Effects of Covid-19

Anon — The college used the pandemic as a way to stifle student organizing. If you look back, the college would not allow any people to meet on campus with more than, I think, ten people. And so that was definitely a way to hamper student dissent in that spring semester of 2020. 

Eugene — I would say it was calculated. Because, I think, if that hadn't happened during the pandemic and the student body was on campus, that was going to be our army. And the administration knew, the army was away. So that was the perfect time.

Anon — I mean, if it wasn't for Oberlin using the pandemic to institute lockdowns on students' free speech and students' organizing to help out union employees in the beginning of February and the first week of March, I thought that there was a pretty good shot that the student body was going to take action to force the college to rethink everything. [...] When the thousand or so people went into King [academic building] to advocate for just a single letter to be read in support of union workers by students. [...] If it took a thousand people to read a couple paragraphs, I felt pretty confident in the beginning that we were going to keep our jobs and continue to be Oberlin employees. So yeah, the best thing to do to prevent [this] in the future is to organize, to build bonds and make friends. [Build] these strong friendships and just fight. That's all you can do, I guess.

Pat — Because people's attitude was - if we're not gonna have a job I'm not giving it my all. I'm not killing myself for people who don't want me. And with Covid and everything, I think that made a lot of play, too, because, like, I was going to work every day and leaving my county that had very low COVID rates, going to work in a county that was one of the highest of the COVID rates...To do a job, because I wanted my job, for people that didn't know if they wanted to keep me.

Vince — It's never a good time to lose your job. But now we're in a whole world crisis with COVID. But now you're sending how many people are doing away with their jobs.  And now a lot of companies are, you know, going to through hard the times. Now, the unemployment, you know, numbers are just skyrocketing. Yeah. And you've got bills, responsibilities. It's very big with a little bit of money for severance pay and it's awesome, you know but when you're used to a lifestyle and working in the college, I volunteered to do so much overtime just because I love my job. Yeah, I would do the overtime, but then the money would, you know, all of a sudden, overnight, everything. Everything's gone. 

Diane — When I first lost my job, it was kind of scary thinking of where I could go to work. You almost felt like you're paralyzed because, you know, especially at my age if you didn't have the vaccine yet, it's like, do I go work in a factory or...where do I go to work where I won't die? When I finally was able to get the vaccine, I felt a little braver. But my husband has lung issues, so I had to be very careful about where, if I did decide to work anywhere. And that’s when my daughter got her brain cancer, so I just kind of put the whole notion of working full time away and that’s when I went on the early retirement so I could be there more for her.