Many campuses that plan to return to in-campus instruction this fall will do so with mandatory mask-wearing policies. Those spotted without a mask might be stopped by a campus “public-health ambassador” and asked to don one, or cited for a conduct-code violation. Students might be asked to sign pledges confirming to abide by safety protocol or called out by a professor for going maskless in the classroom.
The expectation on many campuses is clear: Wear a mask, or get in trouble.
It’s a sweeping policy that’s consistent with guidance from top public-health officials: Masks have been shown to help slow the spread of Covid-19. But for some people, masking up presents extra challenges. Accounting for those populations makes the question of community safety more complicated.
Jaipreet Virdi, an assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware , counts herself among that number. Virdi is deaf and relies on lip-reading to communicate. Most masks, of course, make lip-reading impossible, and in turn pose a significant communication barrier to Virdi and others who are deaf or hard of hearing.
There’s this sense of knowing that I can’t do it, but I’m being shamed because I can’t.
Clear face masks, which allow a view of the wearer’s mouth, are gaining some traction, but even if Virdi’s institution purchased them for everyone — which she calls “a very optimistic scenario” — reading lips from a socially distanced six feet away is, she said, hardly effective, and would prevent her from interacting with students in the classroom. In other words, Virdi said, a mask policy would be “a huge barrier to me managing my classroom, as well as me being effective in instructing.”
The University of Delaware, she said, allowed its faculty members to choose whether they’d teach in person or online this fall. Virdi opted for the latter, but that doesn’t mean mask policies won’t still affect her: She’s already had to turn down invitations to two events being held in person with masks required. And if she needs to go to campus for a meeting, for instance, “it’s going to be a drain on my mental energy to try to comprehend what people are saying and then struggling to have communication, even if we have alternatives in place.”
The ramifications for people with disabilities in academe, Virdi says, could go even further.
“We’re already trying to adapt to a society where we wear masks to go to work,” she said. “What would it mean not just for me, but for other scholars who might not be able to participate in the workplace, whose university might not be as flexible as mine? Or for students who worry about their grade or their degree or their future, who might be barred from participating because they have a disability and they are afraid to disclose it, or they’re forced to come to campus to receive their education?”
Haley Tenore, a rising junior at Arizona State University and president of Autistics on Campus, said that people on the autism spectrum also may be uncomfortable wearing masks. Some experience heightened sensitivity to touch, meaning the feeling of fabric on their face or a strap around their ears could be intensely unpleasant.
“A few people in my club aren’t too crazy about wearing masks, because sometimes they’re very tight on their face, or they might like not like the texture of the fabric that’s on the mask,” Tenore said.
Tenore herself doesn’t experience those sensory issues. She’s used to wearing a mask at her part-time job, but said doing so has brought up another concern. “Sometimes it takes me a minute to process what someone’s saying,” she said. “When someone’s wearing a mask, it makes it twice as hard to understand what they’re saying.”
At Eastern University, in Pennsylvania, Sharon Thompson, director of the College Success Program for students on the autism spectrum, is already preparing her students, and their families, for wearing masks. That work, Thompson wrote in an email, “basically boils down to educating students and parents and having the students practice” wearing masks. Thompson said she’ll devote time during the program’s regular meetings this fall to mask-wearing etiquette and how to handle communication difficulties that may arise from wearing one.
A ‘Messier’ Reality
On a campus where mask-wearing is mandatory, Tenore and Virdi said, the consequences for people who aren’t able to do so — whether disciplinary or discriminatory — could be serious, especially since many disabilities that make mask-wearing difficult, such as autism, are invisible. It’s important, Tenore said, to “not assume why” someone isn’t wearing a mask.
That line has become blurred in recent weeks. Mask-wearing has become political, with a group called Freedom to Breathe circulating cards and fliers that falsely claim to exempt holders from wearing masks under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The question of whether to wear a mask has become “moral without seeing any of the complexities in the middle,” said Scott F. Kiesling, a linguist at the University of Pittsburgh. “It seems to be treated as, if you’re wearing a mask, then everything’s going to be OK. By the same token, that it should be OK for everybody to wear a mask, and if you’re not wearing a mask, you’re evil.”
“The reality,” he said, “is much messier.”
Kiesling knows that firsthand. His wife is a survivor of childhood abuse, and for her, wearing a mask “causes the kinds of reactions that make it impossible to concentrate. And in her case, it could actually be dangerous,” Kiesling said. “I think this is true of a lot more people than anybody thinks.”
For her and many others, Kiesling said, “there’s this sense of knowing that I can’t do it, but I’m being shamed because I can’t.” The perception is “that you’re some kind of different class of citizen.”
Virdi, too, is keenly aware of that inequity, as a historian of medicine. “Public health hasn’t been equal or inclusive for everybody.” she said. And academics who specialize in disability studies, she said, have been talking “about disabled people always being the first victims of any pandemic. I feel sometimes caught in the middle of this conversation.”
Those complexities distill for Virdi into a simple conclusion. “I do have an issue with the basic idea that wearing masks will be the same for everyone,” she said. “It’s not.”
