When Allyse Guyther set off for Boston College in September 2019, nothing could’ve brought her down. The MVRHS graduate took to city life right away, basking in the college experience and making friends with staying power. A spring break trip to Miami was the icing on the cake as Allyse’s freshman year rolled to a finish. She returned from that vacation on Monday, March 9, and on Wednesday, March 11, Boston College announced that the entire student body, including Allyse, had to vacate their dorms before the week was up.
Since March of this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unthinkable changes to this country, and this Island. New protocols, guidelines, and closures have uprooted our individual ways of life, with no definite return to normalcy in sight.
Students are just one demographic with a forced awareness of these changes. It was March 13 when Superintendent Matt D’Andrea announced a two-week closure for Island schools, and on April 21, Gov. Charlie Baker closed all Massachusetts schools for the remainder of the school year. Colleges countrywide met the same fate, many making similar announcements weeks before Baker’s statement.
For MVRHS students, COVID-19 threw even the simplest of plans off course. The seniors, who would’ve graduated at the Tabernacle this May, will now have a socially distant ceremony at the Agricultural Hall while their families watch from their cars. Their first year of college, if they choose to go, will be historic for its safety measures.
Student body secretary Imani Hall is one MVRHS graduating senior whose final year of high school was cut short. “It’s a bit embarrassing, but I initially felt very sorry for myself and the class of 2020, and knowing that the whole world was going through the same thing did not make me feel any better,” Hall told the Times.
Hall will attend Duke University in the fall, just as she had planned prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I will still be attending in person, but it will be a unique experience, to say the least,” Hall said.
Hall described Duke as being communicative but vague about their protocols for the upcoming school year. Some combination of online and in-person classes will be offered, and students will be forbidden from leaving the campus until their Thanksgiving break, which will run through mid-January.
According to Hall, the era of COVID-19 still leaves much to look forward to. “Typically in a summer, I work, dance, and volunteer,” Hall said. The senior class secretary considers herself lucky, as she was able to return to her 2019 summer job at Lambert’s Cove Beach.
“Volunteering is more difficult, because the programs I was helping with or planned to help with have been canceled or moved online, which interferes with my work schedule,” Hall said.
Regardless, Hall continues to look for a bright side throughout these trying months. “Even during COVID-19, there is so much to be grateful for: the family time, the time to reflect, the extra sleep, et cetera,” Hall said.
College students from the Island have also struggled due to COVID-19, but for somewhat different reasons. Following closures caused by the pandemic, many had no choice but to pack up their dorms and return to the Island. These students were pulled not only from their schools, but from their new friends and lives as college students.
Marist College sophomore Owen Bresnick graduated from MVRHS in 2019, but was attending school in New York when he heard news of COVID-19. “I was concerned, but I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal because of the way the U.S. government handled it,” Bresnick told The Times. “Once I started doing my own research and hearing information from various experts, it became pretty clear that it wouldn’t just go away.”
Bresnick and his peers at Marist stayed on campus until spring break, which began March 14. Soon after, the college announced a weeklong extension of the vacation.
“That’s when I knew we weren’t going to come back, especially considering New York was a hot spot for the breakout, and many other colleges were closing down,” Bresnick said.
According to Bresnick, the early closure was disappointing for reasons both personal and academic. “I would have liked to finish off my first year at college with my friends. I was also worried about the transition to online learning. I would’ve much rather learned in person than online,” Bresnick said.
Although Bresnick looks forward to the new semester, he can’t help but feel some hesitation. “I’m excited to go back to Marist, and I look forward to resuming in-class learning and seeing all my friends again. I just hope that everybody takes the health guidelines seriously so that everybody can stay and Marist can keep the college open,” Bresnick said.
Both Allyse and her sister Andrea Guyther returned to the Island following the COVID-19 outbreak.
Allyse recalled hearing early news of the pandemic. “People were talking about it, but we kind of thought it was more of, not a joke, but we didn’t think it was going to impact us so much,” Allyse said. It wasn’t until after Allyse’s spring break that a frightening reality began to set in. “People were getting nervous. Some professors stopped classes and switched to online, because they had partners with compromised immune systems, or things like that,” Allyse said. “They didn’t communicate anything to us until they told us we were shutting down and that we needed to be out by Sunday.”
Andrea Guyther had a slightly different experience at her school, Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU), where she will be a junior this fall. “First they announced that we were going home for spring break, plus two weeks,” Andrea said. “If you were leaving the state, you couldn’t come back unless you had quarantined. I don’t live in Connecticut, so I had to tell the school that,” Andrea said.
According to Andrea, ECSU closed for the remainder of the school year while she was still on spring break. Students returned to their dorms in scheduled, staggered blocks of time to retrieve their belongings, before heading home for the rest of the year.
“I didn’t think the transition from in-person to online classes was that bad, I didn’t have trouble with it,” Andrea said. “It was nice to have something to do during the day, because there were definitely hard times.”
“It was just frustrating because there were a lot of unknowns,” Andrea said. “I wasn’t sure how much I could see my friends, and one of the big positives of being home is seeing the people you’re close to here, but then you couldn’t even do that.”
Allyse agreed, admitting that her transition back home was difficult. “At first I was really sad, because a lot of my friends at school live really far away,” Allyse said. “I tried to be positive about it. I rearranged my room to make a new space for work, but my house is hard to feel motivated in sometimes, especially since coming back. I was excited to get off the Island,” Allyse said.
While both Boston College and ESCU plan to reopen in the fall, the experience will be unlike these students’ previous semesters. Allyse will live in an eight-person, four-bedroom suite, but will still be required to schedule a move-in time in order to maintain distance from her new roommates.
Despite the challenges their upcoming semesters may bring, neither Andrea nor Allyse considered staying on the Island this fall. “If anything, I would want to live in Boston with my friends,” Allyse said.
According to Andrea, returning to ECSU is the practical choice. “I don’t want to graduate any later than I already would,” Andrea said.
As Andrea works toward a double major in developmental psychology and early childhood education, she faces a rigid internship requirement in her senior year. Being a rising junior, Andrea has already begun planning that internship, and fears for its future. “You have to spend a semester student teaching, and you need a certain number of hours,” Andrea said. “Now that the school’s shut down, do those students have to stay an extra semester?”
For some majors, perhaps an extension or dismissal of this requirement would be possible. However, this student argues that in the education department, there isn’t room for that flexibility. Andrea asked, “Who’s going to hire a teacher who’s only had a month of experience in an actual classroom?”
