I’ve been trying to make sense of the extraordinarily mixed messages coming from college administrations that brought students back to campus but are now upbraiding them with all manner of scolding and Orwellian edicts. And here’s what occurred to me:

It’s no secret that in our huge political polarization around coronavirus, blue islands and Democrats in general have adopted a far less risk-tolerant approach to coronavirus. See, for just one example, this Pew survey from June:

Or these recent numbers on K-12 school reopening: https://twitter.com/AlecMacGillis/status/1296093728805920768

It is also no secret that college campuses are as blue as blue islands come these days. See, for example, the electoral map for virtually any college town in the country, even in purple or red states.

So colleges are caught in an extraordinary bind. On the one hand, they have absorbed the Dem/liberal ethic on coronavirus as intensely as anywhere when it comes to social distancing, masks, risk of contagion, etc.

At the same time, for reasons that have been well documented, their business model is at tremendous risk if they don’t offer in-person instruction, since many families will decide remote learning isn’t worth the big $$$.

(To be fair, many colleges also want to open because they genuinely understand the value of the in-person experience and also how much their communities depend on them for basic economic vitality.)

So the result, for the colleges that do open, is this wild inner conflict that’s now on display. The very institutions that feel the social-distancing-ethic as strongly as any other are taking a step seemingly contrary to that ethic. They are trying desperately to reconcile this.

Which is how you end up with the crazy stuff happening now: college administrators sending letters threatening to rescinding admission to incoming freshmen and their parents over their response to an Instagram poll about partying... https://twitter.com/AlecMacGillis/status/1297254567252561920

Or, college deans scanning social media for pics of kids sitting on porches without masks (yes, really) and appointing Behavior Compact Monitors to report on their fellow students. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/us/college-campus-covid.html