This year, as many students are battling disappointment from the inability to participate in the hall events and traditions we all enjoy due to COVID-19 regulations, one of the concerns that keeps popping up is this: what will hall cultures look like after the pandemic? And, more importantly, will they suffer?
Photo by Margaret Henry
While the former question would take a little more explanation to answer, Jonathan Wylie, the Assistant Dean of Students for Residence Life, answered yes to the latter. He believes that because of this pandemic students’ relationships are suffering, and “it makes sense because we have lost desired connections because of restrictions.” But he also issued a challenge to the RAs and staff at Covenant College: “Let’s use our creativity to think about ways we can connect.”
Luckily, there are many who are already answering this challenge all around campus. “I would love to see some traditions be able to come back next year,” said Sara Duke ’23, a resident of the hall Jubilee in Founders. She worries that some halls may have a harder time keeping their traditions alive, especially those without a lot of turnover due to large numbers of upperclassmen.
“But I have also been so encouraged and impressed by each hall’s creativity as they come up with ways to adapt some traditions or come up with entirely new traditions, and so I am not too worried about hall culture,” Duke said.
Despite her concerns, Duke is encouraged by the creativity displayed by a number of halls. They have adapted their old traditions to accommodate the COVID-19 regulations, which is the sort of creativity that Wylie had challenged the student body to exercise.
For Mattie Underwood ’22, the RA of Rowan in Maclellan, reevaluation of the goals of each hall’s tradition is equally important in this time. Along with this, she has her own challenge for halls across campus during the pandemic.
“What would your hall look like if they were the only hall on campus? And your community wasn't dependent on someone else? If you prank someone, you're dependent on their response; or if it's a hall date, then you're dependent on people coming.”
Photo by Joshua McDonald
Underwood makes the point that if students were to think like their hall was the only hall on campus, then they could answer the question of how to set up their success and help their community thrive. Underwood says that there are ways to use this pandemic as a time to examine and purge hall traditions of “unhealthy” goals.
For some like Isaac Trefsgar ’22, the RA of Summit in Carter Hall, the conservation of hall tradition is essential. "I think that [tradition] is one of the pillars of hall life here at Covenant, especially with a lot of the bigger halls on campus, the older halls, the ones that have been around for like forty or fifty years,” he said.
As Trefsgar’s personal goal, he is striving to imbue his mostly-new hall with traditions that will stick and that his hallmates can get excited about. This is because he believes in the importance of tradition to hall culture and the community-building opportunities that they provide.
Duke and Trefsgar are only two out of the many students who champion the importance of continued hall culture during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[Hall traditions] form deeper relationships with the people you live with,” said Duke, “because at the end of the day, those are the people that you are living life right alongside, and how exciting is that? Because that's the church! That is what the church is. [It is] fellow sisters and brothers in Christ, doing their everyday together.”
But there are some, like Underwood, who still feel like hall tradition goes beyond the culture or traditions of a hall and has more to do with a mindset of gratitude. This gratitude is what really allows halls to thrive in the fellowship that reflects the goodness of God.
“So don't hold your hall to unrealistic expectations of what this year should be or what the hall has looked like in the past instead of holding them up to the expectation of finding ways to be thankful for how God is still working,” Underwood says. “Because even if we have nothing, we have everything in Christ, and that's not lost.”