Positive tests & close contacts

Students arrived on Spring Hill’s campus on August 17, and within less than a month the school reported that there were 56 active cases and 87 students in isolation. 

Vivi Milian, a freshman from Miami, Florida described the first month as “scary.” When the outbreak happened, Milian recalls that events started to get canceled, and people started to be placed into quarantine. “I was quarantined for having been in contact with someone and then the day before I got out, my whole friend group tested positive,” said Milian. This meant that after spending two weeks in isolation, she would go without seeing her new friends for an additional ten days. 

Ayrton Purdy from Birmingham, Alabama also agreed that the first outbreak was scary. “I didn’t know if we were going to get sent home and have to quarantine again. If that would have happened, I would have been really down,” said Purdy. His friend, Ridge Chautin from Slidell, Louisiana, also remembers the feeling of fear because he didn’t want a repeat of what happened in March of his senior year of high school. 

While Purdy and Chautin managed to escape being quarantined first semester. Another student, Joe Studt, shared the nightmare of his first month at Spring Hill. Studt was reported as a close contact around the time that Spring Hill began to have its first spike. “I was asked if I could drive home because Spring Hill said that they didn’t have enough quarantine beds for everyone,” said Studt. Naturally, this frustrated Studt because his home was a ten-hour car ride away. He went and spent two weeks at home, and when he returned to campus he remembers it feeling empty. “Nobody was out, which made it hard to actually make friends,” said Studt, “and I felt stranded with nothing to do besides drive around Mobile.”

Luckily, after the first month, the cases would drop and restrictions would be lifted, giving the freshmen to do more than just drive around.