Jamestown Community College President Daniel DeMarte is pictured in his office Monday. DeMarte said the college is ready to receive students for the fall 2021 semester. Photo by Katrina Fuller

JAMESTOWN — The past year-and-a-half has been different for Jamestown Community College students and staff. However, they are ready to face the fall 2021 semester.

Daniel DeMarte, Jamestown Community College president, said the college is ready to open for students in time for the start of the semester, which begins on Monday, Aug. 23.

While varying guidance from state and federal officials can be confusing, DeMarte said the college and its health centers have been handling the changes without skipping a beat.

“We do a pretty good job staying on top of that,” he said in an interview Monday. “Our health centers are fully staffed on both campuses, they have done a superb job especially staying in touch with our counties. For example, I think today, and it’s the second time in the last week or so, we’ll have a clinic in the residence hall on campus. So as students are moving in, if they haven’t been vaccinated, they have an opportunity with the support of our county. They’ve really been such good partners, both counties, with our health centers.”

DeMarte said the college has been keeping up with cleaning protocols and have continued to follow guidance on vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals.

“It’s been the case all along that we’ve been tracking guidance from the CDC, from New York state, and from our county health departments,” he said. “We’ve been tracking not only what’s going on with COVID, the decline in cases, and now the uptick in cases, but also what accompanies and adjustments we need to make along the way. None of it is in the direction we would like, of course, we’d like everything to be back to normal, but we’re not there yet.

The college is still awaiting the FDA’s approval of the COVID-19 vaccination, which would make the vaccine mandatory to attend the college. Currently, the college has “essentially relaxed” protocols for those who have been vaccinated, DeMarte said. However, during the school year, students and staff will be required to wear a mask in the classrooms, as well as when visiting the health centers.

“All of our other protocols have continued,” DeMarte said. “We have a daily app where we expect everyone who is going to be on campus to check-in before they come to campus. It brings them through a series of questions which we’ve now revised because of the vaccination.”

When it comes to vaccines among students and staff, DeMarte said they had a good idea of percentages at the end of the spring semester. At that time, about 70% of students were vaccinated. However, DeMarte said it “will be a bit of a moving target with students because a new group is coming in.”

JCC employees are currently being surveyed on their status, and those results will be in at the start of the fall semester.

“That has been important for months here, although the conversation seems to have dropped off the radar on all fronts,” DeMarte said. “What does community immunity mean? Especially for us in terms of protocols — it adds a level of complexity having both vaccinated and unvaccinated on campus. That would obviously be less of a concern if we were looking at 90% plus of our students and employees who were vaccinated. We’ll get to that number soon.”

DeMarte said while the college has been taking the guidance on COVID-19 in stride, he said there have been questions on these issues from students and staff.

“We’ve been back almost fully since February, working our way back out of the remote operations mode back to on campus,” he said. “So if you’re watching the national news and the state news and you’re seeing that mixed message, those questions work their way back to us, whether it’s an employee or students who are just coming back in some cases from out of the country or out of state.”

At this time, the college is continuing with its weekly communication with students and staff regarding these changes in regulations and other news.

Overall, DeMarte said he is confident in the college’s ability to remain flexible and operate in the safest possible manner going forward.

“We’ve got a supply of masks and sanitizing stations, and they’re going back where they need to be,” he said. “If we need to beef it up again, depending on what happens with the Delta, we’re ready. We can switch if we need to — hopefully we won’t — but if for some reason we have to go back to distance delivery on the instruction side and remote operations, well, we have a lot more experience with 18 months under our belt. We have an idea of what that looks like.”

DeMarte said enrollment has been “lighter than we’d like it to be.” However, he said there may not be just one reason behind that development. “I can tell you, we’ve been getting calls all summer about the requirement — we’ve got people who just don’t want to be required to do anything and people who don’t want to be vaccinated,” DeMarte said the vaccination requirement is a reason some possible students have decided not to pursue an education with JCC. However, for students who are not interested in getting a vaccine, DeMarte said there are possibilities to attend college online through JCC.

Likewise, he said they are awaiting guidance on the use of exemptions to the vaccination on campus.

“It’s not understood yet exactly what it means when we’re talking exemptions,” DeMarte said. “I suspect before we’re finished, it’s going to be similar to how the MMR has been handled. So, if there is a medical reason or if there’s a religious region — as long as we have that documentation, the way we would normally collect it the way we would with the MMR — those exemptions would be allowable. So we’re doing everything we can to make it as normal a semester as possible.”

DeMarte said it is looking like the FDA’s decision will be unknown until after the start of the semester. If that occurs, the vaccine will not be mandatory on campus. If the vaccine is approved, DeMarte said there will most likely be a grace period that will allow students and employees to obtain the vaccine.

“I am assuming there would be some sort of ramp-up if there needed to be,” he said.

At this point, despite having the best-laid plans, DeMarte said all of them are subject to change.

“If Delta peaks, we could be back into fully masked everyone on campus,” he said. “Hopefully, that won’t mean socially distancing, but who knows — we’ll see.”

DeMarte said there are a lot of positive things going on at the college, including an increase in international student attendance, as well as a new vision statement, mission, and values. While the college is still pushing ahead to meet its goals, offer excellent services and instruction and move into the future, the continued issues that arise around COVID can take a lot of energy.

“There’s a still a constant adjustment to the latest guidance or the latest situation that pulls energy away from the things we’d really like to be focusing our energy on,” DeMarte said. “I wish that was over – but we’re not there yet. We’ll push through it as we have to this point. It feels like we’re beginning to shift out of the fear of COVID and more toward the ongoing vigilance in response.”