Indiana University, the flagship institution of a staunch Republican state, will require its more than 100,000 students and employees to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus because it opened a new page in a strange pandemic school year. "It's saving lives, it's that simple," said University President Michael A. McCrobbie. "This will allow us to have a normal fall semester."
Purdue University, which is also prominent in Indiana, strongly encourages students and employees to be vaccinated, but avoids enforcement. Purdue University President Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. said that a campaign of personal choice and responsibility will achieve better public health outcomes than demands that "may appear clumsy and authoritarian."
Two public universities, two different methods, and the same goal: to maximize vaccinations before college students return to school in the fall. Colleges and universities around the world are facing daunting logistical and political challenges as they try to create safe campus spaces to live and study in a country that is tired of the coronavirus and is divided by masks and vaccines.
The school has overcome the crisis of the past year through a variety of strategies: distance learning, wearing masks, frequent virus testing, outdoor tents, isolation and isolation bedrooms, plastic barriers in lecture halls, and so on.
Now, even if the covid-19 death toll in the United States exceeds 600,000, the threat of the pandemic seems to be easing, especially in places with high vaccination rates. However, maintaining public health in crowded campuses with large numbers of unvaccinated students and employees can be difficult. Universities may need to constantly ask students to wipe their noses or spit in test tubes to check if the virus has come back or the variant is spreading.
Gerri Taylor, co-chair of the covid-19 working group of the American University Health Association, said: "Because we want to see more students on campus and have closer contact with others... We can't be complacent." "Universities really have to pay attention to cases and use them. Observed from the dashboard,'are the numbers rising?' If necessary, they need to make appropriate plans to make adjustments."
In order to avoid the recurrence of the pandemic interruption, educators will do their best to carry out mass vaccination in the next few weeks. The Health Association recommends that universities require vaccinations for on-campus students when permitted by state law.
"I think all universities want to resume business as usual and provide the college experience students missed last year and desperately wanted," Taylor said. "I think their best opportunity is to provide high-level immunizations on campus, but they did."
Purdue is pushing for incentives. Students who record the coronavirus injection before July 15 will be eligible for a lottery draw and receive a prize of $9,992, which is equivalent to one year of in-state tuition. They can also skip the surveillance test for the virus, and they may enjoy what officials call “more choices” for campus activities. What this additional option means remains to be determined.
Indiana University officials stated that their mission will promote equal treatment of students and effectively raise meaningless questions about who has been vaccinated and who has not. Officials said they did not want to monitor the individual's vaccine status while walking around the campus. The university will only require students to "certify" that they have been vaccinated, for medical and religious reasons and only online students will be exempted. It urges but does not require students to upload immunization documents.
But on Monday, several students filed a federal lawsuit against Indiana University, claiming that the authorization violated their constitutional rights and the state's law prohibiting "vaccine passports." They said the exemptions allowed by the school were very limited and claimed that even if other institutions eased the coronavirus restrictions, the school threatened to take drastic measures. "This is extreme and unreasonable," IU graduate James Bopp Jr. told The Washington Post.
Indiana University spokesperson Chuck Carney said in a written statement that the requirement is still valid and will help support the restoration of safe and more normal operations in the fall. Carney pointed out that after the Indiana Attorney General's comments, the university revised the process and no longer required people to upload vaccination certificates. "The attorney general's opinion confirms our right to request vaccinations," he said.