UMD Continues Mask Requirement, Students Mixed on Duluth’s New Mandate

DULUTH, Minn. – While the City of Duluth is resuming its mask mandate Friday evening, mask requirements are nothing new for students, faculty, and staff at UMD.

People have been asked to wear one, regardless of vaccination status, inside campus buildings since early August.

For some students, wearing a mask elsewhere in the city will help keep everyone safe from the virus.

“You are doing it to protect everybody, not just yourself,” says Devin Rhodes, who transferred to UMD during the pandemic.  “It’s like a rotten apple next to good apples; you’re going to spread the rot, the mold.”

Other students have questions about why one should wear a mask when they have already been vaccinated for COVID.

“Everybody to each their own if they like to still wear a mask,” says Alexandra Wagman, who will be graduating next spring. “Everybody is entitled to that choice and that option.  If people don’t want to, I don’t think it’s the school or the city’s place to really be imposing that sort of mandate onto people, the same way as the vaccine.”

UMD’s Health Services says they found 11 students with COVID through their testing, the highest it has been since August of 2020.