College Students, COVID-19, and Carelessness

How our reckless actions affect the Twin Cities

By Holly Gilvary

On November 20, the coronavirus restrictions closing bars, restaurants, gyms, and entertainment venues went into effect, entering Minnesota into the closest thing we’ve had to a lockdown since May. This elicited mixed reactions from Minnesotans; some were grateful, some angry, and others were anxious, as they wondered what would happen to their paychecks if their workplace was shut down. No matter where you stand on the issue, it’s hard to feel good about the prospect of being trapped inside again, even if it is for the greater good. But feelings aside, how have our actions affected the Twin Cities community between the beginning of the pandemic and now?

Personally, I wasn’t here in the Twin Cities during the first statewide lockdown. I was at home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, waiting for April 1 to come so I could return to campus (which, of course, didn’t happen). I can’t attest to the way the cities changed, hurted, and grieved during the early months of the pandemic. What I can attest to, though, is what the community looked and felt like when I came back. 

Between a brief weekend in Dinkytown in June to drop off my apartment keys and my return to campus in August, I was shocked at how similar the energy was around campus to the way it had been when I left in March for spring break. People were out and about—some wearing masks, some not—going to restaurants and bars and gathering in large groups. The most dramatic change I noticed was in the temperature, rather than in the way people interacted with each other and spent time with friends. 

Throughout the semester, seeing lines outside of Sally’s and parties on people’s Snapchat stories, I was reminded over and over again that we’re not exactly all in this together. There’s a stark divide between University of Minnesota students who rushed back out to the bars when they opened again in June, and those who stayed home and continued to meet with friends over FaceTime or masked from six feet away in parks. And while it may seem like we’re mostly in a bubble that’s confined to the student neighborhoods around East Bank, West Bank, and St. Paul, the virus that’s plaguing our cities isn’t. While students at colleges around the Twin Cities have taken the risk to live their lives as normal, people outside of their immediate campus communities have paid the price. What makes this worse—and what most likely contributes to the continuation of unsafe behaviors that puts others’ health at risk—is that we often don’t even see the consequences that our actions have in other parts of the community. 

While young people may assess the risks for themselves and make the decision that going out for happy hour or attending a tailgate party is worth the risk, they simultaneously decide that other people in our community don’t matter to them. The University staff working in our dorms and lecture halls, the low-wage workers scanning our items at the grocery store, the strangers we come across on the Metro, locals who haven’t just lived in the Twin Cities for a few semesters, but whose whole lives are rooted in this community, are deemed unimportant by 21-year-olds who won’t stick around long enough to see the damage that they’ve inflicted.

This isn’t to point fingers or to put all the blame on individual actions when we live under a federal government that refuses to give us the resources we need to stay safe; however, acknowledging our role in keeping our community safe as young, mostly healthy people is crucial. And with a disease as easy to spread as COVID-19, it’s just not worth the risk of harming people who are most vulnerable. That janitorial worker in Comstock could be someone’s father, the underpaid grocery store employee could be someone’s daughter, and the stranger on the Metro could be someone’s immunocompromised spouse or the caregiver of someone who is elderly. There’s simply far too many possibilities for the people who aren’t in our lives to be someone that we unknowingly pass the virus on to, and there’s no way of knowing whether or not that will cause another grieving family in the Twin Cities we claim to love.