No anti-vax protest at Summit, La Pine high school COVID-19 vaccine clinics Thursday
Two voluntary student COVID-19 vaccine clinics hosted by local high schools in Bend received intense pushback from anti-vaccine protesters, worrying school staff and students who organized a third clinic on Thursday.
Last week, protesters stood across from Bend High School, blaring an airhorn as loud as a truck’s, and forcing school administrators to escort arriving students, said Julianne Repman, director of communications and safety for Bend-La Pine.
This frightened some students who were worried the protesters would eventually step onto campus, she said.
Anti-vaccine protesters were not as vocal outside a clinic at Mountain View High School on Tuesday, but at least one protester — a self-described “constitutionalist” — was openly displaying a weapon, Repman said. “From a school standpoint, it raises the hair on the back of our necks,” she said.
In response Thursday at Summit High School, which hosted the third vaccine clinic, students arrived early to support classmates getting vaccinated and were joined by interim Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Lora Nordquist, Summit Principal Michael McDonald, a uniformed Bend Police school resource officer and local politicians.
But the protesters didn’t show. Nor did they show up at a similar clinic Thursday at La Pine High School.
“I’m a little surprised we didn’t have more (protesters), but I’m happy to see kids out here wanting to support each other,” McDonald said.
Summit junior, Felix Cowan, 17, used warlike imagery to describe what dealing with anti-vaccine protesters was like.
“You can feel like you’re walking through the trenches, with 30 adults, half of them are armed,” he said. “It will be nice to have familiar faces, peers, in the crowd.”
Having school staff wait in the parking lot for students on vaccine clinic days was a pre-emptive decision made for all schools in this situation, Repman said.
No one had a surefire reason why protesters didn’t materialize. Summit junior Matthew Schrader-Patton, 17, believes online backlash to the protesters at Mountain View may have scared them off.
“With the reaction this event has garnered, I think it’s a little typical for the protesters to be a little deterred from showing up,” he said.
Protesters or not, Bend high schoolers are getting vaccinated.
About 314 students received a vaccine dose at the Bend High and Mountain View clinics, Repman said — that’s about 21% of eligible Bend High students and about 16% of eligible Mountain View students.
At Summit, about 150 students pre-registered for the vaccine, and nearly 200 were vaccinated Thursday Repman said . Another 27 students got vaccines at La Pine High School Thursday.
