Wilson Criticizes Nassau Hall’s Coronavirus Restrictions. (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
The 2,887 Princeton students who returned to campus this semester—including hundreds of freshmen such as myself, who have still yet to experience normal campus life—have faced a harsh new reality as they attempt to navigate the oft-draconian intricacies of the University’s pandemic-related restrictions, many of its seemingly absurd regulations, and the stringency and severity of the Social Contract.
Credit where credit is due. The University’s rigorous testing, contract tracing, and isolation regimen has been robust and effective, to say the least. Thanks to its frequent testing of students, faculty, and staff, the University has been able to rapidly identify and isolate individuals infected with COVID-19, and has consequently driven community spread of the virus to a point of almost nonexistence. As of the writing of this article, the positivity rate among the almost 12,000 COVID-19 tests submitted twice-weekly by Princeton affiliates was a mere 0.12%—far below the Center for Disease Control’s “lowest risk” indicator for the in-person reopening of K-12 schools, 3%, and a statistic which numerous infectious disease experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor, have declared safe for students to return to classrooms.
The science is clear: based on the data we have, the University should dramatically expand access to in-person classes, lectures, and precepts, as well as student access to key University facilities that have inexplicably remained closed. Additionally, the University should be taking a less restrictive approach to student gatherings, social events, and in-person interaction—after all, individuals not infected with COVID-19 can’t transmit it to each other, and the University’s universal mask mandate decimates transmission rates anyway.
Unfortunately, as any student residing on campus knows, this scientific and fact-based approach to the pandemic is not the path the University has chosen to take. Just two percent of Princeton’s more than 1,100 undergraduate courses are offering any in-person components at all, and the vast majority of students’ academic experiences this semester are taking place entirely online. All in-person gatherings by student organizations, including publications and religious groups, are banned.
Students are forbidden from getting within six feet of one another at all times, even while masked, and groups of more than five individuals are barred from gathering indoors—even if everyone is masked and socially-distanced. Off-campus visitors to dorms are completely prohibited, and on-campus visitors are capped at just two people. Student organization offices, dormitory common rooms, eating clubs, Murray-Dodge Hall, and the University Chapel—facilities essential to student life—have all remained closed.
Student press outlets have seen the extent of their coverage curtailed and have been prevented from producing print publications—censorship in all but name—and students of faith have had to watch in disbelief as the University shamelessly encourages non-socially-distanced sexual activity, instructing Peer Health Advisors to offer contraception and sex toys to students, while simultaneously claiming that social distancing guidelines render it too dangerous to allow prayer, worship, and Mass in the Chapel. To me, this dichotomy accurately encapsulates Princeton’s response to COVID-19 thus far: hypocritical, absurd, and logic-free.
Even Governor Phil Murphy, who previously imposed some of the strictest pandemic-related orders and restrictions in the country on New Jersey, recently decreed that it’s safe for churches and other houses of worship to reopen at 50% capacity; unfortunately, with respect to the pandemic, the University seems to be living in its own imaginative and illogical world.
At the same time, the University has been cracking down on students accused of violating the Social Contract, or one of the many additional restrictions it has imposed. According to the Daily Princetonian, thus far, fifty-five students have faced disciplinary action for a litany of reasons and have been subjected to punishments ranging from long-term disciplinary probation—which appears “on a student’s permanent record”—to being kicked off campus and left to fend for themselves with regard to housing. At one point, the University was even considering “additional restrictions” in the event of “spikes” in positive COVID-19 tests—what more they could have restricted, I don’t know.
Facts matter. The University must follow the science and immediately expand in-person access to academic instruction, campus activities, and student facilities. Princetonians deserve—and should demand—better treatment than being continuously subjected to illogical restrictions, rampant hypocrisy, draconian rule enforcement, and the indefinite cancellation of so many critical aspects of campus life.
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