Campus mask mandate should be extended

By Lawrence Zhou, Communication and Journalism graduate student

Last spring, the newspaper published an op-ed in favor of getting vaccinated that I wrote. As the Delta variant tears through the US, hurting US economic recovery and sending the death toll to above 1500 a day, I am only more strongly committed to that position.

A recent New York Times piece by David Leonhardt pegs the risk of a breakthrough infection of an average vaccinated person in America at about “one in 5,000” per day. Meanwhile, the vast majority of new COVID-19 cases are among the unvaccinated. 

However, this piece is not about the virtues of getting vaccinated.

With the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine now fully approved, we’ve seen an increase in the number of people getting vaccinated (although vaccine hesitancy will remain). At this point, if someone wants to get vaccinated, they probably have already got the vaccine.

This piece cannot possibly convince anyone who is still vaccine hesitant to get the vaccine—that will only occur using techniques like using powerful anecdotes, showing deep compassion for the person, encouraging empathy, listening to what the vaccine hesitant have to say, and adapting the message to the specific person.

While I would like to argue for a vaccine mandate as they have in most New York colleges, I suspect the backlash and unpopularity of the position here in Wyoming make it a fruitless effort while other policies like mask mandates have more general appeal. 

Instead, I argue for why the UW Board of Trustees should extend the mask mandate. Currently, the mask mandate is only in place until September 20 and this policy will be reviewed at the September 15 meeting. 

The choice of whether to extend the mask mandate is not whether classes should be in-person with masks or without—it’s whether classes will be in-person or online. In fact, it’s because I want classes to be in-person that I want an extension of the mask mandate. 

Several universities have already had to cancel in-person classes because of surges in COVID-19. For example, Rice University, Liberty University, and others have all shifted to online courses or at least given teachers the right to convert their courses to online or hybrid instructional models. This comes as COVID-19 deaths are surging around the nation.

A mask policy would significantly decrease the chance that we have to return to online classes. The alternative to a mask mandate isn’t in-person classes with no masks, it’s no in-person classes. 

We know that masks work, especially in schools. New studies confirm what we already knew: masks severely cut down on transmission and reduce the viral load spread. Even if there is some (albeit weak) case for not mandating masks for young students, such a case does not apply as well to college campuses.

Sure, there are genuine downsides to masking in educational spaces and these do need to be seriously considered, but I think that these downsides can be mitigated and the benefits outweigh. 

We also know what happens if people aren’t masked.

A single unmasked teacher at a school in California infected more than half of the students in her classroom. A total of 27 cases were eventually tied to that teacher.

Florida recently ruled that schools may impose mask mandates at a time where the state is experiencing its worst moment of the pandemic so far with more children hospitalized than ever before.

I cannot think of many other larger disruptors to learning than infecting over half of a class. A mask mandate would keep our already fairly low COVID-19 case rate at UW to manageable numbers, preventing a reversion to online classes. 

Not only is there a worry that a new COVID-19 outbreak could ground in-person classes, but there is another important consideration—trust.  

As an instructor, I much prefer in-person classes. It facilitates social interaction, allows for peer learning, and creates more natural environments for learning. In an online environment, students are less engaged, there are less opportunities for informal interactions that can morph into valuable social or educational connections, and the loss of a type of energy that can only be captured from in-person interactions.

Not only are my students generally more engaged and motivated, but I am too.

It’s difficult to stare into a screen for an hour while still seeming engaged. It’s difficult to design ways to learn beyond lecture. In-person classes are just better for learning.

Reports suggest that the quality of online classes is markedly lower than the quality of in-person classes. 

But I will not keep teaching in-person if the risks of either contracting or spreading COVID-19 are too high. 

This is not just my own personal stance. There are already several high profile cases of professors quitting over a lack of masking compliance amongst students. One professor even quit in the middle of a class.

More and more college faculty are calling for mask mandates and other safety measures. Even if masks don’t work (they do), the perception that they work is almost as important to facilitating the trust between the university and instructors and between instructors and students necessary for an effective education.

The lack of masking requirements makes instructors nervous and impedes their ability to teach effectively. If instructors don’t feel like they can trust the university and their students to look out for their wellbeing, then instructional quality will surely suffer.

I know that I get anxiety around being around students indoors. It would only get worse if they were unmasked. 

That trust is further eroded if masking is not a university policy.

As Maggie Wood, a teacher of rhetoric and composition, argues: “If you put professors in the position of arguing with students over masks, you will erode trust on both sides. And when students don’t trust you, you can’t teach them. So the purpose of education is defeated before it begins. Administration needs to set and enforce mask and vaccine policies. This should be a no-brainer.”

I agree. Making this official university policy gives instructors the ability to defer responsibility, deflating the risk of conflict over masking policies. 

I dislike wearing masks. I have had to change the way that I teach so I am never speaking for more than five minutes at a time (probably a good pedagogical practice anyways) because I get winded speaking for any longer than that. I wear glasses that I have to coat with an anti-fog spray everyday. I even started getting maskne from wearing a mask too long.

Masks hide our emotions, stifle speech, and create a sense of division, all impediments to effective teaching. I look forward to a day when we don’t have to wear masks all the time (although I wouldn’t mind a culture which also encouraged masking even when there wasn’t a pandemic like in many Asian countries). 

But forced to choose between teaching in-person with a mask that just requires some adaptation in how I teach and going back to online classes, the choice is easy. The choice should be similarly easy for the UW Board of Trustees: extend the mask mandate.