Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
When I thought about what life would be like during my senior year of college, I was hopeful that we’d be able to manage the pandemic after living with it for nearly two years. With the breakthrough of vaccines and their availability nationwide, I was hopeful that our campus community could return to some semblance of normalcy this year. I now wonder if this was all a beautiful lie. Instead of coherence, I have been inundated with contradiction, a failure to establish ourselves on common facts, and what I see as a confused interpretation of where we as a community want to be heading in regards to our policies surrounding this pandemic.
This is a controversial topic. I have had conversations with people who would agree with the points of view that I will discuss below, and I have had ones where these views have been interpreted as selfish and inconsiderate to those in our community. We have to be honest about our situation and reconcile the choices students make while living their lives, given the requisite medical decisions, with repercussions that seem to contradict the living reality of this virus. It is entirely up to the college to thread that needle and reorient the school onto a better path forward.
Here are our numbers in plain. According to Dean Arcelus, “our student vaccination rate is roughly 99% and our faculty staff vaccination rate is roughly 95%.” The college’s original plan had essentially been to return campus operations to what we had once considered normal. The plan did not require social distancing. Masks did not need to be worn when outdoors. Each student would have three Covid-19 tests throughout the semester should they find the need for one. This plan was changed on Aug. 23, before students began to arrive on campus. In my opinion, this was a decision based on fear. I believe that this was the rational choice given the volatility of the Delta variant and its tendency to infect those who are fully vaccinated. However, the guidelines that the college has produced in response to this fear come with a severe disconnect from what students have been used to since leaving campus. I do not think students are necessarily afraid of contracting Covid-19 given that they have a vaccine to protect against the serious illness it could bring. The vaccine has essentially done what a vaccine is supposed to do; protect against severe illness that a virus may impart on them.
I do not think the goal was ever to prevent infection. I do not know if it should be the goal. I do not think that is a sustainable approach in the long term. The problem that I have with school policy regarding positive Covid tests is that these policies are guided by bad incentives for not following the rules. Students are afraid of testing positive because of the policy repercussions that come with it. I would hazard a guess that most students are not concerned about the efficacy of this vaccine in preventing serious illness, and do not see the reason for testing twice a week for a virus that they are largely protected against.
What is the College’s plan for this virus going forward? We have to face a reality where this virus is with us for the long term. We have to prepare ourselves for the inevitable, that students may contract Covid-19 and in turn, may spread it to others in our community who are also protected against the severe illness that it may cause. The perspectives are nuanced. The counter to the thoughts above might state that we are taking the necessary steps to protect our professors and their families and that it is in fact selfish to not follow the college policy. It is selfish to a degree to skirt certain policies that may impact your professors and their families. This was entirely the case last year when most students were not vaccinated and posed a genuine risk to those around them had they been infected. However, to put it bluntly, some people do not care now that they are vaccinated. People are weighing the risks of pursuing their own self-interest against the risks of possibly infecting their professors. Given the layers of protection that are in place in that scenario, such as masks and vaccines the risk seems rather low, so what is the rationale for the other modes of protection?
If the reaction of the college intends to suspend campus operations every time there is an outbreak among vaccinated individuals, the college will fail at conjuring its intended results. Students will continue to test positive and campus operations will continue to be restricted to a point where students will fail to see the rationale for doing so. After a summer of relatively normal life, students were inevitably going to resist restriction. The college must reconcile the freedoms one rationally has from being vaccinated with Conn’s policies and bad incentives set in place that limit their capacity to engage with their lives.
We have to find a practical and sustainable middle ground. Yes, vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness, but there is still a risk of contracting the virus and spreading it to other vaccinated individuals, specifically your professors and then subsequently their unvaccinated children. This is not exactly a fair playing field. Until children can receive a vaccine, it is on us to make smarter and more conservative decisions in terms of what we pursue in our social lives. Perhaps partying at packed bars and dining indoors at crowded restaurants is not the brightest decision given the nature of our situation.
These are all things students have to compromise on for the time being, but it is also necessary for the school to meet students halfway. The primary goal of the school is the continuation of our in-person education. Realistically this cannot completely deprive students of what I see as necessary cultural experiences. The mental toll that constant lockdowns and uncertainty have on students cannot be ignored. Students and professors are frustrated with the lack of engagement on campus and are struggling to see what good the year is going to bring. The college must find a way to not only de-incentivize students from making decisions that could impact our community as a whole again, but also incentivize students to pursue proportional alternatives on campus that are objectively safer.
If you are going to tell students to not go to bars in New London, incentivize them to not travel to them by opening Humphreys, the bar on campus. If you are going to tell people to not eat or drink indoors at restaurants and cafes in Mystic, incentivize them to stay on campus by fully reopening the coffee shops that are on campus run by students in the testing program. By communicating the intentions of doing these things openly and honestly with the student body, the college can bring back some sense of hope and anticipation for what we could have as a campus community if we are willing to meet each other in the middle.
