UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (WTAJ) —The University Park Undergraduate Association says transparency is key for getting through COVID, and would like more of it from Penn State.

“Penn State has an ever growing case count and it’s only going to go up from here,” Noah Robertson, At-Large Representative at University Park Undergraduate Association, said.

Friday Penn State reported 174 COVID cases over the past week.

On Wednesday, Noah Robertson a representative with Penn State’s Undergraduate Association presented two resolutions before UAPA.

One is asking the university to move to all remote learning was voted down, but the other requesting that Penn State give a nasal swap test to 10% of students every day, and give daily case results, was passed.

“It called for daily updates to the COVID dashboard, clear academic policies, hazard pay for student workers, increasing student representation on COVID-19 task forces,” Robertson, said.

He says not reporting cases for several days, makes contract tracing more difficult and impacts the ability to adjust policies for deaing with COVID-19.

Also, Robertson says he thinks Resident Assistants, or RAs who are in charge of 25 to 50 students need to receive more direction from the university.

“I would love to see policies in which it’s informing RA action to what they should do when they see those gatherings outside of East Hall,” Robertson, said. “Is it an RAs responsibility to break up a group of a hundred and twenty students, jeopardizing their own safety.”

The UPUA is now talking about how and who exactly to send this resolution to at the university.
WTAJ contacted Penn State for their response and have not heard back.