by Lexey Burns, Editor-in-Chief
Robert Haché, President of Laurentian University, says the school is “taking the additional step to require all persons attending campus to be vaccinated against COVID-19” just days after announcing that only students living in residence and varsity athletes would need to be vaccinated.
“With increasing infection rates caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant, Dr. [Penny] Sutcliffe [Medical Officer of Health for Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD)] has strongly recommended a vaccination policy which requires all individuals attending in-person activities on campus to report their immunization status,” Haché said in a statement.
Some students, like Kaitlyn Connell, a third year student and Residence Assistant (RA), support the president’s call.
“I think these measures are great to ensure the safety of all staff and students,” Connell said.
“It makes me feel a lot safer knowing that the university is taking the pandemic serious, still.”
Janice Leidl, a history professor at Laurentian is teaching “five classes in-person, one of them also offered in a hybrid option where students can choose to attend in person or connect via Zoom.”
Leidl said only “a handful” of courses will be delivered in a hybrid learning style, saying that not every classroom on campus is “fully equipped with the necessary cameras and microphones to make the virtual class a great learning experience.”
“I recognize that vaccine mandates inspire protests and fear.”
Leidl added that the importance of vaccination as vaccines helped eliminate the threat of diseases like smallpox and polio.
“It also shows the horrors inflicted by diseases against which contemporary society had no medical recourse like the Spanish flu from 1918 or the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the 14th century,” she said, emphasizing how vaccines could turn the tide of COVID-19.
Leidl explains how the Twenty-first century society has very little understanding of how vulnerable humanity has been to such pandemics.
“Anyone demanding the right to an education while being exempted from public health directions just because they want that should read, like my students have, historical accounts of these diseases.”
“Let’s not do anything to put others at risk,” Leidl finished.
Not everyone supporting decision
Rita Nundu, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing student, said she “think[s] it’s unnecessary to mandate a vaccine that… hasn’t been approved and or completed all the clinical trials yet.”
“We still don’t know about all the side effects it can cause,” she continued.
Nundu believes that waiting until the vaccine trials have ended and the vaccine has been approved is the best way to approach the situation, not just use the vaccine for “emergency use”.
“By [2023] we will have enough data and people can make an informed decision,” Nundu said.
Comments from upset students quickly appeared on Laurentian’s Instagram post, sharing the mandatory vaccination update on social media.
One user commented “That is unconstitutional. You cannot force people to get vaccines.”
“They pay for their education and if they are against getting the vaccine it should not hinder them receiving said education,” they continued.
“That would be equivalent to telling them they have to be affiliated with a religious group or they won’t be allowed on campus. You are trampling their right to refuse the vaccine.”
Other users are upset at how “last minute” the announcement was.
Pop up vaccination clinics will be available for the Laurentian community, with more information to come in the following weeks.