COVID-19 has wreaked havoc across the United States, forcing closures everywhere it touches, from supermarkets to college campuses. However, unlike many other universities, Cornell is still dedicated to keeping its campus open. Though this decision has resulted in lots of turmoil—ranging from COVID clusters to TikTok drama—the number of cases has not risen enough to force the university’s closure. The campus thus remains open, and despite all the problems and difficulties, Cornell has every intention to keep it so.
Problems With Reopening
When Cornell announced its intention to reopen the campus, the decision was met with a lot of local pushback, with many Ithacans wondering how the university was going to keep the local community safe. While local protestors warned of the possible grave consequences of reopening, Cornell responded to grievances with assurances, and claimed that a virtual semester would counterintuitively worsen the pandemic in Ithaca. According to the Ithaca Journal, Cornell indicated that “more people would be infected in a no-reopen scenario because many students would return to Ithaca regardless, and the lack of in-person courses would prevent the university from establishing serious testing protocols for its community.”
Currently, the apocalyptic predictions from the protestors have not turned out to be correct. While young people play a large role in the COVID infection data (10-29 year-olds made up 61 percent of the 378 positive cases in Tompkins County), Cornell students do not seem to be importing new cases to Ithaca and most of the cases are not related to travel from more infected areas. Additionally, as seen on Cornell’s COVID Dashboard, the university’s alert level is green (as of September 26), meaning that infection rates are ”rare and transmission is controlled.” However, it would be disingenuous to claim that the school’s reopening went entirely according to plan.
One of the biggest problems before and during the first weeks of the semester was the presence of student gatherings that did not respect the campus’ safety protocols. At least one of these gatherings was responsible for a COVID cluster consisting of 39 infected students, mostly student athletes, forcing Cornell to limit the maximum number of students at gatherings to just 10 people. Another campus party gained particular notoriety after Cornell’s resident TikTok star, Jessica Zhang (who has over half a million followers), was caught partying unmasked with a dozen other students, resulting in widespread backlash and a petition signed by 2,000 people calling for her expulsion. While these events do paint a negative image of the carelessness of some Cornell students, most people are committed to following safety protocols. Nonetheless, the question still remains whether Cornell’s COVID prevention methods are adequate, and whether they really do keep the campus and Ithaca safe.
Campus Vigilance
Keeping the Cornell campus safe and open during the midst of a global pandemic is an arduous task, but it seems that Cornell is rising to the challenge, at least for now. Testing is a huge part of Cornell’s anti-COVID strategy, and the university has been nothing if not rigorous in its tracking and testing. As described by Good Morning America, over 50,000 tests are self-administered by Cornell students each week, with a mandatory minimum of bi-weekly testing for everyone on campus. Additionally, all Cornell students and faculty are required to log in to the university’s daily check mechanism, which monitors all campus personnel for signs of symptoms. Cornell has also barred students from traveling outside the greater Ithaca area, and outside visitors are reciprocally not allowed inside campus facilities.
While the university is working hard to reduce the risk of infection, a lot of the burden has fallen on the students of Cornell to follow behavior and safety guidelines, from wearing masks and remaining distanced to not attending parties similar to those that marked the start of the semester. Student parties are now also looked down upon by many of the students. Reporting and snitching on safety guidelines violations have been taken to a whole new extreme, as evidenced by the widespread backlash that Jessica Zhang encountered. For the most part, the Cornell community wants the world to know that the actions of a few inconsiderate and reckless people are not representative of the rest of the campus, and that the university is and will remain vigilant against the pandemic.