Pack your bags and wash your hands: Inside the 12 hours to bring Auburn students home from Italy

 
Just before midnight on Feb. 29, Lacey Armstrong, executive director of the Joseph S. Bruno Auburn Abroad program in Italy, was awoken by a neighbor’s loud music pulsating through her apartment complex. However, the ringing of an email notification quickly turned her attention toward her phone. The email read: “Italy–Level 3: Reconsider Travel.”
 
“My irritation quickly shifted to concern, and I had a sinking feeling as I saw the email alert from the U.S. Embassy in Rome,” Armstrong said. “The first words of the email set everything else in motion. At that moment I knew we would have to cut short the semester abroad and send our students home due to Auburn University’s travel policies.”
 
The email was a turning point for Armstrong and her students. Just a week before, they had taken a field trip to Umbria, explored small, pedestrian-friendly cities like Orvieto and Assisi, visited organic wineries, artisan workshops and learned how to make handmade pasta. These travelers’ dreams would someday become treasured memories, but as they explored the foreign culture, whispers of a pandemic spread through Italy.
  
In the early weeks of the spring semester, Armstrong was quick to order hand sanitizer, implement hand washing breaks, make student-travel to Northern Italy off-limits, cancel field trips to Rome and rearrange the class schedule. She worked closely with Roberta Londi and Cinzia Bracalente, staff members of Interlinea, an Italian company that handles the logistical and practical aspects of the study abroad program, to organize a variety of activities for the students who agreed to stay in Ariccia over spring break.
 
Yet despite her careful planning, the time had come for students to return home.
 
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