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When I was in college, my friends and I made many extremely bad decisions. If there had been a pandemic when I was in college, we would have probably wiped out an entire community.
I suspect my college experience is not an anomaly. Someone could make the argument we would have made different, better decisions if there were a pandemic going on. But I doubt that's true. It isn't like we didn't understand our decisions were bad at the time... We knew.
I say this because College/University leaders are now blaming the bad decisions of students for having to quickly shut down their campuses. My experiences as a student and now a faculty member suggest 2 things:
1) they're right, that the poor decisions of college students will cause outbreaks during a pandemic. But also 2) this should not be a surprise to anyone who is or was a college student. So 'blaming' the students only gets you so far.
There have been multiple house parties of college aged students in my neighborhood over the last 2 weeks. I am frustrated at their bad decisions, AND I also suspect I'd be at the party if I were in college.
So when college administrators blame college students for acting exactly like college students, I get where they are coming from.
But I also think that defense does not remove even a tiny bit of responsibility from the administrators who made the decision to bring students back.
But I also think that defense does not remove even a tiny bit of responsibility from the administrators who made the decision to bring students back.
