SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) - Morningside College student Samuel Padilla loves spending time outside of his on-campus housing in the springtime.
However, this year, the normally-bustling college campus is nearly empty.
Due to COVID-19 concerns, all of Morningside’s classes have been moved online. Most of the few remaining students on campus are international students like Padilla.
Born in Columbia and raised in Brazil, Padilla chose to stay in Sioux City while the vast majority of Morningside’s international students opted to study online from their home countries.
“I figured I’d be just as safe in Sioux City than I would be in Brazil,” said Padilla, a junior majoring in computer science.
Sofia Marrufo, a senior biology major from Venezuela, thought the same thing. In her case, she also was slated to graduate in May.
“I was hoping my mom, dad and family would see me graduate,” she told the Sioux City Journal. “That isn’t going to happen any more.”
Originally set for May 9, Morningside’s commencement and graduation ceremonies have been moved back to Aug. 8.
Across town, Kyle Chinen, a Briar Cliff University senior mass communications major, thought he was going to graduate on May 10. Instead, the ceremonies were postponed as a result of public health recommendations that no public gatherings of 10 or more people be held during the pandemic.
Like Padilla and Marrufo, Chinen is taking his classes online. But unlike the other two, he is not an international student.
“I’m actually from a town about 30 minutes away from Honolulu, Hawaii,” Chinen said. “It’s far away, but it still the United States.”
While Briar Cliff is still allowing students to live in dormitories, Morningside said they’ll be closing down their residential housing, with the exception of special circumstances, on April 8.
This, too, will impact international college students, Marrufo said.
“We were coming off from an extended spring break when we heard the college would closing due to the threat of coronavirus,” she explained. “International students literally had a day or so to decide if they were staying in America or going back home.”
That was because if they waited too long, air travel to their home country might be canceled. If they left America, students had no guarantee they’d be able to return to Sioux City.
According to Marrufo, many international students had to leave without taking their belongings.
“Students didn’t want to lose their window of opportunity to leave for home,” she said. “Nobody knows how to react to a pandemic, so everybody was understandably scared.”
Plus, Morningside’s nearly 60 international students looked for answers from Marrufo, the president of the college’s international student association.
Similarly, Padilla had experience working with international students. He, along with friends Alexandre Medeiros and Lucas Gomes, created STEVEN, an online mentoring program that helps international students adapt and thrive in the United States.
As soon as coronavirus became more prevalent, STEVEN Mentoring began an “Adopt an International Student” program.
Padilla said people can help an international student with housing.
“College and universities do their best to keep essential services, like food and housing, available,” he explained. “Once colleges start closing residential halls, international students have very few options.”
That’s because international students aren’t allowed to work off-campus. Many support themselves with campus jobs, which disappear with school closures.
Otherwise, they subsist on money they get from home.
Another problem for international students is a sense of loneliness.
“Students are in a strange country,” Padilla said. “Under normal circumstances, they may have friends among international students. With many of those students now back in their native country, the few who remain feel even more alone.”
Marrufo said this is something she can identify with.
“Initially, I was very sad with how my senior year was ending,” she said. “Then, I realized I was luckier than others.”
After all, Marrufo had already lined up a post-graduate job — as a laboratory assistant for GELITA USA — and still has high hopes that her family will get to see her receive her diploma in ceremonies taking place a few months later than expected.
“Nobody knows how to act in a pandemic because it is new for everyone,” she said. “I didn’t expect to being graduating from college under these circumstances but we do what we can.”
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