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Syracuse University will use the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center for isolation and quarantine housing this academic year, university officials announced at a virtual forum Friday. 

SU owns the property and will be able to restrict access to certain floors of the hotel for the housing, said Mike Haynie, vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation, at the forum. 

Under isolation, students can live within a common space or “family unit” and share facilities with others who have contracted the virus, Haynie said. Students will only go into quarantine — in which they reside in a single room with a non-shared bathroom — if they have been exposed to the coronavirus, he said.  

“We’ve been working throughout (spring and summer) to look at how we’re going to manage to keep the campus safe and healthy for everybody,” said Amanda Nicholson, interim deputy senior vice president of enrollment and the student experience.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered individuals traveling to New York state from 22 states with high COVID-19 infection rates to self-quarantine for 14 days. The guidance will impact less than 2,000 SU students, Haynie said. The university continues to work on contingency plans to accommodate these students and plans to send additional guidance early next week. 

Students, including those who live in New York state, must receive testing up to seven days before their arrival on campus, Haynie said. Students will be required to share negative test results with the university before arriving on campus. 

Students throughout the semester will not be allowed to enter campus residence halls other than the one they live in, Nicholson said. 

“In order for us to be able to trace  and track and test effectively, we need to be clear about who has been in buildings and, again, minimize the mixing,” said Marianne Thomson, dean of students. “The bonding that we think will happen in the floor communities will probably be really wonderful.”

SU dining halls will operate on a mostly take-out and grab-and-go basis at the start of the semester and will possibly add seating later on, Thomson said.

The university will provide tents on the Quad for at least the first two months of the semester to allow gatherings that ensure social distancing, Nicholson said. SU will also reconfigure libraries and other public spaces to allow small groups of students to be together.

SU plans to hire 40 to 50 students to be certified as contact tracers through Johns Hopkins University’s curriculum, with supplemental training from SU. These contact tracers will assist Onondaga County’s existing contact tracing team.

SU’s “Stay Safe Pledge,” released Tuesday, consists of 14 guidelines that students must follow to ensure the safety of the SU community. Students who can’t follow the guidelines, specifically the mask-wearing and social distancing requirements, should not come to campus, Nicholson said.

Students with disabilities who need accommodations to the pledge should contact the Office of Disability Services, said Rob Hradsky, vice president for the student experience. 

“This has to be a collective effort,” Haynie said. “If we want to be all of us, students, parents, faculty, if we want a residential campus experience, it’s incumbent upon all of us to be able to deliver that experience for each other and that’s going to be 100% dependent on our ability to do it safely.”

Published on July 17, 2020 at 4:57 pm

Contact Sarah: [email protected] | @sarahalessan