Monday, March 15, 2021
ONE YEAR LATER, BC REMEMBERS ‘CHAOTIC, HELL ON EARTH, BUT EUPHORIC’ WEEK When Boston College students and faculty returned to campus on March 8, 2020, few could have predicted that campus would be empty again in a week’s time. One year later, students and administrators are still reflecting on and processing those final five days on the Heights—the decisions that were made, the chaos that ensued, and the lasting effects of the campus closure on the community.
IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR
THIS STORY WAS CO-WRITTEN BY MAGAZINE EDITOR, ANNA LONNQUIST; ASSOC. MAGAZINE EDITOR, STEPHEN BRADLEY; ASST. MAGAZINE EDITOR, MC CLAVERIE; NEWS EDITOR, MEGAN KELLY; AND ASSOC. NEWS EDITOR, JULIA KIERSZNOWSKI.
SOUNDING THE ALARM Philip Landrigan, director of BC’s Global Public Health Program and Global Observatory on Pollution, said that when the first cases of COVID-19 began appearing in the opening weeks of 2020, he had little sense of the severity of what was to come. “I wasn’t that clear from the beginning, partly because the initial reports were kind of sketchy, and partly just a normal human reaction that it was far away, you know, it wasn’t here,” Landrigan said. “Then during the months of January and February, as the number of deaths started to mount up, it was becoming increasingly clear to all of us that this was a very, very serious threat and that we needed to buckle down.” Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley said that every administrator was keeping an eye on COVID-19 throughout January and February. He recalled a meeting with the Board of Trustees during which one board member asked him what was keeping him up at night. “It was Friday, February 7 and late the previous night, the doctor in Wuhan, Li Wenliang, had passed away,” Quigley said. “The 30-something doctor … was one of the first to sound the alarm. And I’m not usually an alarmist, but I said that was something that had me a little bit worried.” Quigley said that there were several meetings entering into Spring Break about COVID-19, but no one yet understood the gravity of the situation. Landrigan said that he briefed top administrators about COVID-19 in a meeting on Feb. 28, the final Friday before BC’s Spring Break. “None of us in the room at that point were yet ready to close the place down,” Landrigan said. “I gave my best advice as to what steps BC should take … then over the next 10 or 11 days it became increasingly clear that this was a much much more dangerous situation than we had realized.” Stanton Wortham, dean of the Lynch School of Education, said that there was some planning to move classes online before Spring Break even began. Informational Technology Services had begun to ramp up Zoom licenses, and there was communication from department chairs to faculty urging them to begin planning for the possibility of the transition to remote learning, he said. “So there was some preparation going on even before Spring Break, thinking, in case it happens, we’re going to have to do X, Y, and Z,” Wortham said.
While in Florida, Dryja remembers hearing more and more reports of COVID-19 cases across the United States, she said. “When we were there, like everyone was just kind of joking about COVID, but we didn’t think it was actually a real thing here … which is crazy to think about now,” Dryja said. Nathaniel Van Ness, CSOM ’23, remembered that his friends were making jokes that people should be careful around a student they knew who came back from a Spring Break trip in Italy. Executive Vice President Michael Lochhead said that one of the challenges BC faced was the early timing of its Spring Break, which began on March 2, relative to other universities. Lochhead said that in the week of Feb. 28 to March 7, the situation began to escalate. “We were moving in the direction of remote instruction, [and] we didn’t have the advantage of a Spring Break to kind of get everybody up to speed,” Lochhead said. “We were coming back from Spring Break as everything was changing, and so that forced us to move more quickly.” There was a lot of chaos during those first few days in March in terms of advice coming from the local, state, and federal government, Quigley said. “There was so much cross-cutting and confusing guidance coming from elected officials that it made the jobs of folks in institutions, not just in higher education but across the country, more difficult than I think it needed to be,” Quigley said. Areas surrounding BC also began to grapple with the emergence of the virus in early March. By March 8, Newton North High School students and teachers had completed their first of two weeks quarantining at home after returning from Italy, per the request of Newton health officials. On the same day, the first Newton resident received a “presumptive positive” test.
See COVID-19, A6
MARCH 8
MAGGIE DIPATRI / HEIGHTS EDITOR
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
ARTS: Amanda Roussel
Roussel, MCAS ’21, designs eye-catching, playful jewlery................................................ A5
On Sunday, March 8, BC’s campus came alive as students returned from various Spring Break destinations. Natalie Dryja, MCAS ’22, had just returned from a week-long trip to Miami, Fla. with her roommates.
METRO: Special Election Candidates face off for the two vacant Newton City Council seats.............................. A3
INDEX
IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR
NEWS......................... A 2 MAGAZINE............ A6 Vol. CII, No. 5 © 2021, The Heights, Inc. METRO........................A 3 OPINIONS............. A8 ARTS................................ A 4 SPORTS..................... A10 www.bcheights.com