Several Dozen Colleges Still Have Vaccine Mandates

A college student gets a COVID-19 vaccine at the California State University Long Beach in Long Beach, Calif., on Aug. 11, 2021. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

A rights group that is challenging COVID-19 vaccine mandates said that there are at least 79 universities and colleges that require students to be vaccinated for the fall semester.

“There are 79 colleges in the U.S. still mandating COVID vaccines when there should be zero just like the rest of the world. Do Not Comply!” No College Mandates wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, this week.

In a separate post on X, the group wrote that COVID-19 vaccines for college students, which data have shown are “one of the lowest-risk populations” is “insanity.” Throughout the pandemic, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies have shown that the highest-risk populations for COVID-19 are elderly adults and people with compromised immune systems, whereas younger adults and children had far lower mortality rates.

A list of universities and colleges was also posted by the group, showing that a number of the schools are located in California, including multiple California State University locations.

Other notable schools with mandates are Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University, New Jersey’s Rutgers University, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, the Julliard Music School in New York City, Oberlin College in Ohio, and Harvard University in Massachusetts, according to the group.

On No College Mandates’ website, it states that it’s advocating the “fundamental right of each individual” to “freely choose which medical interventions to receive based on informed consent.” The group comprises parents, students, professors, and experts who attempt to push higher learning institutions into dropping what they describe as coercive rules around the shots.

“Because the coercive nature of college vaccine mandates completely disregards students’ individual freedom and right to bodily autonomy, we strongly believe that these mandates are unconstitutional, unethical, unscientific and undoubtedly contributing to the psychological distress and the staggering rise in mental health issues among young adults,” the group states on its website. “Institutions of higher learning which impose vaccine mandates do not uphold the very civil rights and liberties they teach and purport to vehemently defend.”

Several weeks ago, New Jersey’s Rutgers University announced that it would still require students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine before attending class, drawing pushback from local officials. Republican state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon said that officials at Rutgers “have no business being in charge of, and destroying, the credibility of what should be the esteemed, pre-eminent public New Jersey university.”

“Rutgers includes the COVID-19 vaccine among its immunization requirements for students,” Rutgers spokeswoman Dory Devlin said in a statement late last month. “A primary COVID-19 series is required for non-clinical students, while boosters are also required for clinical students.”

As for Harvard—perhaps the most prominent school that still has a vaccine mandate—the Ivy League university states on its website that “all students” need to “have some protection from COVID-19” via vaccination. The school’s website doesn’t mention natural protection gained from a prior COVID-19 infection, which health experts say can prevent severe instances of the virus.

The vast majority of colleges and universities, however, appear to have dropped their vaccine mandates. No College Mandates also has made public a Google spreadsheet that lists, along with the schools that have mandates in place, about 1,000 colleges and universities that don’t have the rules intact anymore or never had them in the first place.

Recently, the head of the CDC, Dr. Mandy Cohen, responded to speculation about vaccine or mask mandates returning en masse across the country.

“I don’t see any need for mandates or those kinds of things right now. But we have to keep watching this virus, seeing how it changes, and if we need to make other recommendations, we will,” Ms. Cohen told WCNC-TV earlier this month.

Her remarks came right as the CDC recommended the updated mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 made by Pfizer and Moderna.

As for mask mandates, a small number of hospitals, schools, and private businesses have reimplemented them since the beginning of August. Multiple California counties, meanwhile, issued an order that requires all health care staff to wear masks in patient treatment facilities starting in November and ending April 30, 2024.

Earlier this month, former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News that he doesn’t think that any federal mandates will return.

“I would be extremely surprised if we would see that,” he said, referring to mandates. “There may be local organizations that may require masks, but I think what we’re going to see mostly are, if the cases go up, that there might be recommendations, not mandates. There’s a big difference there.”

The CDC and other federal agencies earlier this year allowed a three-year-long public health emergency for COVID-19 to expire.