At least five U.S. colleges and universities have announced plans in the last few days to require Covid-19 vaccinations for students who will be on campus in the fall. But many more colleges have said they would not require vaccination or would wait and see before setting a policy.
Students at
Cornell University in New York,
Rutgers University in New Jersey,
Fort Lewis College in Colorado,
Nova Southeastern University in Florida and
St. Edward’s University in Texas will have to be vaccinated before the fall term begins, with a few exceptions for medical, religious or other reasons.
“Covid-19 has made it very clear just how impactful and necessary it is for us to have an educational experience in person, and vaccines are our way of ensuring that we can be together for a normal fall semester,” Tom Stritikus, the president of Fort Lewis, wrote in a
letter explaining the mandate.
Though most universities have been open in some capacity since the fall, campus life has been fundamentally reshaped by the virus. Quarantines, masks and mandatory testing have become part of the college experience. And when major outbreaks emerged, some schools shifted classes online or even sent students home.
The debate about whether and how to mandate vaccination is playing out on campuses across the country, as shots are becoming available to college-age adults for the first time. Some schools are rushing to offer the shots to as many current students as possible before the summer break.
But
the issue of requiring vaccinations is also shaping into an ideological debate falling along political lines. Some Republicans, including
Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, are calling vaccine requirements overreach pushed by Democrats.
A day after Nova Southeastern University, based in Fort Lauderdale, announced its policy for returning students to be vaccinated, Mr. DeSantis issued an executive order banning state and local government agencies and businesses from requiring so-called vaccine passports, or documentation proving that someone has been vaccinated against Covid-19.
The university’s president and chief executive officer, Dr. George Hanbury, said the school was caught off guard by the governor’s order.
“We’re not trying to do anything but protect our students,” Dr. Hanbury told the Times on Monday and said the university is reviewing the governor’s order and plans to follow it. The university has a wide range of health programs, and, Dr. Hanbury said, many students participate in rotations at hospitals and other health settings where they are required to be vaccinated. “So, to me it didn’t seem like it was a hard extension to require it for everybody else, especially at the advice from health professionals.”
In Ohio, where all adults became eligible for the vaccine last week, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, announced plans to hold on-campus vaccine clinics. Many Ohio colleges have said the vaccines will, at least for now, be encouraged but not mandatory; Cleveland State has said that students living in its dorms next fall must be vaccinated.
“While fewer of our young people get sick from Covid, the evidence clearly shows that they are significant carriers,” Mr. DeWine said. “It is a strategic move, frankly, to vaccinate them on campus before they get out in early May for the summer and scatter throughout the state and throughout the country.”
Some colleges have offered incentives to be vaccinated.
Dickinson State University in North Dakota exempts vaccinated students from the campus mask mandate.
Davidson College in North Carolina gives employees who are fully vaccinated a $100 bonus. Several colleges say vaccinated students will be able to skip the coronavirus testing that they require of others.
In recent weeks, the number of virus cases around the country has been increasing to what health officials consider dangerous levels, which includes the spread of new variants that, in some cases, are more contagious. As of Sunday, there have been an average of 18 percent more cases compared with two weeks earlier,
according to a New York Times database.
Health officials are pleading with Americans to get vaccinated and to continue taking health precautions, with the hope that the growing inoculated population will stave off another surge of cases. As of Sunday, more than 61 million Americans were fully vaccinated, and 106 million have received at least one dose, according to
a Times analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The country is administering an average of more than three million shots a day.
Colleges were a significant locus of coronavirus outbreaks after students returned to many campuses last fall, with more than 120,000 cases of the coronavirus to linked American colleges and universities since Jan. 1, and more than 530,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic,
the Times reported.
In December,
a Times analysis of the 203 U.S. counties where college students compose at least 10 percent of the population found that deaths in those communities had risen faster than in the rest of the nation. Few of the victims were students; they were mainly older people living and working in those communities.