By Mary Mone
Online Editor

Photo by Victoria Deal

After staying open through the fall 2020 semester, Tyler Junior College is resuming instruction for the spring 2021 semester.

TJC upholds their original standards along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines leading them. These standards include things such as wearing a protective face mask on campus, including outside, having the same seat in a class in case of contact tracing and staying six feet away from others.

According to tjc.edu, “All in-person classes will be assigned to a classroom that allows for appropriate physical distancing. Some classes have been rescheduled to provide an appropriately sized room. To that end, the College will hold classes at all available times (including evenings) and days of the week, as well as convert many campus spaces that have traditionally been used for other purposes to academic classrooms.”

TJC has been releasing Cleary notifications for COVID-19 cases since June 25, 2020. According to these reports there were a total of 124 cases in fall semester and there have been 13 cases since the beginning of the spring semester. In the fall, there were 59 cases in September, 41 cases in October, 20 in November, and 4 in December. Since the beginning of January, there have been 13 cases within the TJC community.

In the fall 2020 semester, many student organizations, such as the Student Senate, were having strictly online meetings. This spring, many organizations are venturing into having small restricted in-person meetings.

Juan Lesser, the vice president of the Student Senate at TJC, spoke about the changes in the meetings they are holding this semester.
“We are having in person meetings, but only a maximum capacity of 25 people,” Lesser said. “But we are still offering zoom for the people that can’t attend in person.”

According to Lesser, the main challenge that COVID-19 has placed on the Student Senate is the inability to meet in person. “Before COVID, the Senate meetings were a place where all organizations came together,” Lesser said. “I’m super excited to be able to meet with the students face to face because I can really understand their concerns more than through video chat.”
A year after the COVID-19 pandemic first put a pause on in-person school, the TJC community continues to enforce community health guidelines.