Interesting that there’s no mention in the article of her refusal to comply with Bryn Mawr’s vaccine mandate as her reason for leaving.
Did she discuss her vax status in the article? I must have missed it.
I am not sure that the vaccine was related? I saw her point that doing Zoom all last year from her small home was a problem. She had to withdraw because her grades fell. Not everything with schools and the pandemic has to do the vaccines. Some schools have been more restrictive than others.
With some minimal research, many people who read the article found the earlier discussions from her mom regarding anti-vax stance being principal reason her daughter wasn’t returning to Bryn Mawr.
From the article itself, it also sounded like there were issues with her grades.
https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/1488227085407735816
She didn’t discuss it in the article, but author’s mother’s tweets from last May document her outrage at Bryn Mawr’s vaccination policy, and also states that the policy is why her daughter left the school. She goes on at length about it, includes an outraged letter she sent to the administration (and says her daughter sent her own) and asserts that she won’t let her daughter be indoctrinated by this establishment and that she’d pull her from the school before letting her get vaxxed.
anyway kid wasn’t happy and transferred. not super interesting.
Her mother tweeted about this at the time, indicating that her daughter was leaving the school because they required vaccination.
Sure, other factors could be involved. And perhaps mom, who is pretty open with her anti-vax and anti-mask views, was fibbing.
But this piece is clearly designed to push all the right buttons for the Bari Weiss audience and eventually secure a segment on Fox.
here is some more info - including the letter this student’s mom sent to Bryn Mawr regarding the vaccination requirement.
https://twitter.com/AJKayWriter/status/1480744001766449158
Edited to link directly to mom’s thread about this in early January of this year.
I don’t see why one can’t just take this letter as one student’s experience about why someone would leave a more restrictive Covid environment for a less restrictive one. That’s why it’s good that we have choices and it’s worth considering both the costs and benefits of various Covid policies. I don’t think it’s necessary to ferret out all sorts of background facts about her vax status and her mom’s tweets and speculate about ulterior motives to get on Fox.
While I do agree that students should make choices based their own values and needs, this student didn’t just choose to change schools, she chose to take her questionable version of the reasons why to Bari Weiss’s website, thus inserting her story into the contentious public debate. By her choice, she is now a martyr in the culture wars; Bari Weiss related martyrdom is becoming a fast growing cottage industry. Surely this opens her story up to comment and scrutiny, does it not?
That’s your characterization, not hers. You don’t like her opinion and you don’t like the platform she put her opinion on. That’s fine. I don’t get why you can’t just shrug off someone else’s opinion. You just can disagree with it without trying to find reasons to invalidate it (the mom’s tweets, the vax status, the hypothetical hidden agendas). Maybe other people find it worth knowing that different colleges take different approaches and some students thrive better in one environment versus another.
Maybe other people find it worth knowing more on the viewpoints and actions of the author of an article (and relevant family members) to better put said article in perspective. 
Yes that is my characterization, based on her story, her mother’s activism, the propaganda platform on which they chose to publish the story, and the fact that she is now a media darling of those who work to underplay the dangers of covid.
But I haven’t “invalidated” her opinion or her choice. If she is isn’t comfortable at Bryn Mawr, whether because of the restrictions, the vax mandate, or any other reason, I’m glad she found a place she is more comfortable.
That said, I too am entitled to my opinion, and in my opinion this story omits key facts that would place the narrative in an entirely different light. Also, in my opinion, the story may be closer to curated propaganda that what it purports to be. But please feel free to “shrug off” my opinion if you like.
It is not just the fact that Bari Weiss is pushing it, or that the story happened to omit that the reason the daughter left was because she of the vaccination requirement. The story also fails to mention that the student’s mother is an activist in what I guess could be termed the covid-denier movement.
Specifically, the student’s activist mother has been banned from Medium for spreading misinformation about Covid, and is the Managing Editor of Collateral Global, a British non-profit that markets in pseudo-scientific claims to try to convince people that Covid isn’t nearly as dangerous as people think, and that wide scale vaccines are unnecessary. ABOUT US - Collateral Global
The prominent figures are Collateral Global are authors of the The Great Barrington Declaration, which underplays the dangers of Covid-19 and advocates for a more hands-off approach addressing those dangers. The Declaration has been panned by the scientific community as dangerous and not based on sound science, and as a political statement, not a covid strategy.
So that’s the context for the story. And in my opinion it important for people to understand the context, even if the student, the student’s mom, and Bari Weiss do not agree.
Is there proof of this? Do you have an example, in the student’s own words?
Why would anyone care about her mother’s actions? Isn’t this young woman an adult? We aren’t responsible for our parents thoughts or actions.
Unfortunately, oftentimes parents are responsible for the actions and beliefs of their children, even college aged children. And this parent was actively involved in this student’s withdrawal from Bryn Mawr, and is actively involved in the story now. She has been interviewed by Bari Weiss, and is sitting on panels put together by Weiss on Kids and Covid. Like the daughter’s article, the promotional material fails to mention her role as as a covid-denier activist or her work for the Collateral Global. Read the mother’s twitter feed if you doubt her involvement in what happened with her daughter at Bryn Mawr.
No, the adult student is responsible for her actions in withdrawing. Perhaps she was influenced by many people; I neither know nor care. She is only accountable for her own words and actions, regardless of what her mother, her boyfriend, her pastor, or anyone else says or believes
Has anyone else tried to make sense of her story? It is very odd, even setting aside the omission of her opposition to vaccination.
After describing first being happy at Bryn Mawr, the author described the spring of 2020 ,when much of the country was locked down and when students were sent home. Then she went on to describe staying home for her entire junior year. Beginning with the sentence, "Those two semesters at home hadn’t been kind to me,” she described glitchy zooms, alienation from wealthy friends, apparent depression and consequent extreme weight loss, academic collapse and eventual withdrawal from school:
. . .There was nothing left to look forward to.
I stopped logging on to school, and my As and Bs turned to Fs. Ultimately, I decided to withdraw.
Heartbreaking stuff. I am sure many students and parents can relate to the burdens she describes. Weird thing is, it seems pretty clear that the author never even began taking classes at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year.
She apparently “took a leave of absence” before classes began. Her mom’s texts (and her email to Bryn Mawr where she vociferously complains about the vaccine requirement) leave little doubt about this. Here is one such text from before the semester began indicating that that daughter had taken a leave of absence:
There are many more indicating the same thing.
To be clear, I’m not denying that online learning is difficult, or that it remote learning takes a mental toll on many students. And it could very well be that the author became depressed and lost 20 lbs while living with her family in Arizona. But apparently she wasn’t a student while this happened. If she took leave of absence beginning before the semester even began, then during this period she wasn’t suffering under lockdown, with online learning, or because of oppressive school policies.
That was my exact same thought when reading this! Did she take a leave of absence her junior year or do 2 semesters of Zoom? Not to discount her experience, but there just seems to be some inconsistencies in what is being presented.
If I was held responsible for everything my father said, things would get very interesting.
Maybe the mom thought the daughter was on a “leave of absence” when, in fact, the daughter just fell off the grid by not logging in.
I don’t know. I don’t care. Maybe it’s time to move on. People should probably stop putting words in this young woman’s mouth, though.