The second I walked on campus in Fall 2020 I was almost sure the school would be shut down within the next couple of weeks. 

I was overwhelmed by the clusters of students and parents roaming around campus, as it was the first time I had seen more than 10 people at a time since the start of the pandemic. 

The lack of stigma around walking maskless outdoors I grew accustomed to in Denver was evident. And honestly, it worries me a lot less now than it did last previous semester. 

While I’m nowhere near comfortable enough to go to a house party, I can say for a fact they’re still rampant on and around campus. 

Between the reduced mask-wearing, constant parties and pre-COVID social lives, it’s hard for me to comprehend that we’re still going strong through our second semester in the midst of a pandemic.

Yet, Colorado Mesa University (CMU) isn’t navigating its way through this pandemic any different than any other college; rather, the unique circumstances CMU has been lucky enough to find itself in allows us a taste of life before COVID-19.

What I would argue is another major contributor to our low case rates is the relative isolation having a campus in Grand Junction forces on CMU’s Mavericks. 

Rather than living 30 minutes from family and old friends like our CU Boulder, CSU and CU Denver counterparts do, it takes a majority of the on-campus student population at least a four-hour drive to return to their old stomping grounds.

This is a critical factor to our low case rate, as the lack of ease in traveling, in addition to our lack of mid-semester breaks deters a lot of Mavericks from travel. This means we don’t have hordes of students going in and out of towns infested with COVID-19, just to come back to campus and spread it.

The most important step CMU took to combat COVID cases is actually one of the first steps the administration took, requiring on-campus students to take a COVID test before move-in.

It’s known that travel is a major proponent of almost any disease, so it made a surprising amount of sense when I was told I needed a negative COVID-19 test before coming onto campus. 

This alone is a huge deterrent for COVID cases on campus, and actually creates a very close-knit community of uninfected students. This is augmented as CMU’s isolated location leaves students with few options to travel to in terms of populated cities where COVID runs rampant.

It’s important to realize, however, that this doesn’t mean we can throw our masks away and celebrate just yet.

With the recent introduction of new COVID-19 strains on campus and vaccines slow on the rollout, we have to work together as a community to keep wearing masks indoors, in big groups and to try keeping your social group within CMU as much as possible.

Because unlike the majority of the United States, we have amazing circumstances for this pandemic, and we cannot throw it away.