Students chronicle their first week back to in-person learning
Orange County’s move to the orange, “moderate” tier of the COVID-19 county watchlist, allowed Chapman University to transition in-person classes to 50% capacity. The university reopened its classroom doors March 29. Anne Acosta (left) and Jaeden Camstra (right) take a class inside the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. CLARISSE GUEVARRA, Staff Photographer
In the hours leading up to Chapman University’s return to in-person learning March 29, senior communication studies major Felipe Correa eagerly prepared to visit campus, increasingly aware of the fact that his peers and professors would soon be seeing more than just his digitized face and torso.
He showered, carefully drying and parting his hair. He sifted through the hangers in his closet, curating the perfect outfit. The experience, he recalled, was a jovial frenzy — just like the first day of school.
“When I’m in a Zoom class, I don’t get ready,” said Correa, who is on campus Tuesdays through Thursdays. “I’ll wake up, brush my teeth, sit on my bed or the couch and have Netflix playing in the background … I feel like I’m almost forced to be more engaged (in-person). Sitting at a desk and being forced to be in that environment helps me to focus a lot more.”
Correa’s fervent anticipation of his first day back is a feeling shared by other Chapman students returning to in-person classes. In some students’ cases, the transition marks their first time using campus facilities. In Correa’s case, it’s his last.
Correa is hopeful that the decision to reopen campus at limited capacity, along with California’s March 30 move to the orange “moderate” tier of the COVID-19 county watchlist, will prime the university for an in-person commencement ceremony come August. Though Correa emphasized the value of regaining a sense of normalcy by returning to campus for in-person classes and graduation, he also said that his comfort level primarily derived from having already received a COVID-19 vaccine.
“It’s comforting knowing that my professors are fully vaccinated too,” Correa said. “I don’t want to put (faculty) at risk either, because it’s not their job to teach us and then get a deadly virus right after that. I feel comfortable knowing that if I do go, there’s a very low chance of them getting COVID-19.”
In the orange tier, Chapman classrooms can now host up to 50% of a classroom’s fire code capacity, according to a March 30 CU Safely Back Update. Faculty are required to offer students hybrid learning options unless given special exemptions. Turnout over the course of the first week was minimal, with only 17% of 247 respondents to a poll on The Panther Instagram story reporting that they planned on returning to campus the week of the transition from online to in-person learning.
Freshman history major Jordan Rosenberg — among that 17% — is taking four of his six classes in person for the remainder of the semester. As he attended his first class in Doti Hall, Rosenberg realized he was actually exploring campus for the first time. It was an experience he said allowed him to feel directly engaged with his education and presented opportunities to meet classmates he otherwise only knew virtually.
“I do feel like I’m actually getting a lot better of an education in person rather than online,” Rosenberg said. “Attending class should be more than looking at a laptop screen. You should be there in person, sitting down engaging with your classmates and your professor.”
Another poll respondent, Brian Russell, a junior double major in theater and strategic and corporate communication, said he could see himself returning to campus for the breadth of his classes after receiving vaccination. Until then, Russell is opting to come to campus for one class twice a week — a drawing class he explained was challenging to take online.
“Over Zoom, it was really hard because the professor wasn’t able to give feedback as we were drawing,” Russell said. “The first day we were back in person, there were about three of us. The professor stood in the back of the classroom and was able to look at our screens, what we were using to draw and instantly see that all three of us were making the same mistake. It ended up that everyone on Zoom was making the same mistake as well.”
While Russell enjoys the ability to have side conversations with his peers and the atmosphere of an in-person learning environment, he pointed out flaws with the current hybrid model such as the newfound lack of anonymity for students who want to private message their professors. With monitor displays typically being projected on the whiteboard, students attending an in-person class can see any pop-up notifications the professor receives in the Zoom meeting.
Other students have voiced technical concerns with the hybrid classroom setup, like Jessica Almos, a junior double major in theater and environmental science and policy. She described one particularly “horrible” experience where the professor could see the class, but the students could not see him and were constantly having to ask the professor to repeat himself due to poor audio quality.
Despite living near campus in the Panther Village Apartments, Almos has opted to continue her learning remotely until the fall semester. That choice, however, has led her to feel deprioritized in comparison to her in-person counterparts when it comes to the quality of her classes.
“It just feels like it’s going to start being a really unfair experience; people are going to be getting something completely different out of it,” Almos said. “Even though I hate being on Zoom — do not get me wrong, I hate virtual classes — it feels like it needs to be all or nothing.”
“It just feels like it’s going to start being a really unfair experience; people are going to be getting something completely different out of it. Even though I hate being on Zoom — do not get me wrong, I hate virtual classes — it feels like it needs to be all or nothing.”
As of March 19, the U.S. Department of Education announced a second round of funding — through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, an extension of the Coronavirus Aid, Recovery, and Economic Security (CARES) Act — with the goal of financially assisting students with pandemic-related expenses, as opposed to directly allocating money towards tuition. David Carnevale, the director of undergraduate financial aid, told The Panther in an email that the university has supplemented over $2.7 million to more than 6,000 graduate and undergraduate students — most of which has been distributed in fragments of about $443 per recipient.
In order to qualify under the CARES Act, students must be in good standing with the university, be enrolled at least part-time and complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
“Students should receive compensation monetarily for all of the time that they’ve been virtual, because virtual classes are not the same caliber as the in-person learning that we’re paying for,” Almos said.