As of April 2020, we can all recognize that Michigan is in a state of turmoil. The protest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home decision in East Lansing, Mich. demonstrated the political unrest of some Michigan citizens. COVID-19 has left our campus a ghost town. The fulfilling sense of community we once enjoyed dissipated beginning in mid-March.

The muezzin’s call rang out over the masjid speakers, reciting the Islamic kalima, or statement of faith, and my mother grabbed my hand as we separated from my father and brother to answer the call to prayer. It was one of the occasional times my family went to our mosque in Miami, but at age eight, I was already aware that we were walking to the women’s section behind the men’s, separated by a row of dividers across the middle of a large prayer room. The unpatterned wall of beige dividers towered over me when I was a child, but as time went on, they never really felt smaller.

This Letter to the Editor is written in response to a news article written by Angelina Brede titled “Students, faculty question spring, summer tuition costs, quality of remote learning.”

With the current COVID-19 public health crisis, it’s become particularly clear that the pandemic reaches beyond being just a highly contagious, viral disease or issue of community spread. The coronavirus pandemic effectively stratified the population into its different social identities and personalities based on the impact on specific communities. While the United States may be a melting pot, the virus has made evident these pre-existing divisions within a community.