Jackson State University President Thomas K. Hudson, above, says the university will continue its mostly voluntary masking, vaccines, and testing protocols this fall to combat the spread of COVID-19.
However, historically Black institutions may be well-positioned to withstand an incursion of the highly infectious Omicron BA.5 subvariant as HBCU campuses have fared better than others in managing the pandemic. If past results are a predictor, they will be prepared for the coming year, according to a 2021 research paper.
In the open access article, “Pandemics of COVID-19 and Racism: How HBCUs are Coping,” published on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, Fort Valley State University professors Dr. Komanduri S. Murty and Dr. Tamara B. Payne found that HBCUs were more successful in their efforts to mitigate COVID-19 on their campuses than their non-HBCU counterparts. In fact, they also fared better than their communities at large.
The study cites the COVID Racial Data Tracker — a collaboration between the COVID-19 Tracking Project at The Atlantic and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research — and the New York Times’ “Tracking the Coronavirus at U.S. Colleges and Universities” as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau, personal interviews, and peer-reviewed articles.
“HBCUs experienced relatively fewer cases than non-HBCUs (as well as among the general population) in each state,” the article states, noting these findings:
• HBCUs managed to attain higher student compliance with the institutional guidelines in terms of social distancing and mask-wearing.
• HBCU leaders came up with practical-but-effective strategies for employees’ return to campus, and methods to monitor, trace, and report COVID-19 cases that all institutional employees and students could adopt without a great deal of difficulty.
