AdminisTrATiOn lifTs mAsk mAndATe

administration liFts masK mandate on march 21

Removal of mask requirement elicits mixed reactions from community

ARTICLE BY SHIBANI GHOSH • ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALYSSA GARCIA • DESIGN BY AIDAN BEAVER

on March 14, Executive Director David Porter notified the student body that effective March 21, masks would no longer be required on campus. The announcement came after releasing the results of a March 8 survey where the staff, families and students answered questions about their level of vaccination, contact with immunocompromised persons and comfortability with current UPA COVID-19 guidelines.

Santa Clara County itself announced its relaxation of the mandate on March 1 due to the high vaccination rate and low numbers of COVID-19 cases. The mask mandate was moved from required to recommended, and only required in certain locations, such as public transit, healthcare facilities, shelters, jails and long-term care facilities. The announcement informed the public that other than places with low vaccination and booster rate, as well as highly populated places, masks will not be required.

In the March 14 email, Porter explained that even though he wanted to keep the mask mandate for the rest of the year, Santa Clara County Health declined his plan and decided otherwise. This was mainly due to UPA’s high vaccination rate of 90.1% and booster rate of 70.4%. Porter explained in a subsequent email that due to these compelling factors and UPA’s vaccination and booster rates being higher than schools that have lifted the mandate, the mask mandate would be lifted on March 21. 38% of people responding to the survey said they did not think it was necessary to establish masked and unmasked zones. Sophomore Kian Dowlatabadi chose to go unmasked on campus once the mandate was lifted.

“[It’s] mainly for the convenience issue,” Dowlatabadi said. “I don’t care about the anti-mask stuff. It’s just annoying, fogging up your glasses, smelling your own breath, and it’s really uncomfortable. [It] made going to places more uncomfortable.”

While some students chose to take off their mask, eighth protocols, such as removing one-ways and giving teachers the choice to remove plexiglass. Though some protocols will be lifted, UPA will continue to enforce the hygiene protocols and provide necessary materials to students. Students are provided hand sanitizer before they enter buildings and continue to wipe down desks and shared materials with paper towels and cleaning spray containing soap and water after use. Every classroom also provides masks along with these materials for student use.

“What a great gift to show up to a classroom and sit down at a desk and know that it’s go-

ing to be clean when you sit down,” Porter said.

In Porter’s survey, he included questions about students’ and staffs’ opinions on the effectiveness of certain COVID-19 protocols.

One of the protocols that have been lifted is the one-ways throughout campus. Their purpose was to create a system of pathways and entry points with the least amount of contact with other students to lower risks of getting infected. When it was implemented, students and staff were concerned with the congestion and inconvenience it caused them, their fellow classmates and staff members.

“The CDC was pretty clear on what they thought [...] that these [protocols] were not really necessary anymore,” Reid said. “One-ways were not that effective, but it’s different because I like the one-ways in the learning center. It was easier to have that flow, but other buildings don’t have that.”

After Porter sent out the Google survey in his initial email, computer science and math teacher Nicole Sebek created her own survey for her students gauging their comfort with the mask mandate being lifted and posted it on UPA’s learning management system, Schoology. Sebek explained that she wanted everyone to feel comfortable.

“Everybody’s sitting next to each other,” Sebek said. “And if you don’t agree [with their choice of wearing or not wearing a mask] and you don’t agree with their decisions, we still have to figure out how to work together because we’re going to be in class for another couple months together.”

As the school year is coming to a close, the UPA community is still figuring out how to tackle COVID-19 while protecting its students and staff and making sure they are comfortable.

“If we can all pause and recognize that as a community, we are safer because we all work together and we united over this issue, that tells me that if we were to approach other issues or even global problems, [we’d do so] with a sense of community and connectedness and single-mindedness,” Porter said.

“It’s a steP ForWard into GoinG BacK to hoW it Was

BeFore the Pandemic.” —aislinn reid

grader Avanthiga Vijay chose to keep her mask on.

“I feel like things would be moving too quickly if people just suddenly stopped wearing them,” Vijay said. “I don’t think it’s necessary to take them off when we wore them throughout the whole year.”

Along with students, many teachers took off their masks, including history teacher Aislinn Reid.

“It’s a step forward into going back to how it was before the pandemic,” Reid said. “It allows me to make better connections with my students.”

Porter also announced a change in other COVID-19