PROVIDENCE – In a letter to students, parents and guardians, Providence College President Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard on Thursday said all full-time undergraduate and graduate students must be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 this summer in order to return to the Dominican friar college in the fall.
All full-time undergraduate and graduate students must be fully vaccinated and provide proof of such by Aug. 9 in order to return to campus, according to PC’s COVID-19 FAQ page. The full-time students must upload their vaccination card images to a college-secured database.
PC is the third local college to institute a summer deadline for students returning in the fall to be vaccinated. The others are the University of Rhode Island and Brown University.
URI, the lone Rhode Island state-run college to date to require students to be vaccinated before the fall, is mandating its students to be fully vaccinated by Aug. 16 in order to return to campus.
Of the three, Brown is the only one requiring staff to follow a similar mandate.
PC did not mention staff in its news release and URI says it is only encouraging staff to get vaccinated.
In addition to requiring its students to be fully vaccinated, Brown is also mandating all of its employees to be fully vaccinated by July 1.
Other local colleges requiring students to be vaccinated before the fall are Roger Williams University, Johnson & Wales University, the New England Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Wheaton College.
PC also said students who are living or working on campus during the summer months are required by June 28 to document full vaccination. Unvaccinated students living or working on campus during the summer are required to participate in weekly testing on Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to noon until two weeks have passed since their final vaccination dose, the college said.
Sicard wrote that PC officials have spent weeks looking over various considerations and discussed this matter with state health officials leading up to deciding to require full-time students to be vaccinated.
“Science has given us, by the grace of God, the vaccines that make it possible for us to achieve both those goals. With our students vaccinated, we will be able to return to on-campus living and learning much like it was before the pandemic,” Sicard wrote.
Sicard also said that PC will consider medical and religious exemptions for those who wish to not get vaccinated. The college’s Division of Student Affairs will follow up with additional exemption details in the coming weeks, Sicard said.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
