Dear President Tetlow:

We are Fordham faculty members who oppose the recently announced requirement that all faculty, students and staff receive the bivalent COVID-19 booster. University leadership surely may recommend health measures it considers advisable. But we believe that the final decision whether to receive the bivalent booster should be left to the judgment of each individual, in consultation with that individual’s physician and conscience.

The September 26th email announcing this mandate cites the CDC’s definition of “fully up to date”. But the CDC’s statements regarding COVID-19 injections are recommendations, not requirements. They do not carry the force of law. And the precedent of an initial vaccination requirement, adopted during the height of a pandemic, does not justify a permanent mandate covering an open-ended series of medical interventions for a virus that is now endemic.

Other universities recognize that the time has come to restore individual choice. Most other NYC schools, including Columbia, CUNY (Hunter, Brooklyn College, Lehman, etc.), Cooper Union, Cornell, Marymount Manhattan, The New School, NYU, Pace, Pratt, St. John’s, Touro, and Yeshiva University, are not mandating the bivalent booster, although some “recommend” or “encourage” getting it. In addition, none of the other 27 Jesuit colleges and universities in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities has included a bivalent booster mandate within their COVID-19 policies on their websites.

The CDC webpage recommending the bivalent booster does not claim that it stops transmission. Rather, the webpage states merely that boosters “are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.” Yet there are virtually thousands of available medical interventions that may reduce the risk of illness, from a wide variety of causes. Many are similarly the subject of CDC recommendations. University leadership should not have the power to convert such recommendations into requirements merely because it fears that some members of our community may fall ill if allowed to exercise their own judgment. A realm of personal medical discretion and privacy must be preserved.

For these reasons, we respectfully petition you to rescind the bivalent booster mandate.