Phase three of the University of Wyoming’s plan to slowly open campus started Monday, Sept. 28 with in-person classes; but campus still feels empty to some students.
“Campus is dead. It’s kind of nice, but it’s also lonely,” said Shane Mazur, a senior at UW majoring in English.
Only one of Mazur’s classes started face to face this week. Of her class that meets on campus, Mazur said she has liked the human interaction better compared to seeing people through Zoom boxes.
“It’s more comfortable talking to people in person than on Zoom. You can see the cues in body language that aren’t there in Zoom.”
She said one of her classes that did not start in person this week stayed online because the professor planned to keep it an online class for the remainder of the semester.
“One of my professor’s stayed online because they said it was only fair to everybody,” Mazur said. “Not everybody can be on campus and so there’s no pressure to be face to face.”
Michele Bird is a statistics professor and also works in the tutoring center. She has been teaching a first year seminar on campus since the second phase of returning to campus. Bird said one of her students commented in class, “going to class should feel normal, but this does not feel normal.”
Her class felt off even after they began face to face classes Bird said. Even still she said she doesn’t feel like she knows her students as well compared to previous semesters.
She said campus has had a lot of people this week compared to phase two when there were only a few classes like first year seminars on campus.
“Truly in the forefront of my mind is the social distancing that I’m struggling to understand how [Phase Three] will be sustainable,” said Bird. “It’s one of our biggest hurdles to get through opening up slowly.”
Bird said she is concerned about campus being able to stay open. During phase two she said she felt as if she was the only person in her building, but now she has to leave the classroom immediately so staff can sanitize the room for the following class which started in person this week.
“Phase two felt really safe. Tutoring wasn’t open and most of us weren’t on campus. I’m concerned about our ability to fully utilize social distancing. I say ‘our’ because it’s not other people it’s all of us,” Bird said.
