August 13, 2020
Dear Student:
As we prepare to resume our planned on-campus instruction and activities on Monday, August 24, we have developed a comprehensive array of protocols to enhance the safety of our students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most important strategies to mitigate the risk of transmission of the virus is effective contact tracing procedures.
Now that we have received formal guidance from the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH), we have completed our contact tracing protocols (PDF). I encourage you to familiarize yourself with these important measures. As you will see, our University will be conducting contact tracing pursuant to a cooperative agreement with the Delaware County Health Department.
Under these protocols, our staff will call any student or employee who has been in close contact with another student or employee who has tested positive for the virus. Both the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the ISDH define “close contact” as a person who has remained within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes. That is why physical distancing of at least six feet is so important. And wearing a mask will decrease the risk of infection. For more answers to frequently asked questions about our testing and contact tracing protocols, please visit our website.
If you are called by a contact tracer, please respond as soon as possible. Please cooperate fully with the inquiry, and please follow any instructions that you are given. Also, in order to ensure that a contact tracer can reach you promptly, please make sure that your telephone information is accurate. To update your contact information, please log in to MyBSU.
In order to keep you apprised of the incidence of the coronavirus on our campus, we have developed a dashboard on our website; the dashboard will be live on Monday. The dashboard will be updated regularly, and it will include statistical information about students and employees who have been tested either at our University’s health center or through our partnership with IU Health. To avoid the potential of duplication, our internal dashboard will not include information about students and employees who may have been tested at other locations. Our website, though, will provide a link to the ISDH online dashboard, which contains current information about COVID-19 in Delaware County and every other county in Indiana.
We have invested a lot of time and resources to prepare our courses and our campus. I believe that, if we all honor the commitments embodied in our Cardinals Care pledge, we can overcome the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thank you very much for your cooperation and assistance.
