Imagine having the ability to move back on campus after being gone since spring break.
Packing up your things, driving to your school’s campus, moving into your dorm, and eager to start this new chapter of your life. Then after only being there maybe two weeks, you have to move back home and complete the Fall 2020 semester completely online because of students not following the rules and guidelines that the university and state have put in place. Sadly this is the reality for students at colleges like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NC State University.
Mira Ward, a sophomore and political science and sports administration major at UNC, was excited to go back to school. Ward said she thought from the beginning that UNC was going to end up switching to remote learning. When asked about if people were following the rules, Ward said “no, definitely not.”
Ward lives off campus but she feels bad because “a lot of people went through the trouble of moving in all just to have to move back out.” Ward feels that even though online classes are harder to focus in, they are manageable. Ward said that UNC made the safest decision by going to remote learning, “UNC should have been 100 percent remote to begin with.”
Seline Pons, a sophomore French language and literature major at NC State, was really excited to go back to campus because the only time she gets to see most of her friends is on campus. Pons knew something like this was going to happen and gave it a month from the time she moved in.
She was right. Pons said that she moved in on July 27th and NC State started kicking people out on Aug. 27. Pons said that apart from the fraternities and sororities, everyone was following the rules such as wearing a mask and social distancing.
“Everyone knew Greek life was going to mess it up for us,” Pons said. Pons also said that she felt dreadful having to go back home: “I love my family but this is not the college experience.”
Pons said she is not particularly struggling with the online classes because she took summer classes and she is not taking a lot of credit hours. However, Pons also said, “most of my friends are struggling because they feel like professors are doubling down on them.” One good thing that has come out of this situation, however, is that Pons said that NC State is doing refunds for housing and meal plans.
Dasia Elswick, a design major in her sophomore year at Winthrop University, said that she is excited to go back to campus and she is hopeful that people at Winthrop will follow the rules “because we’re so close knit.” “I’m really hopeful that everyone is going to try and protect each other because you don’t know how other people are going to experience the virus,” Elswick said. She said that while she does not think Winthrop is going to have an issue with parties, if the university has any issues, it will be with wearing masks.
“People might think that because they’re outside on Scholars Walk, they don’t need to wear it, but Scholars gets crowded,” Elswick said. Elswick also said she is having a hard time with remote learning. She said, “I feel like I’m just completing assignments instead of learning.”
UNC Chapel Hill and NC State are just two of the many schools that have had to switch to remote learning for the Fall 2020 semester because of COVID-19 related issues on campus. Will Winthrop be the next school to go fully remote?
Photo by Jamia Johnson
