Modern-day segregation, but with a medical twist

An open letter to the VCCCD Board of Trustees,

As you push and continue to push the segregation of the student body based on medical status, perhaps you can take a moment and reflect back on the need for the district to be both equitable and inclusive in your actions and decisions. You are not at this point being either. You have chosen a path that leaves many students scrambling to try and find classes online that not only are transferable, but fulfill degree requirements while providing a decent educational experience.

For example, if any of you care to look at the schedule of classes–in particularly for Oxnard and Ventura, you will find that nearly every science course with a lab requirement–is either a hybrid class, meaning the lab is in person, and the class meets at least once/week in person, or is a fully in-person class. How is attendance possible for those who are segregated based on your actions? The number of accessible classes available online is very limited and quite unhelpful given your recent stance. If your goal was the Jim Crow legal doctrine of “separate but equal”–you each failed MISERABLY.

Second, the college district has now become a hostile encampment–you have created by and through your reckless and thoughtless conduct an environment that makes the medically segregated seem anathema to those who are attending in-person. You have in essence created an entirely second-class citizen by segregating the unvaccinated e.g., those individuals who have serious, unanswered concerns regarding not only the safety, and efficacy but also the lack of liability for the vaccines. You each know as well as I do–you had and continue to have other, equally useful options at your disposal-e.g., offering a weekly/bi-weekly testing option. Yet you willingly chose the path of segregation, and history will judge each of you, and everyone who supports the segregation of society based on vaccine/medical status as bigots for it.

Third, your attempt at offering “vaccine exemptions” is itself a farce. Who are any of you to sit in judgment of what is and is not a sincerely held religious belief? Did God suddenly descend from heaven and anoint any of you and send you forth with the ability to read the hearts and minds of students in order to determine whether they sincerely hold the belief they claim? Your arrogance, and in particular, that of Mr. Chancer and Mr. Mantooth, literally astounds me. They should both resign in shame and never again refer to themselves as supporters of education.

Fourth, I say it again–there is ZERO HERD IMMUNITY with this virus. It is a flu. I have a letter from the public health officer in which he himself describes it as such. Flu does not confer herd immunity. The vaccine does not confer herd immunity. A vaccinated individual can still contract the virus, their bodies can still mutate the virus and they can still pass that virus on to someone else–therefore there is NO, ZERO HERD IMMUNITY. The biology professor who spoke in favor of the vaccine requirement on Sept. 12 who called himself a “virologist-“-should know there is no herd immunity.

Fifth and finally, I say again and will continue to say–you are what you support. You each claim to support education, yet your actions and conduct say otherwise. You are the antithesis of what Dr. King desired in his I have a dream speech due to your segregationist beliefs. Dr. King desired that his children might one day live in a world where his children were not judged by the color of their skin. I dream mine (who are special needs) will one day live in a world where they are not judged by their medical status. Bigotry comes in many forms–your bigotry is medical bigotry. You are exactly what you support, and as long as you support the segregation of the student body based on medical status–you are medical bigots.

Perhaps you should cease calling yourselves supporters of education–I certainly have.

Yours sincerely and truly,
Ronnie Broyles