As Schools Start Back Up, Covid-19 Begins To Pop Up At Triangle Universities

As the pandemic, college life and college athletics begin to collide, reality is surfacing very quickly, and it’s this: even during a pandemic, college students on college campuses will behave like college students.

We’re seeing this rather quickly in the Triangle, where the virus has popped up at NC State and UNC, and Duke is getting reports of “Covid-19 misconduct.”

UNC has moved already to move to on-line classes. NC State has reported clusters in fraternities and sororities while Duke is investigating seven cases “involving more flagrant misconduct and persistent non-compliance by individuals or groups of students.”

We’re not sure how to interpret “groups of students” but it doesn't really matter from a distance.

The main point is that human nature is immutable. We are a social species and never more so than as young adults.

Should our Triangle students be more careful? Shouldn’t we encourage more discipline?

Well, yeah. But anyone older who says they wouldn't have been foolish at the same age has forgotten what it’s like to be that age.

It also underscores how little we still know. It may be that when this is over we look back and realize that some of the practices we followed were entirely counterproductive. It probably won’t be as ridiculous as what people misunderstood in the 1918 pandemic, much less the Black Plague, but we can’t know what we didn’t know until we do know what we don’t know.

That sounded better than it did before we wrote it down but we hope you get the point.

We have empathy for students who would prefer to have a normal college experiences obviously. However we would make one suggestion: please consider avoiding alcohol and certainly avoid losing control. That one simple decision would help so much and may help you to stay on your campus.