Dupage Policy Journal

The Illinois Music Association required masking of participants at its annual contest held the weekend of June 11-12.

“If the contest is held 'in person,' ALL ATTENDEES will be REQUIRED to wear a mask. No one will be admitted without a mask. Masks may be removed at the student's discretion while performing. Students should use hand sanitizer immediately prior to performing,” IMA noted on its website in a post titled “Mandatory mask requirement update.”

The question of why a private origination was requiring masking when public bodies were not was perplexing to many.  

Around 5,000 people were forced to wear masks at Barrows Auditorium at Wheaton College, where the event was held.

IMA officials were resolute in their stance and provided a letter to participants noting non-compliance “could result in criminal trespass charges.”

“This past weekend the Illinois Music Association (IMA) hosted its annual contest at Wheaton College with an estimated 5,000 attendees,” Jon J. Kerr wrote in the Kerr Report.

“The IMA board of directors voted to include a mask requirement even though DuPage County (where Wheaton College is located) and the Illinois Department of Public Health do not recommend forced masking. Private and public organizations cannot impose rules they have no legal authority to enforce, and this type of autonomous policy scheming is reckless and dangerous. What’s to stop any organization from trying to pull the same stunt? Nothing, when organizations like the IMA continue to get away with it.”

Kerr noted DuPage County and the Illinois Department of Public no longer require masking.

“You can’t get arrested for not wearing a mask,” city of Wheaton Deputy Chief of Police P.J. Youker told Kerr.

The IMA noted it had received complaints in a since-delated Facebook post.

“The IMA has received a couple complaints about our mask mandate. Someone went so far as to contact a reporter who tweeted that we are ‘Bullying People’,” the organization noted.

The IMA's fixation on masking comes as more scientific evidence shows that nations that employ more masking methods do worse than nations that employ fewer masking protocols. For instance, Sweden opted for less stringent pandemic measures at the pandemic's inception rather than masking.

The World Health Organization reports that the nation has one of the lowest rates of Covid deaths worldwide, far outpacing western European nations that have implemented stringent lockdown and masking policies.

Other academic studies have refuted masking procedures as well.

A survey of 35 European nations was published in April, demonstrating "countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage.”