Access granted: The campus is open with certain limitations
“Access” and “granted”, are two hopeful words that were the breaking news in Fall 2021. AUI opened doors for its students to come and experience university life. But, the important parameter that fell out of scope for the AUI students is that the door was left ajar. Getting inside campus had its consequences. Truth be told, AUI really wanted to be one of the safest campuses while maintaining the activities and eccentric social lives that made the campus alive. The safety that AUI wanted to build is represented in levels:
- Level 1, PCR, covid test that needed to be negative was the “get out of jail free pass” for the students to enter the campus. This is level 1 of the many levels awaiting students to surmount. Once it is surpassed, the students enter the campus, the safest place, safer than outdoors.
- Level 2 is composed of scanning your cash-wallet for a period of 2 hours and a half and come back to scan it a second time for another 2 hours and a half and make the most of the outside world before the curfew is imposed. If not respected, warnings are issued, hearings are conducted, and sanctions are imposed.
- Level 3 is shutting down gathering places to avoid the spread of the virus even if level 1 was completed. No rooms for socializing, no couches for relaxing. Covid 19 lurks around even if level 1 was completed. Sometimes, it is best to be extra precautious.
Representing these safety measures as levels explains in a certain way how physically and mentally some students feel inside the campus. It may be perceived as a sarcastic and infantile portrayal of the situation but when you are congested with no entertainment, these levels become highly realistic. As a student, the precautions imposed become a burden, a labyrinth that cannot be escaped and sometimes you feel so immersed in the situation that some hysterical feelings of claustrophobia emerge in our psyche. It is normal to express these dark feelings if you think like me: “Safety is in the mind-set. If you have no self-awareness, you will appropriate these levels and feel oppressed.
The Psychological Dimension
For me, safety does not begin with restrictions. It is mentally taught first based on one’s own incentives. For instance, putting on a mask and distancing myself from crowds is the norm during this pandemic. I read about the virus and I am aware of the health penalties that will affect me and my surrounding. However, institutions prefer to act and implement harsh rules that would handicap students even if the excuse is safety and the explanation behind these decisions may be reasonable:
“Not all students are responsible, and if one is not, it leads to a chain reaction. All will follow.”
The statement is plausible and has truth to it but doesn’t the institution believe that accentuating health measurements will result in transgressing them more? We can think of this question as a prison cell with the prisoner already behind the bars. Making the metal bars stronger and firmer is only congesting the prisoner more. The same is applied to safety measures. Creating them is a must but monitoring them becomes a choice. The institution cares for the students’ wellbeing but neglects the microscopic level which is more related to the behavioral thinking of the students. Psychologically, adding more is suffocation and explicitly showing this maddens students who will want to create chaos.
Rethinking Safety
My idea here does not in any way eradicate safety measures and allow students to live in complete free will. It is rather to re-question the institution’s vision about “Safety.” What does it mean for the whole institution to be safe? Can petitions suffice for students to sign and abide by? If everyone promises to be responsible for their own actions and no curfew is applicable, will it make campus dangerous? The institution can have a try and give the benefit of the doubt to its students especially after the smooth end of the Fall semester. Sometimes dialogue is better than actions and if there is no positive output from the students then, at least it was an attempt from the institution. Only then, when dialogue falls by the wayside, AUI can proudly say that its definition of safety to AUI students is: “Congestion, the best way to promote Safety.”
