What’s Policy without Benefit?: A Critical Review of NYU’s COVID Policies

By Tayler Bakotic

With vaccines and booster shots widely administered, it seems that New York is no longer in the thick of COVID-19. And after two years of mask-wearing and social distancing, NYU has largely returned to its pre-COVID practices. This does not make COVID obsolete, of course, but my question is, when will NYU’s policies reflect this change? Our present reality should work to rethink its policy and practice, especially when policy has caused and is causing harm to students. 

NYU’s guest policy has served more to protect NYU’s reputation than its students, who have been negatively affected by the restrictions on who has been allowed inside NYU dorms over the past couple years. The strict, anti-guest policy has worsened mental health issues and caused uncomfortable, tense, and untrusting relationships between the guards, RAs, and NYU residents. And the Violet Go policies have not served to protect the NYU community, and are more of a hassle than anything else. I should be clear that my claims against NYU’s policies do not, by default, support extremist ideologies like anti-vaxx culture or COVID-19 skepticism—this would be an uncharitable reading of my essay which I do NOT support. Instead, my claims against NYU’s policies are meant to point to inconsistencies and shortcomings within an admired institution of which I am a part, and I hope to remind the reader that billion-dollar institutions perhaps don’t always have our best interests at heart. While it seems obvious that NYU’s COVID-19 policies have caused harm to the NYU student body, it doesn’t seem they have, as of recently, promoted any real, tangible benefit.

 

The guest policy changed September 13, 2022 and was praised by the NYU community. This was amazing news! Or was it? The changes, prima facie, were excellent, allowing members outside of the NYU community to finally come on campus to visit after several years of being forbidden. This meant family and friends were finally allowed to reconnect with their NYU-affiliated loved ones, bringing a true, broader community back to the university. However, not everything was as it appeared. Only those who were fully vaccinated with a booster shot were allowed, comparatively speaking, “easy” access. I say “easy” because the individual who was fully vaccinated and boosted still had to be ‘sponsored’ by their host, had to wait to get electronically approved by NYU personnel, had to submit proof of their vaccination, had to get their proof of vaccination approved by more NYU personnel, and then, once completely approved to be on campus, had to complete a Violet Go form for each day they would be staying on campus. This unnecessarily meticulous process was not a way to protect the community, but a way for NYU to slowly transition from their previous policy of ‘NO OUTSIDE VISITORS’ to ‘SOME OUTSIDE VISITORS.’

However, there is evidence that it caused harm. One NYU senior, who would like to remain anonymous, said that his time spent in isolation caused “a serious depression” which he didn’t feel he had the proper support to handle. He said, “a couple trips to NYU’s Wellness Center are not enough to help, and I know that visits from friends and family would.” Another NYU student, a freshman who would also like to remain anonymous, said that her family was under the impression that NYU was “looking down on them” for their personal choices. She said her parents weren’t vaccinated because of the lack of information about the vaccine in her home country, though she said her parents do support others who wish to get it. She said, “I understand it’s unpopular that some people wish to not be vaccinated, however, we don’t ask people about the status of their other vaccinations regularly. And it would have been really nice to have my mother visit me at my dorm, especially when I was struggling to transition earlier in the semester.” Furthermore, personally, being the partner of an individual with a congenital heart condition who is not able to receive the booster shot due to doctor’s orders, I felt shocked by NYU’s total disregard of people struggling under various special conditions and circumstances.

However, perhaps you are getting the intuition that NYU’s protocol was completely fine––maybe a bit of a bother, but not totally ridiculous. After all, all of the people mentioned above technically were allowed into NYU facilities following the September 13 rule change (albeit with increased difficulty). Therefore, one could rightly say, we had been in a global pandemic for two years, and campus safety could only naturally increase after that. I will allow this contention for now, hoping that by presenting more information on NYU’s September 13 policies, NYU’s inconsistencies will start to become more apparent and even a bit foolish in their futility.

Visitors who were not fully vaccinated or boosted were meant to gain campus access approval. If you were fully vaccinated but not boosted, or not vaccinated at all, you still had to be ‘sponsored’ by your resident and approved to visit by NYU personnel, however, this next step is where it differs. The not-fully-vaccinated individual would then have to fill out a form claiming their reason for being unvaccinated or unboosted was because of 1) religious reasons or 2) medical reasons. There was no option listed for those who decided not to, based on their prerogative, indicating subliminally, though blatantly, that these people were not welcome on NYU campuses. Therefore, the unvaccinated or unboosted person would select from these two options and then be prompted to submit a PCR test for every two days that they were on campus. (For the uninsured, this would cost $600 for a week.) The PCR tests had to then be approved by NYU personnel. Once the PCR was approved, Violet Go forms would have to be filled out for each day the unvaccinated or unboosted visitor’s access was granted.

You may be wondering…why does this matter? Well, how many of your partially vaccinated or unboosted friends or family members would be willing to go through all of this for a weekend visit? How many uninsured people do you know that would be willing to pay anywhere from $150-$600 to get PCR tests on their brief vacation to New York? The policy is lousy in practice, a way to feign progress without really putting any progress into place. In other words, NYU chose marginal benefit over preventing the obvious, ongoing harm of the NYU community. Ultimately, the policy seems to be a way to get people who are not fully vaccinated off their campuses.

Furthermore, the residual effect of the policies was the air of constant surveillance and scrutiny created between different figures of power in NYU buildings and residence halls. The guards had to bear the brunt of these absurd policies by questioning and bothering people for various signatures, IDs, and proofs of vaccination. One girl in my residence hall even complained that a guard allowed her and her guest inside the dorm at around midnight, and then banged on her door at 3:00 a.m., waking them both up, because he forgot to grab the guest’s ID. However, a different guard, who would rather remain anonymous, said the man was just doing his job because “NYU is quick to hire, but quicker to fire.” Then there are the guards who monitor building access, who are required to check for both our Violet Go pass and our NYU ID, often forced to confront people who simply forgot. RAs, too, had to take on the brunt of these policies, reporting rule violations even by residents who had snuck in a friend for a semblance of well-being or lied about their parent’s vaccination status so they could have some company. I do sympathize greatly with the students who have felt so isolated these past years in the NYU residence halls, who had always complied with the rules––that is, until they became absurdly exacerbated in duration and measure that students felt they had no choice but to circumvent restrictions. No one wants to break the rules, but mental health and socialization are human needs that should be treated with care and taken very seriously. NYU failed to do that, and so I find dissent acceptable, even admirable, in these specific cases. After all, in light of recent residence hall break-ins that have left students frightened and frustrated, the administration’s purported commitment to student safety veers toward a facade.

 

The bottom line is that if you are an NYU resident or student and any of your friends, family, or loved ones are international, single, living below the poverty line, did not receive a college education, are “non-white”, and/or have serious health conditions such as being immunocompromised, there is a higher chance that you know someone who is not vaccinated, partially vaccinated, or does not have the booster, making them, as of the September 13 policy, largely unwanted on campus. NYU seems to have conveniently forgotten that only 34 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated with at least one booster shot. Therefore, if people like this aren’t efficiently able to visit NYU dorms and campus for the safety of the greater NYU community, it would seem that, by NYU’s logic, all students and visitors should be regularly PCR tested, students and faculty should only leave their rooms unless for necessary reasons, vaccination status should be a preliminary step in engaging with anyone in public, and we should not be able to travel home for the holidays without PCR testing our family.

It is quite clear that NYU won’t implement these rules today, nor do I think they should, because though these practices may be ideal to prevent COVID, they are no longer practical, especially since NYU faculty and students have been required to be fully vaccinated with at least one booster shot. We have put in the work as a community, received our vaccines and booster shots, worn masks for two years, isolated, quarantined, attended digital classes, struggled mentally, encouraged our loved ones to get their shots. It is time to abandon unnecessary, meticulous policies that work against people within the NYU community. After all, only about forty percent of people in NYC have at least one booster shot , and the other sixty percent should not be designated as ignorant nor unworthy.

But wait! Didn’t NYU change their guest policy once again on October 24? The updated guest policy is: 1) all residents still must sponsor their guests and 2) no proof of vaccination is required to be submitted, and it will not be checked, but it is still required by all guests. In other words, ‘it is okay if you visit without being vaccinated, but we will say that it isn’t in order to virtue signal.’ After all, what has changed from September 13 to October 24? In New York City, the average number of new COVID cases per week was calculated at 1,981 on September 12 before rising to 2,110 on October 24. It seems to be safe to assume that the increase in cases didn’t provoke NYU’s revised and more lenient guest policy. Instead, it seems appropriate to assume that NYU decided enough time had passed by to ease up another restriction. Care is merely a tangential piece in the university’s mission to appear a certain way, to avoid being called hypocrites for enacting COVID-19 guest policies that caused more suffering than good in their prolonged duration. Therefore, NYU cannot simply undo the mess they made: they have to stick by it, like a stubborn child who refuses to admit fault. Moreover, it is interesting how now, after Thanksgiving, the average number of COVID cases per week in NYC are at about 2,700. No new protocols have been called into place, indicating to me once again the absurdity of NYU’s policies that, these past six months, seem to change on a whim, whenever it might benefit the university’s image.

All NYU students, residents, and guests alike deserve a certain liberty that reflects and honors the present. We are not in the thick of COVID-19, thankfully. We should continue washing our hands, wearing masks when it is necessary, and social distancing if it is appropriate, but menial policies and Violet Go checks seem to have done little more than systematize the university’s facade of moral action. I therefore encourage you to ponder when you could walk into Bobst and scan your card and go without being chased by a guard, or when NYU personnel didn’t treat you like elementary schoolers going to the bathroom, or when there was a sense of community at NYU? I’m a senior now, so many of you may not remember this. However, this was a reality at one point, and it would be great if it could be again. We deserve it. And NYU, the multibillion-dollar institution that it is, should envision itself in the image of its previous policies, if they really ‘care.’ Or, at least should show some tangible data that defends their policies as anything more than bureautic, isolating, and largely ineffective.