The Yale Daily News editorial board recently wrote an editorial entitled “Mask Off”. There are so many fatal flaws in this editorial that I quickly lost count. There are a few, however, that I feel deserve attention. To start off, the editorial board argues that the University does not have an obligation to protect the surrounding community, saying that Yalies do not represent New Haveners. But Yale is in New Haven, making Yalies living here New Haveners.

Yalies can (and should!) vote for the same elected officials that the editorial board claim actually represent New Haveners. Eli Sabin ’22 is a Yalie who is currently an elected official on the New Haven Board of Alders. More important than these semantics is the flawed idea that Yale needs to adopt requirements as relaxed as local and national policies. There is a clear link between campus COVID-19 outbreaks and negative consequences for the surrounding community. This indicates that, if anything, Yale has a responsibility to voluntarily implement stricter policies to protect the health of the surrounding community — assuming we actually care about that, which I argue we absolutely should. The editorial board’s point about freeing student volunteer groups is an excellent one that I wholeheartedly agree with. Yalies should be allowed to give their time to help the community as the benefits far outweigh the risks at this point in the ongoing pandemic.

Concerning the supposed “virtue signaling” by the administration requiring masks in classrooms and shuttles but not other spaces, might mandatory mask-wearing be a reason that COVID-19 does not spread in the classroom, for example? Also, it is easy to imagine that immunocompromised students could at least attempt to avoid optional exposure risks in spaces other than classrooms and shuttles, but they are certainly not able to avoid these exposures. What real advantage does optional masking in classrooms and shuttles provide compared to the harm it could cause?

Finally, the editorial board ends by holding up the CDC as an infallible source of unquestionable guidance. Did the majority of the editorial board forget that the CDC literally became a meme only a few months ago for implementing relaxed quarantine guidance that was strongly criticized by many public health experts? The not-so-subtle suggestion that University officials are overstepping by implementing more strict guidelines than an agency that was just criticized for implementing overly relaxed guidelines is laughable. You may not agree with all of the decisions our University officials have made (and I would be right alongside you), but they are not our enemy — the virus is. The assertion from the editorial board that we should implement less strict mask mandates even though “we have a responsibility to respect and support those around us,” is dangerous, privileged, illogical and misguided. Call it virtue signaling or call it whatever you want, but I think mask mandates should absolutely be on the table for Yale if we value the health of our New Haven community.

Patrick Buckley is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Microbial Pathogenesis department and a member of the Yale Student Science Diplomats. Contact him at patrick.buckley@yale.edu.