Colleges Lost the Moral Authority to Blame Students
Institutions
have always profited off risky social behavior. Complaints now ring hollow.
By Holden Thorp
AUGUST 24, 2020
It always starts with Harvard. In July, when the esteemed
university wisely announced that it would move all classes online for the fall
semester to limit the spread of Covid-19, President Trump lashed out: “I think
it’s an easy way out,” he said, “and I think they ought to be ashamed of
themselves.”
Harvard didn’t
care. But Trump’s comments reverberated through red America, and soon
thereafter, public and private universities in red states started announcing
plans for their students to return.
Those campus
administrators were in a tough spot. After my years in administration at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University in St.
Louis (one red-state public, one red-state private), I know how conflicted they
were. And the timing didn’t help. In June, the pandemic seemed to be subsiding
in the United States. But it came roaring back later in the summer, when a
number of colleges were already far down the road toward reopening for
in-person instruction.
Colleges may want to blame student partying for not allowing
them to reopen successfully, but they have forfeited the moral authority to do
so.
I couldn’t be
more sympathetic to these administrators. The students said they wanted their
campuses reopened. The faculty was cautious. The college towns initially wanted
everyone to return to drive the economy, but then pulled back.
Republican-appointed trustees and titans of industry were insistent that the
universities reopen. Blue-state institutions gradually started announcing a
virtual semester. The Ivy League members all bailed, except for Cornell. Trump
tweeted incessantly that schools and colleges needed to reopen, and then
started insisting on resuming college football, of all things. For the
red-state football colleges, there was no way out — the lifeblood of these
institutions flows through the gridiron. Among some of us veteran
administrators, this upheaval is known as “being put in the blender.”
The red-state
university leaders did the only thing they could do — they put plans together
to open their campuses and then pushed the start button. While there was plenty
of evidence that this was unlikely to work, it’s hard to fault them. In some
states, like Georgia and North Carolina, the governing boards of the university
systems gave them no choice but to open. In the end, the only way to convince
everyone that a normal fall semester was impossible was to try to have one.
Now we know
the answer. Some red-state campuses opened for business only to find that their
plans unraveled just a week into the semester, as Covid-19 spread among
students. Just like many offices, cruise ships, and Major League Baseball, you
can make a workplace safe, but you can’t regulate what goes on outside it. When
people are practicing social distancing and wearing masks, the virus doesn’t
spread as easily. But when someone leaves this bubble, becomes infected, and
then re-enters the bubble, look out. It’s a safe bet now that most colleges
will be online in a few weeks, although a few places with a lot of resources
for testing or in regions with low levels of outbreak could make it to
Thanksgiving.
Although the
colleges that reopened made efforts to make their campuses safer, they lamented
that they could not stop the viral spread that originated in fraternities and
sororities and from other forms of socializing. As campuses shut down, that has
led to an awkward situation. Isn’t social culture part of the experience that
colleges celebrate (and sell)? Doesn’t that make blaming the students ring
hollow?
Colleges have
a complicated relationship with student partying. They try to stop it when it
gets out of hand, but they embrace it when it’s to their advantage. Every
college fund raiser, including me, has accepted a gift after being regaled by a
donor with nostalgic memories about epic parties at a frat house or dorm. We
all may tangle with Greek life when confronting its racism, guns, gambling,
sexual violence, and drugs, but it’s the college president who grabs a pledge
form and gets on a plane when a former partyer strikes it rich later on.
(UNC-Chapel Hill even has endowed chairs named after fraternities and
sororities.)
The pandemic
reveals the costs of failing to reckon with that paradox. Colleges may want to
blame student partying for not allowing them to reopen successfully, but they
have forfeited the moral authority to do so.
When Chapel
Hill does well in basketball’s Final Four, there are always big parties with
bonfires along the college strip on Franklin Street. In 2009, the head of the
UNC Burn Center and I did a video warning of the dangers of bonfires. I was new
to my role as chancellor, so I thought this was a good idea. Instead, it stoked
even more bonfires. When UNC won the NCAA tournament the following Monday
night, thousands of people gathered on Franklin Street, celebrating as their
team cut down the nets in Detroit. Many were drunk and stoned and
jumping into fires. We printed thousands of copies of a photograph of the crowd
— complete with the fires — and sent them to our alumni and prospective
students. We were saying to them: Look at the great experience our students are
having!
How can colleges now blame students in an intellectually honest way for risky behaviors during a pandemic? If the plan is to suddenly teach them that their behavior must change, we’re starting from square one.
The system is
held in place by a vicious cycle: The partying and other destructive social
behaviors go on at a moderate level. When they get out of hand, the president
expresses shock and outrage. That mollifies everyone long enough to get back to
business. Among the critiques I received was that I wasn’t convincing enough
when showing my disapproval. But it’s hard to be shocked or outraged at
something you fully expect.
There is one
big difference now. Most university scandals (we used to call them “matters”)
break out on one campus at a time, even though the underlying causes are
universal. But Covid-19 is truly a systemic crisis. Every college is now
confronting the problems arising from the synergistic relationship between
“bad” student behavior and the financial welfare of the institution. Even the
colleges that are conducting all classes online now will have to confront this
when planning for spring and beyond, depending on how vaccination and other
aspects of the pandemic play out. Leaving everything as it is and asking
students to behave differently is not going to work — and that’s not students’
fault. Those of us who have had the opportunity to break the cycle of partying,
shock, and outrage haven’t done so.
Why not choose
now as a time to start explaining what college really is? Sure, there are heavy
partyers, and there are nerds who end up in the brochures wearing lab coats or
sitting in the library. But there are lots of great students of all
descriptions, and the current rhetoric glosses over the complicated reality:
Most college students don’t raise hell at the frat house, don’t pay full
tuition, don’t live on campus, and haven’t been living with their parents
during the pandemic. Singling out the partyers just sustains a false and
outdated image of how a college works.
Despite the current
chorus of curmudgeons, residential education is not going anywhere. The MOOC
fiasco proved that. Yes, some didactic material can be delivered online. But
walking the hallowed ground of the campus, talking in the dorms until late at
night, and — yes — socializing are indispensable parts of college. They should
be treated as such rather than swept under the rug until the next crisis comes.