UVA Unenrolls More Than 200 Students Over Vaccination Status

Landon Mion | August 21, 2021 1:45 PM

The University of Virginia announced Friday that it had disenrolled 238 of its students for defying the school’s requirement that "all students who live, learn, or work in person at the university" be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The students are given until August 25 to receive a COVID jab, at which time they would be permitted to re-enroll for fall classes, UVA spokesman Brian Coy told the The Washington Post. Students who wish to wait until the spring semester to return to campus must still receive their coronavirus vaccination.

More than 96 percent of students at the university have already been vaccinated after the vaccine mandate was announced in May, after which time students were sent reminders about the new policy, which required students to send in proof of vaccination by July 1. UVA attempted to contact students who had still not complied.

UVA granted permanent waivers for religious and medical exemptions to 335 students and an additional 184 who had trouble getting vaccinated but said they will receive their shots before classes begin received temporary waivers.

And while less than 1 percent of UVA students have yet to meet the vaccine requirement, Coy told The Post that only 49 of the 238 unenrolled students "had actually selected courses, meaning that a good number of the remaining 189 may not have been planning to return to the university this fall at all, regardless of our vaccination policy."

UVA's president said at a town hall earlier this month that school's "extraordinarily high vaccination rate" means that that pre-pandemic university life can resume.

"We are in a much better and much different position than we were last year, primarily because of the vaccines and the extraordinarily high vaccination rate in our community," Ryan said. "This means we can return in person to classes, activities, sporting events and research labs as we have been planning to do in the fall semester, with the residential experiences that are at the heart of this university."