Smith’s COVID-19 Incident Response Team (CIRT) announced in an email on Sept. 14, 2022, that the college would increase COVID-19 restrictions by mandating masking in residential houses and requiring students to take PCR tests twice weekly due to a rise in cases.
Guidelines for the fall semester included masking in classrooms and for indoor gatherings of 30 people or more and were intended to be short term as the community came back together. President Kathleen McCartney wrote in an email on Aug. 1, “We expect to end these requirements on Friday, Sept. 16, subject to conditions at the time.”
On Sept. 13, however, McCartney wrote that the college would extend the in-class and indoor gatherings of 30 people or more masking requirements and that all eligible students will be required to receive the new bivalent booster vaccine by Dec. 1.
Dano Weisbord, Smith’s associate vice president for campus planning and sustainability, said in an email that the intention to relax masking was “on the presumption that we would start to see the number of COVID cases going down.” Smith had 118 student cases in the week of Sept. 11, and has had 63 student positives in the last week, as of Sept. 25.
“In this situation, we were prompted by an uptick in daily cases among students,” Weisbord said of the masking mandates. He added that CIRT was aware of the potential negative effects of the new requirements. “Masking, for example, can aid in reducing the spread of disease, but it can also hinder learning and wellbeing for many,” he said. “We try to strike a balance as conditions change.”
The new restrictions garnered mixed reactions from students. Some individuals welcome the more cautious response to COVID on campus, and others find that these changes create a different set of difficulties.
“I think indoor masking policies are a good step,” Ziqi Zhen ’26 said. “I don’t mind the policy of wearing masks around the house and with other people. I think it’s good to be safe and cautious.”
Zhen noted that presenters are allowed to remove their masks in class. “It would feel much better if the professor is also following the same rules as other people in the classroom,” she said.
Lily Garner ’25 said that it can be difficult to keep track of and adhere to these changes in the Smith COVID-19 policy, as they have often felt abrupt. “Even if it’s a lot of small things, there is a toll that this whole situation, all these expectations and responsibilities, take on people,” Garner said.
Nathalie Trouva ’25 said that she thought it would have made more sense to have the new requirements when students returned to campus, in order to prevent an increase of cases that Smith is seeing now, and so students wouldn’t be as overwhelmed.
“Starting off with stronger mandates and testing requirements leads to more relaxed policies, because they could have helped prevent a lot of the COVID spread that happened when people first got back by testing,” she said.“It’s a little too late right now.”
Garner agreed, “Now they’re just trying to backtrack and change back to something more similar to what we were doing last year.”
Both Garner and Trouva said that if the college had required greater accountability from students, such as having all students report their results from the required rapid test at the beginning of the semester, not only positive ones, the spread could have been mitigated. “They wouldn’t have even known if you didn’t take the [required COVID-19] test,” Trouva said.
Zhen said she thinks the return to twice weekly PCR testing is a good idea. “I think testing is always better than no testing,” she said.
As the colder weather approaches, there have been concerns about increasing COVID-19 spread and a further progression to stricter mandates as the Smith community spends more time indoors.
Weisbord said that CIRT has planned for this possibility. “We are offering the new bivalent vaccine booster to the whole campus community,” he said. “This is the most important tool we have to protect everyone and we encourage everyone to get boosted as soon as they are eligible.”
“If there is a spike in the fall or winter, we would do something similar [to increase restrictions], depending on the situation.” But, Weisbord added, “we plan to reduce some of the recent requirements when campus case rates go back down.”
Trouva said that she would welcome a relaxing of requirements and hopes that she and her peers will finally be able to safely shed their masks in the classrooms. “I haven’t had [non-masking] at all in my college experience,” she said. “I was looking forward to having classes without masks on.”
Zhen said that she thinks that the college requiring more active student participation against COVID-19, even if the semester did not begin that way, is a good thing. “I think we should still be cautious and be mindful of people who would prefer not to get sick,” she said.
