Breaking with other Louisiana public universities, LSU dropped its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for the fall semester.
It’s a peculiar move, especially considering that the mandate was not much more than a strong suggestion in the first place. It couldn’t have been much easier to opt out of the vaccine: All you had to do was check a box on an electronic form.
Still, the vaccine mandate had real, positive impacts on the student body’s inoculation against the coronavirus. Over 84% of students were vaccinated by the start of the spring 2022 semester. That’s impressive, and an important step toward safety against a virus that claimed over 12,500 American lives last month alone, according to a USA Today analysis.
This recent move is disappointing but unsurprising in the context of LSU’s vaccine shenanigans covered by the Reveille last summer.
The university spent months telling the public that it couldn’t mandate the vaccine prior to FDA approval — or, at least, that it would be “very difficult,” as the university’s legal counsel Winston DeCuir told the Board of Supervisors last June.
But this wasn’t true. Nothing in Louisiana law prevented the university from taking the step that four other universities in the state did by mandating the vaccine immediately for the fall 2021 semester. In fact, it wasn’t even difficult. Loyola, Xavier and Dillard simply sent emails to the Louisiana Department of Health and received approval within a matter of hours, according to documents obtained by the Reveille last summer.
Lacking basis in truth, this claim passed from one administration to another. The Board voted to mandate the vaccine upon FDA approval. To LSU President William Tate’s credit, he was speedy to implement the mandate. Still, it was a move that had no reason for delay, especially in a state that was being ravaged by another deadly wave of the virus, and where it’s so easy for people to opt out of mandates.
When the state desperately needed its leadership, LSU used false claims to avoid decisive public health action. It’s an unfortunate pattern we’ve seemed to return to a year later.
The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective and no different from the other vaccines the university requires. So, why take it off the list?
This move feels like an attempt to appease a subset of the population — a decent amount of which finds its home in the Louisiana legislature — that’s decided to politicize the COVID-19 vaccine and spread misinformation.
There’s no reason for the state’s flagship university to bend to the will of falsehoods or fear mongering. LSU is a huge, powerful institution that has more than enough weight to make the right decision on vaccines.
Instead, our leaders fail to lead.
Claire Sullivan is a 19-year-old coastal environmental science and journalism junior from CT.
