Schools Reopening

 I've been holding off on this, but I have several feelings about what is clearly going on here.

As someone in academia, specifically a graduate student, I've seen the response of schools to COVID since the beginning. I'll be honest, I didn't take the disease seriously until maybe the beginning of the summer or so. But I got on board, and honestly the response of schools who had MONTHS to come up with a fall reopening plan is atrocious.

Schools are saying that there is no way to regulate students and are putting the burden on them to self-regulate, and to regulate each other. The institution that I'm at is about to stick a ton of students in a dorm without regular testing and is telling them to be careful with their social lives. Ok literally the school tweeted saying that 25 person parties are fine but 26 is too many. Which really is only going to fan the flames of the frats that are already partying. All of the responsibility is going on the students while the administration takes up none of it.

Public health measures are being actively ignored. The way you monitor large populations like this is with universal testing. As far as I can tell, very few schools are actually doing this. Whether or not it is safe to carry on without this has yet to really be studied. But hey, let's do it anyways. And while we're at it, let's stick students into crowded dorms. The number one factor for an outbreak is the density of the population. Dorms are going to be a hotbed of virus activity.

And I think it's important to note that this is going to disproportionately affect some students more than others. We already know that COVID disproportionately affects minority communities, which is just going to carry over to the students. Additionally there will be low-income students or students with unstable housing that have nowhere else to go should the school close. Which will inevitably happen, it's just a matter of time. Not to mention the fact that professors and graduate student instructors are bearing the brunt of this by being required to teach in person in some places. Seriously, everyone is protesting the plan because they don't feel safe here, and no one is listening. We're throwing those that we should be protecting directly under the bus.

All of this for what? Money clearly. The school doesn't want students to transfer and wants that sweet sweet room and board moolah. This is why we are reopening, this is why minimal resources are being put into keeping people safe. And the worst thing is that those who could pressure the school, namely those students paying room and board, have the least incentive to do so. They just want to go back to school because they miss their friends. Which is entirely understandable. But if more of them decided to put the safety of everyone ahead of their own social lives, we could maybe get some improvements around here. Unlikely to happen, seeing as how this would have happened already if it could, but I can dream.

I feel really let down here. I would transfer if I was not stuck. I would do anything else if I could. But I'm a grad student and while I'm supporting those protesting as much as I can, there isn't much more that I can do. This is going to be a rough fall and I really hope that schools shut down ASAP.