Most colleges across the country have closed campuses. But as classes go online, not every student can pick up and head home. Tizee Kasetet is a sophomore at the College of Idaho.
“I'm from Namibia in southern Africa,” he said.
He came to Caldwell from a United World College campus (a high school for international students) in New Mexico to study business administration two years ago. He could have made it back home to Namibia in March, before the first two cases of COVID-19 were discovered there.
"They then started implementing a travel ban," he said. "Even if you are from Namibia, you couldn't go back."
College of Idaho closed its campus two weeks ago, ahead of the normal spring break. Kasetet is still there, along with nearly 200 other, mostly international students.
University officials encouraged some students to stay. Travel risk and potential issues returning to the United States from overseas at an undetermined future date were a concern, but students like Kasetet wanted to continue school, too. For him, logging on from home for online classes was more complicated than just connecting to the internet.
"I would have to like wake up at like 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m. to to attend classes because of the different time zones," Kasetet said.
Students are spread across campus housing so each has their own room. They can venture outside while maintaining distance. Food services is still providing grab and go meals, and campus safety is fully operational, said the school's director of marketing and communications, Joe Hughes.
"The most difficult part is the fact that we are very much a relational college." Hughes said the school has coalesced around a difficult situation and is doing the very best to both maintain education plans and social resources.
Boise State and Northwest Nazarene Universities, like the College of Idaho, have all allowed students without other good options to stay put. And it's not just international students. Hannah Rick is in her fourth year at Northwest Nazarene in Nampa.
“My family lives in northeast Washington."
When NNU announced it was closing campus, she said the news sent her into a scramble because home wasn’t a great option to finish the semester.
"We live in a very rural area and there is no WiFi at the house or really in the area," she said. "In fact, my sister and I were considering having to drop out, if we had to go home.”
Hannah’s younger sister moved out of her sophomore dorm and into the upperclass apartment with Hannah. The school has moved the approximately two dozen remaining students into apartment-style housing.
NNU Vice President for Student life Carey Cook said they are providing a few pre-packaged meals available for pickup, and may shift to reimbursing students for meals in the future. Rick and her sister aren’t relying on those meals though.
“I cook everything from scratch, so it's just pretty easy to just buy what I need for the next two weeks or buy it."
The story is similar at Boise State. About 130 students are still living on campus, plus another couple dozen residence hall staff. Greg Hahn is the associate university vice president for communications.
"They're a little lower density in those apartment-style houses, but they can cook their own food,” he said, before adding a surprise when many of them moved from traditional freshman and sophomore dorms into apartment-style housing.
"They didn't even have utensils, a lot of them," Hahn explained. "So we did an on campus call for donations to folks to kind of look for whatever they could do to take give up and it sort of took off on social media.”
Each school also has counselors at the ready to speak to students feeling isolated or scared.
Kasetet, from the College of Idaho, said he feels safe despite the challenges.
"The isolation; I think is harder for people that left and went home because there are less people. Because there's probably around 200 students still on campus, [so] you still kind of do see some people," he said. For him, this isolated community is still a community.
"So it's not as weird, but it’s definitely not normal. It's definitely not normal."
Note: This story aired the morning of April 3. Boise State University announced confirmed cases of COVID-19 in on-campus student housing, and off-campus apartment housing the evening of April 2. Further details were not available.
