UK should mandate vaccines for everyone. Here’s why it probably won’t.
In the past 18 months of COVID hell, the University of Kentucky has been a role model of servant leadership, caring for our sickest citizens, providing ample testing facilities and setting up a system that got more than 134,000 COVID vaccine shots into arms to help push Fayette County’s vaccination rate into one of the highest in the state.
So now many are wondering why that leadership and fortitude wouldn’t lead to a vaccine mandate for faculty, staff and students so that UK can be an oasis of health rather than a cluster of sickness when classes start on Monday. They have already required vaccinations for all UK HealthCare employees, which make up roughly half the school’s personnel.
UK is the state’s flagship university and one of Kentucky’s largest employers. Where it goes, others follow. Nationwide, more than 700 public and private colleges and universities have already made this decision, which has been upheld in the courts. In Kentucky, the only one is Berea College. Centre and Bellarmine are requiring vaccination for students once the FDA approves it, which is another avenue since so many people object to the emergency classification.
Matthew Zook, an award-winning geography professor at UK, is one of many who question the lack of a mandate.
“First, the vaccine is a miracle – effective, safe, available – and is a key part of dealing with the Delta variant surge we are seeing in Kentucky,” he said. “I just expect that the flagship university of the commonwealth would be leading the fight against the Delta variant by mandating vaccines, especially given the wealth of expertise here. It will help keep our students, staff and faculty safe, and by extension help keep our families and communities safe.”
But in the end, it’s hard to blame UK for not making such a declaration because we now live under our own Taliban-style politics, subject to a vengeful set of state politicians who reject science and even the traditional philosophical tenets of their own party to score cheap political points. (To wit: Andy Barr recently sent out a donation appeal for his “Unmask America Fund.”) UK has probably taken a risk by even requiring masks in indoor settings.
If UK passed down a vaccine mandate, here’s what would happen: Attorney General Daniel Cameron, whose eyes are constantly scouring the horizon of higher office, would file a lawsuit to prevent it, which would tie the school up in court. Then the GOP super-duper majority would continue with a barrage of pre-filed bills that we’ve already seen, such as Republican Rep. Lynn Bechler’s attempt to stop any employer from mandating the vaccine. He has also pre-filed a bill to prevent schools and universities from requiring masks anywhere. Masks that have been proven to lessen transmission.
Then, come January, when they’re in session, legislators would probably go after UK in lots of other ways, such as limiting state funding, more nonsense about critical race theory, and so on. They would probably try to strike down the requirements for meningitis vaccines, another life-saving miracle to a deadly disease that affects college age students. Already UK officials told me, about 500 students claimed a religious exemption when UK required flu shots for students last year.
UK would also face hordes of angry parents, who might even hold students out, tipping the ever delicate enrollment formula needed to fill those very expensive dorms and restaurants. No one around here seems to care about parents who want vaccinations and masks.
But those are all a lot of distractions at a time when they’re trying to persuade students to get vaccinated, then educated, and at the same time, try to cope with overflowing emergency rooms and intensive care units filled with unvaccinated COVID patients. They don’t need to get in a big ugly fight with the Attorney General, and by proxy every Republican in the state.
UK spokesman Jay Blanton was more diplomatic, saying that the campus community is 70 percent vaccinated already, and they are making progress toward 80 percent. “We believe we can make the progress we need to make to protect our community through strong communication and incentives,” he said. “However, as President Capilouto has indicated to the campus, if we need to pivot to ensure the health, safety and well-being of our community, we won’t hesitate to do so.”
Everything is so different now. It used to be that the GOP stood for free markets and local control for school districts. The party respected education. But there’s no accounting for the philosophical confusion abounding these days. The party that wants to control women’s uteruses because of its pro-life stance is trying to actually ban schools from requiring masks that would save children’s lives and downplay or oppose vaccines. Not one bit of it makes sense.
In past years, there could be a debate about who had more clout: The Big Blue school with the basketball tickets that legislators love or those legislators themselves. No longer. Just as a Pew survey found that 59 percent of Republicans think college has a negative effect on the U.S., higher education has become the enemy of many Kentuckians who think it indoctrinates our young with ideas about social justice, gender equality, science and other unmentionable subjects. In the old days, schools like UK were those shining cities on a hill, signaling the enlightenment borne of research and scholarship but today, they are forced to tailor those ideals to a hostile political majority that ignores science.
Yes, it would be great if UK could stand as the flagship leaders for science and truth instead of bowing to Frankfort gaslighters. It would be good for the health of their campus, and our city. It would provide cover for other schools to do the same.
There’s a lot we still don’t understand about COVID, but we do know that vaccines lessen your risk of dying and masks decrease your chance of getting sick. UK doctors have made that point over and over again. But in the end even those two facts mean nothing in the face of Kentucky politics.
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 10:11 AM.
