The new administration of Creighton Students’ Union has had a busy first month, and has already had a visible impact on campus, culminating in a vaccine mandate being passed on Monday. 

Francisco Pastor-Rivera, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences and the new president of CSU, was elected in November as both the first openly gay and Latino president of the organization, to represent Creighton’s student body. 

CSU’s first legislative meeting of the semester was held on Monday, at which an impactful piece of legislation was passed with very little resistance: an expansion of vaccine mandates at Creighton, now mandating vaccine boosters. 

Creighton will now join a growing list of colleges and universities mandating their students to receive a booster dose. The vaccine mandate will become effective midway through this semester, meaning students will need to have their booster doses by spring break. 

“We are living in a time when we could either be responding to COVID as a collective whole or as individuals,” Pastor-Rivera said. “In the past 2 years, since the start of the pandemic, we have seen many people taking an individual approach. Getting the vaccine and getting the booster represents a collective approach. The sooner we get boosted, the sooner we get vaccinated, the sooner we can stop COVID from dominating our daily lives.” 

In a video message last year, Pope Francis urged Catholics to get vaccinated, a sentiment that is clearly in line with CSU’s latest move. 

“Being vaccinated is an act of love,” Francis said in a video in August. “To ensure the majority of people are vaccinated is an act of love.” 

Pastor-Rivera echoed this idea, emphasizing the importance of protecting the more vulnerable members of the Creighton community. 

“People within our student body, as you know, are immuno-comprimised,” Pastor-Rivera said. “Some of our faculty and staff are immuno-compromised. Why put them at risk? Not only that, but professors, faculty, staff, even some of our student body members have to go home to their families, who may be immuno-comprimised, right? Let’s respond as a community, as a whole. Let’s get our vaccines, let’s get our boosters.” 

This isn’t the only project the new CSU president has worked on in his short time in the position thus far. 

Immediately upon being inaugurated, Pastor-Rivera’s impact on the campus was visible as the Creighton bookstore released pride T-shirts, a campaign he began during his freshman year. 

“I just thought, ‘This is something that should be available in the Creighton University bookstore,’” Pastor-Rivera said. “Our student population is so well diversified, representing so many different backgrounds, and to have something like this shows that our university is representing them.” 

The shirts now sit prominently at the front of the bookstore, providing a clearly visible symbol of support for Creighton’s LGBTQ community. According to Pastor-Rivera, this visibility has been received very well by the campus. 

“The response has been so well accepted, I was very happy to hear about that. Being the first openly gay president, I was really happy to see this finally coming to fruition.” 

The administration continued to break new ground over the course of winter break, being the first CSU president to visit Creighton’s new Phoenix campus. 

“I enjoyed the campus, it’s a beautiful campus,” Pastor-Rivera said. “It’s high tech, state of the art, they have these, animatronics, if you will, so that the future doctors and future nurses of tomorrow who are studying at Creighton can interact with them. I congratulate our university’s leadership on getting that through, just the development of our university as a whole.” 

During this trip, he also hosted the first CSU event at the Phoenix campus during the Creighton men’s basketball game against Arizona State. 

Additionally, this past week, CSU’s programming board held their first event of the new year in ice skating. Pastor-Rivera credits the board’s work on that event. 

Xander van den Berg, the CSU Vice President for Programming, encouraged students to check out CSU’s upcoming events. 

“Make sure to check the SLIC’s newsletter,” van den Berg said. “There’s also always events on CU Involved.”