Quakers in Dixie

Auburn, AL

August 30, 2020

Last week Auburn students received a thinly veiled threat from Auburn administrators.

The head of student affairs informed the little deviants that if they didn’t avoid crowds, conceal their faces, and cower in their corners, the semester would not continue on campus. I’m surprised they weren’t ordered to duck and cover under their desks.

Mencken called Puritanism the haunting fear that someone somewhere is having a good time. Most modern authorities act less like what we think of as Puritans than what colonials thought of Quakers. They pretend to pray for you one day a week, and then prey on you the other six. We lament that the South is no longer immune from these Yankee afflictions.

On the first weekend of school, Auburn city and university officials were shocked (shocked!) that bars were packed, parties were held, girls were met, and good times were had. These days, that is an unforgivable affront. Yes, the students could return to school, but only if they remained in their rooms.

Just as viruses will do what viruses do, students will act as students act. Ham-handed edicts may disrupt or delay both, but they thwart neither. 

Moronic mandates abhor being ignored. And those who issue them cannot abide being mocked. By acting human, sane, and normal, students were doing both. Our overbearing officials cannot tolerate such defiance. But at some point, parents may wonder why they pay tuition to academic and political elites who are so scientifically inept and woefully incapable of assessing risk.

With an infection afoot…one with minimal impact on the collegiate cohort…even basic social pleasures are forbidden. Life is merely to be maintained, not lived. 

When 59 year-old Juan Perón was asked if his girlfriend was 13, he said there was nothing to worry about since he wasn’t superstitious. 

Public officials and school administrators have a similar knack for missing the bigger picture, and the essential point. The only difference is that Perón may in fact not have been superstitious. Our rulers certainly seem to be. And they appear capable of focusing maniacally on only one thing.

The reflexively obtrusive, panicky responses to obsessively reported COVID “cases” have no scientific basis. The students they target are more likely to die of a bee sting than of this virus. Their professors are more susceptible to sunstroke or a pedestrian accident. Even the New York Times reports that as many as 90 percent of positive cases are for people who are not contagious. But the farce continues in the theater of the absurd.

Of course, as with anything, there are exceptions. A (very) few young, healthy people have died or suffered grievously. But what of the rule? What of the countless lives lost or ruined as their superiors tried (usually futilely) to prevent the highly publicized anomalies? Not only is that obvious question rarely answered, it is hardly asked. Anecdote is not a sound basis for policy.

My fear through the summer was that universities would use promises of on-campus classes to coax student attendance, and to pry tuition from parental wallets. Then, for a week or two, colleges would welcome students, and give a semblance of “normalcy” a superficial shot.

When, after a few days or weeks, the misleading “case count” inevitably rose, school presidents would throw up their hands, scold the “irresponsible” students, and announce that, because of their “selfish” behavior and refusal to conform, they must return home.

The administrators could claim credit for trying to salvage the semester, and for being conscientious by soberly shutting it down. Having done all they could possibly do, colleges would of course keep the full tuition. 

After all, what more could they do? It isn’t their fault students acted recklessly by making friends, meeting for drinks, and not wearing masks in 90-degree heat (at least it’s a wet heat). At many universities, this insidious bait-and-switch has already happened. 

I hope it doesn’t happen here, but warning flares are being fired. The SEC announced Friday that bands will not march at football games (assuming those happen), eliminating another enjoyable aspect of college to which our son was looking forward.

As in so many other places, only one thing seems to matter. Insipid “Safety First” and “We’re All in This Together” platitudes are parroted ad nauseam, which is what they induce. 

The paragons of “safety” require Alexander to wear a mask at outdoor (!) band (!) practice. Inhibiting fresh oxygen and rebreathing bacterial-laden carbon dioxide seems as unsafe as it is insane, particularly in the summer heat of eastern Alabama – especially when we are constantly harangued about how important it is to “be safe”. 

Safety is only one of many priorities people have, and they have it to differing degrees. But it is by no means “first” priority for many, or even most, of us. People prove that each day by getting in a car, ordering another round, or arguing with their wives.

It is arrogant, presumptuous, and condescending for some people to decide for others that safety is more important than anything else, and then compel them to act accordingly. 

And we are most certainly not “all in this together”. To the extent we are, it is in the sense that guards and inmates are in prison together. The people firing off decrees are not “in this” with those on the business end of their edicts. No politicians or government employees are losing their pay, their businesses, their dreams, or the formative years they will never get back. 

Those dispensing these outrageous diktats should suffer the consequences of their draconian decisions. And not by ballot. For what they’ve done, losing elective office is insufficient. We need tribunals. Nothing like this can ever happen again.

Despite the sword of Damocles hanging over the semester, Alexander moved this weekend from his temporary hotel to his permanent apartment. A third roommate, another freshman from New York, joined him and his previous hotel mate from DC. The place is spacious, overlooks the pool, offers private rooms, and is within walking distance of most of Auburn. They seem a good mix in a great spot. But it is not the best residence on campus.

The most happening quarters are the quarantine dorms. There a couple hundred COVID cases have been confined, but they apparently are having a blast. Few show signs of being sick. They are together in their rooms, without masks or forced separation, joining online classes with everyone else, socializing when they want, having parties, and gathering to eat pizza and watch movies. Those that haven’t been coughing may soon start, if only to postpone re-joining the rest of us in our Kafkaesque “new normal”.

JD