It was an awkward moment.
When I approached the door of Dillard University's Professional Schools & Sciences Building, there was a sign saying masks were required. A two-week mask mandate was implemented August 25.
Required.
Mandatory.
Not optional.
I was going to attend an event acknowledging the 60th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the Georges Auditorium. I've taken this walk quite a number of times, before the COVID-19 pandemic and during the pandemic. But more recently, if I wore a mask, I did so because I wanted to do it.
This was different.
Signs like this one can be seen on Dillard University's campus. The New Orleans higher education institution has implemented a two-week mask requirement while encouraging other COVID-19 precautions.
I haven't walked into any building where I was required to wear a mask in, oh, I don't know, months and months and months.
Gov. John Bel Edwards loosened most Louisiana COVID restrictions way back in May 2021. New Orleans ended its mask mandate in early March 2022. Hawaii was the last state to lift its mask mandate, just a few weeks later.
Since then, not many institutions have had mask mandates.
That's why it felt so strange going onto Dillard's campus.
As regular readers know, I suffered with COVID-19 recently. It was my second time. The first time Rudy Rona slammed me down so hard I was down for the count and I didn't know if I would rise. The second time, I was prepared, I knew what to do and I kept the high temperature, chills and other symptoms I won't mention to a minimum.
Both times I was fully vaccinated and boosted.
The nation's COVID-19 public health emergency is over. But the COVID-19 pandemic is not.
You've probably heard the news that COVID-19 cases in Louisiana have been rising in recent weeks, enough so that this is our state's eighth surge.
It's not a surprise that students, faculty and staff returning to campus, most of them excited to see each other and to begin a new academic year, have been greeting each other with smiles, hugs, kisses and a lot of up-close talking.
Different campuses are dealing with this in different ways.
LSU isn't requiring masks. Nor is the school requiring vaccinations and boosters, although students can get them free at the Student Health Center. The University of New Orleans isn't requiring masks, but, in a statement, a school official said "employees and students should feel free to wear masks if they choose."
Loyola University and Xavier University went beyond basic business-as-post-emergency-usual, but didn't go as far as Dillard did. Both institutions encouraged more aggressive actions.
According to a Xavier representative, the school "encouraged all members of the campus community to return to mask usage and social distancing indoors." A Loyola official didn't mention masks in a letter to the campus community; instead, she encouraged students and staff to "continue basic hygiene practices, such as covering your coughs and sneezes and handwashing."
Earlier this month, Morris Brown College in Atlanta implemented a campus mask requirement — and prohibited large gatherings.
The City of New Orleans continues to encourage citizens to use "proven to work" methods "like mask-wearing, extra distances, and vaccines and testing."
Higher education institutions, community and nonprofit organizations and businesses located in their own buildings can all choose to handle this post-mandate world however they wish. New Orleans has some of the highest vaccination and booster rates in the state, if not the highest. But Louisiana is lagging the Crescent City and much of the nation.
More people of all ages need vaccinations and boosters. More of us need to remember public health emergency-era precautions like hand washing frequently and masking to limit the spread of COVID and to reduce the chances we and others will get ill.
I'm grateful to Dillard University President Rochelle Ford and her team for making me feel uncomfortable when I went on campus. Sometimes it takes being uncomfortable to make us think about what we should be doing rather than doing things casually without thinking — until it's too late.
