CV NEWS FEED // The University of Notre Dame announced that it will require all students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
In a Wednesday message, University President Rev. John Jenkins argued that vaccinations are important to “the local, national and global fight against COVID-19.”
“Notre Dame will require all students – undergraduate, graduate, and professional – to be fully vaccinated as a condition of enrollment for the 2021–22 academic year,” Jenkins wrote.
He promised that Notre Dame will accommodate “documented medical and religious exemptions,” but also introduced a new system for tracking students’ “vaccination status.”
“Having accurate data about the extent of community protection from COVID-19 is critical to our making informed decisions about safe campus operations,” Jenkins wrote. “We have now established an easy way for members of the Notre Dame community to register their vaccination status….”
“Please register your vaccination at this site,” Jenkins wrote, providing a link. The web page Jenkins linked to includes a message asking students to “upload a picture of your vaccine card.”
Jenkins wrote that “if 90% of students are vaccinated in the next few weeks, we can consider making some adjustments to our health and safety protocols in the final weeks of this semester.”
Proof-of-vaccination requirements have been a matter of considerable controversy in recent weeks. Republican and religious leaders have spoken out adamantly against them, while the Biden administration has sought to impose “vaccine passports.”
As CatholicVote reported in March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it “completely unacceptable” for either “the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society.”
Notre Dame’s decision requiring all students to be vaccinated and to document their vaccination status came just a day after public backlash led the White House to back down under pressure and announce it would not be involved in any “vaccine passports.”