Harvard University announced on March 5 that it had ended the COVID-19 shot mandate, walking back on its announcement just weeks earlier that all students needed the shot to register for the fall semester.
The website continued: “Additionally, we continue to emphasize the benefits of wearing a high-quality face mask in crowded indoor settings and remaining at home if unwell. HUHS considers state and federal guidance, along with advice from the University’s public health experts, in responding to COVID-19. We will continue to monitor public health data and will periodically review requirements.”
The move is a dramatic reversal from only weeks when, on Feb. 7, the school announced it would require all students to show proof of having taken the COVID-19 shot in order to register for the upcoming semester.
Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, told The Epoch Times that Harvard’s move to end the mandates is a victory for freedom.
“This is a big deal. I am literally blown away. For Harvard to remove this language from the immunization forms is a huge sweeping move that is impossible to overstate,” said Mrs. Sinatra, who believes that the move will cause a seismic ripple effect.
“As goes Harvard, so goes the rest of the country, and I believe many of the small liberal arts colleges are now going to have a very hard time justifying the demand that young people take these shots now that Harvard has dropped it,” said Mrs. Sinatra.
‘Absurd and Irrational’ Vaccination Policy
Momentum appears to be shifting against the COVID-19 mandate.On March 4, Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican senator in New Jersey’s 13th District, called on Rutgers University to be stripped of state funding over its mandate that staff and faculty be forced to take the COVID-19 shot. Mr. O’Scanlon declared that imposing the mandate on students discriminates against the state’s taxpayers by refusing admittance to those who choose not to get the controversial shot.
“It is difficult to put into words just how absurd and irrational the vaccination policy is at Rutgers University,” Mr. O’Scanlon said in a statement. “The 2024-2025 semester is just around the corner and the administrators at Rutgers still insist that all students, faculty, and staff receive the COVID-19 vaccine—a policy that has no basis in science whatsoever. In fact, the entire policy is anti-science.
“Until Rutgers lifts the mandate, I’m calling for a cut in funding. And, students who are thinking about going to Rutgers, but are not going due to the vaccine mandate, should be able to apply for school aid to use at whatever institution they want,” he added.
The number of schools requiring the shot has fallen as the past two years have seen it become mired in controversy. More than 80 percent of Americans took the original COVID-19 shots after officials pledged that the shots would effectively prevent contraction and stop the spread of the disease.
However, once it was revealed that the shots didn’t work as promised, interest in the subsequent booster decreased dramatically.
Despite the controversy, COVID-19 vaccine mandates continue to be in effect for students at 61 out of the top 800 colleges in the United States, according to recent data acquired by No College Mandates, which describes itself as a “group of concerned parents, doctors, nurses, professors, students, and other college stakeholders working towards the common goal of ending COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”
While pleased that Harvard has finally given its students the freedom of choice, Mrs. Sinatra says accountability is the next step for large institutions that rushed to mandate the shot.
“We have yet to see from any university an acknowledgment of the lack of necessity for the young, healthy adult population and acknowledge that maybe they did too much too soon,” said Mrs. Sinatra. “Or even an apology that there was a rush to judgment.
“But we will take this win and be very, very grateful,” she added.
