If you haven’t heard, IU is mandating the experimental covid shot for all staff and students. Get it or get fired or kicked out as a student. They are taking a hardline stance and have told people who called to “go somewhere else or get another job”. There are students who only have a semester left to graduate who can’t transfer. There are staff who can’t get another job in their field because they need to stay in Bloomington (with limited job prospects), and they have partial custody of their children. It’s not so easy to just get another job.
IU put out a zoom meeting to go over FAQs. They said that the FDA can approve all three vaccines at any time now. Their pediatric physician said that the FDA doesn’t need long term safety data and IU doesn’t need long term safety data to mandate it. He said getting the long term data is not something we need to do this. The whole video was parroting the CDC that these are safe and effective with no serious adverse reactions or deaths in the trials. They said exemptions will be extremely limited. IU denied at least two students who turned in an exemption based on reviewing their history that showed at one point they had received vaccines. I am hearing those were appealed and granted on the appeal. It appears that IU has updated their website to make the language say they will follow state law for religious exemptions.
Notre Dame and Valparaiso Universities are also mandating this according to students who wrote in. We haven’t forgot about them, it has just been so busy to get on a computer to get the contacts for action alerts.
Please continue to call the legislators, especially Senator Rod Bray because he seems to be siding with IU saying the vaccine passport ban didn’t mean state universities.
This isn’t just about IU. During the zoom, IU said they are working with IU Health and Notre Dame to make exemption policy. They said that all the businesses coming on campus such as the mailman and vendors will need to mask if their employers don’t have a vaccine mandate. They are going to check with those employers and see if the vaccine policy aligns with IU. They will be controlling other businesses such as UPS.
Plan to rally on Thursday June 10 on the Bloomington campus. We need a large showing.