Last week, St. Joe’s embraced a return to “normalcy” by suspending the covid-19 vaccine requirement for faculty, staff and students. Eliminating the vaccine requirement sends a very clear message to our community that the vulnerable are not worth protecting. This ableist message saddens me.
Simply defined, ableism means creating spaces that are accessible and comfortable to able-bodied people without considering the visible and invisible disabilities that many in our community carry. As a Jesuit university, we are called to have a preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. When we see each other on campus, we do not necessarily know which of us are vulnerable to severe disease from covid, but if we are vaccinated, we know that we are doing our part to include people with disabilities, chronic illnesses or other vulnerabilities.
The inconvenience of a shot is minor when it may protect someone’s health or life. Requiring the covid vaccine, like the meningitis vaccine that the university already requires, demonstrates our commitment to our community and upholds our commitments to one another. The vaccine requirement at least acknowledged the vulnerability of the immunocompromised. Changing St. Joe’s policy by eliminating the vaccine requirement creates an additional — and unnecessary — risk for some of the most fragile members of our community.
Eliminating the covid vaccine requirement shows a disregard to those among us who are immunocompromised or who have family members who are immunocompromised. Without a vaccine requirement, we fail to address what the Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., called “the actual world as it unjustly exists.”
The actual world includes the immunocompromised and their families. In July of 2020, my mother died of complications from covid. Because there was no covid vaccine at that time, between March and July of 2020, we had one face-to-face visit with her through a window on Mother’s Day. The vaccine came too late for Mom, and it seems incredibly foolish not to continue to recognize the unknowns of covid and to take what protections we can. Covid remains one of the largest causes of death in the United States.
As a service-learning teacher, I try to model Jesuit principles in each course that I teach. It is important to me that my teaching be as equitable and just as possible in order to model Jesuit values. If we believe in our university branding and are “people with and for others,” then we need to stand with the “others” who are vulnerable to disease. “People with and for others” should be more than a slogan, it should be a commitment to keeping everyone safe.