As Vermont colleges prepare to welcome students back for fall semester, they now have to enforce the Covid-19 vaccine requirements many have instituted in recent months.
On Thursday, some Middlebury College students were told they would be unenrolled for the fall semester after failing to either report their vaccination status, or request an exemption on medical or religious grounds.
This was a “very small percentage of our student body,” Sarah Ray, Middlebury’s director of media relations, wrote in an email to VTDigger.
After panicked students and parents contacted the college, Middlebury paused the unenrollment process Monday and gave them an additional two days to submit required documents.
Middlebury expects 97% of the student body will be fully vaccinated before they arrive on campus in coming weeks, Ray said. About 2% of students have not had access to Covid-19 vaccines where they live and will get the shot when they arrive. About 1% of students have received an exemption.
Middlebury announced in May that it would require students to get vaccinated for the fall semester and emailed reminders over the summer.
University of Vermont unenrolled 39 undergraduate students who had not submitted any vaccine information, according to university spokesperson Enrique Corredera.
However, UVM had “not had any form of engagement with them,” Corredera wrote in an email to VTDigger. “We have reason to believe that these students had no intention of joining us when we start classes Aug. 30, but did not take action to withdraw on their own.”
As of Aug. 20, UVM’s student vaccination rate had surpassed 99%, Corredera said.
Other Vermont colleges are taking different routes to enforce their vaccine mandates. At Castleton University, any student who does not comply with the vaccine requirement would be referred to the campus judicial process, said James Lambert, Castleton’s associate dean of advancement.
Castleton’s policy states, “Failure to be in compliance by August 23, 2021, will jeopardize the student’s ability to be present on campus for any reason,” but doesn’t mention unenrollment.
At Norwich University, where about 9% of students have already received an exemption, those who have yet to report their vaccination status will be allowed to sign up for a vaccine or request an exemption upon their arrival, said Daphne E. Larkin, the university’s director of media relations and community affairs.
However, those students will not be allowed to stay on campus or take in-person classes until they either agree to be vaccinated or have their exemption approved, according to an Aug. 5 announcement.
Thirteen of Vermont’s 16 higher education institutions have reported student body vaccination rates to state officials. About 90% of students are fully vaccinated, according to state data released Tuesday. Just under 6% of students have reported they are unvaccinated and did not receive an exemption.
About 3% of students — 734 individuals — have yet to report their vaccination status.
Like Vermont’s high vaccination rate among the general population, the state’s vaccination rate among college students is much greater than in other parts of the country.
Tuesday’s batch of data also reported 349 students, or about 1% of the state’s college student population, had received a vaccine exemption.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the dates related to Middlebury College.
