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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion letters

LETTER: IU should make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory next school year

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As IU has announced, the 2021-22 academic year will be in-person. As exciting as that sounds, COVID-19 is still rampant around the world. So far, there are no finalized health and safety precautions that IU has announced. 

There were 53,280 new COVID-19 cases and 742 new deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. on April 23. Lots of things can happen from now until August 23, the first day of fall 2021 classes. IU must ensure that they are making decisions that benefit the safety of students. 

A massive precaution to COVID-19 is getting vaccinated. Aaron Carroll, the director of mitigation testing and associate dean at the IU School of Medicine, said that having most of the community vaccinated against COVID-19 will be key to increasing in-person classes and activities.

On April 19, President Joe Biden announced that everyone 16 and older is eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. This opens up eligibility for the entire IU community. Additionally, Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall is a vaccination center where the Bloomington community can get vaccinated. The IU community has the resources and responsibility to make sure that everyone gets vaccinated in order to ensure safety for students, staff and faculty’s health.

Other universities across the nation — public and private — have made it mandatory for students to be vaccinated in order to come back to campus. Some of these universities are the University of Notre Dame, Yale University, Columbia University, New York University and Rutgers University. IU should add themselves to this list of universities to guarantee safety on campus and try to get back some “normalcy” in our lives. 

If you want to let your opinion known, the next Board of Trustees meeting is June 10-11. You can also email the Board of Directors at bdot@iu.edu or the Office of the President at iupres@iu.edu.

Sincerely, 

Natalie Deutsch IU-Bloomington

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