Bethel Is­sues COVID-19 Up­dates, Cam­pus Pre­pares for Grad­u­a­tion

MISHAWAKA—On Tues­day, April 6, Gov­er­nor Hol­comb lifted the statewide mask man­date, prompt­ing Bethel to is­sue a COVID-19 cam­pus up­date on April 7. In an email sent to stu­dents, the COVID Re­sponse Team an­nounced that Bethel would be fol­low­ing guide­lines from St. Joseph County Health De­part­ment, which ex­tended the mask man­date to May 27.  

This email also in­formed stu­dents that vac­ci­na­tions are now avail­able to In­di­ana res­i­dents age 16 and over and stated that vac­ci­na­tions are “en­cour­aged but not re­quired for our com­mu­nity mem­bers.” 

Julie Beam, dean of stu­dents and a mem­ber of the COVID Re­sponse Team, said they have been en­cour­aged by the min­i­mal num­ber of cases this se­mes­ter. 

“Right now, our lev­els con­tinue to be quite low, so as far as we can tell it looks like we will con­tinue at the blue level, we hope, through the end of the se­mes­ter,” Beam said. “There’s been a bit of Covid this se­mes­ter, but much, much, much lower than what we dealt with in the fall.” 

Bethel has adapted guide­lines through­out the se­mes­ter as more dis­cov­er­ies were found con­cern­ing COVID-19 and more changes to­ward a greater nor­malcy could be made. This in­cluded shorten quar­an­tine pe­ri­ods un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances and min­i­miza­tion of space re­quired be­tween stu­dents in class­room set­tings (from six feet to three feet). 

“I’m just grate­ful that we have a few fi­nal weeks left to­gether, and it’s sunny, and we can be out­side, so hope­fully that will help us all be healthy,” Beam said.  

As the se­mes­ter winds down, plans are also con­tin­u­ing to be made for the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies, one for the class of 2020 on April 30 and two for the class of 2021 on May 1, one at 10 a.m. for adult and grad­u­ate stu­dents and one at 5 p.m. for tra­di­tional stu­dents.  

The choir will not be able to sing as it would tra­di­tion­ally. In­stead, Michaela Love ‘20, will sing at the Fri­day cer­e­mony, and McKenna Liebenow ‘21 will play a marimba solo at the 5 p.m. Sat­ur­day cer­e­mony. 

Ex­cept for de­part­ment deans and pro­fes­sors who have chil­dren or grand­chil­dren grad­u­at­ing, the fac­ulty mem­bers will re­main out­doors to par­tic­i­pate in the vis­i­ta­tion time fol­low­ing the cer­e­mony, un­less this time is can­celed due to weather. This al­lows the event to fol­low cur­rent COVID-19 in­door oc­cu­pancy guide­lines. 

Other changes were made to ac­com­mo­date these guide­lines as well, in­clud­ing the de­ci­sion to have stu­dents sit with their fam­i­lies fol­low­ing the walk into the gym. Orig­i­nally, they were go­ing to be al­lowed to sit with their friends main­tain­ing a dis­tance of three feet apart, as is cur­rently re­quired in the class­rooms. How­ever, St. Joseph County in­ter­vened and said that if stu­dents were go­ing to sit to­gether, they would need to be spaced six feet apart. This would have cut down on the al­ready lim­ited num­ber of guests stu­dents could in­vite to the cer­e­mony and may not have al­lowed space for any guests at all, so Bethel de­cided to arrange the seat­ing into fam­ily pods in­stead. 

“That was the only way we could get all the tra­di­tional stu­dents in there, and their guests,” Reg­is­trar Jeanne Fox said. “We’re push­ing back all the bleach­ers, so it’ll be all on the floor, and us­ing as­signed seats.” 

There are 199 tra­di­tional stu­dents in Bethel's class of 2021.