Commuter Students: The overlooked demographic

By Christian Maitre

10/7/21

COVID-19 surveillance testing is the constant surveillance of a certain population to keep tabs on how many people are infected. “So we have a huge commuter population, which is a lot different than Ithaca College and Cornell,” said Angeline McComb, McComb is a nurse and head of surveillance testing at TC3. "The numbers change, because a lot of people who are commuters, yes, are TC3 students test at different places or test at home. So then those numbers are associated with the county," She said that TC3 followed the SUNY schools vaccination and COVID testing protocols which require.

SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras laid out these protocols in a school-wide announcement saying "Required, routine surveillance testing for every person on our campuses is imperative to keeping our colleges and surrounding communities safe...”

Similarly at Ithaca College, classes became fully remote after last year's spring break before eventually transitioning to hybrid learning. Although not many students were on campus due to the pandemic, the school also chose surveillance testing to track COVID-19 infection rates.

Commuter students are much harder to track than residential students. Recently, SUNY Chancellor Malatras spoke on the subject in an interview with WSYR.

"Commuter students that go back and forth, they’re not even aware of [the vaccination requirements]. They’re working parents. They’ve got jobs. They’ve got families. Now that we’ve started the registration process, they’re now coming in and getting vaccinated."

Commuter students are more of a risk. They could be driving as long as an hour to get to school, possibly stopping in various places not in the general area and potentially spreading COVID as a member of the student body. Montclair University in New Jersey noticed the fact that they couldn't closely "survey" commuter students enough, and implemented even more restrictions for people commuting to school.

Commuter students at Montclair State aren't allowed to enter any dorm buildings. Residential and commuter students can't even be in the same classes dining halls or campus events. Some in the student body argued it isolated commuter students.

Angeline McComb Head of

surveillance testing at TC3

But at TC3, this divide of the student body isn't necessary. The vaccination and close surveillance of commuter students who opt-out of the vaccine serve as enough precautionary measures for the school. "The only way we know if [a commuter student] is fully vaccinated is based on giving us their vaccine card or getting data from New York," said McComb.

TC3 put in a lot of effort to make sure to provide vaccination and testing resources for students. "We did phone calls and emails, information on the website, as far as the COVID. We also did the Pfizer clinic on campus through Tompkins county health department,"McComb said. "So we had that available through the month of September to get your first and second doses. And also after that, if anybody needed vaccines, we have all the information for a local farmer. To get either the Moderna Johnson, Johnson or Pfizer vaccine."