At one NC high school, students aren’t as ready for masks to come off
Alex Slitz
Mecklenburg County’s mask mandate in indoor public places and businesses will end Feb. 26.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — We’re once again inching toward a post-COVID world. On Monday, Wake County Schools and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools made masks optional for the first time since the pandemic hit North Carolina two years ago. So far, 105 of the state’s 115 school districts have lifted mask requirements, and more may follow this week.
Even prior to the drop in cases, the majority of school districts in North Carolina had made masks optional after two years of a pandemic and mask fatigue that seemed to have started immediately after they were recommended. There have been angry parents and protesters at school board meetings this entire school year, but student opinions have been mostly overlooked, except by their peers.
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“You always see adults speaking for students, but you never see students protesting against masks,” says Matthew Burkhart, a senior at Enloe High School. Burkhart is a journalist for the Enloe Eagle’s Eye, the school’s student newspaper. In late February, the paper conducted a series of polls on Instagram to see how students felt about the current school masking requirements, and any future decisions made by the school board.
In a 369-person sample size, 76 percent of Instagram users said they would not feel safe if the school system eliminated its mask mandate. Respondents also shared whether or not they were vaccinated against COVID: out of 428 people, almost 98 percent of them had been vaccinated. Yesterday, Burkhart and friends tried to keep track of the number of people not wearing masks at Enloe yesterday. He only counted 19, most of them being teachers, he says. While he says he feels safe without a mandate, he is continuing to wear his.
Burkhart isn’t alone on this: when asked why they felt safest with masks, several students told the paper via Instagram that it wasn’t about them; it was about the possibility of spreading it to other people in the school. Others who said they’d feel safe even in spite of a mask mandate also clarified that they would continue wearing masks.
“I really hope this isn’t like last July,” Burkhart says. “Remember when for a good two or three weeks, we thought COVID was over? No more mask requirements. We were going to the mall and museums without masks, and then, ‘Oh, we’ve got delta variant.’ There’s a new variant of omicron which it hasn’t made much traction yet, but it is a little worrying to think that that could happen.”
Students are able to weigh the pros and cons of wearing masks — especially high schoolers, who have a degree of autonomy from their parents and are able to look ahead more than younger students. For more than a year, virtual school was the solution for COVID. Students missed socializing with their friends and learning in-person, and data shows that school closures from the pandemic had adverse effects on mental health.
Older students are more likely to understand that if their school has an outbreak or national cases spike again, they may be forced to learn from home again, or extracurriculars may get canceled. One senior respondent told the Eagle Eye that they didn’t want to lose prom or graduation because of a spike in cases.
It’s possible that Enloe students are more driven by anxieties than data: 70 percent of Wake County’s 12-17 year olds are vaccinated, as are 48 percent of 5-11 year olds in the county. Both of these percentages are about 20 points higher than the state average for the respective age ranges. Burkhart sees this as a possibility, too.
But it’s also possible that these students are thinking long-term. Most adults aren’t in fear of losing multiple milestones anytime soon; parties and experiences are on the table as long as the people close to us are smart. High school students are relying on the entire school to act accordingly so that they can all benefit. Enloe’s students could be outliers, but maybe we should have been listening to them the entire time.
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