Students at the University of Bath in Somerset in Southern England are being given different colored wristbands to wear in order to enter university events to show whether they are vaccinated against COVID-19 or not.
Parents are referring to the wristband as a form of vaccine passport and are upset that students are being segregated due to their vaccination status.
On the website for their wristband, Bath claims, “If government policy changes around this issue, we will update our website and social media channels to inform you of any changes.”
But government policy in England is that domestic vaccine passports will not be used. “I’m pleased to say that we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports,” Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced on September 12.
The idea for vaccine passports was nixed in England by parties across the political spectrum.
In order to receive what the university refers to as a “fast track” wristband, students will need to produce a valid U.K. NHS Travel Covid Pass or an EU Digital COVID Certificate. Those without such wristbands will be segregated and forced to stand in lines to be screened for COVID-19 symptoms before being allowed into events or clubs on campus.
Parents are aghast that their children’s private medical information will be on display for all to see.
“We are worried that some universities appear to have implemented what amounts to a vaccine passport via stealth,” said the director of parents group UsForThem, Arabella Skinner.
“The idea of making students display their private medical information in such a public way is unacceptable,” Skinner said. “This echoes examples of discrimination we have seen in schools through the pandemic and raises concerns of a two-tier system for students to access education.”
A spokesperson for Bath defended the wristband segregation, claiming that it makes everything safer. “Fast-track wristband has been the overwhelmingly popular choice with our students,” and helped Bath with “running safe events’.”
According to the university, the dual wristband decision was mostly about money.
“We understand this isn’t an ideal situation, so we want to take the opportunity to tell you why we’ve made this decision,” the university’s website explains. “The [Student Union] is a registered charity, and we rely on donations and income from places like our bars … without these essential avenues of income, due to the pandemic, we’re having to be a bit more careful with our funding.”
The university does promise to reinvest all funds raised from the wristbands into “freshers” (incoming students) events in the future.
Bath is not alone among English schools in using stealth vaccine passports.
At Sheffield University, students are forced to show a COVID pass to enter student events, while Cambridge and two of the colleges at Oxford are pressing students to disclose their COVID vaccination status to staff.
At Cambridge, the senior pro-vice chancellor for education, Professor Graham Virgo, has e-mailed all students and asked for their vaccination status in a survey to help “assess risk in different contexts” and “plan outbreak control measures.”
“The higher the rate of vaccination, the less onerous the control measures for everyone,” Virgo wrote in a sentence that sounds vaguely like a threat.
In all, at least nine university student unions across England are asking students to produce some form of COVID passport despite the English government’s decision not to institute such a rule.
It’s nothing less than a form of segregation. Instead of race or gender or any of the usual forms of segregation that have occurred throughout the years, this segregation is based on obedience. If you obey the government’s dictates like a good citizen, you get benefits for that. If you don’t obey, you must stand in long lines and be looked down upon by others while you wait for the scraps.
Sounds a lot like the way the Soviet Union used to distribute bread to the proletariat.
