Social distancing, online classes and required masks have been a part of the Texas State community’s everyday life for the past three years. As they prepare to embark on their first academic year with no COVID-19 restrictions, students reflect on an unusual college experience and discuss their expectations for the upcoming school year.
According to statements released by Texas State’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Emilio Carranco, “the development of safe and effective vaccines, more availability of testing and therapeutic agents that decrease the risk of severe agents” are all contributing factors to a restriction-free school year.
In person classes will continue to resume, with some courses still giving the option of a hybrid style class. This coming term will be nutrition and foods junior Libby Beal’s first time taking in person classes at Texas State.
“When I transferred last year, I was a little disappointed that most of my classes were going to be a hybrid style,” Beal said. “I transferred to Texas State because I wanted to go to a bigger school to feel a sense of community, so I’m super excited to be able to actually be in a classroom sitting next to other people where I’m able to see their faces.”
Social interaction between students was an aspect of the college experience that students like Beal lost to the pandemic. Strictly online classes forced them to move back home during the height of COVID-19, leaving some to never come back.
Former Texas State business major Adrian Zapata was sent home his freshman year due to the pandemic and ended up leaving the university altogether.
“I felt like dropping out after getting sent home was really the only option for me,” Zapata said. “Me and my parents didn’t feel like we were getting our money’s worth paying for an an online education where I was in Zoom classes all day long. A big part of college for me was being able to interact and learn in person, so once that was taken away from me, I felt like it didn’t really make sense to stay, personally.”
Zapata would have graduated with the class of 2023, a class that had its freshman year cut short because of the pandemic. Packing up their dorms mid semester and saying goodbye to new friends and college life was heartbreaking to many Bobcats.
Josh Chambers, a mass communication senior, is one of the many affected who is now looking forward to the upcoming school year.
“I finally feel like everything’s coming full circle just right in time for my senior year,” Chamberlain said. “I think the university was a little loose with restrictions when we came back on campus the first time, which I feel like slowed down our progress. But I’m definitely hopeful that this year will be different, because I’m ready to get a full year of the most normal college experience I can.”
Texas State’s COVID-19 restrictions took a different shape each year as the pandemic progressed. When the first wave hit back at the start of 2020, students living on campus were sent home for the remainder of the spring semester. The following fall term, it was announced the university would partake in a socially distanced campus layout with online and hybrid classes offered.
Riley Suiter, a health science sophomore, believes that last year, the university should have taken better measures regarding the pandemic.
“While I can recognize that the school was trying to preserve the learning environment by doing in-person classes, I think they should’ve decreased the size of classes,” Suiter said. “I always felt uncomfortable going to my in-person classes because in the majority of them, it was left up to the professors to decide on whether masks were required.”
Feeling unsafe around others after the pandemic is not an uncommon feeling among students attending a major university. Many students are curious to see how much these looser restrictions will truly affect the number of cases, as well as how close it will be to the true experience before the pandemic arose.
“As for this year, I’m super interested to see if there will be a spike in cases and how the school will deal with it,” Suiter said. “I feel like we’ve all kind of done the back and forth thing where we tried to go in person and social distance, but it didn’t seem to work, so we got sent back home again, so I hope this time it will actually stick.”
While it is still recommended for students to test for COVID-19 when symptoms develop and to report positive cases to Bobcat Trace, campus will start to look a lot like it did in fall of 2019 before the pandemic changed students’ lives forever. The university still strongly encourages masks, but social distancing and mask mandates are no longer required for students, faculty, staff or visitors.
Students are hopeful yet hesitant when it comes to what the upcoming restriction-free year will hold for the university. While COVID-19 has seemingly taken away three years of many students’ college experiences, the beginning of the end to pandemic-related stressors is in sight for them.