Elise Romero
January 18, 2021
Seriously, why did universities across the country decide that campuses filled with students ranging from 18 to 21 was a good idea amid COVID-19?
When the pandemic became a pressing concern to schools in March of 2020, students saw quick changes. At the university level, on-campus students were given the Irish goodbye; dorms closed, personal items were quickly packed, and students finished the year online at home. As the 2019-2020 school year ended, questions arose as to how the next year would operate. Students, staff, and parents were left to wonder what changes would be made to university life due to the virus. Several universities realized that they would have to begin allocating funds towards sanitization products, PPE, and other preventative measures to keep their students and staff safe from the virus.
But if safety were the top priority, why did campuses open at all? What does it say about the higher education system and its morals to open campuses big and small across the country during a global pandemic? As a student at the University of Pittsburgh, I had the choice to either learn remotely from my home for free or pay thousands to learn from a hotel or single dorm forty minutes from my house. When it came down to it, the choice was not hard to make.
However, as I received (and continue to receive) emails from Pitt’s COVID-19 Medical Response Office and read the shame-filled paragraphs laced with threats of suspension/expulsion, it became clearer that the choice to stay home was not as obvious for the multitude of students living on campus. I was initially upset with my peers; how could we as young adults fail so miserably? But when it came down to it, students should not have been allowed on campus to begin with. The only way colleges could have guaranteed prevention of the virus on campus would be if they had never reopened at all.
I recently wrote an analysis piece that looked at a small sample of colleges in western PA and compared their case numbers from the start of COVID to November and related them back to their COVID policies. In that article I focused on the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University, Point Park University, and Carnegie Mellon University. It was not surprising that the larger of those campuses, Pitt and Penn State, saw more infections.
Penn State has a population over twenty times the size of Point Park and seven times the size of CMU. Pitt is six times the size of Point Park and nearly double that of CMU. While the small schools had “manageable” numbers, large schools had no control. In an ideal world, campuses would have zero case numbers and students and staff could live and learn safely. However, allowing students on campus at all creates the risk for transmitting COVID, rendering the ideal outcome unattainable.
Some colleges, like Harvard University, announced they would close their campuses entirely. Harvard was among the first back in March of 2020 to close their campus and began online learning upon the end of spring break.[i] However, not all colleges had resources and wealth on the same scale as Harvard. The government offered the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act”, or “CARES Act,” which several colleges (Harvard included) took part in to receive the necessary funds for the school year. From visiting the Department of Education’s CARES website, one can navigate through what colleges within each state received funding, of the list, several universities and technical schools are included. Though it isn’t lost on me that schools who weren’t closing campus took part in this, Pitt included. The application gave a few viable ways for the funds to be used beyond COVID-related measures, such as acting as aid money for students, but having an open campus was not a requirement. Certain universities consciously chose to do so. Even so, without this external funding, colleges had little choice on where else they would receive money for the new year.
President Donald Trump was adamant on reopening the country, and his administration just “… stopped short of saying it [wanted] to withhold funding from colleges and universities that do not reopen for the fall term…” like it threatened for K-12 schools.[ii] Though it may be difficult to give universities the benefit of the doubt, re-opening campuses while knowing about the threat of the virus may have been due to the need for funding and the uncertainty caused by the Trump administration. While opening safely would cost as much as $74 billion, “Colleges would receive $132 billion in aid to cover both the cost of reopening and to help with the financial hardship.” In the end, higher education is a business, and without money, there would be no campus to return to, virus or not.
So, they reopened.
When faced with this decision, these universities clearly put a price on the lives of their students, staff, and faculty and ultimately decided the cost of PPE, preventative measures, and positive COVID tests were worth it.
As a Pitt student who stayed home for her first semester, it was frustrating to see open campuses having known the dangers of COVID, all while entrusting students to be morally responsible for each others’ lives and wellbeing. Students deserve autonomy, but in life-threatening situations like that of living during a pandemic, taking away the choice to be on campus is the only way to completely ensure students don’t misbehave. The situation continues as Pitt prepares for the next semester, vague emails littering the inboxes of students stating they will be told two weeks prior when move-in dates are— yet classes start in mere days and no date or plan has been solidified, leaving students and families in the dark. Students are left feeling hopeful that they will return, at the very least to pack their dorm rooms and claim items, as the university teases an eventual return on a thin and fraying thread. The prioritization of the dollar over safety is not only infuriating, but also feels infantilizing when the university sends emails from the Dean telling students they need to make better choices;[1] this being the same Dean who okayed a return to a campus that was already struggling to combat COVID without hordes of students. There is a certain irony in colleges across America wagging their finger at students’ actions when they were the ones who practically held open the door.
Colleges also knew that there was a want for normalcy; after months of quarantine, people wanted a return to freedom and routine— and they were able to capitalize on this. Luckily for the institutions, the attitude surrounding college both as a necessity for success and for personal growth kept most students from leaving.
For almost every young person’s entire life, they are told that without a college education they will get nowhere; and this is true due to the glorification of a 4-year degree. A person who can spend years’ worth of savings on a college education proves they have some semblance of financial stability and the capability to learn and adapt, which is objectively desirable to employers. From the perspective of investors and higherups, this glorification works in their favor. Gatekeeping knowledge and the process of education puts more money in their pocket, and thanks to this rhetoric, students see college as something that is not worth compromising, even during a pandemic.
To reinforce the notion that college is the time when young people grow and experience life’s freedoms, a rebranding of what “the college experience” is during a pandemic became essential. Pitt told its students that roommates are essential to “the college experience,” which was why they added hotels as dorms where students could keep a roommate. For students living alone, they were given pods to maintain “the college experience” of having a community on your floor. Colleges needed only to rebrand and market to their students that what they could have had sans pandemic would still be available, and they did so at the expense of not only the students, but the community. Allegheny county holds the most cases in PA second only to Philadelphia, with a dramatic spike in cases in early September, a time when college move-ins were taking place.[iii]
The shifting of blame between students and higherups makes responsibility a watered down, forgotten concept. There can be back and forth forever on who’s truly to blame; students shouldn’t be given some sort of pass for partying, because they should know better too. My point is that the staff who chose to bring Pitt students back on campus did so knowing that we have an open campus. Pitt is not an isolated community; Oakland is not somehow separated from the rest of the city and not every student lives within that area. The actions of Pitt students partying in South Oakland are going to hurt the community of South Oakland. Both students and staff are to blame for their impact on the community surrounding Pitt, and had staff acted preemptively and kept students off campus, the areas near Pitt may have been better off in terms of case numbers and hospital space, and more students could have remained safe. More than anything, students deserve education without fear for their or their family’s health. It seems very simple, but colleges continue to contradict themselves—if they don’t want their students crossing state lines in large masses for the holidays, maybe they shouldn’t close the dorms, and if they don’t want COVID on campus, maybe they shouldn’t open campus. Of course, universities need money to operate, but to open campuses and put thousands of people at risk, affecting not only the realm of students and staff but their families and the surrounding communities as well, is nothing but a selfish, capitalistic nightmare come to life.
[1] This isn’t to excuse students who don’t take the virus seriously; they very well could be partying in their hometowns if campus was closed and they should be taking the virus more seriously. Partying shouldn’t be on their radar at all.
[i] Hess, Abigail. 2020. “How Coronavirus Dramatically Changed College for over 14 Million Students.” CNBC. CNBC. March 26, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/how-coronavirus-changed-college-for-over-14-million-students.html.
[ii] “Uncertainty over Aid for Higher Education in Possible next Coronavirus Relief Bill.” 2020. Insidehighered.com. 2020. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/16/uncertainty-over-aid-higher-education-possible-next-coronavirus-relief-bill.
[iii] “Pennsylvania COVID-19 Numbers.” 2019. Department of Health. 2019. https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Cases.aspx.
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