By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and ASHRAF KHALIL-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

The fi­nal weeks of the col­lege school year have been dis­rupt­ed yet again by COVID-19 as uni­ver­si­ties bring back mask man­dates, switch to on­line class­es and scale back large gath­er­ings in re­sponse to upticks in coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions.

Col­leges in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., New York, Penn­syl­va­nia, Mass­a­chu­setts, Con­necti­cut and Texas have reim­posed a range of virus mea­sures, with Howard Uni­ver­si­ty mov­ing to re­mote learn­ing amid a surge in cas­es in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal.

This is the third straight aca­d­e­m­ic year that has been up­end­ed by COVID-19, mean­ing soon-to-be se­niors have yet to ex­pe­ri­ence a nor­mal col­lege year.

“I feel like last sum­mer it was every­one was like, ‘Oh, this is it. We’re near­ing the tail end,’” re­called Ni­na Heller, a ju­nior at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where ad­min­is­tra­tors brought back a mask man­date about a month af­ter lift­ing it. “And then that didn’t quite hap­pen, and now we’re here at sum­mer again, and there’s kind of no end.”

Man­dates were shed wide­ly in the wake of spring break as case num­bers dropped fol­low­ing a win­ter surge fu­eled by the omi­cron vari­ant. But sev­er­al North­east cities have seen a rise in cas­es and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions in re­cent weeks, as the BA.2 sub­vari­ant of the omi­cron vari­ant con­tin­ues to rapid­ly spread through­out the U.S.

“As much as we would like to move on and think that the pan­dem­ic is over, and I think we all would like that to hap­pen at this point, it’s wish­ful think­ing,” said Ani­ta Barkin, co-chair of a COVID-19 task force for the Amer­i­can Col­lege Health As­so­ci­a­tion. “The pan­dem­ic is still with us.”

COVID-19 had eased so much at Williams Col­lege that the pri­vate lib­er­al arts school in Mass­a­chu­setts al­lowed pro­fes­sors to de­cide whether to re­quire masks in their class­es ear­ly last week. But just days lat­er, with cas­es ris­ing, it re­in­stat­ed an in­door mask man­date, which was even stricter than what had been in place be­fore.

“I think stu­dents are re­al­ly feel­ing like peo­ple they know are drop­ping like flies,” said ju­nior Kitt Ur­dang, who’s had a half-dozen friends test pos­i­tive in re­cent days. “There’s def­i­nite­ly been a lot more un­cer­tain­ty than there’s been on cam­pus since COVID hit.”

Philadel­phia re­cent­ly brought back its mask man­date, lead­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty to again re­quire them start­ing Mon­day. Al­though the city end­ed the man­date Thurs­day, the col­leges haven’t made any changes.

In Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Howard Uni­ver­si­ty’s main cam­pus, af­fec­tion­ate­ly dubbed “The Hill­top” by stu­dents and alums, was large­ly qui­et this week, with many stu­dents tak­ing class­es and ex­ams from home. The aca­d­e­m­ic year is com­ing to a mut­ed end as ris­ing virus num­bers prompt­ed ad­min­is­tra­tors to abrupt­ly shift back to on­line ed­u­ca­tion.

The city’s COVID in­fec­tion rate has more than dou­bled in April. Be­sides Amer­i­can, George­town and George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty al­so re­in­stat­ed their in­door mask man­dates. But Howard is the on­ly one that has moved away from in-per­son in­struc­tion. The spring se­mes­ter ends Fri­day, with fi­nal ex­ams for most stu­dents start­ing next week. Ad­min­is­tra­tors have promised an up­date on what this means for the May 7 com­mence­ment cer­e­mo­ny.

“I don’t think peo­ple are su­per un­hap­py about wear­ing masks,” said Lia De­G­root, a George Wash­ing­ton se­nior who nev­er shed her mask dur­ing the sin­gle week the man­date was lift­ed at her school. “Of all of the things that the pan­dem­ic has dis­rupt­ed, I think wear­ing masks is, you know, a rel­a­tive­ly small thing to do. I think that’s kind of the mind­set that a lot of stu­dents have.”

In near­by Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty an­nounced this month that it was test­ing all un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents twice week­ly through Fri­day, not­ing a steep rise in cas­es. The school al­so said masks would be re­quired not just in class­rooms, but in places like res­i­dence hall com­mon ar­eas.

In Hous­ton, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty an­nounced ear­li­er this month that stu­dents should re­sume wear­ing masks in class­rooms, cit­ing an uptick in cas­es on cam­pus. Large col­lege par­ties al­so were can­celed.

New Mex­i­co State Uni­ver­si­ty took a dif­fer­ent tack, an­nounc­ing Mon­day that all stu­dents on cam­pus must be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19 by Ju­ly 1, end­ing the op­tion of sub­mit­ting week­ly tests as an al­ter­na­tive.

One of the few coun­ties still iden­ti­fied by the CDC as hav­ing high spread is home to New York’s Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, which an­nounced Mon­day that it would again re­quire masks in class­rooms.

J. Michael Haynie, the school’s vice chan­cel­lor for strate­gic ini­tia­tives and in­no­va­tion, said in a let­ter that “it is im­por­tant that we take rea­son­able ac­tion to min­i­mize the im­pact of COVID in­fec­tions” with fi­nals and com­mence­ment fast ap­proach­ing.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester in up­state New York, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, Bow­doin Col­lege in Brunswick, Maine, and Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in New York City took a sim­i­lar ap­proach. Many, like Co­lum­bia, not­ed that their sur­veil­lance test­ing pro­grams were find­ing more cas­es.

While many stu­dents were ea­ger to mask up, grum­bling was emerg­ing.

“We’re to the point where we’re tired of masks,” said Neer­aj Sud­hakar, a Co­lum­bia grad stu­dent study­ing fi­nan­cial en­gi­neer­ing. “We prob­a­bly have a 99% vac­ci­na­tion rate, so at this point I think we just need to move on with the pan­dem­ic and treat it as en­dem­ic rather than go­ing back to what we were do­ing the past two years.”

Tam­my Web­ber in Fen­ton, Michi­gan, and Robert Bum­st­ed in New York, con­tributed to this re­port.