The University of Waterloo keeps changing what its "vaccination requirement" requires
A hallmark of arbitrary and authoritarian governance
The University of Waterloo (UW) has expelled students and fired faculty and staff for violating its covid-19 "Vaccination Requirement." What exactly were these people accused of doing? UW can't keep its story straight about what its requirement actually requires.
The official, published requirement defines non-compliance:
By this definition — call it Definition 1 — if you stay away from campus and complete your training module, you are compliant. No medical procedure or accommodation is required.
Human Resources adopts a different definition — call it Definition 2 — of "non-compliance":
By this definition, staying away from campus and completing your training module isn't enough. You must be "fully vaccinated" or have a "permitted exemption." Definition 2 is not "pursuant to" Definition 1, but clearly different and more coercive.
Senior administrators adopt yet another definition — call it Definition 3 — in internal communications:
Only being “fully vaccinated” satisfies this highly coercive definition. Not even an exemption is enough. Similarly, when disciplining faculty members, deans equate "compliance" with "receiving the vaccine":
UW won't publicly own the standard it imposes internally. Despite frequently overhauling its covid-19 webpages since summer 2021, UW kept Definition 1 as the official, published definition of "non-compliance" until now (26 March 2022).
When disciplining students and employees, UW accuses them of "non-compliance" with the official, published definition. When the accused asks, "When did I illicitly come to campus or refuse to take a training module?" UW refuses to answer and changes the subject.
UW tells its victims that they "were advised" that in order to be "considered compliant,” they must be "fully vaccinated." When asked why anyone needs such "advice" when the published requirement clearly defines "non-compliance," or why the "advice" contradicts the published requirement, UW demurs: it’s "not particularly useful" to "debate the language" used to formulate the requirement.
UW's victims are punished not for violating its "Vaccination Requirement," but for not accepting somebody's advice on somebody's opinion about the requirement.
Yet when discussing the matter publicly, UW switches back to depicting its victims as non-compliant with the official requirement.
To top it all off, UW has the audacity to tell its victims, "You cannot reasonably take the position that any confusion remains about what you were required to do"!
UW's Kafkaesque conduct is deeply unfair to its victims and inconsistent with the rule of law. If rules aren't publicly available in a fixed and definite form, the door is wide open to arbitrary and authoritarian governance. Accountability and transparency vanish. You don't know what to expect. You’re at the mercy of those with power.
UW's administrators have walked through that door, dragging their many victims with them.