How Are Students Adjusting To Campus Life Post-Covid?

By: Hannah Bazinaw

Covid hit in the Spring of 2020. As the disease spread, colleges across the United States, including UM, were forced to put a pause on campus life. A year and a half later, the University of Montevallo pressed play.

As students and faculty return to the University of Montevallo’s campus for the Fall semester, some may experience trouble adjusting back to campus life. As of now, campus rules are almost completely back to normal, with a few exceptions.

To find out more about how students are adjusting to UM’s new rules, I sat down with senior Sydney Young to ask her a few questions on how she handled Covid and UM’s policies.

We met in a gray room lined with computers and office chairs. Sydney is wearing an Alpha Delta Pi t-shirt. It’s the same color as the walls.

Montevallo has recently loosened the reins on the mask policy. Masks are only required when in class or in a large group of people. This is different from the last school year when masks were mandatory.

While there are those who think UM’s mask mandate is excessive, Young isn’t one of them. “I am 100% okay with this. I think they should even be a bit more stricter,” she said.

Many students feel as if they missed out on social and academic milestones because of the pandemic and quarantine. For the past two years, special events like graduation and club meetings have fallen by the wayside.

Sydney was quick to answer when I asked her if she felt like she had missed out on anything.

She gestured to her Alpha Delta Pi tee. “Formal recruitment. When I went through recruitment, it was all online, through Zoom. I’m very happy and had a great experience with recruitment, but I do feel robbed that I didn’t get to go through it in person like they did this year.”

“They” is in reference to the freshman of her sorority who got to experience in-person rush this year.

When I ask her what she thinks the next three months hold for Covid, she’s optimistic. “There’s definitely gonna be a lot more cases, for sure. Hopefully, more people getting vaccines. Not as many problems with people and how they feel about the vaccine, which I understand peoples’ concerns on that front. Hopefully more people getting vaccines and we can start to slow this down and get it to end soon.”

Sydney is a senior this year. She won’t be attending Montevallo next year to see if campus life returns to normal. However, Sydney doesn’t know what UM’s normal campus life was to begin with.
“This is my first time, second year at a four year college. I went to a community college before this, so it wasn’t much of a change for me, coming from there to here. So I’m not sure how it affected any college culture,” she said.

The University of Montevallo has taken and will continue to take safety measures for the good of the student body while also returning things to normal as much as they can.