I read OP’s reddit responses and s/he actually does seem to understand the Covid issue. They said that admitted students were able to “bypass Covid safety protocols” and they didn’t see much of a difference between this school’s accepted students and the waitlisted ones (except that now they think admitted students are more likely to be from wealthy families or the children of alumni).
I think OP miscalculated their chance of acceptance and misread the college’s marketing as personal interest. They signed up for a virtual interview which turned out to be a discussion about the college, but even though OP realized their grades were low for this school they came away with the idea that they had a good chance of being admitted.
When they received the waitlist “offer” they decided to give the college “the benefit of the doubt” and sent in all the additional information they were allowed to send. The “benefit of the doubt” is an odd phrase. If the interview gave them a “positive impression” about their admission chances maybe they thought they were added to the waitlist by mistake. They seemed to read something into the way this college delivered the waitlist decision (because it came in an email instead of a notification in the portal like other colleges) which makes me wonder if they thought the method of notification was an indication of where they were on the waitlist.
OP mentions their “previous interactions” with the college several times to justify why the tour rules should have been bent for them and said that their request should have been considered “in context.” They also said that their visit coincided with the release date of the earliest waitlist acceptance notifications. I think they mistakenly believed they were high on the waitlist and really expected the visit to coincide with an acceptance and were frustrated they couldn’t get the business office to understand what they interpreted as their special status.
The way they talk about the divide between the academic part of the college and the “gatekeeping administration” makes me suspect that they think the academic side of the college wants them and the business side might overrule it. The end of their post even mentions turning down an offer if they get one. In the 2 months since the visit they seem to have come to the conclusion that selective college administrations are elitist instead of understanding that they were responding to the college’s mass marketing. That’s unfortunate. I hope they enjoy their time at the college they decided to attend. It appears to have been much higher on their original list than this college anyway so they’re getting what they originally wanted.