At around 5 p.m. on March 6, the staff of Harvard’s Memorial Hall told us the news: Our spring a cappella concert was cancelled due to concerns over COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus rapidly spreading around the globe. The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, the Harvard Fallen Angels, and the Harvard Callbacks were shocked. Tickets had been sold; hours of rehearsal had been devoted; immeasurable stress had been overcome. Two hours before we were scheduled to take the stage, we found out our hard work would never pay off — never mind the fact that we would not earn the ticket revenue we needed to pay for our live sound, already set up for the show. Luckily, staff agreed to allow us to perform for each other and livestream the event on a laptop with horrific sound quality, but it was a small consolation to friends and family members who in some cases had crossed oceans to attend in person.
Our concert was the first victim of a sweeping cancellation policy which will close historic Sanders Theater to the public until at least April 30. After one final livestreamed performance to an empty hall by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum on March 7, all Sanders events must now be virtualized, postponed, or cancelled. The policy’s development was announced to our group in real time less than two hours after an email from the office of the university’s executive vice president informed the Harvard community that “non-essential meetings or events of 100 people or more [would be] strongly discourage[d]” for at least eight weeks.
The new guidelines, along with similar but less flexible policies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed a sharp uptick in cases of the new coronavirus in the Cambridge area. As of the evening of March 7, there were 13 cases reported in Massachusetts, including five announced that day. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experts are still working to learn how the contagious virus spreads.
The three groups slated to perform in the concert were undoubtedly upset, but we knew that the Memorial Hall staff was trying its best to follow university policy and protect the Cambridge community. We understood. But when we learned that Harvard’s athletic events this weekend, which drew crowds well over the recommended limit of 100 people, went on as planned, understanding became more difficult.
According to the Harvard athletics website, the men’s basketball team played home games against Brown University on Mar. 6 and Yale University on Mar. 7. According to eyewitnesses, including Davis-Tyler Dudley ’21, a member of the Veritones, the stands were full. “Pretty ironic that last night’s a cappella performance was cancelled by Memorial Hall when this Harvard basketball game with nearly 1000 attendees is still going on,” Tyler-Dudley told the HPR in an emailed statement.
Elsewhere, officials have decided that crowded, often rowdy sporting events pose too much of a public health risk to continue. The same night that Harvard played Brown, Yeshiva University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute played a basketball game without a crowd after Johns Hopkins University, the host site, barred fans from entry. The NBA has reportedly warned players that seats in professional basketball arenas may soon be empty, too. Internationally, athletic events have been cancelled, postponed, or closed to the public in many countries, including many for which the CDC has not yet issued any travel warning.
So why are “nearly 1000” spectators allowed to congregate in an arena if a few hundred audience members cannot sit in a theater? Admittedly, the guidelines from Harvard are somewhat discretionary: The administration “strongly discourage[s]” large gatherings but does not prohibit them. But allegations that Harvard’s athletic program receives special treatment are nothing new. Research shows that despite Ivy League universities getting little to no financial benefit from sports, they view athletics as uniquely crucial to campus and alumni culture –— even though game attendance is low. A 2019 paper suggested Harvard’s athletic recruitment process, which does not provide scholarships, may be designed to advantage prospective students from socioeconomically privileged backgrounds.
Of course, I cannot know why athletics officials came to a different conclusion than Memorial Hall staff regarding the university’s coronavirus directives, but the inconsistent application is a problem. It has the potential to spark students’ doubt about the legitimacy of public health warnings: After all, if it’s safe to be in the bleachers of a basketball game, why wouldn’t it be safe to be in the benches of a far less crowded theater? It also has the potential to breed resentment between students whose events are cancelled and students whose events go on as planned, even though usually neither group of students is responsible for the policies in question. This fracturing threatens the unity crucial to living through times of crisis without perpetual panic.
As scientists and public health officials freely admit, current policies aiming to protect the public from COVID-19 combine research with inference, precaution, and guesswork. There are no definitive answers as to whether a cappella concerts and basketball games are safe for Cambridge residents or not. Everyone is doing their best to contain the disease’s spread while allowing normal life to go on as much as possible. Still, the university must do its best while using uniformly applied guidelines. If the virus can spread in close quarters at Sanders, it can spread in close quarters at Lavietes Pavilion. The assessment of risk for an event should have nothing to do with its content.
Singing to an empty theater was heartbreaking. It would have been much easier to stomach if Harvard itself had not given me reason to doubt that it was necessary.
Chloe E.W. Levine is the music director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones.
Image Credit: Clay Oxford