California requires college students to get vaxxed, but not prison guards. What?

How’s this for inconsistency?

Faculty, staff and students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo are required to be fully vaccinated and boosted for COVID-19.

But just up the road at another state institution — the California Men’s Colony — most employees are under no such mandate.

And California’s pro-vax governor is perfectly fine with that double standard.

COVID-19 is surging among state prison employees, including at CMC, where 141 active cases were reported Wednesday.

Statewide, more than 3,800 active cases were reported among employees, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

Yet the only CDCR employees who are required to be vaccinated are those who work in health care settings.

To be sure, at this stage in the pandemic vaccinations do not provide absolute protection against the fast-spreading omicron variant; there have been reports of many breakthrough cases, most of them mild.

But vaccines do protect against hospitalization and death, and they are effective in fighting the more severe delta variant, which continues to circulate.

Gov. Gavin Newsom made the right decision when he mandated vaccines or regular testing for several groups, including health care workers, most state employees and schoolchildren.

Requiring vaccinations for all CDCR staff should have been a no-brainer.

Yet from the get-go, Newsom resisted; his critics saw it as a cynical ploy to curry favor with the powerful correctional officers union, which donated $1.75 million to Newsom’s campaign to defeat the recall effort.

A federal judge did issue an order mandating vaccines for correctional employees last September that was supposed to have taken effect on Jan. 12. But the CDCR filed an appeal of the ruling, which Newsom joined.

For now, prison employees continue to be exempted from vaccine requirements, though stricter testing and masking mandates have been ordered.

It’s a situation that’s both frustrating and dangerous.

From the start of the pandemic, health exerts warned that populations in congregate settings, including prisons and jails, were at extremely high risk.

And sure enough, infections soared among inmate populations. In early 2021 — before vaccines became widely available — nearly one in three inmates at the Men’s Colony had the virus. At the time, it was the highest case count among the state’s 34 correctional facilities.

Even more concerning, the spread of the virus through CMC cost lives. Over the course of the pandemic, 13 inmates at CMC have died from COVID-19.

The outlook has improved with the arrival of vaccines.

Of the roughly 3,200 inmates at CMC, about 84% are fully vaccinated, according to reporting by Tribune writer Sara Kassabian. Only 13 inmates have tested positive over the past two weeks, though inmate cases at other prisons are increasing.

As for staff, only around 68% are fully vaccinated at CMC.

That’s not good enough.

Obviously, CDCR’s strategy of encouraging the shots — rather than mandating them — has been ineffective.

In opposing a mandate, the state argues that prison employees who oppose the vaccine will resign en masse, especially veteran employees who are close to retirement.

But with the inmate population shrinking — the state is closing two prisons and considering shutting down more — is that threat overblown?

We don’t expect the Newsom administration to reverse course — even though the optics are horrible.

He will no doubt be hammered for his ties to the correctional officers union during his upcoming reelection campaign.

The criticism is deserved.

In giving a pass to CDCR employees, Newsom provides cover to vaccine holdouts who are looking for any excuse to avoid getting a shot, and the governor’s inconsistency fills the bill.

Let’s just hope the court of appeal sees this for what it is: a position motivated by politics, and not by public health.