COVID Diaries: How IHE Graduate Assistants Responded to the Global Pandemic

Julianne O’ Connell, University Housing

On Thursday evening of Spring Break, I learned classes were suspended for two weeks and that students were not to return to campus—even to collect personal items. But as a graduate resident in Creswell Hall, leading a staff of Resident Assistants, I was to return to campus immediately, if I felt comfortable doing so. University Housing was operating in an all-hands-on-deck mode. 

When it became clear that the pandemic made it unsafe to return residents to campus, we launched an alternative move-out plan for the residence halls. During the week, my staff and I scheduled and assisted 960 students with room check-outs. Students, accompanied by two family members, reserved a two-hour time slot to remove their belongings. They could leave behind any items for donation or disposal to expedite the process and reduce burden on elevators and receptacles.

Residents who couldn't move out due to travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, and other reasons were relocated into a single building. 

In the days that followed, the nature of my job changed significantly. Many of my staff also moved home. Without any residents in the building, we shifted student conduct cases, office hours, and professional development programs to the Zoom platform. I checked in with remote residents and staff, and the RAs offered online programming to connect and engage.

Then, we had to prep the buildings for anticipated summer conferences and orientations. We emptied rooms, removing trash, futons, mini-fridges, etc. The sustainability coordinator, Christy Tweedy, did an amazing job of facilitating with Athens organizations like the Habitat Restore and Project Safe to donate many of the abandoned items. We worked together, outside our traditional capacities, to benefit the community and ensure the safety of our students and our buildings.

The stress of living through a global pandemic was exasperated by finals, my job ending, and moving out of my on-campus apartment. I had enjoyed the work immensely, and I felt sad to end my service at such an uncertain time. 

When I began the internal process of wrapping up my two-year assistantship with University Housing, I had a lot of new questions focused on Student Affairs, and Housing, in particular: how do we support students when they aren't on campus?; what does it mean for our residential curriculum?; how are we serving our international students during this stressful time?; how can we best support our housing insecure students?

I feel especially lucky to study higher education during this...unprecedented time (I cannot avoid this cliché). This experience has been challenging in many ways and fulfilling in others, and I am just trying to stay positive and curious through it all. 

Ricky Kirby, Government Relations

Government Relations has always been an office where you never know what exciting challenges you’re going to have once you walk through the office doors in the morning. These exciting challenges and opportunities grew significantly once the COVID-19 pandemic struck Georgia. When all UGA departments started mapping out how to leverage UGA resources to serve Athens-Clarke County and the state of Georgia, the Office of Government Relations did the same. Subsequently, our entire team saw their roles expand to face the challenges ahead. 

 

My role quickly saw a flurry of adjustments, but not solely due to the pandemic. My supervisor went onto maternity leave and we added a public relations staff member, whose duties I had been performing. Both of these events occurred just a few weeks after remote work began. I quickly reviewed our communication strategies, with a focus on the Athens-Clarke County community and wanted to gear all of our publications and social media posts towards supporting local restaurants, non-profits, and organizations and toward providing resources to community members. 

I also took on the responsibility of managing UGA’s COVID-19 response catalog detailing how units and departments across UGA were responding to the pandemic. To support our director of community relations, I began and have continued serving on a multi-division UGA COVID-19 workgroup and the related Community Engagement Subcommittee. I even got tapped to collect resources, create and maintain an online platform containing numerous, at-home, educational resources for kids of all ages. If you have kids at home, I encourage you to check out the page through UGA Office of Service Learning’s Engage platform! 

As I’m sure it has been for everyone, the past few months have been quite the adventure, and I am thankful to work in such a collaborative office with highly capable professionals.