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University of Virginia. (Julia Rendleman/The Washington Post)
Washington Post
On campus with the coronavirus: An oral history of the strangest semester ever
By Paulina Firozi, Hannah Knowles, Reis Thebault
October 11, 2020
It was the second Wednesday of the first month back on campus, just
weeks into the weirdest semester on record, when one dorm’s residents
received an email that might have marked the beginning of the end.
The University of Virginia was about to confront the biggest threat yet
to its audacious plan to bring thousands of young adults back to
Charlottesville and resume in-person schooling mid-pandemic. There
appeared to be an outbreak of the coronavirus in Balz-Dobie residence
hall, a first-year dorm with a handful of positive cases and concerning
signs pointing to even more.
Like scores of universities across the country, U-Va. found itself
facing rising case counts and an anxious student body at the outset of
an unprecedented, chaotic school year. Students closely tracked the
upheaval elsewhere. When nearby schools were forced to change course,
they wondered if they’d be next.
The virus swirled, and so did the rumors. Closure was imminent, some
said; the school just wanted to cash in on nonrefundable tuition
payments, others claimed. Many feared it would only get worse.
Then, the email came. Around 5 p.m. on Sept. 16, a “Public Health
Alert” arrived in Balz-Dobie inboxes, ordering students back to their
dorm within the hour. Every resident would get a coronavirus test, and
the building would be locked down until the results came back. The
future of U-Va.’s restart experiment hung in the balance.
It was a moment that exemplified a fall of extreme uncertainty, which
unspooled against a backdrop of fierce national debate over in-person
instruction. On U-Va.’s campus, known as the “Grounds,” students
struggled with questions both monumental and mundane: Where can I
study? How do I make friends? What if my roommate gets me sick? What’s
the big deal? Why are we here?
This is the story of those first few weeks — condensed and edited for
clarity — as told by new college students, a second-year, resident
advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for their
jobs, three school officials and the university’s coronavirus
dashboard, which tracks quarantines and virus cases since Aug. 17.
This oral history follows more than a dozen students in different dorms
who shared their experiences in real time, from the days before
move-in, through the ominous Balz-Dobie email and into the
unpredictable aftermath.
‘The start of a horror movie’
On Aug. 28, three days after fall semester classes began online, the
university announces it will reopen campus to its more than 17,000
undergraduates. In-person classes will start Sept. 8. Now students have
to decide whether they’ll go.
U-Va. leaders in their “Return to Grounds” statement: There are no easy answers here, and there are no risk-free paths.
The Cavalier Daily, U-Va.’s student newspaper: This feels like the start of a horror movie.
Gabrielle Cope, a first-year: I was scared, because in my hometown,
nobody took it seriously. Kids have been partying the whole time. And I
sat in my room alone, because I didn’t want to risk my parents’ lives.
Cassie Lipton, a first-year: I know there’s definitely risk involved.
But at the same time, I’ve just been stuck in my house so long that I’m
ready for a change of pace regardless. And my entire, like, 13 years of
public education has been building up to going to college.
Abena Sekum Appiah-Ofori, a second-year: My mind works better when I’m
at school, so I’m excited. I think it’ll be better for my grades. But
I’m also concerned for the Charlottesville community.
President Jim Ryan: Thousands of students, the bulk of our students,
live off Grounds, and it was clear that they were going to be back
living in private houses and apartments whether classes were all online
or some were in person. Part of the goal has always been to not just
ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff, but to ensure the
safety of the Charlottesville community.
Lipton: I keep telling people that my plan is to just go and safely
make the most of whatever two weeks I get until we’re inevitably sent
home.
Ryan: The financial piece of it is obviously something that you have to
pay attention to, but the finances didn’t drive the decision.
Mina DiPaula, a first-year: I heard somewhere the goal was to
essentially be able to pack up and move out of your dorm room with one
day’s notice and be able to go back home, which is obviously very
stressful when it’s the first time you’re moving out of your house and
you’re told: “Don’t bring anything you can’t pack up in one day.”
Ryan: Our view was that we would have an easier time of influencing
student behavior if you didn’t have a closed sign on the university and
instead students feel like they were a part of the university community.
Appiah-Ofori: My mom doesn’t want me to go. She’s like: “Why are you
going? We’re not kicking you out or anything. You can just stay home.
You’re going to catch covid.”
Allen Groves, dean of students: I sent an email to students saying, you
know, this is a personal decision for you and your family to make.
DiPaula: I keep second-guessing if I made the right decision in going.
Tyler Busch, a first-year: I think it’s best summarized by, if you’ve
ever seen “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” Padme, when the whole
empire was shifting, says: “So this is how liberty dies? With
thunderous applause.” And that was sort of how I was feeling, because a
lot of my classmates were so happy and so excited.
When the first undergraduates arrive on Sept. 3, U-Va. reports there
has been a total of 135 student coronavirus cases. Quarantine housing
for the exposed is 6 percent full. Isolation housing for the infected
and symptomatic is empty. Resident advisers’ jobs have gotten a lot
harder.
Fourth-year RA: I got some PPE to distribute to my residents. Each
person has a bag. It’s two masks, two small hand sanitizer bottles.
It’s kind of pathetic.
Brian Coy, university spokesman: We provided personal protective
equipment to all members of our community that was recommended by
public health experts.
Balz-Dobie RA: RAs feel like we have not been given adequate personal
protective equipment. I can’t speak to other dorms, but we had to
really beg for it.
Coy: RAs requested additional PPE, including face shields, which were
then provided. We also provided two additional cloth face masks to RAs.
‘You were definitely at a bar’
A quarter of the nearly 4,000 first-years who initially signed up for
on-campus housing don’t show up, Groves says. Upperclassmen dorms are
half-full. Move-in weekend, usually a celebration, becomes a four-day
logistics exercise. Students are assigned two-hour windows to lug dorm
furnishings into their buildings.
Before they arrive, students must sign an agreement pledging to
“maintain a healthy and safe environment.” New roommates, meeting each
other for the first time, will have to depend on one another to stay
safe.
Busch: A couple weeks back, I made this doc for us and shared it with
my roommate, outlining things that we can do to limit contact.
Cope: We came together and defined our expectations for how we wanted
to act. So for our suite personally, no one’s allowed in the suite
without a mask on who doesn’t live there, and if someone who doesn’t
live there is in the suite, we all have to have masks on.
Busch: I was in the bathroom, and I wiped down a sink, and then someone
else was using a sink next to me and then he actually left and got his
sanitizer stuff and wiped his sink, too. So, you know, good behavior is
rubbing off on people.
DiPaula: I walked up to the Corner at U-Va., where there’s a bunch of
restaurants and stuff. That was insanely busy. I was like: “Nope, I’m
leaving here now.”
Appiah-Ofori: The only time I felt like, “I’m about to get covid,” was
when I was at the Corner and there were a bunch of people not social
distancing and not wearing masks.
Groves, dean of students: We’ve talked with the owners of the bars on
the Corner and said, “Look, we need your help here, that you make sure
you are, in fact, checking ID, but also that you’re enforcing the same
kind of restrictions that we’re trying to enforce.” Those spaces can
become superspreaders.
Hala Baidas, a first-year: My dorm is right by the stairs, and I can
hear people coming in at like 2 in the morning on a weekend. And it’s
like, you were definitely at a bar. And I really hope you didn’t bring
anything back, because I definitely share a bathroom with you.
RA in a first-year dorm: I don’t blame students for that all the way.
Being told it is safe for them to come to the university, to live in
the residence halls, go to classes, it carries a little bit of an
implication that it’s safe for them to do a lot of things they might
consider essential to the college experience.
Appiah-Ofori: I’ve seen a lot of people on U-Va. Twitter being like:
“Oh, if I see you breaking social distancing rules, I’ll report you.” I
don’t know. I just don’t like that idea of us self-policing each other.
Black and Brown students are going to receive the worst of it if we’re
all self-reporting each other.
Busch: Online, some people were saying, “Oh yeah, I saw this person
without a mask or doing something crazy,” and for some people, it might
be true, some not. It’s just creating tension among the students. A lot
of people are losing focus on the big picture and the school’s role in
this as well.
Fourth-year RA: The policies are you can’t bring any guests into your
room. There’s no way we can police that. I don’t think I want to police
that.
‘Please return to your room now’
Heading into undergrads’ first full weekend on campus, total student
infections have jumped by more than 100 in a week. Quarantine housing
is 8 percent occupied. Isolation housing is 1 percent full.
On Monday, Sept. 14, the Balz-Dobie dorm group chat lights up.
Residents are self-reporting symptoms and volunteering to get tested.
For one student, it feels like the virus is inching its way closer. An
open letter appears on a window in the dorm with a warning: “It takes
one empty-headed student to force us into isolation by the dozens."
Balz-Dobie RA: I personally was starting to get on edge probably around
Tuesday night. Just knowing that there have been large gatherings in
our dorm particularly. I had already started hearing residents being
concerned about people exhibiting symptoms. And I was like, this makes
sense given what I’ve seen, and I’m starting to get scared.
On Wednesday, U-Va. says five Balz-Dobie residents have recently tested
positive and that the dorm’s wastewater shows signs of the virus. Cue
the university’s official Public Health Alert.
“If you are away from Balz-Dobie, please return to your room now. If
you are already in your room, please stay there,” reads the email, sent
at 4:58 p.m. All 188 residents would have to be tested. Once again, the
group chat buzzes.
President Ryan: There was some concern that there might be a really
large number of cases. The recommendation was to test everyone, but to
do it quickly.
Soven Bhagat, a first-year: People who face the front of the building
started sending pictures and videos of the U-Va. health staff coming in
in their scrubs and all of their testing kits.
Busch: I found myself just kind of sitting here and trying to get stuff
done. But I really, really couldn’t focus on anything for the most part.
Bhagat: Their process for giving us food was to make us go pick it up
from a table, which, I don’t know, I’m not a public health expert, but
it still felt weird that they were letting us leave the building.
Balz-Dobie RA: We had not been prepped on what would happen if our whole dorm went into quarantine.
Ryan: This is the first time through a pandemic for all of us on a
college campus. We did do an awful lot of planning, but we also went
into it realizing and saying that we were gonna have to be ready and
willing to adapt based on what we were seeing.
One day after Balz-Dobie’s lockdown began, U-Va.’s coronavirus tracker
reports a total of 382 student cases. In the meantime, the dorm’s
residents are stuck inside, wondering how bad things might get.
Bhagat: At some point in the afternoon, U-Va. emailed us saying we’ll
have your test results for you this evening. In that time period, one
of the boys in the building, he’s a musician, so he put on an Instagram
live concert for us.
Luke Powers, a first-year who performed: We were waiting for our test
results and it was hard to focus on doing work and I thought: “What can
I do about that?”
He plays guitar and sings for an hour, live-streaming for scores of other students stuck in their rooms.
Bhagat: Everyone opened their windows and put speakers in the windows
so everyone was listening to it together. That was just the first time
where everyone really settled. We all had a sense of calm and
camaraderie together.
University of Virginia first year plays virtual concert for fellow students
Powers: A few hours later, people were moving out, going to isolation dorms, people getting contact traced.
Balz-Dobie RA: I’ve not talked to a single resident who was able to get
work done during the time that we were in quarantine. All of them said
that they were too stressed.
Residents are told that students who are positive will go into
isolation. Close contacts will go into quarantine. People who need to
move will get a phone call before midnight.
Balz-Dobie RA: Our residents are trying to ask us questions like, “When
are we gonna get out of here?” We say we have no idea. We don’t even
know who’s positive.
Bhagat: We were also very consciously following the Cav Daily, because
they were giving us a lot more information than U-Va. itself.
Ten more cases surface in Balz-Dobie. By the end of the week, U-Va. has
reported 440 student cases in a month. Three more dorms are tested —
and the results are still coming in.
Almost a fifth of quarantine housing is now full. Busch is in one of those rooms, a hotel suite off campus.
Busch: I’m really upset, knowing that I was fine and that I did
everything right, but that, incidentally, one of my contacts has me in
here now. I’d say this is bad, but not the absolute worst, because I
don’t have it. And also — trying to find a positive in this — I’m in
quarantine before things potentially get worse from here.
Students still stuck in Balz-Dobie get an email Friday afternoon: They’re free to go.
Bhagat: I was exhausted. So the first thing I did was I left. I put on
my mask and I went for a walk. I was like, I need to leave. I need to
just be in a place that is not my dorm room.
The residence hall is eerily quiet over the weekend.
Bhagat: Normally in all the lounges on the floors on Friday and
Saturday evenings, people are playing games like poker or Codenames.
Everyone’s hanging out. Yesterday, it was just about empty. Everyone is
a little bit on edge, and there’s a lot of residual trauma from the
past few days.
A little over two weeks since undergraduates moved back, U-Va.
decreases acceptable gathering sizes from 15 to five people for at
least two weeks and urges people to follow the rules on travel: Don’t
leave Charlottesville. No out-of-town guests.
Quarantine housing jumps to 26 percent occupancy. Isolation housing is
7 percent full. In a video message to students, President Ryan says
public health experts are worried about reports of big gatherings on
and off Grounds.
Students have been suspended, but U-Va. declined to share details on
the individuals or their violations, saying the school disciplinary
process is confidential.
Hannah, a first-year: I’ve heard of kids trying to get tested off
campus so we don’t have to report it to the school. It just seems that
a lot of kids are trying not to get — I don’t want to say not get
caught. Not to be disrupted.
Hannah and her roommate, Erin, spoke to us on the condition we only use
their first names, because they are worried about backlash against
their eventual decision to quarantine off campus.
Ryan, in the video message: We will also put in place additional
restrictions if necessary. I say this not to alarm you, but to make
clear that we will continue to do everything we need to in order to
keep people safe and to give students a chance to remain on Grounds
this semester.
Busch: I want to say that I think we close. But the school has their
reputation on the line and just won’t do that any time soon, no matter
what.
Ryan, in the video message: We have known that this path would be difficult.
‘I’d still rather stay here’
More changes, more testing.
Mask use wanes at U-Va.’s Clemons Library, which is forced to briefly
close on Sept. 23 for the second time in four days. Balz-Dobie
residents will be tested again, as will the 115 students in Hancock
residence hall after 16 cases were found there. More dorms follow.
DiPaula: It’s kind of gotten to the point where it’s still definitely
very frustrating but no longer surprising. Because it feels like
practically every other day there’s something new they’re wanting us to
do or take care of.
RA in a first-year dorm: That does take a mental toll on my first-year
residents. They see a situation that overall seems to be slowly
worsening, but they can’t identify exactly where that’s from.
Powers: A lot of schools have said, “Okay, we tried, we’re sending you
home.” And I think U-Va. is really trying to keep us here. Even if that
means being as strict as possible, I’d still rather stay here than
spend my first year of college online at home.
Balz-Dobie RA: I feel completely unable to do anything. Did I take the exam? Yes. Do I think I did well on the exam? No.
Appiah-Ofori: There’s two organizations on Grounds trying to get the
university to allow pass/fail grading again this semester, because
circumstances have only gotten worse, not better.
Balz-Dobie RA: Everyone that has additional responsibility because of
covid would prefer universal credit/no credit. I feel like I’m
constantly drowning.
Baidas: The covid tracker, we have a little schedule. Every day when it
comes out at 4 o’clock around that time, we look at it, and we discuss
what’s going on. Everyone checks it religiously just to see the numbers
and pray they’re not shooting up.
Powers: I do think U-Va. is definitely handling it the best they can. I
think the students are figuring it out as we go, and they’re also
figuring it out as we go. And I think it’s going to require a bit of
grace on both sides.
New infections start to decline under the stricter rules. Nobody knows if the trend will hold.
In an interview, President Ryan says kicking students off campus would
pose its own danger: potentially contagious young people fanning out
around the state and country.
But it will happen eventually. Students leave next month for Thanksgiving break and will finish the semester remotely.
Ryan: We’re working out plans to provide testing before students return
for Thanksgiving. It’s not clear if we can require students, only
because it may be difficult to enforce that requirement.
‘We’re just going to do it ourselves’
Some students take matters into their own hands when they believe
they’ve been exposed. When a suitemate goes into quarantine after
experiencing symptoms, DiPaula says she self-isolates even though the
school hasn’t asked her to yet. Hannah says that when she loses her
ability to taste — a symptom of covid-19, the disease caused by the
novel coronavirus — she and her roommate decide to leave their room
only for food and bathroom breaks.
Hannah goes into a university isolation room after reporting her
symptoms to the school, she says, but two days later, she’s cleared to
leave with a negative test result.
Hannah: We were very skeptical, because I couldn’t taste anything, couldn’t smell, I had a headache.
Erin, Hannah’s roommate: She was really positive she was gonna get a
positive test, so I packed all my things up and I was ready to leave.
And then when it came back negative, we just made the decision that
we’re just going to do it ourselves.
Hannah: We hear everyone outside having fun without us. The people in
our hall chatting and forming a deeper friendship while we had to sit
in our room and just talk to each other.
Soon, their whole dorm is tested. Hannah says she’s still negative, but
Erin says she gets a call in the middle of class: She’s positive. She
thinks: “I need to do laundry.”
Erin: I was like, “Oh my God, I have to leave.” So the panic of like, I had nothing ready to go.
With U-Va.’s blessing, the roommates say, they head to Erin’s house two
hours away in Leesburg to quarantine in her family’s basement. Neither
wants to relive Hannah’s experience isolating on campus.
Hannah: It almost looked like an insane asylum. The walls are so bare.
And they also told me not to bring any, like, bedding or anything, but
they gave me only the thinnest blanket in the world to sleep with. My
RA had to drop off my comforter for me later.
Erin: I’d rather be home.
‘A very different kind of semester’
Through the health alerts and quarantines, the more quotidian concerns of college life linger.
Lipton: That’s been pretty difficult, trying to make friends,
especially being out of state and not knowing anybody and not having a
roommate.
Cope: You can’t walk around campus and walk up to someone and say hi, because you don’t want to invade their personal space.
RA in a first-year dorm: I have a great support network and I would say
most RAs have a great support network of other staffers in the
building. I feel like when there’s a sustained, unrelenting pressure,
stress, a physical threat like this, I think those support networks
become less effective, because every single person in those networks
who would normally be recharged, ready to help, they’re going through
the exact same thing.
President Ryan: It’s challenging. From the very beginning, we tried to
make it clear to students that this would be a very different kind of
semester and gave students the option of learning from home.
In his hotel room Sept. 30, Busch tallies his days in quarantine.
Fourteen. Almost out. But while he’s been stuck inside, with cold meals
and a window that doesn’t open, much has changed on Grounds.
Busch: I don’t even know what I’m going back to.
Even his on-campus housing will be different when he returns. He’s
moving into a single, a change he requested after being quarantined to
limit his exposure.
Busch: Not to say it’s anyone’s fault, but it probably could have been
avoided if I was living by myself. I would feel much safer and more at
ease just being by myself in a room.
‘Is it ever going to go back to completely normal? I don’t know.’
The university extends the extra restrictions another two weeks. It
agrees to let undergraduates take their courses credit/no credit,
bowing to pressure from students. On Oct. 8, U-Va. counts 857 total
student cases, with a recent average of about 15 new infections per day.
Charlottesville has logged more coronavirus cases since September than
in the six previous months combined. Cases are trending down in
Virginia, but most states have seen cases flare since late summer, and
experts are worried about cold weather driving people inside.
The rest of the semester is a question mark at U-Va., too. There are 52
days until final exams, and 44 days until the last of classes before
Thanksgiving break. Plans could change at any moment.
After a month on campus, students ask themselves: Did I make the right choice?
Bhagat: I think the in-person experience has been worth it for me. I’ve
been able to make friends and still spend time with them with some
level of safety. We’ve been hiking and paddle boarding on weekends, and
while it’s definitely not the experience I would have planned to have
had, it’s still been nice so far.
Cope: Is it ever going to go back to completely normal? I don’t know. So I can’t push off life, hoping that one day it does.
DiPaula: I think it was a worthwhile choice for me, but I don’t think
the university should have decided to open. By deciding to open, the
university forced all of us to make this really, really hard choice.
Balz-Dobie RA: I believe that Housing and Residence Life is actually
doing a pretty good job given the circumstances, and my complaints are
with the university administration, the higher-ups. And I’m speaking to
[a reporter] because I feel like the only way to get through to the
higher-ups is to make it a PR necessity to do so.
Appiah-Ofori: I’m honestly filled with intense guilt the longer I stay
in Charlottesville. It’s still very conflicting. On one hand, I know
it’s best for me mentally and academically not to be at home while I’m
taking classes. But on another hand, I’m contributing to the spike of
covid rates in Charlottesville by staying here and risking getting
infected and passing it on to others.
At the end of the day, I’m just one person, and U-Va. is an institution
that can make the change necessary to stop the spike by sending us back
home. I’ve definitely thought about packing up my stuff and going home,
but I’m choosing to wait until the university makes the call.
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