As many of you are probably aware, Drury has changed their masking policies from having them required in classrooms to having them be optional everywhere for staff and students. This also includes people working at the campus exchange and the dining hall. Drury isn’t the only school in Missouri to be doing this, Missouri State University and Southeast Missouri State University have also changed their masking policies to optional as well. 

Drury remained open the whole time during the outbreak in 2020 and the university is trying to make it a priority that it continues to stay open. Drury has something called the Panther Plan that I’m sure several of you have heard about by now. This plan details the school’s Covid policies and vaccine policies, and it also gives students instructions on what to do if they have tested positive for Covid.

Drury does not require any Covid vaccine, however, if you are unvaccinated, you can be selected for random testing every two weeks and in order to come back to campus after breaks, you must have a negative Covid test. Vaccinated students do not have to get tested unless they are exposed and can return to campus without having to test. Over 80% of Drury’s population is vaccinated.

Missouri definitely has not been encouraging for mask mandates seeing as public schools who enforce masks are getting sued left and right, but this was a bit of a shock to students at the university since masking has been pretty strictly enforced so the school could remain in person. Most colleges are free from this threat of being sued since they aren’t free education, so many schools have continued their masking policies until now. The reasoning for this is because there has been a significant drop in cases in the last few weeks, and at the time I am writing this article Drury has only had one positive case in the last week.

While some students and staff are happy to be rid of masks, there are several students and faculty members that do not really think that this is a wise decision or that it is going to last very long. I am one of those people. I feel like if we get rid of masks now, all the progress that we have made will be undone and we’ll just have to go right back to wearing them again and we may even return to stricter covid rules. I personally think that everyone is jumping the gun on this one and I’m not just talking about schools. Lots of people seem to have this mentality that Covid is over and that we can simply just go back to the way things were, but there is no way that we will ever go back to normal, at least not completely.

Whether you agree with this new development or you don’t, it is in effect and all we can do is trust that these universities are making their students’ safety a priority and that they are keeping a close eye on the numbers.

Article by Sophia Meek