Thread by @ConnorASheets

University of Alabama senior Carlee Fernandez works the front desk of a tower UA converted last week to quarantine COVID-positive/exposed students amid an explosion in student cases. She says UA provided no guidance about how to handle sick students. 1/X al.com/news/2020/08/t…

“The students are coming in. A few of them came up to the front desk just with their masks on and their stuff in their hands and were like, ‘I’m here to move into isolation. What do I do?’” Fernandez said. “We were never told what to do if someone comes for isolation." 2/X

Meanwhile, UA is seeing one of the nation's most severe campus coronavirus breakouts. The university added 481 new student COVID-19 cases in 3 days last week and it reported Friday that 36% of its isolation space in Tuscaloosa was occupied. 3/X

Instead of training, Fernandez was given a one-page FAQ sheet to refer to when students ask about the dorm's COVID conversion. But even that seems unsafe, she says, as the front desk's Plexiglas barriers don't cover the area where those face-to-face conversations take place. 4/X

UA spokeswoman Monica Watts said in a statement emailed to AL.com that safety is the school’s “top priority." 5/X

Morgan Quillin was only 6 days into her freshman year at UA when she received an email from the university last week stating she had two days to move out of her dorm in Burke West, a tower the university converted to isolation space in response to rising COVID cases 6/X

“A lot of things were up in the air. I had a panic attack while my roommate was frantically packing and trying to console me,” Quillin told AL.com. “I was devastated and so incredibly scared. I felt abandoned by the school I’ve looked up to my whole life.” 7/X

She was assigned a new roommate in a different tower, which Quillin said made her worried about possible COVID exposure. She was eventually able to move to a new dorm w/ her original roommate. The experience left her concerned about the school's dedication to student safety. 8/X

UA sophomore Lila Bogle was in a cavernous lecture hall w/ dozens of other students last week when a student behind her sneezed. When Bogle turned around to say bless you, the student’s mask was not on her face. The student said she had only pulled it down to sneeze. 9/X

Bogle said the incident reflects her wider concern that "a lot of people aren’t taking [COVID precautions] very seriously. There is some partying and going out still, just based on hearing girls arrive back at their rooms on weekends and sounding drunk when they get back." 10/X

Most of the over a dozen students and faculty who spoke with AL.com for this story said they don't believe there is anything UA can do to sufficiently slow the rise in COVID-19 cases among UA students. 11/X

The question on all of their minds: Will UA be left with no option but to cancel in-person classes in response to the raging COVID-19 outbreak? Morgan Quillin would like to see the university take that step. 12/X

But Monica Watts, the UA spokeswoman, says the university bullish that it will be able to "bend the curve" on coronavirus. 13/X

Students' fall semester bills are due Sept. 4 and the first UA football game is scheduled for Sept. 26. Whether students will still be on campus by those dates remains to be seen. Thanks for reading, more detail in the full story. 14/14
al.com/news/2020/08/t…