In Spring 2020, main campus was nearly desserted after Temple announced on March 16th that it was sending more than 37,000 students home and switching to virtual learning.
“It was so weird it feels like it was yesterday, so not only like, is the pandemic happening, everyone’s scared, they’re kicking us out of dorms,” class of 2023 Nina Wible said.
“It was definitely weird figuring out the whole zoom thing and everything going into COVID for the end of my freshman year. I mean, I loved it because you could just chill on your computer all day,” class of 2024 graduate Vincent Tulli said. “But when we came back the beginning of sophomore year, fall of 2020, it was definitely strange. Like being at Temple and going on campus, it was like a ghost town.”
Some of these students felt like they werent receiving the full value of their college tuition which led to two lawsuuits against the University. Despite the settlement, former student Vincent Tulli considers the lawsuits to be unreasonable.
“I mean, how selfish can you really be,” Tulli said. “I mean, I feel like Temple was just trying to look out for their students and the idea that, you know, the world shut down and we don’t want anyone getting sick. You know, there was a lot of deaths of COVID, obviously. So why even risk sending your students to class if a bigger lawsuit could happen if someone gets really sick or someone dies. That’s not a good look for the university. That’s not a good look for the student body. So I think Temple was just trying to keep their student body safe.”
In a statement provided by Temple, the University said it responded swiftly during COVID to prioritize the safety of the students and the community. The statement said it was a “near seamless transition that helped to minimize the effect on our students’ learning outcomes.”
While students can claim a cash award from the settlement. One former student said that getting information about the award was challenging and that he needed to go find information on his own.
“I’ve reached out to them and they actually just reached back they didn’t, they didn’t have a record of me going there in, in 2020, which I definitely did,” class of 2021 graduate Jack Byrne said. “So now I have to reach back out to them with whatever my mailing address was at the time, which it could have been a number of different addresses because I lived at a different apartment each year and my family moved around while I was at Temple. So I have no idea what address they have. And then I think they also asked for like some sort of proof of me going there, like my transcript or things like that, which, you know, as an alumni, I would I would wish that I could just go back to my TU portal and just download whatever documents I need.”
If students chose to decline this cash award they could choose from Temple football tickets, an alumni recreation pass, or a Temple course.
“I love Temple. I don’t know if I’ll be pursuing the Temple season tickets for football now. I think they’re going through a transitionary sort of period. But the class sounds appealing, you know, depending on the options that they provide,” class of 2022 Stephan Konnovitch said.
Students who were in class for spring 2020 have until December 27th to claim their cash or non-cash awards.
For more information, visit the Temple Covid Settlement website.
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