After one San Diego State University student tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from a study abroad in Italy, the university said it had "highly encouraged" him and other study-abroad students to self-quarantine for 14 days.
The student did not listen to that advice, the university reported. When he came back from Italy, he returned to his home outside of San Diego County, but then later came back to San Diego. He went to two offices on campus and potentially exposed his off-campus housemates to the virus, as well as others he came in contact with, according to a posting on the university's website.
On Thursday, the university said another student who returned from study abroad in Spain also tested positive for the virus, but that student had gone straight home and never visited campus.
Once the positive test for the first student who did visit campus came back, the university told his housemates and others who came in contact with him to self-quarantine and did a hospital-grade cleaning of the two campus offices where the student briefly visited.
SDSU's experiences with this student and another who spoke to KPBS provide a window into the chaotic situation facing the university as it tried to communicate with students across the globe.
In an email to the SDSU campus late Friday, President Adela de la Torre wrote: "We continue to ask students returning from affected areas to self-quarantine for the CDC-designated 14-day period." SDSU also posted on its website that it asked "returning students to return to their permanent homes, not SDSU, upon their return to the U.S."
This email and others reviewed by KPBS show how the communication between SDSU and students changed in a matter of days.
Adrienne Murdock, a student who was also studying abroad in Italy but not with the student who tested positive, said SDSU's correspondence with her was spotty. She had been in Italy for less than a week when the outbreak intensified there, so she left the country and went to Switzerland before returning to the U.S.
At first, Murdock said she heard nothing from SDSU while other students she was studying with were getting daily updates from their colleges.
"I was confused. I didn't know — was my school canceling this?" she said. “I don't know if they want me to come home, I don't know if it will be offering classes. So it took them a while to first reach out and say what they were offering."
On March 2, a day after Murdock returned home, she received an email from SDSU telling students in Italy to come home. But it didn't say to self-quarantine. Instead, it said: "No order for quarantine or self-isolation exists for individuals from any area other than mainland China," and to "pay attention to your health during travel and for 14 days after you leave."
Murdock said she mostly stayed at home. She flew straight to her parents' house in North Carolina and stayed there for 12 days, going out to Target once, and then traveled to visit her brother in South Carolina. She said she is feeling healthy and has had no symptoms of COVID-19.
A spokesman for SDSU would not comment regarding the university's communication with study abroad students but instead pointed to the campus's COVID-19 website. On the website, the university makes it clear that it would be violating students’ constitutional rights if it tried to force them into quarantine.
"Although this is an international crisis, there is nothing in place that supersedes the rights and protections afforded to every citizen under the Constitution," the university's statement reads. "Therefore, SDSU cannot automatically move or force a student or employee into isolation or quarantine."
The statement goes on to say, "SDSU does not determine when or how a person should be isolated or quarantined; public health and governing authorities hold that responsibility."
That is the correct interpretation of the law, said Dov Fox, a law professor and director of the Center for Health Law Policy & Bioethics at the University of San Diego.
"A school can set public health rules about when you're allowed to work there, be on campus, in dormitories or take classes," Fox said. "But it doesn't have the power of police or otherwise to require quarantines. Only the government can impose confinement in one's home."
He added that governments should also only force quarantines as a last resort.
"When there is no better, more effective, less oppressive means of stopping the spread of a disease like the coronavirus," he said. "When it uses this power of quarantine, it should target people who are either infected or exposed to the disease that they can spread easily to others."
