July 6, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – With the start of the new academic year just over a month away, Ivy League schools announced reopening plans for Fall 2021 that make COVID vaccines and medical information disclosure mandatory for new and returning students.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, and Cornell universities and Dartmouth College have all made the experimental vaccines a requirement for normal school attendance, with exceptions.
Harvard University president Lawrence Bacow wrote on Harvard’s website: “To reach the high levels of vaccination needed to protect our community, Harvard will require COVID vaccination for all students and staff who will be on campus this fall. As with existing requirements for other vaccines, exceptions will be provided only for medical or religious reasons.”
In order to claim exemption from the vaccine for religious reasons, students must submit an online form to be approved. Harvard’s vaccine FAQ website warns: “Any community member who is not vaccinated will be subject to additional public health measures (e.g., masking, additional testing). In addition, students who are not vaccinated will be placed on a registration hold.”
A registration hold is a serious obstacle for a student because it prevents the student from securing a place in classes necessary for graduation and interferes with scholarship payments and other funding.
The university will verify that students and faculty have received their jabs with COVID vaccination cards.
Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Columbia are making the same mandates as Harvard, forcing all students, faculty, and staff members to register their vaccination status at the beginning of the academic year.
Yale already has strict measures in place for any member of the university who successfully claims an exemption to the vaccination mandate. Unlike their vaccinated colleagues, unvaccinated students and staff at Yale will have to: wear a mask indoors unless alone, wear a mask outdoors when 6 feet of distance from others cannot be maintained, perform daily health checks, schedule weekly asymptomatic testing with release time for obtaining the test, refrain from university-sponsored travel, quarantine and test after personal travel, and quarantine after close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.
Dartmouth is requiring all students to be vaccinated, but “faculty and staff are only ‘strongly encouraged’ to do so.” The college will “accommodate” students who wish to have medical and religious exemptions, and requests for exemptions will be handled “case by case,” said Justin Anderson, vice president of communications. Cornell University is requiring vaccines for students without exemptions, but not for employees.
These academic institutions currently retain their vaccine mandates despite recent findings from the CDC that suggest that people ages 16-24 – the age group most college students fall into – risk potentially fatal heart inflammation by taking the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.