What it’s really like on the Alabama campus during COVID-19

One rarely leaves her dorm room. One never even left New Jersey to return to the Alabama campus.

Another thought for sure he’d been infected by COVID-19 before testing negative.

And Hayley Czarnek isn’t even allowed to step into the law school since her re-entry test results never came back.

Together, this group of University of Alabama students help paint a picture of the first two rocky weeks of a fall semester not only during a pandemic but on a campus dealing with its own outbreak.

From bar closings to isolation dorm drama, more than 1,000 positive tests and general campus anxiety, it’s been quite a time in Tuscaloosa. AL.com caught up with a few of the students initially interviewed to gauge the temperature entering this most unusual school year to see how the reality meshed with expectations.

PART I: Alabama students explain fears, excitement and if return to campus will really work

Few if any of their classes are meeting in person while one of the students spoke to AL.com from quarantine in his off-campus apartment.

Matthew Travis was stunned he didn’t have COVID-19 after both of his roommates tested positive. He had a pounding headache for days, a sore throat and a dull sense of taste when driving to a local fire station last week to be tested. When the emailed results came back negative, he went back for a second test that confirmed the first.

“I’m still not sure how I didn’t have COVID since my roommates have it and I’ve been in contact with them,” Travis said Tuesday. “But that’s fine with me.”

Still, the junior from Charlotte is not leaving his apartment until the 10-day mark of his roommates’ initial positive test. One of the two was experiencing some serious symptoms including the shakes and a complete loss of taste.

That’s the scenario -- at least the symptoms -- McKenzie Moore is doing everything to avoid.

The freshman from Hartselle, Alabama is effectively isolating in her dorm room after seeing positive cases mount after arriving on campus. All of her classes can be taken virtually so the only trips outside her room are to pick up food from the dining halls.

“It’s very hard to get used to,” Moore said. “I already knew college was going to be difficult to get used to but with all of these precautions and trying to just navigate all the rules as they come has been a little bit overwhelming.”

There was one class Moore thought required in person attendance but after one session in a computer lab with 50-75 classmates, she discovered the course could be completed online. So, she takes three classes a day from the desk in her dorm room.

Small gatherings with vigilant neighbors from her hall are the extent of her college social life but Moore isn’t complaining. It’s just the reality with which she’s come to accept.

“I don’t know, I’d rather be bored than unsafe or a problem or responsible for somebody else getting sick,” she said. “So, I don’t really mind. Even if I was bored to death, I wouldn’t mind as much.”

For Czarnek, there’s a bit of monotony taking all of her law school classes online. She didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter since her COVID-19 re-entry test results are lost in the wind and phone calls and emails have yet to be resolved three weeks after the swab.

“The Office of Student Conduct doesn’t have any information, but I keep reaching out to them because they keep telling me don’t go back on campus,” she said. “So, that has been a bit of a nightmare.”

The law school allowed students to request an online-only model so Czarnek took that option.

“It is definitely hard to adapt to all virtual learning, particularly for grad school,” she said. “It’s difficult to stay focused and engaged but I will say it’s better than when we had to randomly transition to online (in the spring) because professors are prepared to make the content more engaging.”

More than a thousand miles away in Freehold, New Jersey, Claire Studer is two weeks into the senior year she never anticipated. The plan all along was to delay her arrival in Tuscaloosa long enough to see how the campus handled the influx of students.

She’s taking 17 hours online so the decision for her to stay home wasn’t difficult.

“It was not worth the time, money and headache to get back down there,” she said. “And I honestly feel like they’re going to be sent home pretty soon with the way things are going. So, for me to drive 16 hours is just so not worth it to go home two weeks later. So, I’m doing everything remote and that’s the best thing for me.”

The reports Studer heard from Alabama helped her reach that verdict. She saw how many people were hitting the town, packing bars and dismissing mask mandates. To top it off, her Tuscaloosa apartment roommate tested positive for the coronavirus.

“So, I’m really glad I didn’t go back now,” Studer said.

It’s still frustrating. She’s still paying for that apartment and this was supposed to be a triumphant final lap as a college student.

Farrah Sanders can relate with that.

Also a senior, the Huntsville product lives in an apartment on University Boulevard near The Strip with a front-row seat for what was a thriving social scene. It looked like pre-pandemic Tuscaloosa before bars were shut down Aug. 24 by mayor Walt Maddox, she said.

University of Alabama Diversity and Free Speech Student Protest — Alabama student Farrah Sanders at a protest for diversity and free speech from the Ferguson Center to Rose Administration Building Sept. 19, 2019 (Ben Flanagan / AL.com)

“The Strip really feels like a ghost town,” Sanders said a week into the 14-day pause on city nightlife.

That hasn’t gone over well with classmates who were primed for the party.

“There are a lot of Walt Maddox jokes,” she said. “The response from a freshman who has been here for all of two and a half weeks saying he’s going to run for mayor, the overwhelming response I saw was unhappiness as far as having their social lives cancelled. And that’s odd.”

Before going into isolation, Travis said he saw lax attitudes toward masks around town. A trip to Publix including witnessing a student getting a ticket for failure to wear a face covering while mocking the officer and recording the exchange. He estimated half of the students are taking this pandemic seriously “and half don’t really care.”

The City of Tuscaloosa told AL.com it had issued 18 citations for failure to wear a mask from Aug. 16-27.

Over on campus, Moore heard of dorm parties cramming 30 students into a small room and other violations of the COVID-19 guidelines.

“I don’t think people are taking it as seriously as they need to and I’m honestly a little confused,” Moore said, “because it’s the same people who get mad when they’re told they might have to go home or football might be canceled but they don’t make an effort to save those things.”

UA president Stuart Bell on Monday said more than 400 students were involved in the disciplinary process for COVID-19 infractions. That doesn’t surprise anyone interviewed for this story. Moore, in fact, said the enforcement hasn’t been strong enough.

Studer said her friends down in Tuscaloosa have done their part to slow the outbreak. She can sense their frustration.

“It’s like, one person’s poor choices are going to lead to everybody being screwed in the end,” she said.

Travis, for a little while, thought he’d be one of those who followed all the directions and still got infected. The broadcasting student was glad he opted for the drive through testing at the firehouse instead of Coleman Coliseum on campus.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to stand outside waiting around a ton of people who did have it,” he said. “So, if I didn’t have it, I was standing around a lot of people who probably did, I would have gotten it anyway.”

With three hybrid classes, Travis will have the option to return to in-person learning or remain online.

And like the others interviewed, Sanders is handling her course load without entering campus. She stepped foot in a classroom exactly once in the first two weeks before learning her sign language class could be taken online.

Almost none of her friends have classes on campus either, so exactly how in-person is the experience this semester in Tuscaloosa?

“That’s a great question,” Sanders said.

A university spokesperson said 46 percent of classes were face to face while 34 percent were hybrid (in-person mixed with online) as of Aug. 31.

Still, Moore isn’t planning on leaving her dorm room. Czarnek couldn’t step on campus even if she wanted the in-person experience while Sanders is content with her apartment classroom.

Studer didn’t even see the point of leaving New Jersey.

And in Travis’ three-bedroom apartment, a symptomatic COVID-positive roommate does his classwork in isolation in a microcosm of the twisted reality that is college life in 2020.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.