On March 16, 2020, all St. Thomas classes moved online for the remainder of the spring semester due to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. Two years later, St. Thomas’ University Action and Response Team is still navigating a pandemic that emptied campus, introduced mask mandates and created a shift toward online learning.

“One day we’re sitting in a meeting room in the student center shoulder to shoulder talking about what we’re going to do next,” UART COVID-19 Management Co-chair Wendy Wyatt said. “The next day, we’re in the Woulfe Hall spread way apart. Each one of us had our own little table and we’re taking up the whole space of that ballroom.”

The original thought for students was an elongated spring break, but that thought quickly disappeared as COVID-19 numbers rose across the U.S.

On March 16, students were informed that most of them would have to leave campus by March 29, leaving some in a haze as they had to pack up with no prior warning. They were also not warned that it’d be 164 days until they would return to campus.

“I started crying and I was like, ‘why would they do this to us? Like, are you kidding me?’ No warning,” senior Maya Roe said. “I definitely wasn’t expecting (the pandemic), but I think that, at least for my class, that heightened a lot of people’s anxiety and made us scared for what the future would even hold at that point.”

UART members had no idea what would lie ahead of them in the coming years either, but that’s something Wyatt is grateful for.

“If, back then, you would have told me that we would still be dealing with this two years later, it would have been very hard, just from a morale and motivation perspective, to be ready for that long slog,” Wyatt said. “Early on, we were always saying this like, ‘we just need to get through; let’s get through spring and then OK, let’s get through the summer.”

St. Thomas made its way through the 2020 spring and summer semesters with an empty campus and a shift to Zoom classes, something many students hadn’t experienced before.

“I was kind of sad because it was just hard being completely online,” junior Calley Dolan said. “Sitting through classes online and (a) lecture; that’s hard to pay attention to.”

The move to online was also something that UART had to navigate as some students and professors didn’t have the resources to deal with the effects the pandemic was leaving.

“A lot of the tools were new and people hadn’t had a chance to really practice them,” Wyatt said. “We were sending people home like ‘OK, you can take your office computer home if you need to,’ and some of our students who didn’t have the sort of hardware, we were pulling laptops that we used in classrooms.”

As the university got most students off campus, they were hit with the first reported COVID-19 case from an employee on May 4, 2020. At that point, the university had put a hiring freeze in place, announced no salary increases for employees but were still hopeful to come up with a plan to get back to ‘normal.’

UART finalized its initial plan in mid-May with August 15, 2020 as the end goal of St. Thomas’ pandemic struggles. But, that plan didn’t fall into place.

While the university attempted to make plans for people to get back on campus, students were stuck at home along with the rest of the world.

“I basically just didn’t leave my house for like a month,” Roe said. “It got to a point where I’d go like a week or two without even stepping outside.”

When St. Thomas returned to campus for the fall 2020 semester, there was a string of new requirements for students to get used to, including social distancing and wearing a mask.

“There was a lot of making a decision and then sort of testing it,” Wyatt said. “We always knew that we were making the best decision that we could given the circumstances at the moment. … It was never a 100% clear kind of decision.”

2020 came to a close but the pandemic still continued on. St. Thomas’ final Division III and MIAC season would begin in the spring of 2021 with players saying their goodbyes to the 102-year-old conference in front of empty stands.

St. Thomas has now loosened some of the restrictions that came to be as students’ faces are now visible walking through the halls of buildings that lacked any sound two years ago.

After a knock on wood, Wyatt said she was happy that UART was able to keep students healthy as the pandemic seems to be coming to a close.

“I do feel pretty good about our response from a public health perspective from keeping our students and their educational experiences front and center while also trying to care for the health and safety of our employees,” Wyatt said. “We hope we’re there, continuing to climb out of this, and that we won’t have to have COVID discussions too often coming up.”

Scout Mason can be reached at maso7275@stthomas.edu.
Cam Kauffman, Joe LaPorte and Abby Kielty contributed to this report.