Technically, it was a dining room. But between the scuffed walls and tacky, nicked floorboards, the space was better suited to serve as a makeshift gym than it was to accommodate a dinner party—and during Michael Hoecht’s last semester of college, it was the only option he had.
Every building on Brown University’s Providence campus had been shut down in March 2020 in response to rapidly growing concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Students who could go home haphazardly packed up their dorms or deserted their off-campus rentals. A Canadian transplant whose closest family was in Toronto 500 miles away, Hoecht (pronounced “Hoyt”) was one of the few who stuck around.