Despite a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases in Orange County, bringing the total to over 60,000, Chapman President Daniele Struppa nonetheless sees a return to normal life blooming all around him. 

When he goes out for dinner at Laguna Beach, the area is packed with people enjoying meals; when he jogs on Saturday mornings in Huntington Beach, he sees groups of other runners and friends pass by. Yet when Struppa walks on Chapman University’s campus to teach a class, he sees only a couple stray students littering an expansive classroom.

“The most isolated place I find right now in my daily life is Chapman … That’s the only place I feel lonely,” Struppa said during an Oct. 28 virtual town hall. “Society is coming back, and I think we need to be part of that.” 

The gradual push toward a normal life – a normal campus, a normal class schedule – was made clear by Chapman administrators during a town hall focusing on COVID-19 testing updates. 

Orange County currently sits in the “substantial” tier of California’s COVID-19 county watchlist as of Nov. 1, with a seven-day average of 5.1 positive cases per 100,000 residents, restricting in-person classes to 25% capacity. If that average drops below five it will move Orange County to the “moderate” tier and classes may be operated at 50% capacity. 

As of Oct. 30, there were only five active cases of the coronavirus among students living in or near Chapman’s campus. Struppa, Provost Glenn Pfeiffer and Director of the Student Health Center Jacqueline Deats spoke on the success of the return to in-person classes, which was followed by a Q&A from viewers. 

A large topic of the Oct. 28 discussion centralized on looking forward to the next semester, with concerns expressed for faculty and staff being required to teach from the campus. One anonymous question, which was upvoted 52 times, asked, “With only 130 students attending classes in person, why are huge swaths of staff still being recalled to work in-person?” 

“Students expect to have in-person contact with some of the services,” Pfeiffer responded to the question. “We have invested considerable amounts of money in technology that improves our instruction delivery in our classrooms, and even if there are no students there, having faculty in class improves the instruction.”

According to Pfeiffer, the percentage of students attending class in-person from the first week of hybrid classes ranged from 5% to 30%.

“There is a lot of demand by students to attend in-person,” Pfeiffer said. “In fact, many students have told me and told others that they were waiting to see how it was going to go and then they plan to attend, so we might see an increase going forward.” 

However, students have told The Panther they’re not confident in a complete transition to in-person, citing concerns about COVID-19 transmission, which Deats and Chief Information Officer Helen Norris addressed. Chapman plans to test around 25% of the total number of students attending in-person classes per week, determined by a “complex algorithm” that takes into account a variety of factors such as last name and last time accessing campus, Norris said. 

“My team is in contact with the Orange County Health Department seven days a week,” Deats said. “Together, we can identify and keep our campus a good place to learn in person.”

Dave Sundby, the director of Residence Life and First Year Experience, addressed the recent outbreak of cases in The K Residence Hall, postulating that it was likely due to first-years in the residence making new friends and letting “their guard down more than they realized.”

“We had so few active cases for the first four to six weeks of the year that we all may have gotten a little complacent,” Sundby said. “It was a reminder to everyone on campus that we can’t be lax at any point.”

Chapman was exploring the possibility of fully opening residence halls in the spring, Sundby said. In that case, he mentioned that freshmen and seniors would get priority, and students would still have private bedrooms to have a space to isolate themselves. 

Most staff who spoke at the Oct. 28 event mentioned being encouraged by the overall success of the hybrid model since its implementation Oct. 19. 

“Note that we have a lower incidence of COVID-19 on campus than Orange County in general,” Pfeiffer said. “I’m really proud so far of the way our students and faculty have responded to this, in terms of following these guidelines and staying safe.”