Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, BYU campus is alive and bustling, but it was not that way when the pandemic started.
March 2020 brought big changes to the BYU campus and to the world. BYU administration saw they needed to implement measures on campus to keep the students safe.
“It was really clear from day one that our administration cared about the safety of the students,” Todd Hollingshead, the BYU Media Relations Manager, said.
He was involved in sending out the email that notified students about classes going remote.
“I remember looking out of our building through the windows and just kind of seeing students as they walked across campus, getting the official notification,” Hollingshead said. "Students were walking and looked at their phone and stopped and kind of scrolled and opened and you can see them stop and processing it.”
This change came as a shock to many students who were busy living out their freshman year at BYU.
“Even right up until BYU even shut down … it was nowhere on my radar," David Lance, a 2025 BYU graduate, said. I did not think it was that serious.”
Some students, like Jaycelyn Chino, left campus right away.
“My parents were like, immediately like, okay you got to move home, you got to pack everything up,” Chino said.
Others chose to remain, even with increased restrictions and the switch to online classes.
“I’d find a lecture hall and I had the zoom up on the big screen and have the whole lecture hall to myself,” Lance said.
While the pandemic was a worldwide crisis, it did bring some unusual blessings to students.
“My friends were a little distracting when I was in school … but I think when COVID hit, it kind of allowed me to just focus on my work,” Chino said.
Chino said she still found ways to build relationships with her friends while they were apart.
“We were able to stay in contact and we would Facetime a lot,” she said.
For Lance, COVID was a realization of his need for human connection.
“Part of me has always kind of like fantasized about like that single bachelor life in the city,” Lance said. “I learned very quickly ... I need to have that human connection involved in my career.”
COVID has shaped these BYU graduates’ academic experiences in profound ways. Many say that it has made them more resilient in facing the uncertain times ahead.