(LifeSiteNews) — Western University has blocked the attempts of five students who contested the school’s mandatory booster shot for all students and continues to keep its draconian vaccine requirements in place.
This week in a London, Ontario court, Justice Kelly Tranquill ruled against five students who took Western University to court over the school’s rigid vaccine requirements. In her ruling, the judge stated that as a private institution the university has every right to maintain its vaccine requirements despite the fact that they have been lifted throughout the province.
“The Western University Act plainly establishes the university as an independent, autonomous, self-governing institution that is empowered to oversee its administrative and academic affairs,” the Justice said. “The collection of proof of vaccine is how the vaccination policy or mandate is implemented and enforced. This court finds the policy is the product of Western’s broad powers of self-government.”
Western students Simon Hawke, Tiana Gleason, Michael Puzzo, James Donalds and Ashanté Camara, supported by lawyers Lisa D. Bildy and Mark A. Joseph, filed a permanent injunction against Western University on Wednesday over “an improper and unlawful violation of … the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.” The students wanted the court to order the university to end its vaccine requirements for all students as well as order them to get rid of all vaccine records of students, calling this a breach of privacy and that the school was not authorized to require such information.
“The applicants explain that their privacy is important to them. They do not wish to disclose their personal medical information to Western as a condition of continuing their post-secondary education,” the court documents reads. However, these claims did not hold up in the court.
“They [Western] force them to choose between two options and if they like neither then it’s their choice,” the justice wrote, in response to this claim of coercion. “Each choice comes with consequences. That’s the nature of choices.”
“That the province no longer requires Western to impose a vaccine mandate, or that Western is reportedly the only university in Ontario to impose such a mandate, is of no consequence. Western is expressly permitted to govern its affairs.”
On August 22, nearing the beginning of the school year, Western University had announced that all returning students must provide proof of at least one booster shot before October 1. The university has chosen to keep vaccine mandates in place, despite the fact that Coronavirus vaccine trials have never produced evidence that the vaccines stop infection or transmission, and do not even claim to reduce hospitalization. They also have chosen to keep these requirements despite the fact that there is strong evidence that the “vaccinated” are just as likely to carry and transmit the virus as the unvaccinated.
“Considering that the general population is at 50 percent in terms of their booster shot, we think it’s not too much of an effort to get where we want to get,” said Florentine Strzelczyk, Western’s vice president. Western has since extended this deadline to January 9.
“We want to come together and have a term that is not interrupted by pivoting back and forth depending on how the situation looks like with COVID,” Strzelczyk went on to say. “COVID is expected to spiral of course, as we all know. We don’t know when that is going to happen. We want to ensure we have a safe return to campus because unlike other institutions, our in-person experience is very important to us.”
Bildy said that the five students were not the only students opposed to the vaccine requirements, and that the university would be surprised to know just how many students, regardless of vaccine status, oppose the university’s vaccine mandates.
“They’re representative applicants for a much larger body of students who don’t want to give this information, who feel very strongly that they don’t want or don’t need the boosters, or who just don’t want the university to know,” she said. “You’d be surprised at how many people have actually had three shots, but just don’t think it’s the university’s business to gather that information anymore.”