Diary Of The Plague Year – All Otsego

Advertisement. Advertise with us

SUNY Oneonta Students Share Fears, Hopes

Diary Of The Plague Year

Edited By MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

Last March, SUNY Oneonta sent students home. Amidst massive disruption, Adjunct History Professor Ann Trainor was struck by the historic nature of the event. She encouraged her students and others to record diaries of their experiences.

Reading through these diary entries a year later feels like time travel, the experiences familiar while the perspectives seem naïve.

“I really thought we were going to come back to Oneonta at the end of March and this hysteria would be over,” student Maggie McCann wrote in mid-April. In July, looking back at her earlier entries, she commented that it “felt like it was written in a different decade, so much has happened since.”

Trainor collaborated with historians, librarians and others to create a blog-style website, “The Semester of Living Dangerously,” for the housebound campus. In the summer, with more than 100 diary entries, essays, poems and other writing shared, the organizers extended the project.

The blog continues to grow, and will be edited into an academic book to be published by SUNY Press in 2022. Below are a few excerpts from hundreds on the website.






You have reached your limit of 3 free articles

To Continue Reading

 

Our hard-copy and online publications cover the news of Otsego County by putting the community back into the newspaper. We are funded entirely by advertising and subscriptions. With your support, we continue to offer local, independent reporting that is not influenced by commercial or political ties.

Posted

Related Articles

Killer Ricky Knapp Dies In Prison

Killer Knapp Dies In Prison; Guilty In SUNY Coed's Death Ricky Knapp ONEONTA – Ricky Knapp, the man convicted of the 1977 death of SUNY Oneonta student, has died in Mohawk Correctional Facility, according to prison records. Knapp, 66, died March 8, having served 40 years of a 25-to-life sentence for a 1978 manslaughter conviction in the death of 18-year-old Linda Velzy, a SUNY student from Long Island. According to reports, Velzy was last seen Dec. 9 1977, hitchhiking in downtown Oneonta. You have reached your limit of 3 free articles To Continue Reading SubscribeLogin   Our hard-copy and online…

Editorial: Get Your Holiday On

Are the kids clamoring for a visit with Santa? On Friday, December 13, the jolly old elf can be found in Cooperstown from 3-5 p.m. at his cottage in Pioneer Park. From 5-7 p.m., he can be found in Oneonta’s Muller Plaza. And in between—like so much Christmas magic—Santa will make an appearance on Main Street Unadilla, for the Santa parade at 6 p.m. (tree lighting at 5).…