Vaccine-incentive Program set to pay out $3 million in bookstore credit

Andrew Lopes

November 30, 2021

Vaccinated Fullerton College students that submitted their vaccine status with the college by Nov. 15 were entered into an incentive program created by NOCCCD. Fullerton College will notify the randomly selected 5,000 winners before the end of this week. Winners will be awarded $200 in bookstore credit that can be used at the Cypress College or FC bookstore.

The college book store credit may be used on anything within the store, but books are the foremost focus. — Vaccinated Fullerton College students that submitted their vaccine status with the college by Nov. 15 were entered into an incentive program created by NOCCCD. The 5,000 randomly selected FC students will receive $200 each in bookstore credit that can be used to purchase anything within the bookstore, which includes textbooks, food, scantrons and other materials. The voucher must be spent by April 30, 2022. Photo credit: Andrew Lopes

The incentive program tried to boost vaccination rates amongst students and was allocated $3 million from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, a federal program. As a result, Fullerton College, Cypress College and North Orange Continuing Education will have 5,000 winners from each school. Winners can use the bookstore credit to purchase anything the bookstores sell and must be spent by Apr. 30, 2022.

“We want students to be able to return to campus in a safe manner,” FC Director of Campus Communications Lisa McPheron said.

McPheron said the program’s purpose was to reach students who have not already submitted their records and encourage them to do so.

As of Nov. 15, 14,414 students in NOCCCD had submitted their vaccination records and 7768 are from Fullerton College. Since then, 2158 of the remaining 14,876 students enrolled at Fullerton College have submitted their vaccination records. This leaves FC with about a 6% increase from the incentive program, at a 43.84% submission rate for vaccination records.

Around 73% of students enrolled in on-campus classes during the fall semester of 2021 are compliant with the mandate.

“I think it’s pretty helpful. It won’t cover all the costs towards books, but $200 is very impactful,” said Fullerton College engineer major Joseph Gaskill.

Gaskill is vaccinated and had uploaded verification prior to the incentive program deadline but did not know about the program before his interview with The Hornet.

“I follow the school Twitter and Insta, but I’ve only seen one thing about it on Instagram. I think more info being given through classes would be helpful,” Gaskill said.

For more information on the incentive program, visit the Fullerton College website.