YAL Celebrates Colorado School of Mines’ COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Removal

Pro-liberty student activists gathered hundreds of petition signatures, persuading university leaders to support medical freedom

Austin, TX — Today, Young Americans for Liberty (YAL)—the nation’s most active youth liberty organization—is celebrating the removal of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, where YAL student activists have defended medical freedom for months. All pages on CO Mines’ website referencing the vaccine mandate have been taken down, fulfilling a verbal confirmation from University President Paul C. Johnson.

Lucas Baumgartner, YAL’s Colorado state chair and a YAL chapter member at CO Mines, launched a petition against the vaccine mandate on the first week of classes in August. His petition eventually garnered over 500 signatures—about 10 percent of the campus population—and it was subsequently delivered to Johnson, who promised to share the hundreds of signatures with the school’s Executive Council in late October. The petition was indeed circulated with the Executive Council and the vaccine mandate was scrapped shortly thereafter, due to months of mobilizing by Baumgartner, YAL Chapter President Elijah Sage, and other student activists.

Thousands of students at CO Mines are now more free as a result of YAL’s efforts to remove the school’s vaccine mandate. Across America, YAL will continue mobilizing young people to make tens of millions of Americans more free—in Colorado and elsewhere.

“After months of petitioning students, YAL has formed a committed movement around a single cause: Student liberty,” said Baumgartner. “Together, we pushed administrators until, finally, the vaccine mandate was repealed. While this is a huge win for student liberty and privacy, it’s important to remember that we are back to where we were almost three years ago. In order to move in a positive direction, we must continue to push for student liberty and we must not be stationary.”

“As a club, YAL’s petition reached the 500-signature mark in just 42 days,” said Sage. “I fought for the reversal of this policy because I believe in personal freedom and I will not stop fighting until liberty wins.”

“More than two years after the COVID hysteria started, YAL students are still committed to winning their right to personal freedom back from campus bureaucrats,” said JP Kirby, YAL’s director of student rights. “Lucas Baumgartner and his rockstar chapter entered this semester with a clear goal and a plan to execute. I’m proud of the YAL chapter at Colorado School of Mines for taking on a fight that ensures the next generation of students doesn’t have to pay the price for pandemic panic.”