COVID on Campus

VCU professors question the university’s reopening and COVID-19 testing methods as its cases climb

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As Virginia Commonwealth University concludes the second week of its fall semester, positive COVID-19 cases among students and employees have continued to climb.

According to VCU’s online COVID-19 dashboard, there are 108 positive student cases and eight positive cases of the novel coronavirus among university employees as of Friday, Aug. 28. That’s an increase from the previous Sunday, when the university reported 58 active student cases and 12 employee cases. Fall semester classes began on Aug. 17.

Since classes resumed, students and employees have been required to complete a daily online health survey, wear face masks in common areas, and sanitize personal and shared spaces before and after use. Other restrictions have included bans on non-university-sponsored gatherings of more than 10 people, though some larger events organized by VCU are still allowed. According to VCU spokesman Mike Porter, 46.7% of all university courses are being offered entirely in person while the rest are being taught either fully or partially online.

Hannah Torma, a sophomore at the university, says all but one of her classes this semester are being taught fully virtually, and she calls the return to college life amid the ongoing global pandemic a mixed experience.

“Generally on campus, I feel like people are decently good about wearing masks, but I was talking to someone just the other day who [said], ‘Oh, I'm going to a frat party at [the University of Richmond],’ ” she says. “I was like, 'Are you serious?' So there are always going to be a couple of people who are still doing stuff like that.”

This week, the university’s COVID-19 dashboard was updated to note a cluster of 44 positive coronavirus cases within its athletic department and now includes a notice that on-campus students who test positive for COVID-19 are being isolated in two residence halls, the Honors College and Gladding Residence Center III. As of Friday, 169 students who live on campus and have either tested positive for COVID-19 or may have been exposed to the disease are in isolation or quarantine. 

Before returning for the current school year, students who live on campus also were required to complete at-home COVID-19 tests and submit negative results. The at-home tests and daily health screenings are being administered by Delaware-based company Kallaco LLC, but a coalition of educators at the VCU and George Mason University chapters of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has questioned the company’s methods. Kallaco also has been contracted for testing by GMU and William & Mary. 

In a letter sent to the Virginia Department of Health, VCU President Michael Rao and GMU President Gregory Washington, AAUP members on both campuses say the company lacks the experience needed to properly manage health data for tens of thousands of students across the three campuses and hasn’t surfaced detailed information about its testing kits.

“All experts we are familiar with insist that reliable testing is absolutely necessary to prevent viral spread during this pandemic, and so the scant information provided to our communities about the nature and quality of the testing done on our campuses is deeply concerning,” the letter reads.

Kallaco LLC was registered in New Orleans last April under the name Strataclear Solutions, according to Louisiana state business filings, and partners with Opeto Laboratory to administer the majority of its Virginia university tests, according to a post on its website. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website notes that it hasn’t authorized Opeto for testing, Kallaco states that its tests have been submitted to the FDA and its labs have the authority to run tests under FDA guidelines.

“We acknowledge Kallaco is a new technology company; in fact, most companies in this space are new. They are being held accountable as is any company doing business with VCU and the VCU Health System,” Rao wrote in a VCU blog post earlier this week.

Everett Carpenter, a VCU chemistry professor and president of the university’s AAUP chapter, says the group has opposed the university’s decision to reopen due to current COVID-19 infection rates across Virginia and lobbied administrators to only offer in-person classes for studio, clinical or laboratory courses prior to the university’s reopening. To date, the VCU chapter of the AAUP comprises more than 100 members, he says.

“I think what's going to inevitably happen is exactly what happened at Chapel Hill,” Carpenter says. “There's going to be a spike in cases in the next two to three weeks, and then we're going to be forced to backpedal, and that's what we were hoping to avoid.”

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill attracted national attention last week when it announced that it would close its campus and move to all-remote instruction for undergraduate students after reporting 177 students in isolation and another 349 in quarantine following its first week of in-person classes. Other schools around the country, including Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame, also have cancelled or temporarily suspended in-person classes.

Locally, Petersburg-based Virginia State University backpedaled plans to reopen its campus and announced on Monday that it will remain fully online through the fall semester.

VCU isn’t alone, however; in-person classes have resumed or are set to resume at other Virginia colleges and universities including the University of Richmond, William & Mary, the University of Virginia, James Madison University, George Mason University, Radford University, and Virginia Tech.

VCU history professor Antonio Espinoza has opted to teach virtually this semester, and while he says his department has offered faculty the freedom to do so, he remains wary of the rise in active COVID-19 cases on campus.

“I do appreciate the fact that the administration seems to have been willing to have some flexibility with regards to the faculty [opting to teach virtually],” he says. “At the same time, though, I think the university has taken a higher risk in going back to campus, as what has happened with the University of North Carolina system and Michigan State and Notre Dame shows.”