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A university official said Tuesday that Virginia Tech kicked out more than 100 students who didn’t show proof of vaccinations before the fall semester started. This makes Virginia Tech the second college in the state to crack down on people who don’t follow strict rules.
Mark Owczarski, the associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, told Fox8 that 134 students were kicked out of school because they didn’t show proof of vaccinations or get a medical or religious exemption before the first day of classes on August 23.
Owczarski said that the university “doesn’t know if any of these students weren’t going to come back for reasons other than the requirement to get the COVID-19 vaccine,” since some students drop out every year for reasons that are out of their control.
The university tried to get in touch with these students about the requirement, which was made public in June. Owczarski said that they would be welcome back if they could show proof that they had been vaccinated.
Virginia tech disenrolls 134 unvaccinated students:
About 95% of Virginia Tech’s 37,000 students have been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a dashboard run by the school. The same is true for 88% of university employees, who have until October 1 to meet a requirement set earlier this month.
So far, only 31 students and one worker out of more than 2,000 tests have come back positive for the virus.
SURPRISING FACT
About 0.4% of Virginia Tech’s students were kicked out because they didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine as required. The Roanoke Times used average cost estimates to figure out that they could also cost between $2 million and $3 million in undergraduate in-state tuition, room, and board.
Virginia Tech seems to be ahead of the curve when it comes to enforcing its rules. It comes after the University of Virginia (UVA) said two weeks ago that it had kicked out more than 200 students who didn’t get the required vaccines, including 49 who were signed up for fall classes. “A good number” may not have planned to go back to school at all this fall, said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the school. Some smaller colleges, like Xavier University in Louisiana, seem to have started dropping students, but they haven’t released full numbers yet.
What to keep an eye on
Colleges are likely to make more announcements in the next few weeks since many of them seem to have set their deadlines for meeting vaccine requirements for early September. For example, Montclair State University in New Jersey said last week that about 480 students were at risk of being kicked out of school because of a deadline on September 2. Hundreds of colleges in the U.S. require COVID-19 shots right now.
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