Multiple Massachusetts colleges extend mask mandates indefinitely

Three Massachusetts colleges are extending their COVID-19 mask mandate — and a fourth is putting it to a vote — even as masking requirements are disappearing around the nation.

Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and Hampshire College have all extended their mask mandates indefinitely, according to releases made in the past month.

“I am sorry to say that because of the relatively high confirmed COVID-19 case counts on campus (approximately 50 per week since the start of the semester) we will need to continue our indoor mask mandate until further notice,” Mt. Holyoke’s president, Beverly Daniel Tatum, said in an open letter last week.

“It is clear that the current levels of infection have taxed our campus health care system and residential services to the limit.”

The school had been set to drop its masking requirement last Friday.

Nearby Amherst College announced recently it will be holding votes in order to determine masking policy on a classroom-by-classroom basis.

“Faculty members will conduct an anonymous survey of their classes, either by collecting handwritten (no names!) responses to the question, ‘Should masks be required in this class?’ or by distributing a survey,” the college said in a letter to faculty and students last week.

“If anyone in the class, including the instructor, wants to continue with masking, then masks will be required.”

The decision to keep covered comes as other higher learning institutions have been trending in the opposite direction, embracing a “masking optional” approach to pandemic control.

UMass Amherst, the fifth member of a consortium including the four schools above, does not require masks outside of health facilities.

In New York, Columbia University has taken a similar tack — requiring mask use in “clinical settings,” but merely “strongly encourag[ing]” masks in classrooms. NYU lifted its mask mandate, along with other COVID restrictions, last week.

Trinity College in Connecticut continues to require masks while Wesleyan University, another Nutmeg State liberal arts mainstay, does not.

Yale University currently leaves masking to a professor’s discretion, according it its stated policy.

While the overwhelming majority of mask mandates have been dropped, the CDC still recommends wearing masks in areas of high COVID transmission.