The 2019-2020 school year got off to a great start. Returning students were greeted with unstable classroom assignments as the registrar struggled to find rooms amidst wide-reaching construction projects throughout campus. In addition, a rogue hacker was able to deduce that most of Stevens’ data was all hidden behind the password ‘Stevens1870’ (or ‘Stevens1870!’ for some of the more clever system administrators), leaving the organization scrambling to recover their missing files as students waited until a few days before class to get their schedule. In March 2020, the year was abruptly ended by a global pandemic which forced everyone to quarantine for over a year.
And so, in some ways, it’s nostalgic to see the absolute disaster that coming back to campus has been. In the first week of classes, the student body weathered a tornado, its subsequent flooding, and a robbery. In addition to this, the administration demonstrated a variety of failures in terms of their management of the return to campus.
For starters, many organizations didn’t have access to the school’s room registration software or were unaware that it existed, since even their direct predecessors wouldn’t have used it during the pandemic. I had to get access in order to begin planning events for my fraternity, the Lodge, so I submitted the ‘VirtualEMS’ form on DuckLink and found out later that the administration didn’t know the form existed. Only by arranging a meeting with an admin in-person were we able to actually get our events posted. We were also fortunate that we were able to get this finished within the first week of classes, since afterwards the system promptly self-destructed, and took any hopes of future plans with it until it was fixed.
On top of this, any event planning is overshadowed by slowly shifting COVID-19 regulations which, while understandable, threatens to make all of those efforts worthless. While events are much closer to normal than I first expected they would be, weekly COVID regulation updates are a frequent reminder of a possible Second Return and provide a sense of uncertainty about the regulations. Can events still be held indoors? Is food allowed? Questions such as these permeate all planning discussions but have to be answered again every week. Trying to plan for any significant event beyond a month is made impossible, since even the administrators that are determining the policies are uncertain where their whims will take them in their eternal quest to cover Stevens’ posterior.
With the resignation of 7 faculty members over the past year, many of whom have been very involved in student affairs, it’s no surprise that the administration is left floundering. In an email to the presidents of different Greek Life organizations, the former Director of Greek Life, Malcolm McDaniel, announced his resignation with his employment to end days before the start of classes, leaving his superiors and the Greek life community to figure out the transition back to campus alone.
So, our return back to school has been hectic, to say the least. But in trying to work through the chaos, I’ve noticed that there are people that are working hard to try and make sure that it goes smoothly. I don’t know who or what caused these varied issues, but I do know who is responsible for some of what has gone right. From my experience, Director of Student Life, Leo Pedraza, has been helpful in trying to iron out the logistical details of student events, and Gabriella Poska from the Student Government Association has demonstrated organization and hard work in trying to arrange the Flock Party and other related events. Despite the chaos and mismanagement of the whole situation, it’s heartening that there are faculty and students that are trying to get everything back to normal again.
Senioritis is an Opinion column written by one or two Stevens student(s) in their last year of study to discuss life experiences during their final year at Stevens, and other related subject matter.
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