Students at the University of South Carolina carry their dinners across campus on August 10. Since the campus reopened, the university has reported more than 2,300 student Covid-19 cases. | Sean Rayford/Getty Images
College campuses are coronavirus breeding grounds. They don’t have to be.
In the last weekend of August, officials in the city of Columbia — home to the University of South Carolina — broke up a pool party where more than 200 college students were packed into a courtyard. “It was like Mardi Gras,” the fire chief told a local paper. “Nobody was practicing social distancing. Nobody was wearing a mask,” despite a local ordinance requiring so. “That was just the perfect storm to spread the virus,” he later said.
Over the next few days, the university registered more than 435 new Covid-19 cases. Other illegal parties near the campus, including