TU Offering Incentives To Get 75% Of Students, Staff Vaccinated By Fall Semester

Like many schools in the state, TU is not requiring the vaccine to return to campus. Instead, the school is giving out thousands of dollars in prizes to students who upload their cards by July 31.

Friday, July 9th 2021, 5:44 pm

By: Amelia Mugavero

TULSA, Oklahoma -

The University of Tulsa is giving students extra incentives this summer to get vaccinated before the fall semester.

TU said its goal is to get 75% of students vaccinated by August.

"The process is very swift, easy, takes about a minute two minutes or so," Student Association President Kareem Ihemidan told News on 6.

Ihemidan walked through how University of Tulsa students can upload vaccine cards to the school's database. It's part of TU's push to get 75% of students and staff vaccinated by August.

"But if we don't try to set a bar high, we will never know if we can reach it or not. It will take the effort of all of us to encourage students incoming and returning to get vaccinated," Ihemidan said.

Like many schools in the state, TU is not requiring the vaccine to return to campus. Instead, the school is giving out thousands of dollars in prizes to students who upload their cards by July 31. Some of those prizes include free iPads, Mac Book Pros, court-side seats, and suits to games and even free housing and textbooks for a whole year.

Matt Warren is the school's Chief COVID officer and Vice President of Risk Management.

"Just to try to get some excitement around the vaccination process," Warren.

He believes TU is the only school in the state handing out these rewards right now.

"We believe a lot of our students have gotten the vaccine, but they haven't necessarily notified the university, so we wanted to close that gap, so we can make better decisions on our safe operations," Warren said.

Warren said as of right now, about 70% of the school's faculty are vaccinated and in the system, and 40% of students. The school also lifted its mask mandate Friday for all indoor areas effective immediately.

You can read the full email Warren sent to students a few weeks ago describing the campaign below.

Dear students,

The University of Tulsa is planning for a safe return to pre-pandemic campus life and activities for the fall semester. The surest way to accomplish this goal – and to safeguard against COVID-19 outbreaks and shut-downs on campus – is to promote widespread vaccination of our student body.

Public health experts believe that between 75% and 90% of people need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to prevent community spread and to safeguard against future shut-downs. To date, 27% of our student body has reported to the Alexander Health Center (AHC) that they are fully vaccinated.

To encourage our students to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this summer, TU is pleased to announce a series of student vaccine incentives. Here are the details:

If 75% of our student body is fully vaccinated by July 31, then those students who have been fully vaccinated will be entered into a raffle to win the following prizes:

6 prizes for a President’s Suite Pass at Chapman Stadium (1 winner + 1 guest per home football game)

10 prizes for a free parking pass for the 2021-22 academic year

5 prizes for Athletics Game Day Experiences (guest coaching opportunities, sideline/courtside seating and more)

5 prizes for free coffee at McFarlin Library for the fall semester

10 prizes for priority enrollment for spring 2022

10 pries for priority housing selection for fall 2022

If we reach the 80% student vaccination mark by July 31, we will raffle off the following additional grand prizes to fully vaccinated students:

3 prizes for FREE campus housing for a year (residential students)

3 prizes for a Universal Parking Pass permitting the pass holder to park in any and all TU parking lots on campus for the 2021-22 academic year (commuter students)

5 prizes for up to $2,000 worth of textbooks for the upcoming year (all students)

2 prizes for a new MacBook Air (all students)

To be counted, students must verify their vaccination status by uploading a copy of their COVID-19 Vaccine Record Card to the AHC portal.* Students can track the university’s progress to goal on TU’s COVID-19 Dashboard (updated weekly by end of business on Tuesdays).

Vaccines are available to students at the AHC with no out-of-pocket expense. For your convenience, TU is holding J&J vaccine PODs at the AHC this week (no appointment needed):

June 1: 8:30 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1-3:30 p.m.

June 2: 8:30 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1-3:30 p.m.

June 3: 1-4 p.m.

Please bring your insurance card with you to the vaccine POD. These PODs will offer the single-shot J&J vaccine. Appointments may be made for the Moderna vaccine by contacting the AHC at 918-631-2241.