I’ve been involved in several discussions lately regarding the merits of a gap year for the #Classof2020 seniors. The argument being there’s no guarantee their colleges/universities will be cleared for anything more than remote learning by the fall. Fellow parents have asked: 1/

Is it safe? Are we throwing our housing deposit down the drain if kids can’t live in the dorms by the fall? Will we ever be able to live communally again, or return to a time without social distancing?My response as of this moment (I reserve the right to change my mind as more 2/

information becomes available): We’ve already taken so much away from the Class of 2020. No, we haven’t sent them off to war. We haven’t issued them PPE and thrown them into the front lines of the medical fight. But we have taken away all of the milestones they’ve worked their 3/

entire young lives to achieve? Was it necessary? We don’t know yet. That will be borne out in the months and years to come. But we’ve asked these seniors to see beyond themselves and sacrifice for the greater good. Do it for your grandparents, kids. And now that we’ve robbed 4/

them of their present, we want to take their future away from them, too? The agreement was to #StayHome to #FlatteningTheCurve. The purpose, we were told, was to not overwhelm our hospitals and lose people to #COVID19 because they didn’t have access to the care they needed. 5/

We did not, however, agree to go inside until the world was safe again. The world wasn’t safe when I went to college. Dr. Anthony Fauci was warning the country that a million Americans were infected with HIV my freshman year of college. He furthered warned that number would 6/

increase to 2-3 million in 5-10 years. Liberace died from AIDS my freshman year of college. The first antiviral became available and the first clinical trial for a vaccine started my freshman year of college. That was 7 full years after the first HIV/AIDS patient was recorded 7/

in the US. We didn’t have a vaccine. We didn’t have proven successful treatments yet, and kids went to college. We would lose so many while I was still in college: Keith Haring, Ryan White, Miles Davis, Anthony Perkins, Robert Reed, Freddie Mercury, & many more. It was tragic 8/

and devastating. I wish we could have done more sooner for every person lost to the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s & 90’s. But we did not take the future away from an entire generation because we didn’t have all the answers for the present. I want my daughter to be safe, above all. 9/

If information emerges that the odds of surviving her freshman year at college are stacked against her due to the #coronavirus, of course we will make the decision to protect her life. If they can prove her going to college will result in the death of others, we will do our 10/

part. We want answers the same as everyone else. But as of this moment, we are not planning on taking everything our daughter has worked so hard to achieve away because the world doesn’t have all the answers yet. We will follow guidelines, do our best, and support her dreams.