Nova Southeastern suspected coronavirus was on campus. It hosted 150 visitors, anyway.
Despite suspecting some of its community members may have contracted COVID-19 and knowing some with symptoms were currently isolated in its dorms, Nova Southeastern University went ahead with plans to host new students on campus, potentially exposing more than 150 people to the novel coronavirus.
The private institution announced Saturday, March 14, that six people affiliated with the university had tested positive for the respiratory illness upon returning from a 12-day school trip to Ireland.
However, NSU officials knew about the cases on campus days before the advisory and still decided to move forward with one of their large admissions events that weekend, apparently taking few precautionary measures in the face of what had already been declared a pandemic.
NSU President George Hanbury’s email with the news about the cases didn’t hit the inboxes of thousands of students, faculty members and staffers until about 3 p.m. that Saturday. That was roughly four hours after the school wrapped up one of its Shark Preview Weekends, which are designed to allow admitted students to interview for its premier programs and get a taste of college life.
Quarantine after Ireland trip
Hailey Keeran, a second-year education student at NSU who visited Ireland and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19, said 29 students and three chaperones traveled.
She said the chaperones knew about the possibility of some being infected as early as Wednesday, March 11, the night they all returned home.
After her plane landed at Miami International Airport, Keeran said she rode in a school shuttle back to campus, located at 3301 College Ave. in Davie, where she lives in a campus dorm. That’s when she started feeling ill.
“I was super sick. I had a cough and a bad headache,” she said.
Two friends who had traveled with her had the same symptoms. The three decided to visit a doctor, who tested them for strep throat and the flu, and eventually came back with a bronchitis diagnosis.
Before they went home, the Westside Regional Medical Center staff told them a chaperone and a fellow student — from the same trip to Europe — were already at the clinic getting tested for COVID-19.
The staff advised the three to self-quarantine for 14 days as a precaution and warned them that if the results from the other two patients came back positive, they would be asked to come in and get tested.
Keeran said she texted the chaperones and her resident assistant to fill them in. The university staff supported her, dropping off supplies.
“They have been super amazing,” she said.
On Thursday, March 12, the 19-year-old from Wisconsin emailed Kimberly Durham, dean of the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education at NSU.
Her dean wrote back promptly, Keeran said, telling her she appreciated the notice and told it her it sounded like Keeran was doing the right things. She then added there was going to be a message from President Hanbury that night — Thursday night — letting everyone know about the cases.
That email didn’t arrive until Saturday. Durham couldn’t be reached for comment.
On Thursday night, Keeran and her two friends received the dreaded call notifying them they, too, would need to get tested for COVID-19. They arrived at the ER at midnight.
“We were all shaken up,” she said. “We knew it was a big deal.”
Keeran found out she had tested positive for COVID-19 the following Monday, March 16.
‘That I can’t speak to’
On Wednesday, March 11, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic, and the Florida Board of Governors issued a press release, stating that all 12 public universities in the state should temporarily transition to online classes.
Hanbury first emailed his community about the new coronavirus at about 7 that night.
“To the best of my knowledge ... ,” he wrote, “no student, faculty or staff member has been diagnosed with COVID-19.”
Hanbury made no mention of suspected cases, and it remains unclear if at that point he had any reason to believe that the Ireland-related cases would soon be confirmed.
In an emailed statement, NSU spokesman Brandon Hensler didn’t clarify when the university first found out about the cases. He didn’t comment on what factors NSU took into consideration before revealing the information on March 14 and why.
In his March 11 message, Hanbury shared the steps NSU had taken to combat the illness, including ramping up its cleaning efforts, advising travelers from any CDC Level 3 countries to self-isolate for 14 days (Ireland was not one of them), suspending non-essential NSU travel and announcing preparations for a transition to online learning.
However, Hanbury didn’t address any large-scale events scheduled on campus.
When asked if he knew about the cases before moving forward with that week’s Shark Preview Weekend, Anthony DeNapoli, the Interim Executive Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, refused to answer.
“That I can’t speak to,” DeNapoli said. “I can only tell you about the program itself.”
What he did say about the program — Shark Preview Weekend, which usually runs from Thursday to Saturday — is that his office took precautions, including deep cleaning of surfaces. His office also told visiting students who lived in the area and those who had traveled with their parents that they could no longer stay on campus.
DeNapoli couldn’t say if the program itself had been modified. In his statement, Hensler said “planned large-scale events were turned into smaller group activities.”
NSU has since moved all of its classes online until the end of the semester. It has also started hosting virtual Shark Preview Weekends.
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 12:42 PM.
