Texas university employees fired after asking students if they were vaccinated

Two Texas university employees were fired after they asked students if they were vaccinated against the coronavirus. 

Bruce Hodge and Karen Corwin, employees at Lamar University, told The Washington Post they were fired after inquiring about the vaccination status of 16-year-old and 17-year-old high school students in the Texas Academy of Leadership in the Humanities program.

Hodge was in charge of a program in which high school students would live in the dorms and earn college credit. He was also responsible for keeping students safe and taking them for medical treatment if an issue arose. 

“I could foresee a situation with an incapacitated student where I couldn’t reach a parent and a doctor is asking me if they’re vaccinated,” Hodge told the Post.

Hodge said he was not given much guidance for the coronavirus this semester so he and counselor Corwin created vaccination slips to find out who was protected against the virus. 

“We collect just a voluminous amount of medical information on these students that normal college students don’t have to provide,” Hodge told the Post.

Most of the 30 students said they had been vaccinated and the two employees showed the dean, who seemed “peeved” the employees created the slips. 

Afterward, the associated provost and school’s chief of police collected the vaccination slips, and Hodge and Corwin were fired shortly after with no explanation. 

“I don’t think you have to be a super-detective,” Corwin told the Post. 

Corwin and Hodge cannot sue for wrongful termination because Texas is an at-will employment state, meaning employers can fire employees for any reason. 

“We thought we were protecting the students,” Hodge said. “I would lay awake at night realizing the liability that rested on me and the shoulder of the academy with these 16- and 17-year-olds on campus.”

“I still worry,” Hodge added. “I just hope that everything’s okay, that nothing happens to a student.”

The school told the Post they don’t comment on these types of matters.