Students at nearby universities grapple with their own challenges

BY ALEXIS FLEMING / VN Staff Writer

Detroit Mercy is not the only university settling into a new and different semester.

The pandemic has changed the way classes, organizations and even sports will be running throughout the country, leaving many students struggling to get used to the new normal.  

Darla Washington, a sophomore at Michigan State University, is one of those students. 

“This semester should be pretty easy since last semester beginning in March wasn’t as bad as I thought,” she said. “The transition to online wasn’t as bad but I’m not sure how it will be considering we’ll just be starting versus in March (when) we already were familiar with the course work.” 

She said that MSU has done a great job handling the pandemic and has made many arrangements to help international students who had to stay on campus after contracting COVID-19 last semester.  

Though some students feel their campus has risen above the pandemic, others feel their school should do better.  

Breanna Kociba, a senior at Ferris State, feels up in the air.

“It is currently 39% face-to-face, 39% online and 11% hyper-flex,” she said.  

She said there has not been much social distancing on campus making it, in her view, unhealthy to attend on-campus courses.  

“I ended up dropping some classes – two to be exact – because I just personally don’t want to step foot on campus after how many people this weekend were not social distancing,” she said.

According to Kociba, Welcome Weekend saw students not taking proper precautions.

She thinks classes should have been 100% online.  

Students at MSU and Ferris State have experienced many of the same steps as Detroit Mercy. There are no sporting events, many organizations are meeting online and precautions have been taken in the dorms.

As the semester continues students are just adjusting to wearing a mask and doing online classes – and missing out on what in previous years would have been some of the most exciting events on campus.