ROCHESTER, N.Y. — With COVID-19 vaccines now available to anyone 16 and over, more colleges are discussing their future plans with students now eligible for vaccinations.

With a robust operation that tests more than 1,300 on-campus students and staff a week for COVID-19, Monroe Community College’s Interim President Dr. Kate Douglas says they’ve been taking the pandemic seriously from the beginning.

“As soon as we have a positive case, we’ve been able to be right on it so there hasn’t been any kind of a spike,” Dr. Douglas said. “So it really demonstrates to me how important the science has been.”

Right now, only 25% of its students are on-campus, but with vaccine eligibility now open to those 16 and older, Dr. Douglas hopes to at least double that number by the fall.

“The science-driven vaccine is true light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re very, very grateful,” Dr. Douglas said. “We’re getting closer and closer, and we’re grateful to have a vaccine.”

MCC is working to bring on-site vaccinations to its campuses, but in the meantime Dr. Douglas says they’re working to get students to sites run by the state. It is partnering up with other SUNY system schools, which started vaccinating the general student population on many of its campuses this week.

“It’s a game changer for us. We’ve been advocating strenuously over the last several months, working with all of our partners at SUNY, our collective bargaining units, our unions, our faculty, our staff and our students, to open up eligibility for everyone,” SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras said.

And Malatras says to date they’ve already performed over 900,000 vaccinations, vaccinating not just faculty and students involved with work on the front lines, but the larger community too.

“This isn’t just about our students,” Malatras said. “This is about every single citizen in the state of New York about how do you get beyond the crisis, so we’ve been all in on this since the beginning.”

As the vaccines only have emergency approval from the federal government right now, schools aren’t able to mandate students get their shot. But Malatras doesn’t think making vaccines mandatory is necessary right now.

“Most of our students want to be vaccinated because they want to go back to normal,” Malatras said. “Our faculty wants to go back to normal, our staff wants to go back to normal. So this is a big day for us to have this open eligibility for sure.”

He’s confident and hopeful for a fairly normal fall semester, with in-person learning, club activities and even theater and sports...albeit with masks.

“This has been a really difficult time, but we think the vaccine will allow us to turn the page and have a more normal experience that college students are looking for,” Malatras said.

SUNY also secured single-shot vaccines for its residential students, so they don’t have to return for a second dose in the middle of summer.