“In November of 2020 I remember sitting on the trunk of my car, parked on the top level of the parking deck because it was one of the only places with no campus police surveilling us, and thinking what if…I jumped off? That’s how bad it was. But then I thought that my mom would be so sad. That kept me from the ledge,” said 25-year-old Houston Reese, who attended Biola University in Los Angeles County, California from 2019 – 2023, a county he said had one of the hardest lockdowns in the country during the Covid period.
“I was heavily depressed with what was taken from us, with the restrictions and with not being able to be with friends,” he said. He feels like one of the lucky students, though, because outcomes for him could have been much worse.
Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director James Redfield said in the summer of 2020 that far more teens and young people were dying of suicide and drug overdoses than from Covid. Doctors and epidemiologists who authored and published the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020 advised against school closings, calling them a “grave injustice;” advocated for protection of very old and sick people; and advised that young and healthy people should continue normal life because they were at little risk from the virus. Since then, many scientists have agreed that panic, fear, and severe restrictions in young people’s lives during the Covid period were mistakes and caused grave harms. Many others have remained silent.
And yet, recommendations against lockdowns for college students did not curtail mandates and restrictive policies that harmed them. College offers young people a time to question authorities, to explore new ideas, to have adventures with friends while socializing and bonding. Classical liberal arts education embraces the ideals of sharpening students’ critical and creative thinking; provoking them to examine divergent perspectives; and teaching them to strengthen their oral and written arguments. Yet, during the Covid period, colleges and universities all over the country followed government and bureaucratic mandates while discouraging and even punishing students’ critical thinking and questioning.
When Houston returned to school in fall of 2020, it felt like a ghost town to him with students working on classes online from their rooms. Students were forced to wear masks outside, he said, as campus police surveilled them. On the first offense, they were fined, and on the second, they were sent home, “as 19-year-olds,” he said incredulously. He described regularly carrying snacks while walking outside, so he could remove the mandated face mask and breathe freely. Late one night, he visited outside with his cousin whom he hadn’t seen in a long time. They sat about 15 feet apart, talking. A campus police officer approached to force them to apply the mask. They said they were eating.
“You’re not eating consistently enough,” the guard said. “Put the mask on.”
Police banging on dorm room doors when college friends gathered; secret tip lines college administrators provided for turning in non-compliant fellow students; administrators barring students from leaving campus for months; teacher firings; student expulsions; shaming and bullying the non-compliant – Covid-era college students shared stories like these.
Face Masks While Cross-Country Running; Required Covid Shots
A cross-country runner, Houston described being made to wear the mask while running outside in LA County, but as soon as the team ran the two miles into Orange County, the rules changed.
“Coach would turn around and tell us we could take the masks off,” he said. At the end of the 2020 school year, Houston, a Political Science major, dropped running, failed two classes, and almost lost his scholarship. He left campus for a while. Upon his return, vaccine mandates rolled out.
“I didn’t feel the vaccine was necessary for me as a 20-year-old with a 34 resting heart rate, 10 percent body fat, who had been running 60 miles per week,” he said. Administrators demanded vaccine status and required students who declined the shot to be Covid tested twice weekly, he said.
“Those who had to be tested were publicly known, and we had to go to a separate campus location and get nose swabs. Students with false positives or with Covid, with a cough or sniffles, were sent to separate on-campus apartments and forced to stay for two weeks,” he described. “Having no vax and testing positive was treated as shameful,” he said. He watched everyone who took the shot get sick anyway.
Battling Mandates
The group No College Mandates (NCM), led by Lucia Sinatra, tracked over 1,200 colleges that mandated Covid vaccines, which was not every college that mandated them in 2021, according to Sinatra. Skeptical of the Covid shots since their first rollouts, and after research and discernment, she took on the fight to stop them.
“Saying no was not an option for me – the work had to be done, and I had to be on the front lines. I had two students who were about to enter college or college programs, and there was no way I was going to let any school coerce them to comply with a mandate for a product that didn’t prevent infection or transmission, was never needed for young healthy adults who were never in danger of severe illness or death from the virus, and that had started to exhibit injury signals of myocarditis and pericarditis, among other signals.”
The schools NCM tracked were only a portion of ones that required Covid vaccines. “There were other lesser known and/or smaller colleges and community colleges that also required the vaccines,” she said. “We used the top 1,200 colleges, listed by US News and World Report. We included other colleges when community members informed us of their policies.” Largely due to the work of activists like Sinatra and groups like No College Mandates, in February 2025, the Trump administration issued an order to end Covid shots as a condition for college enrollment. However, they are still required for many health care students to complete the required clinical parts of their schooling.
Even before required shots, college students’ lives changed suddenly and dramatically. In spring 2020, campuses all over the country suspended in-person classes, shifted to online classes, often sending students home or confining them to dorms or residence halls. This impacted at least 14 million students, according to Georgetown Professor Bryan Alexander’s estimate on CNBC in late March 2020. More than 1,300 institutions suspended in-person classes and closed campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Many colleges and universities around the country barred students from classes, suspended, or expelled them for declining shots. Exemptions were very difficult or impossible to obtain.
“These students were often so traumatized or scared that they couldn’t advocate for themselves,” Sinatra said. “Good times in their lives were ruined, and adults and institutions tasked to protect them turned on them.”
A Journal of Medical Ethics study concluded that harms of Covid shot boosters outweigh benefits for young people ages 18 – 29. And yet in 2022, many colleges and universities were still requiring students to receive a Covid shot plus two boosters to attend school.
“I lost a lot of faith in institutions and in my school,” Houston Reese said. “I thought the school would be willing to stand up in truth, but for two to three years, it toed the line for the LA County Department of Public Health.” Houston said he read and listened widely during this period to a range of news sources including Fox, CNBC, CNN, and the Daily Wire and followed-up by researching articles and sources. He also noted and saved a Johns Hopkins article that questioned publicized numbers. Having questioning friends to talk to and church groups helped sustain him, he said, adding that some friends left school because of the restrictive policies.
Houston said it quickly became apparent that the college had “an authoritarian mindset” and could send people home for non-compliance. Some professors commiserated with students but didn’t stand up, he said.
“That was disappointing, but I knew that they had to keep their jobs,” Houston said. When his running coach attended a church that had remained open, “when LA county had a ban on singing,” he said school administration forced the coach to stay home for a period of time. “It was not a healthy time. At least one student was kicked out for having a guest.”
“I would hope that my story would discourage people from just taking the party line again. I would like to see a more conscious response in the future,” Houston said, adding that he is Libertarian-leaning and doesn’t think the government should have the right to make medical decisions for people. He noted that he had studied the data that said that Covid shots did not stop transmission. I was glad to catch up with him by phone while he was enjoying Disney World on a Sunday afternoon with his friends. “What happened during Covid should never happen again,” he said.
East Coast College Restrictions
Across the country in Fairfield, Connecticut, Sophia Spinelli described similar experiences while a student at Fairfield University in March 2020. The pandemic began when she was a freshman. When she returned to school in fall 2020, the dining hall and gym were closed and remained closed the rest of the year, she said.
“We were not allowed to have any more than two guests in our room at a time, and guests were required to wear masks,” Sophia said. She had five roommates in an apartment in a dorm on campus. When guests did not wear masks, resident advisors and campus police often knocked on their door and compelled them to put on masks. Sophomores were not allowed to have cars.
“So, escaping for a day wasn’t an option either,” Sophia said. “We were quite literally sequestered in our rooms for nine months straight.” Some classes were in person, but they periodically or permanently switched to Zoom throughout the year, she added.
Substance abuse, alcohol abuse, and addictions to computer devices skyrocketed among college students during pandemic shutdowns and restrictions, according to various studies, and this Fairfield University student reported first-hand experience of this.
“Everyone I knew drank heavily every night – we had nothing else to do, and sadly, drinking was the only coping mechanism many students had,” Sophia said. “My entire demeanor changed. I don’t consider myself a depressed or unhappy person, but I can say the effects Covid had on me were extremely detrimental to my mental and physical well-being.” Because she could not use the gym, she ran.
“When I ran outside alone, I was told by campus police to wear a mask, which I simply refused to do,” she said. “My grades plummeted, and I knew I had hit a very low point when I was crying for no apparent reason in the middle of the day.” She described friends struggling in different ways, including a male friend becoming completely dependent on alcohol. “My roommates and I would practically sleep all day and drink once the sun went down. There was nothing else to do with our time. We were unable to make new friends and meet new people due to the restrictions. I look back at pictures and cannot even recognize myself.”
While Fairfield did not mandate the Covid vaccine, like Houston Reese in LA County, California, students like Sophia in Connecticut were subjected to weekly testing.
“I once missed a test because I was home for my sister’s wedding, and a campus police officer showed up at my room and threatened that I would be kicked off campus if I did not immediately comply and get a test that day.” Sophia questioned college policies that did not make sense to her. She said that students received frequent emails from the college president admonishing them to not meet with groups of friends in their rooms. With encouragement from her family and gaining strength from her religious faith, she said she was one of the only students in her circle who wrote to the dean.
“I met with him online and explained the contradictory nature of the regulations. How was being stuck inside all day with no fresh air healthier than being around students who have been on campus all year long? Why was the age-old concept of herd immunity being rejected, especially in what should be the healthiest demographic? Why must we have online classes when the only people scared for their health were the professors?” she asked.
Administrators gave unhelpful and rehearsed answers, she said.
“I was discouraged when none of my peers would advocate for themselves or each other out of fear for the repercussions,” she said. When school began to open up in her junior year, students’ demeanors had changed, she said.
“The bubbly people I had met freshman year seemed gravely different than I remembered them,” she said. “There was a lack of light. . . and everyone seemed extremely socially inept,” she added. “We all felt robbed of the experiences that should have been.”
Sophia declined the vaccine because she said she had educated herself with scientific articles and advice from doctors who were against mandates.
“I knew many people who had suffered vaccine injuries that were swept under the rug for the sake of protecting the integrity of the shot,” she added. “I saw no reason to receive a vaccination for a virus that I had already had and built immunity against. If students had been allowed to interact and build herd immunity, there would have been no need to keep us prisoners in our dorm rooms.” Sophia said she felt frustrated and angry, miserable and trapped.
Sadly, scientists increasingly reveal that Covid shots were not needed for healthy college students and young people, and the shot may harm the immune system and may be linked to certain cancers, according to cancer research specialist Dr. Charlotte Kuperwasser at Tufts University. A student interviewed for this story said his grandfather was diagnosed with leukemia after receiving a Covid booster.
“I felt alone in my fight against the school,” Sophia Spinelli said. “At the same time, I learned that I am capable of standing up for the truth no matter how scary and lonely it can be.” If anything like that happened again, she hopes that young people like her will have the courage to advocate for the truth, “if not for themselves, at least for the people around who are too scared to speak up,” she said.
When my husband and I met 25-year-old Thomas at one of the churches we attend, I began work on this story. Thomas was a second-year law student who had earned his undergraduate degree in English at a small prestigious New England private college during the Covid period. Thomas described how many of his friends now endured Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms from that time – symptoms including hypervigilance, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, persistent sadness and hopelessness, and trouble concentrating.
Thomas described being barred from leaving campus when lockdowns descended. His mother called often to check on him. Feeling like fugitives or criminals, he and a friend snuck off campus to get ice cream one night. A few non-conformist friends to talk to helped, he said. In the midst of hard lockdowns and the worst fear, seeing his favorite poetry professor in the library stacks with the mask dragging his chin offered him hope. This professor taught by reading poetry aloud.
“How can I read poetry with this?” the professor asked, pointing to the mask. Sadly, oppression, fear, and restrictions didn’t end even after mask mandates lifted on Thomas’ campus. Administrators told students that in any gathering, if one student asked for masks, then the entire gathering had to put them on. Thomas told us he had to submit to Covid shots to return to in- person school.
After hearing Thomas’ stories, I wanted to hear from other college students around the country about what happened to them during the Covid period. These young people are our future doctors, lawyers, teachers, writers, parents, politicians, business owners. From different sources, I gathered stories. Organizations like No College Mandates helped, and stories from students, teachers, and parents overwhelmed me – stories that ranged from vaccine injuries to faculty firings to vaccine deaths to student expulsions for refusing the vaccine. These stories need to be told. Just a few of them are here. I changed some names to protect privacy.
“Now, almost no one is talking about what happened,” Lucia Sinatra of No College Mandates said. “These stories are so important. How will young people process these traumas? Telling the truth and being heard helps.”
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