While Smith College embraces its changes to Green Mode, many students are feeling left behind. Masks are required in classrooms, but students have no safe way to get to and from classrooms because they are forced to walk through buildings with unmasked students, employees and visitors. Among the list of things which unmasking makes unsafe are: being in an elevator, standing in line to access food, accessing study spaces, checking out a library book and, ironically, students must be exposed to unmasked people in the Campus Center when accessing COVID-19 testing.
Smith literally changed the definition of Green Mode. Until April 4, Green Mode did not permit anywhere near this level of unmasking. Smith should at least be honorbound to comply with its own operating mode rules. The color-code system has been crucial for students making decisions regarding leaves of absence, and they trusted it would be upheld. For the administration to make this decision while campus cases are spiking is shocking.
Furthermore, it is disrespectful and ableist to expose high-risk students to unmasked visitors and tours on campus, including in our houses. Why should a visitor’s desire to visit campus while unmasked take priority over current students’ safety?
In addition, if COVID-19 is suddenly no longer a risk to our community, then why is masking still required in the COVID-19 testing center, classrooms and health center? Either it’s a risk or it’s not.
Smith held a vaccine booster clinic on campus for high-risk individuals to receive a second booster. But Smith removed the mask requirement prior to giving these members of our community an opportunity to receive this booster protection.
One person wearing a mask is helpful, but obviously the unmasked people around them still put that person at risk. Wearing a mask is as much about protecting oneself as it is about protecting others. Smith’s comment about masking being a personal choice is insensitive and deeply offensive to immunocompromised and many other vulnerable people. This mindset also disregards people who wish to avoid contracting and spreading COVID-19 to others.
Smith was doing such a good job until this semester. It is so sad that many people have seemingly arbitrarily decided that the pandemic is over and that high-risk people, people who care about others and people who cannot afford to get COVID-19 no longer matter. Our lives and long-term health (Long COVID and other complications) are not expendable. Smith seems to have forgotten that this is a worldwide pandemic and millions of people do not have access to good healthcare. Every single person who gets COVID-19 is a potential petri dish for COVID-19 to mutate into yet another new variant.
I hope the decision-makers will reconsider.
— Anonymous
