Making a splash
COVID caravan
The doctor is in
SPORTS
PHOTOSPREAD
COMMUNITY
Swim team wins and wins
The
@Collegian_GCC @gcc.collegian The Collegian: The GCC Newspaper Friday, February 12, 2021
Students make way to quarantine hotel
Dr. Love makes his perceptive debut
Collegian The Award-Winning Grove City College Student Newspaper
Three weeks in, we’ve still got it
Cases are spiking
SPIKE 3
Editor-in-Chief
Anna DiStefano Managing Editor
cine. “I decided that, while the long-term effects of the vaccine are unknown, there has been a lot more testing on vaccines in general than on this disease. I know that, as an educator, I am exposed to
Pennsylvania State Police arrested a Grove City man Tuesday after a report of harassment from two female college students. The students contacted Campus Safety Feb. 4 after a white car followed them into the Aldi parking lot and parked directly behind them. After shopping, the students returned to their car, got in and locked the doors, when a man tried to open their rear driver’s side door before they drove away. Video footage from the encounter was obtained from Aldi security cameras, and Grove City police identified the man as 44-year-old Richard Rohrer. He is charged with disorderly conduct and harassment. “An interview was conducted with the actor at PSP Mercer on Feb. 9 at which time he confessed to the contact with the victim’s vehicle, however motivation for this action is unknown at this time,” state police reported. The case was one of two incidents of suspicious activity reported by Campus Safety this week. The other report was from a female student who heard a man call out to her as she walked from the PLC parking lot and then followed her towards her residence hall around 9:45 p.m. Feb. 2. The incident sparked several other reports of suspicious behavior on campus, according to Campus Safety. Outside of the Feb. 2 report, “all of the subsequent reports have ultimately turned out to be a member of the campus community, or to be some variation of a rumor told and retold with slight variations in location or date,” Director of Campus Safety Seth Van Til said in an email to students Tuesday. In light of increased rumors surrounding the suspicious activity, Van Til informed students that all reports are investigated, but urged them to limit their reporting to firsthand accounts to “free up resources to better safeguard the campus.” “If you hear of a new sighting, ask the person if they personally witnessed it or not. If they are simply repeating something they heard from someone else, please do not further the rumor by passing it on without evidence,” Van Til said. Junior Nick Buonaugu-
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ALDI 3
MATT SCHOONOVER
Sophomore Rachel Gladstone waits outside the PLC last Saturday to be taken to the Holiday Inn Express to quarantine. Check out the Photospread on page 6-7 for a visual perspective.
Vaccine distribution is waiting game Ashley Ostrowski Copy Editor
As Stage 1A has begun in Pennsylvania this past month, many health care personnel, long-term care facility residents, adults ages 65 and over and people with high-risk conditions are receiving doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. This leaves Grove City College’s professors and students wondering when the vaccine will be distributed to them. According to biology professor Dr. Brian Yowler, it is unclear whether the vaccine will be offered to college staff at Phase 1B, which includes the educational sector. In preparation, the administration is making plans on what will happen when vaccination does come to the college. When the vaccine is available to professors, Yowler plans on getting it and recommends that others do the same. “Overall, I think the appropriate measures have been
Man charged in Aldi incident Paige Fay
Collegian Staff
With only two weeks into the spring semester, prospects for continuing in-person classes are compromised with a spike in campus COVID-19 cases. President Paul J. McNulty ’80 notified students Saturday of the situation on campus, saying “the news is not good.” “Our COVID-19 cases have increased quickly, and our ability to manage appropriately the infected and exposed students is already under significant strain,” he wrote in an email. “We are at about the same spot now as we were in mid-October last semester.” He warned students that social distancing efforts must be increased or “we will be forced into some unwelcome choices including discontinuing in-person classes and sending students home,” he said, noting that the college’s resources for handling such case numbers is limited. The college is state mandated to test symptomatic students, conduct contact tracing and quarantine direct contacts of infected students. According to McNulty, the
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taken in terms of the vaccine going through the phase trials. The data has been provided. The data has been very good and reviewed. Therefore, I’m confident that the appropriate steps have been taken, and they’re not only very effective but very safe,” he said. “We have two vaccines that are over 90 percent effective, and that’s really something. There has not been anything that shows any significant risk to the population,” Yowler added. “There are those very rare allergic reactions, but they are rare and treatable.” Tricia Pritchard, an adjunct professor in the Communication & Visual Arts Department, said she is not planning on getting the vaccine right now. She believes that higher-risk individuals, like her 84-year-old mother, should get their vaccine dose first before younger adults who are less at risk of contracting the virus. Though it looks like most college students will have a
MYGCC
The COVID-19 Positive Test Dashboard continues to update this semester on my.gcc. The college saw a spike in cases between Feb. 4 and Feb. 7, with 12 positive results, rivaling the increase we saw in October. Since Jan. 1, the college has reported 32 positive student cases and 6 positivie employee cases. long wait to receive the vaccine, senior Kylee McLafferty was one of the exceptions. McLafferty received the vaccine because she works in childcare, which is considered an essential business in Pennsylvania. She was personally glad that she made the decision to get the vac-