Drinking in Pods, ‘Social Snitching,’ and More Covid Freshman Experiences
How do you make friends in your first weeks at college when you don’t know who you can trust?
Since Emily Thompson arrived for her freshman year at Tufts University, she’s been in mandatory quarantine, only leaving her dorm room, which she shares with a roommate, to go to the bathroom or throw out garbage. Their dorm room is next to the hall’s trash can, Emily says, and though they aren’t allowed to leave their door open, “If we’re leaving to go to the bathroom or throw out the trash at the same time, we’ll stop someone in the hall and say, ‘Hey, what’s your Instagram,’ and start DMing if we have common interests.” They put sticky notes on their window saying hi, and the sophomores who lived in the dorm across the way put up stickies with their Instagram handles.
After quarantine is up — as soon as students get three negative Covid tests — they can join their hall’s “cohort” of about a dozen neighbors who may socialize with more relaxed rules. In the cohort, they’re allowed to hang out “slightly closer than six feet,” with masks on. All other social interaction has to happen six feet apart. “In our group chats, I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s as if Tufts were picking out our friends for us,” Emily says.
