Throughout the pandemic, the American public experienced a new uproar in the culture of excessive safety. Safety is something to strive for, but excessive rules and regulations that diminish life are incredibly harmful, especially if they do little or no good. We take risks every day, and instead of pretending to eliminate them with what has been called “security theater,” we should inform people and let them make their own informed decisions. Consider speed limits on the highway. We could drastically reduce the fatality of car accidents, while cutting gas consumption and encouraging more people to take public transportation, by lowering the speed limit to 30 miles per hour. We do not implement such a law because it would drastically reduce the quality of life and would not be followed.

We see a similar situation in the pandemic. There is a lot of inherent risk in communal housing, in-person classes, and socializing with our peers as these arbitrary rules that no one follows lord over us. Even something as simple as social distancing -- the most important rule for fighting the virus, and necessary in order for masking to be effective -- is not followed. Desks may be separated by six feet, and we may have dots littered on the floor to create a perfect Voronoi diagram. Yet we still pretend that everything is normal when we grab our food or party with our “cohorts.” We performatively police each other’s behaviors, while making exceptions for our own. Nobody truly follows the rules. The gain is slight, and those who are especially worried or vulnerable can feel free to take extra precautions and ask their friends to do the same. Instead of pretending that we follow the guidelines, we should accept that the cost they impose on us is not worth the gain. If the cost were worth it, we would be following the guidelines and even taking extra measures.

Professors and high-risk individuals have now been vaccinated. People who get COVID-19 will experience very mild symptoms, and those who suspect they are high-risk can take extra precautions. We do not eliminate peanuts from the dining hall because a few have deadly allergies to them. We simply label the food, and the people with allergies carry around EpiPens. Because of our remarkable testing regime, we can quantify the level of COVID risk that each of us is exposing ourselves to and adjust appropriately. (Thankfully, it seems that the college administration understands this, because the violation they take most seriously is missing tests for the virus.) That means we could have full classes, a normal dining hall, and an end to the blue Adirondack chairs which supposedly decrease the spread significantly more than a table or regular furniture. We could end the semester without the isolation, and anxiety, that comes with the inconsistent enforcement of these rules.