Rushing Franklin Street During a Pandemic: Bad Intentions or a Longing for Normalcy?
UNC students gather on Franklin street after the Duke-UNC game last week, replicating a time honored tradition despite both University standards and the obvious public health risks. Source.
Rushing Franklin Street after defeating Duke has long been a favorite Tar Heel tradition. The scene of thousands of UNC students gathering to celebrate a victory in the famed UNC-Duke matchup is always newsworthy. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, it is even more so.
Leading up to last Saturday’s game, UNC notified students that Franklin street rush would contravene COVID-19 community standards and warned of potential disciplinary action against those who choose to break COVID protocol. This warning, however, did not stop a massive crowd from gathering on Franklin after the win.
Pictures of Franklin Street spread rapidly across social media and were soon picked up by major news outlets. Naturally, there has since been much controversy surrounding the event. Much attention has fallen on the university, which is now investigating over 300 complaints against students for breaking community standards. Less attention, however, has been directed toward exploring what this moment reveals about our student body and the divisions that exist within it.
The quick spread of the virus on campus and throughout Chapel Hill last semester already exposed the unfortunate reality that many UNC students do not strictly adhere to public health guidelines. But the actions of these students are not representative of the entire student body, much of which has been very cautious during the pandemic. To understand this division, we must seek to find the root cause of why some students are ignoring COVID restrictions.
In a recent Daily Tar Heel article, the editorial board identified “white privilege” and “entitlement” among those who rushed Franklin as the driving reasons behind their behavior. Others have pointed to poor leadership from the university as the culprit. Such explanations, while well-intentioned, are too simple and miss the mark.
Another possible explanation is that the pandemic’s adverse effects on college students are causing them to act in irrational ways. Many recent studies have found that more and more college students are experiencing mental health challenges due to the pandemic. Loneliness, anxiety, stress, and depression are all on the rise, and with limited mental health resources available to meet the growing demand, too many students are left to cope with these problems on their own.
This may lead some students to adopt negative coping mechanisms - including occasionally breaking gathering rules or looking to old traditions to satisfy a natural human need for socialization. Whether they were consciously aware of it or not, rushing Franklin may have meant more to some than a win; it could have represented a momentary return to normalcy and the pre-pandemic college experience.
To be clear, this reasoning is not at all meant to excuse the genuine irresponsibility of those who rushed Franklin last weekend. Such actions clearly risk harm to other students and to the wider Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. Undoubtedly, many who took part in it have acted selfishly before in the past year and were disregarding restrictions. But with such a large crowd, it would be unsurprising if many people among the rushers have been otherwise generally cautious during the pandemic but set aside that caution for one night to take part in an old tradition.
As the university deals with this issue, they must at least consider the possibility that not all students who were there acted in the same way. Some students - likely among those who wore masks and distanced to the extent possible - may have simply been looking for an escape to normalcy rather than acting in bad faith