Hilbert College peer leaders are making an impact on the new freshman even with the new COVID-19 protocols and restrictions.

Peer leaders are helping many freshmen around campus and making their first-year experience even better.

Peer leaders are like a professor’s helper in the class where they get to connect one on one with the new freshman, helping them navigate things around campus, meet new students and help their class with needs or concerns they have as they are starting their first year of college.  With COVID-19 this year, things are a little different this year but are mostly the same.

Peer leader Sydnea Schiede said that she is like an older sister to her class helping them whenever and however she can.

“Formally if a freshman needs anything like help dropping a class or catching up in a class, I will help them,” Schiedel said. “But if they just need someone to vent or talk to while experiencing their first year of college, I’m there to help them too”

Makenna Payton, another peer leader, said the duties and responsibilities of a peer leader include weekly check-ins, teaching some lessons and just being there for her students.

“I help/assist my professor with any lectures or structured classes,” Payton said. “For example I present and lead a few classes myself like I did a PowerPoint on time management and study tips”

Freshman Paige Wagner said her peer leader has helped her navigate a strange first year of college.

“My peer leader has helped me a lot especially when figuring out blackboard and juggling my assignments,” she said. “My peer leader is very easy to talk to and they usually have 15-minute meetings with each student frequently to check in on them.”

This year America saw one of its most contentious election cycles in decades. For many Hilbert students this was their first time voting in a presidential election.

On Hilbert College’s campus there was a mix of excitement and frustration, as students were happy to be participating in the process, but put off by some of the rhetoric around the election and anxious to know the results as ballot counting took much longer than a typical year due to the high volume of mail-in ballots because of the pandemic.

A Senior at Hilbert College, Brianna Stegmeier shared her thoughts and said the slow process of counting mail in ballots made for a less-than-ideal first time voting experience.

“This was my first time voting this year, so it was very exciting but at the same time frustrating,” Stegmeier said in an interview conducted before results were finalized. “I just wish everything were more organized and we find out soon.” 

Stegmeier shared how she is frustrated in the system and the many conspiracies that came with this year’s election and hopes everything was fair and accurate.  

Hilbert Sophomore, Grace Zabawa, said it was also her first-time voting.

“I voted by mail this year,” Zabawa said. “It was my first time, so it felt pretty cool and convenient to be able to do it all from home since I am all online.”

Zabawa was thankful for the opportunity to be able to vote from home and was excited to be able to exercise her right to vote for the first time.  

Sophomore, Anna Hagner said she was glad to vote, but was ready to look forward to the future.

“I was really excited to vote this year but now I would just like the election to be over,” Hagner said in an interview that came before results were certified. “I hope we find out the official results soon so we can all finally move on with our lives”.  

In a time where the world is working to control a pandemic, Hilbert College staff, faculty and students have been persevering and thriving through the first 12 weeks of the semester.

At other colleges and universities across Western New York, the state and the country numbers have been substantially higher than the 14 positive cases that have been reported on the Hilbert campus. New York State alone has more than 10,000 cases at 181 schools, according to the Covid College Tracer Tracker put out by The New York Times.

Jennine Lukasik, the head of the Math department at Hilbert College, said the protocols had been followed well throughout in-person learning.

“I don’t have any problems with students not wearing their masks or wiping down their areas before and after class,” she said. 

Although Hilbert is a relatively small campus, almost everyone seems to be following the protocols, and those protocols have been working to protect community members, which shows in the small number of positive cases reported.

While some schools like SUNY Oneonta were forced to switch to remote learning just a few weeks into the semester – more than 700 positive cases were reported on the 6,500 student campus this semester – Hilbert was able to continue in-person learning through mid November, just 10 days short of the goal of making it to Thanksgiving break.

The school choose to switch to remote learning, not because of an outbreak on campus, but because of alarming positivity rates in the surrounding community.

Some students at bigger schools have described very different experiences.

Daniel Scully, a senior at the University at Buffalo, said he has seen some students not following protcols on campus.

“For the most part, faculty have been doing everything they can to get students to follow protocols,” Scully said. “I do see students sometimes hanging out in bigger groups without masks which is something that nobody wants to see”.

UB was able to continue in-person learning through the Thanksgiving break, despite crossing just over the state’s 100 active case threshold in the final week.

“I believe that the protocols that the school has put in place are working, but if students do not follow them, they could ruin it for everyone,” Scully said. “If we can just be smart and get through this semester, hopefully, things can start to get back to normal.”

One of the biggest differences between private colleges, such as Hilbert or Canisius College, and public schools such as UB, is that the state school has a much more accessible live update of the number of cases confirmed at all levels of the school.

Scully said he knew the exact amount of cases that had been confirmed to the minute and he  is notified every time there’s a new case through the State University of New York covid tracker website.

A Hilbert student must go on the state’s website check how many cases have been reported, which appear in weekly batches.

Amanda Whalen, a sophomore at Canisius College said her school uses an app called Campus Clear that is required to be used by all Canisius students while they are on campus. Whalen said the app is quite easy to use and makes the Covid-19 protocols clear for students.

“At first I thought it was going to be a pain having another thing to do while getting adjusted to the new ways on campus, but Campus Clear has made it easier because all the Covid information that you need is all right there,” Whalen said.

Now, the hope is that students will be able to return to school for in-person learning again next semester. Like other schools, Hilbert officials have pushed back the beginning of the semester and eliminated spring break in an effort to make things run smoothly.

Hilbert Professor Jenelle Lukasik said she thought students did everything they could to keep the community safe this semester.

“I think everything is going very well so far,” Lukasik said. “The seating in classrooms is spaced out enough. Everyone has been staying in their areas, and the cleaning procedures are being clearly followed. It’s as normal as it can be at this point in time and I believe we are on the right track.”

Last week, Hilbert College announced it’s moving to online class instruction after Friday, November 13 due to increased COVID-19 cases across Erie County. The move comes just a week before the original target date of transitioning to virtual learning, which was just before Thanksgiving.

Dr. Michael Brophy, the college’s president, said the decision to move earlier was a proactive one.

“This previous Sunday when the governor made it clear that Western New York was moving into what they call the yellow zone,” Brophy told HAWK Radio News on Thursday. “We just had to think about all the different logistics that would kick into gear if God forbid, the virus started moving quickly. And because Western New York is struggling right now with the virus, we thought it best to be able to send everyone home on Friday.”

The state’s yellow zone area includes Hamburg and much of Erie County. With that designation comes many new restrictions including limited dine-in seating at restaurants, gatherings are limited to 25 people or less, and certain businesses must close by 10pm.

Also included was a testing requirement for schools, mandating that they test at least 20 percent of students, faculty, and staff per week. While the requirement did not include private colleges like Hilbert, Brophy said the difficulty to meet that should the state mandate institutions like Hilbert to do so was also a factor in the early online transition.

“We determined through the governor’s office that we weren’t required to do that [testing],” he said. “But the fact is that if we needed to do testing, for better or worse, the local and federal governments just haven’t provided this infrastructure for lots of rapid testing for lots of people. So we realized that if we needed to test everyone, we were in a tough place. It wasn’t just financial, it was really just logistical with the tests to be there.”

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the United States in March, many professors were caught somewhat off guard after Hilbert moved to teaching online. Dr. Brophy said this time, they’re prepared.

“The faculty worked all summer long on having their courses prepared to be taught online,” Brophy said. “They prepared to be online at Thanksgiving, so it’s not going to be a great hardship on the faculty. But obviously, we’re really, really sad about our students, especially our freshmen who are in their first year of college and having to deal with this. But we do think, as a Franciscan college, we have to be thinking about people’s whole lives, and welfare.”

As of November 15, Hilbert has reported 12 COVID-19 cases to the state from the beginning of the semester, including both commuter and residential students. Looking ahead to a return to having students in the classroom, Dr. Brophy is confident in the January 25 return date for the spring semester.

“I think our students know that we did a really good job this summer, we queued everything up, people came back, we started the fall semester,” Brophy said. “But it came down to a lot of planning and sacrifices. We’re gonna do the same thing for the spring. What we’re hearing from the medical community, of course, is that the next month will be very difficult for most of the country, but in a new year, the vaccines will be available to folks. So we are preparing to come to be back on the 25th for sure.”

Classes for this fall semester will continue on virtually until December 18.