While an end to the government shutdown is drawing closer, 21 students with internships at NIH or NIST are still shut out of work until the government re-opens.

Since Oct. 1, students have been unable to work at their internships, which count for class credit. Instead, students are excused and go home after their last class.

“It’s brought a lot of frustration,” science internship coordinator Melanie Hudock said. “They signed up to work in science labs as science interns and they can’t.”

The shutdown has disrupted students’ research, much of which concerns cancer cells. Some students’ experiments have been completely shut down because their supervisors have been furloughed.

“Our cells are going to die which is going to set us back, and now we have to go through the process all over again,” junior Nick Lorence said. “I was just starting to get to a point where I felt comfortable with procedures and tasks in the lab.”

The halt on disease research touched a nerve with students. They feel that the government doesn’t consider cancer research important, Hudock said.

The experiments halted by the shutdown are often time sensitive, and their goals aren’t partisan but for the good of the whole country, senior Adam Lowet said.

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would end the shutdown at NIH, but the Senate refused to pass a bill that didn’t fully solve the budget crisis.

“The shutdown means that children, often with very unique, otherwise incurable cancers are being turned away from some of the most revolutionary treatments in the country,” said junior Katie Mackall, another intern at NIH.

Instead, students have received reading to keep up with what they should have been doing, Hudock said.

“The head of my lab has continued to send me articles and updates,” Mackall said.

This research contributes greatly to her knowledge base, but doesn’t compare to the intellectual stimulation of working in the lab itself, Mackall said.

Lowet is using the time freed up by the shutdown to focus on his other activities, he said.

The shutdown is also making Hudock’s job harder. Hudock personally conducts time consuming visits to each intern’s lab. These visits were supposed to start last week but will likely not be done by December because of the delay caused by the shutdown, she said.

Additionally, Hudock is worried that interns wouldn’t have made enough progress on their projects to participate in Science Montgomery, a science fair in March, she said.

But there is a positive side to the shutdown, at least for some students.

“It’s nice since I can go home at 12:30, take a long nap, and wake up when I normally would be getting back from school,” Lorence said.