Spring-to-Spring and Covid in Between: The Tower Edition!

By Lenny K. Mata Cuevas | Published by April 30, 2021

How many times have you read Coronavirus- related articles in The Tower within the last year?

All of those stories are known, thanks to the willingness of administrators, staff, faculty and students to share their journey of hardship, trauma and perhaps loss of loved ones in the year of the pandemic.

Now, with hope abounding, The Tower’s staff shared what it was like dealing with their own environment while reporting on everyone else during the first full year of COVID-19. 

It was March 14, 2020 when the first online article about the announcement of remote education due to the growing spread of COVID-19 was published on The Tower’s website, www.kutower.com. 

On March 21, 2020, the NJ Collegiate Press Association announced The Tower scored Number 1 in the state for the coveted “General Excellence” award , effectively naming it the best college newspaper in New Jersey, public or private.

At the same time,  News Editor Cindy Lazo was covering a story about the total suspension of “all in-person classes until the end of the semester.”

Suspension of in-person classes marked the beginning of quarantine, online classes, discussion questions, Zoom, Google Meet and so many emails. “I don’t think I ever sent so many emails,” said Lazo, who was going through her first semester as News Editor of The Tower. 

But Lazo was confident it would all pass quickly.

“Personally, I thought that COVID wasn’t going to last as long as it did,” Lazo continued. “I assumed that it was one of the issues that was going to be debated on as the Presidential Elections were a few months away and it would slowly decline.”

Unfortunately, Coronavirus did not decline and by April 15, 2020, in New Jersey alone, there were a total of 71,030 COVID cases, according to online newspaper NJ.com.

Four days later, Emily Robles, The Tower’s social media and online editor, reported on Kean University becoming an official testing Center for COVID-19, which nowadays is also a vaccination center.

“When this story was given to me, I was so excited to write it,” Robles said. “I was just happy that my campus was involved in helping people get tested safely.”

Regardless, Kean University was closed and so was The Tower’s office. Robles, who graduates in May, explained that she “will sadly not see the return of face-to-face instruction.” She misses the newsroom and like an old-time reporter, she misses the print edition of The Tower, which has been  publishing a digital edition only since the pandemic began.

“I miss being able to attend The Tower meetings in person and hanging out with the other editors in the Tower room,” she said. “I miss actually passing out the printed edition of our paper to people on campus and being able to interview people in person for stories.”

Like many others, The Tower’s staff sometimes felt anxiety and the pressures of social restrictions. Features Editor Chelsey Jaipersaud shared that quarantine affected her motivation and her writing.

“I lost a lot of motivation and I struggled to write my articles. I felt like I was letting down the professors, the editors and myself,” Jaipersaud said.

Loss of motivation, due to the abrupt changes in working and studying style, was one of the many issues Americans had to deal with during the year of the pandemic. 

According to a paper published by The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the biggest challenges of doing everyday tasks from home “include not being able to unplug after hours, difficulties collaborating and/or communicating with colleagues, and a lack of motivation.”

On September 22, 2020, Jaipersaud’s article about the transition to remote learning and the difficulties of keeping up with the assignments  ended her writing struggles. She decided to push herself like any student should and any journalist must. 

“I did feel like an extra weight had been added, but I was really motivated to get myself together especially when it came to The Tower,” Jaipersaud said.

It obviously worked. Jaipersaud was awarded second place Column/Opinion Writing in the 2021 statewide college journalism competition by the NJCPA.

Jaipersaud’s push forward mentality was the culture that the rest of The Tower’s staff had too, although the advisors recognized the challenges everyone faced throughout the year as writers and as students.

“It’s hard to concentrate on schoolwork when you feel your world is falling apart,” said Professor Pat Winters Lauro, resident faculty adviser for The Tower. “But the editors, staff and advisers never stopped working. I think The Tower showed true grit.”

The Tower’s Editor-in-Chief Valerie Sanabria knows about grit. This year has been particularly difficult to get good stories and interviews, considering that most of it was by email. 

“Not everyone is willing to reply and type long responses,” Sanabria said. “We were at home struggling with anxiety and as a reporter I wanted to keep writing and finding interesting topics to show to the readers that there was much more than just Covid, but it was hard.” 

Even so, Sanabria managed to publish an article about the positive side of COVID. The story published on December 9, 2020 was about Sammy, a Kean student balancing entrepreneurship in the middle of the pandemic. 

“I was inspired by Sammy’s story and I was happy that there were still hopeful people out there.” Sanabria said. “With Sammy’s story I found a way to say, hey, there’s this student who is also an entrepreneur and covid changed her plans, but she is trying to find a way to follow her dreams even during a pandemic.” 

For Steven Merrill, The Tower’s sports editor, things were different but not impossible to overcome. 

“I was able to make the best of the situation and I’m taking this pandemic one day at a time.” Merrill said.

The same way events and parties were cancelled so were college sports until further notice. But for Merrill the hardest part of being a college student during the pandemic is ‘closer to home’.

“The hardest part of this pandemic is not having family gatherings to see my relatives during all the different holidays we celebrate and cherish,” Merrill said.

Professor Lois R. DeSocio, co-adviser of The Tower, admitted that there was a moment of fear of getting sick, but the hardest part of the pandemic has been not knowing what the aftermath will be until the very end of it.

 “When I think about “the hardest part of survival,” it was this gut feeling that I had from the onset that I couldn’t shake — that I might not realize the scope of what will be lost until we get fully trenched into some sort of post-Coronavirus world,” DeSocio explained.

Overall, publishing the news on a college newspaper during Covid was a challenge but we editors and reporters are expecting a safe return to classes in September. We expect to have those interviews with fellow students once again, hear their stories and return to news meetings in person — or in the case of this writer, attend my first in-person Tower meeting.

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