The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
12— Wednesday, March 24, 2021
statement
What COVID-19’s done to the campus club
BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
I
t was the fall of 2019, a week or so into
my first semester as a University of
Michigan student, and I was launching
myself headfirst into new experiences with
a crazed level of zeal. Over the course of one
week, I downloaded Tinder for the first time,
then swiftly tried my hand at blocking some-
one from Tinder, vinyasa-ed my way through
my first group yoga class, went to my first real
party, the list goes on. I was buzzed on the
kind of gluttonous ambition one can only clas-
sify as freshman fall hysteria.
The next step, it seemed, was to find the
student organization that would become my
home.
The dream scenario looked like this: it’s
Festifall, the University’s take on the quint-
essential “club fair,” and I’m one of the thou-
sands of freshmen anonymously moving in a
stupid pack, a school of fish. Then, in slow-
motion, a self-assured upperclassman plucks
me gracefully from the crowd, guiding me
safely to their respective club table, to which-
ever little community they had formed on
campus. And a new group of friends would
descend upon me, angels with wings.
But reality failed to replicate this dream.
On that fateful Friday, situated at the tail end
of orientation activities, Ingalls Mall had been
invaded by a mass of student leaders occu-
pying little, rectangular factions of grass and
darting around with manic enthusiasm. In-
tensely ornamented poster boards and color-
coded interest forms were in plentiful supply.
And swarming past in congested packs
were their unassuming attendees, the fresh-
men. Some were in pairs, beckoning their best
friend of 24 hours to come to check out the
perfect film society they “gotta join.” Some,
like me, made the risky decision of attending
the event alone, collecting a forest’s worth of
mass-meeting informational slips. Cooking
clubs, publications, acting troupes, fraterni-
ties, improv groups — I wanted to sample it
all.
And sample I did. RC Players, the Univer-
sity’s chapter of College Democrats, Camp
Kesem, Dance Marathon, Women’s Glee Club
and Her Campus magazine were just a few
of the clubs I scouted. But, ironically enough,
after weeks of mass meetings and enough
GroupMe invites and listservs to make my
laptop crash, I hadn’t yet found either of the
two organizations I would later devote myself
to at this school (one being this paper and the
other being a co-ed a cappella group on cam-
pus).
Essentially, a great majority of my fresh-
man year can be summed up by this thrill-
ing and exhausting chase to belong. Explor-
ing these groups, then finding people I really
clicked with and looked forward to seeing in
these groups, was a cornerstone of my fresh-
man experience.
My first few meetings as a Daily Arts writer
were icebreakers and trivial announcements
but also stacks of newspapers, walls plastered
corner-to-corner with campaign posters, a
finely-tuned newsroom of worker bees. And
on the left side of the room, the arts writers
would congregate, each carrying their own
notebook of scribbled story pitches and inter-
view quotes; a cast of characters talking about
new films or new music or a really dope new
Korean restaurant on State Street. My mere
proximity to these kinds of people made me
want to write forever and then some.
And my a cappella rehearsals were about
sight-singing and vocal blend but were also
about the way group members would file
into a depressing, Barney-purple Modern
Languages Building auditorium on a Mon-
day night and find something to celebrate — a
new job offer for Mark or Miriam’s fresh new
manicure or something hilarious and perfect-
ly delivered by Josh. We’d shake off the flush
from the Michigan winter outside and find
pockets of warmth in comfortable conversa-
tion and tight hugs.
Little did we know that in just a couple of
weeks, those jumbled rehearsal arrivals and
flushed exchanges would be terminated by a
little virus that has an affinity for those who
speak (or better yet: sing) in close proximity
to one another.
A year has passed and, after conducting a
handful of outdoor rehearsals in the Thayer
Street parking structure, our vocal warmups
muffled under the fabric of our respective
facemasks, we’ve transitioned to Zoom. These
rehearsals tend to be characterized by a loud
level of silence and a track that lags more than
it actually plays our vocal parts for us. The
booming “Za-Za-Za” exercises I used to belt
with a full chest in a University auditorium
are now whispered in my sad attempt to not
disturb my roommates.
Our group is joined by over 1,600 other
registered student-run clubs on campus,
meaning that there are thousands of Zoom
club meetings just like ours taking place
for every week that we remain under Uni-
versity-mandated virtual guidelines. While
freshmen have reflected on the ways cur-
rent circumstances have tarnished what
was supposed to be an unforgettable year for
them, I wanted to talk with the upperclass-
men leaders behind these organizations to
learn more about how other organizations
are faring. How were they attempting to
foster community during these unarguably
bleak times?
LSA senior Tiffany Harris was studying
abroad in South Africa when the world’s fa-
vorite virus found its way to campus and the
University effectively moved to a virtual for-
mat. At the time, she was the treasurer and
devoted member of Creatives of Color, an or-
ganization that fosters collaboration and pro-
fessional development opportunities among
student artists of color.
But upon returning home, she got an excit-
ing request from the club’s e-board.
“After … everything had kind of shut down
they were like, ‘Tiffany, we want you to be the
president (of the club),” Harris recounted in
a virtual interview with The Daily. “You’ve
been the most present and you’ve been there
since the beginning, so you know so much
more than a lot of other people.’” The club
had just been gearing up to host their annual
showcase, which sought to anonymously pair
up artists of color — dancers, artists and pho-
tographers alike — to organize collaborative
acts for their biggest event of the year. They
held the informational meeting for the show
just a month prior to the U-M shutdown in
mid-March.
Harris tells me CoC was forced to cancel
all of their events and workshops for the re-
mainder of the year, including the showcase.
But once a hybrid fall semester rolled around,
Harris hit the ground running with a presi-
dential enthusiasm:
“
I decided, as president, that I re-
ally wanted to have some in-person,
safe events,” Harris said. “So, in the
fall, we had this event called the ‘Creative
Expo.’ So we had singers, filmmakers,
dancers, rappers, and some people who
were on the e-board as well … we trans-
formed our e-board member’s basement
into an event space. We edited the lights,
(we) had just, you know, very good cam-
eramen … we had masks on, we tried to
stay socially distanced when we weren’t
performing.”
While the event was admittedly very
“DIY,” Harris tells me, “... we made it work,
and we performed it via Twitch so it could
be livestreamed. So instead of having an au-
dience like we usually would, we had about
30 (virtual) attendees, which I think is pretty
good for a virtual event.”
Harris has been working feverishly to con-
tinue hosting virtual events, workshops and
meetings via Zoom in order to maintain a
similar level of activity that the group might
experience during a normal school year.
However, Harris admits that enthusiasm
among members has been lacking simply be-
cause, “it’s obviously very hard to be creative
(right now), especially (because) not many
people want to get on another Zoom call after
being in Zoom classes all day, which I under-
stand.”
Nevertheless, Harris’s persistent efforts
within CoC serve as a testament to the ways
student leaders are creatively adapting to ab-
normal circumstances.
While she may have never anticipated or-
ganizing a livestream event in her friend’s
basement to be one of her presidential re-
sponsibilities, this year has shown us that we
can, in fact, conquer new feats with just a little
creativity and a lot of flexibility.
Ultimately, “There’s a lack of friendship
that we truly need,” Harris admitted. “Our
community misses it, our e-board misses it …
we want to do more, but we’re doing the best
we can.”
***
Public Health senior Liadan Solomon, ex-
ecutive director of Wolverine Support Net-
work, the premier peer-led support program
on campus, says her position is “not a low-
commitment role.” She can spend upwards
of 20+ hours a week working on her WSN ex-
ecutive duties alone, and she wouldn’t have it
any other way.
“You don’t sign up to do basically a part-
time job for free if you don’t care about it a
lot,” Solomon said in a virtual interview with
The Daily.
Before she became executive director, Sol-
omon was a member of WSN her freshman
year, then became a group leader, then the
director of operations. She found out a mere
few weeks before the campus-wide shut-
down, at the end of February of last year, that
she would assume the head director position
she carries now.
Solomon acknowledges that the rapid
change and elevated levels of anxiety that
came with the pandemic go against all that
WSN stands for: student mental wellness.
And so, her task became trying to assume
business as usual, as quickly as possible, with-
in the organization.
“That transition (to virtual meetings) was
scary and threatening in some ways. It threat-
ened … the communities that people had al-
ready formed, which is really scary, obvious-
ly,” Solomon said in regards to the close-knit
support groups WSN’s e-board had meticu-
lously organized in spaces across campus.
But Solomon describes the transition to
virtual meetings as nearly simultaneous with
the COVID-19 shutdown.
“So we transitioned almost immediately
to virtual… And for us, cancelling our groups
was never really an option,” Solomon said.
“We know that a lot of students rely on our
groups for support and, especially during a
time when there was so much rapid change
happening, we knew that the support they
were getting was so important, so that’s why
we decided to transition straight to virtual.”
Now, Solomon and the rest of the WSN e-
board are utilizing virtual events and social
media advocacy to continue the culture of in-
clusivity the network is known for.
“In terms of operation, we’ve not used
(the) virtual (format) as an excuse to bow
down from a challenge if that makes sense,”
Solomon said. “We hosted about 10 events
over the summer that were all virtual. This
semester alone, we’re hosting about 16 or 17
events that are all virtual.”
Solomon even mentioned taking over for
select group leaders who were not mentally
able to assume their roles this semester —
she’s doing the jobs of multiple people and
executive-directing the entire network and
she’s doing all of it with zero compensation.
It is students like Solomon who demonstrate
that, where the U-M administration has prov-
en inept in terms of protecting the rights and
wellbeing of their undergraduate and gradu-
ate student bodies, students can show up and
provide that support for one another.
***
Pre-law fraternity Kappa Alpha Pi was in
good company last March as one of countless
social organizations facing the cancellation of
one of their semester-defining parties due to
the onset of COVID-19. (The Michigan A Cap-
pella Council was supposed to host our “Aca-
Prom” the very weekend that students were
evicted from campus housing).
KAPi had just finished an in-person, Win-
ter 2020 rush process when plans for their
formal in Detroit were underway. Public
Policy junior William Brown, who now holds
the position of vice president of the fraternity,
was social chair at the time and remembers
that fateful week of cancellations and hurried
transitions.
“From the e-board perspective it was pret-
ty hectic,” Brown told The Daily in a virtual
interview. “… We kind of had to go into high-
gear and cancel (the formal) and try and get
refunds … We (then) shut down everything
and moved everything online, including our
entire new member orientation system.”
When asked about how they navigated a
virtual rush process this semester, KAPi Ex-
ecutive Coordinator Ruby Yearling, an LSA
junior, said that while the organization didn’t
see too much of a drop in numbers, the pro-
cess was simply not the same “on an interper-
sonal level.”
“I’m sure that there are a lot of people who
just aren’t comfortable on Zoom, or there are
lots of barriers with that,” Yearling specu-
lated. “And so, it’s very possible that there
were a ton of amazing applicants who we just
weren’t able to get to know because of the cir-
cumstances.”
Pre-professional organizations like KAPi run
like a well-operated machine, with each e-board
member managing their own specific project
or sector of the club — Yearling, for example, is
tasked with organizing the club’s “Speaker Se-
ries,” a weekly event that exposes members to
working professionals within or close to the law
profession. And, ultimately, not even a global
pandemic has proven to drastically disrupt this
perfectly-running operation, partly due to the
nature of the org and also to the credit of student
leaders like Yearling and Brown.
***
A part of me felt reassured to know that,
similar to my intensely awkward and poorly
executed Zoom a cappella rehearsals, other
student orgs were also stumbling through a
(dare I say it) unprecedented school year.
When Ingalls Mall will once again be
flooded with organizations’ coveted Festifall
propaganda and schools of bright-eyed fresh-
men, I do not know. But nevertheless, student
leaders continue to serve their communities
in the best ways they can, come rain or shine,
hybrid or virtual, Zoom or no Zoom.
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY