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I received my Stanford acceptance letter at home, about two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic. Months later, I chose to defer my acceptance owing to the uncertainty of the pandemic.
As I graduate this June alongside the 2,000 or so seniors that also matriculated in the fall of 2021, I am afraid that the absurdity of the actions Stanford took under COVID will be forgotten. My first article for the Review, in fact, was entitled “COVID Policies Push Stanford Students to the Right”—an article that was as much projection as a frustration widely felt among my peers.
I do not want these absurdities to be lost to time, for the “COVID bathrooms” to become an urban legend. So, here I attempt to catalog what Stanford students had to deal with during the 2021-22 school year.
The absurdities are as follows:
- Students would get locked out of all buildings other than their dorms and would be unable to eat at dining halls if they did not complete weekly Color COVID tests. To enter a dining hall, students would have to both swipe their ID and show their COVID status on the Stanford app. If you didn’t take a COVID test that week, or if you didn’t have your phone on you, you wouldn’t be allowed to eat.
- In the dining halls, chairs were artificially limited so that a table with a ~3ft radius would only have four or so seats around it. To eat with friends—and to make friends—students would have to spend time gathering chairs, preventing other students from eating in the company of others. This, obviously, defeated the point of the limitations, because students were clustering around the tables anyways. Dining halls were zero-sum.
- Masks were mandated at the gym. While running on the treadmill, I would be instructed to re-secure my mask to make sure it was covering my whole mouth. Meanwhile, the outdoor gym next to Stanford Law School was blocked off with tape so that no one could enter, even though COVID was known to spread much slower outside than inside.
- Masks were also mandated in all classrooms and libraries, even residential classes like SLE where students lived with their classmates.
- Winter quarter, Stanford introduced ‘COVID bathrooms’ in the dorms. Rather than having a men’s and women’s bathroom on each floor, there were COVID and non-COVID bathrooms. COVID-free were told to avoid the COVID bathrooms, even if no one on their floor had COVID, restricting the amount of stalls, showers, and sinks available. Often, there were small lines to shower, brush one’s teeth, or use the toilet. Also, throughout the year, there were small plastic dividers between each sink station.
- For a time, students whose roommates had COVID were instructed to sleep in the lounges as per an “isolate in place” order, letting their infected roommates take the rooms. (Here’s a good satire piece from the Stanford Daily proving that I am not making up this absurdity.)
- When students were not “isolating in place,” they were taken to EVGR or, worse, off campus isolation hotels. Assigned random ‘COVID roommates,’ in some cases, students were forced to stay in a random off-campus hotel, barred from coming back to campus.
- Until March 27, 2023, Stanford students who self-reported as COVID-positive were able to claim a $72 daily stipend of UberEats money. The program was evidently cancelled when abuse of it became rampant. Many seniors remember frequent Nobu dinners their freshman years.
- The first three weeks of winter quarter were online to prevent the spread of COVID. Originally, it was only the first two weeks, but the hold on in-person classes was extended. However, as many students spent these three weeks in Tahoe or traveling doing Zoom classes, COVID cases soared week four and beyond.
- Many parties, being heavily regulated, were wristband-only, and the wristbands were for sale.
- An EVGR RA sent out a dorm-wide message to 2,400 residents that white students who forwent their masks were “racist, triggering, disrespectful, and immature.”
- Water fountains were only to be used to fill up water bottles and cups.
- Students during the Gaieties naked run were told to wear masks … despite it being a naked run.
This list ignores the fact that the 2020-21 school year was entirely online and, to add insult to injury, the fact that the university repeatedly told students that year—at the very last minute—that they would not in fact be returning to campus. Nor does the list include that Stanford mandated a COVID shot for all students enrolling in the 2021-22 school year and that it censured Dr. Scott Atlas for questioning severe lockdown measures.
Stanford may seem like the best elite university because it is the least political. While Harvard and Yale are plagued by nonstop protests, Stanford students would rather wait in line to hear Sam Altman speak than to “speak truth to power”. Sadly, this apolitical bent also allowed Stanford to force its students to bend the knee to rules both draconian and absurd.
The record ought to be set straight—and remembered past the Class of ‘25.
To report further grievances, please email eic@stanfordreview.org.
