Ohio State leaders express their support for the university’s vaccine requirement, stating that it is for the betterment of the Buckeye community. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor
Ohio State student leaders from the Undergraduate Student Government, Council of Graduate Students and Inter-Professional Council expressed their support for the university’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement in a joint statement Tuesday.
The leaders stated they have relayed students’ concerns to the Ohio State administration to ensure the safest return to campus, and the new vaccine policy will protect students while sustaining the existence of in-person campus activities.
“The circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to change, but we must now recommit ourselves to caring for one another and defeating this disease on our campus,” the leaders stated. “We believe that this COVID-19 vaccination requirement is a major step toward as healthy a future as possible for our community.”
University President Kristina M. Johnson announced in a universitywide email Tuesday that all Buckeyes will be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine’s first dose by Oct. 15 and second by Nov. 15, following Monday’s Food and Drug Administration full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
Jacob Chang, USG president, said the new vaccine mandate exists to serve as a reminder that the community has a responsibility to protect others and those who could be at high risk if they contract the virus.
“I think we’re just trying to emphasize this is the decision that’s what’s best for the community and it was crucial to protect each and every one of the Buckeye community,” Chang, a fourth-year in political science and psychology, said.
Nick Messenger, CGS president, said student leaders have had representation on multiple task forces — including the academic return-to-campus task force — to voice student concerns to administrators throughout the 2021 spring semester. He said student leaders and the university concluded, based on science and data, that vaccination was the best way to ensure students could come back and participate on campus.
“This vaccine is the safest and most effective way to protect yourself. It’s the safest and most effective way that we can all protect each other,” Messenger, a third-year in Ohio State’s PhD program in agricultural, environmental and development economics, said.
Chang said he and Anna Valerius, USG vice president, encouraged administrations to mandate the vaccine after communicating with other student leaders of Big Ten universities about their schools’ requirements.
Messenger said the new vaccine requirement is consistent with the other university policies in place that follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state guidelines.
“I think every step of the way in the pandemic it’s been important to follow federal and state guidances,” Messenger said. “It’s been important to not be overly reactive to certain things and to make sure that we’re doing things the right way.”
Valerius said USG will continue to ensure the university addresses students’ questions and presents information clearly and accessibly. They will meet with the Office of International Affairs Thursday to see the process of opting out for students who are not in Columbus for whom the mandate does not make sense — international students or those who are fully remote.
Messenger said he encourages students to read through the universitywide email about the vaccine requirement and make sure to ask their health care provider questions. The student leaders will continue to speak with administration about ongoing developments and data presented to them, he said.
“The vaccine requirement is a major step towards a safer campus, but we’ll continue to look at the data,” Messenger said. “We’ll continue to kind of advise President Johnson and Dr. Shivers and others on ways that we can continue to make students safe, more comfortable and still enable that key experience that I think people come to Ohio State to have.”
