Ohio college students admit they have coronavirus when police break up their house party

Miami University students.
(Image credit: Screenshot/CBS News on Twitter)

A handful of Miami University students just displayed the exact opposite of common sense after testing positive for coronavirus.

In what looked like a typical response to a noise complaint outside of a college campus, a police officer pulled up to a home where about 10 students were hanging out inside and on a porch, a body camera video obtained by CBS News shows. Of course, the bigger problem was that the students were together during a pandemic, maskless and in violation of a ban on mass gatherings in Oxford, Ohio, so the officer told the students who didn't live at the house to leave.

Once people packed up, though, the officer asked for the ID of the student he'd first talked to. He then looked up the student's name, and found that he'd tested positive for COVID-19. The student admitted he had tested positive, and when asked if he should be quarantining, said "I am. That's why I'm at my house."

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But it turns out, at least by the student's admission, "all" of the students gathered on the porch also had the virus. "Well, I think two," he said when pressed further. Six students who lived in the house were cited for violating the city's mass gathering ban, a local CBS News affiliate reports.

As of Friday, 965 Miami University students had tested positive for COVID-19 in the past few weeks — a total of 1,243 since online classes began in mid-August. The school is supposed to start in-person classes Sept. 21.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.