A Year of Solitude
Stuck on Campus, Gabriel Gorospe Gave New Meaning To Social Distancing
“She’s a runner, she’s a track star,” sings Gabriel ‘Gabe’ Gorospe as he sprints on his toes to avoid sinking his three-inch stiletto heels into the wet grass and becoming permanently stuck at Whittier College. Gorospe, a residential advisor, has been living on the college’s mostly vacant campus since the COVID-19 lockdown began in March 2020.
He laughs as he tells me he practiced walking in his heels by running through the empty halls of the dormitory. As the only occupant of the entire building, which typically hosts about 180 students, Gorospe was free to blast his music as he sprinted through the halls.
With less than 50 students living on campus during this plague year, the residents Gorospe oversaw were mostly housed in the upper campus, far up the hill from his dorm room, and abiding by social distancing. This made this job much easier, if much more isolated. Without responsibilities such as safety checks and monthly programs, Gorospe has a lot of time on his hands as he completed his senior year of college online.
Until recently, when vaccines became widely available, he only saw his friends through FaceTime. COVID-19 precautions kept him from returning to his home in the San Francisco Bay Area or seeing his family in person for over a year. His birthday and holidays were spent alone inside an empty dormitory, bringing a new meaning to social distancing.
March 10, 2020, was a gloomy, quiet day foreshadowing the year to come. Gorospe checked his phone to see a message in the group chat named “The Triad” that he and his two best friends (full disclosure, I’m one of them)have been a part of since his freshman orientation. He read a message that said, “You did not hear it from me because we aren’t supposed to know until tonight, but Thursday is our last day of class. Friday is canceled. Then the two weeks following spring break are canceled and will be moved to online only. They are assessing what to do after that, but they are expecting we will complete the rest of the semester online.”
Just three years earlier, when Gorospe was an outspoken freshman walking around with a personal hand fan asking two girls if he could join them to go to Starbucks, he never could have imagined that one of them would be informing him of a pandemic, lockdown, and the start of online courses.
All students, faculty, professors, and parents were rightfully concerned when Whittier College sent an email to the student body informing them of the initial plan in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Gorospe, though, had a multitude of concerns: losing his housing security, traveling home and potentially spreading the virus, and/or staying on campus and getting sick from living in the dormitories.
Initially, Gorospe decided to remain on campus through spring break when there was hope the shutdown might be for just a couple of weeks. When it became clear that it was more permanent, Gorospe decided to remain on campus in his solo dorm room.
Meanwhile, back in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, his family had recently moved out of their home into an apartment.The downsizing meant Gorospe would not have a room of his own. COVID-19 has been particularly dangerous for those living in high occupancy dwellings. He thought it would be more comfortable and safer to stay on campus rather than try to pack up all of his belongings, find a storage locker, board a plane, and fly back to his family.
To his knowledge, Gorospe never contracted the virus, meaning staying in the dorm did keep him physically safe. The long term mental-health consequences of the pandemic, however, are still not fully understood, though there is context. There is some indication that pandemics, such as the Spanish Flu of 1918–1919, spurred an increase of suicides in the United States. Though there yet no clear indication that suicides in the U.S. increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, it did heighten risk factors such as isolation, fear, economic anxiety and increased domestic abuse.
A pandemic intensifies these factors, but the advent of technology, continuous media coverage on television, social media, the radio, and more, has the potential to create more anxiety and fear for people living with preexisting mental health conditions. Experts found that in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, firearm sales increased 41-percent increase over 2019 rates. In 2019, the United States had a 14.5 per 100,000 suicide rate, 51-percent of which came via firearms.
Certain groups, such as healthcare workers, those who are unemployed, those with mental health conditions, the elderly, the youth, and people of color are more vulnerable to the pandemic and, as result, have increased risk factors for suicide. John Hopkins is concerned the pandemic may have long-term impacts on mental health and suggests equitable access to health care, especially mental health care, and providing economic relief as possible solutions to lessen the risks of the pandemic on people’s mental health.
“Social distancing” is not a phrase Gorospe used before the pandemic. The term is meant as a verb. For Gorospe, though, it quickly became an adjective describing his life.
Walking through the empty identical halls of Stauffer Hall, he relates how he spent the summer, Halloween, Christmas, New Years’, and Easter alone in the dormitory. As he speaks, the pungent residue of first-year body-odor and glee lingers while Gorospe guides a tour of the dormitory maze. It’s easy to imagine losing one’s mind while being locked down in an empty, freshmen dormitory during a pandemic that felt eerily apocalyptic.
For Thanksgiving 2020, after approximately eight months of being alone, Gorospe received his COVID-19 tests results from the college’s mandatory testing for residents. The results came back negative. Desperate to escape the musty, empty Stauffer Hall, he boarded a plane to visit his family in Daly City armed with hand sanitizer and wearing two masks and gloves.
Months later, his family was able to drive down to Whittier and stay in a hotel to spend some time with him. He says his family took necessary precautions, such as getting tested before visiting and wearing masks, but he knows that there is always a risk. Even today, fully vaccinated, Gorospe says he can’t imagine a time where he will put his masks in a box and slide them under the bed, never to be seen again.
So, how did he cope?
Gorospe says he did his best to maintain perspective and says he felt guilty and selfishness when he felt sorry for himself or felt depressed because he knew people were dying and worse things were happening. He was grateful that he was at least healthy, had a roof over his head and had food security. Surviving, isn’t the same as living, though, and Gorospe says he was depressed and confused when the pandemic hit, existing in this purgatory of knowing the virus was out there, but lacking clear guidance on what to do. He was concerned about the visit to Disneyland he took just before society closed down at the beginning of the pandemic.
.Gorospe attempted to make self-care a main priority, but at times it became difficult to do. During the fall and winter holidays, when cases of COVID-19 surged, he felt a prolonged sense of loneliness and had to intentionally take his mind off the stress and trauma he and the world as a whole were facing.
It hit hard when Whittier College announced the 2020–2021 would be conducted virtually with only limited on-campus housing available for students facing housing insecurity. Putting on his decorated cap that reads “Category Is: Graduate Realness,” a reference to RuPaul’s Drag Race, Gorospe says, “I was going through everything with the pandemic but all of that in a res hall.”
Months of binging Netflix shows and trying new recipes, such as whipped coffee, could only occupy his mind for so long. Cabin fever overwhelmed him, meaning the five minute walk to the college’s cafeteria became his solace and daily dose of Vitamin D. But walking through the empty door, unboxing packaged food, and sitting in front of the television to eat dinner alone for the umpteenth day took a toll. While he was used to wishing for more time — more time to sleep, more time to finish the essay he’d procrastinated on, more time with his loved ones, more time to live — he wasn’t prepared for all of this free time, especially when it was alone time.
A couple of times it looked like Gorospe might have relief from his isolation, but such as when he was selected to be the Resident Advisor for the school’s contracted apartment building. He even had a roommate lined up for a minute, but all this was dashed with the school year went online and housing was severely restricted for safety protocols. Gorospe’s living arrangements changed several times before he was settled into a suite in Stauffer Hall.
Months later, Gorse’s voice strains as he grits his teeth and tries to be polite about discussing his alone and adrift on the all-but-empty campus. Online shopping, playing video games, stuffing his feelings with food, watching WWE, and blasting his comfort song, “Praying” by Kesha, helped him survive.
Mostly, though, he relied on his own resilience and his dreams for his future.
So, what happens after the credits roll?
While Gorospe knows this is time he will never get back and completing college online was never his plan, he is grateful for his and his loved one’s health and is excited about his future. Recently he hired on at a retail store in Whittier and he is preparing to move into an apartment with a friend and officially embark on adulthood. With a major in Theater Arts and Communications, Gabriel Gorospe is ready to move out of the lonely dorm and onto the big stage.
