The University System of Georgia is holding in-person classes this fall, with no masks required. It's an anomaly among top public universities — and it will put people at risk, professors say.
, said professor Joshua Weitz of the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. The absence of a mask requirement"significantly" increases the risk that the virus will be transmitted, he told NPR."The risk should not be a surprise to anyone in leadership," he said."We have a limited time to change course."
The majority of Georgia Tech faculty wants the school to have autonomy to determine how best to reopen. They say decisions about how to educate Georgia Tech students are best left to school officials including Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. The Georgia Board of Regents has not responded to NPR's requests for comment. But in response to an earlier petition to require masks on Georgia campuses, a University System of Georgia spokesperson said it was following COVID-19 guidance from the Georgia Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Professor Devesh Ranjan, who helped write the letter, said he's optimistic that Georgia Tech's administration agrees with faculty who say an in-person mask-optional return is too risky."We suspect they would not actively oppose faculty taking the decision to have most courses online," Ranjan told NPR."In the final analysis faculty will choose to do what they think is ethically correct.
Georgia is unique in that the state's education board has imposed mandates across the entire public higher education program of 26 colleges and universities — sometimes directly at odds with the wishes of individual schools. Georgia Tech already ran up against this in March when school officials ordered an immediate campus shutdown and a move to online education; the University System of Georgia wanted the school to only stay closed for two weeks.
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