CC implements a vaccine requirement for fall semester

Plus, the Residential Experience on preparing for a less hectic move-out process

Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pandemic date last year, former President Jill Tiefenthaler announced that the college would be rescheduling Commencement ceremonies for the Class of 2020. (This year, Commencement ceremonies for the Class of 2021 will take place on May 23, while those for the Class of 2020 will take place a week later on May 30.)

Today, we explain Monday’s announcement that Colorado College will be requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for students, faculty, and staff returning to campus in the fall. Plus, how CC’s Residential Experience is planning to move students on campus and in supplemental housing out at the end of the semester. 

➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to resume using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

✉️In Your Inbox: 

• On Wednesday, Acting Co-Presidents Robert G. Moore and Mike Edmonds sent out an email commending the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

• Also on Wednesday, two on-campus students received positive COVID-19 test results. One student was recently in South Hall, while the other was in Loomis Hall.

• On Thursday, CC Communications sent out an email regarding a May 4 CC Conversation about climate policy. The virtual conversation, titled “Working Toward a Just Climate Policy,” will include panelists that are both CC alumni and faculty. Members of the CC community interested in attending the virtual talk can register in advance here.

• Also on Thursday, three students living in Mathias Hall received positive test results for COVID-19. One of those students was recently in Palmer Hall.

• On Tuesday, two on-campus students received positive COVID-19 results. One of those students lives in Loomis Hall, while another resides in South Hall, and one student was recently in the Lloyd E. Worner Campus Center. 

🚨WE’RE HIRING: We’re looking to add some new members to the team for the summer. CC students, if you’re interested in joining us, email us at ccreportingproject@gmail.com for more information. Applications are due May 5 at 5 p.m. MT.

Photo courtesy of Cameron Howell ‘23

💉No vaccines, no service, with some exemptions

On Monday, Colorado College leadership announced that students, faculty, and staff planning to live, learn, and work on campus next year will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. 

The announcement, which came as an update to previous statements college leadership made claiming that vaccines would be “strongly encouraged,” said that members of the CC community planning to return in the fall would be required to show proof of their vaccination by Aug. 1 in order to be eligible to be on campus.

With the requirement, the college joined a growing list of institutions of higher education, like Georgetown University and Rutgers University, across the United States that are requiring their students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 for the coming academic year. 

So what changed?

Monday’s announcement came after conversations between college leadership and the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) that took place over several weeks. 

Andrea Bruder, chair of the SAG, said that she felt the requirement was important for mitigating the academic disruptions small-scale outbreaks, quarantines, and isolations caused for the CC community on or near campus. 

“I think it’s really essential to bringing us back together on campus,” Bruder told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “In the absence of high vaccination rates, we would likely have outbreaks.”

CC’s Vice Provost Pedro de Araujo told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project that he thinks the requirement is “the right decision” and the college’s “best chance” to go back to what it does best, which de Araujo said is a residential liberal arts experience. 

“I think that we would get opposition regardless”

Given the high rates of vaccine hesitancy across the country, de Araujo said the college has taken into consideration the possibility that some in the CC community will oppose the requirement to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

For individuals that oppose the college’s vaccination requirement, some exemptions will be made for medical, religious, and personal reasons.

More details on how those exemptions will be processed and decided on, de Araujo said, would be released soon. 

But despite potential reservations about the requirement, de Araujo said there likely would have also been pushback from the CC community if the college did not require that those on campus be fully vaccinated.  

“I think that we would get opposition regardless,” de Araujo said. “That requirement was based on science, and that’s what we’re holding, and if that creates a pushback, then we’re going to have to deal with that.”

Ensuring access

In order to accommodate those that may not have access to vaccines, CC’s COVID-19 Emergency Manager Maggie Santos ‘86 said the college and its health partners plan to continue to host on-campus vaccination clinics for those that need it in addition to the upcoming clinic on May 8. 

“Those students who want to have their first vaccine on the 8th can come get their first vaccine, and then we’ll set up another vaccination clinic in three weeks, and then we’ll set it up for another three weeks,” Santos told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “As long as people are interested in vaccines, we will continue to provide it for them.”

In order to not make the process “more complicated” for international students, Bruder said the SAG recommended to college leadership that all international vaccines that have gone through an approval process be accepted by CC. 

Bruder added that the SAG will also be keeping an eye on new regulations or rules regarding international traffic or travel this summer and beyond.

Ultimately, Santos said the college will help students, faculty, and staff who want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 but are unable to receive those shots before returning to campus to do so. 

Hoping for a high rate of vaccinations 

With the requirement that students, faculty, and staff must be vaccinated to be on campus, CC leaders and the SAG said they were hoping to reach a high vaccination rate among the college’s community, which they said will help bring the college back to normal — or as close to normal as possible.

Specifically, Bruder said she was hoping for a vaccination rate among the CC community “in the 90% range.” 

For other vaccines, like the meningococcal vaccine, Bruder said CC has typically had high rates of vaccination, so she is “quite optimistic” the vaccination rate against COVID-19 will be high among the community as well

“I think that would be our only chance to actually have us going back to normal, is if we can actually get a rate of vaccination that is very high,” de Araujo said. “And I think that requiring the vaccine creates that layer that’s going to push us to that threshold.” 

Bruder said the fall semester will be much less disrupted with high vaccination rates and that COVID is transitioning from being a public health issue to “a personal medical issue” like other diseases such as measles. 

“It’s in fact a lot easier to plan for the fall semester if we can assume that vaccination rates are high. In that case, instruction can happen in person, by default,” Bruder said. “Less social distancing might be needed, and fewer people will need to quarantine following exposures, because there will be a lot fewer exposures, a lot fewer infections. And then if people are vaccinated, eventually they will also not have quarantine anymore.” 

Another perk of the steadily increasing vaccination rates, and a highly vaccinated community in the fall, is that the college will be able to welcome visitors back to campus again, Bruder said, because the college is working on a policy to welcome visitors back to campus. 

Some members of the CC community think the benefits of the vaccine requirement will reach beyond campus. 

Susan MacGrath, a CC parent, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project that she “absolutely” feels safer sending her child back to in-person learning with the requirement in place, and that she thinks it will make everyone safer. 

“I think it’s a good idea because it’s about protecting the community,” MacGrath said. “The sooner, [the] better, not just for Colorado College, but for the state, for the country, and actually on a global perspective as well, because it’s going to take all of us.”

🏃Moving out during a pandemic

Last March, after Gov. Jared Polis declared a state of emergency for Colorado in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many Colorado College students living on campus abruptly had to pack up and leave with little notice or information on how to retrieve the belongings they left behind.

Of course, CC students were not the only ones to go through this.

According to CNBC Make it, the University of Washington was the first school to send students home and switch to an online learning approach due to the pandemic on March 7, 2020. Soon after, many schools did the same, resulting in millions of college students being sent home with little warning.

But this year, CC’s Residential Experience is looking to make the move-out process less hectic for students. 

Edwin Hamada, assistant vice president of CC’s Residential Experience, said that move-out procedures this year will mirror those from years before the pandemic, with the caveats that students will need to wear masks, abide by social distancing guidelines previously established by the college, and limit the amount of people allowed to help them move out.

This year, the deadline for students to move out by will be at noon on May 20.

For the most part, Hamada said that he is expecting that students will choose “express check out” options, which will allow them to check out by simply dropping off their keys. 

Hamada said there will not be any storage for students to keep their belongings in, so students will need to move everything out.

“We’ll make an effort to notify the students but most of the stuff will be anything left behind, we’ll just donate,” Hamada told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. 

A socially-distanced move out

As with moving in during Pandemic Fall, only one guest will be allowed to help students move out, which Hamada said was a measure to help cut down on the number of people inside residence halls at one time. 

Still, Hamada said that if the pandemic “got really bad” locally, the college may change its policy to not allow any guests on campus. 

Another measure Hamada said the Residential Experience discussed to reduce the risk of virus transmission during move-out procedures was the possibility of allowing residential advisers to use Zoom to do room checks. However, Hamada said the team ultimately decided in-person checks would be “fairly low risk” because of masks, social distancing, and express check outs. 

For this year’s move-out procedures, Hamada said the Residential Experience will continue its approach of enforcing pandemic safety precautions through staff monitors that will watch students as they move in and out of buildings, but added that some of that enforcement will be based on the “honor system.” 

Less to move out 

Luckily, move-out procedures this year will be much smaller in numbers than they normally are.

Hamada said this was because around 950 students currently live on campus or in supplemental housing, which was significantly less than the approximately 1,700 students that are on or near campus in non-pandemic years. Furthermore, Hamada said that between 250 and 300 students will be staying for classes in the Summer Session, which will make the number of students moving out this year closer to 700. 

“It’s about half the size when we normally would move out in a normal year,” Hamada said. 

Hamada said that all students taking classes during Block A will be allowed to stay in their on-campus housing, with the exception of those living in McGregor Hall, which will be used for summer conferences. 

For those taking Block B and C courses, Hamada said there might be some “funneling” into one particular building or area so the college could repair and clean facilities.

“It’s just easier to focus in on one building at a time,” Hamada said. 

Hoping for a smooth process

When the time comes for students to move out, Hamada said the Residential Experience is prepared for a smoother process compared to last March, but one that will take longer than move-in procedures did during Pandemic Fall. 

“Move in and move out tend to be just different beasts,” Hamada said. 

For the most part, Hamada said that was because students can’t be forced to move out at a particular time.

Still, Hamada isn’t worried that students will overstay their welcome, and thinks that those planning to leave won’t wait until their final deadline of May 20 to move out. 

“I think most people are excited to leave,” Hamada said. “They’re not going to wait until the last minute.”  

About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project

The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.

The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community. 

📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or news tips by emailing ccreportingproject@gmail.com.