VCU Ends Vaccine Mandate for Staff and Students
By Ashley Hagan
On Jan. 15, 2022, his first day in office, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed nine executive orders and two executive directives. These orders included one rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees. On Jan. 18, 2022, Virginia Commonwealth University stated that its employees no longer need to be vaccinated, boosted, regularly tested or report their vaccination status. As a public university, VCU employees are state employees, meaning that VCU cannot mandate them to receive a vaccine. Several other public universities in Virginia also dropped their vaccine mandates for staff, including Virginia State University, the University of Virginia, and William and Mary.
Later in January, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares stated that he believes the vaccine mandate for college students is unconstitutional. This gives unvaccinated students the grounds to sue public universities and let the courts decide the legality of the vaccine mandate. In response, VCU, along with other public universities like UVA and Virginia Tech, ended the vaccine mandate for students on Jan. 31, 2022.
Despite the vaccine mandate ending, the mask mandate remains in place for indoor events and outdoor events with more than 50 people. Students and employees may obtain one KN95 mask, one three-layer cotton mask and one hand sanitizer per month at vending machines throughout campus. Testing also remains free for students and staff.
As of the end of the fall semester, over 97% of staff and 95% of students had already received their vaccines. This means that even without the mandate, the vast majority of VCU students and staff are currently vaccinated. In the short term, rates of infection among students and staff are unlikely to rise dramatically. However, without boosters being required, the rate of infection on campus is likely to rise due to waning immunity and new variants. Over time, COVID-19 vaccines become less effective as antibodies in the bloodstream wane and as new variants have increased genetic differences from the original strain used in the vaccines.
Cases of COVID-19 have been trending downward in Virginia since mid-January but remain above 4,000 as of the writing of this article. Even without a vaccine mandate, most new and current students should continue to receive their vaccines and boosters, both for their own benefit and the benefit of others. Although continuing to have a 95% or 97% vaccination rate among students or staff is unlikely moving forward, as long as vaccination rates remain high and mask mandates remain in place, the spread of COVID-19 on campus should be limited.
Vaccination can be a sensitive issue for individuals, who would rather decide privately what they want or do not want to put in their bodies. While many people consider vaccination a way to prevent infection, vaccines are more effective as a way to prevent hospitalization. Especially with the Omicron variant, fully vaccinated and boosted people are still getting seriously ill, although most people who need hospitalization and supplementary oxygen are still those who are unvaccinated. Although less likely, fully vaccinated and boosted people can also still transmit the virus to other people, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Even when the vaccine mandate was in place, many students still wanted to have a hybrid learning option in most courses, allowing students to opt to learn virtually rather than be forced to attend large classes. This is especially relevant for lecture halls and subjects like history where teaching could be done just as well via Zoom and classes may require less student-teacher interaction.
Efforts in favor of the hybrid learning model included a student walkout on Jan. 26, 2022, although VCU has not made any changes to their course modalities in response. In the wake of the student vaccine mandate ending, calls for a remote option are likely to grow stronger. The end of the vaccine mandate may be a step forward for student freedom, but it does little to help collective student safety.
Photo courtesy of Mufid Majnun via Unsplash