Two local legislators are protesting Indiana University’s decision to require all students and staff to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to campus this fall and have called on Gov. Eric Holcomb to intervene.
Nineteen Republican state lawmakers — including Reps. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, and Sean Eberhart, R-Shelbyville — are urging Holcomb to use his executive powers to prohibit any public university in the state from requiring vaccines that have not been fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, calling such mandates “unconscionable.”
Lucas and Eberhart each represent small portions of Bartholomew County as part of their districts.
“Nobody is disputing that COVID-19 is real, or dismissing the contributions of healthcare professionals over the past year, however, enforcing a mandate that students and faculty accept a vaccine that does not have full FDA approval is unconscionable,” said the letter, which was drafted by Lucas.
Eberhart did not return phone calls from The Republic seeking comment about signing the letter.
The letter came just days after IU officials announced that they are requiring students, faculty and staff at all campuses — including IUPUC in Columbus — to be fully vaccinated before returning for the fall semester.
Currently, three COVID-19 vaccines have received emergency use authorization from the FDA, but that’s not the same thing as a full approval.
Health experts across the country have stressed that the vaccines are safe and were held to the same “rigorous” safety and effectiveness standards as all other vaccines.
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said earlier this month that they had started the process of applying for full FDA approval of their COVID-19 vaccine.
Lucas, who said he has not been vaccinated against COVID-19, also said he is against “forcing anybody to do anything with their body” and likened IU’s policy to “social engineering.”
“That’s above and beyond the responsibility of Indiana University to be delving that far into people’s personal medical histories, especially given the fact that those vaccines are not yet fully FDA-approved,” Lucas said.
“There’s too much at stake here to allow this to continue,” Lucas added later in the interview. “It’s a slippery slope, too. Where does this end? One could almost argue this is social engineering.”
Lucas said he had not heard from Holcomb or his office regarding the letter as of Wednesday morning. The governor’s office told The Associated Press that Holcomb would review the letter after he returns today from a trip to Israel.
Eberhart did not respond to requests for comment.
On Friday, IU joined a growing number of colleges across the country that have announced that they will require COVID-19 vaccinations, even as opposition to similar mandates led Indiana legislators to prohibit the state or local governments from issuing vaccine passports, according to wire reports.
Exemptions to the IU’s vaccination requirement will be limited to “a very narrow set of criteria,” including medical reasons and documented and significant religious objections, the university said.
“Since the pandemic began more than a year ago, one of our main goals has been to make it safer to be a part of the IU community than not,” said IU President Michael A. McRobbie in a statement. “We continue to plan for an in-person fall 2021 semester and expect that we’ll return to mostly normal operations. Requiring the COVID-19 vaccine among our students, faculty and staff continues to extend the university’s comprehensive and thoughtful approach to managing and mitigating the pandemic on our campuses and brings us one step closer to making a ‘return to normal’ a reality.”
IU’s students, faculty and staff members should have their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by July 1 in order to meet the university’s requirement, according to wire reports. They will have to demonstrate that two weeks have passed since they’ve received the final vaccine dose by Aug. 15 or when they first return to campus.
Faculty and staff members who don’t meet the vaccination requirement “will no longer be able to be employed by Indiana University,” the school’s statement said.
Several private universities in Indiana, including Notre Dame, DePauw and Valparaiso, as well as other Big Ten Conference schools in other states, have announced similar COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Purdue University plans to require students and employees to either provide proof of vaccination for the fall semester or participate in frequent COVID-19 testing, according to wire reports.
Lucas said he also has asked the Indiana Attorney General’s office to look into IU’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
But if the governor and attorney general don’t take action, Lucas said “the nuclear option is we are technically still in session.”
“We can try and build support to call ourselves back into session,” Lucas said. “We did not adjourn, but we can call ourselves back into session and address this legislatively. I don’t want that. I’d like for cooler heads to prevail.”
