Chelsea Zhao
Staff Writer
As of Friday, Sept. 25, 99% of students and 96% of FT employees have been vaccinated, a rate that far exceeds the Cook County vaccination rate of 60.3%.
The cumulative positive cases since the start of school year is a total of 10, including 8 students and 2 employees.
Norah Collins Pienta, dean of student, links the smooth reopening of the past month to collective community efforts.
“I’ve been quite pleased and impressed with students’ behaviors to be able to have so few cases that have been reported,” Pienta said. “And I think that’s a testament to what students is doing and their vaccination status, testing and reporting to be able to make sure we can have a safe and healthy campus community.”
Barrington Price, vice president of Student Success & Engagement (SSE), said that most of the COVID-19 cases came from unvaccinated individuals. Elizabeth Ritzman, director of the Wellness Center, confirmed that at least one vaccinated student contacted COVID-19.
According to Katy Somerfield, Advising and Student Success analyst, 80 students and 6 employees have submitted religious and medical exemption from the vaccine. According to Price, most of the exemptions are medical-related.
According to Price, as of Sept. 26, one person has yet to submit a vaccination record or medical/religious exemption form. The deadline for the submission is midnight on Sept. 24 or dismissal from the university.
According to Ritzman, family is a prominent reason of vaccination hesitancy among Dominican students.
“Some students have been in here [the Wellness Center] in tears. Because it’s so hard for them to make the right decision because they’re hearing such strong opinions from different directions,” Ritzman said. “Other students are in great distress because they want to vaccinate but their family is really opposed to it. And they want to respect and honor their family.”
Individuals who are exempt from vaccination are required to undertake weekly COVID-19 testing. According to Price, students can pick up free testing kits at the Coughlin Welcome and Information Desk (WID) and the Lewis Hall main entrance WID regardless of vaccination status.
The test is from O’Hare lab and consists of a self-swab with drop-off located near the Wellness Center.
Due to the efforts of vaccination in the DU community, Ritzman said that the Wellness Center did not check other mandatory vaccines for the class of 2024 and 2025. The other mandatory vaccine shots include measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, meningitis etc.
According to Pienta, Dominican University continues to work with John Segreti, director of the epidemiologist team at Rush to monitor the situation on campus. The threshold for moving to complete online class is 5% seven-day average of infected community members attending in-person or hybrid classes.
According to Rachel Jantz, Communications Specialist at Student Success & Engagement, the winner of the raffle for vaccination records will be announced in October. Students will be notified via their email before Oct. 19.
“We have some students that dialogue over the whole entire summer and made some really thoughtful decisions,” Price said. “So, what I see is a lot of growth and a lot of life lessons that I think our students will take from this and just how to make life decisions.”
Chelsea Zhao
Editor in Chief
