Gabby Stoneking moves into Boling Apartments during the first day of Operation Move In 2020.
Garrett Walker isn’t too worked up about the new safety rules and guidelines at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in response to COVID-19.
“If everyone follows the rules, it’s fine with me,” he said Monday as he moved into West Campus Housing.
But the freshman in computer science plans to follow one guideline scrupulously: hand sanitizing.
“I’m going to use Germ-X a lot, I know that.”
On Monday, freshmen moved into housing across campus during Operation Move In 2020. Unlike previous Move Ins, however, things were a bit more urgent and time-sensitive. To avoid the chance of spreading or getting infected by coronavirus, a set number of students were assigned to 30-minute intervals for taking their belongings into housing. At West Campus, for instance, 10 students were allowed every half hour.
New safety rules also are in place for the entire campus, including the constant wearing of face masks, practicing social distancing and no visitors in campus housing.
“You know, it makes sense to me,” said Emery Benson, who’s majoring in history and living in Boling Apartments. “Humans typically rise to the challenge they’re presented with, and it’s just another cycle in history we’ve got to get through.
“And it will make a good story. I’ll have a mask to show the grandkids and good stories to tell them years down the line.”
His mother, Diane Benson, said she’s “cautiously optimistic.”
“I’ve really liked all the communication that we’ve received from UTC, and that’s kind of eased my mind a little bit,” she said. “It seems like there’s a lot of policies and procedures in place, so that just made me feel a little bit better. It’s hard sending your only kid to college anyway, and this year is extraordinarily different.”
Many students, however, said they weren’t terribly worried about the virus, so they weren’t bothered by the new rules.
Nikki Deknoblough from Summertown, Tennessee, was bothered more about leaving her family than the virus.
“I think it’s just like the flu,” said Deknoblough, a freshman majoring in architectural design.
Abeer Mustafa, associate vice chancellor for Student Affairs at UTC, said she and other university staff were keeping an eye on incoming students, making sure they were following the safety guidelines.
“We are seeing students and families wearing masks and the ones that are not, we’re asking them to mask up,” she said. “They either have it in the car or around their neck, but they are obliging when we’re asking them to mask up.”
Just the fact that students are coming back to campus is a major plus, she added.
“Today, we’ve got 612 students coming in, so we’re super-excited. They’re the life and energy of housing. It’s renewed hope, absolutely.”
Housing complexes across campus had varying numbers of students allowed to bring in their belongings every 30 minutes. At 10 every half hour, West Campus had the most, while Boling allowed from five to seven students at a time throughout the day. Stophel, Walker, Johnson Obear and Decosimo apartments allowed two students at a time, and only one student every half hour could carry stuff into Palmetto Place.
And some students had a lot of stuff.
Shellie Peterson, who drove down from Franklin, Tennessee, with her daughter, Isabella, had to rent a cavernous Ford Expedition to carry everything because they couldn’t squeeze everything into her car—and Isabella’s, too.
“This is not even the first load,” Peterson said as she piled boxes onto a wheeled cart at West Campus.
Many carts—often pushed by parents—were loaded to the ramparts with coffeemakers in boxes, plastic tubs full of odds and ends and garbage bags stuffed with clothes. At times, items would tumble off especially full carts, landing with solid thunks on the concrete. Some students had so much, their parents rented U-Haul trucks to carry it all.
While acknowledging that the coronavirus made her nervous by dropping off her daughter—an interior architecture major—at a school two hours away, Peterson said she was “just going to pray for the best.”
“I’m nervous, but she lost the last part of her senior year, and I didn’t want to take this away from her,” she said.
Brad Hall, also from Franklin, was helping his daughter, Evelyn, move in to Boling. Having had two other daughters move away to go to college, he’s familiar with the process, saying it’s both sad and exciting. This year, there’s an added worry.
“You don’t want anybody to get sick, but you don’t want them to miss out on this part of their life, either,” he said. “So as long as they social distance and wear their masks, I think they’re going to be all right.”
Prayer was the answer for Jeremy Hagewood from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, who was helping his daughter, Cora, carry her stuff into West Campus.
“I’m a little bit nervous,” he said. “She’s my little girl.”
His “little girl,” though, was eager to get her college life rolling.
“Honestly, I’m glad we get to be here,” said Cora Hagewood, a finance and accounting major. “We’re all trying to be safe and, as long as we’re safe here, I would rather be here than not.”
As a history major, Emery Benson took a long-term view of COVID-19 and its ultimate effect on society.
“There’s so much trouble and hard times in the history of the world,” said the Honors College student. “When it comes down to it, I still get to come and get my education. I still get to live on campus, which is great. In the end I’m still getting what I came here for, and I can look at that and say, ‘You know, I didn’t lose what mattered.’ So I’m OK.”
