On Mar. 25, 2020, Wofford students received an email stating that they will not be returning to campus for the remainder of the academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The long spring break that students had been excited about now meant that they wouldn’t be able to see many of their friends until the fall, while the seniors never truly got a proper goodbye.
Two years later, the school only recently removed the mask mandate in classrooms, and Wofford is finally starting to feel like Wofford again. A common thought of having online classes to finish out Spring 2020 was that the nation needed to “flatten the curve” and we would all be okay, but the virus is still ever-present.
When looking back at their time through the past two years, students have realized that they weren’t prepared for the pandemic they were about to live through.
Ellie Joyce ’23, like many other students, was scared and confused when originally sent home.
“I didn’t know what was going on or what we were going to do,” Joyce recalled.
Olivia Hampton ’21 was a junior when she was sent home for COVID.
“A lot of my friends were seniors so when we found out that we wouldn’t be returning for the rest of the year, I was crushed that I was unable to say a real goodbye,” Hampton said. “Our goodbye was ‘See you in two weeks,’ which is (all) I hoped it would be.”
Though Wofford has had to change to keep up with mask mandates and social distancing, Joyce felt that COVID-19 did help Wofford make some changes and become more aware of students’ needs that perhaps wouldn’t have taken place if the pandemic wasn’t in the picture.
“I honestly think the community has learned and advanced in a lot of different ways socially and technology-wise,” Joyce said. “Whether people think this is good or bad is definitely their own opinion and I know it varies, but I do think that there (have) been a lot of positive changes made to Wofford.”
Similarly, Abigail Woodall ’23 felt that professors were much more aware of students’ mental health and have become increasingly more supportive, while Mac Muzzarelli ’23 feels that the Wofford community itself has distanced themselves.
“I feel like we’ve grown apart as a community over the last 2 years but are gradually making our way back to what it was like my freshman year before this all happened,” Muzzarelli said.
As the students who were freshmen and sophomores are now juniors and seniors, the majority are feeling like they lost out on their college experience as they didn’t have the ability to engage in typical Wofford activities, like Greek Week or Spring Concert.
Natalie Aversano ’23 felt that the campus as a whole has become more passive but is grateful that going to a small school allowed for her to go to some in-person classes and still see her friends unlike students at larger schools.
The past two years were nothing like what anyone had expected as the two-week period to let COVID-19 “settle down” ended up not being the case. But, two years later, Wofford is maskless and COVID-19 is no longer the main topic of conversation.
