U.S. college students face back-to-school vaccination requirements | Coronavirus pandemic news

As American college students prepare to return to campus in the fall semester after more than a year of distance or blended learning, education administrators across the country are making vaccinations against COVID-19 a requirement for entering campuses.

According to a report, so far, more than 1,000 public and private colleges and universities have required at least some students and employees to be vaccinated. database Maintained by the Chronicles of Higher Education. These tasks were issued at the time of a surge in cases in certain areas of the country, especially among the unvaccinated population.

However, just as public health efforts such as mask injunctions and social distancing measures have been politicized in the United States, students’ responses to vaccine injunctions seem to be roughly the same.

University of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, USA. Students in the dormitory on the day they moved in, students, faculty and staff on campus must be vaccinated against COVID-19 [File: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg]

Although some students said they support vaccination as part of the back-to-school checklist, other students are posing more and more challenges to the policy-including legal challenges.

An Indiana University student’s emergency injunction against the school’s vaccine authorization went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. On August 13, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Judge Amy Coney Barrett declined to comment.

Three days later, students from Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Child Health Defense Organization, a non-profit organization known for its anti-vaccination activities, filed a lawsuit against Rutgers University, accusing the school of forcing students to receive “experimental” vaccines.

As American students enter campus in the fall semester, the debate on vaccine authorization is far from over.

Student weighing

Alan Gutierrez breathed a sigh of relief. When he heads to Princeton University, New Jersey in September, all students, faculty and staff will be fully vaccinated.

Gutierrez has a congenital disease and was vaccinated as soon as he met the conditions in March. He said that if Princeton did not perform the task, he would feel uneasy.

Gutierrez told Al Jazeera: “I personally don’t think it should be controversial in any way,” he pointed out that universities and universities have already mandated vaccination against diseases such as chickenpox and meningitis.

He said the task also saves students from asking each other uncomfortable questions.

“On the social side, it’s embarrassing to ask someone if they have been vaccinated because people have just gone to college and I don’t know them,” Gutierrez explained.

As students live and study in close quarters, many colleges and universities mandate vaccinations and encourage them to wear masks indoors [File: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg]

“Because we are empowered, we will actually be able to have a more normal experience,” he said. “Actually, we arranged a lawn party in October. It would be nice to be able to return to those experiences.”

Sophia Kianna also supports vaccine regulations. Sophomores will transfer to Stanford University in California this semester, where all faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students must be vaccinated.

Kianna told Al Jazeera: “As a community, as a community, it’s important to keep each other safe and create this low-spread bubble, especially for the Delta variant,” she added, adding that she also believes in vaccination. It is important to prevent the influx of students from endangering health. The health of the local community, including people with weakened immune systems and children.

However, other universities are waiting for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to finally approve the coronavirus vaccine before implementing its authorization. Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine became the first vaccine approved by the FDA on August 23. Two other vaccines widely used in the United States — manufactured by Johnson & Johnson and Moderna — have not yet received FDA approval.

The University of Minnesota is one of the institutions that awaits full FDA approval before requiring all students to be vaccinated. However, because the FDA’s approval came in late August, it is unlikely that students who have not been vaccinated will have time to get two doses of the vaccine before the start of the semester.

Tyler Blackmon is this year’s Juris Doctor candidate at the University of Minnesota School of Law. He supports this task, but is concerned about the logistics, which he describes as “not 100% resolved.”

Blackmond told Al Jazeera: “One worry is that if there are many ways to solve it, or if it is not strictly enforced, then it will not achieve the effect we want, and it may eventually backfire.” “The Regent just approved it. [mandate], But what does this mean in practice? Do we upload the vaccine card or just proof? “

He added: “I really hope that, in addition to compulsory student use, they will extend it to faculty and staff.”

During a demonstration against wearing masks and COVID-19 vaccine authorization in Olympia, Washington, a protester held up a slogan that read “No Jab”, and the state expanded the scope of vaccine authorization to all public, licensed, and private The teachers and staff of the school, and those who work in colleges and universities in the state [File: Ted S Warren/AP Photo]

But not all students support delegation. Sara Razi, a junior at Rutgers University, believes that other students file a lawsuit against this authorization, and she believes it is up to the individual to decide whether to accept it.

“I was vaccinated, but it was a personal and private decision,” Lacy told Al Jazeera, adding that she believes that “vaccinations are politicized along with the pandemic.”

Razi is the chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom Organization in New Jersey, a conservative liberal student activist organization that held up in May with two other conservative groups, the Turning Point of Rutgers University in the United States, and the State of New Jersey. Rally to protest this task. She said about 600 people participated in the protest.

She said that part of her objection to the authorization was the way the vaccine was launched.

“The issue is [and] This vaccine is different from many other vaccines in the past in that it is politicized in New Jersey and the United States of America and used as a tool of negotiation and bribery,” she said, referring to the free beer provided by the state in exchange for May vaccination.

Legal Issues

However, no matter what students think or feel about the methods used by different schools to enforce vaccines, the real problem is what the law allows.

According to Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, professor of law at the University of California, Hastings and member of the Ethics and Policy Vaccine Working Group, there are many legal precedents for universities to require students to be vaccinated when they want to go to school. vaccine.

“Vaccine regulations are not new,” Rice told Al Jazeera. “Vaccine regulations have been challenged in court before, and they have usually been supported in the past. The court’s approach is usually to provide a safe environment is the job of universities, and they believe that vaccine regulations are appropriate.”

There is uncertainty about whether a vaccine that is still authorized for emergency use is needed, and how the university will respond to the fact that only one of the three major COVID-19 vaccines in the United States so far has been fully authorized.

For colleges and universities that need to wait for the FDA’s fully authorized vaccinations before requiring students to be vaccinated, there may be a delay in full vaccinations on campus this fall semester [File: Rogelio V Solis/AP Photo]

“The question is: can you force a vaccine that is still in emergency use? There is no answer now; we don’t know,” Rice said.

However, there are also some loopholes in the vaccine regulations.

“The Americans with Disabilities Act stipulates that you must accommodate students with disabilities, including medical reasons for not being vaccinated,” Rice explained.

Then there is religious exemption, where people claim that their faith does not allow them to be vaccinated. Each university also has its own method of handling and deciding on requests for religious exemption.

“Some people just ask you to tick a box, but they will ask you to submit a letter explaining why you have a religious exemption for the vaccine,” Rice said. “In general, you need to convince the university that you have personal religious objections, not just that you are part of a religion.”

In the end, Rice explained that religious exemptions usually boil down to convincing personal sincerity: “These are boundaries and it is difficult to monitor.”

Given these complexities, it remains to be seen whether universities can ensure full vaccination.