A Maine college is issuing $50 tickets to students who fail to wear a facemask while on campus property.
According to CBSN Boston, St. Joseph’s College in Standish, Maine, has issued more than 20 tickets to students who have violated the school’s masking policy.
Patrick Meyers, a St. Joseph’s College junior told CBSN Boston that the police issued him a fine for wearing his mask below his nose.
“He kind of just saw me slipping without a mask on,” Meyers said. “I had it below my nose and [the police] rolled right around to me said, ‘Hate to do this to you, but I got to give you a $50 fine.’”
Oliver Griswold, a spokesman for the school, said that the school is using “all of the tools at our disposal to try to keep COVID off campus.” The college doubled down on its decision to ticket students, claiming that they were given advance notices about all fines and policies.
Universities across the country have taken extreme measures to shield college students and faculty from the coronavirus. In some cases, schools such as Harvard University and the University of California system opted to shut down campuses entirely and move to virtual learning-only to mitigate the spread at the beginning of the pandemic.
As the pandemic slows down and vaccines become increasingly available to the American public, universities remain uncertain about what a return to campus will look like. Many schools are making a return to campus contingent on vaccination for nearly all students and staff.
Rutgers University in New Jersey was the first school to announce plans for mandatory vaccination. Leadership at Cornell University announced soon after that students and staff must be vaccinated to return to campus in the fall.
According to the New York Post, at Cornell, vaccine exemptions will be made for individuals with religious and medical exemptions. It is unclear whether Cornell’s in-person classroom instruction will require face masks alongside vaccination.
Notre Dame announced that it would require all students — undergraduate, graduate, and professional — to be fully vaccinated as a condition of enrollment for the upcoming school year. Exemptions are given to those with medical and religious reasons.
The school is bargaining with students at the moment, announcing that if a large portion of the student body gets vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine, the school will ease up on certain restrictions.
The Daily Wire reported:
If 90 percent of the students are vaccinated with at least the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the school says that it can ease up on certain restrictions including: “Allow inter-hall visits in our residence hall common lounges,” “raise the maximum number of informal gatherings outdoors from 10 to 25,” “eliminate the requirement to wear masks outdoors on campus for gatherings of 25 or less,” and “restore some outdoor recreational opportunities, such as basketball and volleyball.”
If 90 percent of the students become fully vaccinated, the school says it will take the following steps: “Dispensing with weekly surveillance testing for those who have been fully vaccinated,” “not requiring those fully vaccinated to go through exit testing before leaving at the end of the semester,” and “providing more outdoor activities for our graduates as we move toward Senior Week and Commencement weekend.”
Extortion.
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