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Monday, March 17, 2025

Mask mandates return to US college campuses as cases rise

 

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1058 days ago
20220423
Signs indicating that protective face masks must be worn in classrooms are displayed outside lecture halls at Columbia University, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Signs indicating that protective face masks must be worn in classrooms are displayed outside lecture halls at Columbia University, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

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.

 

COVID-19Mask mandate


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