The EMU COVID-19 dashboard is difficult to maintain well and puts strain on the faculty at EMU. The dilemma is that there is also a firm desire from some students and faculty for the dashboard to reflect a COVID-19 spike to inform their decisions regarding their own safety from the virus.
Last semester, the COVID-19 dashboard was updated weekly at noon on Mondays. This practice started six days after students moved in on Jan. 11. On Monday, Jan. 17, the dashboard reflected that there were 26 active cases and 52 cumulative cases since Jan. 1 of this year.
After Jan. 17, according to Director of Communications Lauren Jefferson, a weekly update of the dashboard was abandoned in favor of a bi-weekly one. This second update comes by Thursday at noon. According to juniors Joshua Wenger and Kyle Fainter, this is significantly better, but both agree that the more often the COVID-19 dashboard is updated, the better.
Wenger doesn’t go onto the dashboard a lot. Instead, he takes the numbers on the dashboard with a “grain of salt,” as it is possible that even in the case of an outbreak, the dashboard wouldn’t update until either Monday or Thursday.
Fainter contracted COVID-19 last year. “It was a big issue for me,” he said. “I still have issues with fish; it just tastes really, really bad to me.” As a commuter student, he doesn’t believe the dashboard is as pertinent for him as it would be for a student on campus. Still, he checks the dashboard every day before he starts his drive to EMU.
Fainter and Wenger both believe that updating the dashboard twice a week could miss a huge spike in cases. Fainter believes that if a huge spike wasn’t reflected on the dashboard it could lead to an outbreak on campus. He says that updating daily is vital to allow people to take precautions, especially for those who live with immunocompromised individuals.
Jefferson says that the university is in the midst of “the usual process of evaluating [the] COVID status on campus and determining the best process to provide accurate information.” She reports one challenge to updating the dashboard daily. “Setting up this record-keeping and reporting process involves three sets of staff, from Institutional Research, Health Services, and Communications.”
[PLACEHOLDER FOR: FROM COVID POSITIVE TO NUMBER ON THE DASHBOARD INFORMATION]
Despite the large quantity of staff it requires to keep the dashboard up to date, Fainter believes that it should be a priority.
University Chaplain Brian Martin Burkholder shared that he doesn’t believe this is something as simple as saying the dashboard needs to be updated more. From EMU’s side, his top question is how we work with expressed need and work creatively to fill the gaps in the faculty to update the COVID-19 dashboard. While Wenger and Fainter are examples of students who feel the need for a more frequently updated dashboard, Burkholder also added names of faculty who want the same thing.
An ideal COVID-19 dashboard, for Wenger, would reflect the number of cases in each location on campus. For example, he would find it helpful to know if there is a spike in cases in Park Woods, where he lives. He believes this would affect him drastically differently from a spike in a first-year resident hall.
