Blaming college students for Covid outbreaks is unfair
During COVID-19, college students' risk-taking and ingenuity could become productive in curbing the virus and reopening, so encourage them.
As the pandemic enters fall, much attention has focused on the return of young people to college campuses. Quickly, and perhaps predictably, infection clusters emerged on multiple campuses, leading many colleges and universities to retreat into entirely virtual offerings. The blame game has been rampant, with many focused on “reckless” and “selfish” teens and young adults whose unfortunate behaviors presumably led to their infections, imperiling us all.
However tempting it is to saddle youth with all of the blame for campus outbreaks, it isn’t entirely their fault. Just because a simplistic narrative feels right doesn’t make it so, and COVID-19 is anything but simple. Yet blaming young people for their infections and vilifying an entire demographic is not only unfair. Doing so also undermines opportunities to engage young people’s intrinsic strengths to push back against the pandemic on their campuses and in our communities.
Students are meant to be social and rule breakers
The truth is that college students were not set up to succeed. Scores of students have been asked to suddenly adhere to new behavioral guidelines in environments specifically designed to encourage social and scholarly engagement. Dorms with shared rooms and common areas, for example, are purposely designed to encourage socialization — not infection control.
Have some young people flouted rules leading to infectious spread? Certainly. Have there been gatherings of students that shouldn’t have occurred? Most definitely. But these examples shouldn’t nullify other young people’s efforts to adhere to infection control guidelines in hopes of keeping an on-campus year alive. The vast majority of young people we see in our practices who are heading to campuses across the country simply want to continue their educations and pursue their dreams safely amidst the chaos and uncertainty that have flummoxed all of us.
College-age students are developmentally wired to be social creatures and to push against rules and regulations. They are supposed to question, experiment, and take risks. The question with youth is not whether they will take risks, but which risks they will take in which contexts. Unfortunately, during the pandemic their risks have potentially extreme consequences and offer very little margin for error.
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Of course, many older, more “mature” adults have also defied infection control measures in restaurants, groceries stores, and other public venues. Social media has digitally memorialized them for posterity. Clearly, this isn’t a youth problem. It is a human problem. The fundamental challenge is in managing human behavior across a diverse population, and asking us all to fight against our natural urges to be social creatures.
Students need to be set up to succeed. Youth development research has taught us that youth do best when they are held to high expectations and provided adequate supports to meet those expectations. Setting high expectations without adequate supports is unfair, harsh and, in the case of COVID-19, potentially deadly.
Risk taking can be productive
Risk-taking is both normative for young people and can also be quite productive. Well-placed and well-timed risks can drive creative solutions and innovations. If we stopped wagging our fingers and shaking our heads at these “risky” young people for a moment, we might unleash their potential as positive agents for their own health and safety and actually encourage more of the creative and relevant solutions our campuses so desperately need.
We don’t need to look far to find strong examples already in action. College students have created networks of tutors to partner with school-age children who are also struggling to learn during the pandemic. Organizations like "Swipe Out Hunger" are college student-initiated movements that address hunger among students during COVID-19. College students have also created several COVID-19 apps and community resource repositories that are updated regularly by teams of students as service availability fluctuates.
Universities can do more to spur more such work by college students, and they can start by learning from one another. Some universities are offering student service learning opportunities during the pandemic. Others are financially supporting COVID-related, student-led projects. The positive work of students can also be highlighted through official college communication channels, such as alumni newsletters. At a minimum, students should be involved as universities fine-tune their learning and reopening plans.
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College students are primed to be innovative contributors to local, state and national efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. By focusing on college students’ ingenuity and passion, we can expect much more from them as the pandemic stretches on into the fall and likely spring semesters.
Drs. Richard Chung (@DrRichardJChung) and Charlene Wong (@DrCharleneWong) are adolescent and young adult medicine physicians at Duke University. Dr. Wong is also a health policy researcher and serves as the executive director of the NC Integrated Care for Kids Model.
