Three days after Chicago Thinker writer Jahmiel Jackson spearheaded a pressure campaign for the University of Chicago to end its harmful, unscientific residence hall rules, UChicago rolled back its COVID madness.
On Friday, January 21, UChicago’s “Housing and Residence Life” declared that residence hall study spaces, community kitchens, and lounges were closed in the name of COVID. Now, in a statement released this Thursday to all students living in housing, the university announced that “Beginning tomorrow, Friday, February 4th at 5:30 PM, inter-hall visitation privileges will be restored.” The university further promised it will “aim to open community kitchens later this month.”
It remains unclear whether the university will also be reopening residence hall study spaces and lounges. In a phone call with UChicago “Housing and Residence Life,” a representative told the Thinker that the potential reopening of student lounges is “depend[ent] on the nature of that space or size.”
UChicago’s dorm update follows a Chicago Thinker movement led by Jackson, campaigning for the university to return to normalcy and stop defrauding students out of the traditional dorm experience. Indeed, a little over a week after the university announced its strict new dorm rules, Jackson penned a passionate op-ed condemning these restrictions for being unenforceable for resident dean assistants, like him, and detrimental to the mental health of students.
“I did not sign up to police every single social interaction of my students, nor do I want to, given the mental toll COVID isolation has had on young people,” wrote Jackson. “I fear for the well-being of my students. They are being cheated out of the full dorm experience for which they paid, and they are being bullied into seclusion by the university.”
On Tuesday, NBC Chicago ran a TV segment on Jackson’s article. In his interview with NBC Chicago, Jackson argued the university’s policy was nonsensical, given that nearly 100% of students are vaccinated and boosted for COVID and the university is not experiencing a COVID outbreak.
Jackson also pointed out that student living in housing are charged a fee of $1,707 a quarter to cover amenities and social events. Yet, since the start of the pandemic, students have had no access to amenities and have been forced out of many in-person social events, as well. Despite these restrictions, students this year are being charged the same $1,707 fee as charged before the pandemic.
Gerald McSwiggan, UChicago’s Assistant Director for Public Affairs (who is still ignoring the Chicago Thinker’s request for comment on a discriminatory dining hall policy) said in a statement to NBC Chicago that the university is “monitoring conditions with experts from UChicago Medicine to see when conditions will allow some additional precautions to be rolled back…” McSwiggan added that the school would “provide an update on February 4 once [they] have more data about infections on campus.”
As promised in the statement provided to NBC Chicago, and following Jackson’s article and interview, the university has officially “roll[ed] back” the residence hall COVID madness and is now allowing students to visit each other once again.
“Open up our campus,” said Jackson in his NBC Chicago interview. “It’s time that our university becomes a model for asking questions and setting the trend, instead of just following after the city [of Chicago].” With its latest update, it seems the university may finally be listening to Jackson.
Lmao chill with the delusions of grandeur. What you did wasn’t a big “pressure campaign,” it was one article and one interview. I’ll grant that there’s a chance you sped the changes up, but just like the remote learning period, these were always meant to be temporary measures aimed at weathering the massive omicron wave. Housing explicitly said as much in their email announcing the policy: “It is our hope that over the next several weeks we will be able to relax these restrictions.” Given that there have been no major outbreaks on campus since in-person learning started, I’d say they worked pretty well.
The madness continues: why are young make Chicago U students forced to take the now understood and significant risk of myocarditis with each vaccine jab? The so-called “experts” that administrators hide behind are making fools of U Chicago’s historic reputation as an analytical and independent thinking institution. It’s refreshing to see Chicago Thinker rebut the madness, but it’s time to learn who is behind the madness and debate them publicly.
Ur dumb. On Jan 28th the University said in an email to all students that they’d provide a Feb 4th update on the temporary measures you list here. The OP-ed came out Jan 31st, the interview was Feb 1st. (for those with reading comprehension difficulties, those dates are after Jan 28th). Surprise surprise, the University sent out a Feb 4th update lifting *some* of the restrictions.
You must lend me your time machine that allows your “pressure campaigns” to have effects before they begin.
Right now we are in an Information War. The cronies on top have been shoving their garbage policies down our throats since this pandemic has begun. Their polices are based on faulty science, none of which has been peer reviewed. But they continue to push us to “Trust the Science” they promote while censoring anyone who can poke holes in it.
I am attending Virginia Tech and helped end their vaccine mandate by plastering these flyers all around campus:
https://freedom.social/pdf/There-is-no-pandemic-flyer-2.pdf
Every weekend I am going to continue plastering these flyers until everything about this pandemic is gone. Not enough people are questioning.