The pandemic has negatively impacted many colleges and universities, big and small. It is straining many American school systems. However, some small colleges have found advantages in regard to Covid-19. Though many small colleges usually have known issues like scraping by for years with declining enrollment and faltering resources. They have other great qualities such as a sense of unity. "There is this sense that we are in it together," said Barbara Mistick, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Mistick then explains that small school camaraderie is often stoked by a specific set of moral principles — a school mission over and above education. The shared sense of purpose usually makes it easier for smaller schools to get students to comply with university policy on things like mask usage and social distancing. Therefore it is easier to keep covid-19 contained. Amid the mounting crisis, county health officials at Benedictine College, wanted the entire student body to quarantine. College president Stephen Minnis resisted this idea. He instead imposed a partial lockdown with sick students confined in hotel rooms for 14 days. He says “...it was a major wake-up call.” He also ordered students to fast and pray. As well as, strengthened mask requirements, imposing fines for violations. He was aware people would know when someone contradicted covid-19 because it is such a small school. Students have a responsibility for their friends who have to quarantine. Within a month, the outbreak had shrunk to a handful of active cases. Such successes in corralling the pandemic have also been seen at colleges that have secular ideals. Nicole Eikmeier says ideals of social justice at Grinnell College steer the conversation about COVID-19 and responsibility toward the students' duty to shield senior citizens in Grinnell, Iowa, from the pandemic. She has been looking at the situation of how to contain covid-19 at Grinell analytically. She did this by developing computer models to predict the spread of COVID at small colleges. In her research, she made sure to account for the hallmarks of a small college: a single dining hall, one campus library, and the fact that the entire student population mixes with each other more than at a large urban university. Her findings are actually quite interesting. For example, keeping campus gyms, classrooms, and libraries open may work better than shutting them down. Eikmer explains it best, “If you close the library and a student would normally go to the library and you assume that they go back to their dorm during that time and sit alone,” However, let us be real, often college students’ urge to socialize may take over them. Particularly when there is no place to go to. Small schools, colleges, and universities are easier to contain, and control to provide safer environments. Especially, for things like social distancing in classrooms and other public areas. The environment is more intimate and speaking from past experience, news travels fast and it is easier for people to be a close society. Eikmeier believes that there is no substitute for extensive testing. An idea based upon her models.

Unfortunately, however, many schools aren't doing it. There are valid reasons for this though. It’s not really the most comfortable and it is expensive. It is usually $50 per test for many schools. At Heston, specifically, the cost of the tests is covered by students’ insurance. In the event that a student is uninsured and cannot afford a test, the college’s emergency fund covers testing. As a result, asymptomatic cases could go undetected at the college. So now, the school has a handful of active COVID-19 cases, and even with its advantages, a campus can still be full of unknowns.

Though small colleges have some advantages, they are also inhabiting their fair of problems. Most colleges, students now need to show symptoms before getting a coronavirus test, but most college students with COVID-19 never develop symptoms. According to an article from insidehighered.com, Hesston College reported seven students who have tested positive for COVID-19. It is a very tiny college of around four hundred students in enrollment. On September 8, 2020, there had been seventeen people who have gotten tested in total. Compared with the hundreds of positive cases reported at large colleges across the country in recent weeks, Hesston’s is doing pretty alright. Even though the majority of their students have yet to be tested. Ohio State University reported more than eight hundred infections in a week. Either way, seven is a significant number for Heston. More than 2 percent of students have or have had the coronavirus since the fall term began August seventeenth. Similar rates have already prompted other colleges to shut down in-person operations this fall. Hesston and Ohio State are like apples and oranges. Researchers have found that COVID-19 likely spreads differently on small, tightly knit residential campuses like Hesston’s than it does at a large municipal university, on which most COVID-19 modeling studies have been focused. Not all colleges have accounted for students who break the rules. On a recent press call, administrators at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said they were surprised that some students were not following quarantine and contract-tracing requirements. Campus case numbers are on the rise “due to unsafe behavior by a number of undergraduate students,” the university said in a press release. Not all colleges operate the same as you can. Thus, producing different results in attempts to contain COVID-19. “The college's culture of mutual accountability enables members of the campus community to identify and engage those who aren't following COVID-19 protocols,” Bartel said. However, that may not be the same at other small colleges. Hartwick College, a small private college in Oneonta, N.Y., tests people more frequently. All students, faculty, and staff are tested once every two weeks, and the college will continue to do so until Nov. 20, when students depart for the semester. So far, five out of more than 1,100 students have tested positive. The college pays for any testing expenses not covered by a student’s health insurance. With only five reported cases, the college switched to remote learning on September 1, citing a steep increase in cases in Oneonta. Vassar College, significantly larger than Hesston and Hartwick, but still described as a small liberal arts college, has implemented a robust testing protocol of the kind pointed to in Eikmeier’sresearch as one of the most effective ways to curb COVID-19 spread on small campuses. At Vassar, all students were required to produce a negative COVID-19 test result. If they didn’t, they had to quarantine off campus for two weeks. Students were also tested again on arrival, then seven days later, and again 14 days after that. Student arrivals were staggered across three weeks, so the college is still conducting hundreds of tests everyday. Bradley said the testing, personal protective equipment, and other COVID-19 preparations were a “substantial investment.” Eikmer believes that at a minimum, colleges should test at least 25 percent of the student body every week. Which is a reasonable idea. I think a second, third and, even fourth opinion should be called for to establish a well-rounded and well-represented strategy. Similar to Eikmer’s study that was mentioned before for Hesston, larger colleges are also doing studies as well. JohnDrake, an ecology professor at the University of Georgia's school of ecology, has studiedCOVID-19 models for that university. He describes testing as a race. He states, “Because you’re going to have some transmission anyway, that means you have to test at some frequency that you find the people who are infected and don’t know it -- faster than, on average, they give rise to secondary cases,” Drake said. “It’s kind of a race between how quickly you can remove people from the population that has infections versus their infecting other people.”