The University of Virginia has unenrolled 49 students who registered for fall classes for not abiding by its coronavirus vaccine mandate.
The school announced in May, along with hundreds of other U.S. colleges, that all students attending classes in the new semester would have to be vaccinated. So far, almost the entire enrolled student body has complied. More than 96 percent of UVA students are currently vaccinated against COVID-19. There are 335 students who have been granted permanent waivers due to religious and/or medical exemptions, according to university officials.
Students have until August 25 to get vaccinated and re-enroll for fall semester classes. They can also choose to simply return to classes in the spring, but they could only do so by meeting the vaccination requirement.
More from The Washington Post:
An additional 184 temporary waivers were granted to students who have had trouble getting vaccinated but plan to get their shots upon arriving to campus.
Less than 1 percent of students enrolled — or 238 students — are not in compliance, “but only 49 of those students had actually selected courses, meaning that a good number of the remaining 189 may not have been planning to return to the university this fall at all, regardless of our vaccination policy,” said Brian Coy, a school spokesman.
UVA students were supposed to provide the school proof of vaccination by July 1. The university says it has sent several reminders since that deadline passed.
The university held a town hall earlier this month where school president Jim Ryan discussed the importance the high vaccination rate in the UVA community plays in the school’s plans to resume a normal campus routine.
“This means we can return in person to classes, activities, sporting events and research labs as we have been planning to do in the fall semester, with the residential experiences that are at the heart of this university.”
The spread of the highly-infectious delta variant over the summer has upended many schools’ plans to reopen with in-person classes and normal on-campus activities. Rice University announced this week it would be shifting to online instruction for at least the first two weeks of the fall semester due to a surge of cases in Houston and among the school’s community.
