As students return to campus at Washington State University this week the deadline for them to get vaccinated has moved to September 10. Mandating vaccines to thwart diseases goes back more than 100 years.
“Like smallpox was a big one in the 19th and early 20th century, if there were vaccines available for it, it made sense to require vaccination for students,” said Andrew Wehrman, history professor at Central Michigan University who specializes in the politics of medicine.
Now, 17 Washington universities including WSU, Gonzaga, and Eastern Washington University require students to be vaccinated. Across the state line in Idaho that isn’t the case, but at one point it was.
“Universities often very quickly put in place quarantine for students who got sick and then compulsory vaccination for the student body and they did it in some different ways,” Wehrman said.
According to newspaper archives the University of Idaho mandated students get vaccinated against smallpox or risk quarantining over Christmas break.
“Some would expel students who weren’t vaccinated, University of Idaho in 1928 did it a little bit more creatively,” Wehrman said.
Now, the University of Idaho isn’t mandating students get vaccinated but according to the university website, the COVID-19 vaccine is strongly recommended.
Beyond the classroom smallpox vaccines were required to travel to certain places like Alaska and Hawaii. But even closer to home, in 1907 the city of Spokane required certain railroad passengers coming into the city to show vaccination certificates. This to keep the city free-from smallpox. And professor Wehrman says looking back at the past can help forge a path forward.
“Think about history, all of our fathers and grandfather who have been, and grandmothers who have been vaccinated who have taken children to get vaccinated the diseases that really no longer affect us like smallpox because of vaccination,” Wehrman said.
