Login
A group of Indiana University (IU) students, parents and staff will hold a “Rally for Medical Freedom” on Thursday, June 10 to demand officials immediately retract the university’s COVID vaccine mandate and drop all mask requirements and COVID mitigation testing.
The rally will take place at 1 p.m. ET during the board of trustees meeting, in front of Sample Gates on the IU-Bloomington campus.
On May 21, IU announced a new policy requiring all students, faculty and staff to get the COVID vaccine, claiming the vaccine mandate is necessary for the university to return to in-person classes.
Under the mandate policy, exemptions will be “strictly limited” to a “very narrow set of criteria” to include medical exemptions and “documented and significant religious exemptions,” the university said.
Students, faculty and staff will be required to upload a photo or a scan showing proof of vaccination. Staff who don’t comply with the mandate will be fired. Students and others who don’t get the vaccine will face canceled classes, and have their email accounts and pay cards (Crimson Cards) cut off.
IU students, parents and long-time employees opposed to the mandate organized IU Family for Choice, not Mandates, Inc., and hired First Amendment lawyer Jim Bopp, an IU graduate, to represent them.
To encourage students and staff to get the vaccine, IU is offering incentives, including raffling off Apple Watches and AirPods, free tuition and Indiana Colts tickets.
Kari Bundy of Children’s Health Defense will be one of the featured speakers at tomorrow’s rally, along with former Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate, Lucy Brenton; Ann Dorris, president of The IU Family for Choice Not Mandates; Margaret Menge, candidate for the IU Board of Trustees; and former nursing home employee Shawn (Skelton) Vidiella of southern Indiana, who reported a serious reaction to the vaccine.
Children’s Health Defense will livestream the rally starting at about 12:45 p.m. ET. For more information, including where to find a link to the livestream of the protest, visit Families4Choice.org.
Here’s how to support IU Family for Choice, not Mandates:
- Attend the June 10 rally in Bloomington and help spread the word about it.
- Call your legislators and ask them to pass a law explicitly forbidding public universities from mandating any medical procedure, medicine, medical test, prophylactic or vaccine.
- Email the IU board of trustees at bdot@iu.edu and ask them to immediately retract the vaccine mandate and allow all students and staff to make their own health medical decisions.
- Run for state legislature and help write new laws that protect medical freedom.
