My graduate school just announced that specifically because vaccine mandates are not allowed in my state (they literally said something along the lines of "unfortunately we cannot mandate vaccines for our staff and students to stop the spread of omicron") they are implementing a temporary (we know how this ends) mask mandate instead for the first month of school to "curb the spread of omicron."

I'm not going to wear a mask ever.

and I'm really nervous about it since I'm bad at social confrontation and my school is particularly trigger happy about reprimanding students for not following rules. What should I say in case they threaten to kick me out of the classroom for wanting to breath fresh air? I want to say I have medical and religious complications but they might default to some sort of "well since we announced the mandate before school started, it was your duty to file an exemption before coming" or something like that. Not sure what to do.

I'm just really nervous especially since they suddenly sprung this mandate a few days before the first class and would appreciate some advice right now. Thanks.