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The Hechinger Report
In dark days of coronavirus, a little kindness can restore students’ faith
From cash to phone calls, pockets of help are making all the difference
By Liz Willen
March 23, 2020
NEW YORK – When news came that coronavirus concerns would close South
Carolina’s Benedict College for the semester, Jayla Berry soon found
herself heading home to Detroit with her ticket fully paid for and her
transportation arranged.
“They helped us load up and even arranged for someone to take me to the
airport,” said Berry, a sophomore environmental engineering major who
attends the historically black college on a full scholarship. “The guy
who picked me up and took me to the bus had no sleep because he’d been
helping all the students get home. Even the [college] president called
to check in on us, and I am forever grateful. They didn’t have to do
that.”
The acts of kindness shown to Benedict College students came courtesy
of its board of trustees, who offered to cover the travel costs home
for every student who needed it, even to places as far as away as
Brazil and Budapest. The school is one of a number of colleges and
universities that are standing out for their humane approaches to the
coronavirus. These institutions are helping students find cost-free
ways to leave campus, keeping dorms open for those who don’t have other
options or identifying ways to enable less-wired students who can’t
access online learning to still finish out the semester.
Not all colleges are being heaped with praise, however, and the
contrasts are striking. At California’s Pomona College, for example,
some circulated petitions demanding the school do more to help students
who don’t have housing alternatives.* The University of Pennsylvania
has been under fire for asking private landlords to send students home.
There’s no playbook for handling the unprecedented coronavirus
calamity, but I’m quickly seeing what a big difference offers of help,
financial assistance and even phone calls of concern can make. With a
little luck, the power of kindness and generosity will be one of the
key takeaways of this crisis when it abates, as will newfound
appreciation for teachers. (Just ask a parent trying to take the place
of educators while working from home.)
For some college students, well-timed assistance can make the
difference between falling deep into poverty and dropping out or
getting to graduation. In recent weeks, I’ve seen aid come in the form
of deferrals of student loan payments, laptop loans, free storage or
help shipping items home, grocery deliveries, pass-fail grading, help
finding temporary housing and paycheck continuation for work-study
students. Meanwhile, cultural institutions are relaxing rules and
paywalls to offer much-needed diversion, like free streaming of
Broadway musicals and plays, operas, online art programs and free
downloads of books from public libraries.
Individuals can help most, advocates say, by making financial donations to groups that are aiding students in need.
The scholarship matching app Scholly launched its Scholly COVID-19
Student Relief Fund to help students and parents with cash assistance.
The Constance Fund, which had been providing emergency student aid, had
to pause until April 1 because it was overwhelmed with requests. And
the Student Relief Fund, which was set up to assist students facing
homelessness and hunger because of the crisis, has raised $95,000 so
far.
Lauren Wright, a sophomore psychology major at Stevenson University in
Maryland, is stuck in her apartment near campus because her mother is
ill and can’t risk the exposure. Just about everyone she knows has gone
home.
In search of help, she answered a few questions on a form and emailed
with Stacy Raphael, a Philadelphia-based social worker and higher
education advocate, who is one of 13 volunteers with the Student Relief
Fund. The fund opened March 11; hundreds of students have asked for
help so far, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, who helped launch the fund and
runs Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice.
For Wright, just having someone to talk to and email with who could
point her to potential resources made a big difference. “It helped me a
lot,” she said. “I’m scared, if I’m being honest. It’s spring break
now, and I’m feeling kind of stuck. I can’t do my jobs. I was supposed
to present my research at two different campuses, but that got
cancelled. I can’t go home. I’m feeling a bit shaky.”
So is Aleina Dume, a 19-year-old freshman at Swarthmore College, who is
now back home in Queens. Dume is the daughter of a single mom and
doesn’t have a big family support system, nor does she have wifi at
home. She is grateful for regular calls with her mentor from a summer
journalism program she attended at Princeton University; she also got a
mobile wifi hotspot sent to her by Swarthmore.
Volunteers with the Student Relief Fund connected Dume to organizations
and people that are helping students adrift because of the coronavirus,
including the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services and
individual therapists. “I felt so hopeful that there is at least
someone that can point me in the direction of resources,” Dume said.
“My job at school helps pay bills at home, so I’m really worried.”
“Unfortunately, there are many students … with many obstacles and just
barely getting by,” Raphael, the Student Relief Fund volunteer, told
me. “We social workers are all too familiar with individuals who have
complex and overwhelming needs. It’s really important to be working on
the ground.”
The crisis is also underscoring how uneven access to technology remains
in this country, something Estrella Rodriguez discovered recently.
Rodriguez is a 26-year-old pre-med student in California and a single
mom who is expecting her second child.
She was issued a free laptop as part of a scholarship but has been unable to pick it up because her campus is locked down.
Rodriguez lives in a one-bedroom apartment with seven family members
who are now out of work. She needs the laptop for her job as an online
math tutor, a much-needed source of revenue for all of them, and to
finish the semester and transfer to a four-year college in the fall.
A phone number Rodriguez got via Instagram led her to referrals for
food stamps and other services, but she still hasn’t figured out how to
get her laptop. In the midst of the madness, though, she’s grateful for
an act of kindness that came after she got in line at a Costco at 3
a.m. last week to score scarce household items like toilet paper.
“I was first on line and two ladies behind me bought me boxes of
diapers,” Rodriguez told me. “That was just so nice. I just hope this
baby doesn’t come early because of all the stress.”
In the meantime, her daughter, Nevaeh, wants to go back to the
preschool she attended on campus while Rodriguez was in class. “Now, we
are both out together. She won’t have her little graduation and I won’t
have mine,” Rodriguez said. “It’s pretty crazy right now. I wake up
like it’s a nightmare.”
Even as online learning begins this week, Benedict College, one of the
many schools that provided travel assistance to students, has a lot
more work to do. Benedict is now sending out information on job hunting
and interviewing skills and offering ongoing online support and
services to its students, said Emmanuel Lalande, vice president for
enrollment management.
“Honestly, we’ve reached an unprecedented point in higher education,” Lalande said. “We all have more questions than answers.”
But there are some answers that can make a difference, everywhere, in
these profoundly unsettling times: donating to emergency education
funds – and a little kindness.
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