By Amelia Delphos
Last Monday, the University of Virginia reached a record-breaking 118 positive student COVID-19 cases in a single day. The next day, 229 students tested positive for coronavirus, making up 10 percent of Virginia’s total new positives that day. Cases continued to climb until the student positivity rate reached 4.2 percent on Friday.
Tuesday night, around 5:30pm, an email sent out to the university community declared that the school would enter a complete lockdown.
UVA banned all in-person student gatherings and shut down libraries and recreation centers. In-person classes and research would continue under the new guidelines, and dining halls would remain open but in-person seating would be restricted to two people at one table.
The spike in cases occurred just after UVA’s annual fraternity and sorority rush events. In a normal year, rush sees hundreds of students cycle through old, cramped Greek-life houses, showing off their personalities (and beer pong skills) in hopes of winning admission to this or that social house.
This year, the student-led Inter Sorority Council limited its member organizations to a virtual rush process with an option for an in-person bid day, while the Inter Fraternity Council ruled frats were allowed to conduct some in-person rush events and an in-person bid day, so long as they adhered to a six-person gathering limit and wore masks indoors and out.
But on Sunday, February 14, the rush process concluded in its traditional way, with groups of students socializing on Rugby Road, posing for pictures at Mad Bowl, and gathering in groups obviously larger than six to celebrate in-person “bid day” after the conclusion of the week-long rush process.
There’s no doubt that rush contributed to this.
UVA President Jim Ryan
Following the Tuesday night lockdown, students immediately took to social media to blame frats and sororities for the spike in cases. Rumors of late-night parties, dumping maskless rushees in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and mysterious venue reservations made the rounds on Twitter and Reddit.
Despite all of this circumstantial evidence, the university released a statement on Thursday that reminded the community that Greek organizations had been subject to the same gathering rules as everyone else. The email also stated that noncompliance with the rules and transmission of the virus were widespread, and there was no evidence the recent spike was linked to rush.
Some students felt the school was too quick to shift the blame away from Greek organizations. “UVA keeps gaslighting all of us,” says one third-year, “saying it’s all of our faults that there’s a massive spike, when it’s so glaringly obvious to the whole student body that the IFC simply didn’t follow the rules laid out for rush.”
Last Friday, the UVA administration’s bigwigs held a virtual town hall to discuss the outbreak and the new restrictions.
According to Dr. Mitch Rosner, chairman of the department of medicine, there was no single “superspreader” event that led to the outbreak. A slide during his presentation at the town hall read, “Contact tracing and our analysis of case distribution does not identify a single or even a few dominant sources of transmission. Instead, widespread issues with adherence to public health measures appears to be the major issue.” Rosner pointed out that cases are also widespread, and approximately 75 percent of them are off Grounds.
At the town hall, UVA President Jim Ryan addressed rush’s role in the outbreak head-on. “There’s no doubt that rush contributed to this, in part because it brought groups of people together,” he said. “There’s also no doubt that mistakes were made, as were willful violations in the context of rush.”
“In hindsight, perhaps we should have tried harder to discourage all in-person rush events,” Ryan said. “As leaders of the university, I wish we had been able to prevent this spike, and I’m sorry we weren’t.”