For some, an eerily silent campus is home amid the outbreak

Make no mistake, it could be worse. "I'm glad we have a place to stay."

• By Bill Shackner/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

(Pittsburgh) — Though most of his peers moved off campus weeks ago to weather the pandemic at home, Zaithwa Gwaza, a business student at Robert Morris University, had no choice but to hunker down in his dorm.

It’s not just that home for him is in Malawi, a 21-hour international flight he could not afford on short notice, or that he’d have no reliable internet once there. Nor was it simply the risk he’d unwittingly carry the virus with him to a southeastern African nation so far largely spared cases of COVID-19.

Beyond all that, he said, a summer internship required that he return to Pittsburgh by May, and with global travel deteriorating, he might not get back into the U.S. in time.

So he finds himself this week among 41 students from as far away as India and Nepal and as close by as Somerset County, all living on the largely empty Moon campus. They video-chat with friends, take online courses and — in the case of Gwaza — fight temptation to binge watch TV shows like “Billions” while adjusting to a suddenly isolated existence.

Make no mistake, it could be worse. “I’m glad we have a place to stay,” he said.

On college campuses, the global health emergency that emptied dorms midsemester has laid bare disparities among campus populations, not just in household income and family situations, but availability of good internet and even the odds of getting connecting flights.

Like other schools, Robert Morris consolidated those students into a single hall, giving them extra living space for social distancing, while kicking in money and assistance to get other students safely back home.

 

 

The exodus of nearly all the university’s 4,300 students was an adjustment for Gwaza — by his own account, an extrovert — who is student government president and active in campus ministry and his fraternity. He sits in his campus apartment taking classes on a laptop that his professors deliver remotely.

But basic needs including meals are provided.

“I have a single mother. She was not too worried about me staying here,” said Gwaza, 21, a junior with a double major in economics and finance. “She’s very religious and believes that God would take care of me.”

Sara Chernicky, 21, a senior, said her mother downsized the family home in Cambridge Springs, Crawford County, after her father passed away. She did not want to put her mother at risk, or her brother’s newborn, and faced poor connectivity at home 20 miles or so south of Erie.

The sudden solitude allows for reflection and testing her creativity. She sews more and is “up-cycling,” she said, modifying old and thrift store clothing, while finishing up integrated degrees in biomedical engineering and engineering management.

But it’s been hard, too.

When the U.S. and Canada announced their border would close to slow the virus’ spread, her roommate and close friend of four years packed up in a day and left for her Toronto-area home without time for adequate goodbyes.

“She was a senior, and I don’t know when I’m going to see her again,” said Chernicky. “There wasn’t a lot of closure there. It’s sad.”

A few months back, the virus was a distant problem concentrated in China. Campus worries in this country focused on whether study-abroad trips and exchange would be cut short.

But now, more than 2 million are infected globally. The U.S. has seen the highest death count, approaching 24,000 as of Monday, nearly a fifth the toll worldwide.

Once the virus took hold here, campuses suspended in-person classes. But moving students home on short notice for their safety created hardships for some of them.

At Robert Morris, campus staff fielded requests from some 90 individuals to stay on campus. They faced issues from employment and internship concerns to housing insecurity.

“One student told me he’d be homeless if he couldn’t stay here,” recalled John Michalenko, vice president for student life.

While letting some students stay, the university scrambled to get others home. Campus staff purchased five plane tickets for students including one from Czechoslovakia, helped a few with rent and secured items like printer paper and ink — even a Wi-Fi hot spot, shipped to a woman finishing the semester back home in rural northwestern Pennsylvania.

“Her internet was so bad she was outside her house in a field. She said ‘I’m standing outside with a laptop,”’ Michalenko said. “I said, ‘Wait a minute. We need to get her a hot spot.’”

Initially, 39 were allowed to stay, but two additional students who left campus returned.

One woman from London planned to stay with a relative in Maryland, but those arrangements collapsed.

“One other young man called me and said, “My house is small. My mother’s not doing well.’ So I said, ‘Come on back.’ I got him a room,” Michalenko said.

Those 41 were consolidated into Salem Hall, an apartment-style dwelling. Before move-in, crews cleaned and sanitized the six-story building, then relocated students in stages to ensure social distancing. “We didn’t want them all getting on the same elevator,” he said.

Staff assigned two students per apartments that normally sleep four or five to ensure each had both a separate bedroom and private bathroom for health reasons.

On the suddenly quiet campus, those left behind are encouraged to go outside for walks, take a jog or study in the school’s largely vacant Nicholson Student Center. Limited takeout menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner are available from RoMo’s Cafe.

Workers there even managed to order uncooked chicken and fresh produce, said Chernicky, so she has the option of cooking in the dorm rather than rely entirely on prepared food.

But students are not supposed to congregate, a restriction not so popular as staff discovered when a group showed up on a practice field.

“You try telling a bunch of 19-year-olds they can’t play soccer,” Michalenko said.

A live-in staff member is available to residents, and campus police patrol round the clock. A nurse is on duty and counseling is available, though remote only.

Students, no more than one at a time, can enter the food pantry for various items including frozen vegetables. Snacks and notes are left for students on “Thinking of You Thursdays,” Michalenko said.

“We’re all doing our best to provide emotional and academic support, but there is only so much we can do, talking on the phone,” he said.

William Clegg, 21, of Central City, Somerset County, juggles coursework with outside activities from tutoring to jogging. His parents are at greater risk to contract the virus, he said, so he is thankful to spare them that and to avoid internet connection problems back home.

That said, Clegg added, “I think the hardest part is the people not being around.”

Chernicky offered a stronger observation about a once-bustling campus of college students now empty save the occasional couple with a stroller and some dogs. “It seems like the apocalypse or something.”