NDSU begins its second year of welcoming students on campus amid the COVID-19 pandemic

To steal a phrase from famous baseball catcher Yogi Berra, when it comes to COVID-19 it’s “Déjà vu all over again”. As students return to campus this fall, mask mandates and social distancing practices for faculty and students come right along with them.

An email from North Dakota State University President Dean Bresciani sent out on Aug. 17 stated that the university “continues to strongly recommend that all people wear masks in indoor spaces when social distancing cannot be maintained.”

However, classrooms require masks to be worn whether classes are credit, non-credit, workshops or training sessions. Faculty members who are able to maintain social distance from students, may remove their masks to be more easily being heard.

Faculty at NDSU closely monitors COVID-19 developments and continues to enforce the policies in place due to the climbing number of cases in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Cass County is currently in a “high transmission” designation according to Fargo Cass Public Health.

“A great deal of NDSU’s success in dealing with COVID-19 so far has been based on our community members’ willingness to be considerate to other people,” Bresciani said. “This compassion will be necessary until this pandemic is truly over.”

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the delta variant has become the predominant variant, accounting for over 90 percent of cases in August. The North Dakota Department of Health also confirms the delta variant as the likely predominant variant in the state.

While some believe that NDSU should immediately mandate masks in all indoor settings based upon what is happening in the southern states, a petition is circulating to get rid of the mask mandate on NDSU’s campus.

According to an article from Inforum, the petition “Make Masks a Personal Choice at NDSU” launched Tuesday, Aug. 17, and had reached more than 2,000 signatures by the following Thursday.

NDSU sophomore Breanna Hosman, creator of the petition, told The Forum that students can choose whether they want to protect themselves from COVID-19. “The more people we’ve got, the more it’s going to show President Bresciani that we should have a choice in our health decisions as NDSU students,” Hosman said, according to the article.

Hosman also highlighted the important value of interacting and building relationships with peers. “It’s so much more than a face covering. It’s so much more than any mandate. It’s losing out on human connection.”

Looking back at the email that Bresciani sent out, he does in fact address this issue.

“For the time being, I have seen students coming back to campus and interacting with their friends and colleagues. They are smiling and laughing without masks for the first time in nearly a year and a half. Some have never been to NDSU without masks and a pandemic. There is value – real value – in being able to interact with other people without masks, and I do not want to underestimate the need for this important human connection,” Bresciani said.

Bresciani believes that if members of the community make a concerted effort to get as many people vaccinated as possible, we may avoid much worse situations in the future. NDSU offers vaccine clinics where students and employees may receive their vaccine for free.

“None of us know what another person’s risk factors are, and I would remind people that not every person is eligible for a vaccination yet,” Bresciani said. “Let’s continue to help each other out and remember that when somebody asks us to wear a mask, they likely have risk factors that we do not face.”