The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said young adults might be driving the increase in U.S. COVID-19 cases. The response of anyone who’s been watching the University of Arizona infection numbers might rightly be, “Ya think?” Predictably, complaints about “those darn kids” abound.
But I don’t blame the students. Instead, fault lies with UA leaders, who seem loathe to use the words “required” and “demand” in favor of “suggested” and “voluntary.”
It’s as if they have never observed Homo sapiens collegium in the wild. Because if they had, they’d know that one of the discoveries of these 18- to 22-year-olds is that, when surrounded by other species’ members in The Land of Constant Temptation, they have nearly zero impulse control. I’m pretty sure a secondary discovery is that Homo sapiens collegium translates the words “suggested” and “voluntary” as “not important.”
I spent a decade working at UA, loving every minute of it. Being around college students gives you hope, keeps you young and most days, is just plain fun.
But it took me about three minutes into my first job there to realize that someone doesn’t go from being a “teen” in the senior year of high school to a “young adult” in their freshman year in college. Indeed, most don’t make that transition until well into their fourth year.
That’s what makes college such a great thing; it is a relatively safe space for nearly-adults to grow up. They are surrounded by people who want what is best for them, and because we aren’t Mom and Dad, the students often seek out our advice.
Will they always follow that advice? Heck, no.
But they are far more likely to follow it when specific consequences are delineated for not doing so, instead of wishy-washy statements.
For instance: “Masks are required everywhere and if you don’t wear one, you’ll move to remote learning, no exceptions” versus “We highly encourage social distancing and trust you will cooperate!”
UA’s approach is similar to parenting methods that assume children yearn to make the right choice — as opposed to explore what happens when you touch a hot stove. This method says let the children be, and when they get into a kerfuffle, try to reason with them. If reasoning doesn’t work, then you bring out the consequences.
Compare that to Tiger Mom who focuses on predicting her tiny enemy’s behavior and preventing the worst of it.
Normally I’m not a big fan of Tiger Mom, but 2020 is anything but normal. UA leaders had to know students — especially the off-campus variety — love to congregate in large, loud spaces. This behavior is known to spread COVID-19.
Ergo, shouldn’t UA leaders have chosen, from the get-go, to keep fraternities and sororities shuttered because off-campus entities are difficult to impose restrictions on in the way UA can at on-campus dorms?
Well, of course that’s what should have happened. Instead, the UA put Tucson’s public health in the hands of 18- to 22-year-olds, hoping for the best.
That best didn’t happen, and county health officials officially quarantined Greek life in mid-September, along with pools at nearby student apartments .
The quarantine, which ended last week, helped a bit, as the positive COVID-19 rate began dropping, but we don’t know who those off-campus students interacted with before the quarantine, when they may have been contagious. Thus, we don’t know if we’re facing an uptick in positive cases this week. Nothing like holding our collective breath for another month or so.
To be sure, most UA students are behaving responsibly. According to the university’s COVID-19 testing dashboard, as of Wednesday 38,349 tests had been administered since early August. Of those, 2,314 were positive, for an overall positivity rate 6%.
But the devil’s always in the details and, this time, the devil is off-campus.
When results are filtered for off-campus students only, out of 16,619 tests, 1,385 were positive, for an 8.3% positivity rate. By comparison, on-campus students have a 4.8% positive rate at 909 students out of 18,896 tests.
In other words, class, it’s all about control. UA can control activity on campus in dorms. They believed that was impossible to do in apartments and Greek life, so didn’t try until after the cases began spiking. Typical new-parent mistake.
But the great thing about parenting is you learn from your errors. If UA leaders really want to douse the tiny fires sprouting up around campus — fires that will surely implode with the annual campus frenzy known as Halloween — they need to act a little more like Tiger Mom and a lot less like their kid’s best friend.
