One Emerson: Symptom Check, Dashboard, Off-Campus Student Spaces

Hi,

Some of you are now back in Boston, others will be back in the next few days, and still others will be attending remotely or at partner institutions.

For those of you connected to the Boston campus, classes start on Monday. I imagine many of you are ready to to get going after the anticipation and uncertainty of the past months. To those of you who are here and have been taking the new guidelines seriously, THANK YOU. To those of you who have been assisting with move-in and orientation, a seriously big THANK YOU to you, as well.

Thinking about the week ahead, here are a few important pieces of information to reiterate:

Social Distancing Applies, Even When You Are:

• Outdoors!
• Wearing a face covering!
• A recent recipient of a negative test result!
• Off campus!
• Somewhere with no staff around!

Social distancing always applies. For now, that’s how it has to be.

Want to stay safe? Move through your day assuming that everyone around you is positive. It’s a little scary, yes — and hopefully it will prompt us to remember to stay physically distant, no matter how much we like, love, or trust someone else. That’s what it’s going to take.

We’re all getting used to this. Let’s help each other out with it.

Daily Symptom Checker and Building Access

Starting this week, all students and employees will be required to complete the Daily Symptom Checker, a new feature of the Emerson mobile app, prior to entering Emerson buildings or leaving their residence hall room/suite. It’s easy to do:

1. Download the Emerson app from your phone’s app store (if you haven’t already).
2. Launch the app and select “One Emerson”.
3. Select “Daily Symptom Check,” log in with DUO, and complete the assessment.

If the symptom self-screening results in a green badge saying “Clear to Enter,” you will be granted access to campus facilities. If you are not cleared, contact healthservices@emerson.edu as soon as possible to discuss your symptoms.

Spaces for Off-Campus Students

Many students who live off campus have shared concerns about how they might navigate moving from in-person to remote course sessions that are timed closely together. With the recent upgrade to our room reservation system, Spacebook, there is now a section for students to identify and book individual study spaces. These include classrooms (ranging in capacity from three to six people) to library study carrels.

For more information, check out Fall 2020 Booking Information and How to use EMS/Spacebook. We will be paying close attention to the demand and usage of these spaces, working to identify more, if needed.

About Our COVID Dashboard…

The Emerson Community COVID-19 Dashboard shows the number of tests and results to date for all members of the Emerson community who have tested at Tufts Medical Center — not just students. It also shows the number of students in isolation or in quarantine on campus, as well as any hospitalizations.

The number of “positives to date” is not going to match the number of students in isolation because positives could include faculty, staff, contractors, or students living off campus. In addition, the isolation figure reflects only those students isolating at a given point in time, which will change as students enter isolation, get better, and are cleared to move about campus again.

Quarantine refers to separating someone who might have been exposed to COVID-19 or has the symptoms of COVID-19 from other people. Quarantine helps prevent spread of disease that can occur before a person knows they are sick or if they are infected with the virus without feeling symptoms.

Isolation refers to separating someone who is infected with the virus (whether symptomatic or not) from people who are not infected.

Through contact tracing, some people who may have been exposed to the virus will be asked to quarantine. The process of contact tracing involves talking to the individual who has tested positive and those people who have had contact with the test-positive individual. Not everyone who has had contact with the positive individual will necessarily be asked to quarantine. Once the contact tracers have gathered details about the nature of each interaction they’ll use a set of guidelines to determine who actually needs to quarantine.

Don’t want to quarantine or potentially cause the quarantine? You know the drill: Stay 6 feet away from others. Keep your face covering on. Don’t gather in groups. Don’t exceed room capacities. Keep washing those hands.

We can do this.

Stay safe and well,
Jim Hoppe
Vice President and Dean of Campus Life