Nicholls, LSU and other Louisiana universities hold off on COVID vaccine mandate Adrian Dubose BATON ROUGE -- Students attending LSU and UL colleges, including Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, will not be required to get COVID-19 vaccines to attend school this fall. The two Louisiana college systems do not plan to enact such a mandate until federal regulators fully approve the COVID-19 vaccines now being distributed, officials said Thursday. Federal approval is unlikely to come until well after classes begin next month, meaning that many of LSU’s 35,000 students and its faculty and staff members will depend on mandatory masking, air filters and some degree of social distancing to protect them from the surging delta variant.