Back when we were reasonably fearful of Corona, freshman and sophomores alike rushed home, attempting to flee the dreaded illness. Now, these same students have flocked back to Whitman — and back to the virus — in droves, now attempting to flee the family members they’ve been trapped with, The Shining-style, for nearly a year. 

Sophomore Naziha claims, “It got to a point where I was running up to random strangers and begging them to cough in my mouth so I could hibernate in my bedroom without my mother yelling at me to come out to the living room and watch TV together. Too many episodes of Modern Family with her and I literally

pass out.” Other students seem to express similar sentiments, with first year Gemma explaining, “If my lungs collapse from the virus, that’ll give me a great excuse to ignore their calls. You and your siblings can’t yell at each other if you’ve got no air to speak with.”

Sophomore Eugene confesses, “When my parents offered to drive out with me to move my stuff into Stanton, I told them ‘Nah, it’s all there already in Jewett storage,’ and whatever other lies I could think up just to get the hell away from them ASAP. I put up with coexisting with those psychos for way too many months. I’m not about to spend a whole road trip with ’em, too. I was more than willing to make six consecutive trips to and from Seattle to break into their house at night with a ski mask on to retrieve my stuff.”

While these attitudes are alarming, we can find some positives within them: they confirm the Whitman campus and community to be a place of comfort, security and relief. Enough so to encourage students to risk ventilators being painfully shoved down their throats to escape spending one more goddamn minute under the same roof as their parents. Sophomore Film Major Eli shares, “I have a flannel shirt and a red jacket. We’ve got an axe in our garage. It snows a lot where we live. In short, I’m just glad to be back at Whitman.”