The Friday revelation that the University of Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, tested positive for Covid-19 less than a week after appearing unmasked at the White House spurred intense criticism and calls for his resignation. And it brought charges that the university was guilty of a double standard by asking students to follow social-distancing rules while allowing the president to flout them.
The disclosure came just hours after President Trump — who this week ridiculed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for wearing a mask — dropped the bombshell news on Twitter early Friday morning that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive for the virus. By Saturday morning, Jenkins and four other guests who attended the September 26 event — Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, the former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor — had all revealed their positive tests. Trump, who was reportedly showing mild symptoms, was transported Friday evening to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Jenkins had been among more than 150 guests at the Rose Garden ceremony where Trump formally introduced Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor and alumna, as his nominee to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 87-year-old associate justice died on September 18 from complications of pancreatic cancer. Trump’s nomination of the socially conservative Barrett to fill the vacancy created by the death of the iconic Ginsburg before the November 3 presidential election infuriated liberals still seething over Senate Republicans’ refusal four years earlier to grant a hearing to President Barack Obama’s centrist Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
When Jenkins was photographed maskless and craning his neck to see Trump introduce Barrett at the Rose Garden event, the criticism was swift and severe. But politics may have had little to do with it.
After the pandemic forced the abrupt shutdown of college campuses in the spring, Jenkins became an early and prominent advocate of reopening them safely and in person this fall. In May he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in which he said that bringing students back to his university for face-to-face instruction was “worth the risk.” He cited Aristotle and argued that reopening Notre Dame was the university’s “attempt to find the courageous mean as we face the threat of the virus and seek to continue our mission of education and inquiry.”
Notre Dame was one of the first institutions to embrace higher education’s Thanksgiving scenario: Bring students to campus two weeks early, forgo fall break, then send them back home for the semester before Thanksgiving. The plan, as Jenkins laid it out in the Times op-ed, would involve extensive testing protocols, contact tracing, and quarantining. And of course “physical distancing and, in certain settings, the wearing of masks.”
Jenkins ran afoul of his own safety rules in early August, before fall classes had even started. The president posed for a photo, wearing a mask but tightly surrounded by a group of students on the quad. He quickly apologized to Notre Dame students for getting “swept up in the excitement and celebration of your return,” and vowed to adhere to distancing guidelines in the future.
The semester began well enough, but within days, an alarming spike in Covid-19 cases appeared. A university spokesman faulted students, saying that many of the cases had been traced to an off-campus party where masks were not worn and social distancing was not observed.
“What it reinforces is our concern that it only takes a weak link,” the spokesman, Paul Browne, told the local South Bend Tribune. “You can have a very strong chain, but if you have only one weak link, it can cause numbers to spike.”
A letter from top administrators on August 16 echoed that theme, reminding students of their responsibility to wear masks and practice social distancing. “And be kind — but remember that being kind to our community includes holding people accountable.”
Two days later, Jenkins announced in a video message to students that a “dramatic increase” in positive cases would require the university to pause in-person instruction for two weeks to try to control the spread of the virus. If the effort failed, students would be sent back home, as happened in the spring. The temporary break worked. Cases fell sharply, and the university began a gradual return to in-person classes last month.
Then, a week ago, the White House called.
As Jenkins would tell the story in the form of an apology to the Notre Dame community on Monday, he received, “on very short notice, an invitation to attend the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court.”
He agreed to go. At the White House, a medical worker swabbed Jenkins’s nose for a rapid Covid-19 test.
“I was then directed to a room with others, all fully masked, until we were notified that we had all tested negative and were told that it was safe to remove our masks,” Jenkins wrote. “We were then escorted to the Rose Garden, where I was seated with others who also had just been tested and received negative results.”
Jerry Prevo, acting president of Liberty University, was seated to the rear of Jenkins. Kellyanne Conway was to the front, and Melania Trump was in front of her. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, were to the right of the first lady. Prevo and the Pences have all tested negative.
Jenkins wasn’t the only representative of Notre Dame in attendance. The Washington Post reports around 18 faculty members traveled to the White House for the event, and were each tested for Covid-19 on Friday. The Post, citing an unnamed source, said results were expected within 48 hours. The newspaper also reported that the dean of the law school, G. Marcus Cole, was in attendance but wore a mask and quarantined after the ceremony.
Jenkins said in an email announcement that he had submitted to a Covid-19 test after learning this week that a colleague had tested positive for the virus. That’s when Jenkins got the news.
“My symptoms are mild, and I will continue work from home,” he said in the message. “The positive test is a good reminder for me, and perhaps for all, of how vigilant we need to be.”
In his apology, Jenkins said he had made an “error of judgment” in taking off his mask and “shaking hands with a number of people” at the Rose Garden ceremony.
For Notre Dame students like Ashton Weber, that’s not good enough. She said the White House’s testing protocols did not justify Jenkins’s decision to remove his mask. When students receive a negative test result, she pointed out, they are still expected to wear a mask and follow social-distancing rules.
Weber recently helped create a petition, signed by more than 200 undergraduates, calling for Jenkins to resign because of his repeated failures to follow the public-safety precautions expected of students. The petition was circulated before Jenkins’s positive test result, but Weber said that revelation had further demonstrated that he must step down.
“Our university deserves a leader who’s vigilant in the midst of a global pandemic, before it personally affects them,” she said. “Not after they receive a positive diagnosis.”
Notre Dame’s student government, which has declined to support Weber’s petition, was diplomatic in its response to Friday’s news, posting on social media that it was extending “prayers” to Jenkins for a full recovery.
In his apology to the Notre Dame community, Jenkins expressed remorse for failing to lead by example: “I especially regret my mistake in light of the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many, particularly our students, in adjusting their lives to observe our health protocols.”
Jenkins is not the only college president to test positive for Covid-19. The president of Harvard University, among others, received a positive diagnosis. One president — Mark Ivester, who led North Georgia Technical College — is among the more than 200,000 Americans who have died from the disease.
