A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Congressman Matt Rosendale who represents the Second District of Montana. His staff asked if I would support his new proposed bill called the University Forced Vaccination Student Injury Mitigation Act. In summary, the bill would require higher education institutions to pay the medical expenses for any student who was required or is currently required to take a Covid-19 vaccine to attend classes and who suffered a vaccine injury. Additionally, higher education institutions would lose all federal funds from the Department of Education if they do not comply with the legislation.
The student seeking payment of medical costs would submit a request that includes: a record of Covid-19 vaccination; a certification from a medical provider that the vaccine caused an injury or disease; and medical expenses for the student. Covered diseases include Myocarditis, Pericarditis, Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and any other diseases the Secretary of Education determines to be associated with a Covid-19 vaccine. The institution of higher education would be required to accept the request and pay the injured student within 30 days unless there is insufficient evidence to support the injury or disease, or they have found evidence that the request is fraudulent.
No College Mandates has been tracking college Covid-19 vaccine mandates for the past several years. Colleges began announcing Covid-19 vaccine mandates in April of 2021. By the summer of 2021, over 1,000 colleges and universities had announced that students would be required to take these vaccines prior to fall enrollment. By December of 2021, nearly 300 of those colleges announced they would mandate a booster shot for spring enrollment even though it had become abundantly clear that the vaccines did not prevent transmission or infection. Even so, the colleges continued to peddle the propaganda that vaccination was the best way to protect the community. In fact, some of them still do.
At this time, 17 colleges and universities still have Covid-19 mandates for the general population of students to enroll for the upcoming semester or to live in residential housing. Healthcare students are still largely required to take updated Covid-19 vaccines either under a mandate from their college healthcare program or the clinical partner that partners with their program.
While all remaining college Covid-19 vaccine mandates are irrational, dangerous, and arguably criminal, some are even more egregious than others. For example, there is a consortium of colleges in California called The Claremont Colleges. The Claremont Colleges include five undergraduate liberal arts colleges and two graduate colleges. The campuses are small and connected, and the students share classrooms, dining halls, and one common student health center across all campuses.
In other words, other than the colleges they were accepted into, there is not much that separates the student’s day-to-day life at the different colleges. That is unless you review the frequently asked questions under their entrance health requirements tab where you will find only one of the seven colleges, Pitzer College, requires “seasonal Covid-19 vaccines due annually by October 31”.
It remains unclear who granted colleges the right to control students’ bodily autonomy and informed consent when they imposed Covid-19 vaccine mandates or what possessed the students to fall in line with their policies that were based neither on sound science nor ethical principles which colleges so proudly purport to defend in their mission statements.
Quite simply, as the whole world went blind to common sense or scientific inquiry to justify extremely oppressive policies, college administrators were at the top of the machine that both created these coercive policies and facilitated their rollout, acting as if their policies would end the pandemic when they knew no such thing was possible.
College administrators also knew from early data and their own internal tracking systems (most of which have been removed from college websites) that college students were at zero risk for severe injury or death from the Covid-19 virus. Millions of college students were infected and reinfected with the virus, but you’d be hard-pressed to find college students who suffered from severe illness or who died from it.
College administrators knew their students never needed these vaccines. I have never once bought into the claims that they did the best they could with what they knew at the time. Their insane policies persisted no matter how many times No College Mandates put them on notice that the data didn’t support their policies, that injuries and deaths had resulted and will continue to result from their coercive policies, and that one day they would be held liable.
So yes, it is past time to hold these colleges responsible for the injuries their policies caused. Without such accountability, college students and their families have no other recourse. This never had to happen. Every college student must retain the right to decide what medical treatments to receive based on consultation with their doctor, entirely free from coercion.
I am thrilled to support the proposed legislation, but I have also expressed concerns with it. The bill seems to conflict with The Prep Act as colleges and universities are considered “covered persons,” and therefore immune from liability. I am unclear how this bill (if approved) would supersede that Act.
Also, after consulting doctors who are treating the vaccine-injured, I hope the list of covered diseases would be expanded, and the Secretary of Education should not be the office that determines if the injury or disease resulted from Covid-19 vaccination. However, I have been assured that Representative Rosendale is open to amending the bill in the coming weeks to make it the most complete and effective. Most importantly, I have been informed that the bill is getting tremendous early support.
The public is waking up to the sham of the Covid-19 pandemic and the harm that resulted from universal vaccination policies especially for those least at risk to develop serious illness or death from the virus. There have been few wins for college students that were stripped of their fundamental right to bodily autonomy, but the fight for justice continues, and it finally feels like justice might be on its way.
