UW System campuses doing federal contract work have an extra month to comply with vaccine mandate

University of Wisconsin System interim President Tommy Thompson says universities with federal contracts will have another month to plan for President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate.

Thompson announced Oct. 27 that UW campuses would comply with the president’s executive order mandating vaccinations for federal employees and employers who contract with the federal government. The original deadline for contractors to be fully vaccinated was Dec. 8.

On Thursday, during the UW Board of Regents November meeting in Madison, Thompson announced the Biden administration has pushed back its vaccine deadline by a month. The Whitehouse now says federal contractors have until Jan. 4 to comply.

Thompson told regents he isn’t a fan of vaccine mandates, but the UW System can’t afford to lose federal research funding and the jobs that go with it.

“I want to tell the board and all the campuses I will not put the hundreds of millions of federal dollars connected to research, that is so integral to the mission of our universities, at risk,” he said.

Thompson also said he thinks the UW System’s push to encourage students and employees to get vaccinated voluntarily has worked well.

As of Oct. 27, all but one UW System campus has surpassed a 70 percent student vaccination rate goal set by Thompson earlier this year. UW-Platteville currently has a student vaccination rate of 54 percent.

Vaccination rates for UW System employees aren’t widely published by universities or the UW System. UW-Madison’s COVID-19 dashboard shows that 95.1 percent of employees at the state’s largest campus have been fully vaccinated.

A draft “UW System Vaccination Policy Concept” shared with WPR indicates that in order to comply with Biden’s vaccine mandate, vaccinations will be required for “employees who are under federal contract or near federal contractors.” The document states chancellors may only require vaccinations for employees within particular work areas if federal contractors won’t have interaction with other campus employees.

The policy also refers to universities without current federal contracts and says vaccinations may be expected of potential federal contractors “if the Chancellor determines the university may seek future federal contracting opportunities.”