After the announcement from Oswego State President Deborah Stanley that in-person classes and extracurricular activities would be placed on pause for a 14-day period, Stanley, alongside SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras and Oswego Mayor Billy Barlow, held a press conference Friday afternoon at the Marano Campus Center.

The press conference on Friday comes just five days after Stanley placed harsher restrictions for students at Oswego State, including the suspension of athletics for the fall semester and a bigger crackdown on larger off-campus gatherings.

Even though Oswego State has not hit 100 cases for the New York State two-week threshold, campus administration decided to put the school on pause before a new academic week began, rather than waiting until the middle of next week.

As of Friday afternoon, Oswego State had 90 cases that count toward the New York state threshold of 100 cases. There were a total of 103 new cases alongside 113 active cases. Eighty-six cases have recovered with 121 students in on-campus quarantine, and 43 students in on-campus isolation.

Malatras called it an “abundance of caution” in order to make it easier on students, faculty and staff so that it is “not as disruptive.” While the pause technically starts on Saturday, it will really ramp up on Monday when classes would begin again.

“We think, just by numbers, they will likely hit 100 even though they’re on downward decline, which is where you want to be,” Malatras said. “President Stanley and her staff, in talking with me and our team, they had a lot of wisdom saying, ‘Let’s do it now, before we start a new academic week so it’s not as disruptive to our students because ultimately we want to make sure our students are getting the best experience possible.'”

The planned completion of the two-week pause is set for Monday, Oct. 5, which would be the start of a new academic week. However, it will take conversations between the school, the local health department and the state health department for the school to be approved to return to in-person classes.

Even if the school hits the 100-case marker during the two-week pause of in-person activities, it will not “reset” the pause. It comes down to the decline and plateau of a low number of cases, Malatras said.

To get approval, the school must be able to “demonstrate cases remain that low” in order to move forward past the pause.

“If that remains the case, and we get to Oct. 5, we’ll consult with the state and local health departments,” Malatras said. “If they say, ‘OK, I think this looks good,’ we’re going to do it. If they say, ‘You know what, you may want to spend a couple of more days to see what it looks like,’ we’ll do that as well.'”

While the school is pausing for two weeks, both Malatras and Stanley emphasized that students are discouraged from going home for the two-week period in order to avoid the potential spread of COVID-19 in different hometowns across the state and country.

Plus, it prevents a secondary spread of COVID-19 at the school should those students return to campus for the return of in-person classes. Stanley mentioned that the school does not have the facilities nor the staff to quarantine all the students who would return back to campus for another two weeks.

Stanley added that since students have card access to their residence hall, activity will be monitored by the school to see who is and who is not using their cards to go to their rooms on-campus.

“We’re saying that, if you do go home, you’re not going to be allowed to come back to campus,” Stanley said. “If they haven’t used the card, we could cut off access to that card.”

Barlow added that, even before the pause was announced, there has been an increase in off-campus patrols to “mitigate off-campus activity.” He agreed with the decision of the school to go on the pause prior to hitting the 100-case threshold.

“You saw the measures they were taking already. It was already helping the data in flattening that curve. Their decision to go remote will just expedite that,” Barlow said. “I look forward to continuing to work with the SUNY administration here to continue moving the data in a favorable position so that in-person classes can resume and we can continue to be one campus, one community and operate as normally as possible given all these conditions.”

Despite the increase in active and positive COVID-19 cases on-campus over the last week, Stanley said she would have only changed one thing about this semester: better communication, emphasizing to students that even if they tested negative when first arriving to campus, things can change in an instant.

“I certainly think we would still bring our students back. What we see is a large majority of students who are thrilled to be here, who are following all the rules, who are doing the best they can. This is a wonderful environment to be in,” Stanley said. “We would be clearer to our individuals that even if you’ve tested as negative when you first came back to campus, that this is a situation that can so dramatically and so quickly.”

Malatras called himself an optimist “when it comes to students” at Oswego State. But he is also confident that the school will be able to start in-person activities again come Oct. 5 after the 14-day pause.

“I think more of the students here are disappointed that it had to go remote. They wanted the campus to re-open,” Malatras said. “Most of the students that are here will remain here. They will follow the rules and they want to do the right thing. They just want to get their degree. They just want to learn. … They’re happy to be here. They don’t want to go home. They want to continue.”

Photo by Ben Grieco | The Oswegonian