Don’t Make College Kids the Coronavirus Police
Many universities are
asking students to wear masks and avoid parties — and to report on peers who
break the rules. It could backfire.
By Karen Levy and Lauren Kilgour
Dr.
Levy is an assistant professor in the department of information science at
Cornell University, where Ms. Kilgour is a doctoral candidate.
·
Aug. 12, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
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Hundreds of American colleges and
universities have opted to begin the fall semester at least partly in person,
allowing some or all of their students onto campus to live and study. These
schools are going to great lengths to impress upon students that their behavior
determines whether campuses can stay open or whether they will have to head
back to their parents’ homes by October. In many cases, schools are requiring
students to sign “social contracts” in
which they promise not to party, have overnight dorm guests, walk across campus
without masks or otherwise conduct themselves as college students normally do —
and often attaching strict penalties if students violate the rules.
In addition to agreeing to conduct
themselves according to these rules, students are also being asked to
police one
another for
violating them. College campuses have long monitored their students’ behavior
to enforce various expectations, from attending class to completing assigned readings to sticking around at football games. In the age of
Covid-19, these forms of monitoring are intensifying — and students are being
tasked with becoming surveillors themselves.
New York University, for example,
implores students to “politely urge” the
noncompliant to wear masks and social-distance — and if they don’t listen, to
report the fellow students to higher-ups. Tulane University urges students to “hold your friends and peers
accountable” for having parties. The University of Nebraska at Omaha
asks students to commit to “discouraging large in-person
group gatherings” to help fight the virus.
Other schools are
recruiting students as “health ambassadors” to “utilize peer-to-peer influence”
and training them in
bystander intervention techniques. Many schools are setting up tip lines where
students can anonymously report those who fail to wear masks or
social-distance, or asking students to use hotlines that
were originally created to report issues like harassment and other misconduct.
And if students eventually test positive for the virus — say, after attending
an illicit social gathering — contact tracing protocols may require them to
report others who broke the rules.
In many ways, it makes sense that
universities are relying on students to be the eyes and ears of public health
management. Students are much more likely than a dean or provost to know about
what’s really going on in the dorms and frat houses. And providing an anonymous
way for students to whistle-blow about unsafe conditions can certainly be a
good thing, since it is unreasonable to expect all students to come forward
publicly.
But there’s a risk that these peer
reporting systems may not be effective in controlling the spread of Covid-19 on
campus because they put students in very tough positions. Of course, many
students understand the high stakes of a coronavirus outbreak and have a desire
to help keep their communities safe. Some students may feel a sense of civic
duty to participate in policing their classmates’ behavior. But others may be
loath to report on their friends, especially when doing so could result in
harsh penalties. And students risk being socially ostracized if they are
branded with the stigma of being a “narc” by their peers. Students may find
themselves weighing the complex burdens of
playing a role in preserving public health against the potential personal costs
of reporting.
We’ve seen this play out time and time
again on college campuses, when students’ refusal to snitch on one another
has impeded investigations of
hazing practices and sexual violence. And we’ve already seen similar dynamics
unfold in the current pandemic — local officials have had to resort to subpoenas to get infected individuals to comply
with contact tracing, and people have been targeted with
threats and harassment for “snitching” to officials about noncompliant business
practices. In many cases, university messaging encourages students to de-escalate and educate in
their interactions with noncompliant peers — but tensions are high, and
even adults don’t
always handle these conflicts well.
Another risk is that peer reporting systems may have
unintended consequences — especially when people use them for their own
purposes. Consider the VOICE hotline run early in the Trump administration,
ostensibly for the reporting of information about crimes committed by
individuals with “a nexus to immigration.”
People who called VOICE were
motivated by a wide variety of family, neighborhood and business disputes. One
caller reported a family member who would not let her see her granddaughter.
Another reported his wife, who he said was falsely accusing him of domestic
violence in order to obtain legal residency. Still others targeted spouses who
had committed adultery or abused their children. Another reported an employee
of her ballroom dance studio, who was allegedly trying to lure away customers
to her own competing studio.
People
report on one another (truthfully or falsely) for a number of personal reasons,
including competition, revenge, leverage and everyday aggravations. There’s
every reason to assume that these motivations will bubble up in the college
context, too. Students have their own loyalties, broken hearts, rocky roommate
relationships and fraternity codes of silence.
Some
commentators have already questioned whether
the N.C.A.A.’s Covid-19 tip line — to be used to report on schools endangering
the health of their student athletes — may be exploited for competitive
advantage, if students snitch on their rival schools or backup players
tattletale on starters. Schools should also not assume that these burdens will
be equally borne by all students. Community policing often leads to
rampant racial profiling — and
recent events have snapped into sharp relief just how
easily reporting can be weaponized against minority groups.
Fighting
the coronavirus is, to be sure, an all-hands-on-deck problem, but pitting
students against one another in a high-stress time carries real risks, and
colleges should be exceedingly careful about casting their students in the role
of undercover coronavirus cops. Deputizing students to police their peers
threatens to disrupt the interpersonal dynamics of student life, while also
creating conditions to displace blame onto
students should outbreaks occur. Universities need to be mindful of how peer
surveillance systems might be misused, how they might burden different groups
of students and the damage they may do to community trust.
Karen Levy (@karen_ec_levy) is an assistant professor in the
department of information science at Cornell University, where Lauren Kilgour (@l_kilgour)
is a doctoral candidate.