New Brunswick’s three major universities say they won’t mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for students, staff or faculty for the fall semester, which is less than a month away.
St. Thomas University is welcoming two groups of students that will be coming to campus for the first time. The second years, who were thwarted by the pandemic, and the fresh batch of undergraduates coming from high school.
However, the students won’t be required to have been vaccinated in order to be on campus.
Jeffrey Carleton, the director of communications for St. Thomas University, said the university engaged students in a survey ahead of the return to classes.
“We’ve also surveyed students as well because we knew the issue of vaccinations would be an important one come September,” he said in an interview Friday. “So we recently surveyed students and we discovered that as of now 88 per cent of our students are fully vaccinated.”
He said the university feels confident in the numbers and in the response provided by those partially vaccinated or unvaccinated who still intend to come — all of whom, he said, plan to be vaccinated in Canada.
Carleton said students who are travelling in as international students — without Health Canada approved vaccines — will be required to isolate with the assistance of the university.
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The University of New Brunswick was unable to provide anyone for an interview on the current policy.
Patrick Hickey, a student representative for the Board of Governors for UNB Saint John, said he plans to ask that panel of executives to make vaccinations mandatory.
“I think really it comes down to why not? Why can’t we? We’re a university, a place of science, a place of research … so why would we not do that for the safety of our students, staff and faculty?” he said.
Mount Allison University in Sackville was also unable to provide anyone for an interview, but in an emailed statement, it made no commitments to making the vaccine mandatory.
On social media, people took aim at the universities, saying not making the shot mandatory falls behind the curve and the science.
Several other Canadian universities have mandated vaccines, including the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University and the University of Saskatchewan.
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