After not receiving clear guidance about the COVID-19 policy from anyone else, Zhang resorted to using her own personal judgment and stayed in her dorm as much as possible, only leaving to get food from the dining hall. 

12 out of 54 PCR tests conducted at Health Services were positive in the month of September. Two out of 36 health services tests have been positive thus far in October. However, according to Health Services Medical Director Dr. Jennifer Schwartz, this data may not accurately reflect COVID levels at Wellesley.

“This [data] is just looking at who came into Health Services. I know there’s a large portion of students that don’t use us or didn’t come in,” said Dr. Schwartz. “The numbers are actually probably a lot higher than what we’ve recorded.”

These test results are concurrent with the general COVID trends in the area. COVID increased by about 300 cases in Massachusetts during the last month but has been decreasing in the last two weeks as of Oct. 15.

On Oct. 4, Vice President and Dean of Students Sheilah Shaw Horton sent an email to students acknowledging the current spread of disease, including COVID, on campus. Dean Horton stated that students “learned healthy habits during the pandemic that [they could] use now to stay safe.”

As of March 28, 2024, the College uses the CDC’s suggestions for COVID quarantining policy. No new information regarding COVID-19 related policies has been announced for the 2024-25 school year. The College has a “Keeping Wellesley Healthy” webpage with its public COVID-19 related policies. 

Dr. Schwartz noted that the CDC recommendations are “kind of vague” and is working with Dean Horton to update the webpage. For now, while there is no defined isolation period, CDC guidelines recommend avoiding being around people if one experiences COVID-like symptoms. Once people are fever-free for 24 hours, they do not have to be “isolated” as long as they mask for five days.

Students can book an appointment in Health Services to test for COVID with their rapid PCR machine.

“The PCR test is the more sensitive test, so it can pick COVID up earlier. The rapid tests are not quite as sensitive, especially with these newer strains,” Dr. Schwartz said.

In case students cannot make it to Health Services, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has rolled out free COVID rapid tests that can be ordered online. Students can order four rapid tests to their unit box. Rapid tests are also available for purchase at the bookstore.

While testing is made accessible to students, Health Services currently does not have COVID vaccines for the school year. 

“Our hope was to have COVID vaccines, but because they’re more widely available this year, there’s also a shortage of them. We’re working on it, but the barrier is just the supply chain,” Dr. Schwartz said.

Currently, the nearest place to receive the COVID vaccine is CVS, and an appointment can be booked online. The new vaccines are free “with most insurance.” If students are looking for affordable transportation options, Dr. Schwartz recommended Catch Connect, a discounted ride share service in Wellesley and the surrounding areas. 

Policy Concerns

Even though the pandemic has moved past its peak, some students are concerned about the lack of schoolwide COVID response.

“There’s not really class-wide or college-wide support for people that are being COVID conscious, and so a lot of people have had to rely on smaller communities or smaller orgs on campus to find communities that they feel safe in,” Dylan Bunyak ’27 said.

When Zhang first suspected that she had COVID-19, she struggled to find masks or COVID tests, forcing her to seek roundabout methods.

“Apparently, in my roommate’s CS class, they just have a box of masks in there, so that’s where I got the masks from. I live in the Quint and when I was sick, I really did not want to walk all the way to health services to get a COVID test, so my roommate ended up getting the COVID test for me,” Zhang said.

Members of Students for an Accessible Wellesley (SAW) have also expressed concern over college policies and the lack of administrative attention on COVID support.

“We have a chronic problem where we notice issues on campus, we contact some department and admin about it, and there’s only a small fraction of the time that they even respond to our emails, much less actually agree to help with the problems we’re having,” Esmé Krummel ’25 said.

To support and advocate for COVID-conscious and infected students on campus, SAW created a “Wellesley COVID Action Plan” that included increasing COVID consciousness on campus, meal deliveries, and a testing distribution program.

“Even though the college is following a lot of the CDC guidelines, we feel that the CDC guidelines aren’t particularly representative of the struggles faced by students with chronic illness or students who are immunocompromised and have more of a risk from COVID,” Krummel said.

Minimizing the Spread

As illnesses have been spreading, students – especially those that are immunocompromised – have been advocating for masking on campus.

“Masking is community care,” Bunyak said. “Masking is a very visible sign of support for disabled and immunocompromised sibs on campus.”

Professors also echo this support for masks. Sohie Lee, Professor of Computer Science, noted that while the Department itself does not have a mask policy, the department requested masks from the College, which individual professors have recommended for their own students. All departments can request masks from the College free of charge on the Facilities website. 

SAW members further suggest the importance of professors in relieving the pressures of an illness.

“I think that professors can play a big role in terms of advocating,” SAW member Iris Zhan ’27 said. “People are coming [to class sick] because they feel like they’re going to fall behind. I think professors can also be supportive in the sense of helping people catch up.”

If students are concerned about absences due to illnesses, they should speak to their professors and class dean to work on a compromise.

Zhang also suggests making masks and COVID tests more accessible, especially because the College is not very big.

“I feel like it wouldn’t be that hard to have [masks and tests] in the res halls, in the dining halls, stuff like that,” Zhang said.

Dr. Schwartz said that Health Services is trying to accommodate all students within a timely manner, and that she is always open to suggestions, whether through email or in person. 

With COVID still in the air, flu season in full swing, and other viruses like RSV and the common cold spreading, Dr. Schwartz emphasized the importance of rest for recovery.

“The short of it is, if somebody’s not feeling well, whether it’s COVID or not, I would love them to be empowered to self care and rest,” Dr. Schwartz said.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Valida Pau, Sazma Sarwar and Lyanne Wang

As the College transitioned into the 2021-2022 school year, some of the policies continued. A statement from President Johnson, released on Aug. 27, 2021, outlined health and safety precautions that amended the College’s previous guidelines about campus life during the pandemic.

Students were instructed to mask in common spaces and classrooms and restricted to in-state travel, and guests were still banned from entering campus buildings. The College returned to the semester system. Once all students were invited back to campus, the College moved quarantine locations from on campus in the Dower House to The Verve, a hotel in Natick. Testing was still twice a week at the Beebe testing site or the College Club, and positive cases were tracked on the Wellesley College COVID-19 dashboard. Other policies were lifted – transportation off-campus was permitted, grab-and-go options were replaced with open dining halls, and social distancing was not required in classrooms. During the spring of 2021, the college offered a COVID-19 vaccination clinic and mandated vaccinations. Guests were eventually allowed on campus and in buildings, registered given their vaccination status.

As the pandemic seemingly lessened in severity, the administration lessened guidelines for the 2022-2023 school year. Wellesley dropped several of its COVID-19 policies, according to an email sent on July 22, 2022. As part of this, faculty members could require masking at their discretion, and weekly testing was optional and only located at the College Club. In the email, the College also announced that hotel isolation would cease. Students who tested positive for COVID-19, regardless of whether they had a roommate, were required to quarantine in the residence halls. Continuing from the year prior, visitors were allowed inside most buildings, this time without registration.

This year, COVID-19 policies have become less restrictive, regardless of the spike in COVID-19 rates. According to the State of Massachusetts COVID dashboard, there has been a small increase of cases in fall of 2023 compared to the spring and summer. Sept. 18, 2023 had a reported seven-day-average of 492 cases of COVID-19, while June 12, 2023 only had a reported seven-day-average of 137 cases. 

When the COVID-19 announcement from Sheilah Shaw Horton, vice president and dean of students was released on Sept. 22, 2023, some students found themselves unhappy with the policy revisions. Iris Zhan ’27 noted that as soon as the email came out, they felt the need to share it with family members. 

“I forwarded it to my parents and they were so mad,” they said. “They were like, ‘What, they don’t know how many students have COVID-19?’”. 

Grace Sun, ’27 felt that the content of the email was misleading. 

“From this email, without knowing how the situation really is, I would assume that it’s not that bad or that there are just a couple cases. But it’s actually far more serious than that and I think it’s a problem that the administration is addressing [it] with this level of unseriousness,” said Sun, “I think this email [feels] like it hasn’t addressed the problem. It brushes off the issue.”

The email gave an update on the COVID-19 protocol. The College is no longer recording the COVID-19 cases on campus, but vaccination and masking is still highlighted as the main form of preventing the spread.  The newest COVID-19 booster is available at nearby pharmacies, and administration is working to bring a clinic to campus. Health Services offers testing to those that are symptomatic, but recommends purchasing rapid tests from pharmacies for self-testing. Health Services is no longer giving out rapid tests and no longer taking walk-ins. Health Services is available for those that test positive, but students should make an appointment by calling. Students who test positive should use their Ozzi containers to get meals to go. Asymptomatic students should mask and test on day six after exposure, but are allowed to go to class and participate in normal activities after five days of isolation. Hybrid classes are not offered for those who get COVID-19. If your roommate tests positive, both of you should wear masks and open a window. Roommates are not able to move to a different space.

For Zhan, these policy changes are not supportive enough for students on campus.

“When I got COVID-19 last week, I called the after-hours [hotline for health services], and they said because they were not open, that I had to get a test from CVS. I was fortunate enough that a friend of mine was able to get me two tests, and that’s how I knew, but I didn’t even realize that  even during their open hours they wouldn’t actually give you a test [if you’re asymptomatic], which is ridiculous. Also, [Health Services] didn’t seem to be prepared or caring about everyone that’s struggling with COVID-19,” said Zhan. 

Sun agrees, stating that she feels uncomfortable with the fact that masking is optional and testing is unavailable. 

“I went to Health Services last week because I was not feeling well to get tested because I wanted to protect other people from myself and they said, ‘You can’t get a test from us unless you are severely symptomatic.’ I think that’s just pretty unreasonable, especially because the way to stop COVID-19 from really spreading is to catch it before it starts transmitting to other people,” said Sun. 

The lack of guidelines poses difficulties for the roommates of infected students. “My roommates struggled for the many days that I was with COVID-19. [The College] doesn’t really care about what to do with the roommates. They’re like ‘Oh, mask up!’ [My roommates] had to sleep in the Bates TV room, and they also slept in the Clapp living room as well. They told me that they didn’t get much sleep, which really sucks,” said Zhan. 

For many, COVID-19 is not just a small cold or a temporary ailment, and Zhan worries about it.

“I am not immunocompromised but this is so much more urgent and worse for them, so why aren’t we caring as much as we did when we had other outbreaks?” questioned Zhan. 

Although Sun and Zhan are first-year students, they are aware of the previous COVID-19 policies and wish that the administration would reinstate some of them.

“If [Dower] truly is empty and not currently used, it would be great if we could put that into use again and quarantine people that have COVID-19. If we could have isolation, actual physical isolation, between students who have COVID-19 and those who don’t, even if it’s just for a couple days, I think that would improve the situation,” said Sun. 

“It’s kind of like a, ‘You’re on your own, kid,’ kind-of-thing, which is surprising and what you don’t expect at a liberal arts college. Maybe at bigger schools, they will hold your hand less and care less, but this is Wellesley – they are supposed to care,” said Zhan. 

According to Wellesley’s Office of Media Relations, the College “revised our COVID-19 policies in ways that will allow us to teach, learn, collaborate and build community more easily.”

“The College’s policies on testing and masking are consistent with state and federal guidance,” said the Office of Media Relations. “As of Monday, Sept. 25, free COVID-19 tests are available at covidtests.gov. Tests also may be purchased at local pharmacies and at the Bookstore in Lulu. The two best defenses against COVID-19 continue to be masking and vaccination. Members of the community are welcome to mask more often than required based on their individual health and family situations. The College also strongly encourages all community members to get the new COVID-19 booster, which provides a defense against new variants. It is available at pharmacies off-campus now, and we are working to bring a COVID-19 vaccination clinic to campus. Going forward, we will continue to align our health and safety policies with CDC guidelines.”

General Manager of El Table, Gabriela Awad ’23, said that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of El Table. 

“Obviously, the pandemic wasn’t good,” Awad said.  “It’s difficult when you’re not able to access the space that the community is centered around. It hasn’t been easy reopening, and we’re just really glad that we have a community like Wellesley backing us up through all of that.”

According to Awad, El Table has experienced an overwhelming amount of support from Wellesley students within its first couple of weeks of reopening. Rahnuma Aroshi ’25, a new hire at El Table, has felt the busyness of El Table.

“At first I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to deal with [working at El Table] because my first shift was lunch rush,” Aroshi said. “Now that things aren’t as jammed packed as they were at first, I can take my time and learn as I go.” 

According to Awad, El Table has a reputation for being a safe space on campus for QTBIPOC students. Returning El Table employee, Alisha Shahriar ’25, said the environment is something students miss about the co-op. 

“People were happy that things were back,” Shahriar said. “Having that in-person vibe, being able to sit and hang out and have a shared community space.”

El Table is located on the bottom of Founders Hall and is open on weekdays from 9am-3pm.

Changes in staffing have been challenging to adjust to, exacerbated by several staff members currently being out on extended leaves. According to Angela Tebbetts, assistant lead academic custodian, the return of in-person classes and events, shortages in dining hall employees and employee burnout have affected custodial services well into the 2022-2023 school year. 

Tricia Diggins, p.m. academic custodian, said the staff shortages have caused her to “triage her cleaning” each day.

“It’s been rough because I started during [COVID-19] when I was looking for dirt,” Diggins said. “If I found dirt, I was like, ‘Oh, I can clean this area,’ so everything was spotless. Now it’s just really painful to see and make the choices as to what goes into tomorrow unclean. I don’t like it, but it’s an absolute necessity.”

Tebbetts and Diggins explained that custodial teams are divided into two types of buildings: academics and dorms. Each group has several lead custodians, who cover short- and long-term absences, but staffing absences frequently exceed the number of leads for each type of building, especially in dorms, due to the sheer number of buildings that need to be cleaned. To make dorm cleaning more manageable, actions such as reducing the number of trash cans on each floor have occurred.

“If people were clean, we wouldn’t have jobs,” Tebbetts said. “It’s not the cleaning that bothers us, it’s the fact that there’s only eight hours in the day. It’s almost like there’s an unreasonable expectation. … If you’re in a building with someone who’s out [on leave or taking a sick day], especially in dorms, you’re going to be asked to cover that person’s area plus your own. But you can’t get two eight-hour jobs done in eight hours.” 

Tebbets noted that hiring temporary custodial workers for the duration of a staff member’s leave can help bridge the gap caused by long-term absences. Given that temporary positions are only hired internally, Tebbetts believes that the College has been hesitant to post these positions because they would likely draw workers from dining services, where a shortage would more acutely affect students. 

Lane said that the College “follow[s] the terms of the [Independent Maintenance and Service Employees Union of America, also known as IMSEUA] contract in ensuring that Union staff members (in dining and in facilities) have access to [temporary positions] if they are interested. … The College and the Union are continuously working together to ensure that there is adequate staffing across campus.”

As the leader of the Union and Labor Advocacy Task Force, also known as UniLad, in Wellesley Against Mass Incarceration (WAMI), Hannah Grimmett ’25 has been working to raise awareness about issues faced by the College’s maintenance and dining workers and to build solidarity between students and staff. She said that students have begun to notice the effects of custodial staffing changes. 

“I have heard people talking about how it doesn’t seem like the services are at the same level they might want it to be, [such as] the frequency of cleanings,” Grimmett said. “Definitely with paper towels running out in academic buildings, or in common area bathrooms that have paper towels, I feel like that’s an area where it’s pretty clearly noticeable that there wasn’t someone who was able to fill that same shift with the same frequency.” 

In addition to filling temporary positions more quickly, Grimmett, Tebbetts and Diggins all agreed that the College could do more to boost morale for custodial workers, such as providing incentives for employees to work overtime, especially in dorms, where cleaning needs are more likely to occur after hours. Tebbetts said that the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that the best custodians are most likely to be asked to cover other people’s shifts.

“It’s the same people who are repeatedly getting asked to do more,” Tebbetts said. “That’s wearing on you, not physically as much as [you ask yourself], ‘Why am I getting punished repeatedly?’ It’s not rewarded in any way, there’s no ‘attaboy.’”

Tebbetts and Diggins said they believe student voices could be central to driving action. 

“Students should complain, because … administrators in Green Hall aren’t seeing the dorms,” Diggins said. “We hate to have people complain. It’s the worst thing when you’re a custodian, and you have someone complain about your area. But if it’s … impossible to do [the cleaning in time], maybe we’ll get some help.” 

Grimmett said she believes that the issues faced by custodial workers are structural, rooted in inadequate compensation for workers, high turnover and an environment that excludes custodians from the broader campus community. 

“There [used to be] massive community events, like softball games and cookouts and things like that, that were about bringing workers, faculty, students and administrators all together,” Grimmett said. “Having a time to socialize, connect and have those socially nourishing experiences to maintain the health of a community [is important], and those have slowly deteriorated and gotten us to the point where we are now.”

According to Grimmett, student involvement can start small, such as by forging connections with service workers on campus.

“We would ask you to understand the individual custodians and the struggles they’re facing,” Diggins said. 

“I think the idea that returning back to normal was good for everyone in the first place is kind of a complicated and in some ways an exclusionary viewpoint, because … normal never worked for disabled people,” Fazya Jaleel ’24, current SAW president, said.

A follow-up to the initial announcement of the policy changes, Dean Horton stated that while the pandemic was not over, “As a community we need to move forward and resume more of our pre-pandemic life,” especially in regards to academics. This reinforced the college’s messaging surrounding masking as a personal choice, no longer a matter of public safety, as part of a broader initiative to return to “normal operations” and “re-establish academic expectations.”

“It’s not an either/or. It’s not flexibility and accommodation for everyone, or academic excellence,” Esmé Krummel ’25, SAW’s academic chair, said. “It’s possible to have both at once, and having both at once is gonna bring a happier, healthier, mentally more stable … [state for] everyone.”

The wide-spread structural shift to virtual or hybrid-based schooling during the past two years is proof that this accommodation is not only possible, but relatively simple to implement and maintain. Although teachers and students alike have expressed frustration with the Zoom experience, the forcible transition away from long-held teaching norms has provided the opportunity for accessibility-forward thinking that considers how best to accommodate each student’s needs, disabled or not, ultimately producing a learning environment that serves everyone. 

To better accommodate its members, SAW has additionally enacted some internal changes. They are in the process of developing a COVID-19 testing form as a way to get an idea of the number of active cases on campus. To help ensure its members ability to participate in and attend meetings, masks are now required at all SAW events, in addition to getting tested 48 hours beforehand and the meetings themselves will remain hybrid. SAW has also appointed a tech chair and an access chair to ensure that those attending virtually have the ability to participate as fully as those in-person. 

“Especially with the pandemic, and with everything kind of going on, I think it’s important to create community first and foremost, and really make it so that disabled people on campus can have the space to process…with each other, and also be in community and advocate with each other,” Jaleel said.

Outside of SAW, students are still running into barriers surrounding adequate accommodation. Furthering this difficulty is the fact that the only accommodations officially recognized are those granted by ADR, meaning students who are unable to get the required neuropsych testing for medical or financial reasons are unable to receive accommodations. However, flexibility is granted when non-disabled students stand to gain, such as the policy allowing virtual classes only in the case of an outside speaker.

“It’s incredibly harmful and incredibly pervasive in this ableist society of ours, that certain people want to go back to not having certain things unless they’re beneficial for the able-bodied people,” Jaleel said. 

Jaleel later noted that ableism surrounding COVID-19 does not exist in isolation of societal views of disabled people. Krummel expanded on this point.

“Dehumanization and alienation of people with disabilities is a common type of ableism that comes up, and … making things COVID-wise, accessible to most people, but not accessible to people with disabilities, is a continuation of our societal dehumanization and alienation of people with disabilities, chronic illnesses and immunocompromisation,” Krummel said.

At printing time, a pack of 50 KN95 masks was $40 on Amazon, and a pack of 50 KF94 masks was $90. Both types of masks would take at least five days to arrive, even with Amazon Prime. Recognizing that it would be extremely difficult for many low-income students to purchase high quality masks, let alone enough to last the whole semester, Harper Elrod ’25 created the WCCommunityCare Instagram account. 

“It’s kind of disheartening that a college, especially when it’s such a large endowment, can’t provide us [with masks],” Elrod said. “I just came up with the idea because I was thinking about what I can do concretely within my own community.”

To source the masks, Elrod reached out to Seoyoung Park ’24, who had already planned on bringing masks for Wellesley students, and agreed to help scale up the effort to serve a greater number of students. A coalition of five students was formed to help with publicizing the fundraising efforts, and a detailed form containing questions on student needs that extended beyond masks, was made available to the students through the Instagram account. 

“On the form, the first question asked is if they are immunocompromised. This information isn’t stored but it’s just so that we can prioritize those needs,” Elrod said. “We did one delivery to all the people who filled it out as immunocompromised … distribution so far has just been literally me and my friends walking around and putting little bags on people’s doors.” 

Elrod also reached out to residential life, and HPs and RAs from each hall agreed to help coordinate distribution and get masks to their residents. To further their effort and learn about the needs of the student body, WCCommunity Care set up a community demands meeting on Jan. 29. Through this meeting and an anonymous form, they planned to gather COVID-related student demands and create a petition. At the meeting, students asked for the College to provide higher quality masks, as well as to increase transparency around COVID rules, specifically the rule banning off-campus visitors. 

“I definitely think they should be providing these masks to students … or they should be sending them the money to buy them themselves. This is something that they should be providing to us with such a large endowment,” Elrod said. “They pride themselves on how much of their student body is low-income, how their student body is so diverse and has so many disabled people, and they can’t pride themselves on that if they don’t protect the people.”

“I was feeling an unordinary amount of exhaustion,” she said. “I just thought that was packing and having all these things going on, but I did have a little bit of doubt in my mind.”

What followed were extensive communications with the College, coupled with a fever Willa developed that same night. Unable to fly to campus, she began classes from home with a large time zone difference. The rest of her household also tested positive for COVID.

Willa’s situation was not unique. Anissa Mansour ’23 also shared her experience of contracting COVID and arriving late to campus. She tested positive the day before her original flight. However, since classes were remote that week, Mansour managed to quarantine at her house and attend online classes. 

“I’m really thankful that everything was online,” Mansour said. 

Mansour also noted that since she is from Florida, classes being held in the EST time zone was not an issue for her, unlike Willa and other students. 

Whitney* ’25, another international student from India, was supposed to fly back to Boston on Jan. 19 but did not because she learned her close family members had COVID days before her flight. On Jan. 20, she tested positive herself.

“I had already planned to postpone my trip before I tested positive,” she said. “It turned out to be the right call.”

Whitney described COVID as feeling like an “intense case” of the flu. Her professors were accommodating, and she only missed one day of classes since she arrived on Jan. 31, the first day of in-person classes. She was originally supposed to arrive a day earlier, but the nor’easter on Jan. 29 delayed her flight. The snowstorm brought with it more than two feet of snow in Massachusetts towns, and it is described as one of the biggest snowstorms in the commonwealth’s history. 

“It wasn’t that bad; I just missed the snowstorm and the sledding part, so that sucked,” Whitney said.

Mansour’s flight was also canceled due to the snowstorm, which was a stressful situation for her. She was able to arrive on Jan. 30 after much difficulty.

“I was really worried about class because everything was in person [by] that point,” she said. “They were not really budging [about refunding my canceled flight, and] I literally was on the phone for three hours. Thankfully the last person was like ‘we’re going to refund you.’”

After her arrival, adapting to a new schedule and organizing things for the next day was an exhausting and hectic process.

 “Just unpacking my suitcase, putting my school stuff out, [and] remembering my routine back was kind of [exhausting],” she said. “Because I only had two hours to do it. I was tired after a flight, and COVID fatigue is very much a real thing.”

Although Whitney no longer has flu-like symptoms and fatigue, she has a lingering sore throat. Willa has no remaining symptoms. A doctor suggested Willa wait to return for a few more days after her mandated quarantine due to possible fatigue, so she scheduled her return flight for Feb. 10. It was also cheaper to fly then, and she was worried that it would take more than two weeks for her to test negative, since some people continue to test positive soon after recovery. However, the College told her she needed to come back by Feb. 4, the earliest possible date she could be out of quarantine. 

“[My dean] told me I should consider taking a gap semester if I came after [Feb. 4] … I would’ve missed too many classes,” she said. “The dean was not very empathetic.”

As an international student, taking an unexpected leave of absence could be especially problematic because of visa expiration. Although Willa emphasized that her professors were kind towards her when she could not attend in-person classes, they refused to let her Zoom into her classes and did not explain why. However, they offered her additional office hours and sent her recordings from equivalent remote lectures from previous semesters. 

After communications with Dean Brown, Slater International Center and student housing, Willa was able to come back on Feb. 4 with money from a college fund paying for her new flight. Although she is jet-lagged and a bit stressed about catching up with schoolwork, she is relieved the situation worked out but somewhat hurt by the way the deans handled her situation. 

“There was so much pressure coming from the College,” she said. “Having a fever, having COVID at the same time was really stressful … I get that it’s really important to tell the College when you’re coming and all that … but you know, they didn’t even care after I booked my flight when I finally told them that I rebooked it. I got no reply back from anyone. They really just wanted to get the job done.” 

*Names have been changed to maintain anonymity.

After years in the industry, she grew tired of its blatant misogyny and switched fields. As a Wellesley graduate, she had “no patience” for dealing with the tech boys’ club culture.

“I was just tired of fighting those battles … and there were opportunities for tech workers in journalism that didn’t exist as clearly when I got out of school,” she said. “It was nice to go to an office space where there were women at all, doing anything.”

This led her to her current position as a staff engineer for the Interactive News team at The Times, where she has worked for almost 10 years. The team, which deals with data and programming, helps create graphs and maps that track COVID-19 cases, the project for which they won the Pulitzer.

“We really understand the terabytes of data we get … and can analyze that correctly to say, ‘Yes, this is the methodology we can use to identify these trends,’” Fehr said.

Although she did not originally plan to work for a newspaper, she was part of The Wellesley News as an undergraduate. She was mostly involved in graphic design, the field she originally thought she wanted to go into after college, although she also wrote some articles. Similarly, at The Times she has occasionally written pieces that have accompanied the data she has worked on. 

“I definitely valued journalism from my experience with The News, which was the first place … I was exposed to most of its concepts,” she said.

Fehr is much happier with the gender dynamics at The Times, but she recognizes that the journalism field still has much more work to do in terms of equality of various kinds. As an engineer surrounded by writers, she has found that the newsroom has more women leaders in general than her data-driven team. Additionally, engineers in positions such as hers make much less than their counterparts doing the same work in more male-dominated startups and tech companies.

“I don’t think The Times or journalism can really pat themselves on the back about the representation of women on the technology side,” Fehr said. “It’s still a battle.”

Fehr also recognizes her privilege in coming from a wealthy background. While switching to a less financially lucrative career for the sake of happiness was risky, she had her family to fall back on if it did not work out.

“Choosing to be in technology in news is kind of saying, ‘I’m not going to be paid a Google-level salary for the work I’m doing even if the work could be similar,’” Fehr said. “Being able to decide that’s okay is either, you’re okay with the mission behind it because you really value journalism … or you are from a place of financial security where that is worthwhile. That is another bridge that the technology industry needs to understand, is shaping other industries because of competitive pay.”

Fehr has been working on the COVID tracking project since March 2020, virtually the start of the pandemic, and her work has gotten easier as the federal government has started releasing more data and vaccines have become available. After winning her Pulitzer, Fehr continues to work on the project with a smaller team. In the future, she hopes to potentially start a new project collecting data on how mask-wearing affects the yearly flu season. 

“COVID will still be around even in low-level exposure,” she said. “Could be we end up morphing to track [the flu] and COVID is just a subtype of the flu numbers or something … We need to get to this winter before we really find out what the cycle is going forward.”

Although Fehr feels honored to have won a Pulitzer, she noted that prior to the event, she hoped that all the finalists would tie. Fehr stressed the importance of every publication’s data contributions during the pandemic.

“I was really hoping [the Pulitzer board] would come up with, ‘Everyone did a public good because the government did such a poor job [tracking and reporting COVID numbers] … Journalism as a whole did a great job covering the government’s ass on this one,’” Fehr said.

Initially, both faculty members and students faced pressing challenges while navigating college amidst the pandemic.

“It was a tumultuous time. Students had a lot of concerns that had nothing to do with school — family, financial, security. And then on top of that, they were expected to do school,” said Physics Professor James Battat. “From the faculty point of view too, there were many who had people to care for at home — be it elders or children.”  

Many students and faculty had not even heard the name “Zoom” before the pandemic. Multiple professors mentioned that navigating the world of Zoom posed several common challenges, such as dealing with the unfamiliarity of its features while working with technical barriers like low internet connectivity. 

The struggle to transition to an online platform was also compounded by the substitution of the semester system with the term system, which involved splitting each semester into two seven-week terms. This required teaching material professors would normally have covered in a whole week within a single 2.5 hour block. 

Besides molding the structure and pedagogy of classes, professors and students also struggled to build community within the virtual space.

“[The community] is such an important part of the college experience,” Economics Professor Pinar Keskin said. “That is something we cannot replicate in any online setup.”

Although adapting was tough, Wellesley’s faculty still strove to create an enriching academic experience. They did so through increased flexibility, new community norms, altered assignment structures and an optimistic and supportive attitude. 

“What was going to be helpful [to students] was being reassuring, providing continuity, providing more policies for late work or for things going wrong, setting up some new norms around issues that may arise during the pandemic and trying to stick with whatever we had decided to do,” Sociology Professor Smitha Radhakrishnan said.

Many professors also added that the adoption of new pedagogies during virtual classes proved to be a silver lining.

“We had for a long time wanted to make some pedagogical changes and we were forced to make those changes [during the pandemic],” Professor Battat said. “A lot of those are going to stay.”

Professors also explored a blended learning approach, which combines online and in-person learning practices in education. For instance, several professors mentioned how recording a Zoom session and sharing it with students unable to attend the session can ensure that no student is left behind. Many professors also use pre-recorded videos from the virtual classes as supplements for their teaching. Another practice several professors have adopted includes having office hours on Zoom or hosting Zoom meetings if they are unable to physically attend meetings.

“We took [the situation] in our stride,” Math Professor Ismar Volić said.“We knew we had to do it and so we went with it.”

Professor Radhakrishnan further expanded on another main change many faculty have made to their teaching methods. A couple of years ago, many faculty were trained on structural inequality and given concrete tactics on how to improve inclusivity in any classroom space, which are being adopted by many professors. 

“The pandemic was a push and an opportunity to really apply this learning,” Professor Radhakrishnan said. 

The virtual learning space also encouraged faculty to explore collaborative and innovative tools like flipped classrooms, where students watch recordings of content and spend class time for problem solving.

“They’ve been doing flipped classrooms in K-12 for a long time, and it’s just not something that we in higher education have been pushed to do before,” Professor Radhakrishnan said.  

After getting through the turbulent year, the Wellesley faculty are excited to physically be back on the campus they have missed so much. 

“We’re basically back to the normal way, just with masks,” Professor Volić said. “We’re just happy that this is happening.”

“I felt so alone,” Moura said. “I felt like I was doing everything completely wrong.”

Similar to Moura, Bianco Po ’22 also elected to take a semester off. Po was persuaded when their study abroad program in Portugal was canceled. While they considered taking the whole year off, they wanted to graduate on time and not overload their senior year. While they enjoyed being closer to friends and family, Po struggled to find purpose in their time off. 

“I just felt like I wasn’t achieving anything,” Po said. “I’m always trying to do the most as many Wellesley students do, so it felt very unfulfilling.”

Unlike Moura and Po, Yihui Liao ’22, Caitlin Gordon ’23 and Nerissa Yiu ’24 all choose to take the whole year off. While Gordon and Yiu will be graduating a year later, and Liao a semester later, all three believe that taking a leave was worth the additional time it will take to graduate. Additionally, Liao, Gordon and Yiu all felt that it was not worth paying the same for remote classes as they would have for in-person learning. 

Although Gordon was initially only planning to take the fall off, once she found out the spring athletic seasons were canceled, she decided it was best to take off both semesters. Additionally, as an international student from Canada, Gordon did not want to risk her safety by flying back to the United States where COVID-19 cases were higher. 

“Wellesley’s expensive and I wouldn’t want to come back to online school or school physically and just have this half experience,” Gordon said. “I’d rather take the time off and get a more normal year.”

Gordon spent her year working at a sky resort as a lift operator and later a camp counselor. She found that her gap year gave her time to “regroup and recollect” herself in a way she’d never had time to before. Liao also felt that her time off gave her the mental break she needed. Both emphasized that taking a break from the “chaotic” Wellesley culture was ultimately beneficial for their mental health and . 

“If you’re feeling really overwhelmed from academics and Wellesley’s environment, I’d recommend [it],” Liao said. “It’s okay to take that time.”

While Yiu enjoyed her gap year, like Moura, she felt isolated from the Wellesley community. Although she was able to maintain some connections to the campus by participating in student organizations, she missed being able to interact with her peers on a daily basis. 

“I don’t think I would have had the circumstance to take a gap year if it weren’t for the [pandemic],” Yiu said. “I honestly sometimes really wish I had been on campus.” 

Yiu also spoke about how difficult it was to transition back into a normal year at Wellesley given that she felt like there was “no support for gap year students.”

Moura shared Yiu’s sentiment, and added that as a sophomore international student, she felt that she received little support from administration to adjust to campus again. According to her, even students who weren’t on campus at all last year, like Moura, weren’t able to attend new student orientation. 

“They never cared,” Moura said.

While Po has been on campus before, they also felt that the transition back to Wellesley was difficult given all the new faces around campus. 

“When I’m walking around campus, I don’t really recognize that many people, which is really strange,” Po said. “Before I felt like I couldn’t walk for more than two minutes without seeing someone I knew.” 

Ultimately, Po, along with Moura, Liao, Gordon and Yiu, are all happy with their decision to take time off. 

“In five to ten years from now, you’re gonna be like, wow, you were smart to take a step back and take a gap year,” Yiu said.