Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Amandalina Letterio

Thompson Rivers University

TRU asks for vaccine status, regular testing of those unvaccinated

Aug 27, 2021 | 4:10 PM

KAMLOOPS — Several universities across the province will require all students, faculty and staff to self-disclose their vaccination status, while those unvaccinated will be tested regularly — and Thompson Rivers University (TRU) is one of them.

TRU Associate Law Professor Katie Sykes, wrote a letter to the university pushing for this.

“[I] am not comfortable with requiring people to come and sit in class, in very large numbers, very close together – and they’re doing it all day,” said Sykes.

For those not yet vaccinated, TRU will require regular rapid COVID-19 testing, which will be available on campus. Sykes says she would like to see even more measures eventually put in place.

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“What I think of as a hard mandate is that you must be vaccinated, except for limited exceptions and documented exceptions,” she explained.

Students, staff and faculty members were sent an email about the changes, but it was unclear if vaccination status will be confidential or if that information will be shared with the professors about their classes.

“There’s a lot of questions around what this is going to actually mean for people who are unvaccinated, how often you’ll have to be tested, what it is actually going to look like for us to disclose our vaccination status,” said Tara Lyster, President of the TRU Faculty Association.

The majority of faculty and support staff are for the new protocols, but both want clarity.

“It’s definitely a bigger issue for them to have to be tested. And in some cases there’s a concern, ‘does it violate my right to have to be tested all the time?'” added Lois Rugg, President of the TRU support staff union.

During the school year, 10 thousand students walk through the busy halls and classrooms of TRU. Most students say they don’t mind sharing their vaccine status:

“We’re nursing students, we’re working with vulnerable populations so if that means keeping us and anybody we’re working with safe, then I’m all for it,” a nursing student told CFJC News.

“Whatever we need to do to be able to come to campus, right? It’s okay,” said another TRU student.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Because after one and a half years, the university is going to open so there is going to be more opportunities for us,” explained one man.

Sykes recognizes the university is doing everything it can, but she might exercise her own layer of protection.

“My kind of default plan was that I would the teach classes online, and I may still do that for the first couple of weeks or few weeks until we have a better sense of how safe things are,” Sykes said.