The University of Virginia has disenrolled 238 students for its fall semester on Friday for not complying with the university’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate, according to a university spokesperson.
UVA requires “all students who live, learn, or work in person at the university” to be fully vaccinated for the upcoming 2021-2022 academic year, according to current university Covid-19 policies.
Out of the 238 incoming Fall semester students, only 49 of them were actually enrolled in classes, and the remaining 189 “may not have been planning to return to the university this fall at all,” UVA spokesperson Brian Coy told CNN.
“Disenrolled means you’re not eligible to take courses,” Coy said. He added that students who were enrolled at the university on Wednesday still have a week to update their status at which point they can re-enroll.
About 96.6% of UVA’s student body is vaccinated, Coy said. Around 1% of students are currently unvaccinated while about 1.3% were allowed to claim religious or medical exemptions, Coy said.
“If you’re unvaccinated, we ask that you wear a mask at all times — indoors or outdoors — whenever you’re around people,” said Coy. “Anyone unvaccinated and has an exemption will have to test once a week, we’re starting once a week: That might go up.”
Unvaccinated students without exemptions were repeatedly reminded to get vaccinated between May 20 and July 1 to avoid disenrollment, Coy said.
“Students out of compliance received multiple emails, calls, text messages and — in some cases — calls to their parents. Our numbers show that our students responded to this. This means we can have the kind of in-person semester where people can engage in normal ways.”
According to the university website, two-thirds of the UVA student body is from Virginia. For the fall semester, the university says there will be around 18,000 undergraduate and about 9,000 graduate students.
