The State of the U(VA)nion: Happiness is Back

Order is restored.

For the first time since February 2020 (30 months, for those of you keeping score at home), the University of Virginia is back. Students flooded the fall activities fair, grabbing flyers for club after club that they have no intention of joining (except The Jefferson Independent, of course). Upperclassmen bustled around grounds, bumping into faces they haven’t seen in months. First years got their first dose of college classes, and went to their first (and last) office hours to try to impress their new professors. Individuals everywhere piled into lecture halls and discussion sections seeing their classmates’ sparkling smiles, free from the shackles of the N-95. Classes are overenrolled. The Corner’s economy is flourishing. The columns of the Rotunda seem to shimmer with a radiance I have never quite seen before. The sun looks a bit brighter, the leaves a bit greener, the air a bit clearer, and the sky a bit bluer.

As a fourth year, the energy around Charlottesville has been nothing like I’ve ever seen. After two and a half years of being controlled, quarantined, and psychologically manipulated by the tyranny of UVA’s medical decision makers, we are free, and experiencing college (for real) for the first year ever (as fourth years). 

I’m torn– part of me is really upset after seeing these first three days. Upset seeing the overwhelming joy from the community, and knowing how amazing it could have been for all four years, had the democratic deep state not garnered control of Corporate America, social media, and all public universities, and gaslit them into thinking it was more important for 20-year-olds to be safe from the common cold rather than experience some of the most fun years of their lives. 

But I am going to try not to do that. I hope everyone else does, too. I hope fourth years see this as an opportunity to make the absolute most of it. To do everything they possibly can. To say “yes” to everything they’re invited to. To do something they’ve always wanted to do. And I hope first, second, and third years recognize how incredible of an era they have in front of them, and do everything they can with the time they have left. 

So I’m not going to be upset, I’m going to be thrilled. Because happiness is back. The University of Virginia is back. The students are back. We’re back. And we are here to stay.