The last days of Davidson

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College seniors planned on a spring filled with traditions and long goodbyes. That all changed with an email.

By Ariana Howard

The news that would upend Davidson came at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 12. Inside a third-floor classroom of Davidson’s biggest academic building, known as Chambers, Professor Ike Bailey was showing students in his “Reporting on Politics and Elections” class the historic 9/11 news coverage from when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. The clip was a way to draw parallels to the coronavirus news coverage: both the level of panic and the lack of concrete information. 

Just as we watched the horror of the second plane crashing into the South Tower, I heard my phone buzz. It was an email from Davidson College’s president, Carol Quillen. Because of the serious health threat, she wrote, “we need all students who can leave the residence halls to do so.” She acknowledged it was an “extraordinary step” and that she was “fully aware of the complexity of this potential course of action and the burdens that it places on you all.” Just like that, the second semester of our senior year was finished.

Then the texts started flying.

“I’m not leaving. I’m really not,” texted my roommate, Marina, a senior from Colorado, to all four roommates. “This is really sad,” responded Lauren, a senior from Pennsylvania.

“I’m sitting in class right now, realizing this is the last class I will ever have on campus at Davidson,” I texted back. I was heartbroken. We all were.

While the coronavirus is different from 9/11, and losing the last two months of my senior year is insignificant compared with the suffering some people are enduring right now, watching the 9/11 clips as we received the crushing news that we had to say goodbye to all of our friends made the future feel ominous — and that much more unnerving.

Visions of swimming in Lake Norman, ‘Frolics’

As a senior, I had been looking forward to the last two months of college all year: formal dance events with the eating houses and fraternities, a weekend of live music and cookouts referred to as “Frolics,” swimming in Lake Norman the first day it got warm at Davidson’s Lake Campus like my roommates and I did every year, presenting my year-long honors thesis on political tribalism, graduating. This was supposed to be the time where our hard work finally paid off and we could say, “We did it. Cheers.”

With just a quick email, however, all of those fantasies of what my life would look like in the coming months vanished.

After class, I returned to my apartment, where my roommates and I began to console one another. Not one of the five girls living in my apartment will likely be in the same city as each other next year. This was it. We all knew it. “I have really loved being all of your roommates,” I told them.

While all of my friends were upset, Marina was the most distraught. Her father and stepmother had just moved from New York to Aspen, Colo., and were staying in a one-bedroom house until the renovations to their main house were completed. “I have nowhere to go,” she kept saying.

Although Marina was the only one of my close friends who lacked a home to return to, she was not alone at Davidson. Many students, particularly international students, had few options besides remaining on campus. Marina ended up going to a high school friend’s house in D.C.

A party that’s more like a wake

As my roommates and I sobbed about the sudden loss of our senior year, we began to hear loud music playing from outdoors. My roommates and I lived on the third floor of the largest senior housing apartment complex at Davidson, known as “F.” This is where all the parties take place on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

The songs being played were all of the most popular hits from our past four years at Davidson. “Wow, that song defined our freshman year,” Lauren commented as the song “Closer” by The Chainsmokers blared through the speakers.

Lauren, Marina and I headed to our balcony and watched as fraternity members began dragging out beer pong tables and carrying out their speakers. Seniors started to stream into the courtyard to what seemed like a party.

However, I soon realized that most students weren’t partying so much as crying and holding onto their friends. The gathering was a space for seniors and friends of seniors to mourn the end of their college experience together. While a lot of people said they needed a drink, others were affectionate and expressive of the deep gratitude and joy they had for Davidson and everyone they had met here.

This moment is the one that I hold onto as I sit on my couch back home in New York City. I felt closer to my graduating class down in the courtyard of F than I ever had.

A final large gathering

That night, many upperclassmen decided to go to Brickhouse, a sports bar on the opposite side of the train tracks in Davidson, in order to celebrate their time in college and all of the amazing friends they had made along the way. It was Thursday, and upperclassmen always go to Brickhouse on Thursdays. This decision quickly sparked controversy, though, as other students found this type of social event irresponsible and reckless in a time when authorities were starting to recommend against big gatherings.

One senior wrote in the Davidson College Facebook group a few hours before the event: “I’m already starting to see posts and messages about impromptu parties happening today, tomorrow, etc. With all due respect, you have got to be kidding me.” While the post received 129 likes, much higher numbers turned out at Brickhouse that night.

A final get-together: The night they found out Davidson was closing, upperclassmen went as usual to Brickhouse, a nearby sports bar — though some questioned the wisdom of a large gathering as coronavirus fears spread.

There seemed to be a divide between the students who wanted to enjoy their last few days ever at college before quarantining themselves and those who recognized the immediate need for social distancing.

These debates soon died out as all restaurants became carryout only and campus police cracked down on large gatherings.

From sorrow to anger

Some of the feelings of sadness turned to anger. On Thursday night, after campus police knocked on our friends’ apartment door at F because they suspected a large gathering and threatened to write us up, girls in the apartment argued with the officer, saying we had done nothing wrong. “This is ridiculous,” seniors kept saying to the cops.

Some students took their anger out in other ways. When I left my apartment Friday morning to go to the gym, I noted that somebody had written “This sucks” and “What the Frick” in black bold letters on the various pillars at F. I noticed broken glass scattered throughout the courtyard as a result of drunken students throwing bottles against the brick walls. Later that day, I witnessed 15-20 students hurl their old furniture, such as Ikea bookshelves and nightstands, off the third-floor balcony and then smash it with an old field hockey stick. The campus consensus was that the destruction of their own property was a valuable release of anger and frustration. People needed an outlet.

Finally, acceptance

The boyfriend of one of my roommates said it best, noting the immense challenge of condensing two months of goodbyes into a mere few days. People dealt with this grief in their own unique ways.

My four roommates and I decided to make the most of our final days together by finding any old white dresses we owned in our closets, straightening our hair, putting on our makeup and taking graduation photos outside of the beloved Chambers academic building. The photos served as a way to close the chapter on Davidson and commemorate the amazing 3.75 years we had all had together. Several apartments had the same idea. Some groups even took photos with bathrobes on top of their white dresses as replacements for graduation gowns.

Before scattering their separate ways, Ariana Howard (right) and her roommates took “graduation” photos as a way to remember their time together. (Photos courtesy of Ariana Howard)

Soon after, the campus turned into a ghost town. The campus I once considered home quickly became unfamiliar and bleak. Instead of wanting to stay as long as possible, I found myself wanting to leave campus as soon as I could.

We are all back home (or in temporary homes), waiting to see what will happen with graduation. Among students, the mood has largely shifted. We are finding new ways to maintain a sense of community, offering Zoom trivia night just like Davidson’s little coffee shop used to at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays; reinstating open mic night over Zoom where students perform songs, poems, stories and more on stage every Thursday; sharing in the college Facebook group the 2008 footage of when Steph Curry led Davidson to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, etc. This shift in attitude demonstrates that students understand the bigger problems our country is facing.

However, no matter how much perspective we have on the devastating and lethal impacts the coronavirus has on our communities, the disappointment of ending college early and leaving all of our friends so abruptly will continue to persist. It’s not life or death. But it still warrants a period to mourn.

Ariana Howard is a senior at Davidson College who is majoring in political science. She works for the newspaper at Davidson and hopes to pursue a career in journalism upon graduating.

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