Yale Or Jail? Ivy League School Bans Students From Visiting Local Businesses And Restaurants, Even Outdoors, Due To COVID-19

Tim MeadsJanuary 5, 2022

It costs just shy of $80,000 to attend Yale University — a school once considered one of America’s finest places of higher education — while receiving room and board in New Haven, Connecticut. But, with COVID-19 cases rising again due to the Omicron variant, the Ivy League school recently told students that they will not be allowed to jaunt around New Haven’s numerous bars and dining options — like the world-famous Pepe’s Pizzeria — unless they get the food to go via curbside pick-up. University administrators even told students they cannot visit local businesses during this time either.

On Tuesday, the college’s newspaper Yale Daily News announced that school administrators announced a plethora of new COVID-19 restrictions for students returning for the 2022 spring semester.

“Students can return to campus anytime between Jan. 14 and Feb. 4,” the News stated. “They must quarantine in their residences (except to pick up food and test) until they receive results of an arrival test.”

“Yale instituted a campus-wide quarantine until Feb. 7 or (which may be extended depending on public health conditions),” the student outlet added.

“Students may not visit New Haven businesses or eat at local restaurants (even outdoors) except for curbside pickup,” it warned. “Dining is grab-and-go until public health conditions improve. Yale is currently set to resume in-person classes on Feb. 7 — after two weeks of remote instruction.”

The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium noted that the data being used to determine if conditions improve are “cases” not hospitalizations. As Omicron continues to rip through the country, it is possible cases could continue to rise, even if the variant is more similar to the flu — especially for vaccinated individuals.

This off-campus dining ban also applies to students who don’t live in Yale-owned property.

“Even if you live off campus, you are forbidden from frequenting local businesses, including outdoor restaurants,” Siboarium tweeted. “This isn’t just a residence hall rule, it applies to all students. And it can be extended indefinitely if cases are high in New Haven.”

“Cases are the metric here, not hospitalizations,” he added. “So even if there were zero pressure on hospitals, Yale could potentially extend the state of emergency—for students who are triple vaccinated.”

Cases are the metric here, not hospitalizations. So even if there were zero pressure on hospitals, Yale could potentially extend the state of emergency—for students who are triple vaccinated.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 5, 2022

This announcement seems to fly in the face of science and reasoning.

In an opinion column just yesterday, Johns Hopkins’ professor Dr. Marty Makary, M.D., detailed how higher education’s reaction to COVID-19 has largely “derailed two years of students’ education and threaten to upend the upcoming spring semester—have exposed them as nonsensical, anti-scientific and often downright cruel.”

“At these institutions of higher learning and thousands more, science is supposedly held in the highest esteem,” Makary wrote, “So where is the scientific support for masking outdoors? Where is the scientific support for constantly testing fully vaccinated young people? Where is the support for the confinement of asymptomatic, young people who test positive for a virus to which they are already immune on a campus of other immune people?”

“The data simply do not justify any of it,” he added.

For now, we can only hope that school administrators embrace the school’s motto of “Lux et Veritas” and find the “light and truth” regarding proper COVID-19 safety, perhaps protocols that do not essentially place Yale’s 99.7% vaxxed student population in a collegiate prison.

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