SJU Snr On How COVID Effected Community

An SJU senior discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has effected his life on campus. As someone who is extremely involved and spends so much of his time around people, he discusses what he is involved in and how covid has changed what that looks like.

More videos like this one can be found at http://transition.starttalkingsju.com. You can also see our prior campaigns: Living in Fear, Striving for Hope, Attacked, Belonging, and Mental Health.

This video was co-created with the person depicted who reviewed and signed a consent form granting permission to share this story online.

If you are experiencing any personal or social effects due to COVID and/or a return to campus life, the university has resources that can help, including:

The Office of Student Outreach and Support
the SJU COVID website;
HawkHub, if you are experiencing food insecurity;
The Bias Activity Review Group, which connects to Public Safety;
Counseling and Psychological Support (CAPS; 610-660-1090)
TitleIX titleIX@sju.edu
REPP (*confidential support) 610-733-9650 (24 hr. Peer Helpline)
SJU Public Safety 610-660-1111.

A complete transcript of the video reads as follows:

“I chose Saint Joe’s over other Philadelphia schools because I really enjoyed the location of it. I liked that Saint Joe’s was still located in Philly with a bit more room to breathe. And, you know, being from an area that’s more suburban and not the city. I really enjoyed the perfect balance between being in the city and in the suburbs.

Here at Saint Joe’s I’m involved with the baseball team here. I have the honor of being a student manager for the baseball team. It included me getting the chance to be involved in the program. To go to every practice and game and help out with a lot of on-field stuff, as well as off-field stuff with the numbers and the analytics here with the program. And just really grateful for the opportunity to be involved with that team and that family.

I also have the opportunity to be a student leader for Agape Christian fellowship here on campus. It’s been a really essential part to my time here at Saint Joe’s. It’s an incredible community of other people and other students here on campus that I really don’t know where I’d be without them.
Well, I’ll say I really appreciate the fact that Saint Joe’s gave us the opportunity to come back here on campus for my junior year in 2020-2021. I had a lot of other friends that went to other schools in the region and the didn’t get the opportunity to be on campus. So I’m really grateful for the way in which Saint Joe’s just went about handling that and gave us the opportunity here on campus as much as possible. And, you know, balancing giving us as much as a real college experience as possible as well as, you know, looking out for our safety.

But, at the same time it was still a struggle. I was still starving for the ability to be with people, to be in community with Agape, to be in community with the baseball team or with high schoolers at young life. I was super grateful for what it was and I’m super grateful that Saint Joe’s gave me the opportunity to be involved with that as much as we were able to, but I still really struggled with the fact that it was not, you know, whatever normal life is.