Mask mandates return to campuses as case counts rise

The final weeks of the college school year have been disrupted yet again by COVID-19 as universities bring back mask mandates, switch to online classes and scale back large gatherings in response to upticks in infections.

Colleges in Washington, D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Texas have reimposed a range of virus measures, with Howard University moving to remote learning amid a surge in cases in the nation’s capital.

This is the third straight academic year that has been upended by COVID-19, meaning soon-to-be seniors have yet to experience a normal college year.

“I feel like last summer everyone was like, ‘Oh, this is it. We’re nearing the tail end,’” recalled Nina Heller, a junior at American University in Washington, D.C., where administrators brought back a mask mandate about a month after lifting it.

Mandates were shed widely in the wake of spring break as case numbers dropped following a winter surge fueled by the omicron variant. But several Northeast cities have seen a rise in cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks, as the BA.2 subvariant of the omicron variant continues to rapidly spread throughout the U.S.

“As much as we would like to move on and think the pandemic is over, and I think we all would like that to happen at this point, it’s wishful thinking,” said Anita Barkin, co-chair of a COVID-19 task force for the American College Health Association. “The pandemic is still with us.”

COVID-19 had eased so much at Williams College the private liberal arts school in Massachusetts allowed professors to decide whether to require masks in their classes early last week. But just days later, with cases rising, it reinstated an indoor mask mandate, which was even stricter than what had been in place before.

“I think students are really feeling like people they know are dropping like flies,” said junior Kitt Urdang, who’s had a half-dozen friends test positive in recent days. “There’s definitely been a lot more uncertainty than there’s been on campus since COVID hit.”

Philadelphia recently brought back its mask mandate, leading the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University to again require them starting Monday. Although the city ended the mandate Thursday, the colleges haven’t made any changes.

New Mexico State University took a different tack, announcing Monday all students on campus must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by July 1, ending the option of submitting weekly tests.

While many students were eager to mask up, grumbling was emerging.“We’re to the point where we’re tired of masks,” said Neeraj Sudhakar, a Columbia grad student studying financial engineering. “We probably have a 99 percent vaccination rate, so at this point I think we just need to move on and treat it as endemic rather than going back to what we were doing the past two years.”