The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student

At universities, some instructors are finding the return to the classroom a nerve-racking experience. A few have quit — one in the middle of class.

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor — vaccinated and masked. So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked. It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Dr. Boedy said.