In 2018, Evin Karatas suffered the first of several depressive episodes that plagued his Temple years. He’d left the academic pressure-cooker of engineering to major in public health, but the fog still stymied him: He failed a class and received a grade of “incomplete” in another. Then, he lost his grandmother in the summer of 2019.
“2020 is going to be my year,” Karatas recalled thinking at the time. “Definitely.”
Three months in, a plague intervened: The World Health Organization declared COVID-19, the deadly respiratory illness originating from the Chinese industrial city of Wuhan, a pandemic. NBA center Rudy Gobert became the first pro athlete in the U.S. to test positive for the virus on March 11, prompting most sports leagues to suspend their schedules.
Forewarned by news of the thousands killed when the pandemic first surfaced in Asia and Europe, governments ordered nearly all public spaces closed within days — so people could stay home, out of direct physical contact with one another. And schools emptied their dorms and classrooms, promising students learning would soon resume via teleconference.
Five years later, the world chases normalcy: Storefronts are open. Sports stadiums fill with fans. Yet millions ultimately died from the virus; millions more found themselves disabled by its effects. And many of its disruptions have left permanent marks on both the world and Temple’s community.
Rafael Friedlander entered the college admissions process in the winter months of 2020, as a high school junior. The pandemic was still oceans away. He ultimately applied to 13 schools, but the Bethesda, Maryland, native only toured one before the virus grounded most of the country’s college recruits: Temple.
So, despite the restrictions and the uncertainty, he chose to attend when the university welcomed students back to campus in the fall of 2021.
“Taking a gap year would have just meant sitting at home, waiting for the pandemic to end,” said Friedlander, a senior architecture major. “Or I still would have been out there, getting a job, working and making money.”
Linda Richardson, for example, spent years trying to revive the long-dormant Uptown Theater, a onetime stop on the “chitterlin’ circuit” where Black audiences received equal service during segregation. As part of her mission, Richardson invited classes of Temple students to tour the building and learn about its history. She also recruited contractors to try and redevelop the space without trying to tear down the theater or replace it with something else.
The educational outreach stopped when the pandemic forced Temple to freeze in-person activities. Pandemic-era workplace restrictions prevented construction and upkeep on the Uptown itself. And Richardson, the theater’s most prominent and effective champion, died in November 2020.
Members of the board overseeing the Uptown, known as the Uptown Entertainment Development Corporation, say the site now routinely faces vandalism and trespassing. Security cameras and equipment from the Uptown’s low-power FM radio station were torn out of the walls by intruders. And a band tried to play an unauthorized concert on the Uptown’s dilapidated stage, according to two people who work with the board.
Howard-educated mechanical engineer Mariama Wood, Richardson’s youngest daughter, helped advise the Uptown during its past attempts to revive the building. But she’s assumed larger roles in the project since Richardson’s death. Now, she says she hopes Temple looks to help protect the Uptown and deepen the two institutions’ relationship.
“We’re hoping with new leadership, we can start new conversations,” Wood said.
On-campus buildings found their plans altered by the pandemic, too. Temple’s Charles Library had barely been open six months when the virus left Main Campus largely vacant. New library buildings are rare anywhere, let alone one as sleek and state-of-the-art as Charles. But instead of getting acclimated to their new environment, library staff would spend the next several years adapting Charles to shifts in the disease’s impact, according to Libraries dean Joe Lucia.
“The building was designed with principles of flexibility and openness,” Lucia said. Study rooms could easily become classrooms, or even makeshift studios for remote learning.
In the fall of 2020, Temple restarted in-person learning with strict limits on class sizes in a process that meant convening some courses in Charles, Lucia said. When a string of positive tests forced the school to again “go remote,” the library remained open — thanks in part to a small group of university researchers and staff.
“We had a lot of students who needed access to wireless, or a study space, for various reasons,” Lucia said. “So, we operated the building with a skeleton crew, really, for most of that academic year.”
Zoom represents perhaps COVID-19’s longest legacy in higher education. The public often viewed web-learning differently than in-person college — the fairy stepchild of chain-style academies like DeVry and more reputable vocational schools, like Universal Technical Institute.
Not anymore: Even Ivy League universities still offer courses and class meetings through the triumphant teleconferencing app, despite pandemic-era studies showing students learn less through a screen.
Many professors struggled to hold students’ attention when they were confined to Zoom — and say they now find themselves forced to fight for their classes’ eyes in person. But not everyone shared those frustrations.
“We were truly navigating uncharted terrain,” said Timothy Welbeck, a legal scholar who now directs Temple’s Office of Anti-Racism.
Welbeck spent years teaching courses in the humanities and in African American studies, both online and in-person. So, when the pandemic began, he convened his students one last time to map out a pandemic-era version of their coursework.
Miracle of miracles, he says they were willing and able to learn through the small, dim window of their computers.
“The resolve of the community as a whole at Temple, and my students in particular, was admirable — just to be able to navigate those challenges in that way,” he said.
Buzzwords like “resilience.” The myth and cant of “powering through adversity”: These became staples of the world’s pandemic-era vocabulary. But the inspirational talk didn’t resonate with everyone.
Karatas left Temple before the spring of 2021, eventually trying his hand at community college and vocational school. He’s now an apprentice at a Bucks County HVAC company. Getting out of the academic pressure cooker might have played a role in improving his mental health. But Karatas added he had fond memories of Temple, Karatas said.
“I do think I needed a break, emotionally and mentally, from that institution,” Karatas said. “But I also have a lot of things that I do really miss from that time period of my life. So I think I just needed a change.”
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