Between May 12 to May 14, many “Men of Carmel” returned to clean out their lockers for the end of the school year 2019-2020.

Due to COVID-19, Mount Carmel closed its doors on March 16, 2020 and remained closed with e-learning in place through the end of the year to keep students safe, as mandated by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Now that the school year is at its end, Mount Carmel needed to execute a safe plan to allow students to enter the school and retrieve or return items.

The plan allowed for six students at a time to get their belongings from school lockers and athletic lockers, as well as other areas where they had left school equipment. In order to have an easy system, the students were assigned to return in alphabetical order, in 20-minute increments which began at 8:00 am and ended at 3:00 pm each day.

Students felt various emotions when they came back to Mount Carmel.

Junior Ethan Anderson commented that ”it was very fast.”  He also observed that the past two months have been “an unfortunate time for me, my friends and family.  The whole pandemic made me try things I have never done before.”

After all students retrieved their things, they quickly left campus for last time this school year.