Dear Student Body,

We are student journalists. Our business is news; we give voice to the students and inform the Brookings community at large. We are not undertakers. As other student news outlets such as Notre Dame’s The Observer stated previously, we do not wish to write your obituary. We do not wish to herald your passing nor craft your memorial. Death is not our business; do not make it so.

COVID-19 is not the first pandemic to touch South Dakota State University. In 1918, when Spanish Flu ravaged the world, SDSU’s sleepy location did not spare its students the same suffering and death as those in New York or London. Despite the medical advances of 102 years, COVID-19 is just as new to us as it was to 1918’s society; as a result we have no vaccine and no therapeutics. To scoff at their plight and pretend ours is different is foolish, as we are hardly better off.

One weapon we possess that 1918’s campus did not is that we understand how COVID-19 spreads. We are informed enough to collectively make decisions which will determine whether next year’s issues celebrate the retreat of the virus or remember those students which it snuffed out. We decide. Each time we go to the grocery store, and we step out without a mask, we decide whether we suffer the inconvenience of going back for it or go without and risk serving as the virus’s weapons. Each time we receive an invitation to a party, we decide whether we entertain ourselves from the safety of our homes or if we congregate in large numbers, potentially condemning others to death with our lack of self-control.

We write this letter to us all, who wield the power of choice, asking a question: Will you allow the virus to wield you as a weapon against your fellow human-being, or will you protect your neighbor against the virus’s advance?

Best regards,

The Collegian Editorial Staff