The glass table where Kaye Paddyfote attended Professor Khalilah Brown-Dean’s lecture on America’s prison system was spotless. Not a crumb was left from the cupcakes sitting on the nearby counter from a roommate’s birthday the night before.

That spotless table, and the leaves of northern Hamden’s forest peering in the window behind her, will be Paddyfote’s main classroom for three of her five courses at Quinnipiac University this semester. The only classmates with her in person will be the portraits her housemates painted a few weeks ago at a painting event that now sit on the windowsill.

But, she said, life as a student doesn’t actually feel that different.

Students like Paddyfote (pictured above) have begun a grand experiment this fall: How to retain as much of a “normal” college life as possible during a pandemic. Like a larger group of students than usual at all area colleges and universities, she is living off campus, and functioning partly as a “remote” student, partly as an in-person student on a dramatically changed campus.

Instructors like Laura Willis, an associate professor of health and strategic communication, are also navigating the same experiment, in how to juggle remote and in-person duties at the same time.

Paddyfote’s and Willis’s first week illustrated the challenges and changes students and professors face in the hybrid experiment, and the ways they’re setting out to adjust.

Paddyfote is a senior journalism major at Quinnipiac with a minor in political science. She’s the news director of the university’s TV station, Q30 TV, and works two jobs. In a few weeks, if the university still allows it, she’ll start club lacrosse as well.

As Paddyfote sat at the large glass table in her dining room, her roommates sat nearby in the living room watching TV. She chooses to work in the dining room because it helps her focus, she said. If she stayed in her room, there would be too many distractions, but something about the hard, cold table keeps her alert.

Doing class in the dining room motivates her to keep her living spaces clean. If this past Tuesday’s spotless table surface was any indication, she and her housemates have done well so far.

Despite the odd class locations, the empty campus, and the inability to read people’s facial expressions under masks, Paddyfote said her life does not feel terribly different. The classes, jobs, and activities she does still happen, though with less face-to-face interaction. She and her friends still have visitors to their house, just not in large groups.

“The only difference is that you’re just not getting everything at once,” she said of her pandemic senior year. “And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

Right around when Paddyfote was finishing her morning Zoom lecture, Associate Professor Willis was beginning the first in-person session of an undergraduate research methods course. She was in a classroom on campus, teaching both to a room full of masked students sitting six feet apart and to a cohort of students scattered throughout various bedrooms and living rooms, visible to Willis only as boxes on a screen.

In a way, Willis, like Paddyfote, was doing what she normally would, but not all at once. She was teaching, as she normally would. But she didn’t have all her students in the room with her. And she had already recorded a lecture that students had watched before class. In a normal semester, the lecture and students gathering would all happen in a single class period.

But in another way, as Willis stood in a classroom in a mask teaching to both a room and computer screen full of students, she did have to deal with everything at once in a way teaching had not required before. To begin with, there was the material. Then there was the fear of a deadly disease looming, which in the classroom meant watching to make sure every mask was on and everyone was still sitting six feet apart. Then there were the students in the room, whose faces she could not fully see to gauge comprehension. There were the students on the computer, whom she wanted to include in the discussion as much as the students in the classroom. Then there were the mute and unmute buttons she needed to keep pressing to make sure everyone, whether in the classroom or in a bedroom at home, could hear everyone else and be heard.

Willis gave a short sigh when asked what that experience is like.

“The primary word I have used this week,” she said, “is overwhelming.”

The Flow Shifts

Paddyfote’s first week of in-person classes began with a Zoom class. At 10 a.m. Monday, she got on her laptop in her dining room and tuned in to introduction to women’s and gender studies.

Then she drove to campus. At the entrance, she had to scan her student ID so the university could confirm she had gotten two negative tests before she entered the gate.

She got on her phone and ordered an omelet from the dining hall. She went to a room in the student center where she picked it up. She had to walk in one way and out the other.

Next, she went to the public safety headquarters, where she works as a student worker. Normally, she would be one of two people sitting at the desk. But because the room is small, there can only be one now. She said sometimes she prefers being there alone, since it allows her to get more work done. Mostly, she just sits at the desk, though sometimes if someone needs a ride somewhere or needs help, she’ll go pick them up in a cart.

When she was done, she wiped off the table and chair where she sat and headed to her first in-person class: sports broadcasting. Except she was in the half of the class that did not actually get to go to class that day.

This past Monday was the first day of in-person class this year. Classes began online on Aug. 24. (Read a previous article about the university’s reopening plans here.)

While the professor taught students in a studio nearby, Paddyfote and half the class sat in a separate classroom tuning in on Zoom. They sat masked, six feet apart, each tuning in separately on their own computer.

But some students had forgotten earphones, and had to play the audio out loud. The sound of multiple computers playing the same Zoom stream garbled the sound. Everyone shut off their sound and just listened to the audio of one student who did not have earphones.

It was funny at first, but those kinds of sound problems will probably get annoying, said Paddyfote.

Partway through the class, the two halves of the class would normally switch places. On this day, though, the sun was out, and the whole class went outside where everyone could sit far apart.

Of Paddyfote’s five classes, three are fully remote. Two are partly in-person, partly online.

After class, Paddyfote went home, where she celebrated one of her housemates’ birthdays with cupcakes the mother had dropped off and a cake another housemate had bought.

Paddyfote said living off campus with roommates has helped create a sense of normalcy because it allows her to continue seeing people, even while the rest of campus is shut down

“The benefit of having other roommates is having more interaction,” she said.

Fewer On Campus

Paddyfote is one of many Quinnipiac students living off campus in houses throughout Hamden. Off-campus students have often received the ire of residents, who lodge complaints at the university about reckless drivers, parties, and noise. While town-gown tensions have abated somewhat in the last year as town and university officials have opened up a healthier dialogue that many in Hamden say is a step in the right direction, students and landlords do continue to raise the hackles of some residents. The Independent receives photos periodically of five or six cars in a driveway from residents who drove around town documenting the many landlords who violate the town’s four-student-per-house rule.

Colleges and universities in the area have seen decreases in the number of students living on campus this fall. At Yale, only about 1,900 of the 5,200 enrolled undergraduates at Yale are in the dorms; 1,600 are living off-campus in New Haven, and 1,700 are studying remotely.

Southern Connecticut State University anticipates that about 20 percent of undergraduates will live on-campus this fall, though that figure is not yet official. Last fall, 29 percent of undergraduates lived on campus. At Albertus Magnus, 40 percent of undergrads are on campus this semester, compared to 52 percent during the fall semester last year. (Quinnipiac spokesperson John Morgan said the university does not have data yet on how many students are living on and off campus.)

For Paddyfote, living off campus has allowed this semester to not feel quite so alien so far. As a senior, she already has a set friend group. She does not have to go out and meet people in order to create a social circle. She and her roommates have been able to have friends over to their house, though no parties. If she were living on campus, as she did for her first three years, she would not be able to have any guests at all.

“If I was a freshman student, I think it would be harder to make friends, especially because the first two weeks you couldn’t really leave your room. There was nothing to do,” she said.

“Overwhelming”

For Willis (pictured), the first week of in-person classes was anything but normal.

This semester, Willis comes to campus only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She teaches four classes, three of which meet in person. The fourth is fully online only because of scheduling. It meets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while all of her others are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since the university wants faculty to minimize the amount of time they spend on campus, her fourth class has to be remote so she doesn’t come every day.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she holds office hours over Zoom for her remote public speaking class from 9 – 10 a.m. Instead of having a live lecture, she prerecords lectures, gives assignments, and lets students “meet” with her, virtually.

Tuesdays, she has two sections of undergraduate research methods, both in person, in the afternoon. She then goes to her on-campus office, eats, and preps for her evening class, which is a graduate research methods course from 6:30 to 9:15.

Thursdays, she has the two undergraduate research methods classes again, in person.

Teaching classes in person and over Zoom at the same time has been an exercise in having “more balls in the air than I have been trained to juggle,” she said.

“Having to think about what is the experience of my campus students and making sure that they feel safe and I feel safe being in a closed room with no windows that open is primary in my head, as well as wanting to make sure my online students don’t feel that they’re second class,” she said.

On top of worrying about feeling safe and catering to two sets of students at the same time, she has to make sure the right computers are muted and unmuted. She has a computer, as well as a Zoom cart that projects students on Zoom onto a screen and allows remote and in-person students to talk to each other. When she is talking, it makes sense to have her computer unmuted but the Zoom cart muted so there isn’t an echo. When remote students talk, she has to switch.

“That’s what makes me feel like I can’t cognitively engage with the material in the way that I would like in my classroom,” she said.

Contributed photo

Willis’s home office.

Willis now spends much of her time at work in her home office. Before the pandemic, it was just an extra room she used for crafts, but in March, she quickly had to transform it into an office from which she could record lectures. Most of her classes this semester use flipped classroom models, where she prerecords a lecture that students watch on their own time, and then class time is used for work and discussion.

When she does come to campus, there are no more impromptu encounters or chats with colleagues and students. Before, she would have had her office door open most of the time so students could stop by. Now, she keeps it closed.

“I will not go to any building I do not have to go to. I will not be purchasing any food on campus,” she said. “This is not normal.”

Unheeded Stickers

Early Tuesday afternoon, cars were lined up bumper to bumper on Mt. Carmel Avenue waiting to get into the university’s parking lot. At the entrance, a security worker was scanning cards. Only Quinnipiac affiliates are allowed on campus. No visitors may enter.

Paddyfote said the lines have been longer than normal because of the card checking.

But once she is on campus, it feels empty, both she and Willis said.

Paddyfote said fewer people are sitting outside on the grass. In general, there are fewer students walking around.

Willis, who spends most of her week now at home in Northford, said it feels strange arriving on campus.

“Going onto campus is odd because it is very quiet. It feels like what campus normally feels like in the weeks before a semester starts, or maybe over spring break,” she said.

The process of arriving, too is odd. She has to check in on a symptom tracker app to verify that she is not feeling any symptoms, and has not come in contact with a Covid-positive person in the last 14 days.

Once on campus, arrows point where to go and stickers indicate where to sit and where not to sit.

In the dining hall, the university has placed stickers on the tables in front of chairs. Green stickers with white check marks indicate where it’s ok to sit. Black stickers with an image of someone sitting crossed out in red indicate where not to.

But there are still chairs in front of all the places at the table, and students so far have frequently ignored the stickers telling them where not to sit, said Paddyfote. She said she’s seen more people out of compliance in the dining hall than elsewhere on campus, but in classrooms too, all the chairs are still there. She said she hasn’t seen people enforcing the rules.

If the university hasn’t cracked down yet, some students are taking it into their own hands. An Instagram account @QU_unmasked has begun posting photos of people violating social distancing and mask guidelines.

Willis said that so far in her classes, she hasn’t had anyone sit too close or take off a mask. But after class one day, she saw a student in a study room without a mask. She tapped on the window and pointed at her mouth to tell the student to put a mask on.

“It just takes some lax behavior some of the time before this becomes more of a problem,” she said.

This story was produced with financial support from Solutions Journalism Network.

Previous stories:

• 2 Campuses, Week 1: Zoom vs. Zip
• Albertus Continues Convocation Tradition, With A Twist
• Yalies Begin 14-Day Dorm Quarantines
• Future Mechanics Return To Class In Person

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