With the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol just six months in our rearview, the timing for UVA’s new Karsh Institute of Democracy couldn’t be better. PC: Starmax/Newscom Via ZUMAPress
The University of Virginia is deeply invested in the study of democracy. On Grounds, you can study democracy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, or the Miller Center of Public Affairs, or the Center for Politics, or the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, or the Democracy Initiative in the College of Arts and Sciences, or the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the law school.
Now, the school is adding another institute to the collection. In May 2019, UVA President Jim Ryan opened the university’s Presidential Ideas Festival with a vision for an institute of democracy at the university, and in June 2021, his vision is coming to fruition, thanks to a $50 million donation from Martha and Bruce Karsh.
The Karsh Institute of Democracy, complete with shiny new facilities on the Emmet-Ivy corridor, will serve as a collaborative enterprise, bringing together scholars from all over the university to research and strengthen American democracy.
“The idea behind the institute started with a way to not take over those schools or centers, but to enhance and accelerate collaboration, so that we can do it in a more robust fashion,” says Melody Barnes, former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama, co-director for policy and public affairs at UVA’s Democracy Initiative, and inaugural executive director of the Karsh Institute.
The Karshes made their money in investing, and are now part owners of the Golden State Warriors, among other endeavors. After getting his UVA law degree, Bruce Karsh clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was known as the swing judge during his time on the court.
William Antholis, director and CEO of the Miller Center, is excited for the new institute because it is, by design, a “collaborative enterprise, with the goal to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.”
In addition, Antholis says Barnes is the perfect person to lead it. “Melody is a uniquely gifted collaborative partner,” he says. “She has already proven in the College of Arts and Sciences that she can help meld together a disparate set of academic disciplines and perspectives on democracy.”
“It will be really valuable to have somebody who can look across the water and bring us together on an ongoing basis.”
I don’t want to see
the Karsh Institute end up being a mealy-mouthed, mediocre forum for talking about how we all need to get along better.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, UVA media studies professor
Certainly, now seems like the perfect time to study democracy, with an unprecedented insurrection just six months in the rearview.
According to Barnes, anyone you talk to might identify a different problem with our system, whether it’s white supremacy, or attacks on the media, or the rollback of key voting rights.
Barnes will be working this summer to create a programming plan for the first couple of years, with a focus on how the university can be legitimately helpful in strengthening American democracy.
To Barnes, the announcement of the institute was a “significant commitment by the university to the challenges facing democracy, to leverage these really wonderful assets that we already have at the university, and to bring new and original ideas with the heft of a pan-university institute to the table.”
“We really are in desperate need of a deeper understanding of what has happened to American democracy,” says Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies and director of the Deliberative Media Lab, which is a part of the Democracy Initiative. “We need historical, sociological, and economic, as well as political analysis to really understand how we might rebuild American democracy.”
However, Vaidhyanathan worries about what the Karsh Institute will become. “I don’t want to see the Karsh Institute end up being a mealy-mouthed, mediocre forum for talking about how we all need to get along better,” he says. Ryan’s introductory words on the institute made Vaidhyanathan worry that a safe space, rather than a space for truth, was his goal.
In an op-ed posted shortly after the announcement of the gift, Ryan wrote that universities “have our own work to do in rebuilding trust and credibility with all Americans, especially the skeptics who portray us only as instruments of liberal indoctrination or protectors of ingrained systems of power.”
“The most valuable work universities can undertake to support democracy is purposeful and nonpartisan,” he added.
“The worst thing that can happen to the Karsh Institute is that we become merely academic and merely committed to making UVA look like a safe space for convening,” Vaidhyanathan says. “We have to tell the truth first.”
The graph above shows a breakdown of UVA faculty by race and gender. Data: UVA
By Amelia Delphos
Last week, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones was denied the position of the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism. The tenured position seemed like a natural fit for Hannah-Jones, a UNC alum and one of the developers of the 1619 Project for The New York Times. Despite her backing by the university’s dean, chancellor, and faculty, UNC’s Board of Trustees decided to offer Hannah-Jones a five-year, non-tenured appointment following public and private outcries from conservatives.
Supporters of Hannah-Jones have been quick to point out the racism that appeared to be at play in her tenure denial. All previous Knight Chairs had been offered tenure, and all previous Knight Chairs were white.
Tenure denial to Black and Brown faculty is not unique to the University of North Carolina. In the Spring of 2020, 38 percent of UVA faculty participated in an inter-university research study “dedicated to improving outcomes in faculty recruitment, development, and retention.” Among underrepresented minority faculty, tenure policies and tenure expectations clarity were ranked as weaknesses of working at UVA.
Then, in the summer of 2020, the university made national headlines. Paul Harris, a former professor in UVA’s School of Education, was denied tenure after five years in the department by an all-white review board. He appealed his tenure denial to the provost’s office and, after a months-long process and national attention, the university reversed the decision.
The appeal took a toll on the Harris family. “Just the amount of time that it took us,” says Harris. “There was a lot of time and energy and emotional currency that we had to expend unnecessarily.”
This month, Harris decided to leave the university for a position at Penn State’s College of Education.
According to Harris, Penn State was an appealing university. “Dean Kimberly Lawless’ vision at the College of Education is one of building an anti-racist culture, and my work situates incredibly well within that larger vision and scope,” he says. “I felt confident that my work would be valued here and that I could add value to what’s happening.”
“This isn’t just UVA,” Harris says. “This is at many institutions across the country. There can be a reckoning with how structures and systems and policies in place perpetuate the status quo that privilege whiteness and marginalize racial minorities, particularly Black and Brown faculty.”
Since 1987, UVA or UVA-affiliated groups have released over 15 reports detailing the university’s shortcomings when it comes to racial equity. In 2020, as protests erupted around the country in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, UVA President Jim Ryan appointed a new Racial Equity Task Force to address racial equity concerns at the university.
“We were in this particular moment in time in our country in which a number of things felt different,” says Kevin McDonald, a member of the task force and UVA’s vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion. “But there was definitely a level of racial reckoning and reflection, both personally and organizationally, that made our efforts feel a bit different.”
In addition to McDonald, the task force, which released its findings in the August 2020 Audacious Future Report, is made up of Ian Solomon, dean of the Frank Batten School for Public Policy and Leadership, and Barbara Brown-Wilson, assistant professor of urban and environmental planning and co-founder and faculty director of UVA’s Equity Center. The report outlined new goals for underrepresented faculty recruitment, promotion, and retention.
The first recommendation—which has been completed—was to endow the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. Most of the money from the endowment will go toward the hiring of new faculty and postdoctoral fellows for the institute.
The task force also recommended doubling the number of underrepresented faculty at UVA by 2030. Although this recommendation has yet to be completed, the university is making strides to meet this goal. A $5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation is dedicated to the growth of racial equity programs, funding post-doctoral fellowships, and supporting faculty teaching and research focused on racial equity. Additionally, the money will be used to build faculty and curriculum around the subject of race, place, and equity. The grant will allow the College of Arts and Sciences to hire more faculty, especially minority faculty.
“We anticipate that these openings, all focused on race and equity, will attract and sustain a strong community of BIPOC scholars and teachers who can contribute to real, lasting transformation at UVA,” said a UVA spokesman in a statement.
“We continue to unapologetically recognize the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” says McDonald. “There’s an intentionality to our work. We want our equity walk to match our equity talk.”
The map above, shared by UVA last week, shows where those with new COVID-19 cases live.
PC: UVA
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.”
The Warminster Baptist Church, in Buckingham County, is at the center of a community that could be destroyed if a gold mine were established.
By Amelia Delphos
The Warminster Baptist Church sits on the corner of Warminster Church and Sycamore Creek roads in Buckingham County. The historic Black church was established in 1866; the congregation has worshiped in three different buildings, but never strayed far from the plot of soil where their traditions began.
Across the street, multiple generations of the Wayne family own land and live next to each other, as they have their entire lives. Their family members are buried down Sycamore Creek Road, less than a mile away, where they will one day be buried themselves.
The property that sits directly next to both the Wayne family and the church is owned by Weyerhaeuser, a timber and wood products company that grows and harvests forests. For the past four years, Weyerhaeuser has partnered with Aston Bay Holdings, a Canadian gold exploration company, which has quietly conducted exploratory drilling on the Weyerhaeuser land. The companies are searching for gold deposits beneath the forest.
An extractive gold mining operation could spell trouble for the people and environment of rural Buckingham County. But the area is no stranger to an environmental fight. Last year, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled in part due to the dedicated organizing of Buckingham’s activists. Now, those organizers once again find themselves defending themselves and their environment from big business.
High price
Buckingham County, Virginia, was the leading producer of gold in the United States prior to the California Gold Rush in 1849. A belt of gold and pyrite runs through the foothills of Virginia, from Fairfax, through Buckingham, and down to Appomattox. In the 19th century, gold mining was done with a pickaxe and shovel. Miners dug down until groundwater filled the mine and would move on to the next one.
Things have changed since the 1840s. Today, multinational companies swoop in to areas with historic gold mining success and set up huge mines. Open-pit gold mines look like craters left by asteroids, dents in the earth hundreds of feet deep and hundreds of thousands of feet wide.
Gold mines decimate local ecosystems. A 2017 study conducted by environmental groups found that “Gold mines almost always pollute water—74 percent of operating gold mines polluted surface and/or groundwater, including drinking water.” That’s a particular problem in Buckingham County, where residents are almost entirely reliant on groundwater. The small town of Dillwyn has a water treatment plant, but the rest of the county’s 17,000 residents drink from the deep wells on their properties.
Aston Bay’s exploratory drilling is taking place very close to the James River, which provides drinking water for over three million Virginians.
“All of the streams are heading downstream from that location to the James,” says Chad Oba, president of Friends of Buckingham, a local group of citizens “united to work with our county leaders to attract economic investment opportunities that benefit all of our residents, and that contribute to a sustainable healthy environment.”
Oba’s group first coalesced in opposition to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in 2014. That project, too, would have had dangerous impacts on local watersheds. If a gold mine comes, “The James, very definitely, would be impacted,” says Oba.
Mining town
A couple years ago, Paul Barlow, a resident of Buckingham County, had two Canadian geologists approach him and ask to take samples from his creek. The geologists were not affiliated with Aston Bay, but had heard there was exploratory core drilling happening nearby, and they hoped to locate the source that had drawn their countrymen. Barlow agreed, and the geologists took samples and sent them back to their lab in Canada.
About eight months later, they told Barlow they found no gold in his creek, but they did find indications that gold could be close to Barlow’s property. Casually, Barlow asked the geologists what would have happened if they had found a deposit on his land.
“‘Would you guys dig a pit? Would you guys tunnel for it?’” Barlow asked. “They both laughed and said ‘Oh no, no, no, it would be an open-pit mine. You would have to move, we would completely destroy your 27 acres, and up your house that you would have to move. All these trees and all these hills would be leveled with huge, open pits.’”
The geologists told Barlow he wouldn’t have to sell or lease his land, but he wouldn’t be able to live there because of the mining operation. It’s a timeworn Appalachian tale: community members presented with a choice to sell their land to the arriving industrialists and have it decimated, or stay, and watch their property value dwindle to nothing.
Paul Barlow. Photo: Amelia Delphos
After Barlow’s encounter with the geologists, he traveled south to learn more about what it’s like to live so close to a gold mining operation. About five hours from Buckingham, Kershaw, South Carolina, contains the largest gold mining operation on the East Coast. The Haile Mine sits three miles northeast of Kershaw, where the Australian company OceanaGold mines between 146,000 and 175,000 ounces of gold per year.
Barlow hoped to talk to the people who lived around the mine.
“I was driving around and it was just empty driveway after empty driveway,” he says. “You could see where a house foundation used to be, and it was just miles of empty driveways.”
Eventually, Barlow found someone who lived close to the mine. In 2012, OceanaGold approached the man and offered to buy his property. The man refused, but his sister, who lived next door, was offered $300,000 for her property, 40 acres and a single-wide trailer. According to local real estate trends, she made a profit.
“The mine will spend a lot of money to displace people.” Barlow says.
Nowhere to go
In 2018, Buckingham’s Warminster Baptist Church’s well went dry. The neighbors down the street began having problems with their well, too. After years of heavier-than-average rainfall, there’s no obvious reason for the wells drying up.
“Our neighbors to the church, [they] can wash one load of clothes and they have no water,” says Deacon Bill Perkins, who is a Wayne on his mother’s side. He’s concerned that more industry nearby could further disrupt the community’s delicate ecosystem.
“If they was to do the mining in the Warminster Baptist Church neighborhood, it would affect the whole neighborhood,” Perkins says “It would affect our water table, our air, and then bring all of this heavy equipment in and it will destroy our roads.”
Deacon Bill Perkins. Photo: Amelia Delphos
Should a gold mine be established, it would be difficult for the Wayne family to relocate. The family has been on that land for at least five generations and most of the current residents are elderly. They have grown up together and plan on dying together.
“We have nowhere to relocate to,” Perkins says. “Most of the people who live in this neighborhood have been there all their life. It’s disturbing that they’re doing this, and we have nowhere else to go.”
On top of that, members of the Wayne family and other church family members are buried in a cemetery on Sycamore Creek Road, less than a mile from the church. “I’m concerned about our cemetery,” says Perkins. “It’s real near where they’re drilling at. What would happen to that? They’re not going to drill around it.”
“It’s a problem,” he says. “A terrible situation.”
Laws of the land
The possible gold mine has already led to changes in local law, and could soon bring about change at the state level, too.
State geologists say the current exploration is nothing to worry about. At the moment, Aston Bay Holdings is in Buckingham just to perform exploratory drilling. According to David Spears, a state geologist for the Department of Mining and Mineral Energy, core drilling primarily involves collecting rock samples.
“They drill a hole, they collect the samples, they plug the hole with cement, and then they go away. That’s it,” Spears explained at a November Buckingham County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission work session. A few weeks later, the Buckingham County Board of Supervisors voted to make core drilling allowable by-right on private property designated for agriculture and industry. That means Aston Bay can proceed without any other special permissions.
Friends of Buckingham responded to the board’s decision by working with the Virginia League of Conservation Voters to draft a new piece of state legislation. House Bill 2213, introduced in this winter’s General Assembly session, proposed establishing a commission to study the effects of gold mining in the state and imposing a two-year moratorium on large-scale commercial gold mining in Virginia in the meantime.
“This will extend,” says Oba. “There are 13 counties that the gold-pyrite belt runs through, so, stop it here, you stop it there.”
“Sometimes people think this is an issue that is limited to Buckingham County, and it’s not,” says Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, a Prince William County Democrat and chief patron of HB2213. “So we have the chance to take this question seriously and examine the issue before opening the door for gold mining that could have long-term impacts on our commonwealth.”
On February 5, HB2213 passed the House on a straight party-line vote. After the bill passed, Stephanie Rinaldi, a community member who lives near the potential mining property, stated, “When I heard they found gold a mile from my house, I panicked. A gold mine here would upend my entire life…We at least need to study and understand this industry before permits are issued.”
A week later, an amended version made it out of the state Senate Rules Committee. The revised bill, which will be presented to Governor Ralph Northam for his consideration this summer, includes the work study group but eliminates the proposed two-year moratorium on gold mining.
“It’s really disappointing that some of the bill was removed,” Oba says of the decision, though she’s glad the whole bill wasn’t killed. “There still is the study, which is absolutely necessary to protect our water, our air, our land-use, and our history, not only here in Buckingham, but throughout the state.”
“What’s the big deal? We’re not talking coal mining,” says Democratic Senator Dick Saslaw, one of the members of the rules committee who passed the revised bill, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Barlow lives about two miles from the exploratory drilling site. He and his wife have lived in Buckingham since 2012, and built the cabin on their property themselves. “We’re just so happy out here,” he says. “Nice and quiet. We don’t want anything to change out here.”
Says Perkins, “We love our church, we love our neighborhood, we love everybody that’s in the neighborhood. It’s not a neighborhood that gets a lot of disturbance. It’s a quiet, country neighborhood.”
According UVA’s COVID-19 tracker, 2,391 tests were administered from September 20-26, with 158 positive results. Roughly half of all tests were given to student-athletes.
By Amelia Delphos
On Tuesday, UVA released a six-minute video in which President Jim Ryan once again attempted to lay down the law, unveiling a new set of COVID rules following upticks in cases in university housing. These new restrictions ban gatherings of more than five people, require wearing a mask at all times unless students are in their room, eating or drinking, and avoiding travel to and from Charlottesville for the next two weeks.
The new restrictions come after the rate of infection has spiked in freshman residence halls. Fourteen percent of those tested in Hancock dorm were positive for the disease, and Balz-Dobie, Kellogg, and Echols dorms have all been put on lockdown for mandatory testing at some point, though those lockdowns have now lifted.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the UVA football team hosted Duke. Scott Stadium contained the socially distanced family and friends of players and coaching staff, as well as the two teams and their respective entourages, in accordance with Governor Ralph Northam’s Phase III requirement of 1,000 people or less at sports venues.
The team was able to win its fourth consecutive home opener for one reason: vigorous testing. Those familiar with game-day traditions know that the most influential player gets to “break the rock” in the locker room after the final whistle blows. On Saturday, Kelli Pugh, the team’s associate director of sports medicine, broke the rock. According to Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall, Pugh has been instrumental in keeping the team COVID-free since players returned in July.
The school administered 1,168 tests to athletes between September 21 and 27, finding 22 positives, the athletic department announced this week. Athletes have been tested almost 5,000 times since July. UVA’s COVID dashboard says that from September 20 to 26, 2,391 tests were administered to UVA faculty, staff, students, and contract employees. Thrice-weekly testing for athletes is required by the Atlantic Coast Conference.
According to one third-year resident advisor, an upperclassman who lives in first-year housing to support the younger students, first-years were told they could come to college to make new friends and build connections, but now have to navigate strict restrictions in order to do so. RAs have watched their first-years struggle as the school’s stated goals and actual actions have contradicted each other.
“I really empathize with them trying to build the social connections that they need just to be mentally healthy, while also being physically healthy,” says the RA.
The constant testing of athletes has frustrated a fourth-year RA who is living in a dorm with an outbreak. “Those tests for the athletes are not just being taken out of UVA, but they’re being taken out of the Charlottesville community,” he says.
In his COVID-infested dorm, the residents are only being tested once a week, whereas the athletes are tested three times a week. “Dorms are also a hot spot,” he says.
Many students were quick to point out the hypocrisy of a gathering of 1,000 people when student gatherings of greater than five were banned just days before.
“It creates a sense that the university is willing to play loose with safety,” the third-year RA says, “if it’s something that benefits [UVA] financially or gives it good PR.”
Dean Allen Groves addresses UVA students in a video posted on August 22.
By Amelia Delphos
For as long as communications departments have existed, big institutions have dumped their controversial news on Friday afternoon. Sure enough, UVA’s decision to move ahead as planned—with students living on Grounds and attending in-person classes—was announced via email after 4pm last Friday.
The announcement—its timing, its style, let alone its content—was the latest university communication in a summer full of emails and videos that have left a bad taste in many students’ mouths.
Since classes transitioned online in March, UVA students have been inundated with plans and promises from the administration, regarding a safe return to Grounds this fall in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subject lines such as “Updates to our Fall 2020 Plan” or “COVID Resources, Move-In Dates, Employee Testing” can be found in every UVA inbox. On August 22, students received a message with a subject line reading “Important Message from Dean Allen Groves.”
This “Important Message” was a link to an eight-minute video where Groves, the university’s dean of students, addressed the undergraduate student body in a nondescript room in front of an out-of-focus backdrop with the UVA logo.
In the video, Groves detailed the new COVID-19 policies for students, and laid out the repercussions for disobeying these policies—most likely suspension for a semester or more.
“We want you to be here, if your own health and safety permit,” said Groves. “But I need every one of you to do your part to make that happen.”
Trinity Moore, a second-year from Raleigh, North Carolina, is scheduled to move into Bice House with her sister on August 31. She did not watch Groves’ address.
“I didn’t watch it because I knew it was going to be saying the same things like all the other emails, ‘the students are going to have to work together to make sure that COVID doesn’t impact our campus hard’ and all of that stuff, blah blah blah,” Moore says. “…There’s no new reactions from me.”
Heather Thomas, a fourth-year from Fairfax, Virginia, watched the video. She didn’t like the format because, to her, it felt like Groves was on the offensive: “It seemed like he was attacking us for doing nothing wrong. It was a little bit premature.”
Additionally, the video undermined previous attempts to rally the community together, says third-year Sarandon Elliott. “I feel like that video was almost to divide us. It almost felt like you were in a dystopia. Every man for himself.”
In Friday’s final, decisive email, UVA President Jim Ryan writes, “This semester will not be easy, as we have said, but the UVA community has faced challenges before. Let’s meet this moment, and this extraordinary challenge, together.”
Some say all the self-congratulation and thinly-veiled elitism has made the actual decision-making process more obscure.
“Instead of being honest and upfront with students, they’re trying to make it seem like they have things under control, which of course no university can since we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” Moore says.
In May, the university wrote that reopening plans meant “placing a good deal of trust in our students to look out for the safety and well-being not just of each other, but of our faculty, staff, and community members.” Now, with first-years arriving in a few days, students feel wary and mistrustful. “They don’t really care if we’re on Grounds,” Thomas says. “I think they care that they can collect full tuition.”
