By Nicholas Calvino, Currier Times Staff ////

Homecoming Weekend brought thousands of people to the Curry campus, and gave the new visitor policy its first real test.

After months of not being able to allow visitors from off-campus, Curry College announced recently that they will now be allowing people to come to campus for both indoor and outdoor events.

Devon Richards, a junior Criminal Justice major, said he was excited things are opening up.

“People should be allowed to visit,” said Richards. “Campus was like a ghost town before.”

The  visitor policy includes having all individuals be required to be masked for indoor events and in campus buildings. The event space on campus is capped off at 50% capacity for any large event, according to the college. This does not apply to classrooms or labs, that capacity is impacted by classroom setup. 

Athletes are also seeing more fans at sports games, and the Curry football game against Western New England on Homecoming weekend featured thousands of fans in the stands. Tailgating was also allowed and many took advantage of that.

Jack Greg, a Freshman Business major, can’t wait for these sports games.

“It’s great and it’s about time. It brings more hype for the sports teams,” said Greg.

The new policy is now allowing visitors to enter our residence halls. But there are still no overnight visitors allowed. With this new policy students are excited to have visitors at the dorms this semester.

“It’s more lively and a chance to make new friends,” said Nacyline Jurez, a freshman Criminal Justice major.

Brooke Sullivan, a freshman Biology major, is ready for this new policy to take place.

“Probably invite friends onto campus,” said Sullivan.

For the safety for everyone on campus, unvaccinated visitors ARE REQUIRED to wear their masks indoors as well as outdoors and to socially distance.

With everything COVID-related, Curry stated, “This policy will be continuously reviewed and visitor restrictions may come back based on public and campus health developments. We will be communicating all updates to campus policies as fast as we can to our students and staff. We invite you to visit Curry.edu/ReturntoCampus at any time for new and updated information.”

This is one step closer to making campus feel more like normal for new and veteran students coming back to campus.

“It’s a good thing, everyone is vaccinated and even though visitors might not be, the cases are going down,” said sophomore Graphic Design major, Arlene. “Also people on campus can hangout again.”