No COVID-19 vaccine? No classroom. Seneca College requiring students, staff to get shots to be on campus

Get a vaccine or stay off campus — that will be the new rule at Seneca College this fall, with the school going a step beyond many other post-secondary institutions in Canada in the hope of protecting against COVID-19.

Effective Sept. 7, the school, which has campuses in Toronto, York Region and, Peterborough will make vaccinations a condition for students and employees coming to campus in the fall term for "in person teaching, learning and working."

President David Agnew told CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Tuesday he believes Seneca is the first school in Canada to implement the measure, but that various academic institutions are doing the same in the U.S.

"We just think that if we're serious about protecting the health and safety of all of our community then it's the right thing and the logical thing to do," Agnew said.

"We're in pretty good company in North America, places like Harvard, [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], Yale, Princeton, the entire public systems in New York and California are requiring vaccinations to come on campus."

LISTEN | Seneca College mandates vaccines for anyone on campus:

Students and staff will be asked to upload their vaccine certificate to a Seneca app to prove they've been immunized and attest that their documents are genuine. Accommodations will be made for those who cannot be vaccinated for legitimate reasons.

International students who have may have received vaccines not approved by Health Canada abroad will have to have an approved brand of vaccine to be on campus, Agnew added. 

The school will be delivering programs in a variety of formats this fall, including online, hybrid, on-campus and flexible.

"Should students choose not to be vaccinated, they will need to take a program that is offered either online or in a flexible delivery format," the school said in a news release Tuesday.