Student Union
College Students Among Last on List for COVID Vaccines
College and university students are low on the list to receive COVID-19 vaccines, according to recent estimates.
Unless students are classified as essential workers — such as medical, nursing, medtech or student teachers — or have a health condition — such as human immunodeficiency virus or cancer — they are not likely to receive the COVID-19 vaccine until at least April, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
An assessment by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) of who should receive the vaccine and in what order placed younger people at a low priority compared with older recipients or people with health issues that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 complications.
NASEM created the assessment at the direction of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland in October 2020. While the CDC recommends vaccination rollout procedures, states determine how to implement vaccine distribution.
Students say they are eager for campuses to reopen and classes to resume in person, and that inoculating students with the COVID-19 vaccine will hasten a return to education.
But distribution efforts have been disorganized, with delays, a lack of supply and appointment cancellations, compounded by varying policies in each state.
Imani Bell, a senior at the University of Delaware, is one of the few college students eligible for the vaccine through her teaching program. But despite trying to sign up for vaccinations in Delaware and her home state of New Jersey, she has had no luck scheduling an appointment; there are not enough doses of the vaccine available, she said.
“I hope that the rollout starts to pick up and that everyone has access,” said Bell. “It doesn’t make sense that we’ve been in this pandemic for a year and it’s still taking so long. It’s frustrating to me that there are [few] companies making the vaccine when it could go so much faster.”
Eduardo Castellet Nogués, a sophomore from Spain at American University in Washington, said he’s seen some European universities open without complete vaccination.
“They’re finding ways to do it,” Nogués said. “I think this is the safest way to start that. If the entire campus is immune, then there’s absolutely no risk of anyone getting COVID.”
Some campuses — like Rowan University in New Jersey, Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and Lasell University in Massachusetts — are serving as vaccination sites, according to Gerri Taylor, co-head of the COVID-19 task force at the American College Health Association (ACHA).
The vaccination sites are available only to prioritized groups, such as those older than 65. But they will serve college students when doses become available, Taylor said.
While it would “be ideal,” Taylor said, to have campus-based vaccinations, vaccinating students near campuses would suffice.
“And I would hope that schools will do a good deal of advertising about where those locations are, make them convenient for students and also give a lot of information about the vaccine,” she said.
Taylor argues that vaccinating students before they leave campus and travel home would be a huge help to stopping the spread of the coronavirus by college students who routinely go between school and home into the community.
“We all, students included, still have to pay strict attention to wearing masks, physically distancing, avoiding crowds and washing hands, all of those public health measures that we have had in place throughout still need to be put in place,” she said.
There have been nearly 400,000 coronavirus cases on more than 1,900 college and university campuses since the start of the pandemic more than a year ago, according to the most recent tracking data from the New York Times. At least 90 students have died of coronavirus-related complications.
Joshua Goodart, a 22-year-old student at University of New Haven in Connecticut, died from coronavirus on February 6, the Hartford Courant reported. While Goodart had asthma, he was not considered high-risk for COVID-19 complications.
But some college students say they’re wary of coronavirus vaccinations. A study conducted at Eastern Connecticut State University of 592 graduate and undergraduate students showed that about half of students surveyed said they would get the vaccine, and half would not or remained uncertain.
Institutions of higher education are debating whether to require students to be vaccinated before returning to school, raising legal questions.
“Many colleges and universities can and do require that students be vaccinated against certain diseases,” such as human papillomavirus (HPV) and meningococcal disease, said Suzanne Rode, a counsel at Crowell & Moring, a law firm in San Francisco.
“The COVID-19 vaccines differ in that they have been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration under an Emergency Use Authorization, making the vaccines available sooner than they normally would due to the current public health emergency,” she explained.
Other challenges for not getting the vaccine might include “valid medical, disability, and sincere religious reasons can serve as a basis for declining the vaccine,” said Rode.
International students will be eligible for the vaccine as other students in their priority group, former Surgeon General Jerome Adams confirmed in December. Specific vaccination guidelines for those living, working and studying in the U.S. can be found on the government websites of the states where they reside.
Some international students are deciding whether to receive the vaccine in the U.S. or in their home countries. Nogués plans to get his dose of the vaccine wherever it becomes available first.
“From what I know, it is very likely that I will get it in the U.S. before I get it in Spain because the rollout in Spain has been slower than a lot of European countries,” Nogués said.
Benjamin Ola. Akande, president of Champlain College in Vermont, says that college and university leaders have a duty to protect the health of international students on campus during this pandemic.
“Coming to the college in the U.S. today is a life and death decision, and we need to recognize that,” said Akande, who came to study in the U.S. from Nigeria in 1979. “It’s a very conscious decision and therefore, there’s a responsibility on leaders of academies to ensure the safety and health care of students.”
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
