Colleges in the 2021-2022 Academic Year & Coronavirus (Part 2)

From Bowdoin’s site-

“There is no religious exemption from vaccination available to students.”

Not sure why other colleges are allowing them.

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Colgate at least forces one to make their argument by answering these three questions:

● Explain in your own words why you are requesting this religious exemption
● Describe the religious principles that guide your objection to immunization.
● Indicate whether you are opposed to all immunizations and if not, the religious basis that prohibits particular immunizations.

Also, Colgate says this:

Philosophical, political, scientific, or sociological objections to immunizations do not justify an exemption under Department of Health regulation 10 NYCRR, Section 66-1.3 (d)

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There’re other colleges that don’t provide religious exemption to students.

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Oh I’m sure. There’s just a lot of chatter on this thread about people faking their religious exemption application so it does seem like the majority of colleges are allowing it. Some making it easier than others.

What I also noticed is these colleges generally still offer religious exemption to faculty and staff. There must be some legal issue.

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It’s much easier to fake a vaccination card than deal with writing multiple essays.

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Faking a vaccination card could be ground for expulsion from the school. That’s not a risk a student can take lightly.

Students do drugs on campus. Students binge drink themselves into the ER. Many students have fake IDs. Does anyone really believe that the type of people that are vehemently anti-vax wouldn’t just buy a fake vaccine card for $200? With breakthrough cases among the vaccinated they’d have a built in alibi should they get Covid.

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@homerdog that it very similar language to what S20’s college is using WRT applying for a religious exemption. He is also in NYS. I’m glad they are making it hard.

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Yes. Bowdoin anyway does allow faculty and staff to apply for a religious exemption. Doesn’t look like many takers since that group is 96 percent vaccinated.

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Purdue announced today that they will continue with the mask mandate for all students, regardless of vaccination status, in classroom settings.

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The SUNYs aren’t requiring masks (and it sounds like they won’t unless the state mandates it), however, faculty of certain types of classes can require them. They mentioned music classes/lessons as an example.

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There might be state laws at play. Not sure about faculty and staff, but in the state of MN a college student can object to any vaccine for any personal reason. As long as they complete the proper form and send in a notarized statement, they are exempt. This is state law, I believe.

My alma mater, a very small LAC, came out with the following message from the President. They’re not mandating the vaccine, just suggesting that students get it. I haven’t seen any other colleges reason this way.

“…many students from minority communities are distrustful of the historically discriminatory U.S. health care system, which is why the school opted to simply encourage students to get
the vaccine rather than enforce a mandate.”

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Does the school mandate other types of vaccines? It’s inconsistent if it does.

Minority community is not a monolithic group.

I know a lot of South Asians in the medical field and they where all fully vaccinated by the end of 2020. They where first in the queue due to their job and they jumped on it immediately.

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Our county has had to start publishing the daily dashboard again after securing the #2 highest positivity rate in our state. Numbers from yesterday show that half of the cases in the last week are breakthrough cases and a quarter of the hospitalized cases are fully vaccinated. The 30% of unvaccinated people in my county are driving the rest of us into masks again.

The LAC a few minutes from my house has a vaccine mandate for faculty and students. Their website has very little detail about fall plans regarding things like masks but they aren’t due to arrive until after Labor Day. If the picture in the community doesn’t change, there won’t be much of a choice because campus is walkable from downtown and there is a lot of interaction between the students and the community.

So 20 vaccinated people are in the hospital with Covid? That’s awful. I wonder if your county will ever give an detail on those - older? Immune compromised?

If the entire LAC near you is vaccinated, what percent of the town are they? Maybe they only need to mask up if they head into town.

The LAC has 2300 students. Population in the city is 30,000. I’m not great at math and the stats are for the whole county but if you use the same fully vax % (65.4) in the city as the county, there would be 19,620 vaxxed residents. If you add a fully vaxxed student body, that would be 21,920 vaxxed out of 32,300 which is still only 67.8%. Still not great…

Did everyone start wearing masks in your county again? Our county was in the substantial category yesterday and I was out shopping and saw no change in masks inside at all. No one was wearing one. Our county was very compliant before May but I’m not sure if everyone will start abiding by this new mandate now.

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