Students Are All for One in Response to Coronavirus

Mar 20, 2020

At 11:07 a.m. on Friday, March 13, Camryn Yacks hit the “post” button on her phone and created a new Facebook group. She called it: Help a Muskie. Her goal? Create a shared platform where any Xavier student could find or give help as the entire student body shifts from campus life to remote learning during the coronavirus epidemic.

Here is what she wrote on her first post: 

“I have created this group to help connect Xavier students (to) find a community of people willing to help with moving, rides, housing, storage, meals, mental health resources, etc. Please feel free to post what you need assistance with or what assistance you are able to give. There is no better time to be All for One.”

She waited. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes passed. She started to get worried. She was riding in a car with friends on spring break in Gatlinburg, Tenn., and not much was happening on Help a Muskie. She had gotten the idea from a friend of hers at another, smaller college where the school had created a spread sheet for people to sign up to help. She thought Xavier students needed help, too, and she would do better than just a spread sheet. A Facebook group would be perfect.

Then her phone pinged. It pinged again. She was getting notifications from people who wanted to join the group. After only 30 minutes, she had over 40 members. The next morning, over 400 people had joined, and today, there are nearly 1,500 members.

Help a Muskie, it turns out, is a big hit.

“I was absolutely surprised,” said Camryn. 

A junior Exercise Science major, Camryn moved back home with her family in Maineville, Ohio, north of Cincinnati. The biggest challenge for her and everyone, she said, is leaving her community of Xavier friends and classmates behind and squirreling away at home. Staying in touch and doing something to help out is one way to deal with the loneliness. 

For Camryn, former soccer player and now team manager, that’s been creating and now monitoring Help a Muskie. She’s amazed at the outpouring of support and offers of assistance from so many different people.

“It started off just posts of offering rides and storage and places to stay, but what stuck out for me are posts from alums,” she said. “(One alum) lives in Buffalo and she was willing to pick up students from the airport in Buffalo, and it struck me because it’s people not just from Cincinnati reaching out to help. That it doesn’t have to happen just on campus, that there is a network of students and people around the country who want to help students.”

She was also surprised to find posts from faculty offering both academic and personal assistance. Biology professor and chair Jen Robbins offered storage in her basement and attic as well as reassurance that online learning will work just fine and answers to any questions about the virus.

“We are working hard to get a quality education launched online,” Robbins wrote. “Lots of us have prior experience teaching online and we’ve been experimenting with technologies in the past days, as well as acquiring new ones. We’ve even got plans for labs. I’m sure there will still be glitches but we will all give each other grace, and we will get through this.”

The posts include offers of apartments to sublet for the rest of the semester, rides home to different parts of the country, free parking for cars left behind, meals, pot luck dinners, supplies of food. A biology alum in Washington, D.C., offered her study materials for tutoring. A number of Xavier departments posted reminders of their services, such as counseling, cafeteria hours, mail center availability, library resources. Others are seeking jobs, offering jobs, and things to do to keep busy. That includes Cassandra Booth, president of the campus Fiber Arts Club, offering to lend supplies and provide instructions on knitting, crocheting, weaving and other crafts via Zoom.

One of the more prolific posters is Maria Freese, the "Caf Baker" in the Hoff Dining Hall, who offered several of the students’ favorite recipes including Oreo mousse, Chocolate chip cookies with poured fondant icing, and hot fudge cake.

“I know we're all probably going to be getting a little cabin fever at some point and will be looking for ways to stave off the boredom,” she wrote. “If anyone is missing their cookie fix from The Caf, I've scaled down our chocolate chip cookie recipe for you. It's simple, it's easy and the ingredients shouldn't be too hard to scrounge up. Great way to kill an afternoon and get a taste of simpler times.”

Help a Muskie is one small way students are helping each other continue the community they had while living on campus. Other students who have to stay in Cincinnati because of jobs or internships are also discovering new ways to maintain that community.

Taylor Latona, a junior finance and business analytics major from Milwaukee, suddenly found herself alone in her off-campus apartment when her three roommates all moved back home. She had to stay because she has an internship with Fifth Third Bank that is continuing through the end of the semester.

But rather than succumbing to loneliness and isolation, Taylor is staying in touch with her three roommates and others in her closest group of friends using text, Snapchat, Facebook, email and phone calls. One of those friends is also by herself in a rented house since her roommates left, and she has an internship that is continuing at Western and Southern. They carpooled to their offices downtown until last week, when they were both told to work remotely. Now they make a point of connecting every day around 4:30 p.m. by phone when their work day ends and try to get together over the weekends—while practicing social distancing, of course.

“It’s so important to continue that communication and still have that community because everyone is going through it differently, so it’s important to check in with everyone to make sure they are good and make sure you are there for them,” Taylor said. “Going home is like back in high school, so how do you help them through this time? It’s a time where everyone is secluded in their bedrooms wherever those bedrooms may be, so doing the best with what you have right now has been the key to keeping those relationships constant.”

Taylor spent last week consoling her friends as they moved out. There were a lot of tears as they said goodbye to each other, and she tried to reassure them, telling them everything happens for a reason, and the year has been cut short, but in the end it will all be okay.

Camryn, buoyed by the responses on Help a Muskie, feels the same way.

“I think it did what I hoped for and more. I just knew that if I could help one person, that would be a success, and I think we definitely helped more people,” she said. “I can’t help all, but I can provide a platform for others. It took me 15 minutes to get it started, and it was definitely worth it.”

By France Sloat, Office of Marketing and Communications