The COVID-19 virus has affected all of us in one way or another, which is why AACC should require that all students have the COVID vaccine in order to attend classes in person.

With school starting back up for the spring semester and students coming back to in-person classes, now more than ever it’s imperative that we all do what we need to do to keep each other safe.

That means every one of us needs to be vaccinated.

That means the college needs to require that every one of us is vaccinated before we set foot on campus.

We deserve to be in a safe and healthy environment.

Students should be able to come on campus if they need to without worrying about being in close contact with unvaccinated classmates.

From having to be conscious of how we interact with others when we go out, to changing the way we go about our day-to-day activities, to having to spend time attending classes online when we’d rather be in person, these last two years have not been easy.

The total confirmed cases of COVID in Anne Arundel county is 78,490 as of Jan. 14, according to the county.

One in six people who get COVID will experience severe COVID symptoms, which include trouble breathing and chest pains, health officials have said.

The fear surrounding COVID has not gone away. Students are concerned about whether their classmates have been vaccinated, if they are wearing masks outside of school, or just how careful they have been.

We’re not saying that the college shouldn’t accommodate people who have a religious or medical reason for not getting the vaccine. The college should.

Some people are apprehensive about getting the vaccine.

Maybe they feel a vaccine mandate will infringe on their right to choose what they put in their bodies.

But not having a vaccine mandate infringes on the rights of everyone else to be protected, which is far more important.

People are suffering from this virus more and more and the longer we wait to make vaccinations mandatory, the more at risk we all become.