The Dawgs Move In: SIU students return to campus for the fall semester
August 24, 2022
Southern Illinois University began to buzz with life once again this weekend as new and returning students arrived on campus.
While on Wednesday, Aug. 17, Carbondale was a quiet, calm town, interrupted only by the construction that persisted through the summer, by Saturday, Aug. 20 it was bustling with eager faces, ready for the fall semester to begin.
On Thursday and Friday of last week, students, with the help of their families and friends, moved into their dorm rooms, lining the streets with cars waiting for their turn to unload bags of clothes, bed linens and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
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The air smelled distinctly of Clorox wipes and cardboard boxes as parents and students sat with piles of belongings while others wheeled bins of their possessions back and forth from their cars to their rooms.
However, move-in day saw a major difference this year compared to recent years: loosening COVID-19 restrictions.
At the beginning of the month, SIU Chancellor Austin Lane wrote an email welcoming the students to campus, explaining the new COVID-19 guidelines. According to Lane’s email, masks are no longer required, but are still recommended, and testing is no longer required for most people on campus.
These loosening restrictions have opened a much appreciated door of normalcy in university housing as students began returning to campus.
For the past two years, students have had a limited number of guests they can bring with them while moving into their new rooms, but this year, SIU Senior Associate Director of Housing Operations Jim Hunsaker said, “That’s all removed.”
“[Students] are used to bringing their parents and their grandparents and really making it a family affair, and we’ve really seen that this year where students are again bringing the grandparents with them, and the grandparents get to experience the student move in as well,” Hunsaker said.
That’s not where the dissimilarity ends, though. SIU is seeing a near three-percent rise of students living in the on-campus residence halls and about a four-percent increase in total students living in university housing, according to Hunsaker. With this influx of students, the once single dorms are now being assigned as doubles for new incoming students.
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“Students are having roommates again, which is always a good thing for us and for the students to experience that real college experience of having that roommate and making those new friends,” Hunsaker said.
While COVID-19 restrictions changed many aspects of college life at SIU, another thing that is slowly returning to its full extent on campus is events and opportunities to connect with other students at SIU.
On Thursday, Aug. 18, SIU hosted Light Up the Lake, where students could play volleyball, eat s’mores and meet new people.
“It was such a fantastic turnout,” Hunsaker said. “We saw a lot of students who looked like they were alone but by the end of the night they had a friend group already established.
Hunsaker is optimistic that more events and opportunities will return to campus as COVID-19 restrictions lessen and people are allowed to gather in large groups again.
“There are tons of resources for students who don’t feel like they are connected,” he said. “[…] we will help a student navigate this university to make them as successful as possible.”
Hunsaker said there are a lot of unknown resources that students don’t even think about, that are available here on campus.
“Getting involved in talking to your classmates and getting out of your residence hall room and going to athletic events or the RSO’s that are so numerous here on campus and getting involved is very important,” he said.
Editor in Chief Sophie Whitten can be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram at @sophiewhitten_. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter
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