End of the Quarantine Period
By: Jett Goetz, Lauren Kim, Nhan Phan, Ellie Ana Sperantsas, Andrew Yuan
Shortly after the first day of fall, Exonians swept into town, enjoying Stillwells on the last of the sunny days or heading further along the river to the bridge, where the waters churned underneath. On September 27, the Academy saw town open up, trips to Boston be an option with out-of-town permissions, loosened social distance policies, room vistiations, and optional COVID-19 testing.
Starting from the beginning of the school year, Exonians underwent a two-week quarantine period, which required social distancing and masks while indoors. Boarding students were not permitted to leave campus unless accompanied by a faculty member.
On September 21, the two-week quarantine period ended. Dean Russell Weatherspoon outlined new policies in an email, which stated, “students will be able to go into town and visit each other’s dormitories during visitation hours.”
As of September 27, mask-wearing is optional indoors and outdoors for vaccinated members but is required indoors for unvaccinated students. In town, mask wearing is recommended indoors when not eating for vaccinated students; unvaccinated students cannot eat indoors and must wear a mask. Athletics, ESSO activities and off-campus programs are all permitted. Besides those who are returning from off-campus programs, who must perform twice-weekly COVID tests, students no longer have to test twice-weekly unless they are feeling COVID-like symptoms.
Webster Hall dorm head Alex Myers praised the school’s COVID-19 prevention measures. “Over the past year I've been really impressed with how [the Academy] adjusted [COVID-19 policies] and changed them and tried to be as permissive as they could be, but to keep us safe,” Myers said. “I really hope that this pattern is one of us being cautious, carefully testing patients, giving us more access when it's safe to do so. And I really hope that we don't have to go back to mask wearing or tighter restrictions.”
Williams House dorm head Alexa Caldwell provided her thoughts on the loosened restrictions. “The kids have done well with the rules and we all seem to be healthy as a community!” Caldwell said.
Wentworth dorm head Sean Campbell shared similar thoughts. “I enjoy having our affiliates back in the dorm. This was not possible for almost all of last year so it is good that this is back, giving day students a greater feeling of belonging on campus.”
Wentworth dorm faculty Chelsea Drescher reflected on visitations. “The common room visitations have been overall positive. I think I've just been slightly concerned. You know, I had to warn one group, ‘Hey, if I come back down here and you're not wearing masks, then you'll have to go,’” Drescher said. “I've heard some concerns from boarding students about not having to quarantine, but you don't have to quarantine now if you're a close contact. You have a set of instructions as well to deal with that. But I do know some people are a lot more cautious and concerned. I'm just hoping that they're well.”
Prep Aubrey Silvestri said, “I am super excited to explore a bit off campus and hopefully be able to see everyone’s faces indoors without masks!”
Upper Angie Wah reflected about the rationale behind the Academy’s loosened restrictions. “It makes sense to loosen the restrictions a lot more, for sure, so we can actually do more on campus and off campus activities; there's less of a risk of going off campus and doing stuff like that once we are all vaccinated,” Wah said.
Upper Aaron Joy added, “We can definitely see that there is much more socialization going on indoors and outdoors. Given that the Academy is such a highly vaccinated community, it’s great to see that there is a somewhat of a return to normalcy.”
Lower Aavik Wadivkar is optimistic about the new changes, especially for students who have not attended Exeter pre-pandemic. “I think it’s a fantastic step in the right direction. Everyone’s happy with this decision and while the students are satisfied, there is still an element of safety that some of us opt to be concerned about. However, given Exeter’s track record with dealing with the virus, I am confident that this will go well.” He also reflected on the Class of 2024’s experience last year, “COVID restrictions turned the Class of 2024 experience [last year] into Exeter Lite and so we just got a very limited access to everything the Academy had to offer. For older students, it’s returned to normalcy. For the Class of 2024, it’s an improvement.”
