Colleges nationwide now are cracking down hard on masks
UH student loses job as a resident adviser, along with other perks
Dobri Stalev, a junior studying mechanical engineering at the University of Houston, was enjoying a leisurely morning espresso in the student center late last year when a staff member approached. Stalev was not wearing a mask, he pointed out. Stalev said he was eating and drinking, and therefore allowed under university policy to be without a mask.
The same day in October, Stalev said, he was removed from his position as a resident adviser at the college — a position that involves living among undergraduates and helping them adjust to college life. Along with the job, his housing, meal plan and monthly stipend disappeared, amounting to roughly $13,000. He appealed the decision to strip him of his post, and lost.
On March 9, the day before Gov. Greg Abbott ended the state’s mask mandate, Stalev met with friends in a courtyard to say goodbye. He was moving to New York, where he had found a job in his field that could help him pay for housing and meals for the remainder of his undergraduate program at UH, which he plans to carry out virtually.
Stalev’s case encapsulates the
tensions and contradictions that have surged throughout the pandemic. Especially in Texas, where the governor removed the authority of counties and cities to make decisions about masks, enforcement of public health policy has been rendered toothless in many settings and hard-line in others, with high stakes for all as statewide deaths reach 48,000.
It is uncommon for the consequences of not wearing a mask to extend beyond being asked to leave the premises. But universities have a unique toolkit to curb the health risks of socially inclined students, including conduct codes, hearings, probation, suspension, expulsion and, in Stalev’s case, control over employment and housing.
Shawn Lindsey, University of Houston’s executive director of media relations, declined to comment on Stalev’s case “due to privacy laws,” but said the case was handled like any other university policy.
Andrew T. Miltenberg, a New York attorney specializing in student due process violations, said he has started nearly every day since September — including weekends — with frantic calls from the parents of students in the midst of a COVID-related disciplinary hearing. His firm has worked with roughly 100 students at universities including Boston College, New York University and Duke.
As the year has gone on, Miltenberg, who is not working with Stalev, said serious consequences have become more common.
“Schools are taking a very expansive view about what is a COVID violation,” he said. “Their policies have been refined to the point where there is zero tolerance for a violation.”
College is famously a time when students meet new people and new ideas that shape their adult lives. “It’s a maturation period,” said Douglas Erwing, a professor who, over the course of a few of those encounters, got to know Stalev.
Erwing loves to open his U.S. history lectures with short meditations on life — “Here are a few thoughts about whatever: about leadership, about various things” — and he said Stalev was interested in those subjects. They met occasionally to exchange ideas over coffee; Erwing described Stalev as a thoughtful, earnest, serious student who showed up to class early.
Stalev also showed up at the student center early, for a student, often around 9 a.m., when he would order multiple shots of espresso, water and a sandwich using the campus currency that came with his job. There, he said, he would often spend an hour or so over breakfast, sometimes talking to friends and family back home in Bulgaria, eight time zones away, sometimes reading.
Whether he could be considered to be eating the entire time or whether he should wear a mask in between sips and bites became a source of contention with student center staff, Stalev said in his written appeal. They had asked him to wear a mask several times and had at one point called security to speak with him. Each time, he pointed to the school’s policy, which says students do not need to wear a mask while eating or drinking, but should wash their hands and replace their face covering upon finishing their meal.
“I was sufficiently socially-distanced, consuming food and beverage and I thought that I was not in breach of the UH mask policy,” he wrote in the appeal.
When he learned he had lost his job, Stalev was shocked. He did not realize student center staff had reached out to his manager; he said he had no warnings or conversations with his employer before his termination. He reached out to Erwing, who is an attorney, for guidance. Erwing sat in on the appeal, which Stalev lost.
Erwing said he believed the university could have responded more compassionately, in a way that turned the conflict into a learning situation. “How nice it would have been if someone pulled him aside and mentored him in this situation,” he said. “I was disappointed.”
Lindsey, the university spokesman, said the procedure in such cases did include such conversations. “The person not complying with the face covering policy will receive positive coaching and, if that fails, disciplinary action is initiated following the procedures outlined by the relevant policies.”
Miltenberg, the New York lawyer, said he had seen a turn away from warnings and conversations among the schools his clients attended. At the beginning of the school year, he recounted, the most typical consequence for breaking a COVID policy was a “tongue lashing.” Lately he has noticed a shift toward more serious consequences: Suspensions. Lost housing privileges. Expulsion.
“There’s a lack of proportionality,” he said.