This post contains two articles, written by Rebecca Cunningham of Burlington High School and Morgan Manley of Mill River Union High School in North Clarendon, for the Underground Workshop, VTDigger’s new platform for student journalism.
On average, 53% of Vermont’s high school graduates attend college the following fall. These articles explore the dilemmas they faced this semester.
Part One: The social challenge
by Rebecca Cunningham, Burlington High School
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Sam Beste, a Burlington High School graduate and a freshman at the University of Colorado Boulder, was spending time with a few friends when he learned troubling news. In response to a recent Covid outbreak at the college, the Boulder County Health Department had passed a public health order that prohibited social gatherings between residents aged 18 to 22. The order would commence at 4 p.m.
“For a while we were confused because we didn’t know what it meant,” Beste said. “It seemed unreasonable; you can’t be seen with anyone. We didn’t know, can you walk with people? Turns out we couldn’t.”
The Boulder County Health department set a severe punishment for those who failed to comply: a maximum $5,000 fine or an 18-month jail sentence.
“There have been people who have gotten thousand-dollar tickets for trying to go to Starbucks with their friends,” Beste said.
Although the order eventually changed to permit outdoor gatherings up to 10 people, it exacerbated a difficulty that Beste, like many college freshmen from Vermont, already faced: how to make and spend time with friends in an environment riddled with social gathering restrictions.
The task started when Beste arrived.
“We didn’t have much of an orientation,” he said. “We had some online things but they were mostly optional and they didn’t do a great job of publicizing them.”
Beste was not alone. Emma Salem, a 2020 graduate from Arlington High School, now a freshman at Middlebury College, shared a similar experience.
She spent her first two weeks in quarantine and met her orientation group for only an hour each day.
“The rest of your day was pretty lonely,” Salem said. “You didn’t have anything to do, you didn’t know where anything was.”
Unfortunately, orientation foreshadowed a slew of canceled sports, clubs, activities and events to come. Both Beste and Salem tried to join clubs at their respective schools but could not.
“There would be fewer outbreaks if colleges implemented ways for kids to actually safely socialize,” Beste said. “The only way to meet people right now is to go to illegal house parties or hang out in other people’s dorms, which is not allowed.”
And, on top of suspended events and organized gatherings, new dorm rules and online classes increased the disconnect among college freshmen.
“It’s been relatively difficult to make friends as well because of all this limited occupancy,” Salem said.
So, with the deck stacked against them, how are students finding friends and building relationships?
Beste succeeded with a favorite game of his, Spikeball.
“We met playing Spikeball in the middle of a field one day,” Beste said. “Basically, the only way you can meet people is to walk around and talk to people but it’s just really hard with masks.”
Beste said he also uses social media as a tool to connect.
“I’m in a couple of group chats for Ultimate Frisbee,” he said. “I chat with a bunch of kids. But there is nothing sanctioned by the school right now.”
Not all colleges initiated such rigorous Covid prevention methods.
At Franklin Pierce University, freshman Janvier Ntakirutimana said sports and clubs are allowed to practice but they cannot attend competitions. However, he said that students refrain from large social gatherings and friend groups do not mingle.
“Students themselves try to keep their friend groups and exclude other friend groups,” Ntakirutimana said.
Ironically, many freshmen said their best college experiences thus far have been spent with friends.
Another freshman, Morgan Jennings, a graduate of Arlington High School and a student at the University of Hartford, described a memorable excursion.
“We [my friends and I] all went apple-picking a couple weeks ago and got super close,” Jennings said.
Under the circumstances, many 2020 graduates decided not to attend college in the fall. Their social lives today look much different.
One 2020 Burlington High School senior, Emma Barker, chose to defer when she learned in June that her school, Bowdoin, had decided to teach all its classes online.
“I am much more engaged in person, in really good discussion formats or hands-on,” Barker said. “I felt like that was not going to be a rewarding semester for me.”
Instead, Barker applied to the HMI Gap, a semester-long high mountain institute. She spent her semester hiking and climbing in the American West and learning about the environment with a group of 11 others.
Although Barker sometimes feels left behind by her high school classmates, she is happy overall with her decision.
“I have met a lot of really interesting people and I have been able to connect on a deeper level,” Barker said. “I think my mental health has been good. I haven’t had a lot of stress about what this is going to look like and about all the social stuff that comes with college right now.”
Other students decided to work for a year between highschool and college.
Kira Margolis, a graduate of U-32 High School, had planned to attend the University of Edinburgh Law School but she deferred when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Margolis deferred for two reasons. First, she has an autoimmune disorder that makes her immunocompromised and she worried about her safety in a college environment. Margolis also worried that she would pay the same tuition cost for a mediocre academic and social experience.
“Even after I had made the decision, I was uneasy,” Margolis said. “Now I am seeing all [my friends’] experiences play out and I think I made a smart choice.”
Now Margolis works three jobs she has pieced together. She tutors 11 students virtually in traditional school subjects and SAT material; she edits student work at the writing lab at Norwich University; and she embroiders tote bags, which she sells in Burlington stores.
“I am glad I have been able to create a plan,” Margolis said. “A lot of my peers have been very touch and go and it has been very disruptive to their learning and their semester.”
Although, Margolis does not interact frequently with people her age, she is spending quality time with family and family friends.
“In terms of social life [my family and I] have a really close circle of people we see. It’s been us and one other family,” Margolis said. “I am not necessarily craving the face-to-face interaction.”
Back at school, students are finding ways to cope with their loneliness and relax in a stressful time.
Beste goes for walks in the morning or runs arounds campus. He also keeps a positive attitude.
“The past couple weeks, going to online school and staying in a lot more, it’s definitely taken a big toll. I think people are really stressed and anxious,” Beste said. “Definitely anxious to, you know, be a college student.”
“I am glad I came,” he added, “but it is hard to justify.”
Part Two: To stay, or to come home?
by Morgan Manley, of Mill River Union High School
Sitting in class on Tuesday, Aug. 25, college freshman Olivia Suker, a human biology major at North Carolina State University, heard alarming news from one of her classmates. Everyone had received an email announcing that all students, staff and faculty would be returning to fully-remote learning.
“Even before the announcement, we knew eventually that we would be fully remote due to all of the partying, unsafe gatherings and the daily skyrocketing in numbers of cases,” Suker said.
At NC State, Covid-19 cases increased daily because of students not following the CDC social gathering guidelines. Every day at school, Suker said, she saw students ignoring guidelines and was even invited to unsafe gatherings around campus. Not even two weeks after classes had started, all students were told to leave campus within a week.
That news meant that Suker would have to make a decision: to live off campus in an unfamiliar state or move back to her home in Vermont.
Having been an online student for most of her high school career, Suker was thrilled for an in-person learning experience at college. Suker’s other passion was to pursue equestrian horseback at two-time Olympian Lenden Grey’s Winter Intensive Program in Florida, leading to her being an online student with Laurel Springs for most of high school.
The question of coming home or staying in Raleigh, North Carolina, was not easy for Suker. She has always wanted to leave her small hometown in Vermont and go to college in a large city on her way to becoming a doctor, but also had to think about how her family would feel about her staying almost 11 hours away from home during a global pandemic.
“Once I had heard the news about the shutdown of campus, I knew I wanted to stay in the area,” Suker said. “I immediately started looking for apartments with a few friends, before even talking to my family about staying.”
Back in Vermont, Suker’s friends and family agreed with her choice. Olivia Suker’s mother, Michelle, knew the move would be hard and wanted to be with Olivia; however, she fully supported her daughter’s decision to stay in Raleigh.
“After living on her own for a few months in Florida during high school, I knew she would be OK off campus in Raleigh,¨ she said.
Annika Heintz is a Mill River Union High School junior and one of Suker’s close friends. “Knowing Olivia, and her desire for adventure and exploring new places, like living in Florida, most of us back home knew she would not want to come home,” she said.
After Suker’s support from her family and friends back home, she felt confident in her decision to stay in North Carolina.
Suker has tried to make the most of her first few months of college, but she said that all of her classes, especially lectures, would be much easier if they were in person, rather than over a computer screen.
“Being in class, you are submerged in the subject, but it can be challenging to focus when there are so many distractions happening around you at home,” Suker said. “I’m not just missing out on learning, I’m missing out of other normal college student activities, like clubs, sports and sororities.”
With five girls living in an apartment together, they use each other as their only source of human contact. The girls are going through the experience together, which at times makes things easier in this time of so much unknown.
After receiving a negative Covid-19 test with a 10-day quarantine, Suker came home for the holiday break.
“The pandemic has made things this year more difficult than ever imagined,” she said. “Everyone is trying to make the right decisions for themselves and get through this together.”
