Point Park has a serious communication problem. We’ve written about this before, but the mask-optional policy changes have exposed the fact that this is way more widespread than any of us initially believed.

The fact that multiple professors are under the impression that they do not need to wear masks in the classroom and that neither do students is a problem, but it’s not necessarily the fault of the professors. We, as a collective campus community, have an issue with not reading emails comprehensively. The email from the President’s Office, while relatively straightforward, can be easily misinterpreted, especially by people who aren’t paying full attention.

This communication issue isn’t exclusive to masks. Over the past week, multiple fire alarms went off, but there was no communication on what the cause of these alarms were. If the university had some sort of way of saying “hey, these fire alarms were because of a technical error” or “this was a fire drill,” then the general populace could probably rest a lot easier.

This issue applies to other university-based organizations as well. For example, there was a large amount of confusion in regards to when the SGA election results would be released, confusion that extended to executive members of the Student Government. We’re not here to fault anyone at SGA or to commentate on the interpersonal politics of their organization — we’re just pointing out that once again, there are communication issues.

A big part of the issue is that a lot of students just don’t read their emails. It’s understandable, we’re constantly bombarded with things that don’t concern us. That being said, we should all still pay more attention to our emails.

Again, the issue is not just with the school. Everyone at the university is no doubt very busy. It’s easy to miss what is actually an important announcement, especially over email. The best thing that we can do is to all try a little bit harder to communicate better, academically, extracurricularly and interpersonally.