By: John Kurkjian
A sign on a mask stand inside a classroom in Healy Hall, Georgetown’s flagship building
COVID-19. Ugh, right? When will it end? That’s the current sentiment among students on the campus of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. after the school’s administration once again made masks mandatory in classrooms for the Fall 2022 semester.
On July 22, University Provost Robert Groves sent an email to the student body that outlined the school’s health guidance for the upcoming semester. The email informed students that, regardless of vaccination status, they had to be tested either within 48 hours prior to their arrival on campus or within 24 hours after moving in. Additionally, the message delineated that masks are still required in instructional settings, specifically saying, “Masks are still required in indoor instructional settings, such as classrooms and teaching laboratories, on the Main and Medical Center campuses. This applies to organized classes, but not to informal gatherings (e.g., in libraries, study spaces).”
However, the large issue that many students have is not the policy that requires masks in classrooms itself, but rather the constant flip-flopping of policies and hypocrisy demonstrated by Georgetown’s administrators. Luke Perrino, a junior at the McDonough School of Business, criticized the policy by saying, “Having a mask mandate in our age group doesn’t make sense when you consider the hospitalization rate, especially when you consider almost everyone here is fully vaccinated and boosted.”
Georgetown, like thousands of schools across the country, required masks for the Fall 2021 semester and required weekly testing for randomly selected students. Then, on December 14, 2021, University Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ranit Mishori sent an email to the student body about “a notable and concerning increase in COVID-19 cases on our campuses this week,” and therefore the school transitioned all dining locations to a grab-and-go model.
This, according to Alex Kadar, a junior in the School of Nursing and Health Studies, was a very unnecessary step that angered the student body. “From a medical standpoint, I don’t see the benefit of forcing students to eat in their rooms. The percentage of vaccinated and boosted individuals going to hospitals now is incredibly low.”
What set many students, parents, and alumni, off, however, was a tweet sent out by Mishori just a week after preventing students from congregating at the school’s dining halls which read, “Living dangerously at the @kencen.”
A screenshot of the tweet Mishori (left) sent at her Kennedy Center event
Mishori, who quickly deleted the tweet, explained the post by saying that she was “practicing what I preach” by double masking. Kerry Smith, a parent of a Georgetown student, replied to Mishori’s tweet and expressed frustration by saying, “Practicing what you preach would mean canceling your events and not attending this event. Why did you delete this tweet?”
Furthering the hypocrisy, during the spring semester the University implemented a mask-optional policy on March 21, 2022, that was in effect for mere weeks before it was reverted to the fall semester policy.
The week before the mask-optional was implemented, Mar. 13-19, 2022, Georgetown students had a 1.43% positivity rate. The week of Aug. 21-27, 2022, Georgetown students had 190 positive tweets, as the University’s COVID-19 Dashboard no longer makes the number of tests received and positivity rate public, which many see as directly misleading.
Michael Hayes, a junior in the MSB, shared a sentiment that the University is intentionally withholding information from its students to prevent public backlash. “It just doesn’t seem fair to the students to keep flipping and switching the policy, especially when administrators and professors don’t seem to care to follow it anyways.”
All of this is to say – many Georgetown students are frustrated, vaccinated, and ready to start a post-COVID era at one of the nation’s leading universities. There is no timetable for a change in the classroom mask mandate, even as hospitalizations in the U.S. are at their lowest since June 2021.
