Hundreds of Western University students, along with their parents and former faculty, have begun their protest against the institution’s sudden, discriminatory, and wholly unnecessary vaccine mandate.
Speaking with Maverick Multimedia, one organizer of the event, Hannah, said, “This year, students are really upset, and they are seeing that you don’t have to wear a mask anywhere pretty well now, you don’t have to get the vaccine, you don’t have to show proof, but you have to do that at Western in order to continue your schooling. And they also announced it after we had to pay our tuition. So that especially makes students upset.”
While Western University has since stated that they would refund any students who refuse to comply with their mandate, many are still distraught over the vaccine mandate and the fact it was announced just weeks before the Fall semester.
Moreover, the university has not offered a full refund for courses taken in previous years. While such courses could go towards a degree at another institution, there’s no guarantee that students will be accepted at another institution — potentially rendering their previously completed courses utterly useless — nor will their application fees be covered by WesternU.
Hannah continues, saying that students weren’t consulted on the vaccine mandate last year and weren’t consulted this year either.
“We’re hoping that Western will listen to us,” Hannah explains, “that we’ll be able to have consultations with the USC. They’re starting to want feedback from us now as students. So, we’ve been giving them a ton of feedback. Students have been writing and saying that we’re not okay with being forced to violate our bodily autonomy in order to have an education, and we’re hoping that Western’s going to back down and listen to us and follow suit with all the other universities and colleges.”
Expected to speak later in the day is former Western University professor and ethics scholar Julie Ponesse.
She’s previously spoken out and even taught a lecture on “the ethics of coerced vaccination.” Unsurprisingly, it was her last lecture, and Western University promptly fired her. Go figure. An ethics professor fired for discussing an ethical dilemma that’s plagued billions of people around the world as it was happening in real-time.
While WesternU hasn’t budged on its mandate yet, they have acknowledged that the protest is peaceful and have refrained from spreading misinformation or misconstruing the actions of students with any potential bad actors, as was seen with the Freedom Convoy protests.
So far, there have been no violent or hateful incidents nor any indication that the protest could become unpeaceful.
