Three Strikes, You’re Out: Students can lose housing if COVID rules are broken
A Point Park University official urged students to report mask violations in a recent university article.
According to the article, on the third COVID violation, students will be put on university probation and could even lose campus housing.
A PPU student spoke out against the school’s COVID rules, calling them “a waste of time and resources.”
Some universities have mask mandates, other universities require the COVID vaccine, and some even have a system in place that allows complaints and violations of safety policies to be reported to administration. Point Park University, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has implemented all three.
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On Oct. 20 Point Park University’s (PPU) student paper The Globe published a piece that featured a PPU official explaining the importance of holding “students who do not follow the masking policies” accountable.
According to Director of Student Conduct Angelo Gargaro, “Students can submit an incident report, which can be found via pointpark.edu.”
Although incident reports regarding COVID-19 safety violations can be submitted anonymously, Gargaro expresses the importance of including as much information as possible.
“Complaints can be submitted anonymously,” Gargaro told The Globe, “However, providing the most amount of detail and information is helpful.”
The Globe’s article lays out what punishments will be administered to students reported for not wearing masks where masks are required.
According to the article, the first COVID-related offense will result in a written warning. The second offense results in disciplinary probation and the third leads to university probation. On top of those punishments, students who live on campus will receive additional punishments, including housing probation and the loss of housing altogether.
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Point Park University’s Managing Director of University Marketing and Public Relations, Louis Corsaro, provided Campus Reform with the following statement regarding the school’s fight against COVID-19:
“Since Point Park resumed in-classroom learning, our students, faculty and staff have done an exceptional job of following COVID-19 guidelines. Student Conduct has received very few incident reports detailing violations of the mask policy currently in place. Each incident received is thoroughly investigated. Although it’s difficult to respond based on a hypothetical scenario, it would be reasonable to expect no action would be taken if it’s determined someone’s mask slipped down on their face.”
Tyler Hillard, a sophomore at Point Park University, disagrees with the school’s stance on COVID-19 issues.
“At this point during COVID and knowing that the majority of students are fully vaccinated, I think it’s just a waste of time and resources to be reporting people for not following the COVID rules,” Hillard told Campus Reform.
“The conflict I see with that is you may not be getting the full picture when you report someone for not wearing a mask right,” Hillard explained. “They could have simply needed to blow their nose or take a drink and that’s something you shouldn’t be reported for.”
Overall, Hillard says he believes that the school is “taking things way too far for this.”
Campus Reform reached out to The Globe for comment, but did not receive a response. Angelo Gargaro chose not to comment.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @logandubil
