On Aug. 4, Governor John Bel Edwards extended the phase two implementation to Aug. 28, which limited gatherings to no more than 50 people.

Campus activities have had to be paused until Sept. 3, with guidelines and limitations still in place.

According to the Division of Student Affairs, all events and organizations must complete a Registration of Activities form. There must also be a host for the party that is required to overlook the party in its entirety, and maintain sanitation stations. All events will have a social distancing monitor who will keep up with social distancing measures, wearing face masks and overseeing that the party does not reach more than 25 people.

All organizations except for intramural or club sports will be able to resume participation.

Joidyn Nelson, a junior communication major and Press Club president, shared how the structure of Press Club meetings will be carried out this semester.

“As of now, we are not planning on resuming regular in-person meetings,” shared Nelson. “We will be holding our meetings via Google Meet either weekly or bi-weekly. Google meetings can be seen as a precaution to maximize our members’ safety.”

Many club members have expressed doubts of a virtual meeting. However, Nelson shared the outcome has been the opposite.

“When we switched to Google Meet last semester, we saw a greater amount of participation from club members,” said Nelson. “These restrictions might limit us as far as who we can reach out to, but I think we will still have a great turnout.”

Lauren Buchanon, a graduate business major and College of Business Ambassadors president, described how her organization has stayed involved throughout the pandemic.

“During the pandemic, we’ve made sure to stay in touch,” said Buchanon. “We have a GroupMe message where we can all reach out to each other whenever we need. In the spring semester, we really just focused on utilizing our group message as a form of support for each other. We checked in and made sure everyone was doing well both physically and mentally.”

All events scheduled for the 2020 Spring semester were canceled, leaving campus groups to make other arrangements.

“That semester we put a pause on any other events we had planned, but for this fall semester we are getting plans in place to do more than just communicate with one another,” said Buchanon.

Buchanan explained that there will be a variety of ways for students to be still involved in College of Business Ambassadors.

“With that being said, we, COB Ambassadors, are planning some flexible meetings for the semester,” shared Buchanon. “We’ll offer it to our members to be in person and those who cannot will be able to join via Zoom, like many classes are doing. I’m just asking members to notify me who plans to be in person so I can ensure we get a room with enough space for us to practice social distancing standards.”

The ambassadors are coming up with ways for students to get creative this semester.

“We are still in the process of putting together some events and outings,” said Buchanon. “We’ve been discussing some different virtual events we could do such as a COB T-shirt Design contest voted on by the business students via social media and putting together a virtual ‘How to Get Involved in the COB’ where other organizations would be able to share their information with students.”

Any organization seeking to hold campus must have a social distancing plan and can fill out the Registration of Activities Form at www.southeastern.edu/roa.