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With a normal semester on campus out of the picture, several Syracuse University students have chosen to take a leave of absence this fall.  

The students made the decision to defer due to financial constraints, concerns about the spread of coronavirus on campus or to seize different opportunities during a time of uncertainty.

These are the stories of four SU students who chose to defer enrollment at SU this semester, and what led them to take time off from the university:

Sourov Rayhan

Sourov Rayhan came to Syracuse University to escape persecution that LGBTQ people face in his home country of Bangladesh. But when his mother’s business began to suffer during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rayhan, a sophomore studying English, realized he wouldn’t be able to afford SU’s tuition this fall. 

Rayhan sent an appeal letter to SU on March 22 requesting that the university lower his tuition. SU denied the request two days later. As a result, Rayhan — who lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital — opted to take a leave of absence from SU. 

“I have to take a leave of absence because of (the appeal denial), and the school’s still not cooperating while I said that, my life, that’s going to be on the line,” Rayhan said. 

Now, Rayhan is back in Dhaka, helping his mother restart her business. He hopes to return to SU in the spring, where he can feel safer.

“This wouldn’t have had to happen if the school was cooperating,” he said.

Hannah Ly

Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s travel advisory, those traveling to New York, New Jersey or Connecticut from COVID-19 hotspots must self-quarantine for two weeks upon arrival. The order impacted over 3,000 SU students at the beginning of the fall semester, including Hannah Ly. 

Completing the quarantine came with costs. SU allowed freshmen and transfer students to quarantine in their dorms for a $1,000 fee, while returning students had to secure quarantine accommodations on their own. Some students, such as Ly, felt the cost wasn’t worth it.

Ly, a sophomore studying magazine, news and digital journalism from California, feared she would spend money to quarantine only to be sent home during a spike of COVID-19 cases at SU. 

“I was scared that I would spend all this money trying to find somewhere to live during that two week quarantine period and then two weeks later, once classes start, there’s going to be an outbreak and then I’d just be sent home,” Ly said. “I didn’t want to waste that much money.” 

SU has said it will pause residential instruction if 100 students contact COVID-19 and will send students home if an outbreak overwhelmed the university’s ability to track and isolate new cases.

Ly was on track to graduate a year early, in the spring of 2022. Now, she will likely have to put off graduating for at least a semester. She works full time at a grocery store at home while taking online courses through a local community college, which she said is less expensive than taking classes through SU and more accommodating of her work schedule. 

She plans to save the money she earns for when she comes back to SU. 

“Seeing how some schools haven’t even started classes and they just decided to go online, it’s kind of scaring me that I may not be able to go back for the spring semester,” Ly said. “That will push my plans to graduate a year early, it’ll just disintegrate them entirely.”

Noah Goldmann

Noah Goldmann decided to take a semester off from SU before the pandemic even began. 

Goldmann, a senior studying math and environment sustainability and policy, is spending this semester in Montana, working on a few different political campaigns with the Montana Democratic Party. 

“I knew that I wanted to work on an election this year,” Goldmann said. “I wanted to take the semester off since before COVID and then it sort of just worked out pretty well for me.” 

Goldmann spends most of his time at the party’s main office. Like other SU students who took a leave of absence this semester, he’ll have to push back his planned graduation date. He plans to return to SU in the spring and graduate next December, a semester later than he had originally planned. 

Curran Campbell

Curran Campbell’s leave of absence should only delay his graduation by a semester if he returns to campus in the spring. But he hasn’t decided whether he’s coming back.

Campbell, a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major, decided to take a semester off because of the cost of attendance at SU, which increased after the university raised tuition by 3.9% for the 2020-21 academic year. 

“I can’t justify paying the amount of money we pay to have an extremely limited in-person experience,” Campbell said. “The limitations of campus life made the cost of attendance not worth it to me at least for this fall.” 

Campbell, who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, is taking one online course through North Carolina State University and making money on the side by delivering food for Postmates. 

“I don’t make that much money doing it, but it’s enough to keep me going a little bit,” he said. 

Campbell plans to decide whether he’ll return to campus in the next month so he can register in time for spring courses. 

“I’m kind of just watching (the fall semester) like some sort of mad science experiment from afar right now,” Campbell said. “We’ll see what happens, and we’ll make a decision off of that.”

Assistant Digital Editor Austin Lamb contributed reporting to this article.

Published on September 15, 2020 at 12:04 am

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