As UNC nears its return to campus in a couple of weeks, employees of the university remain concerned about the university’s ability to come back safely.
The UNC Employee Forum met on Wednesday to discuss the university’s plans to return to campus and the feasibility of mandating vaccines for faculty, staff and students.
Vice Provost Bob Blouin said the discussion of mandating vaccines remains on the table but would require approval from the university system.
“We do not have that delegated authority to independently make that decision without the support and approval of the president of the system office,” Blouin said. “I am sure that there will continue to be conversations about that this week and next week.”
Even without a mandate, however, Blouin said he remains confident about the return to campus operations in the coming weeks.
“We have about 25,000 students who have attested to their vaccination status,” Blouin said. “Of those students who have attested yes, it’s right around 94 percent. So, that’s a very encouraging number.”
Attestation is the voluntary declaration of vaccination status. Blouin said more than 82 percent of faculty and 54 percent of staff said they received their vaccines.
Other major public universities like Indiana and Michigan University recently announced vaccine mandates for their campus communities ahead of the fall semester.
Both UNC’s Faculty Council and members of the Employee Forum have urged the university system to enact a mandate.
Blouin said while a vaccine mandate does not appear likely in the near future, other consequences remain on the table for the university to enact independently.
“In lieu of a vaccine mandate would be an attestation mandate. We would ask all of our students to now complete, as a condition of enrollment, their attestation as to whether or not they’ve been vaccinated or not.”
Blouin said an attestation mandate would also extend to UNC faculty and staff.
Other questions at the Employee Forum revolved around mask-wearing and the use of the Carolina Together dashboard, which is used to share COVID data with the campus and community. While these protective tools will be in place during the fall semester, Blouin said we cannot expect them to halt the spread of the virus.
“We’re going to have a lot of cases,” Blouin said. “We are starting to think about how we live with this virus. It’s not going back into the bat, I’ll tell you that.”
Ahead of the fall semester, Orange County Health Director, Quintana Stewart said she believes in UNC’s ability to adapt to the virus.
“I am not nervous about UNC and the fall semester,” Stewart said. “I feel pretty good that they’re doing all they can. I mean, we are all in this. We don’t know what the variant will do or if there’s another variant that emerges. At this point in time, I feel good about the plans that the university has in place.”
Blouin said he hopes the campus community will be close to 90 percent vaccinated by the time classes start on August 18.
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