Lauren Mueller is a graduate student at SUNY New Paltz. Right now, the school has six coronavirus cases and Lauren is taking four classes online and one in person. She just finished her second week commuting to campus and the word “different” doesn’t even come close to describing the experience.

What You Need To Know

  • SUNY New Paltz has six COVID cases right now

  • One student says the students aren't following social distancing rules

  • She also says the school is doing a great job of enforcing the safety rules on campus, but it's off campus behavior that's cause for concern

“This is like a big word to use but it’s almost post-apocalyptic, like you can’t take your masks off and you have to sit certain seats away from the person,” Mueller said. “It feels like it’s always up in the air."

Only in her second semester, Mueller says it’s hard to meet people when most of her classes are online.

“I started my first semester at New Paltz and I had that first two months, and I could see all these new faces and everyone just like skateboarding to class and it was dope,” Mueller said.

“And then you go back and there’s no one there.”

Mueller says the school is making an effort to enforce social distancing rules, but the students are not.

“They don’t [follow distancing directives] in their personal lives and that’s what keeps us back. Just because you go to a place and you follow all of the rules, then you leave that place and you break all of them, that’s not right. You can’t do that because then all that work that you put in is for nothing if you’re just going to ruin it again,” Mueller said. “It’s important to be strict with yourself.”

She says the people she has met at New Paltz so far have been kind and caring and hopes they don’t end up like SUNY Oneonta and have to leave campus and move to an all-remote instruction plan.