In light of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention relaxing regulations in K-12 schools and Gov. JB Pritzker lifting the statewide mask mandate, Illinois State University has announced that it will be lifting its classroom mask mandate.

This comes after case numbers and hospitalizations have gone down in the area. ISU had already lifted its mask mandate in other campus facilities.

However, with Spring Break approaching, this decision could lead to a potential surge. ISU has not added any testing requirements for when students return after spring break.

While we cannot wear masks forever, it seems that this decision has come rather quickly. 

ISU should wait to reverse the mandate until after Spring Break to see what case numbers look like then. However, it may be treating the week after Spring Break as a built-in quarantine.

While this decision seems like the right one to make now, that could quickly change after students and staff come back from vacation.

Even though the CDC made this decision affecting younger students across the state, ISU needs to pay close attention to the number of cases among the college student demographic, even if officials are doing so already. 

ISU lifted its mask mandate in several buildings Monday. It may be useful to wait and see how numbers are after this week so we can see if this partial lift affected case numbers at all.

While this option may seem like it is taking forever, the phrase “rather safe than sorry” comes to mind. 

Students, along with people across the state, hate when places go back and forth between having a mandate and no mandate, so it seems like it may be a better choice to wait a little longer and see how we will be affected. 

The mask mandate has also been lifted in several places in the Bloomington-Normal area. This could also affect the case numbers on campus as community members from local schools also go on their spring breaks.

The decision to lift the mask mandate is not necessarily wrong, it just came a bit abruptly. We do not want ISU to jump the gun and end up regretting its decision. 

After all, the safety of the students, faculty and staff at ISU is what is most important here.

ELIZABETH URBAN is News Editor for The Vidette. Urban can be contacted at emurba1@ilstu.edu. Follow Urban on Twitter at @eliizabethurban.  

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