Quarantine Restrictions are Too Much

Exactly one year before I wrote this, I was at Capital Thai with my Mock Trial team. We gathered around a combination of 5 tables, passing food, enjoying each other’s company. 

Today, I sat in my room from dawn to dusk staring at my computer screen, only leaving to microwave my Cup Noodles. It’s a stark contrast, almost a depressing one, but definitely a necessary one. The danger of COVID-19 needs no explanation. Afterall, no one wants to get sick. No one wants to spread the virus. No one wants to get sent home.

However, students still break the rules. I see a disregard of quarantine procedures in Exonian’s stories, posts, and group chats. It almost seems worse than violations from last term. Why is that? 

It boils down to our lives for the last two months. Students have been living off campus, with little human interaction and the load of the full Exeter curriculum. Support systems through clubs, dorm life and in-person socialisation were either gutted or simply did not exist during that to month span. Now, students are back on campus, but are told not to meet in common rooms with or be around people, which sometimes live feet away from them. 

The Exeter administration’s regulations are overly-restrictive at this time. I know this term in particular feels especially constraining with the early check-in, the near-complete elimination of common areas and the lack of almost any in-person interaction. I can see the basis behind these rules, but their extremely restrictive nature has led to these behaviors, which are, in a way, more dangerous than before.

Since students can no longer meet in common rooms, agora, or dining halls, the natural choice is their rooms. From there, it is a slippery slope because if you are breaking that rule, then why should you wear a mask? Why follow any of the guidelines at all? It is not too hard to understand the development of this mindset—by making regulations extremely restrictive, the Exeter administration has created an environment in which students that want to socialize can only do so through these clandestine activities. And those activities tend to be worse than eating or meeting in a common room that was allowed last term.

The strict quarantine is only supposed to last a week before returning to “November”  levels. Just going back to fall term procedures is not enough, though. As Exeter begins to open more common space, group activities should be made more available than last term. Doing so serves a purpose. First, having group gathering spaces and activities helps our community mesh naturally. Second, supervised activities will provide the community with the opportunity to socialize, while ensuring all activities adhere to current guidelines. The administration should open areas like the theatre, gym, and academic buildings, as they are relatively large and open. Regarding activities, the Friday “gym day” should be extended to multiple days of the week, as it provides a social and physical relief from academic life. Additionally, extending “gym day” should help to reduce congestion and create a more COVID safe environment.

The Exeter administration’s plan is, without a doubt, reasonable, yet it fails to take into account students' great desire for community, which has led to the exact opposite of the administration's goals—to keep our campus COVID safe. Of course there would be no issue if all Exonians followed the guidelines for the current plan. Yet, such a scenario is an impossibility. Exeter students are still teenagers and realistically are not going to be great practitioners of self control. Additionally, holding every Exonian accountable would be impossible because faculty cannot monitor everyone, and the school cannot completely block off campus. 

In a perfect world, students would be responsible and the administration would be effective at monitoring, but we do not live in a perfect world. As such, the plans implemented by the administration should have dealt with the reality that students would not want to follow very strict rules. A more effective approach would have been the two week soft quarantine from fall term, as it gives the students just enough to be satisfied.

 The administration's current plan to lift restrictions, while better nothing, is not nearly enough. All in all, the return plan attempted to accomplish too much and has actually made campus, or specifically dorms more prone to COVID-19 spread than in fall term.