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Berkshire Community College sets vaccination mandate deadline for students

Two wings of a concrete complex meet in a quad.
State of Massachusetts
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https://www.mass.gov/

Berkshire Community College says students attending in-person classes on its campuses around the county must be vaccine against COVID-19 by January 3rd. BCC, based in Pittsfield with an enrollment of around 1,400, is one of 15 community colleges in Massachusetts, all of which have adopted vaccine mandates for the coming semester. WAMC spoke with Dean of Students Celia Norcross about how the college plans to implement the mandate.

NORCROSS: The community colleges have come together and they've created a mandate that requires all students that are taking any in-person classes, or any in-person functions, to be fully vaccinated by this January 2022. So that would include, again, any students that are attending a class in-person or maybe are coming to use facilities or using the different resources on campus in person. So our remote, fully remote students do not have that requirement. It's for our in-person students at this time.

WAMC: There’ve been concerns throughout the pandemic about possible inequities in imposing vaccine mandates on communities. At this point, is BCC confident that a vaccine mandate for students is not going to inequitably impact different groups of the community?

So at this time, anyone who has a concern is welcome to call the office, and we talk through everybody's individual circumstances and situations. And we have a number of different resources listed on our website, as well as with our community health partners to walk through anyone who might feel like they don't have access to the vaccination.

Now, as far as actually carrying out the mandate, what is this going to look like on the BCC campuses where students are going to have to show evidence of having received the vaccine?

So at the moment, the students are required to upload their vaccination information and a copy or an image of their actual card or notice from the doctor's office. Most of them are cards at this point. So they would come up onto our website, load up that information. We then take it and put it internally into our database to have it sit in the place where we can double check and triple check all of the information and have it stored electronically. So that's the process we're using at this time. If someone's unable to do that electronically, they can also just come to our office and we can do that with them here in the dean of students’ office. We can do that with them. They would bring the vaccination card, we would take a copy, and we would be able to upload that as well, just in case someone doesn't have full access to internet all the time, or is here on campus mostly and not necessarily around a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they could do that in person. So at this moment, that's what we're asking everyone to do if they've already been vaccinated, to go ahead and load that information. If they haven't yet been vaccinated, they can reach out to our office and we can make some, again, conversations and plans about how to help them do so and use all of our community partners to get that that vaccination requirement met.

I wanted to double back to the question about reasonable accommodations. I'm going to quote from the press release: “The requested accommodation must not create an undue hardship to the college nor present a direct threat to the health or safety of others in the learning and working environment.” Can you sort of break that down for me? What are the key points that would either support or hurt someone's argument that they are owed a reasonable accommodation from the vaccine?

So first, let me just note, it's really important to note that a student's education is really important to us. And with that reasonable accommodation prompt, anyone who fills out that form has a conversation with myself or the Vice President of Student Affairs, Adam Klepetar. We’re right now the two officials kind of hearing any reasonable accommodation request. So you know, again, the education is really important, and we would go through this process with them. The reasonable accommodation as it's listed is in line with ADA and OCR and it requires us to do an interactive process with the individual. And everything is so very individual, there's not one common outcome for any typical reasonable accommodation request, and this is the same as well. So we're going to talk with the student individually, find out which classes and components are being required. Obviously, if there's someone on the cusp of graduation, we're going to work to have that student complete all the requirements in a reasonable manner and fulfill that degree requirement. When we talk about undue hardship, it again, there's not a specific case, it's more individual, but it really just speaks to making sure that the college is using its resources appropriately and implacably and efficiently towards completing an educational process and not necessarily using all of its funds to fulfill one requirement- But we're going to be looking at that judiciously and being really creative on creating class components and connections to classes as we can for students to fulfill requirements.

Josh Landes has been WAMC's Berkshire Bureau Chief since February 2018, following stints at WBGO Newark and WFMU East Orange. A passionate advocate for Western Massachusetts, Landes was raised in Pittsfield and attended Hampshire College in Amherst, receiving his bachelor's in Ethnomusicology and Radio Production. His free time is spent with his cat Harry, experimental electronic music, and exploring the woods.
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