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The isolation chronicles

There are no two students who experience COVID-19 the same way. 

Before the fall semester started, the university set guidelines and procedures in accordance with the CDC for students who either contract or are deemed potentially exposed to COVID-19. 

Even with these plans in place, students develop different symptoms, or none at all. The recovery environment can vary from university apartment to off-campus hotel rooms.

As a result, each Bradley student put into “isolation” has a different story to tell.

Several students are spending their isolation periods at the St.James apartment complex off-campus. Photo by Anthony Landahl

“You can’t get more COVID”- Noah’s story

“I had about two to three hours to pack up all my stuff to go to this new building with people I didn’t know,” said sophomore Noah Mollett.

Mollett, a theater arts major, is one of the hundreds of Bradley students in the last month who had been moved to an isolation location after testing positive for COVID-19. Though he had no symptoms, he decided to get tested as a precaution after someone on his residence hall floor tested positive.

When a student tests positive in a residence hall, students on their same floor are encouraged to get tested, but it isn’t required. Because of this, asymptomatic students like Noah may never know they have the virus.

“I’m fine,” Mollet said. “I followed all the rules. I stayed 6 feet apart, I wore my mask, I stayed in my room, and I still got it. It happens. You just have to get tested.”

Shortly after receiving his positive test result from Bradley Health Services, Mollett was shocked to find out he was assigned three random roommates, all of whom had COVID-19.

When he asked why positive students were put together, he found the explanation concerning.

“I quote the person who told me this at Health Services, ‘You can’t get more COVID.’” 

And so began nine days in isolation for Mollet.

He described the St. James’ apartment, where he was placed as completely barren, and only had the supplies he was able to pack in two hours. In his time there, dining services delivered three different meals each day: one hot and two cold. 

“This was nowhere near enough food for one person, I mean you could eat everything in that bag in one sitting,” Mollet said.

He ended up using Instacart and other delivery services to order groceries online.

“I felt bad doing so because this whole entire building has coronavirus, but we cannot survive without more supplies,” Mollet said.

During his time in the isolation apartment complex, Mollet observed people going in and out of different apartments, hanging out with others who also tested positive. 

“People in St. James said they literally didn’t know what the rules were,” Mollet said. “They said they moved to St. James and that was about it. I figured, as my assumption was, don’t leave and don’t invite anyone over.”

After a nine-day period, and without a negative test result, Mollet was allowed back into his dorm room.

“It’s very unsafe how Bradley is handling the St. James situation,” Mollet said. “I like the idea of moving people into separate buildings but putting people together is counterintuitive.” 

“I lost the concept of time” – Denise’s story

Within hours of finding out she tested positive for COVID-19, sophomore Psychology major Denise Sinadinos was on a bus being transported to university isolation.

Her isolation location was a little farther than “off-campus,” but in fact, a downtown Peoria hotel.

Like Mollet, she received an email notifying her where she was headed and given about an hour to pack. She was paired with someone from her sorority who also tested positive, and was thankful given the uncertainty of being matched randomly.

“Bradley should let students who don’t want to room with a random person have their own room just because the hotel is so small and it’s quite awkward,” Sinadinos said.

She and her roommate were in the hotel room from Sept. 12 until Sept. 21. They were delivered two meals a day from dining services; a hot meal for lunch and a cold meal for dinner.

“We didn’t have a fridge or a microwave which made it hard because we were forced to eat the food they brought us,” Sinadinos said. “Personally, I’m very picky so I didn’t really eat the food they gave us, but they added snacks like bags of chips and muffins and two bottles of water each meal, which was nice,”  Sinadinos said.

Denise documents her last day isolated in the hotel room. Photo via Denise Sinadinos

While she was there, she experienced “very uncomfortable” COVID-19 related-symptoms such as a fever, runny nose and a loss of taste and smell. 

Sinadinos said it felt strange being sick in an unfamiliar place.

“It was hard because no one was checking in on us,” Sinadinos said. “What would happen if our symptoms got worse?” 

In addition to physical symptoms, she said being confined to a 300-square foot room affected her mental health.

“I lost the concept of time and I barely got any sunlight, so I felt like my motivation just went down and I didn’t want to do anything,” Sinadinos said. “It was hard to do homework when most of the day I was sitting in my bed.”

“From what I noticed, everyone was abiding by the rules.” – Robert’s story

Freshman economics major Robert Nitsch decided to get tested through Bradley Health Services after one of the fraternities he visited during recruitment recorded a positive case.

After being notified that his test was positive at 10 a.m. on Sept. 16, Nitsch described the communication as slow; he didn’t find out his isolation location until 2 p.m., four hours after the initial call.

Because he lives in a dorm room, he was concerned about infecting his roommate, using shared bathrooms, and getting food during those hours of uncertainty.

“I wouldn’t move out until 4:30 [p.m.] because that is when a bus came to pick me up from my dorm to move me to St. James,” Nitsch said. “This left my roommate exposed to me for around six hours.”

Like Mollet, Nitsch found out he would be in an apartment with three unknown  people who also tested positive for COVID-19 until Sept. 25.

“From what I noticed, everyone was abiding by the rules,” Nitsch said about his roommates.

He said the food from dining services wasn’t the best and believes the university should make an effort to improve the quality.

“They also did provide a good amount of snacks, but we were only given two water bottles a day, which I thought was lacking,” Nitsch said.

Nitsch was asymptomatic and spent most of his time studying, which proved without a study area.

“There weren’t any chairs or desks in the rooms, so I mainly laid on my bed except for the few times I went to the kitchen to study if I needed to sit,” Nitsch said. “Maybe providing a desk and chair in the rooms would also be nice since I and others get distracted easily in bed.”

Nitsch said that if he could summarize the experience, he would describe it as a “prison of boredom.”

As of Sept. 24, the university reports that 127 students are in isolation and quarantine, but does not distinguish between them. Since the beginning of the school year, there have been 318 cases of COVID-19 from on and off-campus testing. Additional information, including weekly positivity rates, can be found on the university’s COVID-19 dashboard, which is updated every Friday.

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