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Spencer Pierce remembers starting his high school day at 8:30 a.m., coming home from baseball practice at 8 p.m., and still not being as tired as he is after a Zoom lecture.

Pierce, a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major at Syracuse University, said that the changes to life during the pandemic have taken a toll on his mental health, and he knows he isn’t alone.

“It’s just changed the standard and the norm of students’ days,” Pierce said. “I would definitely say the pandemic has changed how we go about our day and how our bodies react to this change.”

SU shortened and delayed the start of its spring semester to run from Feb. 8 to May 14 and eliminated spring break. Pierce created a Change.org petition, which received more than 2,400 signatures, asking the university to implement wellness days.

SU later announced that it would provide two wellness days during the spring semester — one on Tuesday and another April 21. University officials said during a University Senate meeting that the decision to add the days was the result of student demand, though they didn’t mention the petition specifically.

With the spring semester halfway done, some students said they’re feeling particularly burnt out, and they’re concerned that the university did not initially include any days off in its schedule.

Pierce said he’s happy that his petition was successful, but he’s also bothered by the fact that, had he not made the petition, the university might not have done anything at all.

“If someone didn’t make this petition, the school wouldn’t have been prompted to have these wellness days,” Pierce said. They would have put their students through these 70, 80 days (of classes) and then finals. That’s kinda been bothering me.”

When Victoria Quiñones saw the petition spreading on social media, she was already disappointed that the university took away spring break.

Quiñones, a senior music history major, said she’s happy the university added the wellness days, but still doesn’t think they’re enough to help students through the semester.

“As much as it is great to have a day off, that amount of time does not really equate to the burnout that all of us are dealing with this semester,” Quiñones said.

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In his original petition, Pierce proposed six dates for wellness days — one in February, two in March and April, and one in May. Some friends told him later that they would have liked a day off in February, he said.

“I feel pretty burnt out honestly,” said Diya Kumar, a freshman philosophy major. “I think it’s important for us to get a break because we don’t get a spring break.”

Last semester, the university added additional weekend classes and planned to move online after Thanksgiving break. SU ended up suspending in-person classes early after a spike in cases two weeks before the end of the fall semester.

Olivia Gork, a freshman public relations major, said she feels more worn out at this point in the semester than she did at the same time in the fall.

“We’re very deep into college during corona,” Gork said. “I’m a freshman, so it’s been hard just in general just to make friends normally as you would.”

As freshmen, Gork and Kumar said it’s harder to manage their mental health without a normal social life. The pandemic’s impact on the social lives of students has been a detriment to their mental health, Gork said.

Even in her in-person classes, Quiñones said she thinks students are less inclined to talk to each other during the pandemic, making the campus feel more like a reclusive community, she said.

“I know a lot of people who are deteriorating mentally because they can’t go out, they can’t see anybody, they’re scared of getting corona,” Quiñones said.

Quiñones said her professors for her classes this semester have been more understanding and sympathetic of how COVID-19 and other issues happening in the world and on campus are affecting students.

But last semester, she didn’t think some of her professors did enough to check in on how students were doing outside of the classroom.

“What burns me out is that I’m supposed to continuously ignore all of the different things that are affecting me and other people just to get through the rest of the semester,” Quiñones said

Pierce said he based his petition on other universities, including Boston University, Harvard University and Duke University, who had implemented some form of wellness days either before or after students petitioned for them to do so.

Duke included a two-day break in March in addition to a wellness day in April, according to the Duke Chronicle. BU added two Wellness Days but also kept off-days on Presidents’ Day and Patriot’s Day on April 19.

Pierce said he plans on trying to catch up on sleep during his wellness day but also plans to see what wellness activities will be offered at the Barnes Center. Quiñones said she plans to use her day off to catch up on work.

Though grateful for a short break, students said they wish SU would have taken the initiative to prioritize students’ health when making the spring calendar without having to be prompted.

“Now that I look at it a little bit harder and look at what some other universities are doing for their students, I don’t really think it’s enough,” Pierce said. “It does make me look at the university and the administration a little differently knowing that we wouldn’t have these days had they not been prompted.”

Published on March 22, 2021 at 10:53 pm

Contact Sarah: scalessa@syr.edu | @sarahalessan