In “LSU Administration responds to vaccine concerns at faculty forum” (Madelyn Cutrone, July 30), The Reveille quoted President Tate as saying some want vaccinations required, others do not: “People have their own risk mitigation strategies, and we have to respect that while preparing to lower our collective risk.”
In reducing things to individual risk assessment, are we running an insurance company or a university?
We are an institution of higher education, so let us turn to logic and consistency. Is it simply an individual decision on risk, and then posing it as if there is some equal balance between any stand and its opposite? Is there not a question of LSU’s responsibility to its students and the community? What is its liability when its decision leads to harm? Take LSU’s strictures on hazing or alcohol consumption in its fraternities. Someone unwilling to accept LSU’s rules for Greek life is not admitted into it, not left up to individual student.
The biggest pandemic of our times has killed hundreds of thousands in the country and still has a rising, daily toll in our town. Does the flagship university have a responsibility, even moral, to set an example and educate citizens of our state on science and public health? Instead, we tailor even its medical advisory committee recommendations to LSU’s legal counsel.
The 14th amendment, liberty clause, due process and such weighty arguments are now trotted out. I note that this is very new, the administration so far using as excuses for inaction the status of FDA Emergency Use Authorization or the distinction between public and private universities.
Even after hundreds of faculty in May and even after the Board of Supervisors meeting on June 18, LSU did not even seek such approval from the Louisiana Department of Health. It is only when all that was shown to be untenable in prominent court cases such as Indiana University (also public) and a July 6 Department of Justice memo that LSU now invokes the liberty clause. For President Tate, the EUA seems still the impediment; once removed, the risk balance will suddenly be different, the 14th amendment and due process no longer standing in the way.
A public health doctor Leana Wen said, “We are in the middle of a national and international public health emergency; you have a right to stay unvaccinated if you want to, but if you want to be in public spaces, if you want to now be coming to work and be around other individuals, you don’t have a right to infect others with a potentially deadly disease.”
As with the Title IX scandal, is LSU’s legal advice sound and good for it?
A. Ravi. P. Rau is a professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University.