As COVID continues to rise and fall, people reflect on wearing masks in order to reduce its transmission. Students and staff should all wear masks, but there follows a few of those who don’t. This leads one to question if masks have a purpose to protect students and staff or are they just something to wear. 

Sophomore Samantha Vuong thinks that masks are both useful and helpful to lower the spread of COVID. 

“If they require students to wear masks and teachers aren’t wearing masks, it is unreasonable,” Vuong stated.

Vuong is right. If we want students to be in school, we need our teachers to be safe as well as the students, and that means following mask mandates. Students benefit from in-person learning, so keeping students safe should be any educator’s first priority. Student education is one of the most important things to WCHS staff, so keeping students in class and not at home means that masks need to be worn and students must maintain their distance between each other. 

Arianna Flaven, senior, thinks that if teachers are getting sick then because the students won’t have the teacher they could fall behind and they could stop doing their work. 

“This would entirely be the teacher’s fault for acting irresponsibly by not wearing masks,” Flaven said.    

Some teachers can be seen not wearing masks while in classrooms during lunch. This is a reasonable time to not wear masks because students aren’t in classes with their teacher while they’re eating lunch.                  

When not around others, students agree that not wearing a mask is not as bad. 

“If they are in their classroom alone, it is acceptable because they are alone, but when students are near they should pull up their masks,” Flaven said.

Assistant Principal Melissa Garcia stated that she has not heard of any teachers or staff not wearing their masks and that everyone should “definitely continue” wearing them.

A more suitable and reliable source on the effectiveness of wearing masks would be with the Center of Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recommends “universal indoor masking by all students (ages 2 years and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.”