What Colleges are Requiring COVID

Vaccines for COVID-19 have, so far, proven to be incredibly effective. In areas where vaccine adoption has been dense, the disease is well in hand. Nevertheless, it continues to spread and mutate, and cities with high rates of vaccination are sometimes being flooded with ailing people from outside of their region. As a result, even those hospitals are reporting that ICU admissions are primarily for COVID-19 sufferers who have refused the vaccine. They also report that current death rates are heavily weighted towards those who are opposed to the vaccines and thus remain unvaccinated. Still, the rates of hospitalization and death are off the charts, and hospitals are, at times, having to refuse treatment to non-COVID patients in lieu of those who need immediate aid due to COVID.

In an effort to contain the deadly and debilitating disease, businesses and some governments have responded with vaccine mandates, just like those requiring students to get the measles vaccine to attend public school, college students to be tested for TB, etc. President Joe Biden has mandated vaccines for federal employees, federal contractors, and healthcare workers who work in facilities that receive federal funds. An additional 80 million US workers are also mandated to take the vaccine, though they can choose bi-weekly testing to ensure that they don’t bring COVID into the workplace.

So far, legal challenges to these mandates have failed. After all, employers are free to insist on vaccinations, dress codes, and other normative behaviors as a condition of employment, especially as at-will employment continues to be the norm. While some vaccine resistors can lay claim to religious exemptions, they need to make very strong arguments with factual support.

Colleges have also mandated vaccination for their students. However, these efforts are rather uneven. Since public universities are subject to the prevailing politics of the state, some colleges have required proof of vaccination, while others have not. Private colleges and universities are typically immune to these political inconsistencies and they are free to mandate the vaccine if they choose, though, in these cases, it’s up to the ruling body of the school.

As time goes on, it's believed by many that more institutions, including colleges and universities, will choose to insist on vaccination. After all, students are already mandated to receive vaccination for other diseases and, now that the FDA has granted full approval of a COVID vaccine option, there is less and less reason not to require vaccination for a disease which has killed hundreds of thousands in the US alone.