Welp, we did it. Don't know why it took so long after the FDA approval, but it's done. Students, faculty, and staff must be fully vaccinated by November 15. Students who don't meet that mark cannot participate in on-campus activities or residence for spring semester.

I don't know about Ohio, but the colleges in NJ that require vaccinations have been very lenient in granting exceptions for religious or other reasons.

A friend of mine's son doesn't want to get vaccinated.
No idea why.
He applied for, and got ,a religious exception (Catholic), based on the use of fetal cells in the vaccine development.
He got the exemption even though the cells are decades old and the Pope said there wasn't an issue.

I think the schools just want something for the file.

Now he has to get a weekly PCR test.

Since FDU is primarily a commuter school, they don't offer the tests on campus.

I'm curious how this will be applied to attendance at on campus sporting events for fans, alumni, etc., and how they'll manage it if they mandate it to attend games. I'm all for the vax and have mine, but it creates a new set of challenges to sort through once it's required.

I'm sure some people who don't want to get the vaccine (for countless reasons), will use the religious-morals or medical exemptions because it will probably work. The system needs to be more rigorous to avoid this.

A lot of this is to get off-campus and regional campus students inoculated. Something like 75% of residential students at the Athens campus are fully vaccinated but only 61% of off-campus students are. The regional campuses are down in the 20s. And off-campus students are driving the positive tests in the Athens campus. From August 23 to 28 there were something like 80 new positive tests among students and employees; 55 were off-campus students, 22 were on-campus and three were employees.

Good idea!