In May, The New York Times published an essay by Jonathan Malesic, a writing teacher at Southern Methodist University, titled “My College Students Are Not OK.” At colleges across the United States, the essay asserted, student engagement was a casualty of the COVID pandemic. Malesic and his students had returned to in-person instruction, but students “just weren’t doing what it takes to learn,” he wrote. “They didn’t even seem to be trying.” The essay prompted much discussion in higher education. PAW asked Dean of the College Jill Dolan to discuss the situation at Princeton in an essay of her own.