Students return to campus following Easter break

By Jake Zabski

Students who returned to campus following the first break of the semester were required to test negative for Covid before returning to in-person classes following a surge of cases campus-wide the previous week.

With new restrictions in place for Easter break, students who chose to leave campus over the long weekend were still expected to follow campus guidelines, such as wearing masks and staying six feet apart from others.

Some students returned home to be with their families, while others stayed on campus over the long weekend to avoid travel and contact with others outside the “Stonehill bubble”.

Junior Abby Guilfoyle is from Maine and chose to stay on campus for Easter break.

“I live pretty far away and with the case rates on campus being higher than I’m comfortable with, I didn’t want to travel too far. I also have a ton of work to do for this coming week and I thought the weekend with less people here would be an ideal time to work on everything,” Guilfoyle said.

Guilfoyle said she had an average experience but a lack of food options made it not enjoyable since all the dining areas on campus were closed except for the commons. Guilfoyle chose to stay mostly in her room as well to be safe, leaving for the occasional walk.

Junior Hannah Lennon also stayed on campus for Easter break.

“I didn’t go home for break because I didn’t think it was worth it. I’m from Connecticut and I just didn’t think that the two-and-a-half-hour drive was worth all the extra testing trouble. Plus, my grandmother is high risk so I didn’t want to take any chances,” Lennon said.

Lennon said that there were no lines to get food, very few people came into the Sports Complex where she works, and there were abundant parking spots which many students would love on a regular basis.

“It was a nice break from the usual hustle and bustle of campus life,” Lennon said.

Students who chose to go home had to return to campus on April 5 to get tested and then enter quarantine until they got their results.

Junior Nick Gould is from Cape Cod and returned to campus to get tested on Monday morning. Gould said the testing process was normal and there was no line.

While he was home, Gould found it was easy to follow campus guidelines, even though he was around family for the holiday.

“My family was comfortable with me at home because they know I get tested frequently at school,” Gould said.

Gould said though that even though it was technically a break, it didn’t feel like one.

“I still spent a lot of the weekend doing homework. We might not have had class but professors still assigned a lot of work over the weekend which takes away from the point of having a break,” Gould said.