Rutgers Students Opposed To Vaccine Mandate Hold Campus Protest

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Out of a total enrollment of 51,000 undergrads, these are the select few Rutgers students who say they intend to fight the university's mandate that they get the coronavirus vaccine in order to return to campus this fall. They plan to hold a protest against the mandate this Friday on the College Avenue campus in New Brunswick.

"I'm very angry. I think the decision to get a COVID vaccination should be a personal choice, not the government's," said Sara Razi, a 21-year-old Rutgers junior. "And I'm not anti-vaccine at all. I've gotten the flu shot; my childhood vaccines. I'm anti-vaccine mandate."

Rutgers said its aim in the mandate is simply "creating a safe campus environment in fall 2021," said university spokeswoman Dory Devlin.

"The university’s position on vaccines is consistent with the legal authority supporting this policy," she told Patch Tuesday, when asked if the school was aware of Friday's protest.

In late March, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway announced Rutgers would be the first college or university anywhere in America to require the coronavirus vaccine as a condition for students to return to campus. Since then, Harvard, Notre Dame, NYU, Columbia and nearly every other college in New Jersey, including Princeton, has followed Holloway's lead.

Razi, a political science major from Freehold, is a member of Young Americans for Liberty, the students' Libertarian organization on campus. She is also the vice president of Rutgers Turning Point USA, the conservative students' organization on high school and college campuses.

"Why should students like me be forced to take a vaccine that is currently still experimental?" she asked. "We don't know the long-term side effects for 18-, 19-year-olds."

While all three coronavirus vaccines have been approved under emergency-use authorization by the Food & Drug Administration, they have been highly researched in clinical trials and deemed safe by both the CDC and FDA. Moderna was tested on more than 30,000 American adults 18 and older before it was approved. Pfizer-BioNTech tested its vaccine on 43,448 people 16 and older, and Johnson & Johnson's single shot was tested on 43,783 participants worldwide, including 840 right here in New Jersey. In November, J&J was actually asking Rutgers students to volunteer as vaccine trial participants.

All the vaccines have shown effective at preventing serious illness and death from coronavirus.

"A vaccine should be a personal choice made by me and my doctor," Razi maintained.

Razi said, so far, most of the resistance to the vaccine mandate has been among Rutgers students who identify as conservative or Republican. It's been difficult to build a groundswell movement to fight the mandate, she admits, perhaps in part because Rutgers students haven't physically been in classes together for more than a year.

"The students who have openly said they are against this are members of the Rutgers pro-life chapter, Young Americans for Liberty and Turning Point. I would say that's about 300 students," she said. "But I actually believe there are a lot of Rutgers students who think this is wrong, but they are too scared to speak out against it.

"That's the thing about living in a blue state that already takes very authoritarian measures," she continued. "The government has taken such extreme measures already in the past year that people have just become used to it. 'That's how things work in New Jersey.'"

Protest planned for this Friday on Rutgers campus

Razi and others are organizing a protest against the vaccine mandate at 10 a.m. this Friday, May 21 in front of 11 Brower Hall, on College Avenue.

State Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger (Republican-Monmouth) and Assemblywoman Serena DiMaso (Republican-Monmouth) both confirmed they will be at Friday's protest. Scharfenberger is a vocal critic of masks and lockdowns; has participated in recent end-the-mask protests, including this one last weekend in Middletown, and spoke at this Reopen New Jersey rally last May.

But it's been difficult for Rutgers students to get New Jersey lawmakers on their side, even among Republicans.

In late March, DiMaso introduced this bill to fight the Rutgers vaccine mandate; her bill would remove state funding from any NJ college or university that requires its students get the coronavirus vaccine. However, she told Patch Tuesday that the bill has yet to be assigned to any State House committee, and no other lawmaker has agreed to co-sponsor it.

"I've sent it to several legislators to read and hopefully they will join on," DiMaso said. "I am getting a lot of calls at the office and lots of people on Facebook and Twitter (support the bill). They are calling out other legislators (who won't sign on)."

"Maybe they are worried about the Rutgers president being insulted?" she continued. "I plan on being at the Rutgers campus this Friday."

Gov. Phil Murphy has said he supports the Rutgers vaccine mandate for students. Republican governor front-runner Jack Ciattarelli said he does not support the mandate, but issued this statement March 31: "Governor Murphy should discourage our public and private colleges and universities from mandating vaccinations for all students. At the very least, he should do so until such time as the state can guarantee that every single New Jerseyan in higher-risk categories has immediate access to a vaccine should they choose to get one."

Some parents of Rutgers student will be at Friday's rally, as well. Alicia Gross' daughter will be a senior at RU this fall.

"She wants to be on campus for her last semester, and as her mother I don't believe it's fair to mandate a vaccine that seems unnecessary with all the therapeutics available," she said. "I am very concerned about adverse health effects for her and I believe it's important to help young kids just reaching adulthood see that older folks care about their future. Why the forceful mandate?"

Finance major Zack Giannakopoulos, 23, from South River, said he will be at Friday's rally. He is also a member of the Rutgers chapter of Young Americans for Liberty.

"Even if we get a few hundred there, it's about making noise," he said.

Giannakopoulos just wants to finish his senior year on campus, in Rutgers classes, after a very difficult junior year where he said he felt isolated from his friends and teachers. He said he thinks Rutgers administrators are essentially bullying students, holding the promise of a "normal" college experience over their heads on one condition: That they get the vaccine.

"The past year and online learning definitely hurt my education," he said. "And we have to consider young people's mental health. It can't be healthy to be locked in a room for months on end, not interacting with any people your age. I really want to do senior year in person."

Giannakopoulos said he views Rutgers' existing vaccine requirements, such as requiring all freshmen get the meningitis vaccine, as very different from the new COVID vaccine mandate.

"You had to get those shots if you wanted to live in the dorms. I've always been a commuter student," he said. "I just really want to return to in-person classes. I know they're going to say well, you can still take classes online if you don't get the shot, but it's not the same quality of education."

"Where is the ACLU on this?" he continued. "This is a group that in the '70s fought for the right for Nazis to have freedom of speech. But now they won't even fight for students who want to be given a choice to take an experimental vaccine?"

The ACLU has been critical of the idea of vaccine passports, saying they could lead to a "privacy nightmare." But they did not respond this week when Patch asked if they had a position on colleges mandating the vaccine for students.

Rutgers professors not required to get the vaccine

Razi is also angry Rutgers is not requiring its professors or staff to get the vaccine. School administration said they "strongly urged" teachers to be vaccinated, but are leaving it up to their own discretion to get the shot.

"This is solely because the teachers have a union that represents them and we don't have the same bargaining power," she said.

The president of the Rutgers faculty union, Todd Wolfson, previously told Patch "the university never reached out" or broached a vaccine requirement with the union, something Rutgers administration confirmed.

"However, we would welcome a conversation on this front," said Wolfson in April. "We want a safe campus."

The Rutgers spokeswoman said students are currently testing positive at a much higher rate than faculty, many of which are electively choosing to be vaccinated. Students also live in dorms or shared housing, which have a high transmission rate, she said.

"The ongoing Rutgers spring data clearly reflects that students have a 60- to 70-percent higher COVID-19 positivity rate than faculty and staff," said Devlin. "This is to be expected since they are highly mobile and highly interactive given that they often study and live in congregate settings."

With some exceptions, U.S. colleges that mandate the vaccine are mostly requiring it only for students. There are rare exceptions: Columbia is requiring both students and staff get the vaccine. New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark, is the only New Jersey college requiring both students and professors be vaccinated.

Rowan is the lone New Jersey college not requiring the vaccine; the South Jersey school said "students may opt out in accordance with guidelines with the emergency-use authorization," but unvaccinated students who live in dorms will be required to undergo weekly COVID testing.

In March, seven teachers filed a federal lawsuit against the Los Angeles School District, challenging the district’s right to mandate that its employees receive COVID-19 vaccination. Their lawsuit argued that because the COVID vaccines have only received emergency-use authorization from the FDA, anyone has the right to refuse a vaccine.

The national chapter of Young Americans for Liberty said they were considering filing a similar lawsuit against Rutgers over the mandate.

"As far as legal action, we are evaluating all options at the moment. There is a possibility we will do so soon," said a spokesman for the group.

The students said Rutgers has given them no choice. They could make up some medical or religious reason why they cannot get the coronavirus vaccine. But that would be lying, said Razi.

"I guess we could all pick up and leave school, but that's not realistic," she said. "We have the right to claim religious or medical exemptions, but what about that we just want to make the choice for ourselves, for our bodies? It's not fair."

Giannakopoulos said he will "wait until the last possible moment" to be vaccinated this summer.

"I'm hoping this will get overturned," he said.

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