COVID-19 Residence Hall Health Guidelines
Residential Policies have been temporarily modified to comply with guidance from Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the City and County of San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) until further notice. Securing the health of our students, staff, faculty, and surrounding community is our goal. We will follow these guidelines to ensure that we can continue learning, working and living safely. Failure to follow guidelines outlined by USF will result in a referral to the student conduct process for students.
Please note that these guidelines reflect current guidance from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the City and County of San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH). If these guidelines loosen, USF and Student Housing will examine these policies and notify residents of appropriate changes in a timely manner.
Please review USF Together for current policies regarding living on campus and COVID-19 guidelines.
Symptom Reporting is Required
If you are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, you must remain in your residence room, limit your traffic outside of the room, and report your condition by emailing covidtracing@usfca.edu.
Currently, the COVID-19 symptoms include one or more of the following:
- Cough
- Shortness of breath or difficult breathing
- Fever
- Chills
- Repeated shaking with chills
- Runny nose or new sinus congestion
- Muscle pain
- Headache
- Sore throat
- Fatigue
- New gastrointestinal symptoms that you haven’t experienced before
- New loss of taste or smell that you haven’t experienced before
Quarantine Reminders and Action Items
Please watch this video for detailed information about the quarantine process while living on-campus! Please note this video was created during 2020-2021 essential housing but there is still relevant information that applies to current residents.
Face Coverings Requirements
The City and County of San Francisco issued an order to require all to wear a face covering while in public spaces and conducting essential business. Residents must wear a face covering anytime they are out of their assigned room or unit, and/or interacting with a University staff member. This includes common areas in residence halls, such as: lobbies, restrooms, laundry rooms, stairwells, hallways, room entries, and main entries.
All persons on campus — visitors, employees, and students alike — must wear a face covering. A reusable face covering will be provided to all residents living on-campus. The university will not provide these face coverings to visitors. Visitors will not be allowed on campus if they do not have a face covering. Please refer to resources from the CDC and USFCA Human Resources Website from the CDC about how to create a mask of your own should you need more.
Guest and Visitation Policy
With the start of the academic year, and the ongoing efforts to do our part to support community health during the current COVID-19 Variant surge, we will institute an updated Guest and Visitation Policy effective on August 21st.
Residential students are only permitted to have guests or visitors, who must be USF students, during the hours of 8:00am and 11:59pm. No overnight guests are permitted. Outside guests, including family and other individuals not affiliated with USF, will not be permitted to enter residence halls.
During this time, each resident is only allowed to have one guest checked in, or one visitor from another room, at any given time. This is to help alleviate larger group gatherings in student rooms or apartment units.
Residents are encouraged to congregate in larger groups in residence hall common areas and when possible outdoors. This adjustment to the guest policy will remain in effect until further notice.
Gathering Guidelines
Common area spaces are open and usable. Students may gather in groups, but should limit group size and face coverings should be worn at all times.
Items Available at the Front Desk
Until further notice, the front desks will not provide any recreation equipment, kitchen supplies, face coverings, and personal hand sanitizers. The only resources that will be provided at the desk during this time will be temp cards checkouts (if you are locked out of your room), room cards, mail and packages (see below bullet for more information).
Maintenance Request and Custodial Services
- For all non-emergency Facilities work orders, please submit requests online.
- For urgent Facilities issues, please call (415) 422-6464 during business hours and Public Safety at (415) 422-4201 after hours.
- For routine maintenance and repairs, the work may either be deferred until the room is unoccupied (winter or summer break), or it may be done by contacting the occupant and informing them of the available time window for work to be performed.
- Facilities personnel will respond as quickly as possible for emergencies and problems requiring rapid response to minimize the potential of injury or damage to buildings and property. In such cases, Facilities personnel will respond wearing PPE and may enter rooms (including residences) without scheduling their arrival. Facilities personnel will knock and introduce themselves in these cases. Residents will also be required to wear face coverings when interacting with Facilities personnel both at the door and while work is being conducted in their room or residence. Please Note: All mask guidelines are based on SFDPH guidelines and are subject to change.
- Restrooms will be temporarily closed during regular cleanings by ABLE staff. Residents must wait until the restroom is clean and available to enter the space.
ESA and Service Animals
As part of the approved animal policy, students must designate a non-student or a student off campus as an emergency contact in case of illness, hospitalization, or other emergency that would impact a student’s ability to provide care for their approved animal. If a student cannot care for their animal (i.e. a student is placed in isolation and cannot walk the dog or go outside to clean a cat box litter), the emergency contact should be within a 3-hour radius and they will keep the animal until the student is able to regain care of it. The emergency contact is expected to retrieve the animal within 5 hours.
Water Stations
Public drinking water supplies are safe to drink, however the surfaces around the fountains including the spout, button/leaver and nozzles could pose a risk for the transmission of COVID-19 and other germs. Please be mindful of not placing your water bottle directly on the devices when using the water bottle fillers that are attached to the water fountains.
Please refrain from pouring anything into the machines.
Laundry Facilities
Laundry facilities will be open and available for usage.
Restrooms
Students should wear face coverings at all times while in restrooms except for when showering and/or washing face and brushing teeth.
General Fire Evacuation Procedures
In the event of a fire alarm and need to evacuate the residence hall, all residents will evacuate via the nearest stairwell to the hall’s relocation site. Residents shall wear their face coverings during evacuation unless physically unable to do so.
Emotional Support Resources
Crisis Text Line:
- Free 24/7 support
- Text BAY to 741741 or online resource www.crisistextline.org
CAPS All Hours: Mental Health Consultation
- 24 hours daily, including weekends and holidays (855) 531- 0761
- Anxiety Toolkit:
- 10 research- based strategies to navigate anxiety USF Anxiety Toolkit: https://myusf.usfca.edu/caps/anxiety
myCompass: Personalized self-help program for use on your mobile phone or computer
- Deal with troublesome thoughts, feelings, and behaviors www.mycompass.org.au
Personal Preparedness
- Hand Hygiene: Wash your hands before eating, after using the restroom, and after sneezing, coughing or blowing your nose. Wash your hands often (for 20 seconds) with soap and water, or use alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Avoid shaking people’s hands.
- Respiratory Etiquette: Cough or sneeze into your face covering, elbow or a tissue.
- Face: Do not touch your face, especially your eyes, nose and mouth.
- Cleaning: Clean and disinfect commonly used surfaces and items like cellphones, door knobs, desk, light switches, keyboards, wallet, USF OneCard or keyroom card (if applicable).
- Face covering: Have your own face covering. Make sure to not share any face covering with other people.
- Cloth face coverings should be routinely washed in a washing machine, depending on the frequency of use.
- Hand sanitizer: Have hand sanitizer with you at all times, clean your hands with a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
- For travel and health monitoring and quarantine guidelines, please visit the USFCA Travel Guidelines and COVID-19 FAQs for international students.
How to Make Your Own Face Coverings
There are several options for making your own face masks. Some are as simple as using a bandana or cutting up a tee-shirt. Other options require a sewing machine and a little sewing experience. Below are several different patterns to choose from. Questions about any of these patterns or resources? Contact Mara Krasts for tips.
- CDC Recommendations for homemade masks
- Pattern for Adult and Child mask with elastic
- Sewing directions for mask with elastic
- https://myusf.usfca.edu/human-resources/COVID-19