The board that oversees Mississippi’s universities and colleges rejected calls for a campus vaccine mandate this afternoon, with seven of the board’s nine members agreeing only to “strongly encourage” vaccines during a socially distanced Zoom meeting.
The two physicians on The Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning provided the only dissenting votes after urging their fellow trustees to support a vaccine requirement.
“We’re not here to debate vaccine versus no vaccine. We’re here to discuss encouraging versus mandating the vaccine and to provide some direction to our universities,” IHL Board of Trustees President Dr. J. Walt Starr said at the beginning of the meeting.
