Business View Magazine | February 2021

227 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2021 BENEDI CT COLLEGE 30 hours and we subsidized our students’ travel home. “We then took a deep breath, patted ourselves on the back, and realized our troubles were only beginning. We faced the reality that many of our students did not have access to broadband technology and internet. Even though we were providing laptops and hot spots to support students, some of our students live in areas that there was nothing to connect to. That was a very real challenge for us. We also learned very quickly that although we got our kids home, home is a relative term. Nearly 31 percent of Benedict students experienced some sort of housing insecurity. Many of them were truly homeless. Our students needed to get back to campus.” BVM: How did you decide whether to reopen the campus? Artis: “On July 20, one of my rising seniors was shot and killed and that really crystallized it for me. Our kids were exposed to COVID-19, our kids were low income or often homeless, our kids did not have access to technology, and our kids weren’t safe, quite frankly, in their home environment. We made the decision to reopen the campus in August with very, very strict protocols. “We did universal testing. We tested every single student, staff and faculty member prior to entering the campus. We did random testing on a weekly basis for about 15 percent of our population. We had a midnight curfew because Empowering Communities. Changing Lives. The Columbia Urban League is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. Its mission is to enable African Americans and other underserved communities to secure self-reliance, primarily in education, employment, and economic development. www.culsc.org