The Daily Gamecock

Board of trustees make progress on coronavirus response, monitoring report

In Friday’s board of trustees meeting, the board elected new chairperson Charlie Dorn Smith, gave updates on the coronavirus and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges' (SACSCOC) monitoring report.

As of Aug. 14, 373 of the 433 total coronavirus cases related to the university are students. University President Bob Caslen warned the student number could be “much higher” as the current numbers are self-reported.

Caslen also discussed how the university is continuing to limit the spread of the coronavirus, including waste water monitoring, a quarantine building and an alert matrix, a decision-making matrix that helps the university make decisions regarding the coronavirus.

“We’re asking [the city] to put an ordinance in place to limit space distance inside restaurants and inside bars,” Caslen said. “The mayor is considering an ordinance for off-campus parties as well, and we’re working with him right now with respect to that.”

The amount of cases per day in South Carolina has gone down 35% with an average of 1,016 cases per day in the past week. As of yesterday, there are 42 new deaths and 935 new cases.

Caslen said he’s recently felt “encouragement” about student behavior after seeing groups for sorority rush spread out on the Horseshoe while walking back home from a late night in the office.

“They were sitting down in groups of maybe 20, 25. … They were spread all over the Horseshoe, maybe five or six different groups,” Caslen said. “I couldn’t believe it. Every single one of them was separated at least 6 feet and every single one of them, both students and the ones that were teaching, had masks on.”   

Smith gave an update from the ad hoc governance committee on the progress of the SACSCOC monitoring report that USC submitted after being accused of "undue influence."

“We are moving along right on schedule," Smith said. "The SACSCOC monitoring report deadline is looming right around the corner. We will have another advisory group meeting on the 17, again on the 21, we’ll look at that to continue to review the draft.” 

Smith said he plans to mail the monitoring report by Sept. 1 with the deadline for getting it to SACSCOC being Sept. 8.

“We’re basically on their timetable,” Smith said.

A designated team from SACSCOC will virtually visit USC to see how progress has been made regarding initial concerns. Members of this team include the president of James Madison university, the president of Georgia Tech and a former LSU board member. When the visit is over, the group will make a report and recommendations to SACSCOC and will meet to discuss them in early December and decide if the university needs to take further action. 

“We should have a good indication in early October based on the special teams visit as to how things are going,” Cameron Howell, an external consultant aiding the university in fixing its governance issues, said, “but we won’t know for certain until December, and we’ll take opportunities between those benchmarks to provide SACSCOC with any updates as to work that the governance committee and the board has continued to do.” 


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