Penn State’s faculty senate wants the COVID-19 vaccine to be required. Will that make a difference?
Penn State’s faculty senate wants to see the COVID-19 vaccine required for all students, faculty and staff this fall — although it’s not known if the faculty’s stance will have any impact on the university’s decision-making.
The faculty senate, which includes both University Park and the commonwealth campuses, passed a largely symbolic resolution, 113-31, during a special meeting Wednesday to essentially recommend the administration mandate the vaccine. The move comes just two weeks after University Park’s student government voted 25-10-1 to pass a similar symbolic resolution.
Neither the faculty senate nor the student government holds the power to mandate the vaccine itself, however. That’s still up to the Penn State administration, which has said — at least for now — that it plans only to voluntarily “incentivize” the vaccine.
Josh Wede, a teaching professor of psychology, said Wednesday that simply wasn’t enough.
“A vaccine requirement, with noted exceptions, would be significantly more likely to get us ‘there,’” Wede said, referring to herd immunity, “more than solely relying on an incentive approach.”
Executive Vice President and Provost Nicholas Jones fielded questions for nearly an hour at the virtual meeting, explaining that the university has no current plans to require vaccinations. He said the university’s priorities have included making the vaccine available to all who want it — by partnering with multiple health systems — and now coming up with ways in which students will want to get the shot(s).
For those who are vaccinated, incentives could include discounts at Penn State Eats or the bookstore. Jones also mentioned holding raffles for upgraded meal plans, pizza parties or concert tickets. He even alluded, potentially, to incentives revolving around obtaining student football tickets — before clarifying no decisions have yet been made and that was given as a “general example.”
Several faculty members derided those examples, with one professor writing in the complementary chatroom that it’s “absurd to fill a classroom with students who may not have found a slice of pizza sufficient reason to get the shot.” But other faculty members voiced their agreement with Jones, saying the vaccine should be a personal choice, especially given students’ low probability of developing serious symptoms from the coronavirus.
Before the formal vote, Jones said the administration would take any faculty resolutions to heart, though he stopped short of making any commitments.
“I would say that we always give serious consideration to resolutions that come from the university faculty senate,” Jones said. “That’s how shared governance works; we value your collective input into these issues, and we acknowledge the resolution is a strong expression of the senate preference, and the senate is the duly elected representative body of Penn State’s faculty.”
At Penn State, much of the sentiment has so far skewed — at least anecdotally — to requiring the vaccine. A non-scientific faculty survey conducted by Wede, which solicited 1,221 responses, found that 86% of respondents were either strongly or moderately in support of a vaccine mandate compared to 11% who were strongly or moderately opposed. (Some 3% did not have an opinion.) A non-scientific student survey led by UPUA President Erin Boas found that, of 2,319 respondents, 60.03% favored a mandate while 39.97% opposed it.
“As a highly acclaimed research university, we have a responsibility to treat this topic as an issue of public health and not weaponize it for political matters,” said Boas, who doubles as a student senator and supported the resolution. “As an educational institution, we must commit to the factual existence of the topic at hand and assist in the communication of scientifically backed information.”
Nationally, the same debate has played out across thousands of campuses. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, more than 340 campuses have so far made the vaccine a requirement — including at least 10 colleges in Pennsylvania alone, with the likes of Lehigh, Penn and Carnegie Mellon. In the Big Ten, three universities boast mandates: Maryland, Michigan and Rutgers.
Both Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Acting Physician General Denise Johnson said last week that the commonwealth would not require vaccines for college students, leaving the decision up to individual universities such as Penn State.
University President Eric Barron first shared April 28 that the university was moving toward an incentivization model, though he stopped short of saying a potential mandate was off the table. Still, it’s clear such a requirement is not the administration’s first choice.
Jones added Wednesday that, later in the summer, the university could give consideration to being more restrictive “as necessary, as circumstances dictate.” When asked whether the university would make student vaccination data public, specifically the collective student body’s vaccination rate, Jones said the university only had access to how many students uploaded their records. He never promised to share that information, although he said a future survey was a possibility.
He also told faculty that, even in the absence of a mandate, professors would still be expected to teach in-person this fall — although exceptions could be granted on a case-by-case basis.
“We believe that in taking the actions that we are taking and managing the environments in the way that we are ... that we are providing a safe environment,” Jones added.
The faculty senate’s resolution allowed for medical and religious exemptions. The full text can be found online at senate.psu.edu.
This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 7:06 PM.
