Santa Clara University Students Must Take COVID Vaccines or Withdraw
Health Viewpoints
College COVID vaccine mandates remain some of the most coercive mandates ever declared. While most colleges have rescinded their mandates, some refuse to let go, and Santa Clara University (SCU) in California is one of the most oppressive.
In late April 2021, after most incoming freshmen had committed, SCU announced that all students were required to get COVID vaccines for fall enrollment or after full approval, whichever was later.
Then by mid-summer, SCU announced that students would be required to receive the vaccine even if it remained authorized only for emergencies (EUA) and even though the CA Health and Safety Code codifies the Nuremberg Code. Section 24172 states:
“There is, and will continue to be, a growing need for protection for citizens of the state from unauthorized, needless, hazardous, or negligently performed medical experiments on human beings. It is, therefore, the intent of the Legislature, in the enacting of this chapter, to provide minimum statutory protection for the citizens of this state with regard to human experimentation and to provide penalties for those who violate such provisions.”
SCU (and many other CA colleges and universities) directly violate this code for removing informed consent by mandating EUA medical treatments.
Despite the lack of efficacy or adequate safety data for this overwhelmingly healthy young adult population, in December 2021, SCU mandated the booster midway through the academic year, when students would have no choice but to comply or leave tens of thousands of dollars behind. SCU’s three-dose requirement remained through the 2022–2023 school year.
In complete disregard for the end of the emergency declarations, in early April 2023, when most universities like nearby Stanford were announcing the end of their COVID vaccine mandates, SCU updated its requirement for incoming freshmen.
On May 8, one week after the fall 2023 enrollment deadline, SCU quietly updated its COVID vaccine policy to require one bivalent dose for incoming freshmen (but not returning students), regardless of how many COVD vaccines they had previously taken. SCU backdated this announcement to May 1, thinking no one would take notice, but in private emails from incoming students, we learned that some were furious. We encouraged them to withdraw and accept another offer.
On May 31, SCU updated its policy again. It now requires either three previously taken monovalent doses or one bivalent dose for all community members. As with the university’s previous mandates, SCU offers no religious exemptions and limited medical exemptions for students—even in the most extreme of circumstances, as explained below. Faculty and staff, however, are permitted to request exemptions.
SCU’s policy is determined by its opaque “COVID-19 team,” believed to be led by campus physician Dr. Lewis Osofsky, who also holds several positions at Santa Clara County Medical Association (SCCMA). SCCMA partners (pdf) with the Santa Clara County Public Health Department (SCCPH) to maximize COVID-19 vaccinations. Santa Clara County is one of the most vaccinated counties in the country, with more than one-third of its residents having received the bivalent booster—twice the national average—with 88.5 percent having received the primary series.
Dr. Osofsky’s positions in the SCCMA include chair of the Professional Standards and Conduct committee, tasked with promoting high ethical standards for physicians and investigating disputes involving unethical conduct. This is ironic, as Dr. Osofsky is believed to be a driving force behind SCU’s ethically indefensible mandate. Medical ethics would require, at a minimum, both transmission prevention and a proven benefit for students. An antibody increase from vaccines, with no established antibody level correlate of protection, wanes in mere weeks and cannot support the ethics of a mandate. In fact, a recent study demonstrated that the “greater the number of vaccine doses previously received, the higher the risk of COVID-19.”
It is alleged that Dr. Osofsky has improperly denied students medical exemptions. In a March 2022 lawsuit (pdf) filed against SCU, Harlow Glenn, one of the student plaintiffs, claims that she had severe adverse reactions to her primary series of COVID vaccines, including an emergency room visit due to leg paralysis and abnormal bleeding. According to the complaint, Dr. Osofsky refused to grant her a medical exemption for the required booster and actively interfered with her doctor-patient relationship by contacting her private doctors to persuade them to retract their medical exemption documentation.
Such aggressive tactics are nothing new for Dr. Osofsky, as he apparently employs them against patients in his private pediatric practice. Parents have complained in online reviews that Dr. Osofsky’s office forced vaccines and didn’t listen to their concerns. As it turns out, Blue Cross Blue Shield pays pediatricians in private practice a $40,000 bonus for every 100 patients under the age of 2 that they fully vaccinate if at least 63 percent of the patients are fully vaccinated (including the annual flu vaccine).
Dr. Osofsky’s roles with SCCMA, which is in partnership with the SCCPH, whose goal is to maximize COVID vaccination, as well as his aggressive private practice approach to vaccination, have likely played a significant role in SCU’s continued COVID vaccine mandates.
On June 14, 2023, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed their opening brief (pdf) against SCU in the Sixth Appellate District in California. SCU is expected to oppose the appeal and insist on its right to demand that students submit to EUA boosters to “protect the campus community.” Protect the community? That justification went out the window long ago when U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that the COVID vaccine did not prevent infection or transmission. Recently released documents confirmed that Ms. Walensky actually knew this information in January 2021, well before colleges announced COVID vaccination requirements.
Given that the emergency is officially over, and the shots have proven to be both ineffective and, in some cases, harmful, SCU must now more than ever defend the science and ethics behind its refusal to drop its mandates.
Without such transparency, we are left to assume that Dr. Osofsky, SCCMA, and SCCPH must be using SCU students as mere pawns to achieve their unscientific and authoritarian vaccination goals and quotas.
From the Brownstone Institute
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