Scenes from a Campus Evacuation
Those of us living on Princeton University’s campus awoke to smashed windows, flipped tables, and broken glass in the outdoor stairwells. Beer cans, hot dogs and Lay’s potato chip bags were scattered amongst the gothic-style buildings across our intimate, 500-acre campus. In an email, the university had just announced that two staff members were being tested for the coronavirus —“All students who are able to must return home and stay home for the rest of the semester,” the email boomed — and just like that, plans for the semester unraveled. It was only midterms. The coronavirus had turned into a global pandemic. Even before the e-mail, I had watched in horror as my father's college classmates and professors, the ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ who treated me like their own kid when I visited their hometown, succumbed one-by-one to the global pandemic. I feared that my other relatives in Wuhan would also fall ill. Students reacted to the evacuation order with anxiety, recklessness, and nostalgia—anything but stoicism. Some took senior pictures early. Others partied—hard. All tried to pack a semester's worth of traditions and giddiness into a couple of days.
‘Is she going to die?’
After students received the news, they ran inside the student campus center and started chugging White Claw and Corona beer.Some lugged a speaker into the dining area and blasted Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” Students embraced as fireworks went off a half-mile away. For those first two dream-like days, everywhere I went, people were drinking or bawling, amid the revelry. One residential college advisor called 911 three times for alcohol-related emergencies. She walked into one hall as students screamed, “Is she going to die? Is she going to die?” Her response: “Who’s going to die?” She found a woman hunched in a bathroom, puking violently.Public records obtained from through the New Jersey Open Public Records Act confirmed the incident. According to a police report, a call came in from 911 just before midnight Thursday.“3rd floor bathroom near the elevator, Female vomiting from Possible, floor cleaner,” it read. “Did not ingest the chemical and forced herself to vomit.”Within five minutes, the incident was over and emergency officials left.A university spokesperson declined to comment.“Everyone’s looking for something to grasp onto because things are being taken away,” said Alex Rogers '20, who squeezed in as many of Thursday night’s festivities as he could. The next morning, he packed his red Mini Cooper, and headed toward central Pennsylvania.
‘It feels really weird’
In the third-floor bedroom of an eating club, three disposable cameras sat on Curtis Leonard’s desk. In just 24 hours, the senior from Myrtle Beach, S.C. had burned through two.“It’s just tough to put into perspective the weird amalgamation of emotions we’re experiencing,” said Leonard '20.Outside, large orange rolling bins that looked like repurposed laundry carts were wheeled from door entryways to the curbs where parents were waiting. Clumps of several dozen students dressed in everything from suits to sweatpants, gathered to take senior photos normally scheduled for May.Students from one athletic team peed on the turf field they usually played. Later that night, another student with loftier ambitions walked around campus with a speaker in hand, whispering, “This is God speaking.”For one student, going home was not an option, and everything hinged on the University’s decision to allow him to stay put. “It was probably the equivalent of getting accepted into Princeton,” said Yang Song '20, from Sydney, Australia. Song sat alone in his room, refreshing his email, much as he did four years earlier waiting for his admission decision.At 11:35 p.m., Song relaxed visibly. An email approving his request to shelter at the university had just come through.
Through the gates
It is a tradition at Princeton for freshmen to walk through the FitzRandolph Gate at the main entrance of the campus when they arrive. Once they do, they are greeted on the other side by older students, with whom they will spend the next several years. Seniors repeat the exercise in reverse when they graduate, this time marching out of the gate in caps and gowns in a processional behind the faculty. Campus myth is that anyone who walks through FitzRandolph Gate before they graduate, won't graduate at all.Publicly, administrators have been coy as to whether there will be a graduation ceremony this year, insisting that, “No final decisions have been made at this time regarding Commencement.”Not taking any chances, around a hundred students wearing jeans, scarves, and boots milled around the gate at 3 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 14. Those due to graduate this spring stood there for a while and then slowly, gingerly, stepped through to the other side.