I remember when the CDC first started reducing mask/isolation guidelines a research university I worked with was discussing changing their policy on masks/remote courses/etc to follow. The entire biology department had to get together and basically threaten to stop teaching for the university to continue requiring masks :agony-soviet:
Our department was the only one to continue requiring masking in doors up until the end of last Spring. During the August/September surge last year I had about 40% of my students contract COVID and was never contacted for contact tracing or anything like that. I also had a student get a medical exemption from masking, which raised hell since the other ones wanted to remove their masks when he didn't have his on. It was a hell of a semester. Thankfully President Biden has soundly defeated COVID and I won't have to do extra work to catch students up in class from plague.
Edit: And to add, while I was having 40% of my students contract COVID the University was pushing for us to teach fully in person and was threatening untenured faculty if they continued to stream their lectures.
Yeah very excited to see how the Fall semester goes now that COVID has been completely wiped from the academic psyche allowing us to pack enormous groups of students into small, poorly-ventilated spaces, with no pressure on them to reduce socializing. Fortunately we've come full-circle back to "if we don't test we don't have cases", so I imagine instead we'll just have a statistically significant increase in absences and flu-like symptoms
I remember when the CDC first started reducing mask/isolation guidelines a research university I worked with was discussing changing their policy on masks/remote courses/etc to follow. The entire biology department had to get together and basically threaten to stop teaching for the university to continue requiring masks :agony-soviet:
Our department was the only one to continue requiring masking in doors up until the end of last Spring. During the August/September surge last year I had about 40% of my students contract COVID and was never contacted for contact tracing or anything like that. I also had a student get a medical exemption from masking, which raised hell since the other ones wanted to remove their masks when he didn't have his on. It was a hell of a semester. Thankfully President Biden has soundly defeated COVID and I won't have to do extra work to catch students up in class from plague.
Edit: And to add, while I was having 40% of my students contract COVID the University was pushing for us to teach fully in person and was threatening untenured faculty if they continued to stream their lectures.
Yeah very excited to see how the Fall semester goes now that COVID has been completely wiped from the academic psyche allowing us to pack enormous groups of students into small, poorly-ventilated spaces, with no pressure on them to reduce socializing. Fortunately we've come full-circle back to "if we don't test we don't have cases", so I imagine instead we'll just have a statistically significant increase in absences and flu-like symptoms
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