USC could fine or suspend on-campus students who don’t get a monthly COVID-19 test

The University of South Carolina will begin charging a fee to on-campus students who do not get monthly coronavirus tests.

The fines, approved Tuesday by USC’s board of trustees, would follow a warning, and students ultimately could be suspended, according to a presentation by Kelly Epting, USC’s associate vice president for finance and budget.

Here is how the fine structure works:

• If a student fails to get a coronavirus test for a single month, he or she is given a formal warning.
• If a student misses a second month, he or she is given 48 hours to provide test results or face a $100 fine.
• If a student misses a third month, he or she is given 48 hours to provide test results before facing or face a $250 fine
• If a student misses a fourth month, USC will move to suspend the student.

The requirement applies to anyone who: lives on campus (including privately owned partner apartments such as 650 Lincoln and Greek Village), takes at least one in-person or hybrid class or is on a Greek Village meal plan, Epting said.

Students who have had a positive test within 90 days are exempted from the testing requirements, according to Epting’s presentation. Anyone who tests positive is presumed to be temporarily immune from the virus.

USC had already announced the “vast majority” of those who study or work on USC’s campus will be required to provide the results of a coronavirus test before returning to campus, according to a previous article from The State.

The fee is part of a larger plan to minimize the effect of coronavirus on campus. The board approved renting 90 rooms at the Holiday Inn on Washington Street to function as a quarantine facility for students. At $69 per room per night, renting the rooms are expected to cost USC a total of $431,843, according to USC attorney Walter “Terry” Parham.

At that rate, that’s enough money for USC to rent those 90 rooms for roughly 70 days. If USC needs those hotel rooms after the 70 days, the school could renew the agreement, spokesman Jeff Stensland said.

The $69 per room, per night rate is less than the $77, per room, per night price listed Tuesday morning on multiple travel websites.

USC’s board also approved a $125,000 purchase of a machine from biotechnology company Illumina. The machine will be housed in the same facility where USC processes its rapid saliva testing, Parham said.

“This is important because determining the genome sequence will...help us contact trace,” Parham said.

This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 1:44 PM.