News
Featured Image
 Screenshot

BOSTON, Massachusetts (LifeSiteNews) – A Jesuit-run high school in Boston is under fire for segregating unvaccinated students at lunch behind plexiglass dividers and banning them from sports, prompting an outcry from parents and alumni.  

Boston College High School (BCHS), an all-male college prep school, announced in August that it would isolate un-jabbed students at all times while eating, Catholic News Agency reported. 

According to the school’s “social compact” for the 2021-2022 school year, unvaccinated students may eat only at the school gym and must sit behind plexiglass barriers for the entire lunch period. Any student caught violating the policy may be sent home and subject to a disciplinary meeting with parents before returning to school.   

“As a Jesuit school, relationship and care is at our heart,” the document states. “We know our students and adults thrive when they are valued, cared for, and respected.”  

BCHS also requires vaccination for school sports and other co-curricular activities, like Model UN.  

About 98 percent of the school’s 1,430 students between grades 7 and 12 are vaccinated, Colleen Carter, BCHS’s vice president for external relations, told CNA, leaving around two dozen who have not gotten the jabs. Carter said that the school is “remarkably proud of the policies and procedures.” 

A group of two dozen parents and alumni blasted the requirements in a petition to the BCHS board of trustees last fall, however, warning that “these measures are having serious, detrimental effects on unvaccinated – as well as vaccinated – students.” 

“We believe that it is short-sighted and developmentally harmful to create a school environment in which students regard classmates as potential biohazards, and where teachers and staff are emboldened to openly single boys out in service of these excessive separation measures,” the petition reads, adding that some parents have already vaccinated their children “against their better judgment and, worse, against their conscience” due to the school’s policies.  

“Many parents in the BC High community have expressed a shared concern over these discriminatory practices but feel too intimidated to include their names on this petition for fear of retribution against their son(s). Furthermore, stories among BC High families are circulating of student depression and anxiety resulting from these exclusionary measures,” the petition states.

The petition also notes that the vaccines do not prevent transmission or infection and that BCHS’s COVID-19 rules contradict CDC guidance for K-12 schools.  

“Cohorting people who are fully vaccinated and people who are not fully vaccinated into separate cohorts is not recommended. It is a school’s responsibility to ensure that cohorting is done in an equitable manner that does not perpetuate academic, racial, or other tracking,” the CDC has said.  

The death rate of COVID-19 for people 19 years old or younger in Massachusetts is less than .001 percent, according to data published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.  

The COVID vaccines have been linked to serious side effects in young men, like myocarditis, or heart inflammation, which can be life-threatening. Recent studies have shown that the myocarditis risk for men under 40 is higher after vaccination than after the virus itself and that one in 2,680 boys between ages 12-17 will develop the condition within two weeks of a second Pfizer dose. An Israeli study last month reported an 81 percent hospitalization rate among vaccine-related heart inflammation cases and a nearly one percent death rate.  

At some point of development, all COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States also relied heavily on cell lines derived from aborted babies, sparking outrage among many Catholics and other Christians whose convictions prohibit them from any complicity in abortion. 

Many Catholic leaders have stressed that vaccination must remain voluntary and that Catholics can refuse abortion-tainted COVID vaccines in good conscience.  

“Catholic institutions, in particular, should respect the decisions of people to decline use of vaccines dependent on abortion-derived cell lines,” the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) has stated. “If any institution mandates COVID-19 vaccination, the NCBC strongly urges robust, transparent, and readily accessible exemptions for medical, religious, and conscience reasons.” 

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is among the NCBC’s directors. 

The Archdiocese of Boston does not require segregating students or prohibiting them from sports or other activities based on vaccination status. Thomas W. Carroll, Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of Boston, told CNA he does not know of any other Catholic school in the archdiocese that has embraced policies similar to BCHS’s. 

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here. 

37 Comments

    Loading...