Senior Multimedia Editor Kamala Madireddi discusses obstacles international students faced when accessing vaccines.

The announcement ushers in the start of a school year that will look more like pre-pandemic college, with predominantly in-person classes and no plans for surveillance testing.

Quick, easy, painless. That is how freshman Hailey Weiss described her experience getting the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The shot was so painless that at first, she wasn’t even sure that she got it, the only thing assuring her being the sight of blood under her bandage.

But it is not the safety of the vaccine which I am most worried about but rather the social consequence of an unsafe or otherwise botched process of vaccine distribution.

While some skeptics say that we shouldn’t trust a vaccine developed so quickly, I believe we don’t have much of a choice.

In the wake of increasing abortion opposition efforts, decreased Planned Parenthood funding and opposition to fetal tissue research aren’t the only issues; a multitude of scientific goods have fallen victim to our nation’s larger problem of a scientifically misinformed population.

In this country, there is a widely accepted notion that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and has a right to share it. The first right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is that of free speech. As such, discussions in this country, political or otherwise, allow for everyone to contribute his or her thoughts and insights.