Back to School, 2020
School Safety
1. Every morning the students opened The AppTM. Not Instagram or Snapchat, though they opened those daily too. This was a new app, which every student at the college had to download during their virtual orientation. They hit “accept” when The App requested access to their location. Every morning, they took their temperature and entered it into The App. If they had coughed recently, they entered it into The App. Headaches, runny noses, shortness of breath – they all were entered into The App. And if the student passed the test, The App would display a green screen. They showed this green screen every time they entered their dorm building. They wouldn’t dare hold the door open for someone, just in case their screen was red instead. They opened The App to go to the dining hall to pick up the to-go food they ordered off a different app. They displayed The App when they went to the library, when they went into a classroom, and when they went into school buildings for their biology labs. The App even knew when they went down to the shared bathroom at the end of the hallway. The App kept track of the people they came in contact with. The App knew everywhere they went. The App kept them safe.
2. Jason joined the Zoom meeting for a floor bonding activity. He recognized the other freshmen on his floor only through Zoom and their GroupMe profile pictures, but still tried to say hi when they would walk by each other in the hallway, faces obscured by masks. He joined the Zoom meeting for freshmen interested in writing for the student newspaper. He joined a Zoom Club Tennis meeting. As a freshman, he was taking only large introductory lectures, which the school had deemed unsafe to hold in person, so he Zoomed into all five of his classes. After class, he Zoomed with his high school friends. He ate his to-go dinner alone in his dorm room, looking at the extra, empty bed. He Facetimed his parents. He followed kids from his classes on Instagram, wondering if it was weird to do so, as they had never actually met. But he wanted to reach out. One agreed to hang out in person, and they shared an awkward lunch, six feet apart, sitting in the lawn outside of their dorm. James missed his high school friends and his parents – it wasn’t the same, just seeing pixelated images of them, buffering and freezing with the shitty campus wifi. He missed hanging out with people in general. College had been an incredibly lonely experience so far. His older sister told him that everyone feels lonely as freshmen and that he would make friends quickly. But when she was a freshman, she was at least allowed to hang out with other people. James texted his RA for advice on adjusting to college and getting to know more people. He told her he had been feeling really depressed. She texted him a link to a TikTok created by the Student Health Center, advertising their new Zoom group therapy offerings. James would have considered it had it not been advertised in a TikTok. He didn’t text her back. The next morning, he logged his symptoms in The App again. He attended more Zoom meetings and ate more meals alone. The next day, he did it all again.
3. Emily felt perfectly healthy. After months of Zooming with her college friends since their Junior spring was abruptly cut off, she wanted to see them in person. And after months of living with her parents again, she wanted to party. When her friend in Kappa Sigma texted her about the party in their backyard, she had some qualms about going. But all her friends were going to be there and she’d missed them so much. She felt like she couldn’t say no. And, she had entered all of her symptoms into The App that morning and it turned green and said she was fine. She brought a mask with her, but kept it in her pocket when she saw that no one else was wearing one. She had a passing concern about the cleanliness of the cups on the beer pong table, but didn’t want to ask for new ones. She hugged her friends, so excited to see and touch them. They took a group photo, quickly uploaded to Instagram. Life was back to normal again. She had missed this.
4. Lisa lived next door to the house throwing the party. She heard the music first. Watching from her window, she saw 20 people gathered, then 40, then over 100. Then, she saw the Instagram stories. She saw her classmates acting unsafely. She recognized a few people in the crowd – Amy from her Spanish class last semester, David from her freshman dorm. She thought that they were smarter than that. One section of The App was an anonymous tip line for reporting the violations to the social gatherings policy. Lisa typed out a message, but hesitated to submit it. She didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. She just wanted to help Amy and David and the others out there. She wanted to keep them safe. She sent the message in The App, reporting the neighbor’s address, attaching a 60 second video of the parties that she filmed from her window.
5. Brian took his temperature, like he had every morning for months. But this time, his temperature was 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 2 degrees above yesterday’s. This was the worst day that this could happen – his midterm paper for his Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies class was due that day, and he needed one more source. He had found a book that would work, but he had to go to the Law Library to pick it up. He couldn’t find it online anywhere. He knew that if he entered the temperature into The App, the screen would turn red instead of green and request that he go to the student health center for testing. He wouldn’t be able to enter the library to get the book he needed. His paper was worth 30% of his grade, and he already wasn’t doing well in the class. He felt completely fine, not sick at all. Well, maybe a little tired, but that was just from staying up late working on the paper. He didn’t have a cough or any other symptoms, so the temperature must have been a fluke. He took a couple Advil and stuck his college-branded thermometer under his tongue again. Now it was 99.9. See, it was already going down. And the Law Library was never that crowded anyway, he probably wouldn’t run into anyone, and he would wear a mask. He typed 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit into The App, same as yesterday. The screen turned the healthy, calming green, and Brian proceeded to the Law Library.
6. Michael got a notification on his phone: “You have come in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19. Report to the Student Health Center for testing immediately.” He walked to the student health center and joined the line of students, spread six feet apart, spaces enforced by health center workers. Once he reached the front of the line, they administered the nasal swab. It felt like it reached into his brain. Tears came to his eyes, and it took him a couple minutes to recover. The App notified him that he tested positive. It told him that he was going to be moved into a new dorm – he wasn’t even allowed to go get his stuff, they would move it for him. The APP asked him to enter a list of everyone he had seen for the past 24 hours. He wrote down the names of the ten people in his in-person advanced English seminar, the professor, the TA, his friend on his floor who he had stopped to talk to in the hallway that morning, and the guy who he vaguely recognized while they were brushing his teeth at the same time in the bathroom. There were also three people picking up lunch at the same time as him, but he didn’t know their names. It didn’t matter, The App knew.
7. Emily and all of her friends at the Kappa Sigma party got emails the next day, saying that they must report to a Public Health Panel, and if the panel found them in violation of the Student Health Agreement, they could be referred to the Office of Student Conduct for possible disciplinary action. Emily didn’t understand how they could get in trouble, as the party was off campus. Weren’t they able to do what they wanted on private property? Only one of her friends didn’t get in trouble, because her phone had died before the party. The App didn’t know that she was there. But then the friend got the email two days later, after the school found her account tagged in Instagram photos from the party .
8. The Administration decided that The App wasn’t working. There were glitches in the tracking in certain buildings, not all students were recording their symptoms correctly, and too many phones were turned off or had dead batteries – college students seemed to never charge their phones. The Administration came up with a new solution. Jason, Brian, and Michael received emails saying that a health center worker would be stopping by their dorm rooms after 8:00 that evening. Emily and Lisa, who lived off campus, were told to report to the campus gymnasium during an assigned ten-minute slot. Within 24 hours, every student attending the school was injected with a tracking device. To keep them safe.
Tess Burchmore is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, with a major in History and minors in Anthropology and Writing.