Shelyn Williams and Miranda Peruesk (Part 1)

Beyond the Bell Tower

“It was over there, so we didn’t have to worry about it,” Shelyn Williams who is a freshman at NC State University talks about the start of the pandemic. She has experienced first-hand what life on campus is like during a pandemic. As one of the freshman students who requested to stay when the university decided to transition fully online in Fall 2020, she explains what it is like to live on campus during a pandemic along with the difficulties faced by having had her senior year of high school finish during the beginning of the pandemic as she recognizes how quickly the virus spread in North Carolina and how our views changed about the pandemic overtime.
Miranda Peruesk is a transfer student and senior at NC State who is able to recall what campus life is like for students like Shelyn who have not been on campus before the pandemic, “it was like we lived in our own mini-city, our own social ecosystem”. Miranda plans to graduate from NC State in Spring 2021, she takes to heart the struggles that Shelyn faced as a senior in high school.
Together, these students look at the COVID-19 pandemic as a whole, and what the university and the state of North Carolina can do as we head back onto campus.
Recorded fall 2020.