By the end of Aug. 19, over 172,000 people had died from COVID-19 in the United States. Despite knowing this, hundreds of freshmen, some without masks, descended upon one of the most sought-after party spots on campus: Syracuse University’s Quad.

By doing so, this ignorant group of students rendered the deaths of fellow Americans illegitimate. As Vice Chancellor Michael Haynie described, they “selfishly jeopardized the… chance at a residential college experience,” and potentially ruined countless students’ sacrifices for an in-person semester.

As a result, the university should be asking: how did all of this happen?

To put blame on SU would disregard this unavoidable fact: students have had five months of quarantining to learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior during a pandemic. Marching down the Mount steps like there’s not a problem in the world shows exactly where these students’ values are.

For months, experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that gatherings like the one on the Quad create the highest risk of spreading COVID-19. Some students on the Quad did not wear masks, and all did not distance themselves from one another. These are two precautionary staples to prevent the spread of COVID-19. If one student had COVID-19, the virus’s spread could be exponential, causing a halt to on-campus activities entirely.

Negative COVID-19 tests from the students who attended the party on the Quad do not warrant a complete disregard for the rules SU put in place. Last night, hundreds of students broke simple rules that thousands of others have followed. Their actions were completely unfair. Breaking the rules puts the whole semester in the hands of a virus that spreads easily.

As Haynie said, the actions of a few freshmen may have “done enough damage to shut down campus.” An online semester is not the SU experience the majority of students paid for, but this scenario may be likely if COVID-19 spreads from this gathering.

As students, we are often pushed around by outsiders who say that “college life is not the real world.” Given the semester will take place in the midst of a global pandemic, that statement is nothing more than fallacy: what students do at SU now has real-world implications tomorrow.

This semester, we have the opportunity of in-person classes that many students across the nation do not have. Success depends on the collective responsibility of every student. But it will not last if people take their first time away from their parents as a rite of passage.

To all the freshmen who attended the party on the Quad:

I hope you are as scared to face the consequences of your actions as millions of Americans are afraid of catching and dying from COVID-19.

Published on August 20, 2020 at 3:20 pm