It is hard to believe but it has been five years since the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus essentially closed after spring break. During the spring 2020 semester, spring break was officially from March 14th-22nd but campus did not fully re-open for the rest of the spring semester. Reviewing the Daily Illini, the concerns about Covid-19 before break were primarily about traveling abroad. In March 2020, the Daily Illini was still a physical newspaper and with the closing of campus, its publication was halted from March 15th through June 2020.

I was working at the Undergraduate Library in March 2020 and took the spring break week off on vacation. I never could have guessed that the libraries would close, and work and classes would move online for the rest of the semester. I remember even stating that there is no way the libraries would close, because at the time, they were considered an essential unit and were very rarely closed.

My colleagues and I worked remotely until the end of July while we began to determine how we could return to work in a safe manner and begin to provide what in-person library services we could for the 2020-2021 academic year. Upon return to campus, we had two weeks to completely revamp our services and get ready to open. When we did “reopen” for the semester, the services provided at the Undergraduate Library did not look the same. I won’t review it all here, but services included: a check in station in the entry space that included Wellness Safety Associates to check building access permission, loanable technology picked up from lockers, study space for around 27 patrons that had to be booked 24 hours in advance, book pickup from lockers in the Main Library, quarantining any returned librarymaterials for a week, etc.

After I returned to work, I noticed that the UGL was still receiving copies of the Daily Illini, so I began to collect every issue we received. I knew that the year was going to be memorable and indeed, it was a very stressful and eventful year.

When this blog post was scheduled to be released at this time, five years after campus closed, I decided that it would be a good time to dust off those newspapers and give a brief overview of the 2020-2021 academic year at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The newspapers provide a snapshot of the year and even though it is becoming recent history, it is still remembered and discussed to this day. In fact, while working on this blog post, I heard students walking across campus talking about the pandemic, the fact that it had been five years, and then discussing how that year affected them. It is an icebreaker and a good way to start a conversation with anyone old enough to remember the pandemic. Even though it affected us all differently, it still is a time that did affect us all, no matter how old we were at the time. 

I know this next comment will show my age, but I have often thought that Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” could be rewritten from just the events that occurred in that one academic year. After reviewing the Daily Illini issues from that time, some of the events that could be mentioned in the song include:

• Face masks
• Social distancing
• Saliva-based covid test
• Classes and meetings over Zoom
• Covid dismissals
• Lack of toilet paper and low groceries
• Safer Illinois App/boarding pass

• Wellness Safety Associates (WSA)
• Shield Team
• Locked buildings
• RSOs online
• Dorm for isolation
• Fall break with no campus return until Spring
• Cancelled spring break
• New variants
• Covid fatigue/burnout
• Mental health struggles
• Automated testing
• Covid/testing expense to campus
• Vaccine
• Herd immunity

Campus was not only affected by the covid pandemic that year. There were a lot of other important events happening on campus including:   

• Social justice concerns
• Kingfisher mascot
• National elections
• Protests for defunding UI police
• Bus service decreases
• Food insecurity
• Big Ten win

The 2020-2021 was an eventful year and these Daily Illini newspapers give a great overview of the challenges the campus faced. I want to ensure these newspapers are available to read so, the History Philosophy, and Newspaper Library (HPNL) will have them available after this blog post is active. Please stop in and read all about the memorable 2020-2021 academic year at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

HPNL also has books that cover many aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic so if you would like to learn more about the pandemic, please check out this bibliography:

HPNL Covid Bibliography

Public Aspects of Medicine

Fang, Fang, and Michael Berry. Wuhan Diary : Dispatches from a Quarantined City. HarperVia an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2020.

Kavey, Rae-Ellen W., and Allison Kavey. Viral Pandemics : From Smallpox to COVID-19. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.

Lewis, Michael. The Premonition : A Pandemic Story. W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.

Manaugh, Geoff, and Nicola Twilley. Until Proven Safe : The History and Future of Quarantine. MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Nixon, Kari. Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19 : What Pandemics Teach Us about Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today. Tiller Press, 2021.

Petriello, David. The Politics of Disease : An American History from Columbus to Covid. McFarland & Company, 2023.

Sowemimo, Annabel, and Publisher. Wellcome Collection. Divided : Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare. Profile Books, 2023.

Tolley, Kimberley. Vaccine Wars : The Two-Hundred-Year Fight for School Vaccinations. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

Social Science

Holden, Kisha B., and Camara Phyllis Jones. Black Women and Resilience : Power, Perseverance, and Public Health. State University of New York Press, 2024.

Peacock, Margaret, and Erik L. Peterson. A Deeper Sickness : Journal of America in the Pandemic Year. Beacon Press, 2022.

Philosophy/Ethics/Psychology

Being There, but How? : On the Transformation of Presence in (Post-)Pandemic Times. Transcript, 2024.

Butler, Judith. What World Is This? : A Pandemic Phenomenology. Columbia University Press, 2022.

Weinstein, Netta, et al. Solitude : The Science and Power of Alone Time. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Wellner, Galit P., et al. The Philosophy of Imagination : Technology, Art and Ethics. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.

History

Hill, Marc Lamont, et al. We Still Here : Pandemic, Policing, Protest, & Possibility. Haymarket Books, 2020.

Yancy, George, and Tim Wise. Until Our Lungs Give out : Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future. Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.

Zakaria, Fareed. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World. W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Political Science

Esposito, Roberto, and Zakiya Hanafi. Institution. Polity Press, 2022.