Seniors Spend Quarantine in Lexington to Preserve Last Months of College

As college campuses across the nation are closing due to COVID-19, the students of the tight-knit Washington & Lee community are trying their best to cope with the changes without being in the environment they know and love.

“My first thought was, wow, this is like a different planet,” Director of Student Activities Kelsey Goodwin said. “Time to board the spaceship and launch to a different planet.”

A month and a half ago, students were informed that the W&L campus would be closing, those living on campus would have to vacate, and classes would resume online. Just months shy of graduation, seniors said goodbye to their last moments as students on campus. While many students stay connected from home and across the country via Zoom video chat, over 100 seniors stay in Lexington.

“My heart really goes out for the senior class. I mean, we were some distance from graduation,” Goodwin said. “They missed a lot: your last opportunity for Fancy Dress, spring break. Just a lot of things that come with wrapping up the W&L experience.”

Seniors took the news especially hard because their time as college students on campus came to an end in a matter of seconds.

“I would say the initial feeling that Friday evening for our senior class was, if it could be described in one word, probably denial,” said Hugh Crump, who graduated in December 2019 but has been living off campus.

Many seniors spent the next few days saying goodbye to underclassmen. To their knowledge, they may not be seeing their younger friends until Alumni Weekend next fall, Crump said.

“What I felt when I heard the news was, ‘this is probably the last time me and all of my friends are going to be together and my last time with the younger grades,’ so that was probably the biggest bummer of all time,” Senior Marshall Dike said.

When the news was announced, many students expected to carry on a social life similar to their time at W&L, Crump said.

“I think most of us kind of imagined still having that Wednesday, Friday, Saturday night routine,” Crump said. “Even sitting around a fire, even if there’s just a couple dozen of us here.”

However, as the gravity of the virus became apparent, students’ expectations weren’t fully met.

The Lexington Police have reached out to the Campus Community Coalition, an organization that helps communication between W&L campus and the community, and informed them that they will be strictly enforcing social distancing, Crump said. 

“They didn’t want to see a fire by Windfall at night and 50 people sitting around it, or they didn’t want to see 100 people over by the Poles hanging out,” Crump said. “I would say the restrictions have kind of limited what everybody was expecting.”

Though social interaction like before is now limited, students in Lexington are taking advantage of the beautiful nature in Rockbridge County and finding new ways to stay occupied.

“There are a lot of things on my bucket list, like hiking House Mountain, long kayaks in the maury, and things like that that I haven’t done and am going to be able to do now that I’ve stayed here,” Crump said. “This lockdown has provided the perfect opportunity to do all those things.”

Senior Roby Mize gets a hair cut on his front porch. The barber gave 15 haircuts in the neighborhood.

Students have been creating new and fun activities to pass the time with friends. The Windfall dance floor is now a dining room, the Pumptown dance floor is now a movie theatre, and porches have become makeshift barber shops, Crump said.

“There are a lot of things on my bucket list, like hiking House Mountain, long kayaks in the maury, and things like that that I haven’t done and am going to be able to do now that I’ve stayed here,”

Crump said.

“This lockdown has provided the perfect opportunity to do all those things.”.

We’ll do painting together, do some random activity together, which we didn’t really do before,” said Sara Spain, a senior still living off campus in Lexington. “We’ve really been more intentional about hanging out.”

Although the seniors are among friends, Lexington is not the same.

“When we go on walks and things the streets are just deserted. It’s like a ghost town,” Spain said. “There’s too much free time I think, and so it gets kind of depressing.”

Many student-favorite restaurants in Lexington have closed as well. Others remain open for take out and even delivery.

“Palms and Blue Sky are probably the two biggest disappointments because they are completely closed, Crump said.

“They arent even doing a takeout option.”

Hugh Crump ‘24

Kelsey Goodwin is trying to keep students connected and in the spirit of W&L without being in Lexington.

“It’s so antithetical in a lot of ways. With the small liberal arts experience that you get at W&L, it was hard to imagine what W&L would look like online,” Goodwin said. “We tend to have such personal relationships with faculty here, and it’s such a big part of the W&L community.

Because a large part of Goodwin’s role on campus is keeping students engaged, happy, and healthy, she has experimented with ways to keep students involved while they’re across the country. She’s created a virtual book club, a pen pal program, and zoom hang outs so students can bring W&L spirit back into their lives at home, she said.

“We’ve been throwing things against the wall to see if they stick,” Goodwin said. “I think there’s something to be said for what I see students doing on social media and all the other ways they connect, is really being more intentional about trying to send out messages of positivity, trying to connect with classmates online, in a way that feels like, ‘we’re all here for each other.’”

The W&L community has been showing support for seniors as best they can, but it’s hard to make up for the time being lost, Goodwin said. Since graduation has been postponed, there isn’t currently an opportunity to honor the seniors.

“I don’t know if there’s ever going to be much closure. I feel like it was an abrupt ending, and I don’t even know how to figure that out,” Dike said. “Usually graduation is the kind of closure, and you have a couple of months to prepare for that closure.”

The whole W&L community will grieve the absence of seniors and remember the impact their class had on campus life.

“The whole week leading up to [commencement] is just really meaningful and emotional to those of us who have gotten to bond with you guys for four years, and all of it got kind of taken away,” Goodwin said. “I feel bad for them, and I feel selfishly sorry for myself because I missed those opportunities to honor students and celebrate students.

Dike said he hopes that W&L announces a plan for graduation soon so he knows he’ll see everyone in Lexington one last time.

“I assure you that we will find an occasion to mark this milestone properly here in Lexington when it is once again safe to do so,” W&L President Will Dudley said in an email to all students.