Get vaccinated or else: Colleges roll out new punishments for holdouts

At the beginning of the summer, institutions started to wave the prospect of scholarships, laptops, game consoles and more to students who got a Covid-19 shot. Now, as thousands of young people move back to campus, hundreds of schools are mandating vaccines and penalizing students who resist without a medical or religious reason.

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Quinnipiac University students who aren’t vaccinated will be fined up to $200 per week and lose access to the campus’ Wi-Fi until they get the shot. The University of Virginia booted more than 200 unvaccinated people from its rolls before the semester began. And Rutgers University, the first university in the U.S. to mandate vaccination for students, is threatening to disconnect email access and deny campus housing for students who don’t comply. Some colleges used similar tactics last year to get students to follow testing procedures.

“The Delta variant has been a game changer, and we need to respond accordingly,” said Anita Barkin, co-chair of the American College Health Association’s Covid-19 task force. She noted that schools with immunization requirements have a distinct advantage over schools that have to use incentives to get students vaccinated.

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