Two Greek Life houses at Mississippi State University have seen outbreaks of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and a total of 80 students are evacuating the houses and must quarantine for 14 days, MSU Chief Communications Officer Sid Salter confirmed Friday.
Salter declined to provide the names of the two Greek organizations in question, but students confirmed them to be the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, known as Fiji, and the Phi Mu sorority.
Salter also did not say how many cases there are in the two houses, but Mississippi State Department of Health — which is investigating the cases at the Greek houses — considers three or more positive cases to be an outbreak.
The 80 affected students have the option of returning to their homes or staying in either of the two Starkville hotels MSU rented for the fall semester as quarantine sites. The Comfort Suites on Russell Street and the Hampton Inn on Blackjack Road have a total of 155 rooms, and Salter said the number of occupied rooms “literally changes hourly.”
MSU has staffed the hotels with employees from the departments of Housing and Residence Life and custodial services, and employees of the Longest Student Health Center will monitor quarantined students’ health on site.
MSU Division of Student Affairs will sanitize the Fiji and Phi Mu houses, and students will hopefully be able to return in 14 days, Salter said Friday. They moved into the houses within the last two weeks.
All Greek chapters have safety protocol plans that follow guidelines from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Jacqueline Mullen, MSU’s Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life. Signs on the entrances to the houses say that everyone must wear a protective face covering. Chapters also have adjusted meal schedules to enforce social distancing, increased the frequency of cleaning and implemented check-ins for residents, members and visitors, Mullen said.
Two MSU students who spoke to The Dispatch on the condition that their names not be used said that the fraternities have not been adhering to safety protocols, with some even throwing parties. The sororities, they said, have been diligent about the protocols.
“We have so many rules that if it happened, we probably didn’t get it here,” a sorority member said.
MSU releases COVID-19 testing data on its website every Monday. From Aug. 10 to Aug. 14, the university tested 276 people for COVID-19, resulting in 16 positive cases. MSU has seen a total of 156 positive cases from 1,809 tests since COVID-19 became a global pandemic in March, according to the website.
MSDH is also investigating an outbreak at Mississippi University for Women, in which four positive cases required 75 students in the university’s nursing program to quarantine last week.
Classes at both universities began Monday.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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