Some California college students are fighting to have mask mandates reinstated amid ongoing discussions around the return to some COVID-19 precautions.
Last week, the Disabled Students Union (DSU) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), announced on Instagram that a proposed resolution titled “A Resolution to Mandate Masking, Weekly PCR testing, and Upcoming COVID-19 Vaccines, and to Improve Ventilation, and Reinstate the COVID-19 Task Force” failed to receive enough votes from the university’s Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC).
Some of the main aspects of the resolution proposed by the DSU included mask requirements for indoor and crowded outdoor spaces, weekly COVID-19 PCR testing requirements, updated COVID-19 vaccine requirements, and the reinstatement of the COVID-19 task force at UCLA.
The proposed resolution comes as the discussion around the possible return to mask mandates has continued, with some hospitals in New York announcing mask requirements for staff, patients, and visitors in response to increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations. In August, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that a new COVID-19 variant, BA.2.86, maybe more capable “of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines.” However, on September 15, the CDC said, “At this time, BA.2.86 does not appear to be rapidly increasing or driving increases in infections or hospitalizations in the United States.”
In California, the healthcare company Kaiser Permanente announced a return to its mask mandate last month. Data from the state’s COVID-19 tracking dashboard show that as of September 9, California has a seven-day average number of new COVID-19 hospitalizations of 395.3. In comparison, throughout June and most of July, this number stayed below 200.
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Shortly after the proposed resolution failed to pass within the UCLA USAC, the DSU issued another response on social media calling for an emergency meeting to vote on a revised resolution.
The DSU shared a message it sent to the USAC which said in part: “Although the outcome of the voting for the resolution was disappointing for the DSU and for thousands and thousands of students comprising the organizations which pledged support for the resolution, we have revised the resolution to create a ‘new’ version of it for the USAC. The content of the resolution is largely the same, with updated numbers, and some wording changed, so we hope that the concerns raised with members not having had the chance to review the resolution will not present an issue.”
The DSU said that some members of the USAC raised concerns that the resolution was not known to a majority of the student body at UCLA, but according to the DSU, the resolution had an “outpouring of support” “from marginalized identity-based organizations, and BIPOC” which account for close to 65 percent of UCLA’s undergraduate population.
According to the DSU’s social media post, resolutions passed through the USAC “are not absolute” and the revised resolution notes that if passed, it would result in the USAC recommending mask mandates and COVID-19 vaccine requirements to UCLA.
In another update posted on the DSU Instagram story, the union received a response from the USAC internal vice president who said that their request for an emergency meeting was seen and the USAC would be holding a vote to decide whether to hold the emergency meeting in the coming days.
Newsweek reached out to UCLA, the DSU, and the USAC via email for comment.