Officials decide not to reopen at ENMU

PORTALES — The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. After spirited debate, Eastern New Mexico University officials decided Friday they won’t fully reopen campus for the remainder of the spring semester.

However, the university’s board of regents were adamant Roosevelt County was showing strong signs of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the university needed to reflect it.

The compromise: Reopen all university buildings associated with student services by April 5.

Life has not been normal on campus since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit more than a year ago, when an extended spring break turned into a virtual spring semester followed by virtual summer and fall terms.

The current spring semester has limited face-to-face instruction, but the university largely still looks like it did a year ago with most buildings closed to students and the public.

Board President Dan Patterson said the school had planned for a traditional fall semester, but noted Roosevelt County is in the state’s highest designation of turquoise and that surrounding counties are in the green designation. Both of those designations mark counties with fewer than eight daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents and test positivity of 5% or lower.

“Some of us are thinking maybe we need to open up sooner,” Patterson said. “We know that’s going to be a difficult thing; don’t even know if it’s possible. But it’s something we need to discuss.”

Regent Trish Ruiz was the staunchest opponent of a full reopening of campus, and said she didn’t see the benefit in forcing faculty and staff to change plans mid-semester for a few weeks of campus activity. Ruiz, a counselor in the Hobbs school district, said returning to in-person schooling at Hobbs has been difficult with more preparation time than ENMU would have.

“In my heart of hearts, I do not believe we can do this to staff,” Ruiz said. “I’m living that, and I see the stress our kids are going through, our parents are going through. I just don’t understand how five weeks could be beneficial.”

Regent Lance Pyle said he appreciated Ruiz’ viewpoint, but that there was room for reasonable disagreement. He felt there needed to be some type of ramp up, and pointed out the possibility a fall semester would feature a freshman and a sophomore class who were setting foot on campus for the first time.

“I think we need to recognize Roosevelt County is turquoise,” Pyle said. “The other branch campuses are (in counties that are) green. We’re heading in the right direction. But today, we had to call to be let into this building (for a scheduled regents meeting). I think we need to open up the facilities. Turquoise is a low risk. I think we’re doing a disservice to our students and our community by not trying to get opened up and offering some additional services.”

Student Regent Chandlar Head navigated both ends of the debate, and provided her perspective as one of many students frustrated by the closed campus.

“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard students talk about what the point of registering is if I can’t even go talk to someone,” Head said. “Right now, I feel like we’re functioning at the level of a red county. We’re a turquoise county, and I have every intention of keeping this county turquoise. But we’re turquoise nonetheless. It’s not helping to keep our doors locked here.”

Moving instruction back to full in-person, however, Head believed would be a step too far.

Head said faculty put together syllabi, and students planned out all of their assignments and tests, based on a trust the semester would be virtual. The setbacks caused by 11th-hour instructional changes, she said, would outweigh any benefit of bringing a handful of students back into classrooms.

“In order to have student success, we need to have faculty and staff success,” Head said. “I think our approach should be to take baby steps first by opening offices, and then we can start talking about classes.”

Patterson said the university should check with students to see if the students who aren’t in Portales would be interested in a return, and that it might be worth it if a few hundred students said yes.

“I think it would be silly to bring them back for two or three weeks,” Patterson said, “but at four weeks it might be worth it. We’re not forcing students to come back; they could do hybrid.”

Chancellor Patrice Caldwell told Patterson that even if only 100 students wanted to come back, “they’re probably going to be enrolled in 500 (different) classes.”

Vice President of Academic Affairs Jamie Laurenz echoed Head’s sentiments, noting the college developed its spring schedule in October and it would be unwise to make changes more than halfway into the semester.

“When you develop an online course, it’s not a traditional lecture format,” Laurenz said. “It’s not just a simple, ‘OK, now we’ll do a hybrid and we’ll lecture in the classroom.’”

Laurenz also didn’t believe there was an overwhelming amount of interest by students just yet for a full return to in-person classes because none of the in-person classes the school did offer reached their respective registration caps.

Ruiz did suggest the summer session could be the university’s ramp-up to the in-person fall semester, but Laurenz said summer sessions have been conducted largely online in non-pandemic years because those students are fitting classes around summer jobs that are often not in Portales anyway.

Pyle asked why the university has not opened up the service buildings to this point. Caldwell said the matter could be handled with a simple operations plan amendment, and Human Resources Director Benito Gonzales didn’t see any major issues with opening service-related buildings.