A cozy com­forter. A mini fridge. Orga­ni­za­tion­al draw­ers. A sur­plus of virus-bust­ing san­i­ti­za­tion supplies.

As Bre­an­na Cha­pa checks off her col­lege sup­ply list, she has the gar­den vari­ety jit­ters of any incom­ing fresh­man depart­ing her Den­ver home base for a dorm room at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Col­orado com­plete with three room­mates. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Chapa’s intro­duc­tion to high­er edu­ca­tion, though, are any­thing but conventional.

Cha­pa, along with thou­sands of incom­ing col­lege stu­dents across Col­orado, will need to nav­i­gate life away from home while con­fronting the real­i­ties of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic dras­ti­cal­ly alter­ing how a tra­di­tion­al col­lege expe­ri­ence is deliv­ered. Uni­ver­si­ties have long had to grap­ple with man­ag­ing home­sick­ness, but what about a sick­ness more sinister?

On top of the usu­al wor­ries about get­ting along in con­fined quar­ters, Cha­pa and her room­mates must hope each fol­lows through with promis­es to quar­an­tine before set­ting foot on cam­pus and assur­ances to clean vig­or­ous­ly upon arrival and con­sis­tent­ly mov­ing forward.

“I’m actu­al­ly pret­ty ner­vous,” Cha­pa said. “I’m a first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege stu­dent, so I don’t have much back­ground about what to do or what to expect in college…especially now with the pan­dem­ic. But I’m a risk-tak­er. I just want­ed to jump in and get start­ed. I want to con­tin­ue my grandma’s lega­cy of being a nurse.”

Col­orado col­lege stu­dents can kiss an ordi­nary cam­pus expe­ri­ence in 2020 good­bye — that may be the only kiss­ing that’s safe­ty guaranteed.

Each school has its own plan for wel­com­ing stu­dents back in the fall. Near­ly every day, cam­pus­es send out new infor­ma­tion and updates to their nim­ble plans, pro­vid­ing stu­dents, fam­i­lies and employ­ees with more details as they are solid­i­fied around virus test­ing, con­tact trac­ing, move-in pro­to­cols and beyond.

All cam­pus­es are rely­ing on thou­sands of young adults to fol­low pub­lic health guid­ance that often runs counter to the logis­tics and rites of a tra­di­tion­al col­lege experience.

No Moun­tain West or Pac-12 fall foot­ball to cheer from the stands. Class­es tak­en from the com­fort of a student’s bed. Enforced social dis­tanc­ing, offi­cials assure, and get-to-know-you events intend­ed to forge those strong col­lege bonds con­duct­ed via Zoom.

Admin­is­tra­tors expect COVID-19 cas­es to arise as thou­sands of stu­dents from across the coun­try cram in to live and learn togeth­er. Col­lege brass say they’re more pre­pared to han­dle those cas­es than they were in March when cam­pus­es divert­ed to remote learn­ing near­ly overnight. Cam­pus plans note the pos­si­bil­i­ty of going ful­ly remote again if offi­cials can’t keep up with the nov­el coro­n­avirus test­ing, con­tract trac­ing and quar­an­ti­ning that will follow.

Offi­cials at all four cam­pus­es The Den­ver Post con­tact­ed for this sto­ry — UNC, Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Boul­der, Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty and Otero Junior Col­lege — said there was not a num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es or one spe­cif­ic mark­er reached that would trig­ger a switch back to full remote edu­ca­tion. All said their uni­ver­si­ties would work close­ly with state and local pub­lic health agen­cies to make the call, hing­ing on whether the school was able to prop­er­ly han­dle the new coro­n­avirus cas­es that occur. 

What can Col­orado col­lege stu­dents expect for their fall semes­ter oth­er than the unex­pect­ed? Here are a few things we know for sure — at least, for now.

Face masks — worn inside dorm hall­ways, class­rooms, out­side strolling through cam­pus —  will be ubiq­ui­tous. Zoom mee­tups to con­nect com­muter stu­dents, Mid­west­ern­ers and Star Wars fanat­ics, to name a few, will be offered as replace­ments for in-per­son gath­er­ings. Makeshift class­rooms in spa­cious, social­ly dis­tanced cam­pus ball­rooms will replace packed lec­ture halls. Some stu­dents may wind up liv­ing in a near­by hotel instead of a dorm room. Col­leges are prepar­ing quar­an­tine dorms to house those liv­ing on cam­pus who con­tract COVID-19. Those who dis­obey pub­lic health orders could face suspension.

Liv­ing and learn­ing togeth­er and apart

At CU, 33,027 stu­dents have enrolled for fall class­es. Of those stu­dents, 29,310 enrolled for at least one ful­ly in-per­son course or a hybrid course with an in-per­son com­po­nent. More than 3,700 stu­dents have enrolled in cours­es that are ful­ly online.

CU stu­dents liv­ing on cam­pus will need to either present a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test tak­en with­in five days of their arrival or take a COVID-19 on cam­pus before being admit­ted to live in the dorms. If a stu­dent tests pos­i­tive and lives with­in a 250-mile radius of the cam­pus, they may be asked to go home and iso­late until cleared to move onto cam­pus. Stu­dents unable to head back to the nest will be pro­vid­ed with a space to iso­late on cam­pus, said Craig Kuehn­ert, CU asso­ciate direc­tor of stu­dent engagement.

In addi­tion to hand-wash­ing sta­tions and san­i­tiz­ers installed on the Boul­der cam­pus, CU is erect­ing tents so stu­dents can hang out out­side. Stu­dents liv­ing on cam­pus aren’t allowed to vis­it the dorm rooms of their bud­dies from dif­fer­ent cohorts, so the tents pro­vide an alter­na­tive gath­er­ing spot.

Cohorts are uni­ver­si­ty-designed groups that house stu­dents with their class­mates, intend­ed to keep the same col­lec­tion of stu­dents liv­ing and learn­ing togeth­er to reduce min­gling and, poten­tial­ly, more wide­spread germ transmission.

“Cam­pus epi­demi­ol­o­gists talk about a deck of cards and how we don’t want to mix stu­dents of dif­fer­ent decks,” Kuehn­ert said.

Cohort sizes could range any­where from a dozen stu­dents to an entire res­i­dence hall based on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the pro­gram the stu­dents are study­ing, Kuehn­ert said.

Greeley’s UNC isn’t doing cohorts, but due to declin­ing enroll­ment and relaxed rules man­dat­ing fresh­men live on cam­pus, the uni­ver­si­ty has enough emp­ty dorm rooms to accom­mo­date stu­dents who want to live by them­selves, said UNC Pres­i­dent Andy Feinstein.

“We had to be a lit­tle more flex­i­ble as stu­dents have con­cerns about under­ly­ing health con­di­tions or oth­er con­cerns,” Fein­stein said. “A lot of stu­dents have expressed con­cerns about whether or not they feel com­fort­able or safe com­ing to a uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. It’s a lot of incon­sis­ten­cy from fed­er­al and state lev­el about what the fall holds.”

Eigh­teen-year-old Cha­pa is embrac­ing the uncertainty.

The North High School 2020 grad­u­ate wasn’t sure she want­ed to attend col­lege until the win­ter of her senior year when a Den­ver Schol­ar­ship Foun­da­tion coun­selor opened her eyes to the world of high­er edu­ca­tion. Now, even a pan­dem­ic won’t deter Cha­pa from her inde­pen­dence and pur­suit of a nurs­ing degree.

“My fam­i­ly is real­ly iffy about me going right now, though,” Cha­pa said. “They want me to stay safe at home…but I want to meet new peo­ple. I want to expe­ri­ence a large class with so many stu­dents — if that can ever hap­pen. I want to have the whole col­lege expe­ri­ence. It’s hard right now because of the pan­dem­ic, but I know UNC is tak­ing precautions.”

Chang­ing stu­dent behavior

Tim­o­thy Alvarez has been los­ing sleep late­ly, won­der­ing whether bring­ing stu­dents back to La Junta’s Otero Junior Col­lege is the right decision.

OJC man­aged to wrap up cours­es this sum­mer left over from the spring that need­ed to be com­plet­ed in per­son — cos­me­tol­ogy, weld­ing, nurs­ing — with­out a COVID-19 out­break, Alvarez said.

Any class­es that can be done vir­tu­al­ly — psy­chol­o­gy, Eng­lish, his­to­ry — will start remote­ly this fall to min­i­mize stu­dent con­tact, Alvarez said, with some of the more hands-on cours­es being done care­ful­ly in person.

Alvarez said it feels eas­i­er to social­ly dis­tance in rur­al La Jun­ta than in a dense city, but he wor­ries about his stu­dents’ sense of belong­ing at a time when they’re being encour­aged to keep apart.

“How do we cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty with stu­dents when we try to keep them apart?” Alvarez said. “We want stu­dents to have a sense of belong­ing and a sense of pride, but when we don’t allow them to inter­act and we don’t do some of the stu­dent life activ­i­ties, that’s going to be a chal­lenge for us. We have to find ways remote­ly for stu­dents to find that sense of con­nec­tion and pride in the campus.”

Masks are required on OJC’s cam­pus. The small col­lege is set­ting aside dorm rooms to quar­an­tine stu­dents. There will be tem­per­a­ture test­ing, and stu­dents with COVID-19 symp­toms can get test­ed for the virus, Alvarez.

“What this is real­ly pred­i­cat­ed on is requir­ing and forc­ing us to try to change stu­dent behav­ior,” Alvarez said. “As you can imagine…you get 18-year-old kids togeth­er, and they’re going to do things. Part of our charge is to try to change stu­dent behav­ior and implore them that it’s not just about them. It’s about the community.”

Marc Stine, the inde­pen­dent Greek advo­cate who works with the CU stu­dent-run Inter­fra­ter­ni­ty Coun­cil on the Hill, over­sees more than 2,000 self-gov­ern­ing fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers on Boulder’s Uni­ver­si­ty Hill.

Because the major­i­ty of CU fra­ter­ni­ties don’t have offi­cial ties to the uni­ver­si­ty, they usu­al­ly police them­selves with the guid­ance of Stine, their nation­al chap­ters and the under­stand­ing that indi­vid­ual stu­dents are still sub­ject to CU’s stu­dent code of conduct.

That sys­tem will large­ly remain the same this fall, Stine said, with added safe­ty pro­vi­sions such as a social mora­to­ri­um on large events and some fra­ter­ni­ties turn­ing to vir­tu­al recruitment.

Stu­dents are expect­ed to adhere to pub­lic health guid­ance, but Stine said it’s up to the fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers how to imple­ment those rules.

“There’s no way for us to tell them oth­er than to say ‘Fol­low the rules,’” Stine said. “I have dif­fi­cul­ty see­ing guys who live in a fra­ter­ni­ty house wear­ing masks all the time regard­less of what you tell them because they’re young col­lege guys. Some are smart and some are dumb.”

“It’s going to be different”

Incom­ing Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty fresh­man Jor­dan Aguirre is inter­est­ed in join­ing a fra­ter­ni­ty when he arrives on the Fort Collins cam­pus to study biochemistry.

The 18-year-old said coro­n­avirus does wor­ry him, but he want­ed to push on toward col­lege because he feared being left behind.

“I just hope that I still get to at least get a good col­lege expe­ri­ence the first year liv­ing in the dorms and good class time and being able to learn how to con­nect with pro­fes­sors and still being able to make con­nec­tions,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre admits he thinks it will be hard to keep stu­dents social­ly dis­tanced when they’re liv­ing in such con­fined spaces, but he hopes stu­dents who feel sick fol­low prop­er quar­an­tine orders. He said he feels safe at CSU.

CSU is adopt­ing many of the stan­dard uni­ver­si­ty safe­ty pre­cau­tions men­tioned above, includ­ing quar­an­tine dorms, symp­tom check­ing, low­er den­si­ty res­i­dence halls and social­ly dis­tanced class­es. Many of the din­ing options will be to-go and a cam­paign to stress shared pub­lic health goals will be key in buy-in, said Lori Lynn, co-chair of CSU’s pan­dem­ic response team.

All Col­orado uni­ver­si­ty offi­cials inter­viewed by The Den­ver Post con­ced­ed that 2020 would make for some abnor­mal col­lege expe­ri­ences, but UNC’s Fein­stein said it was up to them to make those expe­ri­ences worth it for students.

“We’re going to do our absolute best to make the fall col­lege expe­ri­ence some­thing that enrich­es and enhances their lives, but it’s going to be dif­fer­ent,” Fein­stein said. “Every­thing from social dis­tanc­ing when they’re eat­ing in our din­ing facil­i­ties to wear­ing masks through­out our cam­pus. We’re going to have to make sure we still give them the expe­ri­ences they deserve.”