In light of the current pandemic, Saint Louis University administration announced that changes will be made to the traditional graduation ceremony for the class of 2021. When the wrought-iron gates of campus creaked open for another school year this fall, no one could guess whether they would remain that way. As numbers fluctuated during the fall semester and the start of spring semester, the university scraped by, remaining mostly in-person for their students and staff.

As vaccine rollout is steadily underway and St. Louis cases are hitting new lows, it became evident that an in-person graduation may be a reality.

Current seniors worried that SLU administration might institute a repeat of last year’s graduation, with no formal event in-person or virtually to celebrate the graduates. Instead, the President’s office, the Provost’s team and a group of Student Government Association (SGA) representatives worked for months to plan an in-person pre-commencement and virtual graduation ceremony.

SLU will host up to 17 pre-commencement ceremonies during the week of May 17. Certain colleges may host multiple ceremonies, depending on the number of graduates. Each ceremony will be limited to 250 guests, with two guests allowed for each graduate, and will last for about 90 minutes each.

The official graduation ceremony will be released Sunday, May 23 at 2 p.m., and will include a pre-recorded statement from SLU president Fred Pestello, Ph.D., and the awarding of honorary degrees.

However, the decision to implement these ceremonies didn’t come easily. “Initially, given the state of the pandemic in early February, we were planning for virtual pre-commencements and a virtual commencement ceremony,” said Matt Davis, the Provost’s Chief of Staff.

Once cases began to decrease in late February, a group of students led by SGA president Joseph Reznikov communicated with Pestello and newly appointed provost Michael Lewis, Ph.D., that an in-person ceremony could become a reality. All three groups worked in conjunction to create a proposal to submit to the City of St. Louis Department of Health.

The students on the planning committee “indicated a desire to celebrate with their peers and have the opportunity to have their names called,” Davis said.

Given it gathers smaller crowds, pre-commencement seemed to be the best option for an in-person ceremony. Per the City of St. Louis Department of Health guidelines, hosting an in-person graduation ceremony for all graduates and their guests in their typical venue, Chaifetz Arena, was not an option.

When registering for pre-commencement, graduates were surprised to answer questions about their guests’ COVID-19 vaccination history. Davis stated that this question was added in compliance with their COVID-19 safety plan with the Department of Health. Should it be needed, the responses to this question will be helpful for contact tracing purposes, he said.

Davis also assures that these plans were made with students in mind.

“Our goal was to give students the best opportunity possible to celebrate their accomplishments. Our students have worked so hard to get here,” he said.

While undergraduate, graduate or professional students are embarking onto a world full of unknowns, one thing is assured—the accomplishments made among years at Saint Louis University will be celebrated come May.

“We are proud of what they have achieved in such difficult circumstances in an unprecedented year,” Davis said.

As COVID-19 struck Saint Louis University’s campus, safeguards were swiftly put in place, including an influx of quarantine housing and strict health protocols on campus. Soon after, students were exposed to the poor conditions of SLU’s isolation housing and the alleged mistreatment of Residential Advisors. 

On May 26, 2020, SLU’s fate was decided. Administration chose to allow over 11,000 students to return to the university, despite an increase in COVID-19 infections since campus was first shut down. 

In August, the wrought-iron gates of Saint Louis University creaked open for the school year once again, allowing a flood of students to move back to campus for an in-person fall semester. After a warm, socially distanced welcome, however, the mood shifted—SLU became intent on limiting COVID-19 infections to keep campus open for the remainder of the school year. 

In a plethora of emails from university administration to the student body throughout the 2020-2021 school year, the messaging began to transform from upbeat communications to a more harsh, reprimanding tone. 

One email from early February, entitled “Breaking point or turning point?”, detailed that SLU is “on the brink of implementing severe COVID-19 restrictions because some students, it appears, have just given up,” and explained that students should have “no more beer-pong parties,” among a list of other flagrant actions. 

“Don’t spend Mardi Gras ‘day drinking’ instead of going to class. (Yes, we’ve heard about that plan.) You asked for more mental health days in the calendar, and February 17 is the first one. Use it as it was intended, not recovering from a day of partying,” wrote Debra Rudder Lohe, the Interim Vice President for Student Development at SLU at the time. 

“Come on. You know better,” she wrote.

This pressure to bring case numbers down was especially imparted on resident advisors of the campus’ residence halls, who deal with COVID-19 safeguard violations first-hand. 

One resident advisor who has worked for the university for two years detailed the dismal conditions of her stay at Grand Forest Apartment quarantine housing. The student, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job at the university, is called Abigail. 

Abigail was randomly selected to be tested for COVID-19. When the test came back positive, she was rushed into isolation housing at midnight, where she would stay for the next 14 days. 

When she arrived at her temporary new home, the bathroom door was locked and the bed was without sheets, covered in unknown stains. Luckily, she said, she was given “a roll of toilet paper—thank God for that,” she laughed. 

She called the Student Health Center’s COVID-19 hotline to have the bathroom door opened, who said they would have to check if this was feasible and call her back. When they did get back to her, they said someone could arrive in two hours to fix it. The situation had already become so dire that she had to break the door in order to use the bathroom. 

The days following were along the same vein. Abigail was not fed for almost two days after her arrival. When food finally arrived for her, it was food she explicitly stated she could not eat, as she has Coeliac’s disease and is lactose intolerant. Only in the last two days of her 14-day long quarantine did they bring her food she could eat. Still, she states it was inedible. 

“I like food and I eat anything,” Abigail said, “but I would throw away all this food. It was gross.”

She also faced bouts with her chronic back pain while in quarantine, causing her to call the hotline and ask for Tylenol. When the medication did arrive, it was in packaging that she couldn’t open without scissors, which was not provided. 

Reminiscing on her stay in isolation housing, Abigail recalled that “The first two nights I couldn’t stop crying, I was extremely depressed,” she said. 

Each time she reached out for help from the Student Health Center, Abigail states that they sounded “annoyed” and like “they don’t want to be there.” 

“When they just say ‘okay, we’ll try our best’ and then nothing happens, you just give up,” she said, “They just forgot about me.” 

Though, Abigail states that this treatment from her employer was expected. When cases began to rise, Housing and Residence Life turned to RA’s to crackdown on regulations inside dormitory buildings. She explained that she has felt unsafe in her job multiple times throughout the pandemic. 

“They expect us to go in and bust parties still when people aren’t masked,” she said, “it’s not safe for anybody in that situation.” 

Abigail works two jobs on top of being an RA in order to pay for college on her own. Having money and secure housing from her university is why she continues to work in this position, she states. In her RA role, she works 20 hours a week, on top of helping students on her floor, and gets paid $100 a month, with free housing and a meal plan. The $100 paycheck is taxed. 

Abigail also stated that $100 was taken out of her account without her knowledge in December by Housing and Residence Life, and she hasn’t been paid the monthly stipend since. She is currently working with her boss to fix the situation. 

“From the higher ups, I don’t think they really see students as people, they mostly see numbers, and that’s it,” Abigail said. 

Another student, called Beth for anonymity, shared a similar experience as a fellow second-year RA. Though she signed on for 20-hour work weeks, she often finds herself working more hours than expected. Many times, she feels taken advantage of by Housing and Residence Life because they know she needs the RA position in order to stay at SLU. 

Beth also admits to feeling uncomfortable about doing room checks for her residents and having to enter rooms that are breaking COVID-19 guidelines. 

At a recent meeting with Housing and Residence Life, Beth explains that RA’s were put to blame for higher COVID-19 rates in dorms and on-campus apartments. Though, Beth believes RA’s were never truly taught how to handle these situations in the first place. 

“I remember back in the fall training, people were trying to ask questions and HRL was like ‘we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know,’ and then we never truly got any answers,” she explained. 

“I always feel like I’m slacking at my job, even when I’m doing everything I can. There’s always the overall fear that I’ll get in trouble for not enforcing something properly,” Beth said, “It feels like walking on a thin line always.”

Beth similarly remembers the mistreatment RA’s received after the Black Lives Matter protests. In a document sent to all Housing and Residence Life staff, they explained that students are protected under the Speech, Expression and Civil Discourse Policy at SLU to participate in protests. 

Yet, towards the end of the document, added that “actions taken as an individual can have an impact on your employment with HRL and action may be taken if your actions violate University policy.”

“I actually chose SLU for their social justice values.” Though, Beth now believes that their treatment of their own student staff is “extremely frustrating and disappointing.” 

A student called Claire, who chose to remain anonymous after sharing her negative quarantine experience with the University News, became sick after a night of hanging out with five other students on her floor in early November. 

When one of her friends tested positive for COVID-19, she was moved into quarantine at Hotel Ignacio, a recent acquisition by SLU to accommodate a surplus of isolation housing. Here, she received no communication from Student Health. 

When she eventually did get in touch with them, she was called irresponsible and talked down to, she explained. 

“I was crying on the phone with Student Health for a couple days because I was getting attitude,” she said, “I felt that I was being chastised for catching a virus that I had no control over.” 

Due to initially testing negative, Claire would call everyday to beg for to take another COVID-19 test, in hopes that it would improve her care from the Student Health Center.

“I just wanted someone to call me and ask if I was okay, besides my mom,” she said. 

When she was given the opportunity to be tested again, she asked if a golf cart could pick her up for the half mile walk to the Student Health office. 

“The person that was on the phone was like ‘what? Are you going to get in trouble for walking or something?’ and I was like ‘I can’t breathe, I have COVID,’” she said. 

Making the walk to the Center, she officially tested positive, and finally started to receive calls from nurses. Still, her stay in isolation remained less than ideal. 

“The food was absolutely terrible,” she recalled, “I wouldn’t eat dinner because it was so bad.”

Each day at noon, Claire received a prepackaged sandwich and chips, which she would ration out for the rest of the day because of how inedible she believed the dinners to be. As for activities, the TV in the hotel room was broken.

“I would literally sit at the desk and look out the window and watch cars, all day, every day for two weeks. That’s hard for a person.” . 

On her last day in quarantine, Claire asked to be discharged as early as possible. The COVID-19 hotline told her that a golf cart would arrive at 8 a.m. to pick her and her stuff up. Around 10 a.m., there were no signs of a ride coming for her. She eventually called a friend with a car to come pick her up. To this day, she’s still waiting for communication from Student Health on her ride. 

Reflecting on her quarantine experience, Claire stated that “I’ve had my mom ask me multiple times if I want to transfer. I feel, at this point, that it’s a numbers thing.” 

“They don’t care about how you’re feeling when you get it,” she explained, “Everyone’s a human being, they don’t want to get the virus.” 

“I don’t feel that I was respected at all,” Claire stated. 

In response to the alleged quarantine conditions and student worker mistreatment, SLU administration spoke with the University Newspaper. Sarah Cunningham, SLU’s VP of Student Development, assured that they’re committed to improving their support for students during the pandemic. In a survey of 215 students who were quarantined or isolated, the majority rated their experiences as positive, Cunningham stated. 

“It’s important to know that we are continually taking feedback from students into consideration and adjusting our services accordingly. And if we see a pattern of difficulty emerge, we pivot to a new approach,” she said, “We are constantly learning and always striving to do better. And we will.”

Attempts were made to contact SLU’s Housing and Residential Life department, but no response was received. 

“You can make the difference,” Debra Rudder Lohe wrote in the conclusion of her email to the student body in early February. 

The students interviewed by the University News each stated that they hope their voice will be heard and understood by University administration, in hopes of improving SLU’s campus for future students. 

For now, they simply hope they made a difference. 

Bethani Jacobsen, 26, was a beauty queen—and a good one, at that. Nowadays, she wakes up in the morning, saunters to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and takes her two French bulldogs, Brodie and Cash, outside. Walking past framed photos of herself, her sister and her mom in their pageant attire throughout the years, she makes her way to the bathroom where she quickly puts on her makeup for the day, the same way she’ll later do on a corpse.

Bethani then hops into her car for her minute-long drive to work. The former Miss Illinois International pulls into the parking lot of Strang Funeral Home for another day in the business of death.

These days, Bethani is a mortician and embalmer, a real-life Miss Congeniality turned Morticia Addams.

While the decision was surprising to many, Bethani knew this career choice was a longtime coming. It all began when she arrived at her great grandparents’ funeral service when she was in kindergarten—the first funeral service she’d ever been to, at the same place she would later be employed.

Young Bethani took notice of the shaggy maroon carpeting, the pale wood-paneled walls, the flower bouquets carefully peppered around the room, sent from well-wishers who couldn’t attend, and the polished mahogany pews; she felt right at home.

“I always knew I wanted to be a funeral director,” she said, “I was definitely a weird kid. I was always so interested in death and dying.”

Bethani was also a quiet kid. So quiet, in fact, that she was held back from kindergarten because her teacher didn’t think she was ready to move on to the first grade. Her shyness continued on until middle school, when her mother suggested she try pageants.

Mrs. Jacobsen was a beauty queen in her own right. When Bethani’s older sister, Brittani, was six-years old, Mrs. Jacobsen decided to enroll them both in a pageant. Over the years, both of them took home crown after crown, becoming a hobby for the blonde-haired, green-eyed mother-daughter duo.

Pageants, it seemed, ran in the family—and it wasn’t long before Bethani was roped in next. The brown-haired, brown-eyed, tan-skinned 13-year old reluctantly joined her first one.

“I put up a big fit,” she said, “but I tried it and ended up winning.”

After that first win, Bethani couldn’t get enough. Pageants were the only thing on her teenage mind. Her tomboy phase was over, she now donned dresses at every occasion, and she finally felt comfortable enough to talk in front of crowds. She had found a lifelong passion.

Still, this was only one of the reasons she continued to compete. It was around this time that her parents went through a divorce. Pageants became a perfect storm for Bethani: a place to combat her social anxiety and to soothe her familial worries.

Seeing her daughters be successful and confident in pageants made their newly single mother happy through the dark times of divorce, which made Bethani want to compete even more. While performing, she could see that both sides of her family came together to watch her on stage. Her parents, even when they detested one another, would sit by each other for the show and bring her flowers after a performance. Family was always at the heart of the decisions Bethani made.

Which is why it was so surprising when Bethani declared to her family that she wanted to work as a mortician.

“I think I had a lot of people doubting me and thinking that what I was doing was weird—which it totally is,” she laughed, “it is weird.”

In her mind, however, this was a way to help families just like hers through the most tragic events of their lives.

It was during these substantial teenage years that Bethani’s career path became solidified. Her mother, attempting as much support as possible, wanted to ensure that her daughter could see a dead body before paying for an expensive school. So, when Bethani’s sophomore year of high school rolled around, she called upon a family friend for her daughter to shadow at a funeral home nearby their suburban Illinois home.

After years of shadowing, Bethani was off to college in Iowa for a bachelor’s degree. Despite it being unnecessary for a mortician to have a traditional 4-year degree in Illinois, Bethani was not ready to start her career yet, so she made her own major and graduated with the newly founded “mortuary sciences” degree at Upper Iowa University.

Bethani then returned to her hometown to attend a college of mortuary sciences for her certificate. At college, Bethani and her classmates would gather every day for six-hour classes, with no holidays or days off, then one day a week for six hours after classes to work on cadavers.

The cadavers were typically homeless people whose bodies were never claimed from the Cook County morgue. In hopes that someone would eventually identify them, many of the bodies were severely decomposed by the time the students arrived. Bethani and her classmates learned how to sculpt clay to reconstruct their faces before burial.

After graduating, Bethani began breaking the glass ceiling of the death industry with her work. Heading out into the job market is not an easy task for a person whose family is not already in the funeral business, and especially for a woman.

According to the 2016 census, only 28 percent of morticians are females, let alone beauty queens. On top of being a female in a male-dominated field, 89.2 percent of funeral homes are family businesses, which made it hard for an outsider like her to get a job.

While the mortuary business is traditionally highly saturated with males, Bethani says women in the field were on the rise. She saw more women in her graduating class and the classes below her than the statistics led her to believe, giving her hope for the future of the industry.

Still, she acknowledges the prevalence of sexism in her field. Old-fashioned men, Bethani says, are the root of the problem; believing that women don’t have the physical strength, leadership qualities or the gusto to be in the backroom working on bodies.

“Not every funeral home treats women poorly, but I will say, unfortunately, there are many that are still stuck in the 1950s,” she said, “it does give us a setback sometimes.”

Luckily, when she was fully licensed, Bethani was offered a job from a family-owned funeral home in Antioch, Illinois that treats her as one of their own. Now, three years later, she lives in an apartment directly across the street from the funeral home, because one thing remains certain for Miss Illinois—in the business of death, work is Bethani’s life.

Some days, living across the street from work makes perfect sense. When she gets a call at 2 in the morning that a person has passed, it’s her job to drive over to work, pick up the hearse, and head out to pick up the body alone. On these days, Bethani knows it’ll be a long day at the office.

After parking the hearse back in its spot back at the funeral home, she and the body head to the backroom where she will begin the process of embalming.

The beauty queen then cuts open the skin, finds the corpse’s arteries, injects formaldehyde into their veins to drain out their blood, and patches their body back up.

In those early morning hours alone with the corpse, in the windowless medical area of a funeral home, she says she feels the presence of their soul watching over her embalming for a little while.

Naturally, Bethani is a bit superstitious. When a body comes into the funeral home with their feet crossed, she says it means that bodies will come in threes, and she can expect two more bodies to arrive at the home later.

When this happens, she says, “you’re gonna be working a lot for the rest of the night.”

Bethani also calls 3 a.m. the “devil’s hour” and gets a little freaked out coming to work during a full moon. During these times, she says, “Strange things do happen.”

While she is typically unbothered when it comes to the nauseating sights and smells of her office, the 26-year-old admits she does feel grossed out sometimes.

“I can embalm someone and be just fine and have no problems,” she said. It’s the more natural, mundane occurrences that bother her. Oddly enough, it’s the bodily fluids, Bethani says, that leave her feeling disgusted.

On a typical day, meaning a day when she doesn’t have to go pick up a dead body in the middle of the night, she starts the day like many of us—with emails. Next, comes the visitations with families. Prayers, mass, morning services, funeral arrangements and more services at night, all with coffee fueling her throughout the day.

Bethani is a funeral service jack-of-all-trades: she directs the funerals, plans arrangements with families, embalms and reconstructs bodies and even tends to her funeral home’s social media.

Pageantry for her comes in a bit of a different form nowadays. Being a beauty queen, oddly enough, relates plenty to her current gig.

When people ask her those tough questions while planning their loved ones’ funerals, when the pressure falls on her to scrounge together an answer in the heat of the moment, she is able to calmly answer their concerns. And in the business of death, the sad and outrageous questions are expected from grieving funeral goers.

No mortuary school could teach her this skill, she says, that ability comes straight from her days in the spotlight.

“Pageants have really taught me how to take a deep breath, take it in, and then answer,” she said.

She also learned how to engage crowds through pageants. When people look to her to lead a perfect funeral service for their loved one, she must deliver exactly what they hope for. Her support system says she’s the perfect woman for the job.

“If I had someone as bright and bubbly as her directing the funeral, I would feel so much more comfortable,” said family friend Julie Gleason, 53, who lost her mother in 2017. “She lights up any room that she’s in.”

While a beauty queen leading a funeral service may seem out-of-place, it may be exactly what the industry needs—a strong, charismatic, passionate young woman leading people through their grief.

Bethani says a common misconception about her profession is that people believe you turn cold-hearted after all the loss you’ve seen. For her, it’s just the opposite.

“We’re trained not to cry. But on the inside, our hearts are melting. We’re holding it together for the family. But really, we’re just like everyone else. It makes us a little more mushy towards little life moments and things like that,” she said.

She says this job has caused her to “become kind of corny,” and led her to believe clichés like living every day to the fullest while we’re still here on earth.

Bethani is so committed to this notion, in fact, that she even has a tattoo to prove it. Stretching across her forearm is a portrait of hydrangeas, her favorite flower, which is also common for a funeral bouquet, inside a mason jar half-filled with liquid.

“I did it to signify that you should always look at life with the glass half-full,” she said, “that was the biggest thing that I learned about funeral directing, so I thought, why not make it permanent?”

Bethani’s positivity was tested just a month ago, when her grandfather passed away and she was on the opposite end of the funeral process for once. She recalls understanding firsthand what it was like for her clients to deal with loss.

Instead of having someone else handle the death arrangements, she took matters into her own hands—literally. Bethani administered her own grandfather’s embalming and funeral service.

“It’s very difficult to see that and be in that position, but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it,” she said.

Even with the loss she sees daily, Bethani still regards death as her biggest fear. Oddly enough, this didn’t deter her from her career path, but invigorated her passion even more.

“It’s rewarding to know that I’m conquering my biggest fear every day, just through helping people,” she said.

Still, many times she finds herself taking home the grief she sees during the day. Separating the emotions of her work from her life at home is a hard task for the mortician.  

“A lot of times I have to tell myself: it’s someone else’s family, although it’s sad, it’s not my family and I have to be very grateful that I’m alive, that I still have my family. But I will say, that’s my biggest thing: I feel too empathic at times. It can be physically and mentally draining,” she said.

In fact, Bethani struggles with anxiety and feelings of depression at times.

“When seasonal depression sets in, just like anyone that may not be in this profession, it sets in when it gets cold out or darker earlier—add death and sadness on top of that, it can be quite a bit,” she said. With such a big burden to carry alone, Bethani tries remembering the big picture when these dark feelings close in: she’s making a positive difference for people every day.

Bethani attributes these feelings as one of the reasons she’s still single. After she comes home from a long day at work, sometimes she just prefers alone time to process all of the emotion she saw that day. Relationships can be an added stressor on top of an already demanding profession.

Still, the beauty queen tries to put herself out there. She’s currently on Hinge, a dating app where users can display their occupation along with their other information. For Bethani, most conversations over the app begin with men asking her about her “interesting” career choice.

She typically answers these questions in a very held-back manner, in hopes of not scaring them off too quickly. If she comes on too strong with discussions about her work, men can be turned off to her entirely, no matter how interested in her career they may seem.

Most first dates she goes on, Bethani explains, feel more like a job interview than anything.

“I’m not gonna lie, sometimes it’s a little draining because I do work quite a bit and it can be a lot to talk about work after work,” she said.

On top of explaining her choices to every potential boyfriend, she also has to deal with balancing a busy work schedule and a prospective relationship. Some workdays last from 3 a.m. to 7 p.m., with every weekend booked up for services, and plenty of time being away from her phone. Bethani was in a 3-year long relationship that ended recently, one reason being that even when she was present, her partner felt that she wasn’t fully there after work.

This, in turn, means that a future partner for Bethani must be very flexible. She hopes that this will become a reality for the family she wants someday.

“On days when I want to be alone or I want to binge eat everything because I saw the worst possible thing, I just want someone to appreciate that and I haven’t gotten that fully yet,” she said, “But, I’m certain that someone out there will understand it.”

Surrounded by sadness every day, the beauty queen, nevertheless, maintains hope for the future.

In her apartment, just across the street from Strang Funeral Home, she put up a small fake Christmas tree with decorations sprinkled throughout the living room, two months in advance to the holidays. After she comes home from a long day of corpses and formaldehyde, it’s the little things that add joy to her day.

“This job has really taught me to be grateful that I woke up another day to do what I love,” the former Miss Illinois International said, smiling.

When she walks past photos of herself, her sister, and her mother all donning crowns and sashes as she heads out to work for the day, she is assured of one thing—Miss Congeniality makes a damn good Morticia Addams.

Cases of bigotry on college campuses across the nation have flooded news headlines for the past month—unfortunately, SLU was not immune to this insensitivity. 

At SLU, the growing concerns about coronavirus have fostered an atmosphere of xenophobia towards international students on campus. Instances of intolerant remarks warranted a response from SLU President Fred Pestello, P.h.D. and the increased worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus was partially to blame for the cancellation of SLU’s annual Chinese New Year Celebration on Jan. 31, 2020. 

In an email entitled “Walking in solidarity with our campus community members,” written on Feb. 5, Pestello stated that there were already reports of racist remarks to Chinese students while off-campus. He concluded the email by reminding the community that “wearing a face mask in and of itself is not a sign of sickness.”

The bigotry experienced by international students may stem from a lack of understanding of Asian cultures. For one, wearing face masks is a common cultural practice in East Asian countries. These woven-cloth surgical masks have many everyday uses—to prevent inhaling airborne dust particles, pollutants and from spreading bacteria to others. U.S. Centers for Disease Control states that face masks of little use in preventing coronavirus because, “most facemasks do not effectively filter small particles from the air and do not prevent leakage around the edge of the mask when the user inhales.” Although, students unfamiliar with this practice still make this fallacious connection.

While some students joke about the virus, they fail to take into consideration the tragedy at hand—according to CNN, the death count is currently over 2,000. This unfortunate number is just another reason why the Chinese Student and Scholar Association (CSSA) ultimately decided to cancel their Chinese New Year event.

In another instance,”Barstool Billikens,” a comedic Instagram account notorious for commentating on SLU events, making light of international fears of a pandemic, posted an image of a face mask with a Billiken on it. The caption read “protect yourself from the coronavirus with school spirit.” 

The CSSA hosts the Chinese Spring Festival every year to acknowledge one of the most widely celebrated holidays in China. Numerous students, staff and faculty attend the event and attendees often include students from WashU, UMSL and SIUE. 

According to Lina Liang, the Minister of Public Relations for CSSA, the Festival “aim[s] to share this part of Chinese culture with the Saint Louis University community and hope[s] it can help SLU faculties and students form a better understanding of the Chinese culture.”

Although, this year, concerns for public health and outbreaks of coronavirus in China led the CSSA to their decision to cancel the event. 

“Considering what was happening in our home country, and whose students family members are in China, we are finding celebration to be difficult at a tragic time,” Liang stated. 

This sensationalized concern for coronavirus in America, Liang states, comes from “shocking” and “overreacting” media coverage of the disease. “Influenza has a far more impacted population in U.S. The difference is that influenza is well known, but coronavirus (with flu-like symptoms) is novel,” she said. 

The CSSA will continue to fight against intolerance from their peers. In response to some of the SLU community’s assumptions about and reaction to the virus, the CSSA hopes to educate against the misconceptions about their culture that might lead to bigotry. In collaboration with INTO and SLU’s Office of International Services, they are also fundraising to help Chinese hospitals at the forefront of the fight against Coronavirus. Please consider donating here: https://www.into-giving.com/support-us.

“Let us remember that we are a Catholic, Jesuit, international, urban, residential, research university with a mission that calls us to walk in solidarity with others,” Pestello wrote in his email to the students, faculty and staff of SLU. In such a time of this global health crisis, solidarity is essential to the success of a university-wide community.

On Monday, Nov. 11, the Greater Issues Committee announced that Monica Lewinsky will be speaking at SLU in early December. The GIC came to this decision based on Lewinsky’s content, which will cover topics like the price of shame and her life in the public eye. 

Lewinsky, an activist, TV personality and fashion designer was made famous through a sex scandal with President Clinton in 1995 when she was an intern at the White House. After the scandal, 22-year-old Lewinsky became a figure of popular culture, her name constantly dragged through the mud by news outlets. Now, she tours college campuses across the country speaking on bullying and the dangers of “cancel culture.” 

Cancel culture is a recent phenomenon that takes place on social media platforms, a typical offender being Twitter. Users boycott a celebrity after learning about a problematic action in their past, usually involving xenophobic behavior. While bigotry is not an acceptable reaction in any context, many people, including Lewinsky, believe that cancel culture is also harmful in its own way. 

Chair of GIC and SLU junior, Beatrice Beirne, says that Lewinsky has always been on a short list of interesting speakers to bring to SLU. The decision was finalized the first few weeks of the semester—since then, Beirne’s excitement has only grown. She believes that the subject matter is very relevant to SLU’s campus culture today. 

“Being college students, we can all kind of relate to [cancel culture],” she says. “There’s been a situation for all of us where we’ve cancelled someone without knowing the full story, or we’ve been cancelled without someone knowing the full story.” Either way, Beirne states, “we’re all participating in it.”

As there is a chance for her to interview Lewinsky at the event, Beirne states that it would be daunting to interview someone that’s been interviewed by some of the greats, like Jake Tapper and Katie Couric. At the same time, Beirne says, “it will be cool to be in that proximity and to see this person that is in rap songs, for who she really is,” she said. 

Beirne also believes that SLU students will have an interesting perspective of Lewinsky, as the 1995 scandal happened before most of the current students were even born. “We got to see the second wind of her career,” she said. 

The GIC chair thinks that it is unfair to hold Lewinsky to the same standard she was held to in her twenties—she hopes that the audience shares this outlook at the upcoming event. “We might have the opportunity, because of the generation we’re a part of, to see her as who she is, and not just her sex scandal,” to which Beirne describes her real personality as “overcoming” and “resilient.” 

Lewinsky will speak to the SLU community in the Wool Ballroom on Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. with free entry provided to students with a SLU ID. The audience will be given a chance to ask questions after the interview.

Ultimately, Beirne hopes that the audience will learn “the effect of their actions” from Lewinsky’s speech. “I hope that they come away with being more intentional with preventing themselves from participating in cancel culture, public shaming and hurting people who are celebrities—but also people they go to school with,” she said.

Mae Green Cox, lovingly known as Ms. Mae, was transferred to a new position on SLU’s Medical Campus on Wednesday, Oct. 16. Known as the bright face of Grand Dining Hall, this decision was not taken lightly by her many supporters on campus. An online petition soon began to circulate, adding up to almost 1,800 signatures to date. 

A St. Louis native, Ms. Mae’s first job at the University was serving priests at Jesuit Hall. Upon its opening in 2017, she moved to Grand Dining Hall—now, she is coming up on ten years of working in SLU’s dining halls. 

Ms. Mae’s warm personality and representation of the University’s values led to her very own section of Grand soon after its opening, called “Miss Mae’s Comfort Corner.” She found out about this through a Facebook post and described that she felt “love, excited and all of those other good words.” 

Upon seeing the new sign for the Comfort Corner in Grand, Ms. Mae became emotional. “All of my friends thought I was sad, but they were happy tears,” she told the University News. 

Some students, upset with the transfer, think the problem lies with Sodexo, the food service that manages Grand’s dining. When Ms. Mae was offered a higher paying position at SLU Hospital, Sodexo “did nothing to try and keep Ms. Mae in our dining hall,” said Tyler Guist, the creator of the online petition. When Sodexo did not fight for her to stay, “she was hurt” Guist wrote. 

Gary Prellwitz, Resident District Manager of Sodexo addressed one student’s concerns about Ms. Mae’s transfer at the SGA Senate on Oct. 16. Prellwitz stated that the Hospital’s branch of Sodexo “seems to be agreeable to sharing her” and that Ms. Mae will be returning to Grand once a month. 

“She has committed to, I think, to come back in for the late night breakfast. She always played a pretty important role in that, welcoming all the students to the building,” said Prellwitz. 

In a Facebook post a day before she started her new position, Ms. Mae wrote “I will always be there for my babies,” and that she wants to thank everyone for their support and encouragement in this tough time. 

Although they will miss Ms. Mae’s famous sayings about all students being “her babies” and that “we’re all a big family,” the SLU community is proud to have such a warm representative for them in their Hospital’s cafeteria. Still, when students come to grab a sweet treat from Miss Mae’s Comfort Corner, they will think of the influential woman it was named after.

Last week, a SLU student was badly injured in a hit-and-run on the intersection of Grand and Laclede. On Tuesday, the driver was identified as 21-year-old Aldina Sakanovic, per the St. Louis Police Department. 

Stephanie Grant, a 20-year-old junior studying Biomedical engineering at SLU, was walking across the street near Grand Hall when a car driving erratically ran through a red light, hitting Grant. The driver fled the scene immediately afterwards.

According to the GoFundMe created by her aunt, Elaine Grant Farwell, she has “a broken eye socket, broken nose, broken leg and a spine fracture. She will be facing multiple surgeries.”

Sakanovic’s charges are second degree assault, leaving the scene of an accident, resisting arrest and two counts of armed criminal action, KMOV4 reports.

Police say that the silver Nissan Pathfinder was stolen that day and was spotted earlier near Grand and Cherokee. Officers had started to follow the car but stopped once they saw how erratically she was driving, STLPD said. 

STLPD says that officers were not in pursuit of the car when the accident occurred.

In an interview with News 4, Grant’s father states that “we are very appreciative to everyone for their prayers. They are working. Stephanie has made a lot of progress yesterday. After several days of trying she was able to sit up at the side of her bed. Thanks to the community for all of the support.”

Farwell states that her niece has a “bright future ahead of her” and encourages people to donate to help with the emergency medical funds her family is paying. Consider helping a member of the Billiken family by donating to the GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/emergency-fund-for-stephanie-grant.