After a block in the dorms, some CC first-years moved off campus and got a taste of independent living
Plus, students reflect on the Loomis Hall quarantine two blocks later
Good morning and happy Thursday.
We’re probably as surprised as you to find a bonus issue of this newsletter in your inbox this week. But we’re both in luck. Journalism instructor Corey Hutchins just wrapped up a first-year writing seminar called Writing the News, and one assignment students had was to report a pandemic-related news item as if it were for our newsletter. We were impressed with some of the results, and we’re publishing two of the items today.
➡️ICYMI: Yesterday, we recapped CC’s plan for spring 2021. We still have some questions about the plan and what Pandemic Spring will look like.
Photo courtesy of Colorado College student Emma Bartholomay ’24.
‘We have freedom here’: About 5 miles from campus, apartment living comes early for some members of the class of 2024
By: Denise Geronimo ’24
Living in a college dorm and sharing bathrooms with strangers is a rite of passage for many. At Colorado College, students usually have to wait until their senior year to live off-campus. But when COVID-19 appeared, some first-year students skipped ahead to off-campus living after spending just one month in the dorms.
Following quarantines in each of the three large dorms on campus, Colorado College administrators scrambled original fall semester plans. Now, many classes are taking place remotely, and some first-year students had to leave campus by Sept. 20 — after about a month of living on the college grounds.
Some students started the appeal process in hopes of staying in their dorms. Some students began packing in preparation for the long trek back to their hometowns.
Others had a different plan.
“We had to get an apartment,” Emma Bartholomay ’24 said.
Bartholomay, a previous resident of Loomis Hall, moved off campus to the West Edge Apartments with three other first-year students. They, along with other first-years seeking lodging in the Springs, took advantage of CC’s supplemental housing options.
Colorado College lifted the three-year residency requirement for the 2020-21 academic year, allowing first-year students to either live off-campus or in the townhomes and apartments at the supplemental locations. At West Edge, each apartment includes four individual bedrooms and bathrooms, a living room with a TV, a kitchen, and a washing machine and dryer.
Pro: A community pool and hot tub. Con: There’s a global pandemic.
Along with the perks of having a larger space, the West Edge Apartments offer a variety of amenities, including steam rooms, BBQ areas, air hockey tables, tanning beds, a ski simulator, and a yoga studio, just to name a few. But what seems the most interesting and appealing feature of the complex to some first-years is its patio area, which includes a pool and hot tub.
Upon arrival, the leasing office provided blue wristbands to new residents, one for each student, giving them full access to the pool area. The office also provided two pool guest passes for each apartment, according to Luke Bleckman ’24. Although residents are not allowed to invite guests to the pool or hot tub, Bleckman said the office gave them the wristbands anyway.
“Anybody can walk in with no guest pass at all,” Bleckman said. He added that nobody seemed to be monitoring the pools or enforcing social-distancing guidelines.
A self-proclaimed “germ guy,” Max Carneal ’24 steers clear from the pool area. However, he said the people who decide to take advantage of the pool are usually “self-aware” and are practicing social-distancing. Once a crowd starts to form in the patio area, swimmers will “get up” and “get out.”
For Bleckman, the pool area is a great place to hang with his social circle of eight people. From his experience, the pool is never too populated, and people keep their distances from one another. He did, however, point out: “people can’t wear a mask in the pool — obviously.”
Transportation troubles
Located alongside Austin Bluffs Parkway, the West Edge Apartments complex is not the most pedestrian-friendly.
Because CC doesn’t allow first-years to bring cars to campus, some first-years moved to West Edge without adequate transportation.
Bartholomay has struggled with this reality since she moved in. To get around the city or to even buy groceries, she has had to “leech off her friends” and ask for rides. If nobody is available, she resorts to an Uber, but the price of a ride isn’t particularly feasible for a first-year student in college.
The college is offering a weekday shuttle for students living in the supplemental housing options. But Bartholomay said it only runs twice a day, and its only route is between West Edge and campus. Some students, she said, don’t even know how to find the vehicle.
“I couldn’t find the shuttle,” said first-year resident Zeke Lloyd ’24. “It wasn’t great.”
Lloyd eventually resorted to biking for 20 minutes to get to campus — a venture Carneal swore he would never undertake.
“You would have to be a professional biker,” Carneal said.
Meanwhile, other students like Bleckman have started looking at buying a car out here in the Springs, realizing it would be a practical purchase for life at the West Edge Apartments.
Students adjust to life away from campus
At CC, students usually have to wait until their senior year to escape enforced quiet hours and hall meetings. However, since the college suspended the three-year on-campus residency requirement, some of the West Edge kids are getting an early taste of independent living.
Although they have a night security guard who handles noise complaints, students living at West Edge are, according to Lloyd, completely independent. In comparison to his experience in a dorm, Lloyd believed that living in an apartment without supervision has made him “a healthier person overall,” and now he feels more like an adult.
“We have freedom here, and I’m happy,” Lloyd said.
Yet, regardless of this newfound freedom, some first-year West Edge residents, including Lloyd and Bartholomay, are still hoping to return to campus soon.
“I definitely miss campus,” Lloyd said. “But if I’m going to live in a COVID world, I want some freedom.”
The Quarantine Connection: Bonds built through the Lockdown in Loomis
By Erin Mullins ’24
You likely remember news of the Loomis Lockdown on Aug. 16 when a Colorado College dorm went into a full-scale quarantine after a student tested positive and social distancing guidelines apparently went out the window. The inside story, reported exclusively in this newsletter and in The Colorado Sun, was linked in The New York Times. Now, two months later, some Loomis residents speak about lingering effects from the experience.
One part of college life is taking time to find independence and identity. The first few weeks on campus are crucial for finding one’s place on campus.
“I was kind of worried,” Loomis resident Natasha Jaddock ’24 wrote in a text. “I noticed some of my hallmates getting closer, and I didn’t feel like I was a part of that so that made me kind of worried.”
Location can also be pivotal to finding a friend group, at least until students find their core group. This only becomes more challenging when over 100 residents are confined to their bedrooms.
So how do students think the quarantine in Loomis affected their social lives at CC?
The pandemic has already put a damper on so much of the first-year experience. Imagine a stressed-out first-year college student trying to make new friends under COVID-19 restrictions. Now add in a dorm-wide quarantine, giving them a two-week lag compared to the rest of campus.
The two other large dorms on campus, South and Mathias Halls, were not under quarantine for the first 13 days of the Loomis quarantine, so those first-year students could begin interacting and getting to know their classmates.
“It was a weird feeling that there are two other buildings out there that are making friends and meeting each other and interacting,” said Loomis resident Lauryn Pfrommer-Pease ’24.
Pfrommer-Pease feared the Loomis residents would be left behind when it came to making new friends and would face additional hurdles to find their place on campus.
“We don’t know anybody,” Pfrommer-Pease said. “We are just fending for ourselves and everyone else had a two-week head start.”
This year, New Student Orientation took place virtually. The students in quarantine participated from their dorm rooms, and they got to know their leaders and the other students in their group through online sessions.
“The Priddy Experience helped a lot,” said Loomis resident Jack Higgins ’24. “Mostly because at the end of the day, every day, you get to talk with a group of people that you don’t normally get to talk with and that was something I looked forward to every day.”
Loomis’ special bond
A day or so into the quarantine, the college coordinated with El Paso County Public Health officials to allow the students to go outside for a short amount of time each day. Students had to stay within spray-painted circles or near cones designating a safe space to sit — with a mask on, of course.
“I would definitely say the people in my hall definitely helped me out a lot,” Higgins said. “I kind of figured the whole experience would kind of bind Loomis people together in a weird way.”
Other students agreed about a special connection Loomis students made.
“I think it did help us become closer as a hall,” Jaddock wrote in a text. “We traded food items and spent time playing together (while socially distanced) while we were outside.”
The quarantine gave students plenty to talk about once the college released them at 9 a.m on Aug. 23, just one day after the college announced a two-week quarantine for students living in South and Mathias Halls.
This bond, found nowhere else on campus, formed the foundations of so many new relationships and friendships. Especially in the aspect that Mathias and South quarantines were different from Loomis’ stricter quarantine.
“There is this weird connection between all Loomis kids that is unrivaled by South and Mathias,” Pfrommer-Pease said.
The odd experience and meeting only virtually may seem like uncharted territory for establishing connections, but for some who decided to give it the old college try, it seems to be working out.
“The friendships that I made during quarantine are like no other that I have made before,” Pfrommer-Pease said. “Talking only through FaceTime calls and watching Netflix Party with complete strangers and then having them now be some of my best friends is a really weird thought.”
Now that Tutt Library, the fitness center, and the dining halls are open, students are starting to find some semblance of normalcy on campus.
“It was definitely a weird environment, but I am definitely happy that I stayed on campus,” Higgins said. “Everything is pretty much back to normal right now — as normal as it can be.”
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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