Rhodes College student pushes back on school's plan to charge $1,500 fee to unvaccinated students

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Dietwin Smoli: ‘There is no need to impose vaccine mandates on young people’

Campus Reform correspondent Dietwin Smoli on Rhodes College charging $1500 fee for unvaccinated students returning to campus.

Campus Reform correspondent Dietwin Smoli told "Fox & Friends" on Thursday that his school, Rhodes College, should not charge a $1,500 fee for unvaccinated students returning to campus.

"That's something that is definitely going to impact the community and Rhodes is not the only school doing that," Smoli said. 

Smoli said that he got vaccinated because he has "vulnerable" family members and his dad is turning 79. 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BACKTRACKS, NOW SAYS COVID-19 VACCINES WILL BE MANDATORY THIS FALL

According to FOX 13 Memphis, students returning to Rhodes College campus who have not received a COVID-19 vaccine will be charged a $1,500 fee per semester. According to a release from the private college, unvaccinated students will be charged a Health & Safety fee to cover the costs of the mandatory COVID testing that they would have to undergo.

Students are allowed the option of submitting requests for medical or religious exemptions from the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the University of California system will now require all of its students and staff who want to return to campus this fall to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Regent Eloy Oritz Oakley told the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday that UC President Michael Drake "does plan to move forward with the vaccine mandate."

It's an about-face for the school system, which has 280,000 students and 227,000 faculty and staff across 10 campuses. 

The FDA has so far issued an emergency use authorization for three vaccines made by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson. It's unclear when the vaccines will get full approval. Pfizer applied for full authorization of their vaccine on May 7, while Moderna applied for full authorization on June 1. 

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Smoli said that Campus Reform "has been following a list of over 100 colleges that are planning to announce that they would require the vaccines from students that want to return in the fall."

"People shouldn't have to choose between higher education and to participate in a clinical trial," Smoli said.

"Taking a vaccine is a personal decision, and the fact is that people my age are way less likely to contract serious cases of COVID-19, let alone be hospitalized and die from it. So there's no need to impose vaccine mandates on young people, especially when the alternative imposes a hefty amount of money that most college students, lets be real, don't have access to."

Fox News' Paul Best contributed to this report.