BUTTE — Masks are now mandated at Montana Tech.
Students, faculty, and staff will be required to wear a mask indoors where classes are held in order to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Some faculty and students are happy about the mandate being put in place.
Montana Tech Professor John Ray says that he’s happy about the mandate, but would like a renewed focus on social distancing, quarantine, and COVID testing on campus.
"Those have been kind of lax on campus. I think we need to strengthen those protocols to improve things," said Ray.
Ray hopes there won’t be too much pushback on the mandate.
"Tech has an obligation in terms of its faculty, staff handbook, the collective bargaining agreement on campus, federal law, to provide us safe working environment and if you don’t have mandatory mask policy, you don’t have a safe environment," said Ray.
Giovanna Luciano has been wearing a mask regardless of a mandate but hopes cases will go down so in-person classes may continue.
"I know it’s kind of frustrating for a lot of people cause COVID is still a very real thing and nobody wants to wear masks all day obviously but I think it’s safer overall you know it keeps us in our classes, I like being in person," said Luciano.
Alex D’antuono believes wearing a mask shouldn’t be about politics, but about public safety.
"Everyone’s like trying to turn it into a political thing and it’s not, we’re just trying to stay in person and keep everyone healthy so yeah it’s not fun but it’s something we need to do," said D’Antuono.
According to the Butte-Silver Bow health department, as of September 3, Montana Tech has 11 active cases.
There are 130 active cases in the county.
There has been a total of 93 deaths.
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