A Look at an Evacuated SMU
Snapshots of the campus of Southern Methodist University during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s a beautiful day: sunny and 75. But for most SMU students, the stay-at-home orders mean we can no longer walk the sidewalks of the campus we used to call home. From the safety of my car, I drove around SMU and took photos of the familiar and the unfamiliar…which we’re supposed to call “the new normal.”
For graduating seniors who will never return to campus as students, it feels like we will only ever see our school in the rearview mirror. Look closely at the quintessential Laura Lee Blanton building, and you’ll see that the fountain has stopped running—just another stab in the hearts of seniors who will graduate without “fountain hopping.”
A sign outside the Highland Park United Methodist Church welcomes us onto the SMU Boulevard. The sign offers a message of hope, but its presence also serves as yet another reminder that the pandemic has touched every business, organization, and establishment.
A white tent shrouds the entrance to the Dr. Bob Smith Health Center, where dozens of students got flu shots earlier in the semester, believing that they were safe from a normal flu season. The empty parking lot now feels eerily like the setting of a post-apocalyptic movie.
Families take advantage of the beautiful weather and the abandoned streets to go on bike rides up and down the boulevard. The sense of community among the bikers allows me a glimpse of happiness, but it’s not the community of students hurrying to classes that usually fill the campus sidewalks.
As we pull away from SMU’s main campus, we can see Burleson Park, the playground by the sorority houses, is closed. The yellow caution tape and the stark white-and-red sign ward off neighborhood children and their families.
One last look at SMU reveals a nearly-empty parking lot, and I remember getting to campus hours early last semester to thwart the parking battle. On a good day, students would circle the lot three times and finally find a parking space; now, empty spots that once felt like a winning lottery ticket now simply feel lonely.
