When Schools Were Stunned By The Coronavirus, Students Stepped In To Care For Each Other

By Rainsford Stauffer


On Wednesday (March 11), University of Chicago’s independent student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, reported that the university could be following a pattern set by schools across the country, and canceling in-person classes in a preventive try to lessen the spread of the novel coronavirus before it swept campus. The school was also directing students to move out of their dorms, efficient 11 days from the day the story broke.


However the paper also scooped the university itself, it turns out: Several students first saw the news from the school paper, before the university had a chance to prepare an announcement that reached all students. As students sought statistics announced by their peers, traffic crashed the newspaper’s website. 


“It really felt like the world stopped,” Jahne Brown, the school’s  student body president, told MTV News of finding out from the school’s newspaper. Because she has immunocompromised family member members, the 22-year-old doesn’t wish to go residence, yet fear over whether her on-campus jobs will continue makes her concerned she won’t be financially secure if she stays. “I’m honestly losing sleep,” she added. “This isn't at all how I thought my senior year would go.”


“Some people, including me personally, weren’t happy with The Maroon ‘breaking’ the story before the official news was out because it caused campus hysteria and left students scrambling for answers about housing, finances, et cetera,” 21-year-old Kosarachi “Kosi” Achife, a University of Chicago Vice President, added. She thought the university was doing the ideal it might to communicate with students, given that things changed hour by hour.


Brown also pointed out that the school hasn't canceled finals although undergraduates are being forced out of their dorms. “This is putting a lot of pressure on all of us to have concentrate on taking care of each other while also finishing finals,” she said.


because the news plays out in real time, it becomes more and more clear that several university contingency plans left something to be desired in terms of implementation and communication, likely because few could have anticipated a pandemic of this scale.


Julie Uranis, Vice President for Online and Calculated Initiatives at UPCE, told MTV News that there really are no easy decisions once it comes to the continuity of operations at this scale, and institutions likely had to weigh campus risks alongside obligations to students, faculty, and employees. “With quickly changing conditions, it puts college leaders in the unenviable position of making decisions that could have profound implications,” she explained, adding that colleges and universities are detailed companies that often serve as social, cultural, and economic hubs, so decisions to close a campus are not taken lightly.


“I think several institutions will refine their contingency planning in the near future and include faculty, employees, and students in that work,” she added. “I also believe faculty, personnel, and students will hold institutions and themselves responsible for preparedness. I think we plan to all learn a fantastic deal from this crisis.”


Yet while students wait for that preparation and infrastructure to kick in, they’re leaning on each other, crowdfunding on behalf of peers who can’t afford to get residence, and organizing to make sure fellow students have statistics needed to prepare last-minute choices. Among a vast several other things, the mandates and evacuations unfolding across the nation also illustrate the capacity of young people to take care of each other.


On Tuesday (March 10), Harvard University categorized that students evacuate dorms by the end of the week (March 16). Initially, the university was vague about how exactly they would assist students. Slowly, Harvard rolled out answers to questions: The college will allocate $200 to ship or store your items (still, it’s worth noting, in the event you exceed $200 or don’t receive financial aid, the cost will be applied to your bill), and has stationed personnel in dining halls to assist with travel booking.


The decision instigated a nationwide discussion — not just about the severity of the coronavirus, however about the underserved groups most likely to be impacted by schools deciding to upend living situations, class schedules, and revenue sources in the midst of a semester. (University of Chicago shared that there will be no housing fees for students leaving campus, and one dining hall will remain open.) Low-income students, first-generation students, and international students often depend on their universities for housing and stability, and an estimated 68,000 college students nationwide experience homelessness. Thousands of students rely on schools for work-study jobs, or hold off-campus jobs in the area and cannot afford to miss their shifts if they leave town. Other students lack the ability to pay for reliable, consistent WiFi required to completing online courses, and then some don’t have the funds to buy plane tickets or gas to vacate their dorms. Just as at-risk are LGBTQ+ students who left turbulent and intolerant homes, or young people whose residence lives are marked by domestic violence. Even further, students often depend on universities for health insurance and medical care, which they could fall by means of the cracks if they were to fall ill.


“This campus is [some students’] only source of hot meals and tidy water, health care, access to internet, even a hot shower,” Vanessa Macias, a 21-year-old psychology and social behavior & social ecology student at University of California, Irvine, told MTV News. “To ask students to leave without an adequate plan to accommodate is to take away their only means of surviving.”


According to NPR, the college closures started in Washington state and have since affected over half a million students as of earlier this week; CNN’s running list of closing colleges and universities includes over 30 schools while in the country. Often missing from national collegiate conversation, however identically consequential in terms of impact on students, are the community colleges that will cancel classes or shift to remote learning up until the coronavirus risk subsides. And while several students understand the need to ensure social distancing, particularly with the aggressive nature of how illnesses spread on campuses, they have also voiced agitation that they couldn’t rely on their administrators for more specific guidance at such an essential time.


“Better communication overall would help greatly,” Hiatt Allen, a 22-year-old pursuing a dual-degree program for Master of Divinity and Master of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, told MTV News. “Basic ability to crisis communications should be expected.” He added that he believes the school had a negative track record of communicating changes to students, including being scooped by the school paper regarding significant changes to PhD programs in October 2019. (MTV News has reached out to the University of Chicago for comment.)


Other students across the nation have expressed concern about the chaos of intelligence and misinformation around them, including the whiplash of learning about dramatic changes only to have actual specifics trickle out slowly.


Macias mentioned she has been obtaining data by way of the email, Twitter, and Instagram involving the status of on-campus resources through students who work in these facilities. She is piece of the Mental Health Commission on campus and has been rattled by the group’s mass cancelation of events and plans for the semester, including a conference that was set for May.


“The feeling of failure and loss is painted across so several faces, especially seniors like myself, whose upcoming commencement celebration of all their hard work will right now most likely be a day of silence,” she mentioned. She also works off-campus, however because her job requires working with elementary-school children, she’s concerned about being left without a way to pay for costs and food.


The first case of novel coronavirus to hit Orange County, where UCI is located, was confirmed in January. Although her university delayed class cancelations and emergency plans up until March 10, as soon as there was word of a presumptive case on campus (though the student reportedly tested negative). Marcias mentioned that finally brought up immediate implementation of remote teaching, including finals, and students being rather encouraged to move off-campus. (MTV News has reached out to the University of California Irvine for comment.)


although the school has since introduced a rapid response center, students are still worried. “Some students never have a stable residence to simply go back to if in the scenario students are forced off of on-campus housing. Some don’t even have cars,” Macias mentioned, adding  that she is worried about students with jobs, international students, those with disabilities, and what the transition to remote learning will look like on a practical level.


A similar situation occurred on West Virginia Wesleyan College’s campus, according to 20-year-old theater arts student Jakob Spruce. “Faculty members of our school have been telling us not to worry and the worst that would happen is that we would move to online classes,” he mentioned. On March 12, students woke up to an email from the university’s president, announcing that all classes could be canceled starting Friday (March 13). However faculty obtained the email at the same time, and then some didn’t have plans set to transition to remote learning. As a result, online classes were delayed significantly.


“No one had expected this to happen here, even the faculty,” Spruce told MTV News. “Waking up to an email totally [stunned] everyone.”


In the face of such confusion, students across the nation are also trying to be proactive. They’ve taken it upon themselves to make sure access to intelligence, and support each other even as some of their respective institutions struggle  to convey what changes are occuring, and what the true impact on students they serve will be.


The initial Generation Harvard Alumni compiled a crowdfunding page that’s raised over $50,000 to support first-generation and low-income Harvard students while in this transition, and University of Chicago’s student-run Emergency Fund is working to supply grants to students that never have to be paid back. Brown, who founded the Fund, mentioned it shows how even before this crisis, “students have been distributing for each other and taking care of each other on campus.”


The school’s Student Government Vice President of Administration, Brittney Dorton, also told MTV News that the categorize made the choice to donate as much of their existing financial range as possible to the Emergency Fund. The 23-year-old mentioned the student government also purchased up as several boxes as they could to decrease the burden on students who are suddenly moving out.


“It’s building an enormous quantity of anxiety, and each person is in a stage of collective mourning,” Dorton mentioned. “We’ll be isolated from our support systems for the foreseeable future.”


A student at DePaul University, which reported this week they would move classes online, began a petition asking the university to automatically pass students and citing upheaval related to losing housing, internet access, and even health insurance as distractors from focusing on finals.


“It's a housing crisis, it's an insurance crisis, it's a food crisis; they're closing the dining halls. It's a mental health crisis; I lost my therapist,” 21-year-old Genera Fields, the student who began the petition, told MTV News. She works as a studies assistant and lost her job due to university closures. Because she’s a senior in the middle of her capstone, also doubts she is going have the ability to graduate in June as recommended. Other DePaul students have set up an added spreadsheet of housing resources. They’re volunteering their living rooms, air mattresses, and boxes to assist displaced students.


“We're all very scared,” Fields mentioned, pointing out how disorienting it is to be off your schedule. She was calling from a retail food store, attempting to purchase rice and stock up, as soon as normally she could be in class.


the full community has stepped up, Achife mentioned. “Immediately immediately after we got the news and recovered from the shock, students were allocating housing, cars and physical labor for moving, pet sitting and residence sitting, food and emotional support for one another,” she explained. “It’s truly astonishing how we can come with each other as a community in times like this.”


And while students have not forgotten that navigating the logistics of housing, finances, unexpected travel, and university policy should not be entirely left up to them in the midst of crisis, they are overjoyed of their collective resilience — and what they hope future students might learn, should a worst-case scenario strike again.


“Our plans to leave beyond a legacy of student activism for others to build upon will be cut short,” Dorton added. “But we hope that we’ll have the ability to model that sort of compassionate leadership through our response to this situation, and that it will inspire those who come soon after us to lead in a way that puts the community first.”