The University of Puget Sound, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak has turned the rest of the semester into a virtual phenomenon. The university has been accommodating, and more lenient in terms of finances and academics for students. Yet, campus life for the students who chose to stay on has drastically changed; resources that were available for students prior have been depleted and have limited hours. The Diner, which previously encompassed: Wok, Grill, Deli, Pasta, Allergy Friendly, Chef’s Table and Tortilla station has now been reduced to Pasta and Chef’s Table. Having only these two stations with the same rotation of food choices, you get tired of eating there quickly. This reduction has impacted the variety of food options available for students, and it makes me concerned for anyone who relied heavily on the Allergy Friendly station.
Much of the student population who utilized the Diner have been forced to purchase groceries and order out, while their dining dollars sit unused. If the university knew this was how the Diner was going to function, they should have provided a refund option for the students on campus which would allow students to make purchases of food for themselves, it can be expected that many students will have large balances of unused dining dollars at the end of this year, and the university policy would only allow $25 out of the remaining dining dollars to transfer over to the next semester — It would be plausible to have more of the unused dining dollars transferred than to let it waste away as semester comes to an end. Students pay for their dining dollars, who gets to keep what is left over? The University? What do they do with it?
The Cellar in the Sub? Yes, We Just don’t have the Good Stuff
Are you missing the Cellar pizza? Or maybe your favorite beverages from Diversions, Oppenhimer and Lillis Cafe? While we appreciate and value non-student employees (bless their souls) for their service, this pandemic has truly shown how much we miss the access to, and the vitality of, our student staffed resources on campus. It is more noticeable now than ever that student employment is needed in the various campus food places in order to sustain them to their fullest extent. Or the university needs to provide more funds to pay additional staff. I know some of us students on campus might be reminiscing about the good ole days at the Cellar, how we would like to indulge and savor the taste of pizza or a Moose Track smoothie — I know I sure am.
The first day of class following the closure of campus, African American Studies 399 met online to proceed with our scheduled discussion about Patricia Hill Collins and her textOn Intellectual Activism. Immediately, it became clear to both our professor and ourselves, that we were visibly and communally working through the adversity of transition, the stress of pandemic and the toll of grief. The abrupt transition back to the “classroom” would not lend itself to a “business as usual” discussion and instead, our virtual classroom became a space to process this transitory time.
Despite not completing the planned conversation, I found us continuing to use the themes, language, and perspectives that we had cultivated in class to discuss and process the events engulfing us.
We dissected the language the university uses to discuss policy changes, the emails the administration sends us and the messages from President Crawford. We shared about the diverse factors affecting ourselves and our peers as we navigate online learning. Dr. Brackett took the time to explain the credit/no credit approach to grading that was being offered as an alternative in our spring semester. Additionally, we examined why policy changes are necessary within the reality of resource discrepancy. We talked about the experience so many of us were currently sharing: life on a campus with only the people who can’t, or for endless reasons, chose not to go home.
This process makes me think about positionality constantly. Perhaps, just as I observe the new and visibilized forms of privilege and oppression around me, I also feel more conflicted about my own sense of stability and privilege.
This week, I’ve observed my peers flee for home, abandon houses, and continue to pay rent on homes they aren’t living in.
We’ve all seen the hoarding of supplies at grocery stores, the shock, fear and “how is this possible?” reaction by white America in particular.
I am consumed by a deep rooted desperateness since losing my housing, not knowing how to create money for rent, and the on-going possibility of losing my job.
I’ve felt blaringly aware of my own privilege; to receive a reimbursement from the university, to still have a job, to be easily isolated at this time, to continue classes, to have this feeling of uncertainty be temporary, to be in response to a crisis and not a reality of my day-to-day.
Amidst these adjustments, I also feel angry. Angry with the shock I see in my family; they can’t imagine a disease killing people so unapologetically, as if we haven’t seen diseases destroy entire communities.
Angry, with systems of greed that prevent the supplies hospitals need so desperately from existing.
Angry with Trump and politics and opportunism.
I am sad. I grieve the classroom; the pride and commitment I felt to those fluorescent rooms. I built a sense of self through navigating the university, through learning the systems, through existing and thriving in ways my family has never known.
I cry for my team that worked so tirelessly and fearlessly. I miss being an athlete.
I feel abandoned by my peers, left on a dead campus.
I am frustrated. On social media my peers repost quotes declaring that “now is a time we see the working of oppression most clearly”. Like, what hasn’t been clear about racism? What is invisible about classism, wage inequality, poverty? Have you not observed the discrepancies in education? Not experienced gender discrimination? Is this the first time you’ve realized there are people in this country without healthcare?
I click through their story: the next slides say “quarantine ab-workout for the perfect body”, “if everyone just stayed home we wouldn’t be having this problem”, and a picture of newly ordered “stay at home goodies” wrapped in clearly recognizable Amazon packaging.
I have so many questions.
If now is the first time you are seeing oppression, how are you changing? Why haven’t you changed already? How will you change when this is over?
Student athletes are required to commit a significant amount of time preparing for and participating in University sponsored athletic events. Practice schedules both during the competition season and the off-season pose significant scheduling and time-management challenges for student-athletes. Priority registration would permit student athletes greater flexibility in scheduling courses as well as making it easier to schedule some courses during their non-competition semesters.
Course selection at the University of Puget Sound (UPS) can be incredibly tough. We boast small class sizes, but for all the students we have, there are only so many spots in any given course. Depending on what you are studying, you may encounter a situation where there are too many students and not enough classes for you to take within a given major.
All UPS students have experienced the frustration of not getting a class they wanted or missing out on a preferred professor for a statistics class. MyPugetSound, the online site for registration, triggers a lot of trepidation and stress amongst UPS undergrads during registration week. However, for an in-season student athlete, course registration proves to be almost as hard as a calculus final.
It is time for UPS to follow Division III schools like Ramapo College or William Paterson University and provide its student athletes with priority course registration.
Four years competing as a varsity athlete at the NCAA level has allowed me to gain an understanding for the hours of work it takes to become a better athlete. In one year of track and field I have gained an appreciation for the work that has to be done both in the weight room and on the track to run faster. Playing three years of basketball, the process of a 25 game season is more difficult than people think. From weightlifting to shooting baskets on your own, to recovering can take a toll on you over two semesters.
Basketball specifically, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday start with mandatory weight-room workouts from 6:30 am to 8 a.m. While this does not cast aside all 8 a.m. classes, they certainly are not encouraged as you have to leave team lift early and run across campus, still sweating when you get to class. Participating and paying attention is much more difficult when you are slightly out of breath. So, the ideal time for class is 10 to 12, you are still expected to shoot extra shots and complete homework for your classes in what ends up being an extremely condensed amount of unscheduled time. In addition, on days in which we have an away game, we are generally leaving for the opposing team’s gym at 12 noon on Friday. This means you are not going to your 12 o’clock class about three times in a semester. This may not sound like much, but there are professors who do not excuse absences for sports. Such professors have been known to say something along the lines of: “You are at the school for academics not athletics.” I have heard something to this effect from a professor at least one time per semester for eight semesters. This is true that we attend school for the academics, but some student athletes may not choose to attend UPS if they did not play a sport.
Now, let’s talk about Tuesdays and Thursdays. While we do not have morning lift, we generally have practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. My freshman year of basketball I had class from 3:30 p.m. to 4:50 p.m. You can see how this can be an issue, however leaving class early is not an option. We do come to college for academics and athletics but there seems to be a miscommunication between the professors and the athletics department because as stated above some professors remind us that their classes come first. And your coach knows you will be late to practice, but once again asks why your professor will not let you leave early. Then because you were late to practice for no fault of your own, you may not be able to suit up and play in one of the games that weekend. In the Northwest Conference, games are normally played on Friday and Saturday nights with the occasional Tuesday night game. If you are late to a practice on Thursday, the night before the game, you may not be able to play because you missed a large portion of the game plan being installed for the next day. While basketball is obviously not the only sport on campus, similar time constraints exist in other sports as well. A fellow Logger student athlete confided in me that he faced a similar situation where a professor of his told him that “athletics hold no merit in my class.” Student athletes are being penalized in both academic spaces and athletic spaces for what seems to be an institutional issue that we individually have no power in.
There are only certain times where student athletes, basketball specifically, can take classes. I have run into this sort of scheduling nightmare every semester because I did not get into the class I needed during my regular registration time. Oftentimes, late registration appointments will not allow you to enroll in a class that you would have liked. I will email multiple professors asking them to overload the number of students in their class. Asking for and receiving this overload request greatly benefits my schedule as a student athlete. Sometimes I will receive a coveted add code, while other times I just get a hard no. I understand that professors and classrooms only have so much space, and I also realize that sometimes it is impossible to give an add code. Some professors and departments are quite accommodating, while others are somewhat callous to the issue. I have heard responses from departments such as “Well, academics come before athletics,” or, “You should quit basketball for the pursuit of academia.”
It does not work that way.
There is a counter argument that the situation of student athletes is similar to a non-athlete student who has a job. I would argue that it is significantly different. First, depending on the job, you may be able to make your work schedule fit your class schedule, and may be able to choose what shifts to pick up and which ones to drop–this is especially possible if you work on campus. Basketball players do not have a choice of which practices to go to, which games to attend, or trips we will or will not go on. Second, a college sport is already a full-time job, with in-season time spent devoted to the sport regularly exceeding 30 hours per week. For the UPS students that have a legitimate 30+ hour work week in addition to the standard four-course workload, the reality is they are not also traveling and missing classes. Working students and student-athletes are different.
Additionally, student-athletes are not being paid. What about those of us that need jobs in addition to school and sports? My roommate does. He works in technology services at UPS. While this is not a full time job, it is an additional time commitment that he has to consider. It is mainly time constraints that make creating a schedule so much more difficult. Additionally, if you are not an upperclassmen the time your registration opens means you may have lost out on certain classes already. I understand that all students have difficulty picking classes. However, there is a difference between difficult and the borderline impossible situation athletes face. In fact, many majors are completely off limits to student-athletes. For instance, I have never met another college basketball player majoring in Exercise Science or Biology because the time commitments are simply too much.
Athletes not only have slim choice in classes but we also have other hurdles like studying abroad or majoring in STEM which require labs. As a Division III university student athletes are playing without scholarships, meaning we pay to play a sport at UPS. We play for the love of the sport or the thrill of competition or both and it is hard to continue to play when we worry that it is hindering our ability to fully engage in our academic lives. Do you ever watch a college football game on TV and wonder why so many of the players major in the exact same things? The reason athletes tend to be in the same programs is because the majors like “Parks and Recreation” or “Sports Management” favor their schedules more than majors they are more interested in. Athletes are too often stuck with the dilemma of taking a required class yet still remaining fully committed to their sport.
I’m not trying to complain or sound bitter because there are many, perks and benefits to being a college athlete. Nonetheless, at an institution that is as competitive as UPS, picking classes is simply unfair. UPS is extremely challenging academically, why make it even harder when you have to consistently settle for the classes that are either less interesting or passed over because of an unpopular professor. I think it is time that Puget Sound offers student-athletes the option of priority registration.
When I was seven or eight years old, my favorite movie was Legally Blonde. I would bring the VHS tape back and forth with me between Texas and Oklahoma as I traveled between my mom’s and grandparents’. I grew up half on my grandparents’ cattle and watermelon farm and half in an automotive repair shop.
Nobody in my life had gone to college and graduated; nobody had really even moved away from the Texas/Oklahoma border. As funny as it is to admit, Elle Woods was the first person, especially woman, that I saw graduate from higher education. She made me want to go to Harvard and become a lawyer. As a child, I spent most of my time with my mom and brother, both of whom struggled through school with learning disabilities that were never properly addressed. I remember the anxiety surrounding academics in my house when my brother would do his homework, and I often felt guilty and out of place for liking my schoolwork and wanting something different.
When the time came to go to college, and I had made it through the admissions process in one piece, I found the university experience to be a lot more bittersweet than I had expected. My time at UPS hasn’t been the most traditional. I had to take a year off and work at my family’s muffler shop, and at more than one point, it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to graduate. Sometimes, I wanted to give up because I felt so alone figuring out how to register for classes, talk to professors, and eventually switch majors without guidance from those closest to me. Other times I wanted to give up because I felt like, day after day, I was choosing to be different and apart. Over the years, I figured out that the physical distance between my family and I proved less of an obstacle than a growing cultural difference that got wider as I allowed my college experience to shape my identity. Even as a senior, nobody back home really knows the extent of what I’m doing in school. Discussing university life or classes with my mom is nearly impossible when she has no reference point. I’ve lived in Tacoma for almost five years now, and I feel as if I’ve grown into a different person with a different home.
Sometimes, when these painful realities felt too tough to handle, I would find myself dreaming of graduation and the moment that my two very different worlds would collide. Imagining my grandpa with his alligator-skin dress boots and cowboy hat, sitting on Peyton field taking in the luscious green scenery of the Pacific Northwest, over 2,000 miles from home, where his granddaughter moved, by herself, to take ownership of her education and future. As a first generation student and a member of the class of 2020, getting that email on April fourth stating that commencement would be moved to May of 2021 was devastating. With all that is happening in the spring of 2020, it is looking certain I won’t get my Elle Woods moment, and neither will my classmates. Many things have had to be canceled or postponed due to COVID-19, but graduation getting moved has been the hardest to come to terms with. My grandparents aren’t going to get to see this magical place or the sidewalks that I wore thin by running from class to class. My worlds aren’t going to collide in the way that I had imagined, and it makes me sad to think about how many of my classmates are going through something similar. The celebration has to wait, and I think we all understand that. But I’m thankful for my position during these hard times, and I’m lucky to be able to be in school and continue school throughout this pandemic. We have so much to be thankful for during this time, and it’s important to keep things in perspective, but I also think it’s important to allow space to mourn what has been lost.
