Standing in the way of dangerous behavior

I love to sit in a room full of students all tap-tap-tapping away at their laptop computers, audibly and visibly making progress on the drafts coming due in the next couple of days. The sound is soothing, and when they ask questions or show me their work, I take comfort in the assurance that good has been done here.

But yesterday it was difficult to transition between the roiling mass of chaos outside the classroom and the soothing sound of progress within. For a few days I'd been trying to deal with a simmering problem that came to a full rolling boil just before class. Within a few minutes I had to shift out of my angry-professor-pounding-her-fist-on-the-desk persona to the prof who inspires her students to produce the soothing sounds of disciplined brain-work. A few deep breaths are not enough to ease that transition.

I can't get too specific about the problem except to say that a student wanted to do something dangerous and I was obstinately standing in the way. How dangerous? No big deal in normal times, but the kind of thing that could put lots of people at risk in the middle of a pandemic. We have more than 100 students in quarantine and more than 30 positive cases of the virus on campus right now, so the Powers That Be have shut down all group events for two weeks in an attempt to put a damper on the recent sudden spike in cases, all of which have been traced to unsanctioned social events, athletic practices, and off-campus travel--and this student wanted to travel across the country to fulfill a non-emergency need that they could have fulfilled right here in town and then return to the classroom without quarantining.

The student insisted that I was the only professor who had a problem with this plan, but I found that hard to believe--and I was right. Within a few hours I was immersed in an angry chain of e-mails involving professors, Student Life staff, an associate provost, and two vice presidents. In the end the provost wrote an email that quashed the student's plan and reminded me, in case I'd forgotten, that our administration is serious about controlling the virus--and they've got my back, which will be helpful if the student wants all our heads on a platter.

So now that the PTBs have turned down the heat on that simmering pot of student-induced angst, I'm free to listen to the soothing sounds of students at work and relish the results that will come rolling in over the next couple of days. In a battle between irresponsibility and discipline, discipline wins--this time.