On college campuses, strength, kindness, despite upheaval from a pandemic
The final student newspaper that Ollie Gratzinger put to bed as a graduating senior at Duquesne University is unlike anything the young editor-inchief could have foreseen even weeks ago.
Its cover photo is of a Duquesne student, her face covered by a surgical mask for reasons that by now are obvious.
But don’t be fooled by one stark image.
As they did all year, staff members of The Duquesne Duke chronicled varied aspects of campus life, some bad but much of it good. They found plenty of the latter to write about in recent days, even during a pandemic.
Mixed in with a restaurant review and an opinion piece about March without the national collegiate basketball tournament was a feature quoting two Duquesne business seniors. Will Huisentruit and Jack Knapton were initially unable to think up a business to create — until the idea hit.
“We should start a community of people on both social media and on the internet to encourage people to do one nice act per day to help spread smiles,” Mr. Huisentruit said.
Their vision, “Nice Thing Per Day,” aims to use Instagram and Twitter to give reminders and encouragement about community kindness.
“When the sun goes down at the end of the day, you can look back and smile,” promises its Twitter feed, created days ago.
The Duke’s student staff, no doubt feeling uncertain themselves, tuned out enough angst over the spread of COVID-19 to pull off a 12-page farewell edition. Published and distributed Thursday, it helped remind students abruptly moving home midsemester from the Catholic university that they were part of a shared experience — albeit, a painful one.
“As long as we’re not alone, we
can endure this sort of thing with a certain amount of grace,” said the Duke’s chief editor, 21, from the North Side. “Helping each other out is cathartic for everyone.”
Colleges, like the broader communities in which they reside, are populated with those who can be resilient, even in dark times.
On campuses large and small, in Pittsburgh and beyond, less-than-tech-savvy professors have worked outside their comfort zones to convert face-to-face lectures for online delivery. Staff and instructors have stepped up to help those displaced as campuses emptied and instruction transitioned to remote-only, to slow the virus’s spread.
Seniors due to graduate, their victory lap cut short, managed to look past their own disappointment.
At the University of Pittsburgh, senior Albert Tanjaya, 21, a computer science major from Philadelphia, due to be the first in his family to graduate college, described sadness last week that he could not walk on stage in a now-postponed commencement April 26 at Petersen Events Center. His parents, thrilled by their son’s achievement, won’t get to experience the moment, either, said Mr. Tanjaya, an officer with Pitt’s Asian Student Alliance.
So excited was his mother, he explained, that she had a special sash embroidered for him to wear over his gown honoring the family’s Indonesian heritage.
Suddenly, almost in midsentence, Mr. Tanjaya changed topics to an effort to help campus peers that he and others are shepherding: “Pitt Mutual Aid.”
Like similar groups popping up on campuses of late, it seeks to offer money and assistance, even a place to stay, for students and others. Some students, he said, are reluctant right now to leave campus and Pittsburgh for faraway states or other nations.
“Whether it be $5, $50 or $500, each amount has its own power to help someone in need during this surprising time,” the group stated on Instagram.
At Carnegie Mellon University, Alex Helberg, a writing instructor and doctoral candidate in rhetoric, reminded peers that Pitt Mutual Aid and similar groups have created spreadsheets online to connect those who need help with others who can give it.
He said Carnegie Mellon students Liam O’Connell and Catherine Taipe started the CMU Mutual Aid spreadsheet, which laid the groundwork for a larger spreadsheet resource.
“In the midst of transitioning our classes from face-toface to online, it can be easy to forget that some of our students are going through drastic interruptions in their daily lives, and trying to piece together a new ‘normal’ living situation for themselves,” Mr. Helberg emailed peers last week.
“Stay strong,” he added, “... and help out whenever you can!”
At Duquesne, the blue surgical mask covering the face of Duke opinions editor Colleen Hammond is part of long-planned fashion edition. Look closely, and the image taken by photo editor Griffin Sendek reveals emotion in the young woman’s eyes.
“We usually would’ve run a picture of a student modeling new trends, but with all that’s been going on, we didn’t feel it was appropriate to do that,” Gratzinger said.
Instead, the journalists chose to acknowledge what staff knew was on everyone’s mind last week.
The Duke typically is produced almost up until final exams.
But days after spring break, face-to-face instruction at Duquesne was suspended, as it was on other campuses. Staff of the Duke ultimately concluded that continuing to produce and distribute the paper would put people at risk of catching the virus, including the person delivering the papers.
So the editor-in-chief’s desk was cleaned out early, and its occupant is adjusting to life beyond college.
The paper’s digital version will continue to update as best it can over the coming months, though students working remotely won’t all have access to the technology used to produce the publication while on the 9,300student campus.
Some who put out last week’s publication were in diapers during the horrors of 9/11, a defining moment in 2001 when student newspaper staffs of that generation — by now pushing 40 themselves — had to adapt to a world suddenly changed. The current Duquesne Duke staff has seen its share of calamity, too, including the Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting in Squirrel Hill.
A farewell column from the editor-in-chief, published in Thursday’s edition, is beside an archived photo of Duke staffers doing what undergraduates do in normal times — piling onto a sofa jubilantly, flashing smiles and mugging for a group shot they will look back on decades from now.
“I always thought that I’d leave the newsroom for the last time in my cap and gown, after my friends and I took pictures of each other in our “natural habitat” before walking across a stage and wrapping up our college years with a neat little bow,’’ Gratzinger said. “But it goes without saying that it didn’t happen like that. Life isn’t a movie, after all.”
Even so, as one among a class of seniors who on some campuses have dubbed themselves “the Corona Class,” the Duke’s departing editor found these weeks meaningful, no matter how strange:
“We are living in the midst of history right now. We will remember, ‘Wow. Wasn’t that crazy?’ ’’