On Wednesday, Cornellians gathered for the first Slope Day in three years. For most students, it was a first time Slope Day experience. For senior transfer students, it was their only Slope Day experience. Watching students elbow through tight-knit throngs for a better look at Amine, Loud Luxury, Luna Li and After Six, it was easy to reflect on how much the pandemic has cost students, and how far we have come.
The return of the Cornell-sponsored, year-end celebration epitomizes the exact sort of behavior that Cornell has discouraged, disapproved of, and forbidden for the past two years. Students gathered in extremely close quarters, singing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Participants were almost universally maskless, and few seemed to have any qualms about shoving into people to get closer to the stage. At times the crowding was so bad that the performers had to ask students to step back in order to avoid crushing one another. All this occurred despite what the CDC describes as a “high” rate of community COVID-19 transmission in Tompkins County.
The event symbolized the recognition among students and, belatedly, the Cornell Administration, that COVID-19 is simply not a threat to students. It also offers a window into just how senselessly draconian the COVID restrictions have been and continue to be. Consider the Fall 2020 semester. In circumstances that seem bizarre in hindsight, students had to reserve seats in dining halls, attend most classes on Zoom, submit to biweekly testing, and wear masks whenever not in their rooms. Social gatherings of any size were discouraged, and student gatherings with more than ten people were punishable. Until October 2020, clubs were not permitted to meet in person, even outdoors, and Cornell harshly enforced its outdoor mandate. On numerous occasions on campus, I witnessed COVID monitors absurdly yelling at solo joggers to pull their masks up.
The worst part is that the science was already known. It should have been old news that outdoor transmission was extremely unlikely. As a July 2020 New York Times article pointed out, “in one study of more than 7,300 cases in China, just one was connected to outdoor transmission.” Ditto for the reduced risk COVID-19 to young Americans, which reputable news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times were reporting on as early as April 2020. All this was known even as Cornell decided to return to the campus in the Fall of 2020. Nonetheless, heavy-handed restrictions on Cornell’s overwhelmingly young population lasted throughout the duration of the 2020-2021 school year, with only minimal adjustments. Restrictions continued in the subsequent Fall 2021 semester, some quite onerous, despite Cornell’s lack of even one serious infection requiring hospitalization and a population over 90% vaccinated at mid-semester.
The raucous crowding permitted on Slope Day belies any claims that the administration still seriously fears a COVID-19 breakout. Yet, quite ironically, masks continue to be required in classrooms. By the administration’s own admission, classrooms are the place with the least known transmission risk and classrooms are the place where masking provides the greatest potential detriment to student learning. The fact that Cornell sponsored an event where students amassed–unmasked, in the thousands–to dance and party where just the day before they had been masking in classrooms is comically absurd, and speaks volumes to the misplacement of Cornell’s priorities.
