If the haze of fraternity parties and orientation week festivities leading up to the first week of school wasn’t enough of an indication, Chapman students (and their Uber drivers) were thrilled when the university announced plans to return to campus for the fall 2021 semester.

Honestly, so were we.

After a year and a half of remote and hybrid instruction, the allure of in-person learning was too good to pass up. More significantly, the societal longing for human connection, which has festered throughout the pandemic, has resulted in a palpable eagerness among students, faculty and staff alike to resume socializing with their peers.

The truth? Not much has changed from last year other than setting. Despite the excitement of returning to the traditional college experience, the fear of contracting COVID-19 and transmitting the virus to others remains ever-present.

So, when the university’s positive COVID-19 case count nearly doubled after the first day of school, students and parents grew concerned. With the Delta variant spreading like a wildfire even among Chapman’s vaccinated population, the institution reached 259 reported cases as of Sept. 2.

Four days have come and gone without a revision to the university’s COVID-19 Dashboard, but that doesn’t mean the cases have reached a halt. As American stand-up comedian John Mulaney once said, “You hope it was a miracle, but probably not.”

In reality, the cases are too overwhelming for the COVID-19 tracers to count. Approximately 1,000 students seek Chapman-administered COVID-19 testing on a daily basis.

Ultimately, Chapman is a mere microcosm of the pandemic’s ongoing impact. As of Sept. 1, ABC reported case numbers had nearly quadrupled in comparison to where they were this time last year. COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the rise across California, and Orange County recorded a death count of 14 individuals alone on Sept. 6. With densely crowded festivities over Labor Day weekend like the Orange International Street Fair drawing in swaths of maskless tourists, it is well within reason to expect these numbers to continue to rise.

For students who have been strictly adhering to the guidance of medical experts in the hopes of avoiding infection and reducing exposure to others, the jump in positive cases feels counter-productive. Wearing two masks only does so much when you’re packed like sardines in a classroom next to the guy who's not even trying to keep his runny nose on the down-low.

Furthermore, the ongoing risk of contracting COVID-19 poses an even greater threat to faculty, who interact with tens, sometimes hundreds, of students each day. Doctorate-bearing individuals are spending the first five minutes of class checking who is “clear” to be there and who is not, which implicates them in potential confrontation of students not following COVID-19 protocol.

The sad truth is we predicted an outbreak. So why didn’t Chapman?

Prior to school starting, we feared the hypotheticals of what might occur if a flare-up took place. There was no communication from administration explaining protocol should not just a few students become sick with COVID-19, but a substantial portion of the student body — they simply hoped we wouldn’t get there.

In fact, administration encourages faculty to treat a student contracting COVID-19 in the same manner they would treat any other cause for an excused absence. Or, as Provost Norma Bouchard put it: “like when a student goes skiing.”

The comparison diminishes the severe complications and frustrations that come with contracting COVID-19, whether a student is excluded from participating academically because of symptomatic illness or just exposure. It also propagates a harmful notion that the Delta variant is less pervasive than preceding variants.

The entire country of New Zealand went into lockdown over a single positive COVID-19 case. How many more Chapman students’ livelihoods have to be put at stake in order for enforcement to be taken seriously? 200? 2,000?

As fears of a COVID-19 resurgence are actualized in the wake of such profound passivity, students have been faced with a decision they shouldn’t be forced to make. And the implications are far greater than themselves.

The policy incentivizes students to knowingly put classmates at risk after potential exposure, or accept academic penalization for their absence without proof of a positive COVID-19 test. While the university now offers an option for students to make their absence excused through the Office of Student Affairs, doing so requires reporting to the COVID-19 contact tracing team, which has been inundated with a back-log of cases.

President Daniele Struppa sent a Sept. 6 email to the Chapman community announcing a partnership with another COVID-19 tracing service, called Rapid-Trace, which is a step in the right direction, but ultimately a band-aid for the inadequate enforcement of COVID-19 protocol. After all, the whole point of having compliance officers is to prevent exposure from happening in the first place.

Our solution: tighten protocol enforcement and allow faculty to resume hybrid learning as necessary.

Current protocol states if students confirm they are COVID-19 positive, they are unable to attend classes, even over Zoom, until the end of their isolation period. Professors must make alternate arrangements for delivering assignments and lectures to these students on an individual basis. Similarly, when faculty confirm they are COVID-19 positive, they cannot continue to teach over Zoom from home; instead, a substitute teacher will take over the in-person class.

What’s perhaps more confusing is that after investing $2 million in hybrid and remote learning technology, the equipment is not even being utilized. Conference style cameras remain perched in the corners of each classroom collecting dust as students secretly call their peers on the phone to overhear their professor’s lecture.

Chapman’s staunch mandate of in-person learning comes at the expense (quite literally) of a complete separation from technology-based learning — a move that coincidentally parallels the institution’s recent detachment from Brandman University.

As much as we can point our fingers at the university, there’s still an element of self-interest involved — we can concede to that. The alarming number of students attending class despite potential exposure can appear no better than the administration who readily let them.

The difference is, the university had the entire summer to prepare for the worst possible outcome. What do they have to show for that time? Rapidly-increasing case numbers, an understaffed contact tracing team and a lack of enforcement for current protocol other than a daily screening survey that operates off the honor system.

Stepping foot on campus grounds each day presents a recurring intrusive thought: “Will I be exposed to the virus?”

Schools such as Liberty University, a private religious institution in Lynchburg, Virginia, have already started to revert to online schooling as a result of COVID-19 outbreaks. California State University, Stanislaus also announced Aug. 14 their return to in-person classes will be delayed until Oct. 1.

We don’t want to have to go back to fully online, but if Chapman doesn’t compromise with hybrid learning and increased patrol of COVID-19 compliance officers, we could be doomed to a similar fate.