At last, the doors of the St. Ignatius entrance are finally re-opened for student arrival, something that only the junior and senior classes have experienced. Gone (for now) are the days where students trudge up the massive theatre lobby staircase and get their phones out for VisitU.

As pandemic metrics continue to fall in the region and the nation as a whole, St. Louis U. High has slowly been shedding many of its pandemic protocols as their collective importance diminishes. At the beginning of this week, VisitU check-ins and the temperature screenings were done away with as SLUH shifted into a second, less stringent phase within Condition 1 of the Covid protocol. 

Principal Fr. Ian Gibbons, S.J, who has largely led the pandemic mitigation efforts within the school over the past two years, believes that there was great value in these two practices at one point in time, but that they are no longer necessary to keep the SLUH community safe. 

“Temperatures are important, but not as important as things such as monitoring cases and follow-up with cases,” said Gibbons. “The survey (was) helpful … but it has become a sort of bogging down that we no longer need to do.”

Although the check-ins have been removed, the school can always return to screening if Covid conditions become worse. This flexibility is attributed to the school’s purchasing of measures like the bi-polar filtration system and screening equipment.

“I think they were great investments and I think the school did a wonderful job of finding out what exactly our community needed back in March of 2020 and then adding to that,” said school nurse Scott Gilbert. “Looking back, I can’t think of anything that I would have done differently.”

Not only does this pivot mark the school moving even closer to normalcy, it also creates the opportunity for a rite of passage for freshmen and sophomores that was taken away by Covid. Walking into school this week was a return to pre-Covid practice for the upperclassmen, and completely foreign for the underclassmen. 

“It was definitely the move,” said junior Kyle Verzino. “It was nice not to have to deal with VisitU and walking through that entrance is a scene straight out of freshman year.”