ASU students who have not been on campus since the Spring 2020 semester are getting chosen for random COVID-19 testing.
ASU stated at the beginning of the school year that students are required to get tested if they have been randomly selected, and off-campus students are worried that coming to campus just for the sake of taking a random COVID-19 test could put them at risk. Off-campus ASU students Sukhmani Singh, TaMeia Murphy and Crystal Grassi share their perspectives of how they felt when they were selected for random COVID-19 testing.
If you take classes completely remotely and get randomly selected, contact the Dean of Students Office.
SUKHMANI SINGH:
Why?
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
A simple one-word question that crossed senior ASU student Sukhmani Singh’s mind when she got selected for random COVID-19 testing.
SUKHMANI SINGH:
I am not on campus and they know that I am not on campus.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
She mentioned how in the beginning of the school year she filled out a form telling ASU her current home address. That was not on campus and yet she still got selected for random COVID-19 testing. She also wondered about some other things when it came to getting randomly selected.
SUKHMANI SINGH:
I wondered how many other off-campus students were getting selected, and I wondered how random it actually was.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
She asked the golden question: How random is it for an off-campus ASU student to get selected for random COVID-19 testing? To answer her question, I did a little bit more digging. Here is what Dr. Joshua LaBaer, the executive director of the Biodesign Institute at ASU, had to say about the situation.
JOSHUA LABAER:
We take the population, and we use a mathematical algorithm to randomly pick people. Some people don't believe it's random because they are picked several times. But if you look at a Poisson distribution, some people are mathematically just going to get picked multiple times and other people will just not get picked more often.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
Dr. LaBaer's answer was very logical and to the point, but I still was a little bit confused why students who have been just completely off campus since the spring semester are getting selected. Students like Sukhmani, who even told the university that they won't be back on campus, still was put into the same pool. I understand that all students are responsible for the health of other students, but if students have not been on campus and have not come into contact with anyone—why are they getting selected?
So then I decided to reach out to senior ASU student, TaMeia Murphy, and get her input on what she thinks about students who have been completely off-campus getting selected for random COVID-19 testing. And she gave me the answer that I also kind of related to.
TAMEIA MURPHY:
Although I know it’s random, I feel like it could have been a random selection from a pool of people who are on campus or living on campus. It seems like the priority should be higher there.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
Now, this is where the story gets a little bit more interesting. Right as she told me that, I got an email notification that I had been selected for random COVID-19 testing.
To give you a little bit of a background, I have been doing my entire semester online, and I have not been on ASU’s campus since spring break. You know who else got selected for random COVID-19 testing? My brother. That’s right.
We live in the same house, share the same last name and yet we both got selected. I thought that siblings getting selected just could be a coincidence but then Sukhmani told me this, and I was shocked.
SUKHMANI SINGH:
My sister told me she also got randomly chosen that oh we have to go to ASU. So I wasn’t thrilled.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
We all weren’t thrilled—me, TaMeia and Sukhmani. The process of getting randomly selected for COVID-19 testing is scary enough, and also having to think about going back on campus and exposing ourselves to who knows what is in the air since we haven’t been back there since the spring semester, was a little bit tough for me and for everyone to wrap their heads around.
And new numbers show that we might not be alone. Full disclosure: The next bit of information was released just days before the podcast was published, so no one we interviewed had this information at the time. It’s still important to know, though. On November 5th, ASU officials said that students were not complying with random testing protocols enough. Specifically, off-campus students had only been complying around 25% of the time. While everyone has their own reasons, for me, I chose to not get tested because I was not comfortable going to campus. My mom has an underlying health condition, and I was afraid that even for the slight bit of time that I would be on campus to get tested, I could be exposed to something and it could put her in danger. It’s a fear that Tameia and I both shared.
TAMEIA MURPHY:
I live in Buckeye, Ariz. with my parents who are in their late 60s and early 70s. I just never had any intention of going onto or near campus at all this semester, just knowing how irresponsible people in my age group tend to be.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
This fear that TaMeia and I both experienced about going back to campus lingered in my mind for just a little bit. Until I interviewed Crystal Grassi, a sophomore off-campus student just like myself, and she told me that there is a way that you can let the university know that you are off-campus, so you might not have to come in and take the test.
CRYSTAL GRASSI:
If there is a reason why you shouldn’t do it or don’t want to do it, then fill out the exemption form.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
Great! I thought. There’s an exemption form, we’re going to get out of it. But here’s what it says on the email: “Request an exemption by completing this form. Exemptions are limited. If you cannot take this COVID-19 saliva test because of a medical reason or religious belief please call Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services.” Reading that exemptions are limited, I went and clicked on the form to see if there was anywhere on it that had a button for students to press if they are off-campus. The only button close to that was "Living outside of Maricopa County: Verification will be confirmed via the local address on your ASU account."
So the only way that an off-campus student could get out of random COVID-19 testing was if they didn't live in Maricopa County. And sadly, I did live in Maricopa County.
However, I didn't stop there. I decided to just email the Dean of Student personally letting them know that I have not been on campus since the spring semester. Unfortunately, I never heard back from them.
Now I thought, they’re probably busy and I should give them a little bit more time. Until I got my second notice of getting selected for COVID-19 testing. This email, honestly, was a little bit more scary.
If you’re not familiar with how random COVID-19 testing works, let me break it down for you. You can get an email with amazing colors that says that you have been selected for random COVID-19 testing. “WooHoo,” you think to yourself. Then, it also says on the first line of the email, that “you must take the test within two days of receiving of the email, excluding weekends and university holidays.”
For someone who doesn’t live on campus, that sounded a little bit out of reach for me. When I got the second notice, I was just a little bit more scared.
Here’s what it said: “We previously emailed you to let you know you were selected to take a saliva-based COVID-19 test. This is your second notice. ASU students are required to participate in COVID-19 testing if selected. We randomly select individuals for testing from our campus student, employee and business partner populations.”
That paragraph really got my attention. I am certainly not on campus, I am no longer an employee and I am definitely not a business partner. So why did I get selected? Feeling very scared and discouraged I kind of sat there and thought, what even is the point of randomly selected COVID-19 testing?
JOSHUA LABAER:
Testing does a number of things. First of all, it gives us a much better picture of who has the illness, particularly if we pick people at random. In statistics and epidemiology, there's something called selection bias. If only the people who volunteer for testing get tested, then we are going to get an underestimate frequency of the disease because people who feel like they are sick may not want to show up for testing. It's important to be doing random testing and it's important to have a population that complies with that.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
Hearing that made me feel a little bit better, and Dr. LaBaer also added this as well.
JOSHUA LABAER:
We do all of our picking randomly and a lot of that has to do with the notion that we want to care for our entire ASU population, so we care about everybody in our community.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
Alright, yeah. I get it. The university just wants to care about its students. I mean, after all, we are through a global pandemic. It just still didn't make sense to me why we are getting selected for random COVID-19 testing when we've been staying home all semester. It also goes without saying that if that university cared about us, which I know they do, then maybe they could've taken us out of the random sample.
We haven't been on campus since the spring semester and there are obviously specific reasons why—some of our parents are high risk, some of us are just even high risk. We don't know what could happen and we could potentially be exposed to if we come to campus. That was another reason why random COVID-19 testing for students who have not been on campus just didn't make sense to me.
But I thought to myself, maybe there really isn't a way for ASU to know that we are doing our whole semester online. Until Sukhmani brought up this point, which I had completely forgotten about.
SUKHMANI SINGH:
Makes me question how effective the Daily Health checks are, because I fill it out every single day—no I am not going to be on campus, no I am not going to be on campus—is that doing anything? And the form that I filled out in the beginning of the year letting them know my exact address, why wasn’t that enough to also not be randomly selected?
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
At this point when I heard her say that, I basically lost all of my hope. I sat there and I thought, "Wow, ASU really has many different ways to know that we aren't coming to campus." TaMeia agreed with me. So why are we still getting selected for random COVID-19 testing when we state in our daily health check every day that we are not stepping one foot on campus?
In my little fit of frustration, I decided to ask Crystal if she had done anything about the situation.
CRYSTAL GRASSI:
I also called the Dean of Students, because I just wanted to make sure that everything was good. They were like, “Yeah, we’ve been getting a lot of calls from other students who have the same problem and for some reason, your name just gets put back into a list and you get selected again.”
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
Thanks to Crystal, I felt a little bit more relieved. Also since then, our Daily Health Checks have updated. We can now tell the university exactly what days we are going to be on campus. We are no longer getting those daily daily health check emails telling us that if we don’t fill it out, our passwords are going to get reset. And I think the biggest thing about this update is that it relieved some of my stress regarding COVID-19 in general.
After some of my overarching stress was relieved, I decided to ask TaMeia a fun question. I asked her to give me her best opinion about how ASU has handled the COVID-19 pandemic since the beginning.
TAMEIA MURPHY:
Since the beginning of the school year, and we have to do those health checks, I don’t believe that much of what they do is for student welfare more so than for legal reasons. The health check could have been way more thorough. I was so annoyed when I learned that I had to do it every day, even though I am not an on-campus student.
I hadn’t even opened the health check yet. I just assumed that it was going to be like I would have to take my temperature every day and I would have to show them my temperature every day; or something tedious and thorough that I would have to do every day, even though I am not going on campus. Then I opened it and it was literally just two “Yes” or “No” questions.
I think that’s ridiculous. And that doesn’t help anybody except ASU from not being deemed negligent or whatever.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
And then, I decided to get Sukhmani’s perspective as well about how ASU has handled the whole COVID-19 pandemic.
SUKHMANI SINGH:
In all honesty, I’ve been a little bit critical of ASU from the beginning with everything COVID-related. I’ll give them credit where it's due though. I think that the conditions that they opened under weren’t great, to begin with, but I think they’ve managed it as well as they could. As far as the testing goes, I am glad to know that they’ve put so much time, effort and money into making these rapid tests, saliva-based tests, that’s all good and fine.
But I don’t see the effectiveness of randomly selecting students that are literally not on campus ever. If they want to control COVID within their school, they have to be testing their students that are living on campus or are coming to class on campus.
AUTRIYA MANESHNI:
And there you have it. Whether you’re an on-campus student listening who gets tested frequently, or you’re an off-campus student you got selected for random COVID-19 testing and felt frustrated, scared or annoyed, I hope these girls answered some of your questions and related to your frustrations. COVID-19 is sadly here to stay for a while. ASU and many other universities have adapted to the changes and that probably means there is going to be some hiccups in the road. If you want my take on it, I never went and got tested, neither did my brother. I was a little bit more afraid when I got the second notice, but I had emailed the Dean of Students and if anything was going to happen, I could just show them that email as proof.
So far, our ASURite passwords also haven’t been reset. I think we’re fine. However, the thought of random COVID-19 testing can make an off-campus student shudder. It certainly did for me and these students. It’s not that we don’t want to help ASU get a better understanding of their COVID numbers, we are just scared to come to a campus that has active cases. The university mentioned that they will enforce random testing more, but try to give students who are selected more flexibility on when they can come and take their test.
I can’t help but wonder how helpful an off-campus student who limits their contact with people and most likely tests negative, be to ASU’s COVID-19 numbers? Maybe that’s why random testing compliance is so low. I’ll leave you with this final thought
For the State Press, I am Autriya Maneshni.
Reach the reporter at amaneshn@asu.edu or follow @autriya_manesh on Twitter.
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