There were only a handful of staff and students wearing a mask on Tuesday when Local 5 visited.

“There’s still occasional students with masks on, and it’s not that big of a deal,” one student told us. “No one is judging them for wearing them.”

The university dropped its mask mandate last spring.

“It’s kind of a little weird to me because I was in high school with masks, and I came here with masks, and it’s like, I kind of want to cover my face,” another freshman told us.

While there are a few signs of what was once “normal” everywhere, like a hand sanitizer station, and plastic partitions on a desk, for the most part it’s hard to tell there was ever a pandemic at all.

“Some of the changes this year compared to year’s past is a greater emphasis on caring for each other. Understanding that we’re coming back into a new space post-pandemic,” said King.

The 2022-2023 school year is the largest enrollment in the school’s history, King added.