By Emily Riley

On Wednesday evening, the University of Maryland released an update to COVID-19 precautions, extending spring break by an additional week and holding virtual classes until April 10 at the earliest. The university suspended all study abroad programs for spring 2020 as of March 14.

This comes after a March 9 announcement canceling all university-related travel for 60 days, discouraging large social events and advising that students prepare for online-based coursework.

The decision leaves professors to transition completely to virtual learning. Greg Midgette, who teaches CCJS200, statistics for criminology and criminal justice, is just one of the many professors learning how to adapt.

“I have no prior experience teaching an online class or virtual classroom,” said Midgette. “I started looking pretty quickly once things started to move in that direction.”

Even before the announcement, Midgette took it upon himself to integrate statistics about COVID-19 into class discussion. 

“There is a lot of information… right now, where there’s news media that have all sorts of different objectives and obligations to present information but also make it interesting,” said Midgette. “They’re competing for people’s attention… Even though you are relatively healthy and low risk, we all are excellent carriers for the virus.”

With the cancellation of study abroad programs in Warning Level 3 countries, as well as all spring and summer break programs abroad, the university continues to implement protective measures in an attempt to maintain campus health.

“Wherever people go for spring break, they’re probably going to be in a place that has someone infected,” said sophomore biochemistry major Mikaila Baumel. “There are confirmed cases back in my city at home… I’m going home to the virus and that doesn’t make sense to me.”

While non-essential, international or out-of-state university-related travel is prohibited, personal travel is only discouraged and is advised to be done with caution. The university is still asking for those returning from Warning Level 3 countries to refrain from returning to campus until the 14-day self-isolation period has passed. 

Nick Bailey, a freshman business major, was preparing to fly to New Orleans Wednesday for the 2020 American Marketing Association’s International Collegiate Conference when he found out university-related travel would be restricted. 

“We were excited to go because we want to showcase that we’ve been working so hard. Especially this year, they’ve really done well and could be one of the top chapters in the nation,” said Bailey.  “There’s no point. I’m more at risk here than I would be… in Louisiana.”

Bailey said the customer service wait time for his airline was 117 minutes when he tried to cancel his flight.

Baumel is in a similar situation. As vice president of the club tennis team, Baumel and other members were getting ready to travel to Orlando for their national competition over the break. 

“It’s the top five girls and top five guys on the club that go to nationals, so it was a really huge feat for me to be one of those people.” Baumel said. “Of course I originally wanted classes to get cancelled because my major is really hard and any break I can get from that stress is awesome. But once I found out that they were cancelling even out-of-state travel, I got really upset because I was looking forward so much to this trip.”

UMD Alternative Breaks, which features service-focused programs led by UMD students, was also suspended. Sara Wiatrak, a sophomore double majoring in journalism and government and politics, has spent the past year preparing to lead the trip to Chicago focusing on socioeconomic equity.

“[The cancellation] was almost devastating because we’d been planning for the whole year,” said Wiatrak. “We had a lot of community partners in the area that we’ve been communicating with for months. Today we had to let them all know that we weren’t coming.”

Wiatrak noted that the adjustment hasn’t been easy.

“Last night was a big period of… the dust settling and me realizing I’m actually not going somewhere that I’ve been planning to go for a month,” said Wiatrak. 

The Pitch Dingman Competition Finals, an event expecting a large turnout, was also postponed following the statement.

The university administration’s choice to close campus for a month was just one of numerous options they had to pick from.

“I think given a bunch of really bad options, we’re choosing the least [bad],” said Midgette. 

As of March 15, there remain no confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the university.