OU class of 2023: graduates describe effect of COVID-19 on college experience

On his last normal Thursday night, Reese Phillips practiced for Sooner Scandals with fellow members of OU Choirs. 

Phillips, then a vocal performance freshman, rehearsed with his group on March 12, 2020, the night after the NBA postponed its season and former President Donald Trump announced a 30-day travel ban from European countries to the U.S. 

Phillips’ directors made his team run the entire show and film it before sending well-wishes to their group chat for a restful vacation. 

“Nothing was ever said,” Phillips, now a senior graduating in May, told OU Daily. “But there was a part of us that knew that was going to be it. That was going to be the last rehearsal that we had.” 

Over the following days, Phillips met with friends on campus who hadn’t left for spring break yet. In the Oklahoma Memorial Union, Phillips learned via email that classes would be canceled for an extra week. A few days later, OU moved to online classes for the remainder of the semester. 

“I remember talking to some of my friends just wondering if we’d ever see these people again,” Phillips said. “I certainly did not end up seeing them again.” 

Over three years ago, members of the class of 2023 participated in their last activities and attended their final classes before COVID-19 shut the country down. Some of these students reflected on the unprecedented time as the last graduating class to experience college before the pandemic. 

Joy Nath, an economics and linguistics senior, said spring 2020 left him feeling isolated. 

Nath started at OU in fall 2019 as an international student from India. He made it his goal to be as involved as possible on campus. Nath was a member of The Big Event and the International Advisory Council during his freshman year and had events scheduled for spring 2020 until OU canceled classes. Nath didn’t get the chance to see students and faculty volunteer for The Big Event until over a year later. 

Nath decided not to travel home from his dorm in Couch Center for break after hearing about COVID-19 in other countries. When OU canceled classes, he was stuck on campus. 

Nath hasn’t been home since 2019. 

“It was very traumatic,” Nath told the Daily. “I vividly remember that it was after spring break and the next few weeks, we're kind of happy we got extra few days, then we thought, ‘What is happening?’”

Nath earned the title of Outstanding Freshman in 2020, Outstanding Sophomore in 2021 as well as OU’s Campus Life Award. Nath is a member of PE-ET Top 10 Senior Honor Society, is on the Letzeiser Honor List and won the Honors College Vision Award this year. This fall, he was on OU’s Homecoming court. He achieved all of this despite having not returned home in four years.

Nath watched as his classmates moved out of their dorm rooms over the course of the next few months. Before the pandemic, his friends stopped in the hallways or kitchens to talk and catch up. After OU closed, he said everybody stayed in their rooms. 

“I was looking forward to the spring, and then suddenly nothing was happening. Everything was canceled,” Nath said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don't know what's happening.’ I was disoriented.”  

Nath said one of the main things that helped him was the community international students and other students stuck on campus created. While it wasn’t the same as before the pandemic, he still had a support system.

During his 2019 spring semester, Marcus Ake, a meteorology senior, put a down payment on studying abroad in Germany over the summer. Ake first learned about COVID-19 from his father, who was then traveling in Taiwan and China.

In November 2019, his father alerted their family to start stocking supplies and to take the virus seriously if it made its way over to the U.S. That spring, he saw the full extent of how COVID-19 would impact the world.

“Everything was fun, dandy, normal. I was planning, not only for spring break, but also getting ready for studying abroad,” Ake said. “And all of a sudden, everything came crashing down.”

When OU closed and the country eventually shut down, Ake stepped up to care for his family in Belton, Texas. He went out to buy groceries and disinfected his house to prevent his mother from getting sick. His dad didn’t return home until January 2021.

Grace Goodwin, a pre-med chemical biosciences senior, was in California visiting family when she heard on TikTok the news OU wouldn’t return for the remainder of the semester. She said she was convinced it would only last for two weeks.

Goodwin, who grew up in Norman, returned home and fell into a new normal of quarantine. Her grandfather is immunocompromised, so to protect him, her grandmother moved in with her family.

OU came up with a plan to reopen campus for the fall 2020 semester. As Phillips, Nath, Ake, Goodwin and thousands of students like them prepared to return to a somewhat normal semester, they realized the college experience they had just gotten a taste of would never be the same.

As student organizations held meetings and events over Zoom, attendance began to dwindle and some organizations didn’t survive the years after the pandemic. Ake said upperclassmen were unable to share or pass down leadership as smoothly, therefore causing some campus organizations to lose valuable participation and growth.

“Overall, involvement has really plummeted,” Ake said. “We're the last group who knows what college was like before COVID. So it's crazy. Some traditions were lost, and it's kind of hard to come to terms that may not ever actually come back.”

The freshmen in 2020 didn’t get to watch, learn or see how to plan events like The Big Event or Dance Marathon, Ake and Goodwin said. Because of this, attendance became low and those events were not at the same caliber or scale.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, OU Campus Activities Council raised $1,033,102.20 during the 2020 Soonerthon, now known as OUDM. In 2021, OUDM raised just over $775,000 and in 2023, the group raised $465,318.23 during the 12-hour event.

According to members of The Big Event, 6,000-5,000 volunteers would participate in the event. After the pandemic, the number is about 2,000 volunteers shy of pre-pandemic years.

“I feel like campus climate has changed in general. Involvement has changed,” Goodwin said. “I'm a part of CAC, and I feel like I've noticed a big drop off, burnout and people not really wanting to stay committed to extracurriculars. … (Underclassmen) don’t get to experience what it was like to be like a true freshman and get to experience all the fun events at their height.”

Ake said not only large-scale events were lost in the pandemic, but so were small traditions and myths. During his freshman year, Ake said he heard a rumor that senior meteorology students pulled all-nighters in the National Weather Center. He said not doing that with his class now is one of the biggest losses of the pandemic.

After graduation, Ake will intern with the National Weather Service before getting his master’s in atmospheric and cryospheric sciences at the University of InnsBruck in Austria. Nath plans to work for BlackRock’s internal audit division in New York City. Goodwin plans to apply for medical school over the summer and will continue working at OU Health as a patient care technician in the mean time. Phillips will start a voice performance master’s program at the University of Colorado after graduation.

Nath, Goodwin, Ake and Phillips each said they felt they missed out on social aspects of college, and they are watching classes below them do the same. They said they hope campus returns to the climate from their freshman year, and OU would be a better place for it. 

Ake works as a campus tour guide, and he said he uses the pandemic as a lesson, and he passes it down to every person who joins him for a tour.

“Don't make the same mistake I did, assuming that you have all four years. I really only had one year of that real college experience. I still paid the real college price,” Ake said. “Take advantage of everything you have because you really don't know how quickly something's going to change, and you won't have those same opportunities.”  

This story was edited by Jazz Wolfe and Jillian Taylor. Francisco Gutierrez copy edited this story.