The Office of Student Life and outside organizations have joined together to
provide gifts and activities to help make students stay feel more like home. Credit: Courtesy of Tracy Stuck
When Camille Taylor, a second-year in health sciences, received a call from a contact tracer Oct. 4 and moved into Lawrence Tower to start her quarantine, she said she wasn’t looking forward to spending two weeks alone, so she grabbed the painting supplies the Office of Student Life offered her and occupied herself the best she could.
Students in Ohio State’s quarantine and isolation housing may face loneliness and boredom, but the Office of Student Life and outside organizations have joined together to provide gifts and activities to make students’ stays feel more like home.
“We’re just trying to help people’s sense of belonging,” Tracy Stuck, assistant vice president of the Office of Student Life, said. “I would hope that the things that we’re doing are just really meaningful to students when they’re in there.”
When students check into quarantine housing, they receive a mental health journal, a resistance band and a link to a website to sign up for activities, including cooking and art classes each week, Stuck said. Student Life’s runners — staff who wear protective equipment and have been trained to practice safe procedures — deliver materials to students’ doors.
Taylor said she has completed two cooking classes that have helped pass the time during isolation.
“It made me optimistic, having something to look forward to in the day,” Taylor said.
Stuck said some of these activities are made possible by outside organizations looking to help, such as the Kindness Project, an Ohio State parent group that prepares care packages for students in need.
Marla Gitelson-O’Brian, who is in charge of the Kindness Project, said families raised a total of $1,600 to buy puzzles, comic books, blankets and pillows for students in quarantine and isolation.
“I just feel horrible that they are quarantined away from their family, their friends,” Gitelson-O’Brian said. “Just to know that we’re able to provide stuff, that they’ll get something from the outside world, just to show that, ‘Hey, we’re sorry you’re in there, but we care about you.’”
Gitelson-O’Brian said St. Thomas More Newman Center donated hundreds of plants it would have given out at the Student Involvement Fair in August. Ohio State’s trademark and licensing department contacted vendors that donated puzzles and basketball nets for students, and H2O Church donated gift baskets with $10 Amazon gift cards, candy bars and written notes.
Stuck said the Student COVID Alliance, a new organization created by those who have lived in quarantine or isolation, made it its mission to personalize the random acts of kindness gifts. Students can choose what they want in terms of food or other donations.
Taylor said she received a $10 Amazon gift card from H2O Church and note of support from the Student COVID Alliance.
“Being here, you just feel like you’re by yourself and that everyone outside is just living their own life,” Taylor said. “But knowing that they know we’re here and they’re thinking about us and is supportive is really nice and makes me feel happy and less lonely even though I’m in isolation.”
