Hardly a couple weeks ago, while still a student in the traditional sense, I observed the bespeckling of our once-tangible institution by a scattered but substantial population of a particular type of student. For the sake of your efficient recollection, I’ll attempt to compile them all into a cast of two characters (they aren’t a terribly varied crowd).
Paying absolutely no attention in an econ discussion section is student number one, daydreaming about enlisting in the active troops of America’s dumbest youth currently deployed on Miami beaches. With the full intention of turning these fantasies into realities, as well as the financial comfort necessary to do so, they envision themselves joining the battalions of idiots devoting their spring breaks to pillaging Florida suburbs filled with senior citizens and major airports filled with travelers from the world’s every corner.
Student number two is a Human Biology, Health and Society junior possessing the simplicity of a freshman and a propensity for hypocrisy like no other. They’re an all too common Cornellian, perusing Expedia sites in their Nutrition and Global Health lecture, feigning excitement over a now cheaper Cancún trip with their friends they know damn well Daddy could and would have paid for at a pre-Corona price. This is a student whose life is utterly untouched by the novel virus, who believes themselves immune despite having undergone thousands of dollars worth of “global health” courses, who has been a rather dedicated attendee of recent Catherine Street darties (daytime parties), who self-identifies as a pre-med “because they have a passion for helping others” and who seemingly cares not about the lives they put at risk with every mask-free breath they breathe beyond the boundaries of their campus and their parents’ home.
We are in the midst of a worldwide catastrophe threatening human existence itself, an advancing epidemic with enough vigor to have proven itself unstoppable by even the countless forms of privilege that have long shielded some of Westchester’s finest streets from most other earthly issues.
