There are red modes and green modes and phases of arrival; weekly testing, mandatory masking, and “enhanced” remote formats; a .02 coronavirus positivity rate at “peer institutions”; and an expected 1,700 undergraduate Smith students welcome back on campus. As President McCartney wrote in her email on the 23rd, “Many students are eager to return to campus, and the college has developed a careful plan to make that possible.” I asked a few Smith students how they feel about it.
“We cannot go back until we have a vaccine. Period,” said Alaina Economus-Stout ‘22, a History and Russian Studies double major living in Northampton this semester. “If you bring students back to campus, inevitably there’s going to be some breach of COVID rules — students would have to be sent home. I applaud Smith for not cheating us out of money, but I’m not falling for that bullshit next semester. Of course you should adhere to rules — colleges know that students are going to cause an outbreak and Smith is going to collect the money. So they shouldn’t open it.”
She acknowledged that in some ways, Smith made the right decision to remain closed this fall. And yet, as a low-income student, Economus-Stout has felt wholly unsupported amidst the financial insecurity caused by the pandemic. She said, “A lot of this is highlighting Smith’s inability to show up for low-income students. I don’t have – I can’t go back home and live with my parents, that’s not an option. Smith needed to provide a little more support … I’m lucky enough to have savings—I’m paying for my rent out of my savings—but they should have had more options in terms of subsidizing off-campus housing. A lot of us don’t have homes that we can go back to — we’re not just hanging out with our families. We’re on our own.”
Andrew Turgeon is a senior Biology major and he will be enrolling next semester so he can “get the fuck out” and “try and live life.” He’s also King’s president, stumbling in his attempts to cultivate some kind of online connection amongst his house. “I don’t know, what kind of communities would people want to be virtual in?” he asked me after confessing that in terms of persistent social outreach, “maybe we just need to let things go.” And as a senior, he said, “I don’t feel like I’m about to graduate. I feel very disassociated from reality. I don’t even know what there is to feel about Smith — Smith isn’t Smith. Online class is not Smith.” He’s going through with it anyway.
One night while sitting on the couch with my gap semestered roommates, Carina Von Huene ’22 and Maeve Morrow ‘22, they confessed that sometimes it’s “pitiful” to watch my online classes fumble alongside the collective trauma of the past few months.
“Especially when it was 4:00 p.m. and I’m getting home and you’re like, ‘I haven’t been outside today’,” added Von Huene. They’re not wrong.
We were contemplating the weight of such a choice — to metaphorically “go back” to Smith, or not? On-campus precautions will be strict and classes mostly remote; without deducted tuition, is it worth it?
Morrow confessed that she’s teetering on “the rabbit hole” of dropping out of college, but only because her past few months of “learning-free COVID dealing” have felt so natural and comforting. Part of what informed her decision to take a gap semester stemmed from her remote experience in the spring; her living situation was ultimately “not a conducive learning environment”, so she found herself relying heavily on the S/U grading system in place. She hopes to move back on campus in the spring, where she thinks she would find more academic support in ways she can’t at home, even if it is fully remote.
“It’s not like I’ve been having big adventures or going on these huge trips that a lot of people spend their time off doing. But, I’ve had the opportunity to literally just breathe and realize the kind of person that I am in my life right now and what my interests are at this point, and getting time to appreciate the relationships that have flourished at Smith. It’s a mentally comforting place to be — still having the safety net of going back to school and knowing that that’s in the horizon.”
Von Huene’s criteria was more simple: “If there are no buildings open, no libraries, I don’t think I’ll go back.” They’re developing a spring plan to work in a toy store, garden, and wait out the pandemic. They reflected — “We haven’t had an in-person class in five-ever.”
President McCartney may look forward to welcoming us back in the spring, but many of us won’t be back. Many of us will just be COVID dealing and ignoring pandemic-induced rabbit holes.
