By Rebecca Gagnon ’23
Features Editor
A view from the ground of Mount Holyoke’s Ham Hall.
Life at Mount Holyoke has not been the same since COVID-19 spread across the world over a year ago. One area of the community that endured substantial change was Residential Life, constantly needing to shift the number of students allowed to live in dorms during the 2020-21 academic year. The College’s plans changed from allowing the full number of students on campus, to partial capacity, to almost no students during the fall semester and then back to partial capacity during the spring. However, the 2021-22 academic year now presents more challenges as the Mount Holyoke campus returns to full capacity, bringing the campus back to life.
Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life Rachel Alldis described the processes that took place last year as housing was being sorted, saying, “We had done housing lottery and then we got rid of all those rooms. Then we did the first year, second year housing and then all those people left. [Finally] we did the mandated housing, or the ‘have to be here housing.’” The mandatory housing was for international students, students with internet connection issues at home and other similar instances in which students needed to live on campus.
After all of the shifts of the past year, the College was finally able to open in spring 2021 at partial capacity, allowing some students to live on campus. “We felt like we’ve had time to create the processes and figure out what works,” Alldis said. “We were able to test our testing system and we were able to see how the things we put in place for safety for the students who were here worked, and we felt like we could bring more people back. So we thought again, we wanted to stick to singles, but we can have half of you [students] here, and so that’s what we offered … but in the end, less than half wanted to be here.”
Though they comprised less than half of the student body, some students did take the chance to resume their college experience and returned to campus. However, for safety reasons, there were many rules and regulations put in place for the students who did choose to come back.
“I was on campus for the 2021 spring semester and that was kind of odd,” Lauren Gruen ’23 recalled. Gruen continued to explain that the precautions, such as being tested twice a week, wearing a mask at nearly all times and the travel restrictions made the experience strange. Gruen was also a residential advisor and had to enforce these and other restrictions.
“A facet of COVID that impacted ResLife,” Gruen recalled, “is that students couldn’t have more than one other person in their dorm room, and that other person needed to be a resident of their same building. So, if you lived in Porter and you had a friend in Buck, that … friend in Buck would not be permitted to be in Porter.”
These rules and regulations were put in place for the safety of the students as the College navigated how best to allow the community to grow in the middle of a pandemic. It is unclear which precautions will remain in the upcoming year.
“What I imagine will happen, but nothing is confirmed yet … is that we might see some more restrictions at the start of the year, because I do know we will have a number of international students coming in that maybe weren’t able to get the vaccine before coming to campus, so the first six weeks will be used to get them vaccinated,” Alldis said. “Then once they are, we will have a better percentage [of students vaccinated] on campus to release some restrictions.” Alldis also foresees masks will still need to be worn indoors in some places and testing will still exist in some capacity, at least initially.
While the College is still deciding which of these precautions are needed to support this coming capacity shift, Residential Life is reacting to this drastic change as it relates to dorms and housing.
“We thought at first we were still going to have to be a little limiting with numbers, because we were nervous about using triples and we were nervous about using suites,” Alldis explained. “Then, the College made the decision to mandate the vaccine and a lot of our fears went away. … We saw improvements coming because the vaccine had been distributed and because more things were opening up on campus so we decided … we can use triples, we can use suites, but we are holding apartments still mostly to offer as potential quarantine and isolation spaces if necessary. … There’s very few beds that will be offline, and we are hoping to have most students back and living on campus.”
Alldis continued to explain that Residential Life is also going to be more flexible with some students living off but close to campus due to potential anxiety surrounding living in a dorm at the moment. She also stressed students are living near campus, not at home, because all classes are returning to in-person in the upcoming year, though the College is trying to be as accommodating to students’ needs as possible.
Another change to the 2021-22 housing situation was the timing of the housing lottery. Currently, the housing lotteries for seniors begin June 22 and single housing lotteries for juniors begin June 25.
“Typically we do the housing lottery in April but we were still figuring out some of the plans, and we wanted to do it a little later this year, so if things shifted, we were only doing one housing process instead of three, like last summer.,” Alldis said. Additionally, apartments weren’t a part of this year’s housing lottery.
Although Gruen is now assigned her dorm, being an RA, she has had experience with the housing lottery previously.
“My advice,” Gruen said, “is if you like the building you are living in, you are going to like the room.” She also suggests decorating your room, as it can help it feel like a home. Gruen mentioned other tips, such as saving all the rooms you like while being open to rooms in other dorms as well, to consider that there can be too big a room (because it may get lonely) and finally, being completely honest on the roommate survey.
“I had really good luck on the [roommate] survey,” Gruen said. “Because both me and my roommate wrote an absurd amount in our description, like way too much, but what ended up coming from that was that we were both compatible, and that worked out really well for me and we are still good friends.” Gruen continued, “People have a mentality of ‘oh, I’m not that messy’ or ‘oh, I don’t need to be friends with my roommate,’ but if that is something that you have been picturing … and that is something that is important to you, then make sure you say it is. Please, please don’t lie on your roommate form; if you know you’re messy, then say you’re messy.”
“My best piece of advice,” Alldis said, “is to be open to all of the residence halls, because you can be a part of shaping the community and atmosphere that you want.”