On Monday, Nov. 7, students attended classes without being required to wear a mask for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The change was announced by Smith’s Covid Incident Response Team (CIRT) on Thursday, Nov. 3, and was met with mixed reactions from students and faculty.
In the email to students, staff and faculty announcing the decision, CIRT said that masking in the classroom and gatherings larger than 30 people would no longer be required, citing low incidents of on-campus COVID-19 cases. They noted that per Massachusetts state guidance, masking is still required on campus at the COVID-19 testing center and at the Schacht Center for Health and Wellness.
While masking is now optional, CIRT said in the email that it is still “welcomed in all settings, including office spaces and student residences.”
Smith joined three other five-college consortium schools in the decision, as the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst College and Mount Holyoke College have also shifted to a masking-optional policy in academic settings. Hampshire College still has an indoor masking mandate.
Some students and faculty have found the classroom environment largely unchanged by the removal of the masking requirement, while others have seen a shift in academic settings.
Mariyana Zapryanova, Assistant Professor of Economics, believes repealing the mandate was the correct step to take. “Given the high vaccination rate and given the low infection rate on campus, I thought, perhaps the benefits exceed the cost now, so now is the time to do it,” she said.
For her, the benefits include seeing her students’ faces, which allows her to adjust her instruction style as needed. With masks, she said, “instructors cannot read the classroom and see whether everyone understands” the material being taught.
Zapryanova said that she has already noticed a palpable change in her classes. “Now some of the students are unmasked in class and I can clearly see whether people are getting the stuff or whether they’re not, so it’s helping me already.”
Abby Botta ’24 has also experienced a shift, particularly in her language classes. “We’ve had some weird instances of professors being like ‘No, you should take off your mask right now,’” she said. In language classes, Botta said, not wearing a mask “really helps with learning, but if a student is uncomfortable with that, and the professor’s really pushing it, it’s really tense and uncomfortable.”
Tarryn Gaherty ’24 said that members of her class focused on disability studies have chosen to keep wearing masks. “We set a class expectation that we would be masked throughout the semester because we have people in the class who are immunocompromised,” she said.
Christine White-Ziegler, Professor of Biological Sciences, said that she hasn’t felt a change in her classes since the masking requirement ended. While Zapryanova finds it easier to gauge students’ understanding of material when she can see their faces, White-Ziegler said, “I don’t feel less connected [to students] because of the mask.”
Rachel Reinking ’25, said, “I haven’t found that it has changed the classroom environment that much … There have been people in all of the classes I’ve been in who are wearing masks and people who are not wearing masks.”
While students and faculty have had different experiences with masking in the classroom environment, they agreed that the Smith community has been thoughtful about others’ choices to mask or not mask.
“I’m happy that everyone seems really respectful,” White-Ziegler said, noting that she has not observed any uncomfortable situations around one’s decision to mask.
Reinking, echoing White-Ziegler’s point, said “I think that students have been respectful of each other’s choices so far … I don’t think it’s changed interactions that much.”
