By Dennis Hull ‘22

On October 27, 2021, the Washington and Lee COVID-19 Committee sent an email recommending that all students, faculty, and staff receive a booster shot.

No reason was provided for encouraging the community to receive a third shot. Fortunately, the committee acknowledged that the first two doses of the vaccine regimen – mandated for all W&L community members in May 2021 – continued to provide robust protection against serious complications from the virus. The committee also recognized the importance of personal responsibility in evaluating risks and benefits associated with the booster:

“It is not urgent that you get a booster as soon as you are eligible, as the immune system’s protection after being vaccinated does not suddenly fall to low levels. If you are fully vaccinated, you still have strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death, including against the Delta variant. You should consider options for booster doses and timing of administration based on personal risks and benefits, and consult your primary care provider for guidance.”

On December 15, 2021, the COVID-19 Committee sent a second email reiterating its encouragement for the community to receive a booster shot. This time, the committee sweetened the offer with an entry into a daily lottery for anyone who chose to adhere to its recommendations. Faculty and staff could receive $500 cash. Students, on the other hand, could look forward to a Fancy Dress package, worth exactly $65.

Curiously, this second email omitted any talk of personal responsibility or consultation with one’s doctor. In its place was a vague reference to the booster’s efficacy in “slowing the spread,” the committee’s first justification for its booster recommendation:

“This step is the most effective way to reduce the chance of new surges or widespread community transmission of COVID-19, along with continuing to wear masks indoors and in crowds. We continue to believe our campus community’s high vaccination rate is the most effective measure to slow the spread of the virus.”

On December 29 – exactly two weeks after the lottery announcement – the COVID-19 Committee sent a third email mandating the booster shot for all students, faculty, and staff on campus.

This third email was characterized by several serious flaws. First, no consequences were delineated for individuals who refused to adhere to the new mandate. In the seven weeks since the December 29 email, this has not changed. We are now aware, purely from anecdotal evidence, that some of those who have since refused or ignored the administration’s dictate to receive the booster have been threatened with disenrollment in their Spring Term class and subsequent removal from W&L premises.

Second, this initial email announcing the booster mandate made no mention of those who had recently contracted the virus and gained substantial natural immunity. A follow-up email, sent on January 11, also failed to specify any exceptions for those who had tested positive.

It was not until January 26, five days before the deadline, that the COVID-19 Committee finally “clarified” that anyone who tested positive for Covid had a full 90 days after the date of their test before they were required to receive the booster. This lack of communication constitutes a weighty violation of the COVID-19 Committee’s alleged commitment to transparency.

Few, if any students could have reasonably predicted that an exception from the shot would eventually be made, especially just days before the deadline. CDC guidance specifies no particular time frame for receiving a booster shot after testing positive for Covid. Since the COVID-19 Committee has nearly always cited CDC guidance within any justification for its policies over the past 18 months, and since the committee had not deemed it necessary to outline its fully unabridged booster mandate in a timely fashion, it would have been reasonable for a student who tested positive to look into  CDC guidance and assume no window of exception would be granted. Many members of the W&L community, fearing some unspecified retaliation from the administration, likely made the decision to get boosted solely under these false premises.

The committee’s patently manipulative behavior in waiting four weeks to clarify these booster exceptions is even more heinous considering the vast number of students, faculty and staff who were likely eligible for this exception. Dozens, if not hundreds of community members almost certainly tested positive during the rampant spread of the Omicron variant that began in December. The record-high transmissibility of Omicron contributed to an unprecedented surge in cases even among the vaccinated, peaking at over one million daily cases even during a critical nationwide shortage of testing. When W&L students spread out across the country during Christmas break, their odds of contracting the virus were higher than at any other point in the pandemic.

Even more notably, when these far-flung students traveled back to Lexington to mingle with their peers, Omicron began to ravage the W&L community with the terrifying symptoms of runny noses and mild colds. In fact, the COVID-19 Committee acknowledged this reality in an email on January 28, as it modified its protocols for contact tracing due to the sheer number of cases on campus: “Omicron …. is spreading so rapidly it is no longer productive or possible to track contacts of positive cases.”

 Unfortunately, the committee has not mentioned specific case numbers in an email update since January 11 – just two days after classes resumed – and has not bothered to send a single community update since the January 28 email addressing contact tracing protocols.

Thus, under these circumstances, an unacceptable number of individuals were deprived of their right to full and complete information to make reasonable decisions regarding their own health. The COVID-19 Committee’s sheer disregard for communicating these widely applicable 90-day exceptions to the booster mandate over multiple successive email updates is utterly shameful.

Moreover, the committee’s lack of meaningful explanation for its sweeping booster mandate contributes to a pattern of unsettling opacity. This is a significant departure from the approach to pandemic-related restrictions during the 2020-21 academic year, when the committee made a conscious and compelling effort to justify social distancing mandates, gathering limits, mask mandates and other such restrictions, often citing specific, measurable data such as case counts and isolation and quarantine capacity in weekly email updates to the W&L community.

Rather than reassure the student body that a third jab is indeed necessary for our health and safety, the committee pointed to broad new guidance from the CDC that requires “close contacts who are unvaccinated, or who are fully vaccinated but not boosted, to quarantine.” As a result of adhering to this new guidance, the committee feared that “requiring close contacts who are not boosted to quarantine could put a significant strain on the university’s isolation and quarantine space, as well as on our COVID Care resources.”

Putting aside issues with the university’s severely inadequate isolation and quarantine capacity, the new CDC guidance is tailored to a specific audience: the entire population of the United States of America. We, the W&L community, enjoy a rate of vaccination higher than virtually every country and locality in the world. Over 98% of undergraduates and 95% of employees were fully vaccinated on December 29, when the booster mandate was announced, and the remainder have been approved for medical or religious exemptions. If America as a whole enjoyed such stellar vaccination rates, it is reasonable to assume that CDC guidance would be materially different. Indeed, the COVID-19 Committee had a third, entirely reasonable course of action under the guidance relied upon to justify its booster mandate: refuse to embrace useless quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated (but not boosted) individuals on a fully vaccinated college campus.

The COVID-19 Committee has exhibited a growing apathy to full transparency and comprehensive justification for its increasingly indefensible restrictions and mandates. What were once weekly emails updating the student body on Covid transmission and new developments on campus have devolved into twice-monthly, dry, and woefully incomplete notices. The committee’s “Covid Office Hours,” held weekly last year to address student concerns, are long gone; today, a simple email requesting clarification on a given policy will more than likely go unanswered, even after several follow-ups.

The stunningly scant communication over the booster mandate reveals a detached committee that has abandoned any pretense of adequately rationalizing a set of restrictions that grows less and less relevant by the day. And in a marked divergence from the imposition of the original vaccination requirement, which President Dudley personally announced and justified on May 21, even the leader of our university has grown oddly silent. In the same spirit as his increasingly distant COVID-19 Committee, Mr. Dudley has yet to write a single word on the practicality of the booster mandate.

The COVID-19 Committee should take a hard look at its purported commitment to transparency and proper communication with the members of the W&L. Its complete incompetence and disregard for their constituents’ concerns over the last several months is nothing short of disgraceful.