“I knew that there was going to be ‘enhanced social distancing,’” Garcia said. “When they told us about the quarantine I wasn’t shocked, but it was something that I wasn’t expecting.”
Putting Garcia’s dormitory of more than 150 people into a two-week lockdown was a precaution the school took after a student residing in the building tested positive for COVID-19 and administrators discovered that the college’s “enhanced social distancing” guidelines had not been followed.
Garcia said in some ways she’s enjoying the isolation. She came to Colorado Springs from Dallas and describes herself as a social butterfly from a close-knit Mexican-American family.
“At home, I would always be surrounded by people,” Garcia said. “So I never had ‘me time’ or alone time for me to just reflect, think new things that I wanted to do. ‘Cause at home, you know — responsibilities. But it’s also been a little lonely, not gonna lie.”
Garcia said she had been able to make a few friends before being relegated to her single room. She’s staying in touch with them through video chat. She has daily digital meetups to exercise and do weight training with a fellow student.
“And since we’re all living through the same crisis,” Garcia said. “We’re connecting and bonding even more on that.”
Garcia is still optimistic about the prospects of her liberal arts education once the quarantine is over. She’s signed up for a choreography class.
“Because I was like, why not? Why can’t I study choreography?” she said. “I might fall in love with it and that might be my career.”
Any dancing now for Garcia will have to be in a confined space. And she has reason to dance — she tested negative for COVID-19.
There have been no other confirmed positive cases on campus so far, although there hasn’t been comprehensive testing in Loomis Hall since the students’ arrivals, according to Miriam Brown, a senior and student reporter with the Colorado College COVID-19 Reporting Project. The project was funded by a grant from the college. Brown said the COVID-positive student had been removed from Loomis and was quarantining in a different location.
Arielle Gordon, Brown’s co-reporter, is also a senior at CC. She’s currently reporting on the crisis from her home in Maryland. She is about to start her school year remotely as well.