University Employees Fired After Asking Texas Students About Vax Status
‘NO DISCUSSION’
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty
Two employees working for a Lamar University program in Texas were reportedly terminated after inquiring if the students had been vaccinated against the coronavirus. Counselor Karen Corwin and student services coordinator Bruce Hodge, who have worked for the program since 2005 and 2013, respectively, told The Washington Post they had been given little guidance on any of the college’s COVID-19 protocols for the fall. The pair conceived the idea of handing the students blue declaration slips, asking if they’d been or planned to be jabbed. The slip was not out of line with the rest of the “voluminous” amount of medical information provided to the program by parents, Hodge said. “Not a single student balked when we gave it to them,” he added.
The university dean, however, was “peeved.” Corwin and Hodge were called into a number of meetings where she expressed her displeasure with the blue slips, and an associate provost and the campus’ chief of police came to collect the papers a few days later. The pair were fired on Sept. 13. “There was no discussion,” Corwin said. “There was nothing.” They were given no official explanation, but Corwin told the Post she didn’t “have to be a super-detective” to figure out why they’d been fired.