I figured it out, and I thought it would be helpful to post my solution in case anyone else runs into this issue:
I was looking at the index file in my theme, when I should’ve been looking at the index file in the public_html folder. My site operates through the primary directory but has its own directory for wordpress to do its business hidden away, much like many sites. The issue was that somehow, a <head> tag had ended up in the index.php that resides in public_html and tells wordpress how to do its stuff. Simply removing that <head> tag fixed the issue.
