In an email sent out to the campus on February 11, Union College’s COVID-19 Updates account explained that students, faculty, and staff are still required to remain masked within indoor settings.

This statement comes after the recent announcement by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul explaining that the New York State indoor mask mandate would end on Thursday, February 10. Governor Hochul explained that her “top priority is making sure we keep New York safe, open and moving forward” as the mandate ends. The initial indoor mandate was put in place because of a statewide surge of cases that occurred during December and the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

Now that the statewide mandate is over, the decision to keep mandating masks at Union now falls on the administration of the college. According to the email sent out by the COVID-19 Updates account, the reasoning for keeping masks in place for Union is that “the level of COVID-19 transmission in Schenectady County remains high, as defined by the CDC.” In addition, Union College’s COVID-19 dashboard shows that cases have begun to increase at Union again, with more than double the amount of positive cases coming back on February 9 than on February 3, less than a week before.

The email explains that the mask mandate is still in effect at Union, and that it is recommended that students, faculty, and staff wear “surgical masks or N95, KN95 or KF94 medical style masks” to prevent the spread. The testing center in Old Chapel distributes surgical masks, though these masks aren’t as effective as the N95 of KN95 respirators that Union recommends.

The email also assures readers that the administration “[realizes] there is a desire among some in our community to ease these restrictions as another step toward a return to a more normal way of life. We share this desire and also feel the challenges of ‘mask-fatigue.'” Until the cases lower in Schenectady and at Union, it seems unlikely that the mandate will be ending any time soon. The email does not specify what would be “safe” for Union, or what an ideal situation for removing the mandate would be.