College students across the country are pushing back against some of the draconian COVID-19 measures their schools have imposed on them.
At at least 40 schools, students have organized protests or petitions objecting to vaccine mandates or face mask requirements, The Wall Street Journal reported.
While a majority of college students support vaccine and mask mandates, those who do not want to get the shot are often left out in the cold. Nearly three-quarters of students support vaccine mandates, and about 80 percent support mask mandates, according to a September Kaplan survey.
In some cases, students have filed federal lawsuits against their schools over the vaccine mandates. Those lawsuits may run aground, however.
In August, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Indiana University’s vaccine requirement, and that decision has already been cited in some of the other cases. Eight students sued Indiana University over the mandate, saying it violates their constitutional rights by forcing them to get medical treatment they do not want.
More than 1,000 schools have implemented a vaccine mandate, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Other COVID-19 safety policies that have prompted complaints from students are schools’ surveillance of them and restrictions on when students can leave and return to campus.
Last year, Albion College, a liberal arts college in Michigan with only 1,500 students, prompted outrage from students and their parents when it announced that students would have to use a location-tracking app called Aura in order to come back to campus. The app is built to track students’ location even when they are off-campus and contains the student’s COVID test results as well. If the student tests positive, the app would alert people the student was recently near.
Parents launched a petition against Albion’s “extremely invasive” rules that garnered nearly 2,000 signatures.
Some students at the University of Southern California feel that the school’s COVID rules are “overreach,” the Journal reported.
About 95 percent of USC students are vaccinated, but they still need to get tested once a week for COVID in order to come on campus. Security guards reportedly mill around telling students to keep their face masks on.
Some schools have backed down on things like vital signs sensors for students after students protested.
At Oakland University in Michigan, students and their families protested the school’s proposal that they wear a “bio button” that monitored a student’s heart rate, temperature, and respiration. If the student started showing symptoms of COVID, the button would notify the school. Students launched a petition that got more than 2,400 signatures, and the school responded by saying the button would be optional, not mandatory.
“A large portion of students feel that this [is] in violation of their privacy and some students have stated that their rejections of this idea come from a religious basis,” the petition stated.
Amherst College in Massachusetts prompted opposition when it announced that not only must students be vaccinated, they must wear a mask everywhere outside and inside except alone in their dorm room, and they could not go to restaurants or bars in town.
Meanwhile, some students have actually protested for even stricter COVID rules at schools with fewer safety measures.
In September, Texas A&M students organized a protest for more rules after a fellow student died due to complications from the virus. The university does not have a mask or vaccine requirement.