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This Fall Rutgers University says it will require its students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Can it legally do that? That is the question that leads off today's show. Rutgers is based in the state of New Jersey.
It's a large school. It has three main campuses and enrolls more than 70,000 students in all and it's one of the first American universities to announce that most of those students will need a coronavirus vaccine come Fall semester. There are exceptions to this rule.
Rutgers says students can request an exemption, permission to attend without getting the vaccine, for religious or medical reasons and the rule won't apply at all to students who attend online without actually settingfoot on Rutgers campuses.
But the rest of those who do will have to show proof they've been vaccinated. At this point Rutgers faculty is not required to get the vaccines though they are strongly encouraged to do so. Everyone on campus still has to participate in Rutgers COVID testing programs and everyone is still required to wear masks and keep their distance from one another on campus.
The university says the decisions are in support of its commitment to health and safety for all members of its community but it is a change from earlier this year when a senior chancellor said that in line with Rutgers stance on protecting human liberties, the vaccine was not mandatory. Most colleges require students to have certain vaccines before they can attend classes.
What's different about the coronavirus vaccines it that they haven't been formally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The three vaccines that Americans can get are authorized for emergency use. And the FDA says people have to be informed that they may either accept or refuse the drugs.
That's where experts say it's not clear if Rutgers or any organization can legally require people to be vaccinated. Some say that people's choice whether or not to get a vaccine needs to be protected. Others say that courts will probably side with employers or states that require the vaccine but that it's been argued in the past that the drugs are still experimental and should not be required. So there's a lot of uncertainty about the future of coronavirus vaccine requirements on or off campus.
Parts of middle Tennessee are struggling to recover from deadly flash flooding that started last weekend. Severe storms that rolled over the state on Saturday triggered a flash flood emergency. Some places got five to nine inches of rain. That's more than Tennessee usually gets in the entire month of March. The forecast calls for another inch to an inch and a half of rain tomorrow.
That's normally no big deal according to the National Weather Service but because the state is so waterlogged now, the additional precipitation could further swell rivers, set a new record for rainfall and trigger additional flash flooding.
