The university announced it will be easing some of its COVID-19 restrictions on campus, according to an email sent by Carol A. Fierke, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Stewart Uretsky, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration and Raymond Lu-Ming Ou, Vice President for Student Affairs, on Feb. 7. The announcement comes after a drop in positive cases within the Brandeis community.
“Thank you for continuing to observe our guidelines as we work to strike the right balance between mitigating the spread of COVID on campus while also cultivating and nurturing the spirit of community on campus,” reads the email.
The university will begin to relax its guidelines due to the “significant” drop in positivity cases on campus, according to the email. As of the time of publication, the percent of positive test rates on campus is 0.28 percent, according to the university’s dashboard.
The masking requirement will remain in place on campus. According to the email, the university administration has been in contact with the Waltham Director of Public Health. The university will continue to adhere to the Waltham mask mandate, which permits unmasking in limited circumstances when an individual is in a private space, according to the email. The university’s masking policy will be updated on the university’s COVID-19 response page. The email notes that the spring 2022 masking policy will resemble the same practice from the fall 2021 semester.
The university will allow indoor events to resume serving food and beverages. At the beginning of the semester, the university set in place a rule which prohibited serving food at indoor events. According to the email, food may be served if the event is capped at a 50 percent capacity in indoor spaces through Feb. 18. This rule will remain in place as long as positivity rates stay low on campus, according to the email.
The spectator policy for athletics events has also been altered due to the drop in positivity rates. According to the email, community member spectators will have to remain masked and show a green passport. However, as of Feb. 7, university athletics will open home competitions to external spectators without restrictions. According to a story posted on the BrandeisJudges Instagram page, spectators are still expected to wear high-quality masks including surgical, KN95, K95 and KF94. Masks must be worn at all times, according to the story.
“We hope you will join your fellow Brandeisians in cheering for the Judges: Always have your green passport ready and mask on when you enter Gosman,” reads the email from Fierke, Uretsky and Ou.
The university’s travel policy was updated on Feb. 6, according to the Health and Safety Travel page on the university’s website. For fully vaccinated undergraduate students, domestic travel will be allowed, this is for both university-sponsored travel and personal travel, according to the page. If undergraduate students are traveling outside of the New England states which include: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut, they must register their travel with the Dean of Students office. Fully vaccinated undergraduate students will have to fill out a form to submit to the Dean of Students office, on the form students are requested to fill out their departure and arrival date from campus, their vaccination status and their reason for travel. A separate form is to be filled out by fully vaccinated undergraduate students if they are traveling for university-sponsored travel. The form asks for the same information but additionally requires the information of which university department you are traveling with and with how many other Brandeis students.
Fully vaccinated graduate students traveling domestically must register their travel with graduate student affairs, according to the page. Graduate students are also expected to complete a form informing the university of their travel plans. Faculty and staff who are fully vaccinated are not required to register their domestic travel with the university, according to the page.
For unvaccinated community members, university-sponsored domestic travel is prohibited, according to the page. This includes field trips, sporting events and retreats and is applied even for those who have received a religious or medical exemption from the university’s vaccine mandate. Unvaccinated community members are allowed personal travel, however, they must comply with CDC guidelines for quarantining and testing upon arriving back on campus, according to the page. The CDC’s current guidelines for unvaccinated individuals after travel includes receiving two negative test results—one taken on arrival and another on day six of quarantining—in addition to seven days of travel quarantine, according to the page.
For unvaccinated undergraduate students, travel outside of the six New England states will be allowed only for emergencies, according to the page. Travel must receive prior written permission from the Dean of Students Office.
In the email, the administrators remind students to check in on the university’s travel policies as we approach February break which is set to begin on the week of Feb. 21 through to Feb 25. Community members were asked to take “extra precaution” upon returning to campus after break, including taking a rapid at home test before traveling back to campus. Students will be required to submit a sample upon arriving on campus, though the at home test is not a requirement before travel. Students who test positive over break are advised to notify the Contact Tracing Team at bctp@brandeis.edu, according to the email, students who test positive should not return to campus until cleared by the Contact Tracing Team.
“Please check out the COVID-19 Response website to see all the updates to our COVID policies. While we are making these steps towards more normalized operations, it’s important to remember that COVID is still here: please continue to wear your mask in all indoor public spaces including our classrooms, Gosman, the Library, and the SSC, and continue to make wise personal choices to avoid exposures,” reads the email.
Fierke, Uretsky and Ou, wrote in the email that the university will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation on campus and in the greater community to adjust guidelines and restrictions. At the time of publication, Waltham has a positivity rate of 4.94 percent, according to the university’s dashboard. Waltham as a city is labeled as a red zone indicating that it is in the range of the highest infection zone, according to the dashboard.
