Campus reopenings are already off to a shaky start in Boston.
Northeastern University suspended 11 freshmen who were staying in the Westin Hotel for violating NEU’s policies on social gatherings and visitors. The students are a part of the N.U.in program, and their tuition of $36,500 for the semester is not refundable, in accordance with program guidelines.
NEU policies state students may also face a $500 fine from the state of Massachusetts for prohibited gatherings, and will not be refunded for housing if they are kicked off campus.
Gatherings such as these, as well as ones that are even larger, undoubtedly have and will continue to play a role in campuses closing down. But who should really absorb the responsibility of reopening failures — students or school administration?
Boston University and NEU have both implemented hybrid learning models for the Fall semester, meaning students were given the full choice to stay home, away from campus. Those who consciously decided to return thus take on the responsibility to behave properly and understand what they’ve agreed to.
Both institutions have guidelines in place that students are aware they must follow. Any groups who think themselves an exception are not only violating simple rules essential for public safety, but exhibiting blatant moral disregard of others’ health.
COVID-19 has killed young and old. It has driven nurses to suicide. It has shut down the very businesses colleges students frequent most. And when students’ own reckless behavior contributes to the reclosing of more campuses across the nation, some of their peers will be left without a home to return to.
Suspensions such as those the 11 NEU freshmen are now experiencing will impose a great cost to those students. They will fall behind on credits, lose an entire semester of valuable time and likely have to catch up during summers or graduate later than intended. At such an early point in their college careers — the first week — their professional resumes will already have a stain.
It may seem harsh to be dismissed from campus and suspended for the semester, but students who decide they aren’t subject to community and state health protocols — which were created for everyone’s protection — must be proven wrong.
NEU had already made it clear what the punishments for such actions would be, and if those students chose to follow through regardless, then they chose to risk accepting those consequences if caught.
If these 11 students were to stay on campus, they would be endangering not only the NEU community, but the city of Boston as well. The severity of their punishment sends a strong message to students that the administration is in fact going to take action against unsafe gatherings, which will hopefully deter others from engaging in similar activity. These students have demonstrated that anyone can get caught at any time.
However, the blame here cannot and should not be placed entirely on the backs of students.
Both BU and NEU opened up their campuses to college students and actively encouraged them to return. Large or un-distanced social gatherings and parties are inevitable, and administrators absolutely should have expected that.
While many students on campus are indeed setting model examples, there are bound to be those who simply don’t care enough. Freshmen gaining the freedom of college for the first time are starved of the experience they’d seen in movies and have waited years for. Of course many will be tempted to fraternize, even if it means throwing precautions out the window.
BU’s strict guidelines in regard to partying and socializing came only after rumors of large student gatherings had already begun circulating. Before that, administrators gave the impression that they hoped blind faith in student-to-student accountability would be enough: as President Robert Brown said in a June interview, the school didn’t want to “police” students into behaving properly.
Punitive measures should have been implemented from the beginning, meaning discussions should not take until nearly the start of the semester to produce results. Rolling out a definitive enforcement procedure after students already began moving in gives the appearance that the University was prompted by the potential threat of unsafe gatherings.
When BU is made aware of the fact that students are still out there doing the Allston crawl, it needs also to recognize that it has not provided alternative avenues for social interaction that take place outside of a computer screen. Instead of trying to suppress this need, the University should have embraced an opportunity for innovation in helping students meet it:
Set up outdoor spaces on campus to be prepared for safe social gatherings — physically distanced seating options, picnic tables with plexiglass barriers — so that students can enjoy those in-person hangouts without naturally forming close huddles.
Both college administrators and students must accept responsibility for a dual effort in keeping their community safe. Institutions would be wrong to point fingers at students as scapegoats, yet students must also not pretend to be free of accountability — college kids may not yet have fully developed brains, but we are not unaware of the gravity of this pandemic.
UPDATE: BU discussed enforcement measures during its planning earlier this summer, according to a University spokesperson. This editorial was published under the belief that it did not. We have updated the editorial to reflect this, and to state punitive measures should have been “implemented,” not “discussed,” from the beginning.
