No Vermont colleges and universities have joined the growing list of schools across the country that will require students to receive a Covid-19 vaccine before returning in the fall — but that could soon change.
Boston University and Duke University in North Carolina announced Friday they will require that students be vaccinated. They joined Brown University and Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Cornell University in New York, and Northeastern University in Massachusetts. Rutgers University, a public school in New Jersey, became the first to require proof of vaccination in late March. The full list now includes more than a dozen.
Officials at Vermont’s colleges are in active discussions about the requirement, said Richard Schneider, former Norwich University president and head of Vermont’s college reopening team. While the legality of such a requirement remains murky, the public health aspect makes a compelling case, he said.
“I think many of the schools in Vermont, if [it] is shown to be really legal, I think they’ll require it,” Schneider said.
Where schools stand
At a meeting on April 5, Schneider asked officials from all Vermont’s colleges and universities whether they would be safer and in line for a “more normal residential experience” if all college students came back vaccinated.
The response was “very broad agreement, if not unanimous agreement,” Schneider said.
“Our whole primary purpose of discussing it is: How can we have the very best September residential experience for our students as we can, and the safest?” Schneider said. “That’s what’s driving the college presidents right now in our conversations.”
Now, colleges and universities are consulting with faculty, staff, students and legal teams to develop the next step.
The University of Vermont, which plans to conduct in-person instruction this fall, is also still cogitating, said Gary Derr, vice president for operations and public safety.
“Probably the biggest thing right now we’re monitoring with regards to the vaccine requirement is availability,” Derr said.
Vaccinations for college students without qualifying health conditions open Monday, April 19, but only for in-state students. Out-of-state students will have to wait until April 30 — if there are enough vaccines.
Derr also said the Covid-19 vaccines have received only emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, which he said complicates the question of whether a school can require its students to get one.
“I think once we start to see [the vaccines] get the full authorization from the FDA, that decision is going to be a lot easier,” Derr said.
Other colleges expressed similar views.
Schools in the Vermont State Colleges System — Castleton University, Northern Vermont University, Vermont Technical College and the Community College of Vermont — are “closely following developments within Vermont and nationally,” said Sophie Zdatny, chancellor of the state colleges.
While no decision has been made yet on compulsory vaccination, “we do encourage all members of our communities to get the vaccine once they are eligible to do so,” Zdatny wrote in an email.
Middlebury College expects all faculty, staff and students to be vaccinated by the fall “except in the case of religious and medical exemptions,” and will announce its official vaccine policy in the “spring or summer,” according to an email from Sarah Ray, director of media relations.
About 83% of Norwich University students, faculty and staff said they intend to receive a vaccine when it’s available, said Daphne Larkin, director of media relations and community affairs. Norwich is still deliberating but has also encouraged its students to get vaccinated when possible.
St. Michael’s College does not have an update yet. Champlain College and Bennington College officials did not respond before publication.
Health experts in favor
Public health experts say vaccinations are especially important for college students because of lifestyle. The close quarters in residences and dining halls elevate their risk of infection and transmission.
Although younger people are at a much lower risk to become seriously ill, they’re still susceptible to chronic disease or “long Covid.”
Vermont should already be vaccinating students, said Anne Sosin, a policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College.
“For me, the real question is not whether students returning to campus in the fall will be vaccinated,” Sosin said, but rather, “Why are we not vaccinating college students as an urgent priority, given the high rates of infection that we see in college populations?”
An outbreak at Dartmouth College last month demonstrates how campus transmission can affect the surrounding community. Some businesses in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth is located, temporarily closed their doors as classes at Dartmouth moved online.
Campuses and communities “are connected through the students, through the staff, through local businesses,” Sosin said. “It’s very easy to have transmission across those lines. We shouldn’t think that campuses are hermetically sealed.”
“It’s better for vulnerable students on campus. It’s better for local communities, just to have more people immunized against what we know is a potentially very deadly disease,” said Pam Berenbaum, director of the Global Health Program at Middlebury College.
“I would really like to see [all college students] vaccinated at least before they go home to wherever they call home,” Berenbaum said.
Vaccine precedent
A key question is whether colleges can require students to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.
“I think the answer, if we’re basing it on historical jurisprudence, is quite clearly yes,” said Jared Carter, an assistant professor at Vermont Law School with a speciality in First Amendment law. “There have been challenges to college vaccine requirements, but the courts have soundly rejected them.”
Although state schools typically have less flexibility than their private counterparts, there is already considerable legal precedence for state requirements for vaccines.
The most prominent example is Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Massachusetts law requiring a smallpox vaccine. That case has served as precedent in challenges to “stay at home” orders and other safety measures during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Vermont Department of Health currently requires full-time undergraduate students to receive some vaccinations. They include Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), hepatitis B and chickenpox vaccines. Exceptions are made for medical or religious reasons.
With the Covid-19 vaccines, the main wrinkle is that the Food and Drug Administration has granted only emergency use authorization — the first time emergency use has been granted to a brand-new vaccine.
More than 120 million people in the United States have already received at least one dose, which makes for an astounding sample size. Berenbaum suspects that, as a result, full approval for at least one of the Covid-19 vaccines could be coming sooner rather than later.
“A lot of the legwork has already been done for FDA approval,” Berenbaum said. “We have a lot of observational and epidemiological information that tells us that these vaccines are proving to be very efficacious and very safe.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described the Norwich University survey results.
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