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Meredith Prince, prinmc21@wfu.edu Chase Bagnall-Koger, bagncm21@wfu.edu Una Wilson, wilsui20@wfu.edu
OLD GOLD & BLACK
PAGE 5 THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2022
Photo Courtesy of Mingxuan Zhu/Old Gold & Black
Behind the mask: returning to WFU amid COVID Exploring the impact of COVID on one Wake Forest international student KIARA KAMLANI Contributing Writer
In May 2020, Mingxuan Zhu waited in line to board a five-hour flight from Charlotte International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. She could feel the scientific goggles pressing into her eyes, with black gloves covering her hands and two KF94 masks — express shipped from her mom in China — covering her mouth. Zhu’s heavy backpack weighed her down as she made her way down the airplane, avoiding the outstretched limbs of passengers in other rows and gripping her ticket close to her body until she found her window seat. Nobody sat directly to her right. But the aisle seat was occupied by a man using his t-shirt as a makeshift mask to cover his nose and mouth. “It was my worst nightmare,” she recalled. Stepping off the plane in Los Angeles, all Zhu could think about was food. Hundreds of passengers ran past her with masks either under their nose or chin. Since she did not want to take her mask off on the plane for even a second; her next meal would occur in Beijing. Zhu then had to board an additional flight to Beijing, China. She prepared to leave her dorm at Wake Forest University with exactly 14 days worth of clothing, enough to last through the entire quarantine. Months earlier, the former president, Donald Trump, and his administration
sealed the border and restricted travel in and out of China. At the time, an unknown disease, now termed COVID-19, was spreading and the American government decided that closing the border was their best option to protect the country. However, this strategy left Zhu with no way of getting home. “All I wanted was to fly home, I got more homesick by the day,” Zhu said. “The process was too complicated and I just had to wait it out.” For any Chinese student to get home during this time, they would need two negative covid tests — rapid and viral — a lung scan and a 14-day quarantine once arriving. If a person had been infected with COVID-19, they need to be recovered for six months, making it impossible for certain students to get home. Given that 46% of Wake Forest’s international students are Chinese, the university made as many accommodations as possible with their limited staff. “We asked, they listened, and we all made it work,” Zhu said. “We all were moved to the same dormitory building, but at least we had housing. The Pit was open, but that was our only option.” On June 8, 2020, Zhu was able to board a flight back to China and after a two-week quarantine, reunited with her family. However, her expectation of returning to Wake Forest's campus in August was destroyed. In early July, the Trump Administration rescinded visas for all international students taking fully virtual courses, which was Wake Forest’s plan. Students
became aware of the change through an email sent by the university. “I opened the email and was devastated,” Zhu said. “I could not come back to campus; I did not know when I would ever be able to come to campus.” However, multiple universities sued the federal government in response to this policy. Wake Forest joined as an amicus curiae, a status that allows a person or institution to submit a brief as a third party. “This extremely affected all of our students abroad and we felt like we now had no control of the situation,” said Great Smith, Senior Advisor for International Students and Scholars at Wake Forest University. In response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration rescinded the policy allowing students to legally remain in the country. Students with valid visas could now return to campus, but Zhu’s visa expired. The Trump administration stopped processing and renewing visas for applicants abroad due to a lack of resources, so universities were forced to replan the upcoming Fall 2020 semester. Zhu checked her emails every day, waiting for updates from the university on what her courses would look like in the fall, if she could take any at all. Her biggest fear was falling behind, not being able to keep up with her coursework or graduate in time. At exactly midnight on Jan. 10, 2021, Zhu sat down at her desk, in her small, dark room to begin her school day. Her blue star patterned curtains stayed
closed on her left; behind them was the dark, lifeless city of Beijing. “I would rather have the little stars with me than the darkness,” Zhu said. She opened her laptop and logged onto Zoom. Since August 2020, Zhu had been taking classes every night from her bedroom — there was no other option. Fluorescent lights glared down on her, almost as if they were trying to keep her awake. She was in China living in a United States time zone. She finished class around 6 a.m., about the time when her parents got up to start their day. They were living in the same space, but not living the same lives. “Good night,” Zhu would say, and her parents would respond good morning. Many days she started her homework but became stuck when she realized many American sites were blocked by the Chinese government. “The censorship was getting worse; I had no access to a lot of information I needed,” she explained. Canvas and Zoom, essential to virtual learning, crashed often. Many times throughout the semester, she woke up her father during his sleep because the internet connection was not working or unstable. This meant that their VPN, which allowed her to use foreign internet, was down. Zhu lived this daily cycle for about nine months — the entirety of her junior year.
See Zhu, Page 6
