Fitchburg, Framingham, Worcester State and their counterparts statewide will require students to receive COVID-19 vaccines this fall, they said in a joint announcement Friday.
Those colleges join others in Massachusetts including Assumption University in Worcester and Northeastern University in Boston to announce requirements before students are able to attend in-person courses or live in residence halls. The Massachusetts State University Council of Presidents said it expects employees to be fully vaccinated before the start of the fall semester.
“Student safety and the safety of our communities remains at the forefront of our planning as we prepare to return to in-person learning and campus life in the fall, James Birge, the president of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in Boston and chair of the state university presidents group, said in a statement.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute will take over the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute after Becker College, MassDiGI s host, closes following the end of the spring semester.
WPI previously offered to host the video game center when Becker announced in late March it would close its doors because of financial difficulties. That was made official in an announcement at the center on Monday.
Timothy Loew, the MassDiGI founder and executive director, called the institute and WPI a perfect match. Like Becker, WPI, located only a few blocks away, has an internationally renown video game design program, which started in 2004 as one of the first such undergraduate degree programs in game design.
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The 15 community college presidents comprising the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges issued a statement on Thursday urging their students and staff to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“You can’t just celebrate what one would deem justice in this particular situation when there is no justice for the Black woman in the political science department with her very racist department chair,” said Shaun Harper, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center.
Harper is cautiously optimistic about the racial progress that has occurred in higher education since Floyd’s murder. The painful incident was a catalyst for student activists and faculty members of color who d long advocated for racial equity on their campuses and pointed out systemic and structural racism. It was eye-opening for many white faculty members and administrators who were blissfully unaware of or dispassionate about the repeated and systemic injustices Black people face. It propelled movements led by Black students and their white and multiracial allies to correct those injustices. College administrators, some openly acknowledging institutionalized racis