As a prerequisite for allowing students to live on campus, Cornell University has mandated that all residents sign and adhere to a Behavioral Compact, which stipulates rules and regulations prohibiting certain conduct due to the Coronavirus pandemic. At first glance, it seems obvious that the University should adopt new rules to protect the community from the spread of COVID. However, almost two months into the school year, it has become clear that many of these rules have outlived their purpose, and are unfairly harsh and extreme in their effects on the student body, with the burden of these rules having disproportionately fallen on the freshman class.
Some of the rules in the Behavioral Compact are entirely fair and common-sense, especially with relation to mask-wearing. A university hosting tens of thousands of students obviously has a responsibility to take steps to curtail the chances of a possible outbreak, and so requiring students to wear masks is a logical regulation. Cornell’s laudable testing regime, under which all students are required to get tested for COVID twice a week with swift quarantining procedures for those who test positive, is also a very effective means for the University to halt the spread of the virus. Additionally, the University requires all students to submit a Daily Check, in which they report if they have been exposed to COVID-positive individuals or if they are feeling unwell. By any measure, these rules are minimally burdensome on the student body, and are in fact essential to ensuring that the University stays open and the students remain on-campus. As such, if these were the only components of the Behavioral Compact, they would be wholly reasonable given the unprecedented circumstances in which we live today.
However, the Behavioral Compact goes much further than masks and testing, and includes decrees that are borderline authoritarian, in practice if not in policy. The Compact mandates that students must “refrain from organizing, hosting, or attending events, parties, or other social gatherings on or off-campus,” and that if they are to socialize in person, they are only permitted to do so “in small groups of fewer than 30 people (or as otherwise set by the university or public health authorities)” and “to maintain 6 feet of physical distance.” While it may seem reasonable at first for the University to discourage students from gathering, the enforcement of these provisions is unreasonably severe, and has strangled opportunities for Cornell students, especially freshmen, to meet new people and socialize, without any evidence that such enforcement has had an impact on overall campus health.
As a freshman myself, I can go into depth about the excessive, inconsistent, and downright unjust enforcement of prohibitions on gathering, especially by Residential Advisors, or RAs. Firstly, there is no set limit in the Behavioral Compact as to how many students may gather in a dormitory room; the only stipulation is that they wear masks while socializing. However, this has not stopped the RAs from imposing arbitrary caps on the number of people that may be in a dorm room at once. Why is it that a double in one dorm building is allowed to have 4 people, whereas a double in another building may have 5? Is one building more susceptible to the proliferation of COVID than another? Obviously not, but that hasn’t stopped RAs in different buildings from enforcing different limits, with no obvious resulting benefit to campus health and safety. Secondly, the way in which these room limits are enforced is entirely totalitarian. RAs patrol dorm buildings, looking for any room with an increased noise level, lurking to find any gathering they can bust up. Even the slightest infraction, such as having just one person over the room “limit”, or even someone in the room momentarily removing their mask to take a sip of water, leads to the RAs writing up every student’s ID number and reporting all of those present to the Office of the Judicial Administrator, which is responsible for adjudicating student infractions. And what has become of this? The culture of fear imposed upon freshmen who wish to socialize has forced them to either give up any hopes of meeting new people, or find as discreet venues as possible to socialize without the potential for getting caught.
The University’s rule by fear, however, doesn’t end there. In what is perhaps the most disgusting and borderline fascist policy created by the University to govern its students with an iron fist, Cornell has launched an online hotline through which students can anonymously report other students who they observe violating the Behavioral Compact guidelines. Consequently, freshmen wishing to socialize and gather must not only worry about the presence of RAs, but also about other students who may report them to the Administration. Seem familiar? Of course; this program mirrors the tactics used by despotic regimes throughout the world to control their people. Remember Soviet Russia? The KGB would encourage individuals, even family members, to report each other to the authorities over talk of dissent. And just as the outcome in Soviet Russia was a breakdown of trust between individuals and a culture of paranoia, the University’s snitching program has created a toxic atmosphere among the student body, causing students to become less and less trusting of each other. Students wishing to socialize are forced to keep their cliques small and exclusive, which has led to increased divisions among students and an unwillingness to find new people to meet.
Unfortunately, the disastrous consequences of the Behavioral Compact restrictions are not limited to the negative impact on freshman social life. Cornell President Martha Pollack has made it clear that she will wield COVID restrictions as yet another weapon in her ongoing assault on Greek Life. Pollack’s actions over the last few years have clearly indicated that she is no fan of the Greek system on campus, but these COVID restrictions have only further emboldened her to pursue this war. Without the open fraternity and sorority events during Orientation Week, Greek Letter Organizations on campus were precluded from meeting freshmen, which will undoubtedly impact their ability to acquire strong pledge classes in the spring. Furthermore, the COVID rules have brought up the large possibility that spring rush will be virtual, and if the University decides to proceed with a virtual rush, fraternities and sororities will almost certainly be at a disadvantage when trying to select future members. It clearly seems, then, that President Pollack is more focused on eviscerating the Greek system than she is with the actual safety of her students.
The tyrannical rules that Cornell requires its students to obey make it clear that the University views us not as students, but as subjects. This is not about public safety and health anymore; for the Cornell Administration, it’s become a quest to crack down on the student body through a reign of terror. But for the sake of argument, let’s weigh these restrictions against the University’s compelling interest in maintaining public health. Are the restrictions justified when scrutinized on this basis? Judging from the circumstances, the answer is a clear and unequivocal “no.” Firstly, due to Cornell’s location in rural and remote Ithaca, NY, the threat of outsiders bringing COVID into the community is already much lower than in other locations, especially when coupled with the fact that all students were required to get tested and quarantine prior to entry in the fall. Secondly, Cornell has one of the lowest case rates of any university nationwide. According to the University’s Coronavirus Dashboard, the campus had only 2 positive test results between October 7 and October 13, translating to merely a 0.01% positivity rate, which is extremely impressive considering that the school tests every single student twice a week. Clearly, Cornell has done an excellent job keeping case rates low, which emphasizes the fact that we can begin loosening restrictions on gatherings without significantly impacting the safety of the overall community.
On a larger level, however, let’s take a second to remember what we were initially told about handling the Coronavirus. “Flatten the curve,” they said. “We just don’t want to overwhelm the medical system,” they said. The initial message was always that restrictions would not change the total number of cases that would occur, but would rather just spread them out over a longer period of time so that hospitals wouldn’t be overpowered by a tsunami of COVID patients. But we’ve long forgotten that message, because the “experts” have shifted the goalposts. Today, we’re told that we must wait until a cure or a vaccine comes out before everything returns to normal, with some even saying that normalcy is years away. How long must we live like this? How long must we avoid socializing with others due to fear of a virus with a 0.1% case fatality rate for adults between 18 and 29, who comprise the vast majority of this campus? We students, especially the freshmen, have been cheated out of a traditional college experience because Cornell University has decided to pursue a heavy-handed, extreme, and unjustified assault on our social lives in the name of COVID. Social distancing? A pong table is over 6 feet. So balls back, Cornell.
