For a lot of students prior to the year 2020, the thought of going to school was a nightmare. More precisely, the act of waking up at the crack of dawn, racing to the bathroom and brushing your teeth, shoving two slices of bread down your throat to then hurl yourself into a classroom with people you barely liked was nauseating… and yet, there is something about this traditional style of education that I miss so much.
“These are strange and unprecedented times.” “I hope you’re staying safe.” “We’re all in this together!” Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, well, that’s not gonna stop me from calling out an asshole when I see one.
Earlier this month, the nation marked the nineteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks with our usual solemnity, care, and grief. Photos of the burning World Trade Center were once again splashed across social media, lest anyone get the impression that they had forgotten the event which so scarred our collective consciousness.
Well… what exactly did we expect?
Over the course of an unprecedented five-month quarantine, college students across America waited with bated breath for news about whether campuses would reopen or not for the Fall 2020 semester.
Two days ago, the paper got an email from bronxtenantsunited@gmail.com, detailing a day of action going on today, April 1st, at the corner of Willis Avenue and East 139th Street in the Bronx. At 2pm, the tenants in the South Bronx will converge to demand rent freezes as well as better living conditions during this international pandemic.
Throughout this whole ordeal, I’ve been shocked by how much casual indifference there has by on the parts of so many to this crisis based on the belief that it “only” affects other people. Many have expressed the desire to continue about their daily lives or semester without interruption, even if that endangers the lives of many in their communities. The navel-gazing is not exclusive to Gen Z and millennials, as many on twitter and the in the media have suggest. Brueghel’s and Auden’s works are testaments that these attitudes have been common throughout history, whether it be eighty or five hundred years ago.
Well ladies and gentlemen, and those who do not identify with either gender, we’ve reached the apex of hell. The rest of the semester will be conducted from the privacy and loneliness of our respective homes. I’m not happy about it, you’re probably not happy about it, but nonetheless this is the situation we’ve found ourselves in. My heart truly goes out to the seniors, both those in high school and those at Fordham who are really getting screwed over by this. We love and appreciate you, and we wish you the best. That being said, we’ve got to get to the meat of the issue.
I don’t think anyone is able to put into words exactly how they feel, because they’ve never felt exactly this way before. But I’m going to do my best. Because I have to.
As the coronavirus has spread around the globe into a major pandemic, so too has a global panic surrounding the potential ramifications of the virus, from personal implications to the deleterious effects it could have on the economy. Goldman Sachs has projected zero growth for the American economy in the second quarter and, until recently, Chinese manufacturing was at a near-standstill. Economic effects are being felt especially hard in the manufacturing, travel, and services sectors.
