Syracuse, N.Y. -- Syracuse University Vice President and Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala said that fans will experience some changes in the Carrier Dome atmosphere on Saturday as the school attempts to create improved compliance with its masking policies and eliminate loopholes that allowed a small number of fans to avoid having to show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test during the school’s first football game.
Last Saturday’s game against Rutgers was the school’s first football game with fans since the coronavirus pandemic began. He said the school will apply some of the lessons learned to the second, which comes this week against Albany.
“It’s been a busy week addressing a lot of things that went on last week,” Sala said. “We learned a lot last week. We’re hoping the changes make an impact this weekend.”
Last week the school largely relied on fans to comply with masking policies, openly acknowledging that it did not plan to play the “mask police.”
While fans largely complied with rules as they entered the building, compliance dropped as the game went on and was particularly poor when fans were sitting in their seats, where they are allowed to eat and drink without masks, which inevitably led to yelling and screaming without masks.
While Sala reiterated that he still does not want to be the “mask police,” he said the school will dial up its efforts slightly this week, increasing the amount of signage around the Carrier Dome and asking ushers to move around the bleachers with hand-held signs that could be directed at fans without masks.
Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon noted this week that masks aren’t something that the county is requiring, although it is requiring those in attendance to either be vaccinated or have recently tested negative.
“How do you enforce it?” Sala said. “It’s as bad as enforcing the vaccine around the country. It’s a university policy. We have different levels of what we expect from faculty, staff and students at Syracuse. It applies to all of our people. That policy carries over.”
Sala said the school remains reluctant to ask its Carrier Dome ushers and staff members to become too assertive, pointing to a number of situations across the country where requests from employees to customers to follow rules have escalated into physical confrontations.
One of the most recent occurred in New York City, where a restaurant employee was reportedly assaulted for asking customers to provide evidence that they had been vaccinated.
“It’s hard for us to get in a confrontation,” Sala said. “Any of us who watches the news or social media sees what happens sometimes when there is a confrontation. I don’t want to put my ushers, ticket takers and guest services staff into a situation where there could be a heated confrontation that escalates.”
Sala said the school heard from a number of fans who were concerned about the lack of masking last week.
He said that fans who are uncomfortable with the behavior of those around them can work with ushers to be seated elsewhere.
“We will make sure that we allow you to sit in different spaces around the building,” Sala said.
Many of the unmasked fans were students. While Sala said he is hopeful that students will also be more compliant this week, he said the school’s electronic record-keeping makes him confident that all the students in attendance were vaccinated. He said that more than 6,000 students attended the game, the largest student attendance the school has experienced in years.
“We’re very confident in the level of protection that our students had,” Sala said. “I feel confident the student population wasn’t as affected by the lack of mask-wearing as some of the other areas where I don’t know the people.”
Along with worries about masking, Sala said the school heard from a few fans who were able to enter the Carrier Dome -- or who knew someone who was able to enter the building -- without providing proof that they had been vaccinated or had recently obtained a negative coronavirus test, one of the requirements the county put in place.
“It was maybe three people (I heard from),” Sala said. “A lot of it was associated with the tent we had on the quad for pre-screening. We’re very conscious of long lines. We don’t like our patrons standing in long lines. We noticed there was a long line at that tent. We deployed more of our part-time (student) employees .... over there. Unfortunately, my supervisors didn’t move with them.
“We have three or four people that got their bracelet before they went through the process of showing their vaccination card and their identification. We stopped it quickly because it came to our attention. ... We have addressed that and plan to staff that a little differently.”
Sala said he also heard from a number of fans in the building who raised concern about the number of fans they saw without wristbands from the school’s pre-screening tents, something he doesn’t believe should alarm them this week.
He said the pre-screening tents are being used to allow fans to speed up their entry into the Carrier Dome but that fans can show their proof of vaccination to attendants as they enter the building. In that case, he said, the school has decided the wristbands aren’t necessary.
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