President Martha Pollack announced Friday morning that Cornell will once again move back to a green alert on campus because “we felt like it,” Pollack wrote in a statement to the Cornell community.
“Every Friday morning we look at the dashboard and get some vibes,” the email read. “We are feeling green today on this sunny April Friday morning, as the birds are chirping outside my window. We are once again moving to COVID-19 Alert Level Green (“New Normal”) because we felt like it.”
Pollack told students not to let their guard down, urging them to keep social distancing and mask wearing, even as she felt like cases were low on campus. She also reminded students to keep signing up for their surveillance tests — saying that she knows first hand that losing campus Wi-Fi “kind of sucks.”
“Cornellians, we fervently hope you will take surveillance testing seriously,” the statement read. “I know first hand what it feels like to lose these privileges. I had to rely on my iPhone hotspot over the last week, because I forgot to schedule my test.”
Pollack wrote that she missed her surveillance test because of an annual virtual bridge tournament last week and warned Cornellians to be vigilant about their own testing, because campus isn’t out of the woods yet with the virus.
When asked what students should do if they lose access to Wi-Fi and don’t have a hotspot, Pollack told The Sun that she was “so sorry but we can’t do anything.” She added that students just have to deal with the new punitive policies because “we finally felt like doing something” about COVID clusters after blaming students for partying.
“Keep being vigilant, Cornellians,” the email read. “Green is the color of hope. It’s the color of St. Patty’s Day, which caused a COVID cluster. But most of all, it is the color of marijuana, which we will never let you smoke on our Ithaca Campus. We won’t give you any real long break anytime soon, so go have fun — but not too much fun.”
This piece is part of The Sun’s April 20 joke issue series. For more, visit https://cornellsun.com/category/four-twenty/twentyone/.