Paper about 2020 Halloween at UVA

Pandemic Parties: First-Year Life in the Time of Coronavirus

October 31st, 2020: far from an ordinary Saturday night. It was Halloween during a pandemic; uncertainty hung in the chilly autumn air like a disease, and when dusk turned to night in Charlottesville, the blue moon shone ominously on the stirring masses of University of Virginia first-years. Some donned elaborate and creative disguises; others, usually male, lazily threw on a cowboy hat or basketball jersey and called it a costume. Everyone, however, wore a mask this Halloween.

The past several weeks at UVa had been marked by a dramatic decline in reported COVID-19 cases – after peaking at just below 300 cases in early October, the University’s official case count was in the 50’s going into “Halloweekend” – but despite the low case count, tensions remained high for students, eager to have a good time in the midst of a public health crisis. School administrators, including UVa’s Dean of Students Allen Groves, had spent the days leading up to Halloweekend sending out public service announcements to remind students about the persistent risk of COVID-19, especially as record-setting outbreaks were taking place across the country. Even more intimidating was the heightened police presence, especially around the bars where, although few will admit outright, many first-year students frequent on weekends; on Thursday night, bar-goers reported frequently noticing officers monitoring adherence to COVID guidelines. But even given the exceptional risk, a vast majority of UVa first-years still got together in the hopes of having a good time. It may have been the full moon, it could have been the reckless spirit of youth, and chemically-altered judgement likely played a part in some cases, but whatever the cause, dorm parties seemed to take place in every residence hall on UVa grounds and the bars overflowed with suspiciously fresh-faced “21 year-olds from Delaware.”

This year’s Halloween, though more lively and more widely celebrated than an ordinary Saturday night during the COVID pandemic, still resembled the structure of previous weekends. Since their arrival in September, UVa’s first-year students have been looking for ways to meet new people at college. Typically a difficult undertaking for people in unfamiliar environments, especially those who are more introverted, the challenge of meeting new people was made even worse by the COVID crisis. This fall’s first-years are not only nervous about daunting social situations; in 2020, they also need to be wary of a disease that, at best, could get them put in at least a week of quarantine, and at worst could be potentially dangerous to themselves or those around them. Because of the compelling need to meet new people but simultaneously reduce the risk of contracting COVID (or being around someone who has it), many students have opted to limit their social interactions to small groups of friends and avoid outsiders. Bailey, a first-year from Fredericksburg, Virginia, is one such student. Shortly after moving onto grounds, she met a group of friends through one of her hallmates and has almost exclusively spent her Friday and Saturday nights with this group. Although she considers herself to usually be a social person, this year she has avoided large groups and been wary of strangers, especially since she already spent two weeks in quarantine due to a close friend of hers testing positive. “I feel like ever since I went to quarantine and came back,” she says, “it’s like I’ve been paranoid about going back [to quarantine]. Now I ask a lot more questions before I hang out with people.” While she does meet new people on occasion – on Halloween she went to a dorm party with about 15 people – most of Bailey’s weekends have been spent with the same small group of about six. Her friends make the same COVID-related decisions as she does, avoiding contact with strangers without confirming their infection status, which makes it easy for the group to trust and be comfortable around each other. This is a very common approach to social life during this unusual semester, and many other first years are acting similarly, choosing to stick together with small groups and hang out in dorms instead of going to bars or seeing if they can get into greek events.

Not all dorm parties are created equal, however. Emmanuel, a first-year engineering student, has gained some micro-celebrity in his residence hall for having raucous parties in his room every weekend. At first, Emmanuel only knew one person at UVa, but he quickly grew his social circles by meeting people through his roommate (who has social connections from high school) and by having people over to play Mario Kart on their Nintendo Wii. Soon, Emmanuel’s room became the weekly place to be for many of his hall-mates, often mixing with girls from the upstairs floors as well. In early October, his roommate tested positive for COVID-19, but Emmanuel tested negative. Despite the two weeks he spent in quarantine and the still-present threat of him being sent back if he is exposed to COVID again, Emmanuel seems pretty blasé about coming in contact with strangers. “Honestly, I encourage new people [to come to my dorm]. I kind of have, like, an open door policy. Probably because my door doesn’t latch, but whatever...” Although Emmanuel is comfortable around strangers in the midst of the pandemic, he is (and his get-togethers are) still subject to some logistical constraints. The University has enacted a rule against groups larger than 10, and even though this is usually enforced quite liberally, groups that are obviously much bigger than 10, usually around the high teens or 20’s, are more likely to draw unwanted attention and punitive action; on top of that, Emmanuel’s small room can only fit so many people, so Emmanuel usually only has around 10 people, maybe a few more, on a regular weekend.

Of course, the small group-oriented social life isn’t what most first-year students had in mind for their first months at college; many, such as Bailey, had always imagined their first weeks of college to be filled with huge, exciting fraternity parties with loud music and hundreds of new people to meet, and even those who didn’t plan on going to such events were still anticipating the opportunity to make friends through clubs and similar activities. Michael, a first-year from Richmond, isn’t the type to party much. He is a diligent and tremendously intelligent student – he’s on track to be a physics major – but he still enjoys meeting new people and is a wonderful conversationalist. Michael had hoped to get active in clubs and intramural sports, which, like most other things, has been very difficult to do this semester. Clubs at UVa have been forced to forego their in-person activities and move online to zoom meetings, and many even cancelled operations altogether with the hopes of starting up in the spring term. Because of this, Michael’s options for socialization are much more limited than he’d hoped, but he’s still found other ways of meeting people and having fun. “For a while, it was kinda hard to find people to hang out with, especially since my roommate doesn’t really do much either,” he told me, “but eventually I found a couple guys through Spikeball and I made some friends who skateboard, so now I’m doing fine.” Michael now spends many of his nights out skateboarding with his new friends and feels that he’s had success in making a fulfilling social life for himself, even with the obstacles posed by the pandemic.

While many first-years are happy with small dorm parties and others, like Michael, are perfectly content to avoid parties altogether, there are other students that feel drawn to larger gatherings. Perceiving the dorm-based party scene to be lackluster, these students have turned to bars and, in some cases, greek life, in order to meet new people and have a good time, despite the additional risks presented by the COVID pandemic. Abby, a first-year from Pennsylvania, is one such individual. During her first weeks of college, she was very cautious about being around strangers and crowds, but as the weeks went by and she grew bored of staying in her room on weekends, she began to warm to the idea of going out. Eventually, she started going to bars with her roommate and has since become less concerned about COVID. “As I’ve been here and I’ve been going out, I haven’t gotten COVID, so I’m a little bit more comfortable… I’ve been in close contact with people who have had it, and I never got it, so… Maybe I’m just immune?” While the jury is still out on whether Abby is immune or has just been lucky, many bar-going students share Abby’s stance – and some actually are immune. Joe and Gary are first-year roommates – Gary is from out of state, while Joe is from Richmond – and they, unlike Abby, came to college in September unencumbered by COVID concerns. Both had contracted COVID over the summer, and as such felt their lasting immunity would be enough to prevent them from becoming infected or infecting others. Although their logic is somewhat flawed – there are confirmed cases of COVID reinfection after three months – their approach is not unjustified, given that reinfection is incredibly rare – as far as we know, that is. Gary and Joe are certainly some of the most social members of their age cohort, frequently spending weekends visiting low-key fraternity events, going to bars, hanging out with upperclassmen (Joe knows many older UVA students from high school), and occasionally passing the time in fellow first-years’ dorms. Despite Gary and Joe’s outgoing (and, as some might say, reckless) lifestyles, however, they were surprisingly conscientious about their situation. Gary expressed his sympathy for those who were less able to take risks during the time of COVID, saying, “I feel like there’s a lot of people who have a hard time meeting new people if they’re not willing to cross that boundary, if they don’t feel comfortable exposing themselves [to COVID]... and those people are missing out on making friends.” They also seemed to justify their behavior by positing that the environments where they go out (i.e. bars and frats) are dominated by a social contract whereby individuals are knowingly assuming their risk of contracting COVID when they visit these densely populated areas (“My mentality about it is, if you’re willing to go out to the bar scene, you’re fully willing to expose yourself to others,” Joe told me). Additionally, they felt reassured by UVa’s remarkably low case count, which has steadily declined and remained low for the past several weeks (at time of writing, the UVa student case count is 16, compared to nearly 300 cases in early October) despite regular, compulsory COVID screening for all students every 9-days, which seems to indicate that COVID is, for the time being, under control at UVa, allowing students like Gary and Joe to socialize with a clear conscience.

Any other year, Halloween would have looked very different. It’s probable that less students would be wearing masks and many more would be outside trick-or-treating on the lawn, bar-hopping, and visiting frat parties. For many first years who had never experienced it themselves, the Halloweekend of the pre-COVID past seems like an exotic, distant celebration; but, despite the fact that this year’s events may not live up to previous years’ expectations, students have managed to make the best of their situations. Some have decided to act like they’re completely immune to COVID, while others have chosen to focus on more intimate friendships in small groups in ways that would have been much harder in the past. Interviewing these first years, all of them shared the feeling that, although things could be better, they were all happy with the way things were going this year. Emmanuel said it best; “it hasn’t been a letdown. This semester had every opportunity to be horrible, but it hasn’t been, so… that was a pleasant surprise, I guess?”