Mizzou to require masks in class, hold drawings for vaccinated students

The University of Missouri will require masks this fall in many settings on campus, regardless of vaccination status, and will incentivize students, faculty and staff with prizes such as tuition discounts to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The announcement came Thursday, as Missouri struggles with the surge of COVID cases driven by the aggressive delta variant. Fall classes begin in about a month for about 30,000 students at the university’s Columbia campus.

The school will require all students and faculty to wear masks in classrooms, which will be at full capacity, and in “meeting spaces” where social distancing is not possible. The policy begins Monday and will be reviewed on Sept. 15, according to an email the university sent to students and staff.

Unvaccinated students will be required to wear masks in all other indoor spaces on campus. For vaccinated students, it is recommended.

But there are a number of exceptions to the non-classroom requirements. Unvaccinated students and staff will not have to wear a mask when in work spaces with six feet of separation from others or with physical barriers such as a cubical wall, or when they are with “small numbers of people you consistently live or work with daily (known as a stable group) including roommates, office mates or lab coworkers,” according to the email.

The university is asking students, faculty and staff to submit their vaccination status to track campus vaccination rates and assist with contact tracing. Those who are vaccinated and exposed to COVID do not need to quarantine, the university said, and can continue attending class in person.

MU’s vaccine incentive program will be similar to the state’s monetary incentives, structured around a series of drawings. Prizes include tuition discounts, dinners with athletic team head coaches and free parking spots on campus.

Concerns over the virus in Columbia are not as dire as they are in southwest Missouri. Boone County is the state’s highest-vaccinated county, with 46% of the population having completed vaccination. But the delta variant has been detected in Boone’s wastewater since last month, and health officials have been wary of the outbreak’s spread northward along state highways.

The Columbia-Boone County Public Health and Human Services has advised the public to wear masks indoors, but spokeswoman Sara Humm said there are no plans to issue new health mandates.

As the flagship University of Missouri campus, MU will be the largest school in the state to require masks this fall. The University of Missouri - Kansas City does not require vaccinated people to wear masks except in medical clinics and buses, though Mayor Quinton Lucas on Wednesday issued a citywide indoors mask order following new CDC guidance.

“We are reviewing the mayor’s order but are making no policy changes at this time,” spokesman John Martellaro said.

Missouri State University has said it will require students to test for COVID upon arrival and quarantine in university housing if the test is positive. It has not revived a mask policy yet. Springfield health officials have said they will not implement a new mask mandate there.

The University of Kansas has recommended masking indoors for its fall semester.

MSU and Missouri Southern State University in Joplin have already rolled out vaccine incentive programs for students with prizes such as full tuition for free, meal plans, laptops and book store gift cards.