NJ Senator: Rutgers Should Lose Funding Over COVID-19 Shot Mandate

A student walks past the dormitory at Rutgers Univeristy in New Brunswick, N.J., on Oct. 1, 2010. Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

A New Jersey state senator has called on Rutgers University to be stripped of state funding over its mandate that staff and faculty be forced to take the COVID-19 shot.

Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican senator in New Jersey’s 13th District, declared that imposing the mandate on students discriminates against the state’s taxpayers by refusing admittance to those who choose not to get the controversial shot.

“It is difficult to put into words just how absurd and irrational the vaccination policy is at Rutgers University,” Mr. O’Scanlon said in a statement. “The 2024-2025 semester is just around the corner and the administrators at Rutgers still insist that all students, faculty, and staff receive the COVID-19 vaccine—a policy that has no basis in science whatsoever. In fact, the entire policy is anti-science.

“Until Rutgers lifts the mandate, I’m calling for a cut in funding. And, students who are thinking about going to Rutgers, but are not going due to the vaccine mandate, should be able to apply for school aid to use at whatever institution they want,” he added.

In March 2021, Rutgers officials boasted they were the first school in the United States to make the COVID-19 shot compulsory when the university announced all students returning to campus in the fall would have to show proof they were vaccinated against COVID-19, or they would be unenrolled.

The school’s website states, “COVID-19 shots are required of students and employees unless granted a medical or religious exemption by the university.” Those who don’t show proof that they have had the shot will not be allowed to return for the first day of class on Sept. 6.

The site added that “face coverings are not required at the university but are welcomed.”

Rutgers stated on its website that the policy has been implemented “to minimize COVID outbreaks” and “to prevent and reduce the risk of COVID transmission.”

New Jersey taxpayers currently pay for nearly one-fifth of Rutgers’s operating costs, deriving 19 percent of its revenue from state appropriations, according to the school.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner in Texas, told The Epoch Times that momentum is beginning to shift away from mandates and toward health autonomy.

“Calling for the elimination of mandates is safe and easy to support,” said Dr. Bowden, co-founder of Americans For Health Freedom, a political action committee (PAC) “created to help support candidates who are taking the politically risky move by speaking up against Big Pharma.”

“The shots should have been pulled off the market a long time ago,” she added.

Her group has commitments from 156 elected officials, 133 candidates, and one surgeon general, all of whom have publicly stated that the COVID-19 shots must be pulled off the market and have also pledged not to take donations from “Big Pharma,” according to Dr. Bowden.

COVID-19 Vaccine Controversy

The number of schools requiring the shot has fallen as the past two years have seen it become mired in controversy. The original COVID-19 shots were taken by more than 80 percent of Americans after officials pledged that the shots would effectively prevent contraction and stop the spread of the disease.

However, once it was revealed that the shots didn’t work as promised, interest in the subsequent booster decreased dramatically.

The shots could also be attributed to widespread reports of adverse health outcomes believed to have been caused by the therapies. COVID-19 shots have been named the primary suspect in over 1.5 million adverse event reports, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. The numbers could be even higher. An FDA-funded study out of Harvard found that VAERS cases represent fewer than 1 percent of vaccine adverse events.

Despite the controversy, COVID-19 vaccine mandates continue to be in effect for students at 67 (including Rutgers) out of the top 800 colleges in the United States, according to recent data acquired by No College Mandates, which describes itself as a “group of concerned parents, doctors, nurses, professors, students, and other college stakeholders working towards the common goal of ending COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”

According to Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, Mr. O’Scanlon’s pledge is a promising start but will need more help before being able to realize real change, telling The Epoch Times that if he gets the support needed, “it could absolutely work to end college mandates.”

Mr. O’Scanlon says that as more schools continue to abandon the mandate as the science behind the shot becomes more evident, Rutgers will increasingly look anti-science and out of step with the rest of the nation.

“Not only have the most prominent schools in the state lifted their vaccination requirement, but even the top universities in New York, including NYU and Columbia, no longer require the COVID-19 vaccine. This shows just how out of touch and extreme Rutgers’ policies are,” said Mr. O’Scanlon in a statement.

“We’re not talking about schools in Texas or Florida, we’re talking about schools in New York City, a place led by some of the most liberal people in the entire country—and even they lifted the vaccine requirement.”