For the first time in what seems a lifetime, but is just over a year, we can see a glimmer of hope for better times ahead, even as we watch other countries experience the dire conditions we went through just a few months ago. The pandemic changed everything. It changed the way we attended class, the way we socialized and the way The Hawk staff reported stories.
In this, our final issue for spring 2021, The Hawk is giving a voice to members of the St. Joe’s community, so that we can collectively reflect on the challenges, the memories and the hardships that we lived through during the pandemic. We asked students, faculty, staff and administrators six questions:
- What is your last normal memory from before the pandemic?
- When did you realize the pandemic was about to change life as you knew it?
- What was your biggest challenge of the pandemic year?
- Given what you know now, what would tell your March 2020 self?
- In 10 years, what will you tell people about what it was like to be a student professor, staff or administrator, during the pandemic?
- What do you most look forward to in “normal times”?
We wanted to capture the loneliness from the days of stay-at-home orders and the fear that suddenly came with buying groceries and going to stores, especially in the early days. We wanted to hear about the anxiety that came from friends shuffling in and out of quarantine spaces and the worry of ending up in the same situation. We wanted to acknowledge the immense impact of COVID-19 and institutional racism on the members of our BIPOC community. We wanted to know what it felt like to walk around a mostly barren campus this past year all the while hoping that one of the four people we passed on the way to class was someone we know well enough to say “hi.” Even then, was it really them behind the mask?
Life as we knew it was pushed behind masks, behind computer screens, behind the walls of our rooms. As people were forced to seclude in their own worlds, the importance of reliable, accessible, fact-based journalism became all the more necessary. Informing the St. Joe’s community has always been at the core of The Hawk’s mission, but when the health and safety of the people at St. Joe’s is at stake, our obligation to accuracy and facts were all the more important.
Our over 200 stories on the coronavirus pandemic and systemic racism between Jan. 28, 2020 and April 27, 2021 have been reflective of the highs and lows of a past year that was unlike any other. As cases spiked, we told stories about what life was like in quarantine and isolation as well as about the ethics of mitigation strategies like entry testing or vaccine distribution. We also wrote affirmative stories that came from this pandemic-marred year: students creating their own businesses, clubs persisting through restrictions to continue their work, Hawk sports teams resuming the games they loved.
At the core of our reporting over the past year has been our desire to address the toll that the compounding pandemics of coronavirus and racism have had on our students, faculty and staff of color, as well as on members of our neighboring West Philadelphia community. The Hawk has covered extensively the additional burdens that marginalized communities have carried in the past year, whether that be through lacking accessibility to testing and vaccines, or through racially motivated hate and oppression.
This year will undoubtedly be remembered just as members of the community told us they would remember it in 10 years: “tiring,” “mentally draining,” “challenging,” “anxious,” “lonely.” But we also will remember it as one in which we persevered. And that glimmer of hope, it’s growing.
Sincerely,
Ryan Mulligan ’21
Editor in Chief
