By Kelly Malcolm

As all Northwest students know, COVID-19 regulations are taken very seriously here on campus in order for the university to remain open with few to no active positive cases. What this means, however, is Resident Assistants (RAs) have to enforce these mandatory regulations in every living area and ensure that all students on campus follow the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for college campus living.

Some of these guidelines include wearing a mask at all times in public spaces, staying in groups of five or less, staying six feet apart from others and not eating or drinking indoors unless seated with your household. However, as I am sure any student or RA could tell you, the enforcement of these rules got old fairly quickly.

RA of Guy 300, Julie Quackenbush says, “Student leaders don’t want to tell you to wear a mask or to break into smaller groups just as much as you don’t want to hear it. If everyone follows the rules, then no one has to go through that irritation, and we can keep our community COVID free.”

Things started to look up the further into the semester we got, students even began to get the hang of what the rules were and RAs didn’t have to enforce the rules as strongly.

RA Zach Shelton explained, “We (RAs) have to come on pretty strong for the safety of our community but as soon as everyone kind of realized that things got a lot easier for everyone.”

The general consensus I have gotten when speaking to several students is that despite the unusual circumstances, community is thriving as much as it can.  Living areas continue to host in-person events and residents continue to make meaningful connections despite the physical barrier between one another.