WOOSTER, Ohio — Big changes are happening at the College of Wooster.
"Definitely a good move for now, hopefully, these scares go away,” said economics major Zach Schuch.
More than a dozen students have tested positive for COVID over the past three weeks.
"Good move, for now, I do want to go back to class obviously,” said Schuch.
Now the college has moved to all remote learning, so the hybrid classes that once were are on hold.
"I just like going to in-person classes and engaging in the classes in person, that’s a lot better for me to study,” said chemistry major Ailen Yeo.
Wooster’s president, Sarah Bolton, says it was important to implement the change immediately before things got worse.
"It was a trend-right, and one of the things we had committed to our community from the very beginning was that we would watch, not just total numbers but we would watch trends,” said Bolton. “We went from having no cases to having a handful of cases to a handful of cases plus some students who were ill.”
This is the first time the college has ever seen these numbers and it’s been testing frequently.
"We had very few cases, most weeks we were reporting no cases. We were testing hundreds of students and seeing no cases whatsoever,” said the president.
Although 18 does not sound like a huge number of positive cases, The College of Wooster is small, less than 1,600 students are on campus right now.
Switching to remote classes remote isn’t the only change.
"The library is closed, athletic practices are canceled, food is takeout,” said Bolton.
President Bolton says they are testing even more students this week after contact tracing. Friday they will decide on how to move forward.
"Whether that be something more severe or something that allows us to, as we hope, of course, to return to our regular operations,” she said.
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