The Miscellany News April 2, 2020
miscellanynews.org
Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866 Volume 153 | Issue 7
COVID-19 causes abrupt, chaotic end to semester abroad Holly Shulman
Guest Columnist
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n the northern edge of central Havana, there is a waisthigh wall called the Malecón, which separates a bustling, sixlane highway from the ocean. This wall, flat and low enough to sit on, forms a quirky sort of cultural hub, home to a cast of characters ranging from motionless fishermen to dancing guitar players fond of serenading unassuming pedestrians. The evening of Monday, March 16 saw a new population join the constant rotation: 25 study abroad students mourning the end of their semester, two months early. We sat with our backs to the traffic, facing the water and (somewhere off in the invisible distance) the Florida shoreline, to where increasingly empty airplanes would carry us far too soon. From a distance, it must
have been picturesque. Up close, it wasn’t quite so ideal. Stressed and anxious after weeks of speculation about the potential impact of the coronavirus, we were at last facing the harsh reality that the pandemic would spell our premature departure. “I really thought we would make it to May,” someone said for the millionth time. Students around the world echoed the same disbelief. As the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, spreads across the globe, study abroad programs and their university partners have been faced with the task of deciding if, when and how to extract students from their foreign destinations. By the time we sat on the Malecón that day, our peers in Europe and Asia had, for the most part, been unceremoniously shipped home days or weeks before, while universities See ABROAD on page 6
A Havana cityscape from the roof of my homestay. Courtesy of Holly Shulman.
Seasons end, but eligibility continues Emma Tanner
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Juliette Pope/The Miscellany News.
Guest Reporter
n March 12, the NCAA announced that all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships would be canceled in wake of the growing COVID-19 pandemic. Within 24 hours, the Liberty League and Vassar College Athletics followed suit, suspending all regular-season and championship contests. Though this decision prioritized the safety of student-athletes and their communities, it left most confused, disappointed and heartbroken. “I, along with my whole team, was devastated,” recalled Vassar
men’s lacrosse sophomore Logan Hyde. “At that point the implications hadn’t really set in.” Like all spring sports, men’s lacrosse trained throughout the fall and winter to prepare for their season. Hyde had hoped that his team’s hard work and dedication would make them “strong contenders in the Liberty League.” Despite a hot start, the Brewers were only able to complete a fraction of their scheduled matches before competition was halted. “I was most disappointed that we weren’t able to see all of our hard work come to fruition,” said Hyde. “We had only played five of our 15 regular-season games.”
The entire Vassar Athletics community—coaches, administrators, trainers—expressed similar sentiments. “I went through some of the normal stages of grief, denial, bargaining, anger—back to denial,” said men’s volleyball head coach Richard Gary. Brewers volleyball, once ranked second in the nation, was cut short of reaching its ultimate goal: a national championship. To Gary, the most difficult time came when thinking of each individual “[from] seniors, losing their chance to finish what they started, down to freshmen who were only beginning to have the See REDSHIRT on page 8
Upbeat, steady, mournful: Longing for the harvest moon Noa Rosenberg
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Guest Columnist
hen I started writing this, I had a whole lot more to say about coronavirus than I do now. I sat in my bedroom, converted into a quasi office for coming Zoom misadventures, and wrote sentence after lamenting sentence about Vassar’s cancellation, what an influx of disgruntled college students would mean for my home in Chicago, and and and and and—only to check Twitter in fits of distraction and find that everything I could possibly say had already been said. I’ve started over and over and over again. I keep returning to one moment that seems stuck in my mind. One night in September I was walking back to Joss from the THs, and I was moody. (We’ve all done a moody walk from the THs.) The night was so clear, and I can remember how it smelled like fading grass meeting burgeoning cold. I played Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” as I passed Chicago
Hall, feeling snide and clever for my impeccable timing. The real harvest moon was bright above me, lighting my hands as I threw them out to my sides and reached upwards, stretching. I danced in front of Chicago Hall to Neil Young until I started to cry. Then I danced and cried until I became self aware again and stopped. I could see the purple light of my room waiting to welcome me from where I stood outside, but I wasn’t ready to go in yet. I took a lap instead. Young’s sounds were like a train chugging endlessly to quench the thirst of an unrequited something. Upbeat and steady and mournful. That’s how I feel now. Give or take steady. Give or take upbeat. I won’t be at Vassar for the next harvest moon, but I’m grateful to have another one coming down the line and a spring in between. I can’t wait to see the leaves change and see my breath spiraling in front of me as I crane my head out my window, getting one last crisp gulp of outside air before bed. I
have to choose to believe that there will be some universal justice for the unrequited then. Between now and then is a crisis unbelievable in scope. I have found myself over the last few weeks humbled time and time again by how impossibly big and hard to grasp contagion is. How it can reach, snarling into every crevice of a day. How something unforgiving and inhuman can take everything away so personally. I repeat to myself that this is bigger than me, bigger than my family, than my college or my city, but I can’t help but ache solipsistically. In my dim room at 4 a.m., I feel sorry for myself. I white-knuckle my comforter and squeeze my eyes shut until I see my veins, trying to reconcile crushes unrealized, friends that I didn’t get to say goodbye to, shows undone, and how a year in which I finally felt comfortable at college could end in such a blaze of un-glory. But then I open my eyes, the light filters back in honeycombs, and I feel grateful. I think about
my last night in New York, staying in Queens with my best friend from Vassar. We ate Indian food and stayed up late talking about family. It wasn’t such a bad way to end the year at all. I think about the homes and families I have there and in Pittsburgh, Texas and London, England and Chicago, Illinois and Poughkeepsie, New York. Those families and their families are who this is happening for. We are protecting each other. Because we love
each other. There are things I could have done; times I could have been braver or more present. I wish I could have trusted myself more to cry outside of Chicago Hall alone at night instead of just inside of it in class during the day. But I am lucky enough to have time for all of that. I can’t wait to be happy and giddy and bleary and frustrated and to see my friends dance again. So, upbeat and steady and mournful. Give or take, it is.
Courtesy of theodora.lumi via Flickr. Edited by Jessica Moss/The Miscellany News.