In a surprise, better late than never, late Valentine’s Day gift wacky Wilfrid Laurier University has removed its mask mandate.
The Waterloo, Ontario, university made the announcement via email to students and staff the day after Valentine’s Day. The university has had a mask mandate in effect for nearly three years, having kept the rule in place for much longer than most educational institutions in North America.
Although no specific reason was given for the change in policy, student action against it and increased media scrutiny by freedom-loving news outlets such as… well GWU! is likely the cause.
While the organization Students Against Mandates (S.A.M.) was thrilled to hear that Laurier students will no longer be forced to cover their faces, the organization’s President Leigh Vossen says that “without an apology for the impacts of the university’s harmful and ineffective mandates, a dangerous precedent is being set.”
“S.A.M. insists that Wilfrid Laurier and all Canadian universities and colleges come forward, admit they were wrong, and confirm that they will never implement such mandates again,” demands Vossen.
Although the public will likely never know why the university finally chose to remove the mandates, Vossen suspects that the building pressure from the groups protests in person and online along with the grapefruit mask-antics of student Kamil Bachouchi had something to do with it. That, along with actual science, says Vossen, such as the widely respected Cochrane review.
“(There’s the) release of mask-effectiveness studies or should I say ineffectiveness?, and the fact that Laurier was in the minority when it comes to the masking policy,” asks the Commander in Chief of SAM.
Vossen says that her group is tracking the many universities and colleges that still have mask and other mandates.
LIST OF UNIVERSITIES CONTINUING UN-SCIENTIFIC MANDATES:
- University of Manitoba
- Brock University
- University of PEI
- Conestoga College
- Ontario Tech
- Kings University College
- University of New Brunswick
- Georgian College
- Mount Allison University
- Seneca
- Dalhousie
- Saint Mary’s… and more
Vossen says that many universities and colleges do not specifically state their mandates or are intentionally vague on their websites. In addition, there are many universities that still have vaccine mandates for just certain programs.
Vossen says that S.A.M. will continue to get creative and draw the much needed attention to the “illogical and unscientific mandates that are taking choice away from students.”
“We are committed to ensuring these sort of draconian policies never return. There’s work to be done — Stay tuned.”
