Update: On Mar. 1 University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce announced that effective Mar. 2, the university will be going mask-optional. Masks will only be required in healthcare settings and on transit services, in compliance with the Transportation Security Administration’s mask requirement.
The University of Mississippi is now the only school in the Southeastern Conference Western Division that still requires masks in instructional spaces.
The University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, Texas A&M and Auburn had previously scaled back their mask policies to not require masks in instructional spaces. Mississippi State University and University of Arkansas joined them on Feb. 28.
The UM community was last informed of an update to mask policy on Feb. 11 via an email from Chancellor Glenn Boyce. Effective immediately, masks were only required in instructional and medical areas.
“As we have done since the onset of the pandemic, we will continue to monitor the presence of the virus on our campus and adapt, if necessary, to uphold the health and safety of our community,” Boyce said. “We remain committed to making the necessary adjustments and adaptations to ensure that we meet our mission and serve our students.”
By the following week, on Feb. 14, Mississippi State University had announced nearly identical protocols and Louisiana State University had lifted their mask mandate completely, with the exception of transit services.
On Friday Feb. 25, MSU announced that they would make changes to their mask policy again, requiring masks only in the Student Health Center and on the Starkville-Metro Area Rapid Transit shuttles.
UM’s mask guidance from Feb. 11, requiring masks in instructional spaces, healthcare areas and transit services remains in place.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines updated classification levels, meaning that most Americans can go maskless. The CDC presents transmission levels on a Low-Medium-High metric. Masks are recommended for certain individuals in areas with medium community levels and for all individuals in where community levels are high.
On Feb. 25, the CDC raised the thresholds they use to measure COVID-19 community levels, meaning many areas across the country saw their status change, from high to medium or from medium to low, drastically reducing the number of people recommended to wear masks.
Oktibbeha County, where MSU is located, has a low community level. Lafayette County has a medium community level.
Some schools in the SEC, like the University of Florida, have taken the next step by treating COVID-19 the way we treat endemic diseases like influenza.
“In short, UF will begin treating COVID as we do other contagious illnesses such as the flu so that we can move toward an environment that treats COVID as a present-day virus, one that rises and falls in a number of cases,” the university said. “This means we as a university must also continually monitor our environment and change along with it.”
Others, like Vanderbilt, only require masks for unvaccinated individuals.
Here in Mississippi, 50.9% of Mississippians are fully vaccinated. Cases continue to decline overall with 884 new cases over three days reported yesterday, Feb. 28.
