Vaccinated, boosted, tested, spied on: At Yale, I'm done with endless COVID restrictions

When COVID-19 sent Yale students home in March 2020, I was determined to make the most of it. I kept in touch with my college friends over Zoom. I discovered the game of CATAN and played it online religiously with buddies from high school. My club tennis team even made a chain of videos, whereby everyone would “receive” a tennis ball from the previous video and then hit it to the person in the next video. While nothing could come close to the in-person college experience, I was doing my best to make it work.

I was relieved to hear that there would be an in-person option for the fall 2020 semester. I loved living in my residential college for my first two years at Yale, and didn’t want to change that for my junior year.

Toxic, arbitrary COVID restrictions

But the fall semester was an immense disappointment. I simply didn't grow, socially or academically.

Given that all informal social gatherings were limited to 10 people and extracurriculars were remote, it was difficult to meet new people. While my professors made Herculean efforts to teach over Zoom, I found it impossible to engage deeply with my studies when it was virtual. And with gyms closed, working out was not the same. So with dim prospects for new friends, new learning and physical self-improvement, my personal growth had stalled.

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I was also shaken by Yale’s restrictions. I didn’t like the signs encouraging students to report COVID violations to an anonymous hotline. I didn’t like it when a student decided to record me as I was throwing a football in a courtyard unmasked. I didn’t like that signs were posted everywhere telling us to electronically swipe into buildings individually – that way, the university could track our every movement. And I especially didn’t like it when two Public Health Coordinators entered a friend’s suite unannounced – while recording us with a phone – to make sure we were not breaking the capacity rules.

Moreover, I began to feel increasingly isolated in my viewpoints. Few people seemed disturbed by the surveillance state like I was. Most of my peers saw it as justified, given the risk that COVID-19 posed. And when I questioned issues such as the efficacy of cloth masks, the origins of the virus or the value of natural immunity, even my friends would laugh at me for contradicting the experts.

So when the fall 2020 semester ended, I decided that enough was enough. I took a semester off in the spring of 2021, working as a ski lift operator in Utah.

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I was anxious upon arrival for the fall 2021 semester. Despite near-universal vaccination, Yale insisted on again forcing students to sign a Community Compact that included capacity restrictions on social events and mandatory masking while indoors. But these rules were so obviously hypocritical – dining halls were open, and had hundreds of people socializing unmasked – that students chose to ignore them when they could. Social life on weekends was normal. It finally felt like the tide had turned.

If fall 2021 was one step forward, though, the omicron surge took us two steps back. Over winter break, the administration announced that the first two weeks of classes for the spring 2022 semester would be online. Dining halls would be grab-and-go. We were told to avoid dining off-campus (even if it was outdoors), and extracurricular gatherings were to be held remotely. 

We are done with the nonsense

Now, the frustration has become virtually universal. Students have done everything the university has told us to do. We have been repeatedly quarantined and regularly tested. We have worn masks. We got fully vaxxed. Then we were required to get boosted. Given all we’ve been through, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of students I know supports rolling back the restrictions.

Personally, I was especially indignant after visiting my grandpa’s nursing home over winter break. He and his octogenarian peers are less locked down than the Yale student body.

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If Yale continues to reimpose restrictions every time a new variant causes cases to spike, the Yale community might never return to normal. It already scares me to know that my class is the only class that has the institutional memory of a complete year of normal campus life. Many Yale traditions – such as Spring Fling, the Yale Symphony Orchestra’s Halloween Concert and shopping period – may never be fully experienced again.

Yale must come to understand that “public health” entails far more than just COVID. It means the general well-being of the community, including our mental health and personal growth. The United Kingdom and several Scandinavian countries recently realized that we must learn to live with COVID as if it is endemic. Consequently, leaders there announced that they are done and are lifting virtually all restrictions.

Yale needs to do the same. 

 Jack Barker is a senior at Yale University majoring in Economics and English.