UW braces for omicron unknowns
The University of Wyoming voted to keep its mask mandate until at least February, rejecting a separate motion that would have ended the policy before students return in the new year.
University of Wyoming students will be required to mask up in classes this spring — at least until the Board of Trustees revisits the issue in February.
Some trustees expressed exhaustion and dismay with the mask mandate that has been in place since the beginning of the fall semester, arguing that it asks too much of students. But administrators recommended keeping the mask mandate, stressing the uncertainties presented by holiday travel and the daily drip of new information concerning the omicron variant.
“We want to make data-based decisions about everything related to COVID, and in this case, the masking requirement,” College of Health Sciences Dean David Jones said. “We are probably not going to have data to make those decisions until probably the end of January when we know what it looks like.”
And UW, like the larger scientific and public health community, understands very little about omicron at this point.
“If we didn’t have omicron and it was just delta and things were starting to be pretty minimal on the delta-front, I think it would be reasonable to suggest going more ‘personal choice,’” Jones said. “But the thing is, with omicron, we don’t know yet and we want to have good data before we make that decision.”
Faculty, staff and student leadership expressed support for this course of action. As did some on the board.
“What changed, except that everybody’s tired of it?” Trustee Kermit Brown said. “That’s how we’ve lost wars before for Pete’s sake — everybody just got tired of fighting. We’ll get solutions to these problems — they’re coming — but until those get here, I don’t think we change a policy that’s worked when the most important thing for our students is to continue to have in-person classes.”
But the plan to continue masking had its detractors as well.
“What would my quality of life be like if I had to mask to be in the dorms, mask to be in the halls, mask to be in the library, mask to be in study rooms, mask to be at breakfast, lunch and dinner?” Trustee Macey Moore said. “So I just ask this board to really consider that we don’t minimize this and understand that this may be a quality of life issue for these kids on campus.”
The board’s discussion began when Dean Jones and UW President Ed Seidel made their case for keeping the mandate. Seidel highlighted Cornell University as a cautionary tale. The upstate New York university recently experienced an outbreak brought on by omicron.
“Cornell had to shut down yesterday,” Seidel said. “I just want that as a backdrop as we’re thinking through what we’re going to be doing.”
Jones presented a spring semester plan that includes mandatory testing for all students returning to campus after the break, a continuance of the three percent random sampling testing throughout the semester, continued monitoring of active cases on campus, and the retention of UW’s current masking policy.
That policy requires masks in classrooms and other close quarters, but not at sporting and other voluntary events.
Jones said UW has not yet seen the spike it expected following the Thanksgiving break, but that the new omicron variant was a potential cause for concern. Jones said the variant had been detected in at least 60 countries and 35 states.
“It’s in Idaho, it’s in Utah, it’s in Colorado, it’s in Nebraska,” Jone said. “So it’s reasonable to assume it’s probably in Wyoming, it just hasn’t been officially detected yet.”
Indeed, later in the same discussion, Jones updated the board, saying that UW’s testing had turned up a case of omicron. But he added that the Wyoming Department of Health had not yet confirmed the case.
Jones said masks are vital in a state where a significant portion — and in most counties, a majority — of people have chosen not to get vaccinated. This vaccine hesitancy and rejection exists despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines are both safe and effective at reducing one’s chances of severe illness, hospitalization and death.
Not everyone on the board was swayed.
“I feel like we’ve had two years with COVID and people have had ample time to get vaccinated and to take steps to protect themselves,” Trustee Carol Linton said. “I see people everywhere in public places who choose to wear a mask, and that should be their choice, but I’m opposed to continuing a mask mandate.”
Trustee Brown said it’s wrong to view masks as a precaution people take for themselves.
“I don’t know how to explain this reverse notion to people, but that’s not what it’s about,” he said. “You’re not wearing a mask to protect yourself from the virus. You’re wearing a mask to protect the person you would make ill if you’re infected.”
Others pointed to the lack of mask-wearing in the community and the Albany County School District’s recent decision to end its own mask requirement in January.
Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow said ACSD No. 1 was one of just three districts in Wyoming currently requiring masks. Students in those districts wear masks at school, but live in communities where mask mandates “are not the norm,” she said.
“There’s incongruency, and sometimes it’s laughable,” Balow said.
Brown said he had read the minutes of that recent Albany County School Board meeting, and said the school district’s decision should not influence UW’s.
“There is not a scintilla of scientific evidence or data involved in that discussion or the reasons they provided for going away from the masks,” Brown said.
Some trustees floated the idea of axing the mask mandate for now, but instituting specific metrics that would trigger its reestablishment.
Faculty Senate Chair Adrienne Freng said that plan was unrealistic.
“Once we remove that mask policy, it is going to be extremely difficult to make that adjustment in expectation back to masks if we need them,” she said. “That is likely to fall on staff and faculty to reinvent those expectations, whether it’s in the classroom, whether it’s in the dorms, whether it’s in the offices.”
A motion to outright end the mask mandate in January failed on a 4-7 vote. The board once again rejected a recommendation from the university’s COVID-19 advisory committee to mandate vaccinations for UW employees working in healthcare settings.