Authored by Christopher Belden
When the pandemic first infected the United States in late January 2020, I just had to survive two more marking periods of high school to be liberated from the most miserable years of my life. Two more marking periods, and then I would be off to Manhattan College, a small school, perfect for being a part of a tight-knit community where I would make countless new acquaintances. However, in spring 2020 I failed to comprehend the political selfishness of so many Americans that would continue to prolong what we all thought was going to be a two-week staycation.
By the end of spring 2020, my dream of going away to college in New York City seemed to grow more and more unachievable. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to go off to Manhattan College with a hybrid first year. While my identity was confined to a small virtual tile and concealed behind a mask, I was one of the fortunate ones, for many schools simply stayed online. However, the typical college life was absent—yet still cost the same price. No parties. No guests. Opportunities had to be given up. Internships put on hold or all-out canceled. To me, it was a short-term loss for a long-term gain of a return to normalcy in the near future.
The scientific development of the vaccine provided hope for sophomore year, and that optimism only continued to grow as the Fall 2021 semester drew near. All classes were going to be conducted in person, allowing for the sense of community that Manhattan College prides itself on but had been missing for a year. The face-to-face connections and ability to go to professors’ office hours in person would open doors for my professional career to take off.
Sophomore year, I became the student assistant to the director at the Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center (HGI) on campus, which then led me to an in-person fellowship at the Interfaith Civic Leadership Academy (ICLA), aimed at exploring the religious and civic diversity of New York City through various workshops and small discussions between fellows. College once again was functioning as a database of limitless possibilities waiting to be discovered. That is what college embodies for me: opportunity. My belief in opportunity is what convinced me to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt because the opportunities were unmatched in comparison to a commuter school in Connecticut. This fellowship would be the launching pad to endless opportunities connecting me with professionals from all over New York City.
Every Tuesday night I would learn a little more about another fellow and discover we had more in common than I thought. Tuesday nights became the most important night of the week! Every time I would step off the elevator at Lower Manhattan Headquarters, the stressful burden of endless schoolwork would diminish. This fellowship was an escape from stressful college life, but at the same time taught me some of the greatest lessons about diversity and acceptance that a lecture hall could not. However, at the snap of a finger, the face-to-face interaction and networking reverted back to a square on a screen in which the personnel connections floated off to the abyss as if it was spring 2020 all over again.
I breathed a sigh of disappointment thinking, “Here we go again.”
Seeing the email that the in-person cohort meeting switched to online, I breathed a sigh of disappointment thinking, “Here we go again.” Back to where I started the pandemic: locked away in my room with my only connection to the outside world being through a screen. The sense of community and escape from a college student’s reality that I loved about this fellowship vanished when it was on a screen. How do you really get to know people and form a lasting connection with them from a black tile and shotty audio? We are on Zoom with one person one day, and then the next we can not recognize them in person. We are not cartoons. We are not meant to live our lives out on a screen, but we find ourselves doing so because of a specific, ill-informed group of people who act as if only their lives have been hell for the last two years.
My disappointment and frustration do not lie upon the directors of my fellowship; rather, it is on the people who think they are a part of a patriotic, revolutionary movement by being ignorant to science and resisting the vaccine. We have lived in this pandemic for two years! How much longer do they want to make the pandemic last? There are vaccines to help prevent and lessen the effects of COVID-19, but people still refuse to take it. There are people overseas who would take it in a heartbeat but do not have the privilege to, and they certainly do not have the privilege to deny the vaccine over conspiracy theories and ignorance.
My message to the non-compliant and far-right lawmakers is this: The rest of society is waiting on you. We did our part. Now it’s your turn to do yours. You decide whether we as a society continuously live in this never-ending cycle of déjà vu or can have a more normal tomorrow.