Are Senior Gatherings Really Safe?

 While not being able to hold senior events, some people at school decided to host events for the seniors that would regularly be held such as the Senior Sunrise. Although it was for a fun purpose, many seniors saw these events as problematic as mostly no one decided to follow protocols that should have taken place making most of the seniors who attended in danger of catching COVID-19 and spreading it to others.

  Many other people who attended also had the same sentiment that at the end of the day, it was not executed properly and even though the leadership at our school were the ones who orchestrated these events (but was not affiliated with the school), they did not hold anyone accountable with social distancing and were not wearing masks. 

  At one point there was a line for donuts and almost no one was wearing a mask, one of the leaders was even sharing her mask in order to “keep people calm and safe” which was a devastatingly terrible idea.

 Madison Ross (12) said, “It was nice to see my peers again outside of a screen, but I think the event could have gone better. Students who urged us to wear masks were not wearing one themselves, and I found it hypocritical. After talking with some friends, most of them said they didn’t wear masks because nobody else was. Mask wearing shouldn’t be a matter of fitting in; it’s for safety.”

  A lot of the issue with this event was the mob mentality behind it, there were so many pictures on social media with herds of people without masks. Many people are just bystanders to this mob mentality so if more than half of the people there were not wearing masks, that convinces the rest of the people that they should not.

  Being subjugated into this mob mentality does not excuse the fact that people should still have been cautious because this virus is not over and will not be over until people are more aware of their safety.

  Another senior, Casey Pearlman, said, “The people who made these decisions are completely unqualified to host events without distancing or mask-wearing and could have been responsible for causing more local cases.”

  If things like this keep on happening it will be even harder in the future to congregate in bigger groups and go back to normal. With school starting and many people acting as if the virus will not touch them or as if none of this affects them is the reason why we will probably not stay back at all and will continue online school until possibly the second semester.

  The idea that teenagers believe nothing will hurt them or they are invincible is very prevalent in this case, as people have no respect or responsibility for their own actions, blaming it on how other people did not wear their masks so you should not either is a very big reason that these things tend to happen. It is never the answer though since this is exactly how we will take even longer than before to go back to school or just go back to normal in general.