SoulCycle instructor Stacey Griffith publicly apologized on Monday for calling herself an “educator” in order to get the vaccine before more vulnerable Americans.
SoulCycle instructor and social media influencer Stacey Griffith boasted about receiving the Moderna vaccine on January 29, in a now-deleted Instagram post. “VACCINE DAY! Step one of the Moderna magic,” she wrote at the time. “One hour drive to STATEN ISLAND worth every minute! It takes a village.” Griffith took a spot among just 850,000 New York City residents able to begin the immunization process.
At the time, Griffith defended her position in a response to reporting by the Daily Beast. “Having me vaccinated can stop the short spread within groups!” she said. “I function as a common point for many overlapping people. In my profession of health and wellness as a teacher, it’s my priority daily to keep my community and their respiratory systems operating at full capacity so they can beat this virus if they are infected by it. I can only teach to them if I am healthy myself.”
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was among her most prominent critics. “I don’t think someone who shows up and says, ‘Hey, I’m a SoulCycle instructor’ should have qualified unless there’s some other factor there,” he told the press on Sunday. “That should have been caught in the application process.”
SoulCycle stressed that Griffith’s actions were “personal,” and issued a memo to staff and instructors regarding the vaccination, discouraging them from trying to use their status to jump the line. “SoulCycle instructors do not qualify as educators to receive the vaccine based solely on their roles at SoulCycle,” the company wrote in a memo partially shared with Vox, “and should not be attempting to receive the vaccine unless they are otherwise eligible to do so, based on appropriate state regulations.”
After a long weekend of blowback, the spin class leader has issued a mea culpa. “I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart for my recent action in receiving the vaccine,” Griffith wrote on her Instagram account. “I made a terrible error in judgment and for that I am truly sorry.”
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