What It’s Like to be On Campus During a Pandemic

Words by Nate Izzo
Graphics by Aspasia Celia Tsampas

With the fall semester in full swing, we would normally see the City College campus teeming with activity. We would see clubs tabling in the NAC Rotunda every Thursday. People would be playing frisbee in front of Shepard Hall between classes. The halls would be bustling with students making their way to their next class.

Of course, this is far from a normal semester. In March, most classes were moved online and with the COVID-19 pandemic far from over, the same is true for this semester. The majority of CCNY students will not set foot on campus this semester, having moved to synchronous or asynchronous online classes.

There are, however, certain classes that cannot be moved online. Students with labs will find themselves still coming to campus, as their class’s necessary materials and hands-on nature makes them impossible to do from home.

Jose Andrew, a computer engineering major in his junior year, is one of these students. Andrew goes to campus once per week for his three-hour lab class, facing all of the pandemic risks we have all become so familiar with to do so.

Andrew commutes to campus from the Bronx, taking both a bus and a train to get there. This has made him intimately familiar with the dangers of doing so during a pandemic. “Since my class is early at 9, I take public transportation during rush hour. That means that I get on the bus and it is packed!”

Andrew went on to say, “The train can fit a lot more people, but yet again, during rush hour some of the trains get full. You are simply standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone. The only difference is the majority have a mask.”

Once he gets on campus, Andrew makes it clear that the idyllic college picture is as far from reality as possible. “The campus simply looks pretty empty,” he said. “It almost seems like there aren’t any classes in session.”

 The next three hours of his lab class are also far from the norm. Instead of a room full of students led by an instructor giving hands-on assistance, Andrew describes the room as almost like walking into a hospital due to the social distancing and physical barriers put in place as precautions against the virus. 

In order to maintain social distancing, Andrew’s class of twenty is split into two separate rooms with plastic sheets dividing every workstation. To reach all the students in different rooms and through their “little tents,” the instructor gives instructions via Zoom.

Andrew finds that this makes the lab much more difficult. “It was hands-on of course, but I felt like we didn’t get the experience of working in groups or with partners where we can help each other learn... I totally understand it is to keep us safe, but it made me miss the past way of working.”

Even with the drastically different format, Andrew still feels that the in-person lab is valuable, even with the inherent risk of meeting during the pandemic. “We do definitely need hands-on experience but we lose out on teamwork and working more closely with the lab instructor which is all just as essential.”

The CCNY administration made a commitment early in the pandemic to increase sanitation around campus and it seems that they are mostly making good on that commitment. “After my lab, some people came in with machines to disinfect everything,” Andrew said, but he still has yet to see people cleaning other spots on campus.

While the precautions in place are strong, there is still a general air of worry around in-person classes and the risks involved. “They are definitely protecting students. But there will inevitably be an unnoticed case,” Andrew said. Whether it is on the commute or in the classroom, it is difficult to forget that there’s always a chance of infection.

Hopefully, we will reach a point where it is safe enough to return to campus and regain that picture of college sooner rather than later. Until then, people will continue to do in-person classes when it is necessary and learn from home when they can, taking the necessary precautions to be safe as much as possible.