Central Michigan University will start prize drawings to encourage students to get vaccinated against COVID-19, university president Bob Davies announced Monday. The prizes will include four full scholarships and hundreds of gift cards.
"Keeping our university community safe and healthy has been — and remains — CMU’s top priority," Davies said.
"Vaccines are a safe, effective way for us to protect ourselves and others, and so we have made it our goal to educate and encourage our students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated," the university president continued.
CMU is in Isabella County, where data from the state health department shows less than a quarter of the 16-to-29-year-old population is vaccinated.
“That’s a really low percentage of that population,” said Jennifer DeHaemers, the university’s vice president for student recruitment and retention.
DeHaemers said university administrators didn’t want to require vaccination, but they did want to encourage it. “What we’re hoping for is that … a lot more people get the vaccine.”
DeHaemers says federal guidance doesn’t call for vaccine mandates, so the university won’t either.
“That’s really a personal medical decision between an individual and their doctor. We’re just not -- we don’t feel like it’s appropriate for us to mandate that,” she said.
Still, the university’s policy could shift if the pandemic situation worsens locally, said DeHaemers. “We consider all the CDC guidelines, all the medical information that’s out there. Every decision we make could possibly change based on what’s happening on the ground.”
At least five colleges in Michigan are requiring students to be vaccinated to live on campus. Others, like CMU, are running incentive programs, and some are still deciding what their policies will be.