The day started at 6 a.m. when Lowell Sands and his daughter Hallie Sands prepared to fly from Dallas, Texas, back to the Plains, to the place preparing for a pandemic that has altered the typical back-from-spring break routine and replaced it with a sense of urgency, a sense to drop everything and book the earliest flight on Sunday, March 15.
“Well, the plan is to pack everything up as quickly as we can so we can head out in 20 minutes,” Lowell said, pulling a blue wagon toward the family’s car.
On-campus students were told by Auburn University Housing that they could grab their belongings on Sunday between noon and 4 p.m., a direction given in the wake of a coronavirus pandemic that has caused campus to be closed until at least April 10.
Residence Halls were packed with students and parents grabbing last minute shirts, photos, posters. Only a few people were wearing masks; most went back and forth from car to dorm, gassed and sweaty from one of the first warm days of the year, determined to get in and out as fast as possible.
Click here to see The Plainsman's full coverage of COVID-19 in the Auburn-Opelika area.
The Sands’ arrived at Atlanta International Airport at 11 a.m., drove to Auburn, waited in line to sign in and get access to Hallie’s room, which had books and notebooks she thought she'd return to after break. She is a freshman in studio art and has no idea how classes are going to work. But on Sunday, she didn’t have time to answer too many questions about classes. She and her father had to lug all they could and brace themselves for a 10 hour drive back home.
Lowell was trying to open one of the many locked doors in The Village that was causing holdups for some students and parents. Once inside, it was a sprint to make their own 20-minute cutoff.
“It’s a little bit stressful,” Hallie said before her dad asked about a sweater.
“Wait, real quick, sorry. Are we taking all of your sweaters home?” he asked.
“Just take that one, don’t you think? It’s not going to get cold,” she said.
They made one last round before heading west on I-20 to drive away from a state that has 22 cases of COVID-19 as of Sunday afternoon and toward one with 77.
Bailey Thompson, senior in chemical engineering from Foley, Alabama and a residential assistant in The Village, said he had two major tasks on Sunday: Make sure everyone checked in and out, and make sure the day ran smoothly.
“There’s no hiccups so far,” he said.
Thompson saw one of his residents begin to make his way upstairs.
“Danny, you’re supposed to check in before you move out,” Thompson said, laughing.
“Oh, really?” said Daniel Donohoe, freshman in professional flight who was packing as much as he could before hauling everything back to Jupiter, Florida.
He went downstairs with Thompson and noticed what many do during a health crisis.
“They have hand sanitizer here right now?” Daniel asked.
“They’ve had that before the break,” Thompson replied with teasing disbelief.
“Did they?”
Daniel and his mom, Joanna Donohoe, were busy taking rounds of luggage to their vehicle’s trunk.
She reached for the bag full of soaps and washing equipment.
“Interestingly, I’m taking home cleaning supplies that we brought that they never used,” Joanna said.
She looked around their “cleaning closet” to see what else was stocked.
“An entire box of trash bags — not even opened,” she said.
While Daniel said he’s mostly “annoyed” by the inconvenience of taking classes online, his mother said she does mourn the loss of her son’s freshman experience.
“At the end of the day, they’ll just look back at this,” she said. “They’ll just be a part of history.”
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Eduardo Medina, senior in journalism, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
