Room in CFA building sanitized for potential Coronavirus risk

By: Bailey Hendricks, Editor-in-Chief

One of the TU community members who attended the AIPAC conference, now in self-isolation attended a class in the College of Fine Arts building last week, which resulted in a team wearing gowns, gloves, masks and goggles to clean the classroom last night.

TU professor and department chair of theatre arts Robyn Quick addressed the cleaning in an email sent to theatre students Tuesday afternoon. According to the email, the room that was cleaned and disinfected was CFA 3055. 

“As an extra precaution, last night I asked housekeeping to give additional attention to that room and to disinfect, as well as clean,” Quick said in her email. “The individuals who performed this task wore gowns, gloves, masks, and goggles. The sight of this protective equipment may have caused concern among any students who were in the building at the time, but it is customary to protect them from the chemicals used in cleaning.”

TU student Erin Schetelich was one of the witnesses to the cleaning. She said she and her peers were asked to “quickly leave, [CFA 3055,] clear out our belongings and disinfect them, and wash our hands.”

Schetelich was told by faculty that the room was “just being cleaned,” although the room was “closed off, blinds drawn, and the cleaners inside the room were dressed completely in protective cleaning suits, gloves, and masks while using their cleaning supplies to disinfect the room next to ours,” she said. 

Schetelich described the cleaning team as “wearing white suits that fully covered their bodies except their faces. They also had on gloves and basic masks over their mouths and noses.”

Schetelich then decided to start a petition last night, asking campus to close and move to online-only classes and has received over 350 signatures in under 14 hours. 

Schetelich said she started the petition “to urge a university closure due to this exposure.” 

On Monday, media outlets were made aware that Towson University requested that all American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference attendees and study abroad participants who were recalled from their host countries to self-isolate, according to a statement sent from TU Communications to The Towerlight. 

However, Towson University students, staff and faculty have not received a notification from the University about TU members currently self-isolating as of Tuesday afternoon. Schetelich was surprised to find out this information from news sources, and not the University itself. 

“It is extremely unacceptable that they did not and still have not said anything to us students after days of having this information and giving it to the media, where we are being forced to learn this news from,” Schetelich said. “Several have been potentially exposed and it is extremely unsafe.”

TU student Jack Buzard said he signed the petition because “it is a repeated cycle of Towson not caring for their students.”

“They claim to say that they are trying to better us and make the campus better for us, but it’s really to just turn a profit,” he said. “We are changing Towson for the better and it’s time Towson admits it.”

– Senior Editor Tim Klapac contributed to this article. 

– The Towerlight will update this story as more information becomes available. 

 

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