Vaccine Exemption Must Require More Documentation
With the approval of the Pfizer vaccine by the Federal Food and Drug Administration came the mandate that students must be vaccinated for COVID-19.
The State University of New York issued the mandate that “all students who intend to engage in-person at a SUNY campus or facility must receive a COVID-19 vaccination” effective September 2, 2021. The statement goes on to say that anyone who is involved with on campus activities must be vaccinated, including faculty and staff.
With this mandate comes controversy over the vaccination exemption policy. For the Geneseo campus, there are very limited exemptions given to students. According to the COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements for Students page on the Geneseo website, the exemptions are mainly limited to medical or religious reasons, but are also reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The page also states that the deadline to submit an exemption form was August 30, 2021.
When you go to submit a request for religious COVID-19 vaccine exemption, you are met with a Google Form. The form requires minimal information from a student. Information the form requests are your name, G#, date of birth, address, and a “Student Statement.”
There is no requirement for any form of documentation of claimed religious beliefs, but the submission of documentation is recommended to students. Examples of documentation recommended to students include a letter from an authorized religious official or writings or sources on which the religious beliefs are based. Under recommended documentation, there is a closing statement: “Please note that the campus reserves the right to request additional documentation to support a request for a religious exemption.”
However, when you go to view the form for medical exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine, you are greeted with a more intense intake form. The form must be filled out by a medical official, otherwise it is deemed as a falsified record.
At this point in the process, we can clearly see that the SUNY system is requiring more information from people requesting medical exemption than those requesting religious exemption. With the requirement of authorized personnel to fill out the form, there is less of a chance that false information will be provided.
An open form for religious exemption is risky, as it gives students an opportunity to lie. When you present a generic form to students, you must be aware that students can and will submit false information to try and get out of getting the vaccination.
There is a small population of students that attend on campus activities that are anti-vaccine. These students may use the lack of requirements to their advantage. This would and could be detrimental to the campus population as unvaccinated students are more likely to have and carry the COVID-19 virus. If the school continues the allowance of vaccine exemption without probable cause, we as a campus will have an increase in COVID cases.
It is in the best interest of the school to require at least a small amount of documentation before granting religious exemption because, without it, COVID-19 cases will rise and the safety of the campus population will be at risk even more than it already is.
