Eastern Oregon University was the last public university in the state to announce that students and employees would need to get a Covid-19 vaccine to come to campus in the fall. It’s also the only one whose mandate doesn’t go into effect until at least one of the vaccines receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, instead of the current emergency-use authorization. Other Oregon colleges are requiring shots regardless of approval status, though they allow exemptions for people who want to wait for full approval. (The vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna have both applied for full approval for their shots, which experts generally expect will come within months.)
Why did the college break from its peers? Lawyers for Thomas A. Insko, president of Eastern Oregon, have told him legal concerns aren’t a major barrier to a mandate. “From a legal perspective,” he said, “I believe that full FDA approval is not necessary.” The emergency-use authorization, Insko added, “is adequate.”
“It wasn’t the primary motivating factor behind our decision,” he said.
The decision was instead about accommodating fears and reservations among people on campus. After surveying students, staff, and faculty, Insko decided that waiting for full approval would help settle hesitancies around the vaccines and make people more likely to accept the mandate. In an online survey, 65 percent of responding students said they didn’t think Eastern Oregon should require a vaccine in the fall, according to numbers the university provided. Only among responding faculty members did more people want a mandate than not — 75 percent versus 22 percent, with the rest being unsure. Among staff, 43 percent wanted required shots, 47 percent didn’t want a mandate, and the rest were unsure.
Kaitlyn Jones is a student in the university’s agriculture program. She said in a chat message to The Chronicle that she’s “unsure” about Covid vaccines. There is “just a lot of information and misinformation about it floating around,” she wrote. “It’s difficult to know what to believe.” She is graduating after this summer term, so the mandate doesn’t affect her, but she said she would take the shot if she had to, despite her belief that it could harm her. “My education has been top priority for me for the last five years,” she wrote. “My health has come second, so skeptical or not, I would do what is necessary to continue my education.” (While flu-like side effects are common, serious problems from the Covid-19 vaccines so far have been extremely rare.)
In informal conversations, the vaccines’ emergency-use authorization frequently came up as a worry, Insko said. Indeed, although the EUA process does require companies to show safety data to the FDA, full approval requires data over a longer period. Jones wrote that she would “definitely” feel better about Covid vaccines if they got full approval.
Meanwhile, in the surrounding Union County, only about 36 percent of residents have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, compared with 56 percent for the state overall, and above 60 percent in counties like Benton and Multnomah, where Oregon State and Portland State Universities, respectively, are located.
Union County’s numbers are a reflection of local attitudes and culture, Insko said. The eastern part of the state tends to be more rural and conservative than the coastal cities that loom large in stereotypes about Oregon as a liberal haven. Peter Maille, a professor of economics and the immediate past president of the Faculty Senate, pointed out Eastern Oregon’s proximity to Idaho — a state better known for conservative politics, which have proved more resistant to Covid vaccine mandates. Portlandia, this is not.
“Across eastern Oregon, our vaccine rates aren’t nearly as high as we would like to see,” Insko said. “There’s more vaccine hesitancy and frankly, it’s more wide open spaces. These are smaller communities.” That means there’s a lower level of concern about getting Covid-19, he said, “whether that’s appropriate or not.”
Insko still knew a mandate of some kind was in the best interest of the campus, especially given the surrounding area’s low vaccination rate.
“I support it,” said Maille, who has been vaccinated. “I don’t have too much trouble with the fact that it waits for full FDA approval.” That approval, he said, would make it “a little safer for people to argue in favor” of mandatory vaccinations.
Brady Layman, a senior double-majoring in molecular biology and chemistry, feels differently. He wants the mandate to kick in now. Covid-19 vaccines, he said, have been “proven to be safe.”
“I cannot agree with them waiting because I feel that it opens us up to risk of potentially having an outbreak if the vaccine isn’t fully approved by the FDA by the time fall starts,” he said.
In case full FDA approval doesn’t come by the beginning of the 2021-22 academic year, the university will decide on Covid safety policies based on campus vaccination and community infection rates at that time, Insko said. Unvaccinated students and employees might have to undergo daily health attestations, and administrators are “in discussions” about whether they’ll want to surveillance-test unvaccinated people. To shield people from “shaming,” any difference in protocol for vaccinated and unvaccinated people would not be outwardly visible, Insko said. For example, there wouldn’t be differing mask-wearing rules.
Despite his disagreement, Layman said he understood why the university is waiting for full approval. “There is this sense of hesitancy in the area,” he said. In fact, he’s from the Portland metro region, and had chosen to come to Eastern Oregon partly because he knew the politics and culture would be different from home: “I wanted to gain a different perspective.”
