The College of the Holy Cross recently made the announcement that it would begin the process of rolling back mask mandates in spaces across campus on February 28th – a process which the administration already retroactively delayed indefinitely as of February 45th, due to a spike in cases. They claimed that they were only able to make this move because 90% of the student population had received their booster shot. Indeed, students received frequent emails encouraging them to report their booster status, with the message that “the only thing preventing us from removing masking is the students who have not uploaded their booster.” However, after the new masking policy was announced, the booster requirement began to be enforced with the threat of un-enrollment for students who didn’t comply. Why did the administration stress the need for a 90% booster rate, despite the City of Worcester voting to roll back their mandates starting February 18th? And why did the outcome from not being boosted so quickly shift from not being able to receive the privilege of not wearing masks to effective expulsion from the college?
It seems, simply put, that these measures are a means to mask and soften the administration’s own behavior by pitting students against each other adversarially as a means to mitigate the ire they attract from students. I’m not suggesting that there is some grand conspiracy from above to turn students against each other; however, the lack of accountability and transparency on the part of the administration at the expense of the student body does contradict their continuous effort to develop “community.” Indeed, these tactics are a means of coercion – deliberately manipulating the optics of policy to make them more appealing and limit pushback. But, why am I complaining? Shouldn’t I just be happy that mask mandates are falling away? Yes, I am happy. Perhaps, I’m too cynical regarding the function of the administration, and maybe I’m reading too far into the minutiae of these policies and into the wording of emails. But, if a Liberal Arts education has taught me anything, it’s that we are called to scrutinize everything we read, especially from those in positions of power.
To begin revealing these coercive measures, I will begin with the debacle regarding the basketball courts in the Jo. On January 26th, students received an email announcing a five day closure of these courts as a response to certain students playing on the courts while not wearing masks. It went so far as to say that this noncompliance with the mask mandate was “egregius” (quite a severe word for wanting to be able to breathe easily while exercising). The email also included a warning about students not wearing masks on other exercise equipment. While these students were technically breaking the rules, it’s hard to think they were doing anything “egregiously” wrong. The Jo is a wide open, well-ventilated space, where students are constantly moving. There’s little more risk of transmission there than carrying out the same activity outside. But, even if the behavior was that bad, why did this entail the closing of the courts? It’s not like some students playing on the courts without masks infused the courts and the air above them with COVID particles. Like a parent punishing their child by taking away their phone or putting them in time out, they wanted to punish us, so they took away something we enjoyed. Worse, though, was the use of this punishment to blame students and turn us against each other. The email announcing the closing of the courts places the blame on students: “Students in noncompliance jeopardize their access to The Jo.” It is us, the students, who might ruin the experience for everyone else, not the administration's arbitrary punishment.
Why do I bring this up? It is a relatively small administrative intervention, despite the worrying implications. Well, there is a suspicious similarity between this punishment and the College’s arbirtary 90% booster quota. Remember the wording from the email stating the imposed requirements for removing mask mandates on campus: “The only thing preventing us from removing masking, is the students who have not uploaded their booster.” Besides the description of “students” as “the thing,” which is suggestively (though hopefully accidental) dehumanizing of students, it also directly places blame for the continuation of masking onto those students who haven’t complied. So, for students who want masks gone, who else can they be mad at than the students who haven’t been boosted or haven’t reported their booster? Perhaps the college should have been more honest and said “The only thing preventing us from removing masking is that we arbitrarily set a 90% booster compliance rate, and we have to wait until that is met. And no, we can’t go one iota lower.”
The arbitrary nature of the 90% required booster rate becomes all the more apparent as the college has decided to indefinitely delay the roll back of mask mandates. We reached the goal that was supposed to grant us this privilege but, apparently, the booster rate doesn’t really matter whatsoever, only the number of cases on campus. It is this arbitrary nature that suggests more coercive inventions. In the email notifying students of this delay, the wording for the justification is much the same as for the closure of the gymnasium courts, “we have experienced a sustained spike in our positivity rate due to two student clusters, one where a policy was violated.” Students are to blame. Students are again the adversary to removing masks on campus.
Further revealing the arbitrary and coercive nature of this booster threshold, the college has changed the consequences for not being boosted. Before, not being boosted was an impediment to removing masks, now beginning February 25th, not being boosted will result in your unenrollment from Holy Cross. In the former of these policies, the booster was the key to a privilege: we needed students to report their booster to be able to remove masking on campus. As described previously, this policy positioned students who hadn’t complied as an impediment to their fellow students from achieving that privilege. Now, the same requirement, to receive the booster, is a matter of attending the college or not. So, the push to achieve a 90% booster rate in order to remove masking was entirely pointless. It created a situation where students were uselessly pitted against each other in order to achieve a goal, when in reality, the college was planning to threaten students with being kicked out anyways. Why not enforce the un-enrollment procedure (which is an ethical can of worms I will not even begin to open here) from the beginning? One might argue that setting the masking compliance quota was a way to encourage students to report their booster shot. But, surely, threatening un-enrollment would have been more than effective to achieve a 90% booster rate, at which point the college could have begun to roll back masking without creating a false competition between students. But, that would have made the college the big, bad guy; they would have seemed harsh and demanding. Rather, the college temporarily made students the adversary to encourage a majority of students to comply with the booster mandate, while positioning themselves as the beneficent gateway to a mask-free campus. It was they who wanted to remove masks, if other students would just get boosted! Then, only after most students complied, the college positioned itself adversarially to the remaining 10% of students who weren’t boosted.
I in no way mean to suggest that our mostly calm, mostly peaceful, and mostly affable campus is the site of a full blown class war, but I do think it’s important to notice and reveal the more worrying procedures of the college. So yes, I am overjoyed that mask mandates are falling away, and I thank the administration for making the right decision and moving forward with this matter. However, they have claimed and enforced new authority over students – the ability to enforce masking and boosting – through coercive means. I hope that the administration will fully own its policies and their ramifications in the future. Further, I hope, in the goal of building community on campus, they will be more careful in their own wording towards and treatment of students.