Will Winnipeg, Brandon, St. Boniface universities impose mask mandate?

An organization of faculty associations in Manitoba wants three universities in the province to implement a mask mandate this upcoming fall semester.

St. Boniface University, Brandon University and the University of Winnipeg have not followed the University of Manitoba’s lead in forcing students to wear masks.

The Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations (MOFA) wants that to change.

“It is an abdication of leadership to not have a mask mandate in our universities this fall,” said Michael Shaw, a MOFA council member.

“I’m very concerned for those other universities.”

Universities that require masks on campus are in the minority as the fall semester and the prospect of another wave of COVID-19 infections loom.

Fourteen out of 83 universities surveyed by The Canadian Press through email, interviews and online notices say they will require students and employees to mask up in different settings on campus.

Among them, U of M is maintaining its indoor mask mandate until further notice.

“We all know now after two and a half years of this that recommending things doesn’t work, and mandating them does,” said Shaw, who is also a senior instructor of biological sciences at U of M. “We had seatbelts before there were seatbelt laws and nobody wore them.”

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Shaw says universities provide a unique opportunity for COVID to spread.

“It’s a city of 30,000 people from Monday to Friday,” he said. “We’re in rooms of up to 300 students for an hour lecture, and then that cohort goes and mixes with a new group of 300 an hour later… you’re going to be sharing air with 10,000 people by day’s end because of the mixing that occurs.”

Julie Lajoie, a research associate at the University of Manitoba, says she’s relieved the university is maintaining its mask mandate.

“The University of Manitoba is really following the science.”

—With files from The Canadian Press.