From missed traditions to recession, COVID-19 forces college seniors into the unknown
When the University of Kansas broke for spring break on March 6, KU senior Seth Wingerter and a few friends headed south to New Orleans for their final college vacation. Wingerter, a senior finance major, planned to enjoy one last lick of freedom before graduating and entering the workforce.
The trip was short. Wingerter returned home days before the spread of the new coronavirus was deemed a pandemic. Across the United States, the alarm hadn’t been sounded yet.
Then the images started to flow on social media. Four days after leaving New Orleans, he saw videos of police going through Bourbon Street to break up crowds.
“It was a really interesting dichotomy,” Wingerter said. “Everyone continuing on as usual to four days later, seeing surreal images of a pandemic, just really cracking down like you would only see in movies.”
At the University of Missouri, many seniors aren’t able to travel at all for one last hurrah. Spring break started Monday, but because of shutdowns across the country and fears of spreading the coronavirus, members of the Class of 2020 are socially isolated in Columbia or their hometowns.
It’s not the final spring break many students planned months in advance.
“I was going to go somewhere, but I ended up staying in my apartment in Columbia,” MU senior Sarah Hallam said. “It’s just like a weird mood around. I think most people went home. It’s pretty sad.”
This year’s batch of graduating seniors battles unprecedented conditions as they finish their final few months of college. Courses are all being taught remotely for the rest of the semester at many colleges, meaning seniors have already walked in and out of their final in-person college class.
Some commencements have been canceled, like at Kansas State University. While commencement hasn’t been postponed or canceled at Mizzou and KU, stricter laws around the country limiting group events put a graduation ceremony into question.
More importantly, the seniors are entering an economy likely heading into a recession, coupled with worries of job availability.
“It’s been a lot of everything’s up in the air,” KU senior Shelby Mufford said. “No one has anything to go off of.”
Graduating into uncertainty
MU senior Cal Schmiedeskamp was preparing for his first steps out of college, planning to fully use his sports management degree. A St. Louis native, he interviewed with the Cardinals for an open position a few weeks ago, a potential dream job with a Major League Baseball team.
But as sports leagues around the country suspended their seasons — including the NCAA canceling its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and all of its spring championship events — it threw a major wrench in his plans. After MLB shut down spring training, Schmiedeskamp received an email last week from the Cardinals explaining how they’ve frozen hiring.
“It’s been stressful,” Schmiedeskamp said of the job hunt. “It’s just strange. I see it being pushed back and pushed back until sports are back.”
It’s a similar tune in other industries, Wingerter said. Fortunately, Wingerter has a job lined up. He was hired in the fall as a merchandiser in training at The Andersons trade group in Overland Park. It’s considered an essential business, and as of now, the company still plans to bring him on June 1.
But he’s one of the lucky ones.
“A lot of my friends who are my age, graduating seniors, they were using this semester as ‘I’ll do mock interviews’ or (get the) interview process starting now,” said Mufford, an economics major. “Without those resources, they don’t really get that opportunity. They’re kind of shafted of that chance.”
As stay-at-home orders like in Kansas City and elsewhere in the country take place, it means little to no service industry jobs, Mufford said. While some students take a job as a waiter in between jobs, even that option isn’t available for the foreseeable future.
There’s also the logistical issues of navigating the final few months of college, Wingerter said. The finance major lived in a fraternity house at Lawrence, but once that was shut down, he returned home to Olathe, where he plans to stay for the next few months.
Some seniors, like Schmiedeskamp, plan to stay on campus but only as long as his current internship will allow. Once it wraps up in mid-April, he said he was unsure what his next plans are, considering his courses are online.
When the NCAA canceled winter and spring sports championships, it had a trickle down effect to club sports. Mufford, president of the KU softball club, saw their season end just as abruptly as varsity student-athletes.
“It’s not great,” Mufford said. “As a senior, you’re looking forward to your last this, your last that. To not be able to get walk on campus to class again as a student, or not get to enter a dugout with the teammates that you developed the last four years. It sucks.”
Commencement fate
For Mufford and MU senior Rachel Zalucki, they’ve been looking forward to graduation since they stepped foot on campus. Both are first-generation college students; commencement was always going to have extra meaning, Zalucki said.
The ceremonies’ fates are up in the air. In addition to K-State, the University of Michigan, University of Colorado and others have already canceled their commencements.
Mufford sees the writing on the wall, though she said she’s still hoping for the best.
“Parents, cousins, siblings, nobody in my life has gone to college,” Mufford said. “For me personally, I have been looking forward to graduation to say I did it. I get to walk down the Hill with my friends. I get to do all these things. It’s my day.
“But being that there’s a chance that’s not going to happen, it’s gonna suck. I don’t know any other way to put it.”
Zalucki said she hopes Mizzou postpones graduation until it’s safe, though she added she understands with nobody sure of an exact timeline, it poses logistical problems. She didn’t even have a chance to buy her cap and gown because she was at a national journalism conference, where about two dozen MU students and faculty faced a coronavirus scare.
Seniors will also miss out on school traditions without a graduation.
At MU, the college experience starts with Tiger Walk. Freshmen walk through the columns toward Jesse Hall, signifying their entrance into Mizzou. Once they graduate, they walk the other way through the columns, toward Columbia, symbolizing the finality of college.
At KU, students walk from the Campanile bell tower down the hill to Memorial Stadium, where the graduation ceremony begins.
“It’s disappointing because pretty much every other Jayhawk for years has been able to have the opportunity to do that,” Wingerter said. “It’s unprecedented to say the least for KU.”
For graduating seniors, their last in-person college class came and went with little warning. Universities across the country have transitioned to online-only courses to limit the spread of coronavirus.
After years of working toward graduation and starting a career, the Class of 2020 instead treks into the unknown.
“I don’t think I ever got any closure,” Zalucki said. “It kind of seemed like one of those things where the end could’ve been tomorrow or next year. The end of the confusion and the end of anxiety and the stress. We didn’t know how close or far the end was.”