A group of Citrus College faculty delivered a petition to Superintendent/President Greg Schulz on Oct. 26 asking for Citrus College to implement a vaccine mandate for all students, faculty and staff on campus by the spring 2022 semester.
The petition was started on change.org by political science professor and Citrus College Faculty Association Treasurer Gerhard Peters. As of Oct. 29, it has been signed by 62% of full-time faculty, Peters said in an email to administration.
Peters first made the Board of Trustees aware of the petition at its Oct. 5 meeting, where he addressed the board.
Peters started the petition because numerous faculty in the social and behavioral sciences division reached out to him because they were concerned about the conditions of their classrooms without social distancing and a limited capacity for long periods of time.
Although most of the faculty is vaccinated, according to Peters, the CDC says that anyone can contract the virus and pass it along whether they have symptoms or not.
Peters was informed of many “faculty having children too young to be vaccinated,” he wrote. “Some have pre-existing medical conditions that put them at heightened risk, even if vaccinated. Some live with spouses or other extended family members with compromised immune systems.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in early October that vaccines would be mandated at all K-12 schools. California State University and University of California campuses have also mandated COVID-19 vaccines for students on campus.
“Citrus is an outlier,” Peters said. “Instead unvaccinated students can opt to take a weekly antigen test which is notoriously less reliable than PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests.”
A COVID-19 antigen test is the nasal test that detects certain proteins of the virus with results in minutes. A PCR test is the most reliable and accurate COVID-19 test which detects genetic material of the virus.
The Citrus campus is not the same without the hustle and bustle of trying to find parking and interacting with professors in class lectures, Peters said.
“Faculty wants to teach again on campus,” Peters said. “Online Zoom classes have been less than ideal, and so many of us crave the opportunity to teach again in-person. But we insist that the college administration take the necessary steps to promote health safety.”
In collaboration with dozens of faculty in trying to initiate this mandate, Peters said the whole process took less than two weeks to organize.
Many faculty are in support of this mandate, and Peters received “almost no pushback” except by a few employees that are “ideologically opposed to vaccine mandates,” Peters said.
A survey commissioned in August by the Citrus College Faculty Association said 86.4% of faculty and 87.3% of all employees want a vaccine mandate for all students and employees, Peters said.
The spring academic schedule shows that most classes at Citrus will be held on campus, but the board of trustees has not indicated whether or not they will require vaccines for everyone on campus.
The petition says “that only if the Board refuses to institute a vaccine mandate, faculty be given the option to teach their courses online during the Spring 2022 term.”
Peters said he thinks that a mandate “may increase enrollment as students will feel more confident that the college is primarily focused on public health.”
