What If Covid-19 Never Happened?
Picture This: It is March 14, 2020 and things go a bit differently than we expected in our March 2020 timeline. Let’s say that Covid-19 never had a presence in America and was isolated just to China. How would life on campus look? What would be different regarding campus life and the greater Bridgewater State University community? What would be the problem that students would have to tackle if it wasn’t Covid-19?
When asked what BSU would have looked like if the virus was isolated in China and never reached America, “it would be no different than in the fall semester of 2019 as scholars and students would be traveling or doing daily duties on campus,” said Denine Rocco, Associate Vice President and Dean of Students at BSU.
So if this happened, then more people would be able to travel to new countries and stay a semester abroad. When asked, could the Spring semester of 2021 be like our current fall semester, “the president and his staff would have had to have approval from CDC and public health and state approval,” said Rocco.
When asked who decided to not conduct in-person classes in the spring of 2020, Rocco said, “it was a combination of CDC and state public health, Board of higher education, Institutional uni presidents, and the Bridgewater community”.
The “community didn’t want students back as they were worried about overtaxing hospitals and putting students and members of the community at risk of infection,” said Rocco.
If Covid-19 didn’t happen, we would have been back on March 16. The class of 2020 graduation would have occurred in July of 2020.
If Covid-19 didn’t happen, there would be no masks, no social distancing, and no staying home. There would be some colds and flus that would go around, but we would have the resources to deal with that. The fall semester of 2020 and spring semester of 2021 would not be ghost towns in terms of students living and taking classes on campus. More people would have done better in terms of making friends and pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone if Covid-19 didn’t happen. There would be no Zoom meetings with professors.
If Covid-19 didn’t happen, there would probably be parties on and off campus more often. Students who live on campus would be happy, having a sense of belonging to BSU. The freshmen and new transfer students would be able to figure out what living on campus is actually like.
If Covid-19 didn’t happen, professors and students wouldn’t have to struggle as much, regarding their class work and other responsibilities. There would be a lot of new resolutions, as the year of 2020 was the start of a new decade.
