Note: This piece was originally written for a class.
A Campus Deserted
A first-person account of the early days of the pandemic from a college student’s perspective.
Friday, March 13: “Day Zero”
A brigade of concerned parents has descended upon our campus five blocks from the White House. It’s an overcast Friday afternoon in the middle of March but this influx of out-of-state cars isn’t scheduled for another two months.
So far, I’ve seen: Florida, New Jersey, Texas, and Virginia plates.
The academic year of the George Washington University ends in May. We’re still supposed to move out in May. Then why is the corner of F Street and 19th packed with families loading up their kids’ belongings like they’re never coming back?
Maryland. Louisiana. New York. Pennsylvania.
Sure, the administration told us we would have online classes until April and the university suspended all of its sponsored travel through July and the number of cases is increasing exponentially, but we’ll be back.
Delaware. California. Maine. District of Columbia.
1,116 freshmen live in the dorm next to mine. The garbage in their trash chute is piled eight floors high, according to my friend Flora. I guess that’s what happens when you tell a thousand kids they won’t be coming back for at least three weeks with three day’s notice.
3:18 pm:
Georgie Britcher, my friend and a candidate for president of the Student Association, has made a group chat for those of us staying on campus.
“We can use this to communicate logistics,” she told the fledgling chat before I joined. “But also if we get lonely because it’s gonna be a long three weeks.”
By the time I joined the chat four minutes later, it bolstered about 15 members–including one of her opponents for president, Drew Amstutz. Divisions melt away in trying times, I guess.
Thirty minutes later, we’d reached 30 members. Three and a half hours later, we switched to another platform to accommodate what would soon grow to be a chat of about 90 kids staying on a campus that grew more deserted by the hour.
8:51 pm:
With temperatures in the mid-50s and a calm breeze passing through, any other Friday night would feature people milling about the heart of our campus just outside of the library. Tonight, however, Kogan Plaza is a ghost town on this beautiful early spring evening.
I’m no stranger to late-night walks home across campus. It doesn’t feel like 9pm. It feels like 2am.
I can’t get over how quiet it is. No cars, no rowdy kids, no distant ambulance sirens, no airplanes flying overhead. None of the usual ambient sounds of our campus are to be heard.
“I’m not asking you to come over, but I also don’t want to be alone right now,” my friend Harvey texts me.
“Well, I’m not doing anything and I don’t want to be alone either,” I shoot back. “So is it cool if I swing by?”
“Yes please.”
I’ve got to take a shuttle to our campus out passed Georgetown to visit him, but I don’t mind. He’s leaving tomorrow morning, and I don’t know the next time I’ll see him.
As I make my way to the shuttle, a cliché shot from an indie movie plays out before me: leftover autumn leaves and unclaimed plastic bags dance in the wind down 22 Street like urban tumbleweeds. The irony isn’t lost on me.
9:00 pm:
“I love the corona! Now I don’t have to meet his parents at MIT graduation! I don’t have to see his parents from Portugal!” says a girl at the front of the shuttle with speckled black and gold glasses, a maroon dress dotted with white flowers, a Calvin Klein backpack, and AirPods. “Him and I are incompatible.”
“It’s like a zombie apocalypse movie,” someone responds. “‘I broke up with somebody and now it’s the apocalypse!’ Makes for a great romantic set up.”
They are two of the 17 people on the bus, including myself and the driver, Shakil. Another conversation unfolds across the aisle:
“My favorite part of this coronavirus thing is people walking around with masks on,” says a guy in a Pittsburgh Penguins athletic jacket. “It doesn’t do anything unless you’re sick.”
“I really don’t think it’ll make it into that specific nursing home and rampage across the buildin—,” responds a guy in a dark blue shirt, cut off by the rumble of the shuttle.
“If this whole coronavirus thing becomes a rampage, what would your reaction be? Oh well or?” asks Pittsburgh.
“Oh well. There’s a chance it’ll go rampage and murder everyone in that nursing home,” replies blue shirt. “If I’m a carrier and go in there and kill Helen, Joan, and Maria, oh well!”
“God does not smile upon the old,” says Pittsburgh plainly.
“Whole country in body bags, whoops got that one wrong.”
“I’m not gonna sit here and be upset until I have to. Take it as it comes.”
We’ve made it to the other campus by this point. Both of them thank the driver before getting off the shuttle.
11:47 pm:
A Disney Channel movie from when we were in middle school plays on my laptop on the floor of Harvey’s cluttered room. He’s having a panic attack. He leaves tomorrow. Once he steps off campus, he’s functionally homeless.
His conservative, Bible-thumping parents cut him off financially three weeks ago for being trans. They wrote him a letter that’s now lost among the anxiety-induced disaster that is his room. It said something about how taking hormones doesn’t align with their Christian values and how he’s made it clear he doesn’t want a relationship with them.
The boy crying in my arms would say otherwise. He’s desperate for his family, the only stability he’s had as a military brat. He wants to be the big brother he never had, help his siblings get out of the abusive home he escaped. He wants to be the chill cousin all of the others confide in. He wants to come out to his grandfather. He wants his mom.
1:17 am:
Harvey’s calmed down. Now, he’s panic packing for his flight to South Carolina this afternoon. He already planned on visiting some friends for spring break, so he’s staying with them while we’re kicked out of the dorms.
“How do I fit three week’s worth of clothes into this suitcase? What do you pack for the end of the world?” he asks me.
“You got your toothbrush? Deodorant? Shampoo and conditioner? Headphones? Chargers?” I reply, thinking of all the things I’d manage to forget.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got all of those,” he says. “Now, be honest: is five wigs too many to bring for three weeks?”
“If you’ve got the space and it’ll make you happy, I don’t think so.”
Harvey is a cosplayer, someone who dresses up as characters from works of fiction, and he’s built himself a bit of an online following dressing up as characters from the Percy Jackson books and making videos in costume. The friends he’s staying with are also cosplayers, so dedicating part of his suitcase to supplies just makes sense. It’ll give him something to do to pass the time between online classes.
“It’ll be like a cosplay movie studio with all of y’all down there!”
He nods, puts the wigs and costume pieces into the suitcase, and returns to tearing apart his closet.
2:21 am:
It’s getting late, even for me. I still have to take the shuttle back to our main campus and it takes me way too long to fall asleep, although my new medication is helping. At this rate, I won’t get to bed until 3:30 at the earliest, and I have to be up by 8:30. Another friend and I are planning to say goodbye to Harvey in the morning before he leaves.
“Thanks for staying up with me,” Harvey says as I collect my things.
“Of course! Anytime.”
We give each other a big hug and exchange platonic I-love-you’s as I rush out of his dorm.
2:26 am:
The lights of the shuttle are off and so is its engine. I have to use the flashlight on my phone to find a seat, and every subtle noise is amplified by how quiet it is outside. For a few minutes, it’s just me and the driver sitting in the dark on this dead bus.
The unsettling two-in-the-morning silence is broken as a dozen kids climb aboard. The driver starts the engine, the fluorescent lights flood shuttle, and the kids are laughing and shouting and smell like weed. Things are alive again.
We start for the other campus at 2:30 on the dot. After all, even at the end of the world, there are schedules to keep.
2:32 am:
Everyone on the shuttle–besides myself and the driver–are dressed as if they’ve just gotten off a streetwear runway. One girl is sporting a neon orange high visibility jacket and a t-shirt with bees on it underneath. Another has paired a tight mustard-colored top with a fuzzy black zip-up and baby blue acrylic nails. One of the guys is wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses–with a pair of normal glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt–and has large stud earrings. Another has a silver chain banging on his chest and is rocking a black t-shirt with a pale pink-toned New York City skyline on it.
I’m in sweatpants and a hoodie and am one of two white kids on this shuttle.
Tinny music blares from mustard top’s phone as a girl with maroon braids asks, through giggles and yelling, to make a song request.
“Yeah, what do you want?” replies mustard top, the self-appointed DJ.
“Can I request some Taylor Swift?”
All dozen kids on the shuttle snap to attention and let out a collective confused: “WOAH!”
“I’m kidding!” she assures them.
A couple of minutes pass. Two girls in the seats behind me are entranced by one of their phones. They seem to be texting someone or looking through someone’s social media but are too drunk or high or tired to do anything besides laugh at each other.
Across the aisle, the guy with sunglasses (and regular glasses) turns to maroon braids and mustard top:
“Ok, but what Taylor Swift?”
“We’re never getting back together,” maroon braids says like that’s the obvious answer. The three of them start jamming to the bubblegum pop song as the shuttle hits a pothole and halts their conversation.
“Who is playing the aux bro?” asks New York City shirt halfway through the song. “At least play something else. This joint does not crank!”
“Y’all is not playing the aux right. Man’s said ‘22’!” another guy jumps in, referring to another Taylor Swift classic.
2:45 am:
The whole shuttle seems to be singing and laughing as we approach the neighborhood of our campus. There are two shuttle stops, this one at E and 20th and another at G and 23rd. The shuttle drivers aren’t supposed to stop at the former–which happens to be only a two-minute walk to my dorm–after 8 pm, but I got lucky and he did.
I and nearly all of the Taylor Swift crew pour out of the shuttle, each thanking the driver on our way out. They wander off into the cool night in search of adventures that’ll make their last night out memorable. I make my way back to my dorm and try to fall asleep as fast as possible. I have to be up in five hours.
Saturday, March 14: “Day 1”
8:37 am:
All’s quiet on F Street, except for the birds. They’re singing for spring.
College students aren’t up this early on a Saturday under normal circumstances, so it makes sense there’s no one out and about right now. Although, it’s usually hangovers that keep them inside not a global pandemic. It seems a thousand kids fled in a day, leaving this end of campus empty.
The only other person on this block is a member of the university’s facilities services. His neon yellow jacket makes him hard to miss as he’s taking out the trash and recycling. He’s in his own little word with headphones in his ears. I wonder what he’s listening to as I shoot him a smile.
8:44 am:
The sun may be up, but Kogan Plaza feels as dead as it did last night. The only differences are that birds are chirping and the sound of planes flying overhead echos off the brutalist buildings at the center of our campus.
The university is redoing the flowerbeds, which is nice.
8:53 am:
Harvey and our friend Chava are waiting for me in the back of the Starbucks under the library. Harvey’s gotten some sort of latte and will be bouncing nonstop as soon as the caffeine hits him. Chava hasn’t gotten anything since he’s an observant Jew and it’s Shabbat.
Since January, we’ve grown almost inseparable. Tomorrow will be the first time the three of us wouldn’t find ourselves together by day’s end in nearly three months. But tomorrow doesn’t matter right now, we have to make the most of our last hour together for who knows how long.
While “I-love-you’s” flow like waterfalls in our trio of misfits, we hid extras in sighs and glances. Although none of us said it outright, we all felt that our little found family would soon be tested–by distance, by families of origin, by the pandemic.
“Remember when our biggest problems were dying our hair?” Chava asks.
“Or my concussion,” Harvey replies. “Y’know, I did a tarot card reading for the year, and tarot cards are kind of how I pray, and so far, they’ve been spot on.”
“What’s our outlook for April, then?” I ask.
“Reunion, joy, good things.”
“Then that means we’ll be coming back,” Chava says.
“Or going on that road trip, after all,” I say.
We joked about going on an ‘end of the world’ road trip–the three of us, our friend Sophia, and Harvey’s two significant others–if the rest of the semester got moved online but it was safe for us to travel. We’d start in New Jersey, where Harvey’s one partner and I live, swing by Pennsylvania to pick up Chava, drive down to Tenessee to pick up Harvey's other partner, get Harvey in South Carolina, then get Sophia in Texas. Where to from there? No idea. We’d simply let fate decide.
9:57 am:
Chava and I say goodbye to Harvey. My eyes are watering and Chava’s choking back tears, but Harvey’s too tired to cry so he just hugs us both extra tight. We each send him off with a platonic “I-love-you” as he walks out the door.
Once he’s gone, I check my phone and see it’s blowing up with notifications.
“Oh fuck,” I let slip. “That’s not okay.”
“What’s going on?” Chava asks.
“I just got an email saying housing is going to lock us out of our dorms in three minutes if we don’t fill out a check-in form.”
The form is to confirm who is staying on campus for the next week, technically spring break, who’s gone on vacation, and who’s left for the next three weeks as classes move online. Filling it out grants our campus cards access to our dorms.
“I don’t have my phone because it’s Shabbat. It’s in my room. What am I supposed to do?”
“Yeah, wait... this is fucking bullshit! What are you going to do?”
“Can I fill it out on your phone?”
“Are you sure? I can fill it out for you.”
“No, it’s fine.” Chava sighs as I hand him my phone.
When he gives me back my phone, I go to fill out the form myself. Messages from the 90-person group chat pop up on my screen as folks express frustration with the way housing is handling this situation. I get to the end of the form, but I can’t submit it due to a glitch. I’m locked out of my room with nothing but my phone on me. The only thing I can do is speak to housing in person. So that’s what I do. Chava and I walk over to the housing office and clear things up. In half an hour, the woman at the desk tells me, I can get back into my room.
Chava and I go our separate ways once I’ve regained access to my building.
12:33 pm:
Someone’s spray-painted “Coronavirus!” in bright blue on the bottom of the tempietto in Kogan Plaza. Was I hoping for apocalyptic graffiti like this? Yes. Was I expecting it to happen so soon? No.
6:32 pm:
The CVS on campus is still well-stocked, and they’ve managed to put together a St. Patrick’s Day display. The only empty shelves are where cases of water would have been. A special police officer watches as customers–a mix of students and those who work in the service industry in this area–buy non-perishables and cleaning supplies.
A group of students uses the security camera monitor to take pictures of themselves.
7:18 pm:
The food pantry on campus for students is fairly well stocked. For some reason, though, there’s an inordinate amount of pork products stuffed into the freezers. You like hotdogs and bacon? You’ve come to the right place.
8:12 pm:
Some kids in the group chat decided to organize a game of ‘manhunt’ (tag for adults) this evening. It’s raining, but eight kids have shown up in Kogan Plaza to play. I’m just here to observe.
The organizers work out the logistics, keeping in mind that running around at night as adults could seem suspicious.
“There’s no running, only fast walking,” says one guy.
“Campus police are already jumpy,” says another. “We say ‘manhunt’ at them and they don’t know the game, they’ll kill people.”
And keeping in mind the pandemic, another adds: “We have to practice social distancing, too!”
“Childhood whimsy!” says a girl in a custom-painted denim jacket. “This is what we need right now!”
Sunday, March 15: “Day 2”
2:37 pm:
I wake up and proceed to not do a single thing for the next four hours.
6:31 pm:
After getting out of bed, I head up to my roof to get some ‘socially distant’ fresh air. There are three boys up here. One appears to be jogging laps–the roof isn’t that big–and the other two are working on laptops. Angry metal music plays from one of the computers.
I sit down at the other end of the roof and take in the moment. It’s ‘golden hour,’ when the sun is low in the sky and everything is blanketed in amber hues. It may be the end of the world, but things are peaceful right now.
Monday, March 16: “Day 3”
5:08 pm:
The rest of the semester has been moved online, per an email from the university.
I made a deal with my parents: if the rest of the semester is moved online, I come home by the end of spring break. Looks like I’m moving out by the end of the week.
Tuesday, March 17: “Day 4”
4:07 pm:
I haven’t really left my dorm for days, but I need to pick up a prescription, so it’s time to head out. Since the rest of the semester has been moved online, there’s an influx of cars on campus. I guess the last holdouts, like me, are moving out.
On my way to the pharmacy, a girl dressed head to toe in hot pink blazes past me on roller skates. She has a gas mask on. This is the chaotic imagery I was hoping the apocalypse would bring.
4:23 pm:
“It feels like a Saturday on K Street,” I text my friends. “Not a Monday.”
“Aedy,” several of them reply. “It’s Tuesday.”
Wednesday, March 18: “Day 5”
10:56 am:
My mom calls me as I’m brushing my teeth.
“How quick do you think you could pack up your room?”
“Um, why?” I ask, with the toothbrush still in my mouth.
“We were thinking of coming to get today.”
“Today?!”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen by the weekend. Do you think you could be ready to start moving by three o’clock?”
“I guess I’m going to have to be.”
4:14 pm:
We’ve packed all of my stuff into my mom’s truck and are off to New Jersey.
I don’t know when I’ll be back here, but I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Thursday, May 7: “Epilogue”
It’s going to be a lot later than it is sooner, it seems.