I am trying, without success, to understand your reasoning for denying the Covid 19 vaccine to out-of-state college students.

Surely you know that, being unvaccinated, those students can spread the deadly illness to in-state college students and other New Hampshire residents? These students will be susceptible to the virus and the variants, and will spread them to other residents at a time when COVID 19 cases are already on the rise. If you want to end the pandemic, as you say you do, why wouldn’t you want to do everything in the state’s power to protect our citizens? Given the literal life or death consequences of your policy, I think you owe the citizens of New Hampshire an explanation.

Since I can’t think of any sensible, health or science-based reason to deny the vaccine – that you’re actively urging everyone else – to get to a subset of the population, I’m left to conjecture.

It can’t be that a self-proclaimed “numbers guy” doesn’t know that 60% of New Hampshire college students are out-of-state. It couldn’t possibly be that you’re trying to send a message to those students and their parents that they’re not welcome here, could it? Are you trying to tell them that they should take their tuition dollars and consumer spending to other states? Are you trying to force them to claim New Hampshire as their home state so that, if they own cars, they need to register them here? Or, do you imagine that if they’re forced to say New Hampshire is their home state that it will somehow reverse our problem with retaining young people? Unfortunately, this nonsensical policy will only add to that problem. In fact, if I were an out-of-state college student, I’d get out of New Hampshire just as fast as I could. If, as a resident, I had a child in a New Hampshire college, I’d want to get them out of that environment with unvaccinated people as soon as possible, too.

If this were an issue with only economic repercussions, there would be room for debate on this issue. However, more people will contract the virus and more people will die because of this ill-informed and seemingly vindictive policy.

It’s time to do the right thing, protect all New Hampshire citizens, and give the vaccine to everyone living in the state.