In 2020 the contagious disease, Covid-19 changed a lot of how the world worked, including college campuses. Many college students haven’t been able to have the same experience that they would before this whole pandemic.

Theresa Miller, a 19-year-old college student and Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School alumna with an integrated English/language arts major attends Cleveland State University. Miller graduated from BBHHS and began college in fall 2020 right before Covid-19 began to spread throughout the United States. Among aspects that have changed, all of CSU’s orientations in fall 2020 were online.

Many other experiences have followed the same trend.  “There’s a lot of things that happen during the week like small events and other things like that. However, with Covid-19, a lot of those events have been canceled or they’ve been virtual so I haven’t really attended any of them,” Miller said.

Additionally, many college students haven’t been able to make as many connections as before.

“Going into college during the pandemic, I felt like I wasn’t going to meet anybody new because for me, and other people, they were scared to interact with people on campus because Covid-19 was still going on. Even though I’m in my sophomore year of college, I still don’t know many people on campus,” said Miller. 

In comparison, a former college student, Brittany Artino, graduated from Ohio University with a major in communications and diversity studies and a minor in women gender and sexualities. Before the pandemic, events and live concerts happened all the time, “It was a really good time, compared to now. We were not doing remote learning, instead we were having meetings for organizations and parties and concerts,” Artino said. Many students were on campus meeting people in close proximity unlike now, where students are encouraged to keep 6 feet from each other.

 While there are larger experiences that people are missing out on, there are also day to day changes that impact students. When asked about Covid-19 protocols, Patience Collazo, a 19-year-old freshman at Ohio State University and BBHHS alumna, said that students just have to wear masks and be vaccinated, however recently they have started testing for Covid weekly.

Some universities have different Covid-19 protocols, CSU only mandates masks. However, OSU requires testing every week and mandates masks, which in comparison to CSU, the weekly testing might contribute to a different environment with more live events.

With as many changes as there are, every student’s experience varies.

“I don’t think much of college has changed in my opinion, the only thing different is masks,” Collazo said.