Coming back to campus after five months away from Demorest was like coming up for a breath of fresh air, masks and all. Now it is our responsibility as students to protect one another and uphold the values and community that we have grown to love so much. This year is different than ever before–and with change comes the ingrained and immediate reaction to fight it–but if we, as the College, really want to make it until November face to face then we have to do our part. We have a personal responsibility to our classmates, our professors, the staff, and our families back home to do what we have been asked by those who have worked tirelessly to make sure we can return to campus in a safe and accessible way.

Masks are new. If you wear glasses they present the challenges other folks don’t face, but we can adapt, and it is well worth the extra hassle if it means we get to wake up in Demorest every day. Some feel claustrophobic. Others struggle to breathe. Try out different types and find one that works for you so that we can all stay healthy and happy this Fall. This isn’t the college experience anyone imagined, but being here, at Piedmont, is much better than being at home doing online classes with no human contact outside of a computer screen. This is a small town. There isn’t much to do. However, when push comes to shove, if you go to a party in Athens, unknowingly contact COVID, and sit next to a classmate with an invisible disability the consequences go way beyond being bored on a Thursday night. Make like Mr. Rogers and be a good neighbor this semester.

Monogram your masks or show off your personality with them. Even if you don’t think it’s making a difference, even if you don’t like it, even if you think it’s a political stunt, it’s our policy, it’s a part of the pledge we all signed: so do it. The more we buckle down, the faster we can get back to normal. Our administrators and our other staff and faculty have done everything they can to make sure we stay safe; it is now our job to show them that we are capable of being personally accountable even when we aren’t sitting in class. We are all adults and it’s beyond time we learn that the choices we make, regardless of whether we have the freedom to make them or not, affect other people in very real ways. Every action has a consequence, good or bad. If we wear our masks and wash our hands, even when it’s as hot as the brass handle to Hell in the Summer, the consequence is having this (very interesting) semester on campus. If we don’t, the consequence is yet another cut off semester in our parents basements. The choice is ours. Let’s make the right one.

This weeks editorial was written by Laura Alyssa Platé, Editor in Chief