At least five U.S. colleges and universities have announced their plans to require students to be fully vaccinated before returning to campuses in the fall.
Students attending Cornell University, Rutgers University, Fort Lewis College, Nova Southeastern University and St. Visiting Edward’s University must be fully vaccinated before returning to campus in the fall, with limited exemptions for underlying medical conditions and religious beliefs.
“A broad-grafted student body offers our best hope for returning to the practical, inclusive, experiential, and personalized learning environment we have all loved,” Tom Striticus, president of Fort Lewis College, wrote to the university community.
“As such, all students enrolling at the FLC for the fall 2021 semester must receive a COVID-19 vaccine,” Stritikus added.
In a letter to the Cornell community, President Martha E. Pollack wrote that the university “intends to require vaccination for students returning to Ithaca, Geneva and Cornell Tech campuses after the fall semester.”
Pollack wrote that the decision was taken after ‘recent announcements of extensive vaccination for vaccine in New York and other states, and the increase in vaccine production’, making it ‘likely’ that members of the community in the spring or summer a vaccine can receive. .
Pollack added that individuals who could not be vaccinated before their arrival for the fall semester, or whose vaccination was not recognized by the State of New York, ‘are expected to be vaccinated as soon as possible upon their arrival, and Cornell is investigating ways to to facilitate this process. ”
Rutgers University leaders wrote a letter to their community last month, writing: ‘The expected additional availability of the COVID-19 vaccine enables Rutgers to take steps to protect the health of our academic community and to to move towards a complete return to our pre-pandemic normally as a living institution in the autumn of 2021. ”
Nova Southeastern University issued a statement on Friday announcing that it intends to resume full classroom learning for ground courses in the fall, and that students, faculties and staff returning to campuses are required to be fully vaccinated must be.
On March 29, the COVID-19 management team at St.Edward’s University announces that the university needs the COVID-19 vaccine for all employees and students on campus aged 16 or older, effective September 1st.
The announcements from a number of universities come from data showing that university students are a significant spread of the virus. According to The New York Times, more than 120,000 cases of the coronavirus have been linked to US colleges and universities since January 1, and more than 530,000 cases since the pandemic began.
However, some universities do not yet set a vaccine requirement, but are trying to encourage students to be vaccinated. Dickinson State University, for example, said students who provide evidence of a complete vaccination series could be exempted from the current campus-wide mask mandate.