Looking back on a challenging year.
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
The May issue of The Montage is the last until this fall, and through a challenging year, we have all worked very hard to produce the best paper possible for our readers. Doing this, along with our entire staff juggling classwork in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, has not been easy.
COVID has most certainly changed the way that we produce The Montage. Production on each issue is done almost exclusively remotely; I’m almost positive that I have been the only staff member to visit the newsroom for the majority of the year, and that’s only to distribute the paper once or twice a month. Although some on-campus classes are happening, the campus itself is essistentally a ghost town. Many on-campus offices and classes have been locked for the majority of the year. The cafeteria hasn’t served students in over a year, and furniture remains piled in the locked concourse.
Occasionally, you’ll hear the sounds of a choir coming from the Humanities East building, but for the most part, the campus is unusually and eerily quiet. It’s very calm, yet extremely unsettling at the same time.
Like many of us, I don’t think I realized just how much would change when this all started. I remember sitting in Professor Chris Smejkal’s Oral Communications class on Thursday, March 12, 2020, and I heard him speak to our entire class about the uncertainty of what was coming. Even then, I knew that we were likely not coming back to campus for at least a few weeks, even if STLCC wasn’t ready to acknowledge that yet.
I didn’t know that someone on campus that day was already infected with the virus. I couldn’t have imagined that I wouldn’t have returned to a now-largely empty campus until over five months after that. And I couldn’t have imagined that four months after that, my stepfather would become a fatal victim to that pandemic.
It’s been a challenging year for me, and I’m sure it’s been a challenging year for many of our readers as well. I’m not sure what form The Montage will take next fall, but I do know that I will be here for that ride, and I promise our readers that we here at The Montage will do our very best to do what we have always done: keep you informed.
