3 minute read
Pulling people from class
Opinion Operation extract-a-kid
Ian Letts
Advertisement
News Editor
It is safe to say that the severity of COVID-19 amongst Arcata High School students and their families was not realized until school started back up after winter break.
As for myself, I was always aware of the dangers of COVID.
However, school was one of the last places I thought I would have to worry about when it comes to contracting the virus.
Even though this mindset was a commonality for a lot of people, AHS seemed to be taking the pandemic very seriously coming back from break.
I knew they had begun providing at-home rapid tests for any students who wanted them. I had improved the masks I wore to school as a result of the Omicron variant’s exceptionally contagious nature.
In addition, I knew the virus was spreading to new communities in Humboldt County after the holidays, which made some worried about the prospect of school.
Nevertheless, I could only focus on the much more pressing matter of the AP Environmental Science homework I should have done the week before.
However, upon reaching Arcata High school, my outlook changed very quickly. The parking lot was concerningly manageable. The hallways were oddly empty. The classes were smaller than ever before.
It felt like the virus had impacted our campus directly for the first time and school during the pandemic had never felt more treacherous.
Pre-winter break, the Jenga tower of COVID-19 on campus had remained stable, only wavering every few weeks. But that first day back from winter break, my perspective on the pandemic drastically changed, and it began to feel as if the tower was one move away from collapsing.
These recent developments made it clear that the only thing keeping us safe was our own ignorance.
Our already depleted classes shrunk even further following a series of mysterious disappearances, which seemed independent at first glance, but were compartmentalized due to their similarity. Eventually, they were connected to COVID.
In order to combat the virus on campus, the school administered a procedure I like to call “operation extract-a-kid.”
A positive test, which was an increasingly common occurrence at the time, resulted in administration extracting the students from class through a simple, ominous phone call to their teacher.
They would then, with silence and stealth, extract the students’ belongings from their classroom.
That student wouldn’t be heard from by the general public for at least five days.
This prompted much speculation amongst others who were unsure about their infection status, as it was never clear to students who had witnessed the kidnapping whether the person leaving actually had the virus.
A student being called out of class for COVID was a scary enough occurrence.
However, an even more menacing prospect was a teacher testing positive at school, which I had the misfortune of experiencing firsthand.
When I arrived at the classroom of the teacher in question, I was confused by the sight of both my teacher and a substitute in the room at the same time.
It very quickly became clear my teacher had tested positive, which raised another question: Why were they still there?
It seemed like common logic for the person with COVID to not linger in a classroom full of students (after all, when a student tests positive, this doesn’t happen).
Emily Nalley/PEPPERBOX An Arcata High student is abducted by the indivisible hand of COVID-19
Regardless, our class did not see a significant increase in positive cases that week, so our teacher did the right thing…I guess.
While the horrors of COVID on campus were traumatic for many, they were relatively short lived.
Students began returning to school. The parking lot was back to its usual self, poorly designed and impossible to navigate.
The hallways swelled to their standard, cluttered nature.
Campus life was going back to normal.
The school was beginning to stabilize, and it finally felt safe to be a student at Arcata High again.
