The Decline of Western Civilization at Holy Cross

The endangered species list is due for a new member: history of Western Civilization courses at Holy Cross. Out of 27 courses offered by the College’s History Department in the Spring 2022 semester, only two focus on pre-1500 Western history. In a department of 18 professors, only one specializes in pre-1500 Western history. The Department is currently in the process of hiring another Latin Americanist rather than a medievalist or ancient Mediterranean specialist. This might not seem objectionable at first glance, but it is a serious concern for anyone interested in a genuine liberal arts education. A robust schooling in Western Civilization’s origins is essential for the growth of responsible and informed citizens in a modern liberal democracy, and must be central to any liberal arts curriculum. 

Before delving into the body of the article, I want to specify that despite my criticism, I have a deep appreciation for the History Department. I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity to study under the professors I have taken courses with, for they epitomize the best of the historical profession. My quarrel is not with them (or any professor); indeed I can only commend them for their work in the discipline. Nor do I want to denigrate non-Western areas of study — those are incredibly important to the discipline as well. I only desire the recognition that medieval European and ancient Mediterranean studies hold particular value for the Western citizen.

To the postmodern mind, it is entirely uncouth to suggest that a particular area of history is essential and should be prioritized. Yet, despite a popular aversion to admitting it, there is indeed a hierarchy of historical importance, particularly during the finite time of an undergraduate education. Walter Lippmann’s 1940 speech at Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa Society, offers a cogent case for why universities must defend the necessity of educating students in the tradition and history of Western Civilization. It will serve as the basis for this article's analysis and criticism of the decline in the study of Western Civilization, both at Holy Cross and around the country. Lest he be dismissed out of hand, it should be noted that Lippman was hardly a conservative: he dabbled with socialism for a time, worked for the Wilson administration, and considered himself a progressive for much of his life. 

Lippmann begins from a bird’s eye view of education and its aims. The modern education system finds its roots in the 19th century West, with the goal – quoting Jefferson – of providing the foundation for “the preservation of freedom and happiness”. In Lippmann’s judgement, that foundation has utterly failed. Indeed, it is the students of these schools that in the 20th century “have either abandoned their liberties, or have not known, until the last desperate moment, how to defend them.” One can only defend liberties if he or she is educated in the history and principles that liberty depends upon. 

Lippmann understood that the individuals who built the United States, who constructed and maintained the freest society the world has known, did so with a deep understanding of the West’s past. Many of the concepts that undergird free societies  – such as universal subjection to the law regardless of social stature, the principle of representation, checks and balances, or respect for the human body (as created in the image of God) – were birthed in the ancient Mediterranean. These critical ideas, among many others, were then further developed and enriched in the medieval West. The institutions of a free society that are taken for granted today are but the tip of the stalactite of Western Civilization. Lippmann quotes French philosopher Etienne Gilson: 

“[Western culture] is essentially the culture of Greece, inherited from the Greeks by the Romans, transfused by the Fathers of the Church with the religious teachings of Christianity, and progressively enlarged by countless numbers of artists, writers, scientists and philosophers from the beginning of the Middle Ages up to the first third of the nineteenth century.” 

The American Founders were the heirs of this culture, they were manifestations of a continuous tradition and history stretching back thousands of years. Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, in The Idea of a University, asserts that, at its foundation, the West is a synthesis of two great traditions: that of Athens and that of Jerusalem: reason and faith. Newman, however, stretches the West’s history back even farther, seeing its origin in the great civilizations of the Near East, from Egypt to Mesopotamia. While the geographical center of Western Civilization has shifted in the course of history, its continuity is not in doubt. Hence the importance of educating Western citizens – and this includes all who inhabit the free world – in the tradition of Western Civilization: to fail to do so is to fail to preserve this great inheritance.

Lippmann defends the importance of preserving tradition – which requires understanding it – in a manner reminiscent of Edmund Burke. No individual or society can start from scratch or jettison the accumulated knowledge of generations and expect to progress as a civilization. Like a stalactite, growth is conducted upon a wide and ancient foundation. Lippmann, similarly, analogizes this to the practice of modern science: “[Society is] able to do advanced experiments which increase knowledge because they do not have to repeat the elementary experiments.” Burke asserted much the same, although he termed respect for tradition as prejudice. This is not the kind of prejudice that one thinks of today, instead it is prejudice in favor of deferring to the combined wisdom of generations past, for, as Russel Kirk affirms in The Conservative Mind, the knowledge of the common man “is a kind of collective wisdom” without which “he is thrown back upon his own private stock of reason, with the consequences which attend shipwreck.” This Burkian prejudice is the response of the human mind to the problem of one’s inability to discover every truth for oneself — it is not to be thrown out as backward or primitive, rather it should be respected and utilized. Lippmann understood, however, that the educational system of 1940 – and this is even more true of 2021 – had no interest in strengthening the intellectual roots, or encouraging the Burkian prejudice, of Western society, as the curriculum had been progressively purged of pre-1500 Western Civilization. 

It is not just that there are fewer courses offered on the history of Western Civilization in institutions of higher education, the problem is also that the subject is no longer required. The typical university student’s education is far more subjective than it once was, with undergraduates – in most colleges – having only to fulfill a short list of vague requirements. At Holy Cross, this takes the form of Common Requirements, which include such expansive terms as ‘Studies in Religion’ or ‘Historical Studies’. These requirements are so vague that a student can graduate without having taken a single course on Christianity or Western history. More specifically, in the History Department, majors need only two pre-modern courses – and they need not be Western, pre-1500, or ancient history either. Educational requirements should exist not just to give the student a breadth of experience in various areas of study, but also to educate the student in those areas which are essential to the society that he or she will inhabit. 

 For Lippmann, a society can only endure when there are common bonds, part of which includes a common knowledge of shared heritage and tradition. Education fails in its civic duty – the preservation and furtherance of a free society – when it fails to have a standard of knowledge, when it fails to provide a common well from which members of a society can draw upon. Today, it is a concern for equity that has caused the teaching of Western Civilization — the common well — to be superseded and diminished. Rather than offering courses centered on the school’s duty of providing foundational knowledge for the student, history departments (Holy Cross’ included) have chosen to base their offerings in part on equity or equal representation of cultures and geographic areas — another symptom of contemporary relativism. There is nothing wrong with having culturally and geographically diverse history — indeed, it is a good — but when that comes at the expense of essential topic areas (such as the study of pre-1500 Western history), it does a deep disservice to the student’s education. 

What is required to revivify the education system is a revitalization of studies in Western Civilization and a rejection of the postmodern attachment to relativism. Not all areas of historical study are of equal importance for the educated citizen. Some areas should be prioritized – rather, required – and some should remain elective. This does not mean that the less traditional areas of historical study need to be removed from the curriculum – far from it. However, it does mean that the College should construct its Common Requirements so as to educate the individual in the society he or she inhabits. The History Department should rebuild its medieval Western and ancient Mediterranean history programs, and rework its major requirements to specify that all history majors must take at least one course in both of these topic areas. Politically unpopular they may be, but if the College truly desires to educate men and women “for and with others” in a shared society, these changes are necessary.

Why Classics is Valuable and Cancel Culture is Toxic

Over the summer, I worked as an intern at National Review and was fortunate enough to see many articles about a variety of different topics published in real time. At the beginning of my internship, I read an article by Cameron Hilditch called “Without the Classics, Our History is Incomprehensible.” In this article, Cameron discusses the underlying influence that ancient Greek and Roman culture has had on American history and the roots of our civilization as we know it. He also addresses the recent decision made by Princeton University to drop the requirement that classics majors must learn Greek and Latin. Expertly weaving in the implications that the “pagan classics” have had on politics and the intellectual beliefs of our ancestors (moreso, he says, than even the Judeo-Christian Bible), Cameron forms a concrete argument that opposes the cancellation of classics in modern scholarship and makes the case for preserving a curriculum that educates students about the trajectory of Western civilization.

“Western civilization” as a term has become a sort of polarizing concept these days. Mahatma Gandhi is said to have made this joke when asked what he thought about Western civilization: “I think it might be a good idea.” And sure, that may be funny, but there are some who have taken this literally, arguing that there is, in fact, no such thing as Western civilization. Scholars are doing it, and schools are doing it. A couple of years ago, the classics faculty at Oxford University, for example, recommended that Homer’s Iliad and Vergil’s Aeneid should be removed from the “Literae Humaniores” (a famous undergraduate course at Oxford focused on the classics in particular). Apparently, this decision was made because of the differences in exam results between male and female undergraduates in addition to privately and publicly educated students. However, seeing as all of these people are at Oxford, for goodness sake, the axing of two of the most influential epics of the Western canon is preposterous at best and disgraceful at worst. The effort to erase these two works from the curriculum is a microcosm of the wider attempt by modern scholars to do away with the concept of Western civilization - along with its art, culture, literature, and enduring ideas - as a whole.

In 2019, I wrote an article for WestView News, a newspaper running out of the West Village of NYC, called “Keeping Ancient Greek and Latin Alive.” Back then, I was an idealistic senior in high school who was just beginning to appreciate all that the classics had to offer but was also aware that interest in classical languages and history was in decline. I had studied Latin since middle school, travelled to Rome through a summer “Latin immersion” program, and been exposed to Greek culture my entire life as a second-generation Greek American. At that time, I was also deciding the next major step in my life: where to go to college. I chose to attend Holy Cross, not just for its welcoming community and high-caliber academics, but for its robust and expansive classics department. I was impressed by the sheer number of professors in the department and the fact that all of them were so supremely knowledgeable about a vast array of topics, ranging from Greek tragedy to classical archaeology to even gender in antiquity. The opportunities to expand my own capabilities as a classics student were seemingly endless, and looking back as a junior, they have proved to be more fruitful than I could have ever imagined. I wholeheartedly admit that I would not be as well-rounded and capable of a classicist as I am today without the brilliantly and expertly crafted language and culture courses offered by the Holy Cross Classics Department.

Reading Cameron’s article, I was heartbroken to learn that Princeton University announced that its classics majors will no longer be required to learn Greek or Latin. As of June 2021, the “classics track” was eliminated altogether (which required intermediate proficiency in either Latin or Greek to enter), and the general requirement of taking Greek or Latin was removed. According to the members of the department, these changes to Princeton’s requirements for the Classics track were instituted in order to create a more “inclusive” and “equitable” program of study. Although the school claims that this change will incentivize more students to become majors, what are the true implications of their decision? Are the Princeton professors admitting to the fact that classics as a field is racist, thereby invalidating and tarnishing their entire academic careers spent studying and teaching the subject? Or are they saying that some students at Princeton University are in fact incapable of succeeding in these rigorous language courses? It’s impossible to wrap your head around this issue without coming to these conclusions. Instead of doing away with a subject that is undoubtedly extremely difficult, shouldn’t a school like Princeton and others following in similar footsteps utilize the colossal endowments they have at their disposal to provide better resources for mastering Greek and Latin? By means of tutoring, implementing better structures to courses, and improving professor-student relationships, the problem of the difficulty of the subject matter in question could slowly but surely be eliminated altogether.

I definitely understand that the privilege to study classics is not afforded to all and am grateful that I have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to study this subject for many years with countless resources at my disposal. It is not an unknown fact that communities of color and students in underrepresented groups in the United States have indeed suffered from a lack of access to the classics; however, the classics community as of late has begun to fundamentally change this, especially in the United States. There are a multitude of upcoming initiatives in middle schools, high schools, and universities to incorporate more BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color) and underprivileged students into their classics departments. I personally have been involved in these types of programs: in high school, I volunteered through the Paideia Institute’s Aequora program, which is driven by the belief that “Classics [is] an inclusive, diverse, and socially engaged field.” I would go every week to a public school in Flushing, NY to teach elementary school kids from underprivileged families Latin. This experience was not just helpful for them, but was also gratifying to me, and I was able to witness firsthand the benefits that Latin had on these students: they absolutely adored both Latin and the act of learning itself. I am also currently on the Classics Inclusion Committee at Holy Cross, which upholds those same values as the Aequora program and is working to establish an equitable community here at Holy Cross without getting rid of or dumbing down the already established language requirements. 

Classics has long been considered a very niche and “gatekept” subject, but this doesn’t have to be the case: with enough effort, classics can become open to all who wish to study it. Simply giving up and saying that students of color are at a disadvantage at becoming successful classicists is plain wrong and, frankly, offensive. If the classics departments of Princeton or Oxford do not truly believe in their students’ intellectual abilities along with their desire to fully immerse themselves in ancient languages, how are students expected to believe in themselves? Going forward, we have to be wary of the effects of this new and toxic cancel culture that is all too common in modern society. As Cameron so rightly wrote in his piece, “If anything, we need to expand the scope of classical education that kids receive, not further curtail it. Otherwise, we’re deliberately withholding from American children the conceptual tools necessary for contemplating our ancestors with sympathy and understanding.”

Why I Observe Columbus Day as an Indigenous-Blooded Woman

The DNA results are in.  Should any angry readers search frantically for my ancestry records, they would indeed find that I have quite a bit of Indigenous blood.  In fact, according to my father’s DNA test, I have more than enough to qualify for residence on most reservations, lest someone claim I am too removed from Indigenous people to comment on Columbus.  This fact is not particularly shocking considering my last name is Esquivel and half my family traces their origins to Mexico, where virtually everyone is ethnically Mestizo.  Still, it may come as a surprise to many that I do in fact choose to recognize Columbus day, and am saddened to watch Indigenous People’s Day be pinned against it annually.  

In principle, I am not opposed to Indigenous Peoples’ Day; in fact, I am quite sanguine about the idea of having a national day of recognition for Indigenous people.  Indigenous culture is central to North American history.  We would be remiss as a society to ignore or downplay its place in that history, and the abuses which have been suffered by Indigenous people at the hands of colonizers.  I resent the fact, however, that the push for such a day of recognition has been transformed into the club by which Columbus’s legacy is assassinated.  A “Columbus Day” and an “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” can and should peacefully coexist.  I do not observe Columbus Day as a celebration of the man’s character, nor are his personal sins or virtues of particular interest to me.  In the same way that I celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day despite allegations made against his character, I celebrate Columbus Day.  Both men changed the course of history, and our lives have been bettered because of their accomplishments.  

Columbus’s arrival to the Americas represented the commencement of American society.  No, Columbus was not the first man to “discover America”, but the semantics game does not succeed in watering down the gravity of what happened in October of 1492.  Columbus brought Western values to a land which never had the opportunity to experience movements such as the Renaissance or benefit from the academic progress of the Middle Ages or read Greek philosophy, all of which we are doing at Holy Cross on American soil thanks to Columbus.  This is not to claim that there is no beauty to be found in Indigenous societies as well; Westerners are still dumbfounded by the architectural feats of the Inca and tourists in Mexico pay just to have a glimpse of an Aztec temple outside of the major cities.  What could be better than Indigenous people and Europeans finally coming into contact with one another?  

Of course, it is not that simple.  With conquest comes bloodshed, and the Europeans who came to the Americas were in fact engaged in conquest, some malicious, some well-intentioned. This was the sad fact of virtually every society’s history at the time: European borders were created through ethnic and religious conflict, Indigenous tribes’ own land areas were won through violent conflict, as was that of the Mongolian Empire, the Islamic Empires, and so on.  Though today we see a decrease in such traditional man-to-man warfare, we observe similar patterns which are executed more quietly through the threat of nuclear force (think the USSR and modern China).  Thus, the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas was no historical exception.  

I still choose to observe Columbus Day.  I am eternally grateful that I was not born into the Aztec society of my ancestors.  Cultural relativism is a popular outlook in modern America, but I wholeheartedly believe that I enjoy life in an objectively superior society than that of my ancestors.  Had I been born and raised in Tenochtitlan, I would have watched several chests being slashed in order to harvest beating hearts and spilling blood for sacrifice to the god of the sun by now, had I not been the unlucky sacrificial victim myself.  Were I a member of a high-ranking family in the Empire, I may have had the privilege of engaging in cannibalism as a sort of reward for my noble status.  Were I from a low class I may have had to work as a serf or a slave, and would have been the first to starve during a famine or poor harvest.  

While it may seem as if I am simply berating the Aztecs and their brutal practices for the fun of it, it is not my intention to anachronistically hold them to my ethical standards — standards to which they had not been exposed.  I can, however, state with full confidence that I believe the society in which we find ourselves is exceedingly preferable to the one I just described.  Needless to say, I am thankful that a society arrived in the Americas to inform my ancestors that there is no need to sacrifice a compatriot to the sun god, because the sun operates independently.  Even a vast number of Aztecs seemed to agree with my evaluation, as masses willingly converted to the religion of their missionaries, namely Catholicism, which preached a dramatically contrasting message to the religion they had known for centuries.  

My gratefulness extends beyond my aforementioned points — I could not have been born without Columbus!  As stated earlier, the majority of Mexicans are Mestizo, meaning they are an ethnic combination of European and Indigenous blood.  Most Mexicans can rightly celebrate Columbus Day as a historic event which laid the groundwork for their own bloodline, not to mention the fact that Mexican society, a culture which I love dearly, traces its foundations to the arrival of Christianity on the continent.  A half-millennium later, I would be born, the product of a white mother and a Mexican father, in a society which gladly claims multiethnic people as its own due its philosophically enlightened foundations, an import made possible by Columbus’s landfall in 1492.

Still, ironically enough, Columbus finds himself being posthumously condemned by those who claim to hold the very values which his expedition brought to our continent.  As previously mentioned, I am not here to defend Columbus’s personal character.  The refusal to appreciate the historical importance of Columbus's landfall on the basis of ethical concerns, however, is unbelievable to me, as those criticizing him do not realize that their arguments are a product of a society which subscribes to the values Columbus had a large part in bringing to this side of the world. People ultimately fail to realize just how revolutionary the philosophical underpinnings of the West — brought to the Americas by Columbus — were and are in the face of world history.  Though certainly not carried out flawlessly by all who came before us, the Western value system has proven the greatest facilitator of social progress in history. We must appreciate Indigenous people and the value of their respective cultures, and we should not gloss over the human rights violations suffered by Indigenous groups at the hands of unjust men. I cannot help but celebrate, however, the fact that Columbus made landfall so that I could live the way I do today.  I therefore wish everyone a happy Columbus Day, and a happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

Laid Bare: The Reality of Pornography

Americans are generally wary of potential evils which could degrade the behavior, health, and thinking of their fellow citizens. This wariness is evidenced by the visceral responses of Americans to everything from communist infiltrators to narcotics. Yet, one threat has gone largely unaddressed, in spite of its near-universal accessibility, toxicity to the mind, direct ties to human trafficking, and detrimental effects on the family and public understanding of human sexuality. Rather, the evil of pornography has been praised and accepted in the news and by various public figures. However these individuals and organizations wish to frame it, few things are more abnormal, or pose a greater threat to the moral fabric of society, than pornography.

To understand pornography, it is necessary to understand its affects on the brain and body. Like most addictive drugs, pornography hijacks the brain’s reward system. When experiencing seemingly beneficial stimuli, neurotransmitters give feelings of pleasure, incentivizing engagement in the stimuli. Further engagement releases more neurotransmitters, fortifying particular neural pathways. Unfortunately, this reward system cannot distinguish between superficially and truly beneficial stimuli. When exposed to pornographic videos, the brain is tricked into believing that the person is engaging in intercourse, rather than watching videos of others doing the same. 

As the brain builds a stimulus tolerance, more stimuli is required to achieve the same amount of pleasure. Pornography provides an infinite amount of novelty as a result of the essentially endless supply of pornographic media available for free at the user’s fingertips. Also, since the novelty of pornography makes it a supernormal stimuli, which is shown to elicit a more intense response in humans and other animals than natural stimuli, pornography presents a more stimulating pleasure experience than real relationships.

As one might expect, this rewiring of the brain has disastrous consequences. Pornography leads to physical changes within the brain, with shrinkage of grey matter that is comparable to, or even greater than that associated with heroin use. On a psychological level, pornography usage produces low self-esteem, loss of energy and mood deterioration, and has been shown to weaken memory. Use of pornography even results in physical changes, such as erectile dysfunction. The rising use of pornography has correlated with a 600 to 3,000 percent increase in erectile dysfunction among young men, a phenomenon that most young men would otherwise not experience for another few decades of their lives. An entire generation of young men who are collectively impotent, placid, and losing grey matter by the day would be a crisis in and of itself. Yet, these immediate effects represent only part of the disastrous consequences associated with pornography.

The craving of novelty inevitably affects true relationships in devastating ways. For those who are in relationships with a pornography-consuming partner, they may see practices viewed by their significant other imposed in the bedroom — practices such as choking and spitting that would otherwise be rightfully considered degrading. Alternatively, the user may become bored and neglect their partner entirely, having built unreasonable expectations of sexual attractiveness and performance around their viewing habits. They then forsake human connection for artificial pleasure. Therefore, it should be no surprise that almost 56 percent of divorces involve pornography consumption, according to the research of therapist Dr. Jill Manning. 

While playing an active role in destroying families through divorce, pornography consumption is becoming alarmingly common among children. The average age of first exposure to pornography is eleven, with some being exposed even earlier. For many children, their first glimpse at sexual activity of any kind will be through the highly disordered lens of pornography. While most may be out of the reach of drugs, pornography is within reach of their keyboards, and the search engines are dealing.

The effects on those most intimately involved in the production of pornography — the actors and actresses — are equally grim. Actresses often come from backgrounds of sexual abuse, poor mental health, and financial instability that result in the pornography industry appearing as a glamorous alternative to their present state of affairs. While perhaps gaining some level of significant income initially, actresses are made to perform increasingly extreme material in order to continue receiving the same income. They are coerced into scenes in which they feel uncomfortable, or would otherwise never engage in.

Beyond exploitation, sexual trafficking and rape go hand-in-hand with pornography. One of the most glaring examples is the case of producers Michael Pratt and Matthew Wolfe, whose productions were widely circulated among pornographic websites. They lured unsuspecting women with promises of a modelling shoot, before coercing them into shooting pornographic videos, and sometimes sexually assaulting them. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. According to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, at least a plurality, if not a majority of the millions of videos on websites such as Pornhub are non-consensual, with videos depicting the confirmed rape of minors being monetized. Such was the extent of this content that the website was forced to remove almost half of its videos pending review. Onlyfans, held up by many as the paragon of individualized control concerning pornographic content, has also been linked by investigators to human trafficking, both as a way for traffickers to lure victims, and to profit from them.

The thoroughly terrible nature of pornography is only exacerbated by the attitudes of its proponents and producers. Al Goldstein, credited with normalizing hardcore pornography, stated that pornography was “a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream, its subversive character becomes more charged.” One might wonder how an industry with such consequences, wielded with the seeming intent of its producers to destroy the fabric of American culture, has been allowed to continue unhindered. Yet, this has not always been the case.

 For decades prior to a number of questionable decisions by a liberalized SCOTUS in the 1960s and 70s, pornography was considered obscenity, subject to regulation and outright bans. Obscenity, which is not protected under the First Amendment, is defined as material that is prurient, devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value, and violates local community standards. It is clear that pornography is indeed prurient, as it promotes excess sexual interest by rewiring the brain. Further, it would be difficult to assert that it holds any value except appealing to carnal desire, and violates local community standards depicting degrading and deviant sexual activity. Clearly, it is time for the court to reexamine this issue.

Grim as it may be, for those who have been affected in some way or another by pornography, there is hope. Physically and psychologically, it has been shown that the brain will rewire itself normally in the absence of pornographic stimulus. There are a variety of resources available for those struggling with addiction and recovery, including coaching, blockers, and information about quitting that is widely available. For those who struggle, know that you are not alone. Pornography can be fought... and beaten.

Social Media and the Abortion Debate

On September 1st, 2021, Senate Bill 8 in the state of Texas went into effect. This bill created a set of parameters that was able to circumvent the language used in previous judicial decisions that allowed greater access to abortion. Since this bill was sent to the floor of the Texas Senate, and even more so after it became law, social media sites like Instagram and Twitter have run amuck with various arguments and points that are widely held but lack reason. I will be addressing a few of those here.

Instagram stories, from my experience, especially in the wake of George Floyd's death, have become a breeding ground for coarse opinions and flashy-looking infographics. The activist infographic is commonplace on Instagram, where its creators make several slides and write, usually in a bubbly font and pastel colors, slogans and ideas (sometimes with supporting evidence). If you are unfamiliar with what I am referring to, the Instagram account @impact is a good example of this type of content at the time of this writing. A quick search on Instagram under #abortionrights finds the following arguments that I will be addressing here.

“Men shouldn't be making laws about women’s bodies.” This argument is used to invalidate any male’s pro-life opinion by saying that since abortion and unwanted pregranacy is an issue that only affects women, men lack the empathy and relevancy to govern and legislate this issue. This is in the same vein as those who believe that only those of certain races or backgrounds can speak on certain issues because of their lived experience. This is wrong and, in this case, sexist. Rather than address the arguments of the opposition, they try to invalidate them as being incapable of having a productive thought. This argument also completely ignores the 45% of women who support some restrictions to abortion and 19% of women who support a total ban on aboriton according to data collected by Gallup in 2021. These numbers are strikingly similar to male opinions on the subject, meaning sex plays less of a role in abortion opinions than implied by this argument. If men took a step back from the abortion debate and let women handle it, the outcome would most likely not change.

“The pro-life movement is rooted in racism.” I have seen this argument presented in many different ways. The most compelling Instagram infographic used sources from NPR, Politico, and The Atlantic to make their case. It is predicated on the idea that evangelicals in the 1980s were angry about desegregation and only picked up the issue of abortion in order to gain more votes and galvanize support for their agenda. To show the lack of relevance of this argument, one must only look at the modern data. The CDC reports that in the United States, black women had the highest ratio of abortions out of any racial group with 335 abortions per 1,000 live births as opposed to white women with 110 per 1,000 live births. Black women get abortions at more than 3 times the rate of white women. If an individual or group were racist, why would they seek a policy that aims to disproportionately save the lives of black babies? If this was truly the intention, those supposed racists would be in favor of abortion since fewer black babies would be born, leading to a demographic shift, with the final result being fewer black individuals eventually turning 18 and using their right to vote. In modern times, the pro-life movement seeks to save people of all backgrounds, debunking these all too prevalent accusations of racism, stemming from the arbritary claim of a racist past rather than any claims about the present.

“Pro-lifers are only pro-life until it is out of the womb.” This argument is usually coupled with the accusation that those who are pro-life are really only “pro-birth”, seeing that those who are pro-life are also generally conservative and reject the concept of large government welfare programs. This idea infers that in order to not simply be pro-birth, one has to support large government assistance and in turn support the use of a greater tax burden to accomplish that. The reason why this is false is because there is more than one way to assist people in need. Those on the right of the political spectrum find the best way is not to fund bloated and bureaucratic government agencies that mismanage funds, but rather to give their money to religious groups and private charities. They find religious groups like their church more appealing as a destination for their money because they generally know to whom they are giving the money and can hold them accountable, with the faith that the money will go to a good cause due to a common set of values. Private charities are similar in that they can be held to greater accountability than a bureaucratic agency. If a charity acts in a manner that does not reflect what individuals believe the charity should be doing, those individuals can choose not to give them money. That cannot be said about the government, which is held accountable to government officials who are laden with other responsibilities as well as limited by lengthy procedure. To respond to the claim, many pro-lifers find that private means are better than public means in assisting those out of the womb. The difference is that conservatives want to use their own money to support causes of import, while those on the left want to take others' money and allocate it as they see fit.

“Pro-lifers only want to control women’s bodies.” This claim seeks to invalidate any argument as it simplifies the situation into pro-lifers arguing in bad faith. Anything that a pro-lifer says can be discarded because they do not believe what they are saying, or have ulterior motives. Rather than addressing the ideas put forth, this argument simply assumes the opposition is evil and not worthy of debate. To come to this conclusion, one has to assume that pro-lifers do not actually believe that unborn babies are alive, and therefore rather than protect life, wish to control others. Contrary to this, pro-lifers do genuinely believe in what they say, and are only seeking to protect innocent human life. This claim is lazy at best and conspiratorial at worst, implying that there are vast swaths of the population bent on controlling women by all agreeing to lie about the same thing. I would never assume that a large group of people that I disagree with politically were being disingenuous despite them having legitimate arguments that suggest otherwise, and neither should anyone else because it does not lead to productive conversation and will never convince anyone who is governed by reason. It only seeks to breed division. 

Finally “it is none of your business” or “if you are against abortion don’t have one.” To believe someone is being murdered next door is none of my business? The vast majority of those on the left as well as many on the right believe George Floyd was murdered, but is that any of your business? Are white straight cisgender men not allowed to march for Black Lives Matter because they are not affected by alleged systematic abuse and not a part of their intersectionality umbrella? No, of course not. People support causes because they believe it is the right thing to do. Martin Luther King Jr., a man widely revered and quoted in America by both left and right, famously said, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” Abortion is an injustice, just like those on the left assert that systematic racism — which they believe to be enshrined in most, if not all, institutions — is an injustice, and it is every person’s imperative to fight for justice, even if one thinks it does not affect them. Abortion is murder, and I and many others are not going to sit by and let it happen.

This article, of course, does not get the opportunity to address the real substantive questions on abortion, such as when does life begin, Catholicism’s view on abortion, or the nuances of cases surrounding rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger. These questions have all been answered before either by previous writers for The Fenwick Review or by other commentators on the topic. Here, I only sought to address the many lazy and coarse opinions spouted on social media that I see take away from the real debate. Additionally, not all those who are for abortion accessibility believe these views, as no group is a monolith. These flashy statements should be retired, so that we as a society can engage in a civil discourse that leads to the truth, rather than shouting matches and political theatre governed by emotions and fanaticism.

Debacle

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a debacle is defined as “a sudden and ignominious failure; a fiasco.” Few events in history encapsulate this definition as well as the sudden and ignominious resurgence of the Taliban, their reconquest of Afghanistan, the haphazard American withdrawal which left hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghan allies to the mercy of ruthless Islamists, and the senseless murder of thirteen brave American servicemen at the hands of a suicide bomber. Yet, the word “debacle” still does not fully illustrate the true picture of the inexcusable 20-year failure in Afghanistan. This failure, of course, does not belong to the brave members of the United States Armed Forces who fought, bled, saved lives, and gave theirs in battle. Rather, it is a failure directed from the highest echelons of the Washington bureaucracy that can almost be traced to the conflict’s very beginning.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the United States oriented itself toward one common objective: find those responsible for the murder of 2,977 innocents on that day of infamy, and wipe them from the face of the Earth. After the Taliban refused to accept American requests for the extradition of Osama bin Laden and expulsion of al-Qaeda, Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 7, 2001. In a matter of months, the Taliban had been driven out of power, and al-Qaeda had been decimated. Disappointingly, in the aftermath of the Battle of Tora Bora, it became clear that bin Laden had slipped away and fled the country.

Despite having failed to meet its objective for the invasion, the United States would remain in Afghanistan for 20 years. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1386, the U.S. would join an International Security Assistance Force mandated to maintain security. The U.S. had thus been drawn in to assisting the creation of a new government in Kabul. This freshly created responsibility was further complicated by the launch of an insurgent campaign by the Taliban in 2003.

While undoubtedly a cliche, Afghanistan’s reputation as the “Graveyard of Empires” proved terribly accurate when it concerned the Taliban insurgency. The ISAF faced the task of eliminating an insurgent force from mountainous terrain, which blended in seamlessly with, and was often supported by, the civilian population. It certainly did not help matters that the Taliban continued to receive funding and training from the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. Inexplicably, the U.S. contributed over $5 billion in aid to Pakistan as the country continued to support the very terrorists killing our troops.

Exacerbating these already dismal circumstances, questionable strategic decisions put American troops in untenable positions. Outpost Keating represents one of the most egregious examples of poor decision making from the top. In 2006, it was posited that the creation of outposts in the Kamdesh region would project the credibility of the new government and allow for provincial reconstruction efforts. Outpost Keating was one of these bases, and it quickly became an object of concern for being isolated, indefensible, and unsustainable. On October 3, 2009, the outpost was attacked by the Taliban on all sides. Clint Romesha, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism during the battle, likened it to fighting in a “fishbowl” or “paper cup.” Mere days after the battle - which cost eight American lives - the outpost was abandoned and bombed to rubble to prevent it from falling to the Taliban.

More egregious than its position, the outpost at Kamdesh also highlighted the incompetency of many members of the new Afghan military. Despite receiving $89 billion dollars in funding, the Afghan Army was wiped out by the Taliban within the space of a month. A cursory examination reveals why. 80 percent of recruits were illiterate, resulting in significant time being devoted to teaching literacy rather than combat. Corruption was also rife, with wages and resources allocated to the army being stolen by military officials. Aside from disappearing supplies, thousands of recruits were registered on paper who did not exist in reality. Worse still, members of the Afghan forces engaged in a wide variety of despicable criminal activity, including the practice of ‘boy play,’ the sexual abuse of young boys. American forces were told to turn a blind eye to this abuse, since it was a “culturally accepted practice.” Members of the Afghan forces would occasionally engage in “green on blue” attacks, which by 2020 had seen Afghan forces kill 148 coalition troops and wound 186. This was the force that coalition leaders expected to defend the country after withdrawal.

The Afghan government was not in a much better state of affairs. Apparently, 25% of the total Afghan GDP vanished through corruption in 2010. Billions of dollars in aid and donations simply vanished, undoubtedly lining the pockets of members of the fledgling government. This includes former President Ashraf Ghani, who apparently made off with $160 million as he abandoned his country to the Taliban. This exorbitant level of embezzlement was made possible by the speed and scale of funding given to the government, which prevented effective oversight to prevent the racket that developed.

Effectively, the United States had entered Afghanistan seeking justice, and found itself nursemaid to an incorrigibly corrupt government whose army was illiterate, underpaid, prone to friendly fire incidents, and whose officers were too busy stealing their soldiers’ wages and preying upon young boys to competently lead their men. Inevitably, there is little conceivable way that the United States could have extricated itself from such a situation without chaos ensuing. Even in this context, the ensuing withdrawal from the country proved nothing short of catastrophic.

The U.S. had a precedent for effective evacuation to look to. Preparations for evacuation had already been made prior to the Fall of Saigon in 1975, with the 8,000 American citizens and 200,000 at risk South Vietnamese identified prior to the evacuation, along with potential evacuation options. In a matter of days, the United States successfully evacuated its citizens, along with 138,869 South Vietnamese. However, this success would not see itself repeated in Afghanistan.

By contrast, while American intelligence pointed to a collapse of both the Afghan Army and government, the Biden administration dismissed the possibility of Afghanistan folding so quickly. On August 15, as President Ghani fled the country, the Taliban offered the U.S. control of Kabul, but Biden declined, allowing the Taliban to take control of the capitol. What ensued was nothing sort of catastrophic. Thousands rushed to the airport, pushing their way onto U.S. transport planes, some poor desperate souls holding onto the plane and falling to their deaths upon takeoff. The Taliban were given control of security checkpoints, likely contributing to the loss of thirteen servicemen. At present, hundreds of Americans and thousands of former interpreters remain trapped in Afghanistan, while tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans have been transported to the country.

To say that it is far too late to address the failure in Afghanistan would be an understatement. All that can be hoped for is to learn lessons for future foreign policy decisions; the United States should limit its involvement to its initial objective, and if this objective is not met, it should disengage. Unfortunately, considering the unchanging nature of the Washington bureaucracy, any hope that these lessons will be taken into account may well be wishful thinking.

A Revised Title IX

Holy Cross’ mission statement asserts its desire to “build a community marked by freedom, mutual respect, and civility.” Freedom, an indispensable part of higher education, can only operate in a system that respects each individual’s right to defend him or herself from unjust accusations. When defense of one’s character is out of reach, the social environment is left on unstable ground. Mutual respect demands the same – respect for each other in our capacities to uphold our dignity in the face of criticism. Civility cannot exist when the threat of false incrimination without due recourse hangs over every individual. 

The College’s recent amendment to its Title IX policy simply does not comport with its stated commitment to such admirable qualities as “freedom, mutual respect, and civility.” The change being considered here may seem small, but a few words can be immensely powerful. In August 2020, the Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos issued new Title IX guidelines that (among many other changes) required schools to only accept witness evidence in a sexual misconduct case if said witness submits to cross-examination. Given the stakes in such a case – which can range from a mere warning, to suspension, to expulsion (and an irrevocable stain, justly or unjustly, on one’s character) – requiring cross-examinations should be uncontroversial. 

The alterations to the College’s Sexual Misconduct Policy occured on August 20, 2021, and impacted Section 5, Subsection I, Hearing Process: Examination Requirement. Since August 14, 2020, the policy had stated that “if a Party or witness does not submit to cross-examination at the live hearing, the Determination Panel may not rely on any statement of that Party or witness in reaching a determination regarding responsibility.” The revised policy reverses this: 

The Determination Panel has the discretion to decide how much weight to give to statements or information provided by any Party or witness who did not submit to cross-examination at the hearing. The Determination Panel can consider the reliability of the statements or information, the reason the individual did not participate in cross-examination, and any other factors the Determination Panel considers relevant.

This alteration means that the College may take into consideration claims by witnesses without subjecting those claims to cross-examination. The significance of this is glossed over by giving the Determination Panel “discretion to decide how much weight” the witness’ comments should be given, but that does little to resolve the problem. Witness testimony can be entered into the record with no opportunity for the defendant to examine the accuser. Such a significant decision is left to the three-member Panel. One must wonder how the Panel can arrive at a reasonable conclusion as to the evidence’s validity without allowing cross-examination. While the parties in the case can submit questions for witnesses to the investigator(s) preparing the investigative report, the “[i]nvestigator(s) will exercise discretion [regarding] what questions to consider”, meaning some questions may never be raised. The parties are permitted to review the report and submit comments, but there is no guarantee that follow-up questions will be addressed by the investigator(s). 

The Title IX Office stated that the College was able to make the change due to a recent ruling by the District Court of Massachusetts that struck down the part of the Department of Education’s Title IX regulations that required cross-examination for witness testimony to be accepted. This ruling did not mean that colleges had to eliminate the cross-examination requirement – a point the Office admitted. It is, however, highly unlikely that many individuals will submit to it now that they have the choice. Why sit through a rigorous questioning if it is not mandatory?

The Title IX Office went on to say that “[o]ur approach allows for a greater amount of evidence to be considered by the Determination Panel, with the goal of reaching a just outcome.” It is true that a greater amount of evidence can be considered when there is no requirement to submit to cross-examination, but the quantity of evidence is of far less importance than the quality. If a school wants to adjudicate cases of sexual misconduct, particularly when the stakes for individuals’ (both the accused and accuser) reputations are so high, it should abide by the general procedures of a court of law. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the law knows that witnesses are subject to cross-examination. According to Article VI of  the Massachusetts Guide to Evidence (as released by the Massachusetts state government), witnesses are subject to cross-examination “on any matter relevant to any issue in the case, including credibility and matters not elicited during direct examination.” There is no way to reach a “just outcome” if the evidence under consideration is not subject to rigorous scrutiny. 

It must be recognized that the cases that are being brought before the Determination Panel regarding sexual misconduct are very difficult for all parties involved. Cross-examinations can be psychologically problematic; there is no denying that. In a free society, however, the interest of justice and truth must take precedence. False accusations do occur, and the impact can be devastating. 

It is also no secret that if the College was legally free to create its own policy, it would abandon the 2020 regulations altogether. In its 2019 letter to Secretary DeVos, the College’s Title IX Office joined with 50 other Massachusetts institutions of higher education to decry the cross-examination and live hearing requirements. Their stated concern is that these requirements would “discourage community members who have experienced misconduct from coming forward or deter them from participating in the process.” That may or may not be true, but to simply allow accusations to be made without any need to submit to criticism from the defendant denies him or her justice. The same letter asserts that the College is “committed to fairness and impartiality in all disciplinary matters”, but it is difficult to see how that fits with their distaste for common legal practice. Further, the Title IX Office states:

[O]ur community is unique. We are a small, mission-driven, purely undergraduate, diverse, and tight-knit community. We believe that the proposed prescriptive process not only removes our discretion to conduct our processes in a way that we believe is appropriate for our community, but also may compromise our ability to conduct a fair process.

Complaints like this defy reason: because the College is “small, mission-driven, purely undergraduate, diverse, and tight-knit”, it should not have to abide by basic standards of legal fairness? No matter how unique the community, these standards exist because they ensure equity. 

Going forward, all else remaining the same, it is unlikely that Holy Cross will revert to a Title IX policy that is in line with justice. Simply lamenting the change is not enough to force a rethinking. The only way that the Holy Cross community can hope to return the institution to one truly based in “freedom, mutual respect, and civility” is to bring its concerns to the administration. This article attempts to do just that. However, the burden is also on students, parents, and donors to compel the College to defend its decisions – not just in regard to its Title IX policy, but in any controversial policy shift. The community must remain hopeful, but it also must take an active role in defending what is right. 

The Unmasking

On Tuesday, August 3rd, members of the Holy Cross community received an email from the Holy Cross COVID Core Team announcing a new masking requirement on campus. The school stated that it will require masking indoors at all times from August 16th to “at least” September 10th, when Holy Cross will “re-evaluate Covid conditions in [the] community” and decide if the masking requirement needs to be kept in place. Holy Cross has made this decision based on the guidance of the CDC. That is, in fact, the only reason cited. Nowhere has the school provided data, scientific evidence, or any other justification for this decision. The school’s risk assessment appears to be what the CDC has told them it should be.

The school’s decision to enforce a mask mandate for its vaccinated students is puzzling. What is the logic here? What is the science backing the risk assessment being made? What is the justification for the tradeoffs Holy Cross is asking students to make? The quick answer to that question is, when it comes to the science, there is no justification. COVID-19 was, and still is, a serious threat to unvaccinated individuals. The risk of hospitalization or death — due in large part to extremely high community transmission in the absence of a vaccine — made masking and social distancing critical for protecting our most vulnerable. However, in the presence of a vaccine, the science, data, and everything we are hearing from doctors and hospitals on the ground clearly shows that this risk no longer exists for vaccinated individuals. As you’ll see, the risk assessments being made by the CDC, and even more so by Holy Cross, do not remotely follow the ways that we assess risk in every aspect of our lives. 

The decision to force an almost entirely vaccinated campus to wear masks isn’t even consistent with the risks that Holy Cross allows us to make on campus daily. This is not about managing the risk of Covid in the best interest of Holy Cross’ students, faculty, and staff, but about managing the narrative around Holy Cross’ reputation and circumventing any possibility of criticism —criticism that would be unwarranted — against the school’s administration. This policy could have come about for two reasons: because of the conclusions of the science or because of the need to follow a narrative in order to avoid public scrutiny. It could not have come about because of both. So, since we can’t determine the merits of forcing vaccinated people to mask based on any scientific evidence or data that the school’s administration has provided us, I’ve decided to do the work for them. 

Before I get into the criteria that the CDC has used to make these recommendations and what the Covid data for vaccinated hospitalizations and deaths tells us about the measures being implemented at Holy Cross, let me provide a short explainer on what I mean by “risk assessment”. A risk assessment is the analysis of trade-offs that entities like the government, schools, private businesses, and individuals make in order to maintain a reasonable level of risk that negative consequences won’t happen. In other words, it’s when we trade away certain freedoms in order to reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of something bad happening. 

At the same time, a risk assessment is also an attempt to maintain certain freedoms due to an analysis that concludes that there is not enough risk to justify the diminishment of those freedoms. For example, we have all made the risk assessment that in order to travel from place to place in a reasonable amount of time, a 60-75 mph speed limit on highways is the best trade-off we can make. We trade away our freedom to drive as fast as we want on public roads to mitigate the risk of injury or death to ourselves and others in a car accident. With this analysis, we accept that many will die as a result of highways and other roads having a speed limit in the 60’s or 70’s, but that this negative consequence is acceptable given the net positive. Within the context of Covid, the negative consequences are serious illness or death. The trade-off that the CDC is recommending that we make is forcing vaccinated people to give up their freedom to choose whether or not they want to wear masks inside. As we’ll see in the data, the science simply doesn’t warrant this trade-off.

Worcester County has been placed under the “high” category for community transmission according to the CDC. Under its new guidelines, the CDC recommends that counties it labels as having “substantial” or “high” community spread should have their residents wear masks in all indoor public spaces, no matter vaccination status. Sounds scary! There must be a “substantial” or “high” number of cases — especially in a County with almost 60% of the entire population fully vaccinated and over 85% of its over 65 population fully vaccinated — if the CDC is making this type of recommendation… right? Not so much. CDC community transmission for states and counties is divided into four levels: low, moderate, substantial, and high. To determine the level of community transmission for states and counties there are two indicators. The indicator we will be looking at for Worcester County, since it is the indicator that the CDC is using, is seven day case rate per 100,000 people. In other words, it is the amount of cases per day in the last seven days for every 100,000 people in Worcester County. So, what is the number of average cases per day that the CDC believes indicates a “substantial” community transmission level, and therefore a significant enough risk to re-implement mandatory masking? 50-99.99 cases per 100,000. That is a 0.05% daily positivity rate on the low end and a 0.099% rate on the high end. This means anything above 100 cases, or a 0.1% rate, is considered “high” transmission. These are minuscule portions of the population. 

Currently, Worcester County has a seven day case rate of 107, and nearly all of these cases are unvaccinated individuals. 1,158 people have tested positive for Covid in Worcester County in the last ten days — ten days being the longest amount of time it takes for Covid to stop being contagious. That’s 1,158 out of over 830,600 people. That means the percentage of the Worcester County population who have tested positive and are currently infected with Covid is 0.14%. To put this into perspective, Worcester County had over 1,000 cases every two to three days on a regular basis over the winter, hitting a daily high of 1,552 cases on January 5th. During that time, we were seeing over 150 deaths in Worcester County over two week spans. In the past two weeks there have been 8 Covid deaths in the County. The CDC has essentially determined that 1/7th of 1% of the population of Worcester County contracting Covid in the past two weeks provides sufficient risk to reimplement universal masking indoors. By any reasonable measure, this is a ludicrous amount of caution for such a small number of cases and minute risk of death.

As stated earlier, the trade offs that the CDC has determined the American people must take to mitigate risk does not follow the risk assessments that we make in all other aspects of our lives. 775,000 children under the age of 14 are sent to the emergency room with injuries sustained from playing sports every year, and 500,000 high school athletes find themselves in the ER for the same reason. 38,000 die and 4.5 million are injured in car accidents every year. 354 children, or 0.00047% of the under eighteen population, have died from Covid during the pandemic, while 788, have died from non-Covid induced pneumonia in that same period. The idea of making children wear masks to mitigate the risk of catching the flu or some other viral infection has never been considered as a serious policy, and likely would have been dismissed as child abuse rather than a reasonable protective measure. That’s because we have determined that the 0.00025% chance that a child dies from the flu is not a large enough risk to justify forcing children to breathe through sweaty cloths all day and to lose their ability to communicate properly in school. We take risks like these daily because they are necessary for us to live the lives we all want to live. If we applied the CDC’s rationale for determining risk of hospitalization or death due to Covid to how we determine risk of serious injury or death due to car accidents, the speed limit on every major highway would probably be somewhere around 5 miles per hour. Seems like a pretty unrealistic conception of risk, right? I’d guess that most of us would be up in arms with that type of miscalculation to say the least. 

What is incredible about all of this is that I haven’t even gotten to the most important point: the vaccination rates at Holy Cross. Let’s say — regardless of the senselessness of the risk assessment being used to justify this type of policy — that you still believe that mask mandates need to be put into place in areas with “substantial” or “high” transmission levels to protect children and the unvaccinated. Fine. But that type of explanation wouldn’t even apply to the Holy Cross community, because, as stated in the most recent Holy Cross Covid update, above 90% of the students, faculty, and staff will be fully vaccinated by the start of the semester. 97% of students have already received at least one shot. This is what makes Holy Cross’s decision to follow the CDC guidelines even more perplexing than the CDC guidelines themselves. The already untenable justifications provided by the CDC don’t even apply to the students, faculty, and staff at Holy Cross, because the chance of a student or staff member dying from COVID-19 on an almost fully vaccinated campus is not just a statistical improbability, it is so infinitesimally small that the risk is essentially zero. 

Almost all new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, not just across Worcester County but across the state, are from unvaccinated people. As of August 10th, a week after Holy Cross announced its intent to reimplement indoor mask policies, 0.002% of Massachusetts’ vaccinated population has died from Covid. And even these already tiny percentages are inflated. As reported by NBC Boston, Dr. Shira Doron, an Epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, has stated, "These 100 patients  [.002% of vaccinated population] have died over the course of many months," and “In those cases, the positive test might be old, a false positive, an asymptomatic positive, a mild infection or an infection that is contributing to the illness or death of someone sick with another primary illness but not the sole cause of it." 

Out of those in Massachusetts who have been vaccinated and died, 73% had underlying conditions and had a median age of 82.5. On August 7th, the Massachusetts Department of Health reported that 0.23% of fully vaccinated individuals in the state have tested positive for Covid. A week later, the department reported that this number had increased by a mere 0.06% to 0.29% and that there had only been 51 additional hospitalizations and 18 additional deaths in the entire state, making the official hospitalization rate for vaccinated individuals 0.01% and the death rate 0.003%. Nationally, three-quarters of all reported breakthrough cases have been among people 65 or older. In the week after Holy Cross made their announcement, zero people under the age of 40, vaccinated or unvaccinated, died from Covid in the state of Massachusetts. As the data shows, the risk to those who are vaccinated isn’t even distinguishable between other common diseases. About 35,000 people die and 500,000 people are hospitalized due to the flu every year in the United States. That’s about 0.01% and 0.15% of the population respectively, or five times the percentage of vaccinated deaths and nineteen times the percentage of vaccinated hospitalizations in Massachusetts due to Covid. Why has the school not required flu vaccinations in the past? Are we going to be forced to vaccinate and mask for flu season under threat of being unenrolled from classes? Of course not. Because every school, student, faculty member, and parent over the course of the last century has determined that the burden of forcing students to vaccinate and mask for a disease that kills about 40,000 people a year is too high for such a low risk. 

The risk assessments of the CDC and, therefore, Holy Cross, are completely backwards. But why? If the science doesn’t justify these decisions, what’s the reason these decisions are being made? By my estimation, the reason Holy Cross has adopted the CDC’s recommendation is because of one major factor: the possibility of scrutiny. Specifically, the scrutiny of those who are currently holding institutions like Holy Cross to a non-rational standard based on misinformed beliefs about Covid. I’ve already gone on long enough about why the belief that vaccinated people are at a substantial risk is simply not based in science, but what is this “non-rational” standard? 

It’s the expectation that Holy Cross should be held responsible for outbreak cases, even on an almost fully vaccinated campus. The administration has made the assessment that there is a possibility that the school’s reputation will be tarnished due to this standard. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous or unfair the standard is. It doesn’t matter that the students, staff, and faculty have done their part by getting vaccinated and are now not at risk. It doesn’t matter that wearing masks is, quite literally, a symbolic gesture to make it look like the school is being responsible. It is easier for the administration to pass the buck, commit to the false narrative that masks are in any way necessary for vaccinated individuals, and shield itself from any possibility of public scrutiny. It’s essentially a win-win. If there is outcry from groups of people who hold the non-rational belief that Covid cases among vaccinated people on campus makes the school in some way irresponsible and at fault, the school can defend itself from these criticisms by claiming that they followed CDC guidelines. On the other side of the coin — in an attempt to shield themselves from the criticisms of students, families, and staff who believe that masking is unnecessary and who are upset with the school for going back on it’s promise of “no masking” at a 90% vaccination rate — the administration can blame the CDC’s recommendation for this new masking policy by asserting that their hands were tied. All of this would make for a reasonable risk assessment if you were assessing the risk of public scrutiny and the possibility of your reputation being called into question. 

It is, however, not the job of the administration to protect itself from the possibility of bad PR, especially if doing so negatively affects the learning and campus experiences of students. The one and only job of the Holy Cross administration is to provide a safe and holistic learning environment and campus experience based on risk assessments that are in the best interest of the students, faculty, and staff. That’s it. And within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, any risk assessment that is being made within the best interest of students, faculty, and staff must come about due to rational standards that are based in scientific fact. The standard being applied to Holy Cross right now is clearly not based on that science.

Now, you may be thinking “it’s just an extra few weeks of masking… why are you so concerned about this? It’s not that big of a deal” And you would be right. Having to wear masks for a few weeks at the start of school isn’t that big of a deal. And while there has been a whole lot of research that shows the serious consequences that masks have had on social interaction and communication — which I would argue is more important in educational spaces than any other social environment I could think of — a couple weeks of masking at the beginning of school isn’t some enormous request. But I’m not concerned with a few extra weeks of masking. I’m concerned that if the school is already asking people to mask before classes even start — that decision completely neglecting the scientific facts and statistical evidence we are seeing with Covid hospitalization and mortality among vaccinated people — what are we going to be asked to do if people begin to test positive on campus when we are all back? This is the most important thing for all of us to understand: some vaccinated students and staff will contract Coronavirus this semester. When this happens, the school may feel pressure, most likely from the possibility of public scrutiny of the school’s safety measures.

Here’s the truth that all of us — not just students, faculty, or administrators at HC, but all inhabitants of this country — need to get on the same page about. The goal of vaccines was never to eradicate Covid off the face of the earth. As with the flu, that will likely never happen. The point of the vaccines was to stymie massive spread and decrease hospitalization and death. We have achieved that. No amount of goalpost shifting by a headline starved media, virtue signaling politicians from both sides of the isle, or misinformed social media posts will make that untrue. 

These types of measures may have been necessary to avert serious risk in the absence of a readily available vaccine. That risk doesn’t exist anymore. So, when a student or faculty member tests positive for Covid, and if Holy Cross decides to bring back more aggressive Covid mitigation measures, should you accept the reinstatement of non-optional masking, social distancing, and dorm and extracurricular restrictions on and off campus? Ask yourself, “are the tradeoffs that the school may ask me to make — having to wear a mask while I exercise, having to limit how many people I can have in my room, not being able to go and watch my friend’s sports games from the stands, not being able to eat in the dining hall with groups of friends — are these things that I would find acceptable to give up for any other type of risk?” Are you okay with having any more of your time at Holy Cross, or any more of the experiences that you were promised when you signed your letter of intent and sent in your tuition check, disrupted or even fully taken away because of that level of risk? I would argue you shouldn’t be okay with a single extra MINUTE, much less days, weeks, or God forbid months of your college experience being wasted away because of Covid policies that lack any substantive scientific justification. You’ve already had enough of that taken from you. 

Let me put it in this context. Are you okay with walking across campus crosswalks, roads, and parking lots knowing that there is a 0.001% chance that you will be hit and killed by a car? Are you okay with walking up and down the numerous stairs and hills on campus to get to your classes, dorms, and dining facilities knowing that there is a 0.004% chance that you die tripping on concrete or falling down a flight of stairs? For those who have to live in The Edge next semester due to on-campus housing shortages, and who must take their cars or Holy Cross shuttles to and from campus, are you okay with knowing that you have a 0.01% risk of dying in a car accident? Of course you are. Because we, as human beings, assess risk reasonably in every facet of life.

In the face of narrative driven hysteria and the non-rational expectations of eradicating Covid, the only “vaccine” that can bring us clarity is leadership. It takes standing up and saying what needs to be said and doing what needs to be done despite the fact that you might be wrongly judged for it. For my entire life I have been told countless times that this is what leadership is. By my parents, high school teachers, coaches, professors, and by this very institution. Holy Cross still has the opportunity to show the type of leadership it expects of its graduates. At the very least, Holy Cross students, families, faculty, staff, and alumni deserve an explanation regarding how Holy Cross’ decision to cave to a non-rational standard and the unjustified pressure from a misinformed public models the leadership that all of us also expect from this school’s administration. 

With this in mind, I have a challenge for the Holy Cross administration. I challenge you to pick one of these two options. Provide your students, faculty, and staff with scientific evidence as to why there is a substantial enough risk of serious illness or death on your fully vaccinated campus to implement a mask policy and to justify the trade-offs you are forcing students to make. This goes for any future restrictive policies that may be put into place in the almost certain event that a small number of vaccinated students and/or faculty test positive for Covid over the course of the semester. No passing the buck to the CDC and saying “we’re just following their guidance.” These are your decisions, not the CDC’s, and we deserve a more comprehensive justification than “a government bureaucracy recommended we do this. Sorry!” In the event that you cannot provide satisfactory scientific evidence to justify your Covid policies and the risk assessments you have made, we slide to the second option. Admit that this decision has not been made because of scientific reality or to protect students and faculty from a substantial risk. Admit that this decision has been made to protect the school’s image from non-rational public scrutiny from outside the HC community and to protect school administrators, regardless of the impact on students, from being held responsible (unjustly!) when some students catch Covid or in the 0.003% chance that something goes terribly wrong. If it is true that vaccines work, and if you cannot provide a scientific justification for why a completely vaccinated campus needs to mask and will likely be subjected to other restrictions, this is the only possible explanation for the implementation of a mask mandate. 

Well, I guess there is a third option. You could decide to stay silent, evading the concerns and criticisms of paying students and families, or you could even reiterate that you are following the fundamentally flawed guidance of the CDC, which, let’s be honest, is as good as staying silent.

A special thanks to Monica Regan ‘23 who helped me with my research for this article.