Princeton’s policies during the academic 2020-2021 year towards its undergraduates was heartless, devoid of empiric support, and certainly contributed to mental illness for the students.

Cancelling spring sports – including OUTDOOR sports such as baseball and crew– was especially cruel.  You are only young once.  You only go to college once.  You only have a few years of eligibility to play the sport you love.  But Princeton showed how little it cared about students by forcing arbitrary restrictions on young healthy students who had zero chance of death from Covid without any evidence that these policies would protect students, staff, faculty or the community. The administrators who implemented these heartless policies without any supporting evidence should be required to describe their rationale, apologize, and be fired immediately.

Continuing the mandatory testing and quarantining into the following academic year – when there is zero empiric evidence to suggest that this prevents spread of omicron– was also terribly harmful for the mental health of students – and just unnecessarily sad.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2792382

https://time.com/6148706/college-covid-19-policies/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/05/02/mental-health-colleges-universities/9579632002/

I would expect my formerly beloved alma mater to implement policies grounded in empiric evidence, but after the entire community was vaccinated, hospitals were nowhere near being overcrowded, and the strain was omicron, there was zero evidence to show that cancelling in-person classes, activities and socialization would do anything to decrease student, staff, faculty or community harm from the COVID-19 virus.  Ditto for the mask mandate.

I loved Princeton so much (!!!) and it crushes me to see it so heartless and so devoid of empiric support for its cruel policies.

Catherine A. Sarkisian MD, MSHS
Professor and Staff Physician