SANTA FE – Universities and colleges across New Mexico appear to be getting COVID-19 shots to young people at higher rates than the general public.
With and without vaccine mandates, leaders colleges and universities say they’re on track to increasing vaccination rates on the state’s campuses to levels far higher than their surrounding communities.
The state’s largest public universities announced vaccine mandates last week, requiring virtually all students and staff members to be vaccinated by the end of September, a few weeks into the fall semester.
The University of New Mexico system, the state’s largest, said it has already vaccinated 48% of students, higher than the state average for the 18 to 24 age group, which is 42%.
People traveling to campus who opt out through medical or religious exemptions must undergo regular COVID-19 testing.
In the state’s rural, conservative southeast, one Christian college says it’s having success vaccinating students without a mandate.
“I suspect we’ll probably be 80% to 90% vaccinated by the time the term starts,” said University of the Southwest Dean Ryan Tipton.
That’s an ambitious goal in Lea County, where the college is located and where the adult vaccination rate stands at 43%.
About half of the campus’ approximately 375 students were vaccinated by the end of the spring term, after being driven to clinics in groups of 20, Tipton said.
He said athletes were the first to line up for vaccines because of the perk of competing without wearing masks. Students who share dorm rooms are also required to be vaccinated, meaning they must do so if they do not want to pay for more expensive single dorm rooms.
Many incoming freshmen are reporting that they have already been vaccinated, Tipton said.
Larger universities are turning to mandates, as they try to vaccinate students by the thousands.
“We are about to put 20,000 people in a blender and some of them are not going to be vaccinated without this policy,” University of New Mexico regent William Payne recently said. He joined a unanimous vote by the university system's board of regents approving vaccination mandate.
New Mexico State University, centered in Las Cruces, followed suit.
St. Johns College, a small private college in Santa Fe, will also require all returning students to be vaccinated, with exceptions for specific health conditions and sincerely held religious beliefs, said a college spokesperson, Mike O’Connor.
Highlands University, in Las Vegas, has not yet announced a plan. Officials at the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology met to discuss COVID-19 measures Monday.
