My name is Adam Rizzoli, and I am a student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, part of the Washington, DC metro area. I am one of thousands of terrified students from our public health policy being hijacked by politicians without our consent or consultation.

On January 28th, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares issued a legal opinion to Governor Youngkin stating that state universities in VA cannot require vaccinations for COVID-19. 

Three days later, Virginia’s 4 largest public universities, George Mason (GMU), Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and University of Virginia (UVA) announced that they ended vaccine mandates. 

This is a dangerous health policy! Tens of thousands of students attend each of these universities learning and live in close proximity to one another. 

Before the vaccine, life was horrible for students. Classes were completely online and when we returned to in-person learning, COVID devastated our community. Students lost weeks of their lives in quarantine and a few are still suffering from long term health issues. A close friend of mine even developed brain damage from COVID.

Stopping this virus from needlessly destroying more lives must be our top priority. We have vaccine mandates for other diseases like measles, mumps, and seven others. But Virginia’s elected officials don’t agree with having a vaccine mandate for a disease that is actively rampaging through our country.

The former vaccine mandate worked. We had extremely high vaccination rates before 2022 and had very few cases of COVID as a result. Now that there is no longer a mandate, many students are not getting their boosters. A Harvard study found that 2 vaccine doses are not enough to work against the Omicron variant.  

Lives are on the line here. There are immunocompromised students who can't get the vaccine. COVID is deadly to these students.

GMU has a high number of commuter students who could potentially transmit COVID to immunocompromised, elderly, and disabled family members in the home.  Students are not the only ones at risk.

Don’t let COVID hurt more people. Please sign this petition and share with your friends if you think public universities should be allowed to continue our vaccine mandates.

The Harvard study for those more interested in the science.