Dear Red Wolves:

In February, I promised that we would revisit our COVID protocols if conditions within the city, county, and region continued to improve. This week the Jonesboro Sun marked the decline of active cases, deaths, and hospitalizations in Craighead County, welcome news to everyone. Across the state we see similar indications that the recent omicron variant surge of coronavirus is waning.

With the continuing drop in cases on campus and in our community, we believe that it is time that we can remove all mandatory usage of masks effective Thursday, March 3. Remember last month we took a step toward relaxing masks on campus indoors, but continuing to require them in the classroom. Until further notice, they will not be required in classes.

We are planning to require students, faculty, staff or vendors to report their positive cases of COVID until the end of this semester. Thankfully, the campus case numbers have dropped to single digits during the past several days. As a result, we will begin reporting case numbers weekly, rather than daily, on our campus COVID dashboard. This will begin on Tuesday, March 8.

Thank you once again for being a part of the solution. I’ve said this many times and in many ways in these COVID communiques, but it remains absolutely true. We have collectively done a great job in working together to limit the impact.

Wolves Up!

Kelly