Dissent: Harvard Can’t Give up on Covid-19

Harvard’s newest Covid-19 policies — revised in preparation for a spring semester darkened by the tumultuous clouds of the surging Omicron variant — are the administration's most careless decision yet in regard to the pandemic. These new measures differ in key ways from the University's previous approach: Students who test positive will now “isolate” in their rooms, and the University has declined to guarantee isolation housing to those who request it. Contact tracing, it seems, is now up to us; the University will no longer inform the close contacts of students who test positive.

Rising case rates on campus and beyond certainly complicate Harvard’s mitigation policies, but Harvard’s new approach seems, to us, too close to giving up. Among our peers, even Yale College’s updated Covid-19 policies clearly guarantee that roommates of those who test positive will be able to obtain isolation housing. In contrast, Harvard’s vague language — which emphasizes that alternative housing is “limited” and “not guaranteed” — is far from reassuring, especially for immunocompromised students who rely on the safety provided by isolation housing more than others. Considering Harvard’s many properties on and around campus, we find it hard to believe that the University has run out of other options.

Meanwhile, delegating contact tracing to those infected puts an important responsibility in the hands of a student body that has shown itself too willing to disobey safety guidelines. Whenever Harvard has set a bar for its Covid-19 policies, students have managed to limbo right under it. Public health on our campus is not an individual problem; it shouldn’t be left up to individuals alone to solve.

What underlies Harvard’s entire non-strategy, in our view, is a thread of Covid-19 fatalism, if not outright indifference. It seems to us that there are two ways to interpret Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen’s recent email where he cites “the unprecedented number of cases within our community that we must support,” only to announce that university-coordinated contact tracing and isolation housing have been effectively eliminated. The first is that Harvard, of all places, cannot financially or logistically support the increased demand for contact tracing and isolation housing; the second is that the University believes the risk of Covid-19 to be so high that mitigation is no longer worth pursuing. Given the meteoric rise of the University’s endowment last year, how are we to believe anything other than the latter?

When our board endorses Harvard’s decision, this is what they claim to agree with: Two years in, the raging pandemic is simply no longer worth the effort.

The country thinks of Harvard as the gold standard in higher education — Harvard likes to think so, too. But assuming that role comes with a lot of responsibility, and Harvard’s words and actions are widely reported. Because of this, the ramifications of Harvard’s Covid-19 policy extend far beyond Cambridge. The implications of policies like these have been discussed by scholars since the start of the pandemic. The brunt of their apathy falls squarely on the elderly, the uninsured, and others who cannot afford (financially or otherwise) infection, and this is as true on campus as it is everywhere else. Besides the community of exceptional faculty and staff who support us, many of whom are older, this burden will primarily be felt by our immunocompromised peers, medically vulnerable and already overburdened by pandemic-related anxiety. The saddest part about all of this, though, is that if Harvard’s policy fails, it likely won’t be students or even staff who’ll face the worst consequences. Instead, it will be vulnerable members of communities — workers in Harvard Square, our homeless neighbors, young schoolchildren — who interact with ours.

By shifting the weight of responsibility onto students, Harvard hasn’t just weakened community-level counter Covid-19 efforts; it has also conveniently positioned itself to escape blame in the inevitable wake of its neglect. What is perhaps most frustrating about Harvard’s new policy is its insincerity: the masking of institutional indifference as pragmatic adjustment that allows Harvard to act as though we will all get Covid-19 while claiming to protect us from it.

Jasmine M. Green ’24, an Associate Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Lowell House. Haley A. Lifrieri ’24, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Computer Science concentrator in Winthrop House. Joel Sabando ’24, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Lowell House.

Dissenting Opinions: Occasionally, The Crimson Editorial Board is divided about the opinion we express in a staff editorial. In these cases, dissenting board members have the opportunity to express their opposition to staff opinion.

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