Student Health Center offers free mumps vaccines

About 345 students, faculty and staff received the measles, mumps and rubella booster vaccine April 4 and 6, after nine students were diagnosed with the mumps this year. Photo by Bonnie Cash

The Health Center gave the measles, mumps and rubella booster vaccine (MMR) to 345 students, faculty and staff at no cost April 4 and 6, after three undergraduate students were diagnosed with the mumps in March, said Director of Student Health Jacqueline Deats.

The vaccination clinics were not required but recommended by Orange County Public Health, Deats said. Nine students, including six from the law school, have been diagnosed with the mumps this year.

“The original outbreak was just in the law school, and then when we had outbreaks in undergraduate students who lived on and off campus,” Deats said. “(Orange County Public Health) felt we possibly have students walking around with mumps who didn’t know they have mumps, and they were continuing to perhaps expose other healthy individuals.”

As of April 7, Deats said that no additional students have been diagnosed with the mumps.

The university is not able to confirm that the six law school students who contracted the mumps in February had been vaccinated, because the Student Health Center does not require law school students to provide proof of vaccination to enroll, Deats said.

“I don’t know why (the law school) does or does not (require proof of vaccination). It’s up to the individual school, at the graduate level, to make that decision,” Deats said. “Most of the (law school) students that I’m aware of who I spoke to, they stated that they had been vaccinated, but yes, I do not have proof.”

Deats said that usually, graduate students who are not in a health-related program – like the School of Pharmacy – do not need to provide vaccination records in order to enroll at the university.

Associate Dean of Students DeAnnYocum Gaffney said that law school students aren’t required to show proof of vaccination because the law school is less of a “high-density” environment.

“Many of (the law school students) are coming just to campus. They don’t live on campus, they’re not doing the meal plan,” Yocum Gaffney said. “They may come in for other kinds of events that occur, but typically, it would just be events related to their program.”

At least five of the six law school students who were diagnosed with the mumps in February attended a back-to-school event in Newport Beach prior to contracting the disease.

Both Yocum Gaffney and Deats said that the information they have about law school students being vaccinated is from Orange County Public Health.

“We wouldn’t ask for their records, so we wouldn’t have said, ‘Oh, you’re positive for mumps, now show us all your records,’” Yocum Gaffney said. “Asking someone about their private medical records – certainly, sometimes we need to do that, but you always want to have a really good reason for asking for that because it’s private information.”

Deats said that the university was able to verify that the three undergraduate students diagnosed with the mumps received the MMR because that vaccination is a requirement to enroll at Chapman.

“There’s a deadline by which you have to have your immunization records in, and if you don’t have that, you’re placed on a health center hold,” Deats said.

If a student has a Health Center hold, he or she will not be permitted to register for classes until he or she has addressed whatever is causing the hold, according to the university’s website.