I was appalled, but not surprised, when on Saturday, September 24, the Dean of Students at Wellesley College, where I am a student, buried at the end of an email to the student body that all students at Wellesley would be required to receive a shot of the new bivalent Covid-19 booster. Then on October 11, we were informed this mandate would take effect on December 1, nearly three weeks before the end of the semester.

This announcement follows similar decisions from Tufts University, Harvard University, and the University of California, among others. It also follows a growing body of evidence that there are, for a non-trivial percentage of the vaccinated—especially the young—serious, potentially lifelong, and potentially fatal side effects—such as myocarditis and autoimmune disease—to the vaccine, which CDC director Rochelle Walensky acknowledges does not stop transmission of the coronavirus.

Moreover, this newest bivalent vaccine, designed to protect against the now-defunct Omicron variant, was approved without any trials confirming safety or efficacy. And regarding the latter, at least, the slim evidence we do have is not promising. So why is Wellesley—and why are all these other colleges—mandating their disproportionately young, disproportionately healthy students partake in a human trial for a vaccine that does not stop the transmission of a variant that became almost entirely obsolete months ago?