The recent uptick in COVID-19 cases has reintroduced mask requirements on the Troy University campus.

The university administration made adjustments to the COVID guidelines put in place at the start of the school year.

It was announced that starting Monday, August 30th, masks would be required in all on-campus indoor spaces for students, faculty and staff.

The administration had hopes to return to normal operations but as Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr. Lance Tatum says this was the best option to keep students in the classroom.

“I think normal is never going to be the same definition that we used to use for that word,” says Tatum. “But I do think that as we looked at the number of students who were moving in and out of the classroom faculty, who were moving in and out of the classroom, we had to do something to try to stabilize the environment and so putting people into a mask indoors gave us the opportunity to not have to be so lenient in terms of who’s being exposed.”

Tatum says that many factors played into the university requiring masks including the rising COVID cases on campus. Mass exposure played a role as well from keeping students in attendance to their in-person learning.

“We looked at our case count numbers, we looked at what was happening inside the classroom,” says Tatum. “We had a large number of students who were having to quarantine because of exposure. That led us to this this point where we’ve decided that it’s probably going to assist in keeping the continuity of instruction in place if we go ahead and put everybody into a mask.”

For the full story watch Claudia’s report.