Cal Poly’s booster mandate goes too far

December 23, 2021

OPINION by BEN DI GUGLIELMO

In another step signaling the university’s commitment to endless COVID-19 mandates, California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo has officially required that all eligible students, staff, and faculty take a booster shot, or else be considered “unvaccinated.”

At 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 22, Cal Poly sent a university-wide email addressing the updated COVID policy going into winter quarter. The email stated that, contrary to many public universities in California, Cal Poly will not begin the winter quarter in an online format, and instead will carry on with in person classes and an updated COVID policy. Rather than teaching remote, the new policy will require that all eligible students take a booster shot.

Besides increasing Pfizer’s market cap, the booster shot requirement seems to serve very few purposes. The university cites the “Omicron” variant as the reason for the updated policy, despite the fact that by all available evidence the Omicron variant is no more severe, and is likely less deadly than the Delta variant.

So why, in the absence of a more severe or deadly strain of COVID, is Cal Poly mandating that students take three shots within a single year for a disease that poses very little risk for young and healthy people? Cal Poly claims that students must take their booster shots in order to “protect their community,” despite the fact that the evidence of vaccines slowing community transmission is inconclusive at best.

So when does it end?

If Cal Poly needs so little scientific evidence to mandate yet another shot, is there any point where the mandates will stop? Or will it become the case that in order to attend this university you need to take three vaccines every single year for a virus that poses very little threat to the young and healthy? Will a student who enters Cal Poly as a freshman have to get a total of 12 COVID shots in order to graduate? Will a professor who works at Cal Poly his entire life have to take 120 COVID shots to finish his career?

This policy is an obvious misstep, the students and faculty are smart enough to see the writing on the wall, the booster mandates will never end. According to the email, as of Jan. 20, 80% of all students will be considered “unvaccinated” if they do not take a booster shot before then. This will continue indefinitely. No student, staff, or faculty member, will ever be longer than sic months away from being considered “unvaccinated.” Everyone who did what they were supposed to by getting their two shots will be “unvaccinated” if they refuse to get a third. Everyone who does what they are supposed to by getting three shots will be “unvaccinated” if they refuse to get a fourth, or a fifth, tenth, twentieth, or hundredth shot.

No student will be more than six months away from potentially being barred from campus, and no staff or faculty member will ever be more than six months away from potentially losing their job. This is the world of unscientific and barbaric vaccine mandates.

Ben Di Guglielmo, 18, is an incoming freshman at Cal Poly. Di Guglielmo grew up in Riverside and graduated from Riverside Polytechnic High School earlier this year.