Safety has been an important topic for the university this semester because of COVID-19, and ETSU has recently expanded their information and resources to help keep the community safe.
ETSU recently launched the COVID-19 Dashboard, which gives a daily update on the number of positive cases and how many people are quarantined. The entire Bucs Are Back website is dedicated to providing students with information and resources related to the changes on campus and in the world.
The university has also updated the ETSU Response website in reaction to Hurricane Laura. The website provides information and resources to students or staff that may have been affected by the hurricane, and there are links to donate to different organizations that help with relief efforts. The resources provided are the ETSU Counseling Center, the Employee Assistance Program and more.
In times of crisis, it is really important for organizations to be transparent about what is happening in their community, and it is reassuring to see ETSU taking this action with the COVID-19 dashboard. A lot of universities have been handling going back to school during COVID-19 very poorly and have not been transparent with their students about what is happening or given resources for students.
All universities should be transparent and offer resources to their community, and it is comforting to see ETSU doing what they should be doing in a time when so many colleges and organizations are not.
As for the ETSU Response website, it is great to see the university taking action to help those in need. I think it’s important for universities to foster philanthropy in their community and to encourage people to think about people who may be outside their own community.
ETSU’s response also puts our community into perspective; it can be easy to think of our community as limited to this region when in reality it stretches all over the world. These steps to promote information and resources in our community shows that ETSU is committed to helping us through difficult times.
