Reading the New York Times profile of Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, I couldn’t help but think about the lost Covid years on American university campuses.

The profile details that Robinson was a promising young high-school honor student who received a scholarship to attend Utah State University. “But,” the Times recounts, “a university spokeswoman said Mr. Robinson only attended the university for one semester in 2021, as a pre-engineering major.”

Robinson seems to have been deeply into the virtual world of video games as the real world turned upside down. Acquaintances spoke of him as well informed but increasingly distant. After the one semester at Utah State, there’s not much information about his doings, except that he drifted to an apprentice program for electricians at Dixie Technical College in St. George, not far from where his family lives. He was a third-year student in the program at the time of Kirk’s murder. Robinson shared an apartment with a roommate, and neighbors say they blared music but Robinson was rarely seen and remembered only as “withdrawn.”

There is no mention of the pandemic in the story. And for all I know, it’s of scant relevance. But I wonder. Many high-school students lost their senior year in 2020, and university life was surreal well into 2021 (and beyond) with classes either remote or subject to tight restrictions on in-person gatherings, limited housing, masks, social distancing, and so on. Perhaps it wasn’t as strange in Utah as in other places. Still, the pandemic years had deep psychological and developmental impact on young people and children. One way or the other, it seems Robinson’s life took a detour in or just after 2021. I imagine we’ll learn much more about that.