The names of four students and one alumna from Chapman University have been changed to “Kayla,” “Nikki,” “Angela,” “Evan” and “Jessica” respectively, as all five asked to remain anonymous to protect themselves from retaliation by fellow students, faculty members or administrators.

Kayla, a senior business administration major at Chapman, finished her interterm class feeling frustrated, uncomfortable and unsafe. In an interview with The Panther, she explained that her business professor, Mark Skousen, had broken several protocols laid out in the Chapman Safely Back faculty plan for January 2022. 

Her concerns began to arise in the first week of interterm when classes were still meeting over Zoom. Kayla recalled Skousen sending a poll to his students on the first day of class asking if they felt masks should be optional in classrooms; roughly 60% of students voted “yes,” while she was part of a dissenting minority.

When Kayla arrived for her first in-person class the next week, she found Skousen, as well as several students in attendance, not wearing masks indoors — a violation of the CU Safely Back requirements.

“(Skousen) didn't feel that masks should be required (and) expressed that to us on that first day of class,” Kayla said. “He said something along the lines of, ‘God didn’t give me a mask.’”

According to Kayla, the professor also promoted the notion that the pandemic isn’t legitimate under the rationale that less than 1% of the US population has died — a statistic disproven by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center. Currently, the U.S. has a 1.2% mortality rate, categorizing it as the country with the 13th highest COVID-19 death rate worldwide.

“(Skousen said) he had a medical condition (where) he could not wear a mask for long periods of time,” Kayla said. “For the entirety of interterm, he would not wear his mask in our classroom. That kind of set a standard in our classroom, where students (also) weren't wearing their masks.” 

Skousen has not responded to The Panther’s requests for comment.

Other students have voiced similar concerns about a lack of faculty adherence to the CU Safely Back policies. Nikki, a senior creative producing major, described a fall semester class she took under business professor Patrick Flaherty, who did not wear a mask after the first day of class.

“It was the first time we were back in person, and everybody was freaking out because (COVID-19) was spiking (on campus),” Nikki said, noting her discomfort at the distance between Flaherty and the students in his front row. 

Reflecting back on the first day of interterm, Flaherty told The Panther he urged students to speak up if they felt uncomfortable with a faculty member’s mask conduct.

“I said, ‘I find it hard to lecture with a mask on, so I'll put it down. If you feel uncomfortable, let me know,’” Flaherty said. “No one raised their hand (in response).” 

Flaherty added that he didn’t hear any negative feedback until a handful of students submitted complaints about mask usage in his late-semester program evaluations.

The question of how exactly approval or disapproval of faculty conduct should be communicated has proven contentious between some students and faculty. 

Flaherty believes that students need to proactively voice their concern if they want to see change, while Nikki and sophomore business administration student Angela told The Panther that their silence was an expression of their discomfort — not their approval.

At the start of her fall semester “Foundations of Business Analytics” class with professor Duncan Houldsworth, Angela found herself in a similar situation to Nikki’s.

“He asked if it was fine if he (took) off his mask,” she said. “Nobody really said anything, so he continued without a mask (for) the rest of the semester … it was uncomfortable.”

Houldsworth has not responded to The Panther’s requests for comment.

Student adherence to COVID-19 protocol was of equal concern for Nikki, who echoed Kayla’s earlier comments on classroom conduct and the role of faculty in modeling a safe learning environment.

“The biggest problem I had was the fact that (Flaherty) didn't enforce (CU Safely Back policies) in class,” she said, elaborating that several students in the course also did not wear face coverings. 

While Flaherty could not confirm that any students failed to wear masks in his fall semester classes, he believes Nikki’s observations likely played out as reported, albeit without his knowledge.

“I’m not the mask police; if I missed it, then that was my fault,” Flaherty said, noting the limitations of a professor tasked with enforcing CU Safely Back procedures. “If you come into my classroom and I say, ‘Can you put your mask on?’ and you say ‘No, forget it,’ I'm not going to force you to leave. That's really not my job.” 

Some of that responsibility, Flaherty argues, must rest on the students. But, some students like Nikki and Kayla believe that professors have been hesitant to fully exercise their own authority.

Nikki compared Flaherty’s course with another where the professor would stop their class if a student was not wearing a mask properly.

“That class was (better) because the professor was enforcing (the rules),” Nikki said. 

Jessica, a Chapman student who graduated in fall of 2021 with a degree in television writing and production, remained unconvinced that one of her last classes at Chapman had taken all the precautions it could have to protect students from COVID-19.

The cinematography course, which took place in the spring semester of 2021, had switched from Zoom classes to a hybrid format. Jessica stayed on Zoom for the class but told The Panther she had witnessed the professor, who she declined to name, consistently neglecting face covering requirements when teaching the students who remained in-person.

“This professor would randomly have his mask off (and say), ‘I hate these damn things,’” Jessica said. “(He would) have students take their (masks) off, not even really asking if it was okay with them — just telling them to for different lighting exercises.”

Jessica added that, at times, the professor would even touch students’ faces with their masks off while conducting class exercises. Private Zoom messages between students addressed these moments with confusion, but no one publicly shared their discomfort with the professor, Jessica said.

“He would say, ‘Oh, this is so hot. It's hard to breathe,’” Jessica recalled when discussing the professor’s justification for not wearing a mask. 

Jessica said she views such claims as little more than “generic excuses,” but explained that the portrayal of masks as irritating and obstructive was a perspective frequently expressed in the class. Jessica told The Panther she believes it was this sentiment that guided the cinematography professor’s approach to CU Safely Back requirements: if the professor saw masks as a nuisance, there was little reason for him to seriously weigh the consequences of telling students to remove their masks. 

“(Students) want to agree with professors (and be) in good standing,” Jessica said, who believes confronting or reporting a professor’s conduct could invite retaliation from faculty or the administration. “I think (my professor) kind of had power in that situation.”

When discussing the possibility of reporting Skousen to administrators, Kayla told The Panther that his status as a Presidential Fellow cast doubts for her about whether such a report would be taken seriously.

One student told The Panther that he had reported a professor from his fall semester classes, Fred Smoller, to the Dean of Students office. 

Evan, a junior who had started Smoller’s class for his political science minor, caught a sight similar to that of the other interviewees: Smoller had begun lecturing without a mask. Another student from the same class messaged The Panther on Instagram confirming that the professor was not wearing a mask when he began lecturing on the first day of fall classes. 

After Evan asked his professor to wear a mask, Smoller agreed to. But on the second day of Smoller’s class, Evan said the professor lowered his mask to speak, so he opted to walk out of the classroom and drop the course.

“I sent an email to the Dean's office about it and ended up getting a response talking about the filtration system in the classroom and COVID-19 clear checkpoints (around) campus,” Evan said. 

When he mentioned that he wanted to drop Smoller’s class, however, Evan said he was met with a reply from the Dean of Students’ office requesting he stay in the class to monitor the professor’s compliance with CU Safely Back policies.

Smoller has not responded to The Panther’s requests for comment. 

“I really didn't feel comfortable being the professor's compliance officer, let alone the awkward and precarious position that puts a student who is being graded by that professor in,” Evan said.

While a discussion continues surrounding the responsibilities of Chapman administrators, faculty and students in a pandemic setting, many voices remain steadfast in their approach to a solution.

Flaherty told The Panther he plans to tell his spring classes about the mask requirements at the start of the semester but will continue to leave it up to students to voice any concerns regarding their safety or comfort level in the classroom.

For Evan, the best way forward relies on the enforcement protocols that the university has already set in place, noting that COVID-19 clearance staff and Public Safety officers can be contacted if students, staff or faculty are unwilling to cooperate with Safely Back protocols.

Still, others believe that the responsibility of maintaining CU Safely Back compliance lies in a familiar concept: education. 

“Professors set the tone for our class,” Jessica said. “They have that level of authority and should be using it appropriately.”