Bobcat Buzz: Thank you, QU, for bringing back the college experience
May 27, 2021
On May 26, Quinnipiac University announced that it is mandating a COVID-19 vaccine for students, faculty and staff for the fall 2021 semester.
I couldn’t be happier.
I came to Quinnipiac in the fall of 2019. Since then, I have only had one and a half semesters without COVID-19 restrictions. My college experience that I pay to have, through no fault of the university nor my peers, has been lacking.
A mandated vaccine is the best way to return to normalcy. It’s a blessing that Quinnipiac, which has the right as a private university, chose to go down this path. I desperately want to fully experience everything that freshman year offered, and letting anti-vaccination people take that away from me would almost be too much to handle.
Thank you, President Judy Olian. That’s something I never thought I would write, as student journalists are trained to be skeptical of administration, but this was a decision that was sure to receive backlash. It already has. Thank you for making the hard choice.
For anyone who is infuriated about mandating the vaccine, please ask yourself why. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has supported the vaccine every step of the way, and cases have dropped as a result. While a student may be lucky enough to be in a demographic that COVID-19 rarely affects with severity, an older American may not be so lucky should that student speak with them in a conversation or walk past them in a store.
If you are simply upset about a policy being forced on you, welcome to the United States. There are rules in life that everyone must abide by, particularly those who pay for the privilege to come to a great university like Quinnipiac. To the parents threatening to pull out of Quinnipiac, your child deserves the greatest college experience possible. More so, you deserve to receive every dollar’s worth of value that you pay for in tuition. Mandating the vaccine makes the college experience for every Bobcat infinitely better at no cost to anyone.
Frankly, it’s about time Quinnipiac adopted this policy after schools like Yale University and Rutgers University mandated the vaccine weeks ago.
The vaccine is the way to normalcy, and it’s a relief to see Quinnipiac embrace what should be the new normal once more.
Jean-Alexis Montaudy • Jun 7, 2021 at 2:29 pm
NOT FDA APPROVED. Yes, this is the United States of America for a reason. You can’t force experiments on a population. Where is your courtesy or consideration for people’s choices? So you’re saying we have to abide by a dangerous policy because it is a privilege? This op-ed isn’t it and displayed an egregious lack of respect towards others’ bodies and choices. I can see the similarities in the reasoning behind some of your other op-eds. Personal freedom seems to mean nothing. I am infuriated with this policy because it is unnecessary considering the large population of our campus are young people. The reasoning for getting a vaccine to protect people who already have it is illogical. Please stop and ask YOURSELF why you think a non-FDA-approved vaccine should be the price of admission.