Now that the mask mandate at Smith has officially been lifted, I’ve found myself grappling with a seemingly simple question: to mask or not to mask? When I walked into each class for the first time since the mandate was dropped, I was unsure what to expect: would I see my classmates’ and professors’ entire faces for the first time, or would nothing change?
As it turns out, students in around half of my classes remain entirely masked, and the rest are mixed. I’ve found myself conforming to the precedent set by my peers in the classes with full mask compliance. One of my professors specifically indicated that they preferred we continue to wear them, and I wanted to respect that. It’s generally difficult to be the first one in a group to violate any social norm. However, in classes where the professor forgoes their mask and many students follow suit, I feel more comfortable taking mine off, too, especially in classes that take place in large, sparsely populated and well-ventilated rooms. In the absence of clear guidance from the school, it’s not immediately clear what the best choice is with regard to masking, so I find myself trying to weigh the costs and benefits of the different options even though they can be difficult to quantify.
With the decision to not wear a mask comes a lingering fear of judgment. Over the past few years, a bare face has become a symbol of mistrust of science and disregard for those especially vulnerable to COVID-19. But since the days of chastising everyone who chose to go maskless, our environment and relationship to the virus have changed substantially, and we should reevaluate our choices accordingly.
Thanks to on-campus bivalent booster clinics and vaccination requirements, the overwhelming majority of the Smith community, including students, faculty and staff, has received the primary COVID-19 vaccine series as well as a recent booster. Therefore, we all have an added layer of protection against severe COVID infection. Furthermore, cases at Smith — as well as in Massachusetts and the nation as a whole — have been declining, with only one positive test result reported here the week before the college decided to relax its mask mandate (albeit, this was most likely also due to the discontinuation of mandatory twice-weekly PCR tests).
Until this point, Smith had some of the strictest COVID-19 policies of any higher education institution, with many schools merely recommending masks rather than requiring them outright. It’s also important to consider the reality of mask compliance despite requirements. Students at Smith continue to travel off campus and party regularly. No one at a frat party is going to be wearing a mask, and they often come off on any packed dance floor, even at Smith-sponsored events like Convo. Students also socialize over meals and in dorm rooms, both situations in which masking is highly unlikely. Any attempt by the college to enforce masking in classes has been and will continue to be undermined by students’ gregarious tendencies and the socialization central to the college experience for many.
Additionally, many epidemiologists have predicted that the pandemic will eventually transition from acute to endemic. Endemicity means that COVID-19 will still be present in the population but overwhelmingly survivable without major adverse effects and preventable by vaccine, much like the flu. It seems that our relationship to COVID-19 as a nation is currently undergoing this shift, and at some point soon, we will have to accept the reality of COVID-19 endemicity.
Simply put, masks impede human connection. Our faces are one of our most valuable tools for expressing our emotions, and with 75% of them covered by an N-95, we simply have much less real estate to work with. For those of us who struggle to convey how we feel using our faces, this presents a barrier to communication and makes it much harder to interact with professors and connect with peers.
That said, some students are immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable to COVID-19, and we should not sweep their concerns under the rug. These students feel that their classes are no longer a safe environment for them. The day masks became optional, a whiteboard in Neilson Library was peppered with messages from students expressing their frustration that their needs have continually been outweighed and disregarded by the administration and their peers.
The administration, professors and class communities must provide support, respect and advocacy for students who would prefer a class to remain masked for medical reasons. We should honor such a request even though in-class masking has continually been undermined by the insuppressible social landscape of colleges and universities. Students should be able to feel safe and comfortable in their own classrooms; it’s nearly impossible to focus on learning when actively concerned for one’s own well-being. Furthermore, it’s easy enough to avoid parties or other large social gatherings, but classrooms are unavoidable and remote options for class attendance are rarely available.
Ultimately, wearing a mask is a choice everyone must make and no one should judge others for what they decide. I don’t know for sure whether leaving my mask on in some classes has any tangible impact, or whether taking my mask off in certain classes poses any major risk. There isn’t a clear answer or a one-size-fits-all solution, but this prompts us to ask: how prevalent are masks going to be in our daily lives going forward?
