Microcosm

We’re making news over here at Marist. Earlier in the week, we announced that our College is on pause, with only essential activities allowed. Unlike the fall 2020 pause, essential activities this time do include in-person classes and working out (via appointment) in the McCann Recreation Center – but not a lot else. College decision makers have surmised that this voluntary, precautionary pause is essential in slowing the spread of the impressively persistent Covid-19 virus. A quick glance at our Covid dashboard – which I obsessively refresh each afternoon – and you’ll note that our case numbers have been increasing at a somewhat alarmingly rapid rate for the past week.

Like last fall, during this pause, all intercollegiate athletics activities – practices and competition – have been, well, paused. Our cross country and track athletes were already on pause since March 10, because of burgeoning positive Covid cases within our ranks. We were a bit ahead of the curve, with our Covid numbers trending upward slightly before the general campus population. As one source of trusted information on campus said to me: “Pete, your program is really just a microcosm of what’s happening on the rest of campus.” I like that explanation, although I don’t like the outcome of that explanation. As I think I have mentioned here previously? The current variant(s) of this virus seem to be extremely effective at transmissibility, much more so than the “original” Covid. In other words, when people convene -- now vs. the fall semester -- the likelihood of viral spread is much greater. What does that mean? On a college or university campus, where social interaction of every sort is the norm, outbreaks of positive cases are bound to happen. Zoom in on our upcoming outdoor track season (first scheduled meet = two weeks from today) and ask the same question (what does this mean?), and the answer defaults to something – two things, really -- we have said with alarming regularity over the past year: “I don’t know” and “We’ll see.”