As most of the United States is slowly returning to pre-COVID life, the students’ main focus has been on going back to in-person school. In recent media, schools’ COVID restrictions have caused an issue. This raises the question, should our school’s COVID-19 policy be changed?
In Rocky Hill High School, masks are mandatory in the school building regardless of vaccination status. The same goes for 85% of schools in the United States that have mandated students to wear masks.
This restriction has caused a problem in the media: why do students need to wear a mask when they are fully vaccinated? Two freshmen and one junior at RHHS were anonymously interviewed about whether or not RHHS students should continue to wear masks. All three students answered that students should continue wearing masks because they help stop the spread of the virus, and even though there are fully vaccinated people, they are still able to spread the virus.
The freshmen and the junior agreed that vaccination prevents only to a certain level of getting exposed to the virus, and new variants of the virus have been common these days, and wearing masks would help reduce the outburst of COVID cases.
“We should have more mask breaks or at least space out more to compromise this mask issue,” said one freshman. The interviewees overwhelmingly agreed that more mask breaks should be taken.
Should masks be worn for indoor sports or physical activities in the gym? The three students agreed that masks should not be worn during sports or gym. “The kids are going to be sweaty and tired, and masks are very annoying to wear when you’re being active,” said a freshman.
And all interviewees suggested that students should have the option to not wear a mask, while maintaining social distance, during indoor sports and indoor physical activities.
RHHS requires students to be socially distanced from a student by having a seat space in between them during lunchtime. All three students interviewed said that we should have socially distanced seats during lunch because the cafeteria is a large indoor space with lots of people, and having socially distanced seats also reduces our chances of getting the virus.
Currently, there is also a no visitor policy at RHHS, which the three students agree with. The students believe that not allowing unknown visitors to visit our schools helps prevent a positive COVID case.
Going back to the question, should the COVID restrictions policy at RHHS be changed? “I believe that high school has a good set of rules regarding the COVID restrictions. I don’t know about the other schools, but our school is doing great!” said the freshman. However, students do wish to not wear masks during indoor and physical activities in the gym. What do you think? Should the COVID policy at RHHS be changed?
