Three Illinois State Legislators Met with U of I President Last Month to Discuss School's Covid Test Use
Did they get what they wanted?
Looks like Illinois state senator Chapin Rose (R-51) got the meeting with Tim Killeen, University of Illinois president, that he demanded back in August.
Rose, Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-47), and Rep Adam Niemerg (R-109)1 met with Killeen and other U of I officials via Zoom on September 14, 2022, regarding the school’s “Shield” saliva-based covid test/program/company and related research endeavors.2
The session was slated to last an hour. It wasn’t recorded and no agenda was attached to the emails I obtained.
Three weeks after the meeting, on October 6th, Senator Rose sent a follow-up message to Jennifer Creasy, U of I’s senior direct of state communications, asking when requested documents would be sent.
“It’s been over 3 weeks since our meeting,” Rose wrote. “Do you have an estimate on how long it will take to get us the follow up doc requests? I would have thought we could have at least some communication on the matter by now?”
Ms. Creasy assured the Senator that the documents were being collected and would be sent as soon as possible…which ended up being yesterday, October 11th.
Rose, Mazzochi & Niemerg got some, but not all, of what they apparently wanted.
They received
the data directory for variant identification,
consent forms for all testing (research and every day testing),
voluntary consent statement,
K-12 [testing] consent,
disclosure forms for HIPPA-Collection & testing not covered by HIPAA, and
sequencing sample information sent to IDPH.
Ms. Creasy added, “We are still waiting on information from Shield T3 and will send that ASAP. Please let me know if [you] have problems accessing the files and if you would like to discuss further.”
I don’t know what Rose, et al requested from Shield T3, LLC, the for-profit racket arm of the University’s saliva-testing enterprise. If Rep. Mazzochi’s questions for President Killeen in March are any indication, they probably at least requested documents related to collection/use of samples & data, company structure, and information about who profits from the profits.
I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes next.
One thing’s for sure: It’s not going away.
You can access all of my posts about U of I here:
The original version of this post said Senator Terry Bryant (R-58) was in attendance. Bryant was included on correspondence, but the third legislator at the meeting was Niemerg.
Personal email/Gmail addresses of Senator Rose, Senator Terry Bryant (R-58), and U of I trustee Stuart King redacted.