Evelyn Hernandez

When the second email came out saying we had to leave, it was more like a rush, especially because after spring break. It’s my favorite time being in Boston. I was excited that I could go home because I had been getting homesick, but then slowly it started to sink in.

I’m part of Kappa Gamma Ki and I was one of the chairs of Emeralds Empowerment, a week-long event that is dedicated to women’s issues, and we were going to have an art gallery that was just going to be women of Boston and the Emerson community. We were also working with Active Minds and we were going to have a Foreplay Party that was going to be talking about female pleasure. That was kind of a pit because we had spent so much time on it. In the past, the event was more about sexual abuse and domestic violence, so this was the first time we were going to kind of go broader than that.

When they sent the first email saying classes were canceled, I knew everything else was going to get canceled. I knew some people that were like, ‘oh I know they can’t cancel commencement.’ But, I knew there was no way they were gonna have commencement if they didn’t even want to have 15 people in a classroom. It’s very disappointing. I’m a first-gen in my family, so I was really looking forward to just being able to take the pictures and go to the ceremony.

For me, it’s part of that college experience. Having been to the past two graduations, I was like ‘oh my gosh, next year is us.’

I come from a high school where not a lot of people leave for college, and I was the first person in my high school to go out of state, straight to a fouryear. It’s just kind of a thing that doesn’t really happen, so it was going to be super exciting being able to share that moment with my mom.