No Booster Mandate Yet For Rutgers, Unlike Other NJ Colleges

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Two top colleges in New Jersey announced Friday they will require all students and staff get a booster shot for coronavirus but so far, Rutgers University will not implement such a mandate — yet.

Princeton University and Stevens Institute of Technology announced Friday the booster shot mandate. At Princeton, students must receive booster shots by Jan. 31, while Stevens Institute of Technology requires students and staff get booster shots no later than March 31.

But Rutgers, the largest university in the state, so far has no plans to require booster shots.

"We encourage everyone to take advantage of booster shots as a way of increasing their personal protection against the virus. While we have no impending plans to require boosters for any community member, as an institution we continue to follow the science and will make our decisions accordingly," said Rutgers spokeswoman Carissa Sestito.

Last March, Rutgers became the first college or university in the nation to require that all students get a coronavirus vaccine. Since Rutgers was the first, many American colleges have followed suit with their own vaccine mandates. Rutgers initially did not require its professors be vaccinated, citing a high number of vaccine uptake among teachers, but then said all Rutgers employees must be vaccinated by Dec. 8.

Rutgers said it changed course and made the university-wide mandate after President Joe Biden's mandate that federal contractors be vaccinated against COVID-19. However, Biden's federal contractor mandate, as well as his vaccine mandate for private companies, was challenged by several Republican states and is currently working its way through the U.S. court system. Both mandates are now likely headed to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the school year started this September, Rutgers said 98.8 percent of its students complied with the vaccination requirement. Those students who did not get the coronavirus vaccine had to withdraw from the school.

Only those students enrolled in a fully online degree-granting program were exempted from Rutgers' vaccine mandate.

Princeton University said this week it is seeing an uptick in cases, including "suspected cases of the highly contagious omicron variant," and moved all final exams to be taken remotely.

When asked whether Rutgers was similarly seeing a surge, the university pointed us to its coronavirus dashboard, which shows 25 people tested positive at Rutgers New Brunswick for the week ending Dec. 11 (the most recent week available.)

This dashboard only records people who test on the Rutgers campus, and not does not log students or teachers who get a positive COVID test offsite. So, for example, a Rutgers student who gets a positive COVID test at a Walgreens would not be included in their dashboard.

On Nov. 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it advises all eligible adults 18 and older get a booster. The CDC has not said that booster shots reduce transmission; however the CDC does say that booster shots improve a body's defenses against serious COVID illness and death.

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