U.S. universities are browbeating their students into following a rigid COVID-19 regime or risk losing their academic progress.
Data shows that young people do not have a high risk of dying from COVID-19. Of the college-related COVID deaths that have occurred, most were among employees in 2020 who fell into high-risk categories due to their age or a preexisting condition. This data, however, hasn’t stopped universities from pushing virus tyranny on their students.
Universities in most states without officials going to bat for their constituents have free reign to implement rigorous testing, masking, and symptom-screening systems for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Students who fail to comply with these policies risk losing their Wi-Fi, losing access to their on-campus residences, paying fines, and possibly getting expelled.
Governors in states such as Florida and Texas are working to protect the element of choice for students and others in their state by banning vaccine and mask mandates for publicly funded universities, but private schools in those areas are defying choice and implementing restrictions in the name of combatting the virus.
Several university students and employees have filed legal complaints and lawsuits against their schools for these mandates, but their pleas for medical freedom are often dismissed or ignored by higher education institutions across the nation
While some colleges have offered financial incentives as a way to pressure students to get the shot, hundreds of universities across the United States already require students, faculty, and staff to get the COVID-19 jab or risk suspension or expulsion. Certain institutions such as Washington University in St. Louis have even extended the mandates to online students who aren’t attending classes in person and remote workers who aren’t interacting with anyone on campus in the name of making a “return to full in-person teaching, learning, research and campus life in the fall” and protecting people in the community “who are unable to get the vaccine or more vulnerable because of poor immune response to vaccines due to underlying medical conditions.”
All 50 states technically offer varying levels of medical exemptions to students for vaccinations required by their schools, and 44 states have certain exemptions in place based on religious objections. Because of this legislation, most universities offer students the option to request exemptions from the COVID-19 jab, but whether they are awarded a pass is a subjective decision made by the schools.
Earlier this month, The Federalist reported that the University of Colorado kicked an unvaccinated Denver nursing student out of her medical program for refusing to comply with their universal vaccination standards. The student explained she had moral and religious objections to getting the jab, but the school refused to grant her a religious exemption and ruled that she was not eligible to continue her education with the university.
After purging their enrollment lists of students who refused to comply with the shot mandate, a multitude of universities that boast a 100 percent vaccination rate are still restricting students’ activities on and off campus. Using capacity limits, travel bans, masking requirements regardless of vaccination status, and bolded recommendations barring dining in restaurants and bars, universities such as Amherst College in Massachusetts are implementing their own version of lockdowns on students and staff in the name of curbing future COVID outbreaks.
Officials at Amherst College recently threatened students with “stricter rules” following an outbreak at the nearby University of Massachusetts. The university’s paper admitted that “those infected had experienced mild to moderate illness and were not hospitalized,” but that didn’t stop College Chief of Police John Carter from demanding that Amherst students avoid “significant noncompliance” with the university’s mask mandates and other COVID-19 policies.
Most of these restrictions are indefinite, and the threat of more rules and regulations always looms over students’ heads.
The universally vaccinated students of Amherst College are already prohibited from going to bars/restaurants, prohibited from hosting visitors, and must wear a lanyard displaying their ID at all times. But they still received an email this week threatening further restrictions pic.twitter.com/HIZf3SoomU
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 24, 2021
It’s no secret that the same universities that say racism is a public health crisis aren’t going to budge from their increasingly leftist agenda to accommodate more freedom. The same higher education institutions that are willing to “sacrifice ideas for ideology” and bulldoze any faculty or students who stand in the way of their safe spaces, racist curriculum, and radical gender theory are not looking to give up any power. It doesn’t matter what the “science,” the CDC, or even the Biden administration say the next steps to address the virus should be, the COVID-19 tyranny regime at U.S. universities is here to stay.
