The COVID-19 Pandemic: Five Years Later

GAGANDEEP KAUR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER

KYLE CHOKAS
COPY EDITOR

3/20/2025

This current generation has lived through a wide array of defining events: wars, insurrections but, arguably most notable, a world-wide pandemic that changed the trajectory of seemingly life itself. Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, began its spread in November of 2019 in Wuhan, China. 

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was in the state of Washington and, from there, the pandemic snowballed into something bigger than anyone expected. Michigan’s first COVID-19 case was reported on March 10, 2025, and only two days later, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that all public schools would be closed from March to April to control the spread of the virus. 

In the early morning hours of March 13, 2020, Alma College President Emeritus, Jeff Abernathy, sent out an email to all staff and students, notifying them that the last of in-person classes would be that very day. March 17 brought a halt to all events and public gatherings on campus, the closure of Stone Rec Center and, eventually, all students were to be removed from campus. 

On Tuesday, March 24, 2020, Whitmer issued a stay-at-home order, which stated that unless you were to stay home unless you were an essential worker, you were to stay home. This mandate was to last three weeks and would line up with when K-12 and Colleges were to return to face-to-face learning. 

Whitmer continued this mandate by closing schools for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year; students returned to school in August of 2020 with heavy precautions like mask requirements and frequent testing. 

According to a report done by MLive on April 12, 2020, “A total of 7,837 infections linked to ongoing outbreaks have occurred in and around 23 college communities,” 

In this report, Alma College had 22 positive COVID-19 cases reported. It’s unknown if this report included students and staff or just students. 

In August of 2020, students returned to Alma College’s campus for classes, some class offerings were in-person, with much smaller groups of classes, while others continued to be held strictly online. 

“On-campus testing equipment and supplies were acquired and testing became available at Wilcox Health Center and in Hogan. Testing was available for required NCAA athlete testing, return to campus testing, residence halls that were identified as positive COVID-19 through wastewater testing,” said Anne Lambrecht, Associate Vice President of Counseling and Medical Services. 

The college kept the mask mandate and regularly tested students and staff members for COVID to help slow the spread. 

“There were plastic barriers up on the tables in [Hamilton Commons], classes were typically hybrid to prevent a certain number of people in classes at a time and friends weren’t allowed in each other’s buildings,” said Claire Wittlieff (‘24). 

It wasn’t until 2022 that Alma College began to lift mandates and protocols to protect the health of students and staff. Students were no longer required to wear masks in the classroom, unless specified by a professor and food services reopened to full capacity for students. 

Around the same time, similar things were happening off-campus, such as full-capacity at restaurants, mask mandates being lifted for K-12 schools and some businesses that experienced closure during the pandemic were finally able to reopen. 

Although COVID-19 is no longer considered a major threat for the community, it is still present at Alma College. Staff urges students that if they test positive, to not come to class and to quarantine for a period of time. Additionally, there are students and staff on campus that may be immunocompromised and continue to worry about their own health in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic.