For the first time in more than a year the crosswalks at Stadium Road and Warren Street are routinely busy with students actively walking and crossing, by far outnumbering the cars waiting at the stop lights.
On the campus mall, students talk at small tables outside the bustling student union, where event posters for homecoming concerts, student services and more are erected along the walkway. Nearby, in a roped off area outside Armstrong Hall, the Phi Delts are offering sledgehammer whacks at a junker car for a dollar a pop. Plenty of students are having at it, their friends cheering when a bumper or other body part gets pounded loose.
Smash, boom, bang or sis-boom-bah. Either way, campus life is back.
Yes, masking rules are in place for indoors, yet as far as most are concerned this is a mild measure following a drastic year that resulted in a desolate campus. Until fall semester 2021.
“I am so happy about being back,” said Samantha Schneider, a law enforcement major and member of the Student Events Team. Hers was a lonely year, given the lack of, well, student events.
“I just like seeing people on campus,” said Schneider, now happily busy as Homecoming Director for the Team. “Especially because we were here this summer working and there was nobody here. Usually during the summer, there’s people here, all the orientation groups and the new students, but there was nothing.”
Zahara Osman, an aviation student, was gliding along on an electric foot scooter as were fellow friends and colleagues in student government. Her in-person interaction has been a welcome change in and out of the classroom.
“It’s easier to approach the professor and ask questions right away,” she said. “During the pandemic you had to wait a few hours to get the email back … It’s just better to be in person because you can easily understand and get the professor’s feedback right away.”
Business professor Shane Bowyer had been teaching four years when the pandemic and subsequent shutdown hit.
The interaction with students thus far this semester has been a welcome, livelier change of pace.
“They’re so much more engaged in the classroom,” Bowyer said. “The level of conversation just really increases, the depth of the conversations Instead of typing something in on the chat or something like that, it goes a lot further.”
Bowyer and a class of several dozen first-year students were outside the Memorial Library, about to head into what Bowyer described as a “library scavenger hunt.” The smile on his face said plenty about how he felt being back.
“It’s great to be back and having students in the classroom—there’s so much enthusiasm and smiling faces out and about,” Bowyer said.
Junior Kara Svercl said she was equally elated as the shut-down of campus was nothing less than soul-crushing.
“Last year was so draining,” she said. “It just felt like it was burnout after burnout,” she said. “This year there’s space to be a student along with just accomplishing your work. Socially, it’s nice to see faces, to see friends. To reconnect with people you don’t live with is really exciting.”
“It makes you realize what you took for granted,” said senior Reauna Stiff. “When classes went on Zoom it may have bene more convenient, but it takes a lot out of you. It makes you realize that being in-person really contributes to the overall student experience of being in college.”
Which is exactly what Minehil Kahn felt she had been missing upon. Unable to return to her home in Pakistan, Khan found herself far too alone during the shift to remote learning.
“It was a big toll on everyone’s mental health, especially for me when I saw all my friends and my roommates moving back home to their families,” Khan said. Now that school is back, she said, she can get back to the full experience she sought out from Minnesota State Mankato.
“Especially to have that American experience, American school experience, American life experience … I didn’t feel like I was having that full college-life experience. Being able to see my friends again, being able to communicate with them again and having that social aspect back to your lives is great.”
Said Osman: “It’s good to be back and be with friends and see the campus alive again.”
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