Except the mom repeatedly announced that the daughter had taken a leave of absence before the semester even began. Seems more likely that the daughter (and/or Bari Weiss and the mother) played fast and loose with narrative in order to more convincingly get their point-of-view across. That’s how propaganda works.
Feel free to move on if you don’t know and don’t care. I may be alone in this, but I think it important to focus on honest and accurate assessments of the risks and harms associated with covid and the related remedial measures.
For anyone who might have the false impression that Bryn Mawr is some sort of covid restriction gulag, here are Bryn Mawr’s covid restrictions for 2021-22 school year:
My take is this student didn’t want to attend a school with a vaccine mandate, a booster mandate, testing and extensive masking requirements. She took a gap year for the 2020-21 academic year hoping things would be better in the Fall of 2021 and they were not. I agree her rendition of the timeline isn’t clear. She would have only done Spring 2020 online and perhaps that’s the semester she failed out and took some type of medical leave.
Ultimately the point of the article, in my view, was she elected to go to a school where the COVID protocols aligned with her personal beliefs and preferences. Bryn Mawr was not an outlier as far their COVID restrictions and students were unhappy at many schools during the 2020 academic year. Some still are. You can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time.
And she could have gotten the ‘freedoms’ she sought at any big college too, even at ASU where she started. The smaller schools did have more restrictions because they could and often because all students live on campus. Bigger schools often relied on the city/county/state rules about masks and vaccinations for classrooms, sports venues, dining. Many have been open for 2 years (just closing the spring of 2020).
While the facts aren’t quite accurate*, I agree with the general idea, and it is certainly appropriate for students to choose a school with mediation measures that “are aligned with [their] personal beliefs and preferences.” That should and does play a key roll in many families college decisions, in both directions.
But as for the “point of the article,” there would be no story without the seemingly exaggerated narrative about the harms suffered during these two semesters of remote learning, when she apparently wasn’t even enrolled in classes. It seems her family’s “personal beliefs and preferences” (and not the harm suffered) drove her decision to transfer and the decision to publicize the transfer.
(*ETA: For the sake of accuracy, she transferred before there was any “booster mandate” and Bryn Mawr does not have mandatory surveillance testing, so she likely transferred because of the vaccine requirement, which his what her mom has repeatedly said.)
According to her mom, she transferred with a 3.9 gpa, and if her grades did suffer during remote online learning, it would have had to have been during the second half of Spring semester 2020.
Ironically, Hillsdale was also remote and online during this same time period, as were almost all other colleges. This may help explain why it is so important to the narrative to create the seemingly false impression that her suffering occurred during a period when she was apparently on a leave of absence.
I am reminded of Charles Lichenstein, the second highest US diplomat at the UN. When in the early '80s Soviet-aligned UN members threatened to move the UN out of the US, he responded, “The members of the US mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside, waving you a fond farewell as you as you sail off into the sunset.”
That’s my view. Neither of my Ds who went through on-line learning last year, which involved a first year in grad school and a senior year in college, enjoyed it. But, my view only, this falls into the “boo hoo; life’s tough; get a helmet” category. The one in grad school is a naturally anxious person in a new city at a new school and was terribly isolated for an entire year. Not fun. My response to her occasional rants about it: “well, you can stick it out and continue in your top 5 fully funded program, or take a leave of absence, and thereby risking your funding, and come home and sit around with us. take your pick.” I can’t say there weren’t more rants here and there, but she worked through it and made the right decision on her own.
Is the point of this particular woman’s rant that Bryn Mawr sucks, or that COVID sucks? We can all agree on the latter. I’m not sure what Bryn Mawr did wrong here.
Agree.
In her twitter account, she said she was “sacrificed”, and users rightly pointed out that young men in WWII were “sacrificed”, but not her.
Instead, she endured a moment in time that we all went through and are still going through - trying to have empathy for our fellow man and adjust our lifestyle temporarily for the good of all. It hasn’t been enjoyable for anyone. And not to belittle what she has gone through, but she has fared better than almost 900,000 fellow citizens.
I’m happy that she has found her school and hopefully she can find happiness now.
Yes, I was confused by her statement about how only small religious colleges were operating normally. There were flagships operating pretty normally even in 2020-2021. I believe a poster here with a son at ASU said it was fairly normal. However, I’m wondering if normal for her meant no COVID restrictions whatsoever, which may have been harder to come by.
I’m also wondering if she didn’t qualify to stay on campus in Spring 2020 if she had no place to work and spotty Internet. Did Bryn Mawr not offer that option?
However, if she’s happy at Hillsdale good for her! I’m glad she found a place that was a fit and works financially.
Starting at the beginning of the Fall semester 2020 Bryn Mawr was open and had kids on campus and in-person learning. So she could have been on campus, but chose to take a leave of absence before the semester began. In her mind, the precautions, such as testing, were going to be “unhealthy.” Self-fulfulling prophecy even though her kid apparently wasn’t even there.
[ETA: Sorry, I read your post as asking about Spring 2021. Not sure if they had that option when they went online for the second half of the Spring of 2020. But they did notify students to contact the dean regarding “accessibility barriers to participation in remote learning activities.”
I was working with a group of kids in foster care. They didn’t see their parents for almost 6 months in 2020. They had a few zoom calls and I was able to get the sisters together that summer, but the dept of social services couldn’t arrange supervised visits. THAT is suffering. A 3 year old doesn’t understand zoom.
It is possible to study in a 2 bedroom apartment with 5 other people there. Hard, but possible (how about shutting a door, or getting the other kids to study too?).
She’s wrote an opinion piece. Many of us don’t agree with her. That’s the risk she took with making her piece public.
I was wondering about Spring 2020, when most people were sent home, but international students, people with unhealthy family situations/hardships etc. were allowed to stay in the dorms. Since the author talks about spotty Internet, having multiple siblings in one room, etc. I was thinking about whether Bryn Mawr allowed for some people to stay.
But I definitely don’t understand how she had two semesters of online learning if she took a leave of absence in August? She would have had roughly half of an online semester along with every other college student in America- and colleges were more lenient with grading at that time, were they not? So her failing all of her classes seems questionable as well. Lots of inconsistencies, but hopefully she is happy and healthy where she is!
Yes, sorry about that. I noticed I had read it wrong after I had posted. I don’t know if they what options Bryn Mawr had for those such students beginning in March 2020. I know that they requested that students to contact the dean regarding “accessibility barriers to participation in remote learning activities" but hot sure what accommodations they made.
I agree the academic crash (at least the way she describes it) doesn’t really make sense either, but I too hope she is happy and healthy.
It’s worth noting that Hillsdale was closed in March of 2020, just like BMC, with the remainder of the spring semester online. Bryn Mawr reopened for in-person classes in January of 2021. That leaves the fall of 2020. BMC was remote for most students. In mid-November of 2020, the State of Michigan Health Department forced Hilldale to go online following an outbreak on campus. For all of the “years” of suffering under Bryn Mawr’s overreaction to the pandemic, the author would have only been able to spend roughly 2.5 months more at Hillsdale than BMC.
A quick look at the Hillsdale newspaper will turn up some interesting articles/opinions:
Just in case anyone is missing the political polar opposites of BMC and Hillsdale… Here is a link to the Hillsdale “1776 Curriculum”, which is made available for free to K-12 teachers to provide a rebuttal to Critical Race Theory.
The author’s suggestion of searching for “Liberals like me” appears to mean “not radical conservative”.
There are aspects of the story that feel a bit hollow, but as long as she’s happy at Hillsdale, she made the right decision. Of course, three weeks into her Bryn Mawr existence, she might have been just as happy. Time will tell.
