Upon my very knees, I implore you, heed my message! The curse of knowledge, dear reader, has taken root in my soul, and I can but hope that I can deter some foolhardy wanderer of William Jewell College from exposing themself to the dangers which I, unwittingly, have stared in the face. The ancient evils are awakening, and I would not have you endure their hunger; none of us have the strength to defeat them. Heed this brief warning, and should you be held at bay by some malevolent being, you may yet escape that monster intent on your very marrow. Though it may be too late for me to escape the voracious oblivion that awaits, have courage; you may yet live. 

Perchance you have already taken note of the immortal ascetic who wanders William Jewell College by night. More specifically, she roams Gano Chapel when all the lights are out: you may see her silently admiring the lifeless organ, coaxing faint, faint sounds through its massive dusty pipes; you may observe as she paces the rows of the sanctuary, eyes fixed upwards. Her brown robes, in the corner of your eye, have perhaps flowed past the historical exhibit on the first floor, or maybe you have thought you could see the stage curtains quietly opening and closing; she is pulling the ropes in the attic. But the only place you can catch a glimpse of the Anchorite by day is in the prayer room lower by a floor. Here, on the angular wooden bench, you may watch her meditate, or see, in your peripheral vision, her somewhat translucent shape methodically saying the rosary, perching for hours on the low metal stool. Although she will not cause you any harm, the Anchorite may be displeased should you disrupt her studious prayer. If you wish to share in her wisdom and sanctity, ask politely, to the tune of Ave Maria, that the anchorite will play a game of Uno with you. She will teach you the ways of humility and poverty, and you have a good chance of winning, since she has taken a vow of silence and thus cannot announce when she is down to her final card.

​Some places at William Jewell College seem pleasant and full of light, and indeed I have spent many happy hours idling away my time on the blood-red seats of the amphitheater, which you may find halfway down the Trail of Tyranny behind Marston Hall. Why, I wondered, why call the path by such a nasty name? For indeed the sun shines brightly upon the half-circle, casting the seats into a most marvelous hue. But wander not down the Trail of Tyranny near midnight! I did so, merely wishing to study in my oft-visited haunt of semesters past, but I met with such ghastly guardians that I can no longer so much as pass the place without being taken by a violent trembling in all my limbs. For I nearly faced death that night; walking past the iron lamp, I was suddenly met by a spectre which had six eyes and a jaw so wide that its teeth, set in numerous rows, seemed ready to chew me whole. I have, of course, been beset by supernatural perils before, as my readers may know, but at this sight I could move neither hand nor foot, but stood staring as the Tyrant shambled forward. Casting a glance over his bony shoulder, I saw the seats, formerly so brilliant and cheery in the clearing, now dark as obsidian and occupied by others just as horrible. Some had gangling arms and legs that rested at acute angles in the short-legged chairs: some had such flattened and stretched skin that I seemed to behold a skeleton wrapped in tarpaulin, and all emitted ghastly gargling noises at the sight of me. I stumbled backward into the light of the lamp, at which some of its dim rays hit a mirrored trinket upon my backpack, blinding the Tyrant for an instant as I came to myself and sped off for the safety of the better-lit pathway behind me. Go, enjoy the Amphitheater by day, but stay not past the setting of the sun! I fear lest some intrepid explorer of the night should perish at the many hands of the Trail Tyrants and come no more to that resting place so favored by day.

​The ulterior intentions of William Jewell College’s architecture are not always clear. You may wander a hallway a thousand times, and on the thousand-and-first, it may swallow you whole without apology or explanation. It has upon occasion been necessary for me to enter the traveling box which transports a person from one floor of Curry Hall to another. This elevator has served me faithfully several times, if with uneasy mechanical groans of protest, but I thank the kindly spirits that I did not enter it this week past. Perhaps I did learn something playing cards with the Ancient Anchorite, for on that day my heart was set against entering that small prison, and I could not bring myself to set foot in its metallic embrace. I thought myself a coward, however, and pressed the button, waiting for its arrival. I had nearly stepped into the elevator when I saw a strange dark forest within, blanketed in gray mist that seemed to stretch for miles. I felt as if I were inside a reflection and upside down. This time my wits were less frozen, and before I could answer the deathly pull of that dark landscape I had taken a large step backwards and pulled out the red reverse card that the Anchorite bade me to carry always: and no sooner did I do so than the doors of the elevator slammed with such a force, that my ears rang for a good few hours. I had passed the test. The card smoked and withered, and I was left wondering before those superannuated double doors.

I urge you, beware of the buildings you trust, dear reader, for they may turn on you with such temptations that you fall into the depths of the abyss, leaving this life behind in its entirety. Still I am haunted by the sound of that clear cold wind in my soul, and I would that no other need feel the same terrible weight. Still my dreams lurch at me with the disfigurement of a Tyrant of the Trail, my sleeping hours as haunted as my waking. Still I can find no comfort sitting with the Anchorite in silence, for the evils I have seen are unraveling the knot of my sanity. I beseech you who read this, take my warning not lightly! For there are no safe places in this ravenous world; even William Jewell College will betray you by night, take you as a small morsel into its gaping maw, if you have not the wisdom and wherewithal to run before it is too late.

Due to a medical accommodation, my roommate and I live in a Resident Assistant (RA) room, which has a bathroom, in Mathes Hall. One day, I walked into our bathroom and heard very light tapping noises. When I lifted my head to look for the noise, I was met with a hoard of gnats in and around the light fixture of the bathroom. The noises I had heard were from the gnats flying into the light fixture. Seeing a few gnats fly out of the bathroom and into the main room, I immediately exited the bathroom and closed the door behind me to prevent more from entering my room. The infestation must have happened in the last few hours because I had used the bathroom without a hitch earlier that day. 

I frantically called my roommate to fill her in on the situation and went to find my RA. The RA and RD for Mathes both came into my room to gauge the situation and were in shock from how bad the infestation was. They explained that they would put in a work order and that maintenance should come by to take care of the situation as soon as possible. In an attempt to do damage control, they sprayed the bathroom with a disinfectant spray and opened the window. However, the gnats were still there the next morning. 

Upon returning to my room later in the second day, I found that maintenance had come by while my roommate and I were away. They killed all of the gnats, but they didn’t clean them up. Our bathroom was full of dead gnats. The bugs were all over the floor and the toilet seat cover. The majority of the dead gnats were in the light fixture, so my roommate and I were hesitant to clean it up ourselves. Neither of us wanted to risk damaging anything while cleaning the bugs out of the fixture, as further damage could have resulted in possibly being fined by the school. 

Our RA put in another work order for maintenance to clean up the bugs, But, three days went by without any action. After another two work orders were placed, the bugs were still there, and our RA received an email saying that maintenance had ordered fly traps for our room. The email said that Amazon had initially delivered the wrong item and that maintenance should receive fly traps in the next two days. At this point, it had already been about a week and the dead bugs were still there. Five days later, our RA got an email saying that maintenance had installed a fly trap in our room, although no one found evidence of this being true. Not that the trap would have been much help at this point anyway. Eventually, our RA came into the room to clean out the gnats in our light fixture. We cleaned up the rest ourselves. To this day, we still have not received the fly traps that had supposedly been ordered.

I understand that maintenance gets a lot of work orders from all over campus, which can pile up very easily and make it hard to keep up with the workload. Despite this, the quality at which they complete their tasks matters. Sacrificing quality of work to achieve quantity of work orders completed will lead to more work orders being put in due to the shoddy work done for the sake of completion. This is a problem I hope Jewell will be able to address moving forward for the benefit of all students, faculty and staff.

Grace Urquhart, junior psychological science major, discusses the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the local theatre community and Jewell student experiences, as well as encouraging people to take care of their mental health through this trying time. 

I like routine and planning and knowing exactly what’s going to happen. I tend to like to be in control of everything that I’m involved with and anything that might affect me. I enjoy a nice equilibrium. This is a fun fact: I could not control the COVID-19 pandemic. I know, it’s surprising. Keeping my world stable hasn’t been my reality lately. My reality has been twists, turns and cancellations. That’s how I would describe my experience of COVID-19 so far – not knowing the plan because things were changing all the time. Everything happened so fast, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Events I had been looking forward to were being cancelled all around me. The last few weeks have been similar to being on one of those deep sea fishing boats during a large storm and not knowing where the next wave will come from or if it will knock me over. Not being in control creates anxiety in me. So does my nicely planned schedule being obliterated right in front of me.  

This pandemic, besides causing me much anxiety and being a monumental historical event that I will have experienced, has affected my life in a variety of ways. The theatre industry is not an industry with many consistent jobs. And when your job relies on the gathering of a big group of people, a stay-at-home order, though necessary, does not work in favor of your job.

Since January I had been working with Faust Theatre downtown as stage manager for their production of Spring Awakening. The run of the show was set for March 12-22. When we finally arrived at opening night, shows at other theatres all around us were closing their productions due to the virus. On the 13th, we made the decision to only allow essential staff to stay for the runs of the shows, meaning that I operated the light board instead of telling someone when to hit the button. By the 16th it was decided that the show could not continue for our second weekend, and all of the hard work and preparation everyone had put into that beautiful show was cut short. The show rehearsing in the space just above our space at the Arts Asylum closed before it even opened, so we are grateful we had performed for at least the audience that we did. 

I had also been mentoring a high school student director, Alice, who had written her own show about depression and suicide. Her show was set to debut April 2nd and will not be performed any time soon due to the virus. I had gotten to know the group of high school students, and I am deeply saddened that they won’t be able to perform. I am hopeful that a performance of the show will happen at some point, but at this time we just aren’t sure what the future will be. Some of the cast members were making their theatre debut in Alice’s show, while others were performing for their final time as high school students – both of which are important milestones as a thespian. 

Even another theatre job opportunity of mine hangs in the balance, as it’s fairly uncertain what the summer will be like yet. And as part of the greater Kansas City theatre community, I have seen how COVID-19 has affected my friends and friends of my friends who work in Kansas City theatre. Many have now been rendered jobless due to cancellations of shows. It has been a sad few weeks watching this happen and will continue to be a hard time until we find a cure and vaccination for this virus. 

Closer to home, we can look at Jewell Theatre Company’s cancellation of their spring musical, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. This would have been the last musical for the seniors, and it would have been some of the first-years’ first musical at Jewell – memories that we won’t be able to make up. And in general, speaking as someone who is not yet a senior, we have lost precious time with our favorite senior friends.

I’ve also lost my outdoor track and field season, like many other student athletes whose spring season is no longer in existence. Though I can anticipate next year’s season, I am grieving the loss of my chance to break my personal record this season, and I’m grieving alongside the seniors who won’t even have a senior outdoor track and field season or a chance to make conference one last time.

And, similar to a lot of Jewell students undoubtedly, I forfeit some of my organization’s planned campus events. As a campus leader, I believe we are grieving the lost time with our organizations that we adore so much. I also believe that this new lifestyle we have been forced into is an opportunity, as campus leaders, to lead and support our organizations in any way that we are able to do so. This is my call to other Jewell student leaders. Remember to check in with yourself and let’s remember to check in with our people. 

While I know others are losing much more than hopefully any of us will lose, such as a loved one, that doesn’t render our feelings about what we have lost void. We deserve to grieve too because we have lost important parts of our lives, many of which we will not be able to get back. Nonetheless, we will eventually overcome the grief we feel and find our way into a period of new growth. 

Finally, I want to make sure that all Jewell students get the necessary support and care that they need during this time. Please contact the Office of Counseling Services at counselingservices@william.jewell.edu for any mental health related issue that may come up during our absence from Jewell. The OCS staff are wonderful and are there to support you. 

Here is the link to join the Zoom meeting happening every Monday and Thursday from 3p-4p: Click here to join the Let’s Talk Support Group. 

Erika Storvick (‘18) has been attending Columbia University in New York City through the dual-degree engineering program at William Jewell College. Storvick recounts a chaotic two weeks as the city was overcome by cases of COVID-19 and her final semester was cut short. 

We don’t receive many emails from President Bollinger. I found that out when I was searching through emails to remember the timeline of events that has happened over these past few weeks. 

The first email we received was March 8th with a subject line “Time Sensitive Update on COVID-19.” This was the first day we were informed someone in our own community was exposed to the virus. Classes were then suspended for a few days while the university prepared to shift to remote classes for the remainder of the week – up until spring break. 

After that first email things began to escalate very quickly. Within two days we had another email that the student in quarantine tested negative but virtual classes would continue until March 30th. We slowly began receiving emails that all events of over 25 people were canceled. Professors started to panic about the difficulty of moving classes online. As an engineering student, online classes sounded dreadful. Most of my courses were hands-on, and the possibility of them being conducted completely remotely brought chaos to our whole department. 

That evening a few friends and I walked down to the Trader Joes on 96th street. We thought we better stock up on some food, very unaware of how quickly chaos was going to unfold. The shelves of Trader Joes were nearly empty, the line spiraled around the entire store, weaving through each isle. Some people looked panicked, while others we overheard talking about how big of an overreaction this was. After deciding not to wait two hours in line, we left the store. Once outside, we saw that a line two blocks long had formed to even get inside. Trader Joes had reached max capacity. I had never seen anything like it, and I wondered if those people were even going to be able to find the things they needed once they were inside. 

By March 12th, the day before spring break, we were informed all classes would be online for the remainder of the semester and those who could should move out of residence halls. However, this email didn’t seem too urgent. Things in NYC were stirring, streets were quiet, no one knew what to believe and no one could see what was going to happen. In two days I was supposed to be on a flight to Miami. Rumors of city-wide quarantines and domestic travel restrictions began to spread, and so taking precaution, we cancelled our final spring break trip. 

The following day, March 13th, a few friends and I took the advice of getting away from campus and the city for spring break and went to Cape Cod. Just two days after we got settled and comfortable being away from the city and focusing on self-quarantining, we received the latest Bollinger update. Everyone was to be moved out of their dorms by Tuesday, March 17th. We had two days to figure out a plan, get back to the city and execute that plan. 

We left that evening, the 15th, and headed for the city. The car was quiet and emotions were running high. Spring break had just taken a dark twist as we realized our senior year and our time in New York City was coming to a premature close. At this point we were just awaiting the next daunting email. We knew the bad news was far from over. When we rolled into the city, it was chaotic. It had been rumored that two individuals on my floor in my building had tested positive for COVID-19. Nervous, but equally excited to be back in my favorite city, we grabbed our liter bottle of Purell and gloves and headed to pack all of our belongings. By the next morning we were out of there and on our way to Cape Cod for the second time in a matter of days. 

I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t have time to make a plan. I just had to move in whatever direction was available at the time. I’m so lucky to have a friend that was willing to open his house up to those of us not from the east coast until we could figure out a long-term plan. We quarantined ourselves for the suggested 14 days before thinking about other arrangements. 

As you can imagine, the bad news didn’t end there. Within a few days we received the email that changed all that we had left of our senior year. On March 21st, we woke up to receive the final announcement from President Bollinger. He wrote to us “with three purposes”. Classes had been postponed once again (woohoo for 3 weeks of spring break I guess), all classes had been moved to pass/fail with no opportunity to uncover grades, and finally, we would not be going forward with commencement in May. 

Looking back on this sequence of events, I remember all the emotions I was feeling as it was happening – stress, anger, helplessness and awe. The somber emotions set in later because I was too frazzled to feel them as it was all happening. I feel the grief now though. I feel it for the seniors who never had the chance to walk across a stage in their caps and gowns. As a dual-degree engineering student, I was lucky enough to have this opportunity at Jewell two years earlier. However, commencement this May was supposed to be a celebration of the completion of two degrees and six years of hard work. The abrupt ending to life on campus as we knew it meant cutting off growing friendships prematurely and being forced to leave behind projects that we will never get the chance to see through, yet having to muster up the strength to finish classes remotely. Now, we will always be known as the COVID-19 Class of 2020. I imagine future interviewers asking about “a time you had to overcome a major challenge,” and oh boy do I have a story for you.