Welcome to the Great Re$et, kids:
"Isolated college first-years look to Instagram to make friends" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff, October 4, 2020
On campuses, friendships are still forming the old-fashioned way, but even this generation of digitally savvy teenagers say social media have taken on unprecedented importance this year because there are so few other ways to meet
Talking to someone in class now requires near shouting, students said in interviews, since everyone is muffled by masks and spaced far apart. Dining halls are largely takeout operations, and club meetings happen over Zoom. A student at Wellesley described taking a modern dance class virtually, lunging across her dorm room alone, but everybody’s got Instagram on their phones.
Each day, collegesboston2024 features about seven first-year students who attend colleges around the region, each of whom stars in their own post that introduces them to the account’s followers. Students who want to be featured — some 700 have applied so far — can submit three photos of themselves as well as their hometown, major, and a short bio. An array of similar school-specific accounts have also proven popular.
18-year-old Lucy Garberg and her team — who choose who’s featured, and keep an eye out for the occasional scammer — also post infographics about businesses in Boston, suggesting the best spots for students to find boba tea, bookstores, manicures or tattoos, places of the sort that. Being featured on the page can be somewhat overwhelming, students said.
Lily Schutt, a first-year at Emerson College, checked her phone on July 30 and found more than 60 follow requests. She had submitted her information weeks before but was told there was a queue; now, apparently, it was her turn. Message after message dropped into her Instagram inbox, and comments popped up under her photos. Fellow Floridians said hello; one girl said she, too, loved discussing politics; a number of people said she was pretty. Small talk, for the most part, but it made her feel more comfortable coming to campus in the fall.
Some of Schutt’s collegiate Instagram connections have bloomed into real-life friendships. After she had moved into her dorm, Schutt, 18, sent another Emerson student a message to say she liked her dorm room decorations in the background of her Instagram photos. Later the pair met for coffee, and the next week they went thrift shopping, but the combination of social-media acquaintances plus mask-wearing makes for some unusual interactions. During a recent fire drill, Schutt saw a boy she follows online. She knew what his face looked like from Instagram, even though he was wearing a mask. “I have never seen some of the people that live in my hall’s faces,” she said.
:(
Janis Whitlock, a research scientist at Cornell University who studies young people and social media, said the ways young people are adapting to the crisis will shape the world that will emerge when the pandemic ends.
No they won't.
That will be done by the Great Re$et crowd from the World Economic Forum. The Globe is assisting them in that endeavor every day as the hornswoggle and bamboozle the kids.
“There are going to be a lot of really amazing things that come from this time, but it is asking us, and young people, to dig deep, and it’s scary because most of us haven’t been here before,” she said.
Rather than stunt students' social growth, she said, the obstacles they face this year may make them more resilient.
Never mind the mental health issues and suicides that are going through the roof.
Really, folks, this type of journali$m has reached such an offensive rank-rot it's impossible to read it anymore. They think they are part of the club, but they are not. When their owners and editors are done with them, they will be dispatched like us.
For one Wellesley first-year, Suzanna Schofield, the difficulty of making friends has made her more intentional about it, and she has pushed herself to strike up conversations before class, even through masks, or to ask a girl to breakfast, even though they have to sit six feet apart.
Schofield has made several good friends this way, but she has also pushed herself to broaden her circle by crafting a bio for collegesboston2024. She found being featured on the account a little exhausting. Sometimes she opens her phone to see double-digit notifications and just shuts it again.
“I’m an extrovert in the sense of being around other people, in person — not through technology,” she said, “and so it is tiring, because then you spend your time reaching out, but you don’t spend time with actual people,” and some students said friendships they’ve forged online don’t seem as profound as those that spring up in real life. Dylan Rottman, an Emerson first-year, counts himself lucky to have met his two closest friends so far in line at the dining hall.
Why is everyone the Globe talks to a Joo?
Other students said they couldn’t quite manage to come across as themselves in the bios they wrote, no matter how detailed they made them, and yet, several students remarked, the pandemic has made people open up quicker, and in a more genuine way than they might have otherwise, which helps bridge the gaps.
Foolish children.
“People want to know that there are other people who feel just like them," said Ananya Dutta, 18, of Fremont, Calif., one of the seven who run the collegesboston2024 account.
The students who run the page are, like their classmates, keenly aware they’ve come of age in a troubled world, and they try to use the account, in small ways, to shape a better one.
They feature a diverse array of students and have noticed that differences rather than similarities between students foster the most interaction.
The pandemic has forged bonds between those in the class of 2024, Dutta said; canceled graduations, summer jobs, and college plans have forced them to stop taking things for granted. Back in April, she and her classmates imagined the coffee shops and bookstores they would visit together. Now, they take things one day at a time.
“We don’t know when things are going to end; we don’t know when things are going to start to get better,” she said.....
Actually, we do.
They were written down in documents from the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, and the WEF.
I guess they aren't teaching the kids about that stuff.
--more--"
"Northeastern University will require most professors to return to campus for teaching and research during the spring semester, a school official said Friday. The move is considered safe because the university has contained the virus through frequent testing and strict adherence to safety protocols such as mask-wearing and social distancing, David Madigan, the university’s provost, said in an e-mail to faculty. For the fall semester, Northeastern is offering a mix of online and in-person learning, and the university has allowed wide latitude for both professors and students uncomfortable returning to campus, but in the spring, faculty requesting to work from home will be approved on a case-by-case basis, Madigan said. Those eligible include people with disabilities, those with pregnancy-related conditions, anyone with a medical condition that puts them at greater risk of becoming severely ill, and those living with someone who has such a condition. The university will no longer approve work accommodations based solely on a person’s age, but employees who are concerned that their age makes them more vulnerable to the coronavirus may fill out a form to notify human resources staff, Madigan said. He added that the new policy “may be subject to change, given the evolving nature of the current coronavirus crisis, as well as university operational needs.”
What the tyrants at Northeastern didn't expect was a backlash from faculty members, particularly women with family care responsibilities, so they announced they would be more flexible about in-person teaching requirements during the spring semester.
One might say they made the wrong Assumption:
"Students at Assumption University on Friday started a shelter-in-place order that will last until at least next Friday due to a rise in COVID-19 cases on campus, officials said. While in lockdown, students must stay in their dorm rooms, and only essential personnel will be allowed on campus, University President Francesco C. Cesareo said in a letter to the campus community. Commuter students will also switch to remote learning for the rest of the semester, the letter said. Eight students tested positive for the virus this week, and a total of 130 students are in quarantine or self-isolating on and off-campus, Michael K. Guilfoyle, executive director of communications for the university, said in an e-mail. The decision to lock down the campus was made in consultation with city public health officials, Cesareo wrote. Worcester is a high-risk community for COVID-19, and had 452 confirmed cases of the virus in the last 14 days according to public health data released Thursday."
And WHERE WOULD THAT BE?
A COVID CAMP perhaps?
Parents, get your kids the hell home NOW!
