W

hat does it mean to live in a 

community? 

In one sense, a commu-

nity is a group of people who have something 

in common. When I reflect on what I have in 

common with my fellow students, faculty and 

staff, two things come to mind. The first is our 

affiliation with the University of Michigan. 

The mere fact of affiliation, however, confers 

little significance within Ann Arbor. Meeting 

a fellow Wolverine in your hometown or on a 

trip abroad is exciting, yet here, our Wolverine-

ness tends to fade into the background. The 

school swells with spirit on game days, but in 

the course of daily life meeting another Wol-

verine is so common that it ceases to be special.

Another aspect of our community is that we 

share a common space and engage with each 

other within it. We meet our peers in this neu-

tral territory so that we can form bonds and 

foster relationships of trust that lead to deeper 

social connections. From the buzz of the Diag 

to the roar of the Big House, the activities that 

bind the individual to the community invari-

ably take place in the presence of others. Leav-

ing the privacy of one’s home is crucial to at-

taining this newfound sense of belonging.

It is this second aspect — our interaction in 

public spaces — that is the greatest determinant 

of our sense of community. When people say, 

“I went to the University of Michigan,” they do 

not simply refer to receiving their degree. It is 

rather a question of being there; memories of 

screaming in the students’ section, getting lost 

in Angell Hall and hustling to class in sub-zero 

temperatures linger in the minds of U-M stu-

dents years after graduation. In a similar vein, 

the invaluable work of faculty and staff ensures 

that this environment is preserved for current 

students as well as the generations of students 

to come.

However, this semester COVID-19 has 

forced us to adapt to an unfamiliar social re-

ality. Reflecting on the possible 

ramifications of this adaptation, 

I began to wonder: How did we 

interact historically in public 

spaces here at the University, 

and how have these interac-

tions changed in the time of CO-

VID-19?

In probing this question, I 

decided to examine three kinds 

of public spaces in particu-

lar: dining halls, libraries and 

“crossroads,” places students 

walk through or spend a few 

hours in doing a variety of ac-

tivities, such as the Diag or the 

Law Quadrangle.
B

efore the pandem-

ic, Michigan Din-

ing hosted thousands 

of students per day in seven 

public dining halls and two, 

Martha Cook Dining Hall and 

the Lawyer’s Club, designated as 

“residents only.” MDining is also 

the top student employer on 

campus, with approximately 

1,000 jobs offered each term. 

The amount of food produced and consumed 

in all of these places combined was and still is 

staggering — anyone who has relied on the din-

ing hall system in their college career should 

pause to quietly applaud this herculean effort.

For MDining, the act of feeding thousands 

of students has stayed the same. The experi-

ence of going to the dining hall, however, has 

changed a lot.

Dining hall student coordinator and LSA se-

nior Alethia Blough told me in our Zoom call 

about the major differences in dining before 

and during the pandemic. She works in South 

Quad Dining Hall, where the old system of 

grabbing food from different mini-restaurants 

has given way to a highly organized series of 

socially-distanced lines. There is no more eat-

ing in the dining hall, either; students enter the 

dining hall, join one of the lines and are finally 

spit out at the exit.

“We’re definitely trying to keep things more 

enforced and be a more known presence, just 

to direct the lines and things like that. And so 

(students) kind of have to interact with us. They 

can’t just grab their plate and go.”

Perhaps counterintuitively, the necessity 

of the situation has decreased spontaneous 

interactions among students and introduced 

required interactions between student diners 

and employees. This is a clear, even encourag-

ing caveat to any categorical denunciation of 

COVID-19 damaging all social relations. As has 

been the case for many other essential workers, 

the pandemic has shown the importance of peo-

ple that previously students might have taken 

for granted. Moreover, as cases climb in dormi-

tories across campus, fostering trust between 

workers and diners is more important than ever.

When I spoke with Aidan Meador-Woodruff, 

an LSA Residential College freshman, on the 

phone to get the student perspective on the din-

ing hall experience, one of the first things he ex-

pressed was an appreciation for the kindness of 

dining hall workers. “The people who greet us at 

the dining hall and the actual staff are very kind 

in their interactions with students,” Meador-

Woodruff said.

And these small, everyday interactions 

count for a lot in a time when the coronavirus 

pandemic also threatens an epidemic of loneli-

ness for new students. However well people get 

along in the contemporary dining hall experi-

ence, it is no substitute for the vital social func-

tion dining halls have played in previous years 

— the possibility of sharing a meal with friends 

in these common spaces was crucial for devel-

oping a sense of connection among students. 

Especially as the temperature drops, residence 

hall residents — and anyone who lives alone — 

will have to reckon with fewer opportunities to 

break bread with their peers.
T

he library is another focal point of 

public life that has drastically al-

tered its operations. As physical 

spaces, the many U-M libraries have offered 

generations of students a sanctuary for academ-

ic study. Unlike with the Union, the Fishbowl 

and other serious academic hubs, the library is 

not only a study space; it also holds a vast reposi-

tory of knowledge. The whole apparatus of the 

library — both physical and virtual — is directed 

toward the goal of supporting scholars from all 

disciplines across the university.

This semester, most libraries at the Univer-

sity have temporarily closed in observances of 

public health guidelines, yet librarians are still 

working hard to replace the loss of in-person 

access to the physical spaces. I got to hear more 

about these efforts when I talked with two li-

brarians over Zoom: Emily Petty Puckett Rodg-

ers, a space design and assessment librarian who 

also leads the Library Environments depart-

ment, and Dr. Rebecca Price, a subject specialist 

for architecture and urban planning.

As the lead of the Library Environments de-

partment, Puckett Rogers conducts research on 

how patrons engage with the physical, and now 

virtual, spaces of the library. She told me about 

some of the new services the library was testing 

out, such as specialist virtual consultations, con-

tactless pickup and continued access to the spe-

cial collections. “I think that we are responding 

to some of these challenges in ways that try to 

place us at the point of need for people,” Puckett 

Rogers explained. 

It is clear that Puckett Rogers and her team, 

along with the hundreds of employees of the 

U-M library, are continuing to earnestly support 

researchers here at the University in the vir-

tual environment. What has been temporarily 

lost, however, is the experience of being in the 

library. Price illustrated the nature of this expe-

rience well in our conversation.

“
Just being near all the ideas that are in 

those books; you have, sort of, conversations. 

People are talking to you — that sounds really 

scary.” At this point Price paused and laughed 

at herself. “But when you’re in the library there 

are these conversations going on all the time 

that you can be part of.”

This is an evocative description of what is 

special about libraries, though I think Price’s 

notion of being near the ideas also points the 

way to a broader truth. When you go to a li-

brary, “the ideas” are not only sitting on dusty 

shelves — they also exist in the minds of ev-

eryone around you. At any given moment, the 

vast majority of people working in libraries are 

wrestling with concepts, proofs, code, essays or 

whatever they happen to be working on. They 

do so privately in their own minds, but publicly 

in the act of writing, typing and talking. In ad-

dition to the ghostly conversations happening 

between writers and readers, actual conver-

sations also take place between the budding 

scholars of the future. 

Puckett Rogers described the library as an 

“intellectual collision space.” That might be an 

oddly chaotic image for a place usually reserved 

for quiet contemplation, although the second 

floor of the Shapiro Undergraduate Library is 

a notable exception. At the level of ideas, how-

ever, collisions do occur. Even in the silence of 

the Law Library, one can constantly hear the 

frenetic pitter-patter of fingers on a keyboard. 

Collisions are happening everywhere.
L

ast but not least, I reflected on the 

character of the thoroughfares of 

campus: places like the Diag and the 

Law Quad.

The Diag is the most “public” of all the 

spaces addressed in this article. It is a com-

mon byway for practically everyone, ranging 

from seasoned townies to fans of the opposing 

team on game days. The student population, 

however, still probably provides the majority 

of foot traffic. Indeed, in the time before virtual 

learning, I traversed the Diag every day, which 

is the case for most students. For this reason, I 

assumed it would mark the cornerstone of the 

community; it would represent our sense of to-

getherness.

Yet, I have started to notice something trou-

bling about the character of daily life in Ann 

Arbor. It is not the fact that people keep their 

distance from each other — this is a good thing, 

albeit an unfortunate truth of following public 

health guidelines. It’s also not about my frus-

tration with people not wearing masks — this 

has been a problem since the beginning of the 

pandemic. 

I have noticed that, with regard to how we 

treat each other, not much has changed at all.

I arrived at this understanding while I was 

sitting on the Law Quad. It was a beautiful au-

tumn day, and lots of people had come out to 

relax or do schoolwork on the lawn. The scene 

was eerily normal. There was something famil-

iar about how people were simply leaving each 

other alone. It was then that I realized that CO-

VID-19 has given us an opportunity to ignore 

each other even more intensely than before.

Though we may not like to admit it, ignoring 

each other is an integral part of the culture of 

our campus. It’s rare to receive a smile from a 

passerby on the way to class, unless you know 

them. At bars, people tend to keep to their cir-

cle of friends. In the few minutes before class 

begins, as people are unpacking notebooks and 

their pencil cases, no one is in the mood for a 

conversation. At a school as competitive as 

Michigan, people are too busy, distracted, tired 

or stressed to truly dedicate time and curiosity 

to the well-being of strangers.

To be fair, this cultural practice is in no 

way unique to the University of Michigan. In 

all large cities and towns, there comes a point 

when it is cumbersome to actively acknowl-

edge the existence of everyone you see. In-

stead, minding your own business becomes the 

predominant attitude.

I think that is why there are so many smaller 

communities at the University. The innumera-

ble fraternities, sororities, pre-professional fra-

ternities, consulting groups, a capella groups, 

interest groups, clubs and even the student 

newspaper contribute to a sense of community 

that is much stronger than what mere univer-

sity affiliation can provide. Students in these 

organizations care about each other, make last-

ing friendships and in some cases do incredible 

things with a group of diverse, 

like-minded individuals.

It is clear, however, that car-

ing for a smaller community 

does not always translate to 

caring for the U-M community 

as a whole. People who are con-

scious of COVID-19 keep their 

distance and wear a mask, ef-

fectively “ignoring” you, but 

they do so because it is in the 

interest of the community; they 

acknowledge that others’ health 

is important to them.

On the contrary, I am not 

sure what I can say about the 

person who walks the streets 
without a mask, spits on the 

ground and does not apologize 

for either. This person clearly 

does not know me, and he does 

not care about me. Like all of 

us, he pays attention to what he 

finds significant. I do not think 

there is any mystery involved in 

his behavior, nor an interesting 

psychological problem. He sim-

ply does not give a damn.
T

he paradox of COVID-19 is that 

building a real community requires 

meaningful and sustained inter-

action, while at the same it is currently in the 

interest of the broader community for us to re-

main temporarily apart. 

In terms of how we conduct ourselves in the 

public sphere, we can learn much from their 

stewards such as dining hall employees and li-

brarians. They ensure the continued function 

of essential services, as well as the spaces in 

which those services are rendered. They can-

not afford to ignore others as a part of their job, 

but the truth is that neither can we.

Our lives are becoming increasingly private, 

but in those rare moments when we are in pub-

lic we must tread carefully. Personal respon-

sibility will not be enough; what is currently 

missing in the weakly-bound communities 

across the United States is a sense of the col-

lective. Only when we are able to acknowledge 

the existence of others will we recognize the 

deprivations of unmitigated self-interest and 

the virtues of living in the public sphere.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
15 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020 
statement

BY ALEXANDER SATOLA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

PHOTO BY ALEC COHEN

COVID-19 and the dissolution 
of the community

