November
2020
2020
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FNEWSMAG.COM
Ah, college — the great leveler. According to countless platitudes and Hollywood movies, college is where the cool kids lose their clout, where first-years make lifelong friendships, and where, if you’re lucky, you might have a great, A24-film-esque Coming Of Age™ experience.
It probably comes as no surprise that such glossy dreams were dead on arrival the minute the world officially went into isolation. This fall, SAIC faced an unprecedented challenge — maintain excellent standards of education across both virtual and in-person modes, while also managing to keep over 3,500 students safe and COVID-free. Social distancing and isolation measures, following SAIC’s Make Ready framework, are, of course, necessary. But what of the pandemic first-year, those unfortunate souls who had the good fortune to be admitted to SAIC, but the misfortune of being admitted — and for some, moving across states, or even oceans — during a worldwide health crisis? How are they navigating these strange and unfamiliar times?
The pandemic first-year’s social experience at SAIC appears to be, across the board, one of resounding loneliness. “In the first week that I moved here,” says first-year Ryan Shultis (BFA 2024), “every time me and my roommate heard a noise in the hallway, we would run out to check if it had been made by someone we could talk to.” However, according to Shultis, those frantic attempts hardly ever paid off, as one “rarely ever sees people in the [residence hall] hallways,” even after two months into the term.
Shultis is not alone in his despair. Other first-years report feeling similarly desperate upon moving in, scrambling to make human contact with anyone who so much as passed them in the corridors. However, while this rush to make connections initially led to some early friendships forming, these did not always last in the long run.
“Instead of finding people you get along with best, you just cling on to people you first meet,” said Ally Walsh (BFA 2024). Fellow first-year Frankie Rose Winum (BFA 2024) also commented on this phenomenon, stating that these types of early, codependent friendships “grow toxic on both sides, and fall apart in the worst way possible.” Both Walsh and Winum agreed that the landscape of most first-year friend groups they knew, or were involved in, had changed vastly between the start of term and the current moment, due to this toxic dynamic.
Incoming graduate students are also faced with comparable woes. While perhaps not as pressed to piece together a quintessential college social experience right off the bat, post-baccalaureate and MFA students new to SAIC are still struggling to assimilate socially. The graduate newcomer’s experience is perhaps best summed up by Qianying Niu (MFA VCD 2022), who commented, “I feel excited to make friends but I don’t know where to start.” Niu’s colleague Tetiana Zakaliuk (MFA VCD 2022) expressed similar sentiments, stating that she does not have a friend group, and has thus far been unable to meet and connect with any fellow students from her online classes.
Even those comfortable with making friends at a slower pace are feeling some strain on their social lives. Anna Lee Cai (MFA VCD 2022) notes that, although she is “pretty content with the pace of meeting new people” during the pandemic, she is admittedly “not forging relationships in the same way that she had sans pandemic.”
“I don't think the quality of conversation over a digital space can compare to in-person encounters,” says Cai, who went on to explain that in-person encounters “lend more to chance and physical chemistry too.”
Despite incoming graduate students being able to work in person on campus in personal studio spaces, this has not been conducive to forging friendships within their respective cohorts either. Niu works in her studio regularly, but reports that there is “not too much talk” whenever she is present, and such an atmosphere does not lend itself to making introductions and building relationships. Zakaliuk, on the other hand, is “not spending a lot of time [in my studio] this year, because the space feels so empty that it gives me anxiety.”
Zakaliuk, who previously attended SAIC in 2018-19 to complete a post-baccalaureate in Visual Communication Design, recalls the vibrance of studio life pre-pandemic as a long-gone golden age. “The studios were a place where all of us would do homework, help each other with short critiques, or explain projects,” she explains. “It was also a place where we would hang out, have pizza parties, and just talk to each other while sipping tea or coffee.” Zakaliuk saw her studio buddies as “family, with whom you went through hard times, deadlines, and Crit Week together.” Sadly, due to the de-densification of studio spaces and guidelines on social distancing, such camaraderie is now a thing of the past.
SAIC-organized events, both in-person and remote, do not appear to be the panacea that the Student Life department might have hoped for, either. Some events have put students off from attending any future SAIC-organized gatherings, whether remote or in-person. Shultis recalled his experience at SAIC’s Virtual Prom — a Zoom event organized to introduce the incoming Class of 2024 in a faux-online-prom setting — as being “so awkward” that it put him off attending any other SAIC-organized virtual event.
“I was there for five minutes and I was so horrified, I almost didn’t even come to the school,” joked Shultis.
Additionally, not many students in residence halls, let alone first-years, report actually having attended these events, and those living outside SAIC residence halls remain mostly unaware that these events exist. When I brought up SAIC-organized events, most students interviewed said that they had not participated in any, and Zakaliuk, a first-year MFA student, told me that this was the first she had ever heard of them.
However, this is not a failure on the part of the SAIC organizations — namely Residence Life, Campus Life, Multicultural Affairs, and the Nuveen Centre for International Student Learning — in charge of these events. Rather, it is a first attempt to make sense of a changed college landscape. Daniel Boucher, the Assistant Director of Residence Life for Conduct and Special Programs, said that “the Nuveen Center staff began this year not fully knowing what to expect,” and that this year “definitely stretched our creativity with programming” in order to allow participation from international students taking classes remotely from their home countries.
Low attendance does not necessarily signify problems with the current line-up of events at SAIC either. “We recognize that students have a lot on their plate with classes, studio time, work, and personal commitments, which can limit the amount of time students have to attend Residence Life programming,” said Abigail Holcomb, the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for Residence Life. According to Holcomb, variance in attendance numbers across events has been the case for Residence Life events “in all years,” and is not an indicator of the success of those events.
“While high attendance is great,” added Katrina Valera, Director of Multicultural Affairs, “it’s not a requirement to have a good experience.”
Furthermore, given the ever-evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, most SAIC organizations aimed to enrich individual attendants, rather than to draw large crowds together. Valera stated that the goal of Multicultural Affairs’ events “is that anyone who attends our events meets at least one new person they can reach out to.” Boucher took a similar stance, saying that the Nuveen Centre would define a program as successful “if we help students connect, no matter if it’s with one student or ten.” While individual events may not entirely resonate with some students (a la Shultis’s Virtual Prom nightmare), Residence Life and its sister organizations remain optimistic about student events going forth into the uncertain future.
The virtual nature of most classes appears to be a further impediment to socializing, or even learning conducively, according to many first-years. “You lack so much community on Zoom,” lamented Shultis, citing distractions galore in a work-from-home environment as preventing him and his fellow Zoom classmates from devoting their full attention to the class, as they would otherwise during an in-person session.
Walsh and Winum also feel that their online classes are “not collaborative,” especially when the chat function in Zoom is turned off, or forcibly made public, which deters them from reaching out to their classmates to formulate ideas in smaller groups. Even as a graduate student, Zakaliuk expressed equivalent concerns, stating that she finds it “super hard” to present online, especially when her classmates “are mostly muted and have their cameras off.”
Conversely, in-person classes appear to facilitate engaged learning, and the social encounters that come with it, much better. Walsh said that while nobody speaks in class discussions during her Zoom classes, “everyone is super involved” in her in-person sessions for the same classes. At the graduate level, the consensus appears to be the same. Zakaliuk’s presentation hardships disappear during her in-person classes — she says, “I feel more relaxed explaining my ideas and talking to people in front of me, not to my laptop.” Similarly, Cai expressed that her in-person class, Letterpress Studio, offered her opportunities to observe how her classmates work, to “learn a lot about [them] in that respect,” and to “have fulfilling conversations that we definitely would not be having if we were online.”
The isolation that virtual learning inherently brings with it has also, according to some first-years, extended to hampering their opportunities to forge possible career paths at SAIC. For Paarshav Shah (BFA 2024), his biggest worries do not revolve around socializing in class, but rather, socializing in a more formal, career-oriented environment. To him, opportunities to meet other students, faculty, and individuals on campus with connections to possible career prospects have severely dwindled due to the social restrictions in place, and portfolio reviews are nowhere near as effective when conducted across webcams.
“You can look at a painting for however long you want,” said Shah, “but there’s always something that you lose when you don’t see [work] in person.” Shah is aware of SAIC’s virtual portfolio review and careers programs, and believes that holding these events virtually is the best way to practice safe social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but is nonetheless disappointed by his experience networking professionally so far.
This begs the question — during this pandemic, is there anything that SAIC can reasonably do, in addition to its comprehensive Make Ready framework, to ameliorate its first-years’ social experiences? Niu suggested that SAIC implement some kind of basic test, such as a body temperature test, to ensure that its students are nominally healthy before entering any campus buildings, which she hopes could encourage students to talk to each other more freely. However, this would not account for the possibility of asymptomatic students on campus, and would not be ideal.
Alternatively, some first-years believe that SAIC is doing their best in preventing the spread of COVID-19 on campus, but should offer a small tuition refund to the class of 2024 due to their continued inability to fully enjoy college social experiences, or to use the whole gamut of SAIC’s extensive facilities. Walsh and Winum are among those in this camp, suggesting that a quarter of this year’s first-year cohort’s tuition fees be returned to them, as compensation for their inherently limited social and educational experiences. Unfortunately, this solution does not seem to be in the cards either, especially given the recent budget cuts and layoffs at both SAIC and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ultimately, many first-years and new graduates have been understandably disheartened by the considerably lonelier college landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that is not to say that SAIC’s strict social distancing measures are at fault, or that the Class of 2024 will not find a way to adapt and thrive, in spite of their difficult circumstances. After all, as Cai says, “we are all capable of creating and sustaining a new picture of what relationships look like in this version of reality.” f
Ah, college — the great leveller. According to countless platitudes and Hollywood movies, college is where the cool kids lose their clout, where first-years make lifelong friendships, and where, if you’re lucky, you might have a great, A24-film-esque Coming Of Age™ experience.
It probably comes as no surprise that such glossy dreams were dead on arrival the minute the world officially went into isolation. This fall, SAIC faced an unprecedented challenge — maintain excellent standards of education across both virtual and in-person modes, while also managing to keep over 3,500 students safe and COVID-free. Social distancing and isolation measures, following SAIC’s Make Ready framework, are, of course, necessary. But what of the pandemic first-year, those unfortunate souls who had the good fortune to be admitted to SAIC, but the misfortune of being admitted — and for some, moving across states, or even oceans — during a worldwide health crisis? How are they navigating these strange and unfamiliar times?
The pandemic first-year’s social experience at SAIC appears to be, across the board, one of resounding loneliness. “In the first week that I moved here,” says first-year Ryan Shultis (BFA 2024), “every time me and my roommate heard a noise in the hallway, we would run out to check if it had been made by someone we could talk to.” However, according to Shultis, those frantic attempts hardly ever paid off, as one “rarely ever sees people in the [residence hall] hallways” even after two months into the term.
Shultis is not alone in his despair. Other first-years report feeling similarly desperate upon moving in, scrambling to make human contact with anyone who so much as passed them in the corridors. However, while this rush to make connections initially led to some early friendships forming, these did not always last in the long run.
“Instead of finding people you get along with best, you just cling on to people you first meet,” said Ally Walsh (BFA 2024). Fellow first-year Frankie Rose Winum (BFA 2024) also commented on this phenomenon, stating that these types of early, codependent friendships “grow toxic on both sides, and fall apart in the worst way possible.” Both Walsh and Winum agreed that the landscape of most first-year friend groups they knew, or were involved in, had changed vastly between the start of term and the current moment, due to this aforementioned toxic dynamic.
Incoming postgraduate students are also faced with comparable woes. While perhaps not as pressed to piece together a quintessential college social experience right off the bat, Post-Baccalaureate and MFA students new to SAIC are still struggling to assimilate socially. The postgraduate newcomer’s experience is perhaps best summed up by Qianying Niu (MFA VCD 2022), who commented, “I feel excited to make friends but I don’t know where to start.” Niu’s colleague Tetiana Zakaliuk (MFA VCD 2022) expressed similar sentiments, stating that she does not have a friend group, and has thus far been unable to meet and connect with any fellow students from her online classes.
Even those comfortable with making friends at a slower pace are feeling some strain on their social lives. Anna Lee Cai (MFA VCD 2022) notes that, although she is “pretty content with the pace of meeting new people” during the pandemic, she is admittedly “not forging relationships in the same way that she had sans pandemic.” “I don't think the quality of conversation over a digital space can compare to in-person encounters,” says Cai, who went on to explain that in-person encounters “lend more to chance and physical chemistry too.”
Despite incoming postgraduate students being able to work in person on campus in personal studio spaces, this has not been conducive to forging friendships within their respective cohorts either. Niu works in her studio regularly, but reports that there is “not too much talk” whenever she is present, and such an atmosphere does not lend itself to making introductions and building relationships. Zakaliuk, on the other hand, is “not spending a lot of time [in her studio] this year, because the space feels so empty that it gives [her] anxiety.”
Zakaliuk, who previously attended SAIC in 2018/19 to complete a Post-Baccalaureate in Visual Communication Design, recalls the vibrance of studio life pre-pandemic as a long-gone golden age. “The studios were a place where all of us would do homework, help each other with short critiques, or explain projects,” she explains. “It was also a place where we would hang out, have pizza parties, and just talk to each other while sipping tea or coffee.” Zakaliuk saw her studio buddies as “family, with whom you went through hard times, deadlines, and Crit Week together.” Sadly, due to the de-densification of studio spaces and guidelines on social distancing, such camaraderie is now a thing of the past.
SAIC-organized events, both in-person and remote, do not appear to be the panacea that the Student Life department might have initially hoped for, either. Some events have put students off from attending any future SAIC-organized gatherings, whether remote or in-person. Shultis recalled his experience at SAIC’s Virtual Prom — a Zoom event organized to introduce the incoming Class of 2024 in a faux-online-prom setting — as being “so awkward” that it put him off attending any other SAIC-organized virtual event. “I was there for five minutes and I was so horrified, I almost didn’t even come to the school,” joked Shultis.
Additionally, not many students in residence halls, let alone first-years, report actually having attended these events, and those living outside SAIC residence halls remain mostly unaware that these events exist. When I brought up SAIC-organized events, most students interviewed said that they had not participated in any, and Zakaliuk, a first-year MFA student, told me that this was the first time she had ever heard of them.
However, this is not a failure on the part of the SAIC organizations (namely Residence Life, Campus Life, Multicultural Affairs, and the Nuveen Centre for International Student Learning) in charge of these events. Rather, it is a first attempt to make sense of a changed college landscape. Daniel Boucher, the Assistant Director of Residence Life for Conduct and Special Programs, said that “the Nuveen Centre staff began this year not fully knowing what to expect,” and that this year “definitely stretched [their] creativity with programming” in order to allow participation from international students taking classes remotely from their home countries.
Low attendance does not necessarily signify problems with the current line-up of events at SAIC either. “We recognize that students have a lot on their plate with classes, studio time, work, and personal commitments, which can limit the amount of time students have to attend Residence Life programming,” said Abigail Holcomb, the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for Residence Life. According to Holcomb, variance in attendance numbers across events has been the case for Residence Life events “in all years,” and is not an indicator of the success of those events. “While high attendance is great,” added Katrina Valera, Director of Multicultural Affairs, “it’s not a requirement to have a good experience.”
Furthermore, given the ever-evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, most SAIC organizations aimed to enrich individual attendants, rather than to draw large crowds together. Valera stated that the goal of Multicultural Affairs’ events “is that anyone who attends our events meets at least one new person they can reach out to.” Boucher took a similar stance, saying that the Nuveen Centre would define a program as successful “if [they] help students connect, no matter if it’s with one student or ten.” While individual events may not entirely resonate with some students (a la Shultis’s Virtual Prom nightmare), Residence Life and its sister organizations remain optimistic about student events going forth into the uncertain future.
The virtual nature of most classes appears to be a further impediment to socializing, or even learning conducively, according to many first-years. “You lack so much community on Zoom,” lamented Shultis, citing distractions galore in a work-from-home environment as preventing him and his fellow Zoom classmates from devoting their full attention to the class, as they would otherwise during an in-person session. Walsh and Winum also feel that their online classes are “not collaborative,” especially when the chat function in Zoom is turned off, or forcibly made public, which deters them from reaching out to their classmates to formulate ideas in smaller groups. Even as a postgraduate student, Zakaliuk expressed equivalent concerns; stating that she finds it “super hard” to present online, especially when her classmates “are mostly muted and have their cameras off.”
Conversely, in-person classes appear to facilitate engaged learning, and the social encounters that come with it, much better. Walsh said that while nobody speaks in class discussions during her Zoom classes, “everyone is super involved” in her in-person sessions for the same classes. At the postgraduate level, the consensus appears to be the same. Zakaliuk’s presentation hardships disappear during her in-person classes — she says, “I feel more relaxed explaining my ideas and talking to people in front of me, not to my laptop.” Similarly, Cai expressed that her in-person class, Letterpress Studio, offered her opportunities to observe how her classmates work, to “learn a lot about [them] in that respect,” and to “have fulfilling conversations that we definitely would not be having if [they] were online.”
The isolation that virtual learning inherently brings with it has also, according to some first-years, extended to hampering their opportunities to forge possible career paths at SAIC. For Paarshav Shah (BFA 2024), his biggest worries do not revolve around socializing in class, but rather, socializing in a more formal, career-oriented environment. To him, opportunities to meet other students, faculty, and individuals on campus with connections to possible career prospects have severely dwindled due to the social restrictions in place, and portfolio reviews are nowhere near as effective when conducted across webcams. “You can look at a painting for however long you want,” said Shah, “but … there’s always something that you lose when you don’t see [work] in person.” Shah is aware of SAIC’s virtual portfolio review and careers programs, and believes that holding these events virtually is the best way to practice safe social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but is nonetheless disappointed by his experience networking professionally so far.
This begs the question — during this pandemic, is there anything that SAIC can reasonably do, in addition to its comprehensive Make Ready framework, to ameliorate its first-years’ social experiences? Niu suggested that SAIC implement some kind of basic test, such as a body temperature test, to ensure that its students are nominally healthy before entering any campus buildings, which she hopes could encourage students to talk to each other more freely. However, this would not account for the possibility of asymptomatic students on campus, and would not be ideal.
Alternatively, some first-years believe that SAIC is doing their best in preventing the spread of COVID-19 on campus, but should offer a small tuition refund to the class of 2024 due to their continued inability to fully enjoy college social experiences, or to use the whole gamut of SAIC’s extensive facilities. Walsh and Winum are among those in this camp, suggesting that a quarter of this year’s first-year cohort’s tuition fees be returned to them, as compensation for their inherently limited social and educational experiences. Unfortunately, this solution does not seem to be in the cards either, especially given the recent budget cuts and layoffs at both SAIC and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ultimately, many first-years and new postgraduates have been understandably disheartened by the considerably lonelier college landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that is not to say that SAIC’s strict social distancing measures are at fault, or that the Class of 2024 will not find a way to adapt and thrive, in spite of their difficult circumstances. After all, as Cai says, “we are all capable of creating and sustaining a new picture of what relationships look like in this version of reality.” f
