(The Center Square) — New Jersey’s Rutgers University is facing a backlash over its continuation of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate after federal and state restrictions expired.
The public university originally set its vaccine mandate in March 2021, which required staff and students to be fully vaccinated against COVID to attend classes and live on campus. However, the policy has been extended for the upcoming school year, requiring students to provide proof of immunization to enroll in classes.
The decision to continue the mandate has prompted a backlash online, with some calling for a boycott of the university, comparing it to Bud Light’s recent controversy over its use of a transgender influencer to market its beer.
Closer to home, the policy has prompted calls from New Jersey Republicans for the university’s leadership to resign over the continued vaccine mandate.
“If this is the quality of leadership at Rutgers, it’s time to make a change,” state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, R-Little Silver, said in a statement. “These people have no business being in charge of, and destroying, the credibility of what should be the esteemed, pre-eminent public New Jersey university.”
The university’s vaccine mandate continues despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control officially calling an end to the pandemic emergency, and the Biden administration’s decision to allow the federal public health emergency to expire in May, citing vaccination data and declining infections.
In June, Gov. Phil Murphy dropped a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, ending one of the last vestiges of the state’s pandemic-related restrictions.
Unlike many Northeast states, New Jersey didn’t mandate vaccines for state workers and allowed them to be tested for the virus instead, in some cases twice a week.
In 2021, Rutgers was sued by Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group created by Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, over the vaccine mandate, but a federal judge rejected the legal challenge.
Rutgers is among over 100 colleges and universities that still require students to be vaccinated to attend classes in person, according to No College Mandates, which tracks COVID-19 policies in higher education.
In a notice to prospective students posted in May, the university said the mandate will continue to “minimize outbreaks of COVID-19 in the Rutgers University community, prevent and reduce the risk of transmission” and “to promote the public health of the community in a manner consistent with federal, state, and local efforts.”
The statement said medical and religious exemption requests will be allowed but will be evaluated on a “case-by-case basis” and are not automatically granted.
“For those granted exemptions, on-campus participation is not guaranteed, and is dependent on the course of the pandemic, the rate and efficacy of vaccination, and the student’s academic program,” the university said.
The university suggested that students who don’t get vaccinated for COVID-19 could take online courses or “disenroll” from the school entirely.
“The arrogance of school administrators to tell their students to uproot their college plans and go somewhere else is absurd,” O’Scanlon added. “To essentially say to these kids ‘screw you and go somewhere else if you don’t like our monumentally irrational policy’ is callous arrogance, on top of the stupidity.”
