Cornell Students Want TikTok Star Expelled For Flouting Covid Rules

Colleges have been threatening students with stiff penalties for failing to social-distance and wear masks, blasting "selfish and reckless" behavior and issuing hundreds of suspensions.

At Cornell University, however, it's the students who are becoming the most vocal enforcers of coronavirus-era rules.

"Jessica Zhang has shown that she does not care to comply to public safety measures and wants to put other citizens at risk for the sake of her own entertainment," reads an online petition from a "Concerned Student Coalition" that had gathered nearly 2,000 signatures by Wednesday night. It says Zhang - a freshman who happens to be a TikTok star with more than half a million followers - should be expelled for flouting coronavirus precautions while partying.

"Some students don't have the luxury of going home to a quiet and healthy environment to focus on academics," the petition warns. "Do not ruin it for everyone else."

Students are returning this month to campuses where they are expected to help police their peers and where a few people's misbehavior could get everyone sent home. Skeptics doubt young people's willingness to keep each other in line, given college's social pressures: "the people who slide up saying 'you're not social distancing' are the ones that wouldn't have been invited anyway," read the Snapchat post that kicked off a backlash against Zhang.

The fallout at Cornell made it clear, though, that some students have embraced their role as the first line of defense against virus, even as other community members wonder how much a freshman navigating an unprecedented college experience can really be held culpable.

"The people who you wouldn't expect to snitch will snitch," said Milan Broughton, a freshman at Cornell who signed the petition. "It's kind of the culture that we need to have around. You need to hold everyone accountable."

Quarantined inside her school housing because she hails from a state with high infections, Broughton was thinking Wednesday about the provost's commitment to consider a campus shut down if more than 250 coronavirus cases emerge within seven days. Cornell has reported just 28 positive tests on campus since February, but other schools have discovered hundreds of infections shortly after reopening this month.

For many students, Broughton said, school is a safe haven.

"So we need to police ourselves," the 18-year-old said.

Zhang, who did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post on Wednesday, has posted a video to TikTok captioned "Apologies + No More Lies." She said that a "false narrative" has been circulating, that her posts have been taken out of context and that she gathered with a dozen people who had tested negative for the virus.

"I wrongly believed it was safe for us to gather without masks, and I sincerely apologize to the Cornell and Ithaca community for making this mistake," said the freshman, who was profiled in the Cornell Daily Sun this spring as an aspiring entrepreneur who gained legions of young fans while documenting her college application process.

Cornell, which did not address questions about Zhang, has created a "behavioral compact" for all students on campus as well as in surrounding Ithaca, N.Y. Anyone in the Cornell and Ithaca-area communities can report violations to the university - and students are told that they "must adopt a culture of shared responsibility for . . . safety and well-being."

One rule: Students may only attend gatherings of 30 people or fewer, and only while wearing masks and keeping six feet apart.

"While we are not able to speak to individual cases, we will note that a number of students who have violated the behavioral compact have been held accountable," said Cornell spokesman John Carberry in a statement.

Some think students should not shoulder all the blame for their transgressions.

"Universities asked them back," said Lauren Kilgour, a doctoral candidate at Cornell who two weeks ago co-wrote an op-ed titled "Don't Make College Kids the Coronavirus Police."

She says that students just figuring out adulthood are being forced into tough positions as peer monitors and stewards of public health. She sees college environments built on trust and community being upended by the threat of punishment brought on by fellow students.

Broughton reported Zhang last week, after a friend sent her a picture of what appears to be a private Snapchat story, a post available only to select friends. The friend vented over text about Zhang's other alleged misdeeds - "haven't seen her with a mask on at all" - and soon Broughton had emailed the vice president for student and campus life.

A video circulated, too, showing students clustered mask-less around two people arm-wrestling on the floor. A woman resembling Zhang squishes together with other people for a selfie at the end. Then, this weekend, students confronted Zhang in the Class of 2024 GroupMe, according to images shared with The Washington Post.

"guys if you see someone breaking the rules, report it," someone wrote. "it puts us all at risk."

"it's j that i've been in q since january (not an excuse) and i went against my better judgement, and i'm rlly ashamed," Zhang wrote back. She said the university was "taking action."

According to the screenshots, Zhang first suggested she had not written the offending Snapchat caption. Then she went on TikTok Tuesday to say it was based on her own experience of being shunned by friends for promoting social distancing in high school. People on Reddit ridiculed the mea culpa as insincere and added their names to the petition. At stake, they believed, was their health, the health of Ithaca, their chance at halfway normal year, their tuition.

"This student is not mature and responsible enough to be away from home. Her reckless, careless behavior is placing others lives at risk. Get her our of my community!" one person commented.

Broughton thinks that expulsion might be too harsh and says she signed the petition mainly to push Cornell into a strong response. Zhang is not the only one breaking the rules, she said - she's heard about students going on a beach outing to the Hamptons.

But she notes that Zhang has hundreds of thousands of people following her journey through college. Watching her rocky start - classes have not started - even one of Zhang's loyal followers said they would struggle to forgive.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)