PICKING AN UNNECESSARY FIGHT?

Northern Illinois University lifted its campus-wide mask mandate last spring, although faculty retained the ability to require that students continue to mask up in their class.

The simplest thing to do is to issue the request, and stand by it.

NIU professor Jahred Adelman has chosen to require masks in his classroom, and shame those who disagree with his sentiment.

“Masks are required AT ALL times in PHYS 253. Here and in your labs. It is not pleasant, but it is for your health and safety, my health and safety, and the health and safety of your friends and colleagues. If you do not follow this requirement, you will be asked to leave,” Adelman wrote in the course syllabus, of which YAF obtained a copy.

Had he simply issued the request, there would be no reason for the Militant Normals to get involved.  But he defended his ruling in a way calculated to piss off some people.

“Why do we wear masks? (The pandemic is not over)” the syllabus headline reads. Besides being ableist and racist, the syllabus notes “refusing to wear a mask indoors is […] an exercise of individual privilege that tells the most vulnerable that their health and the health of their loved ones does [sic] not matter.”

“Look around,” it continues. “Your neighbor may be an immunocompromised cancer survivor. The person across the aisle may live with an elderly family member. Your colleague may have a newborn at home.”

That article has a photo of an in-class slide, which might be elaboration, rather than the plain text of the course outline and conditions of carriage.  As I understand the most recent revisions based on the empirical evidence, it's really on the cancer survivor, or the elderly family member to mask up; second-and-third-hand masking has no effect on transmission.

Relatively few faculty members introduce that much culture studies speak into their mask policies.  But those that do only reinforce the idea that the universities are full of people who have lost the good of the intellect.  "Racism should not be a word thrown around as often as the far-left seems to do. It seems like anything the left disagrees with is deemed 'racist.'"  That's a shame.  There are Higgs bosons to be chased.

Academia delenda est.