Rutgers professors comment on U. vaccine mandate for employees

The University recently released a mandate requiring all Rutgers faculty and staff to receive full vaccination against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) by Dec. 8. Several faculty members shared their responses to this mandate.

Heather Pierce, a part-time lecturer in the Department of Political Science, said she first learned about the mandate through an email announcement that was sent out to faculty and staff. She said the mandate should have been implemented before the semester started, specifically at the same time that the University required it of students.

“The faculty unions, or at least the (part-time lecturer) union, had voted on this to support ... a vaccine mandate for all faculty and staff who are on campus as well and sent a document of resolution to the administration,” Pierce said. “I don't think they ever acknowledged it, though.”

Several faculty members also created a petition for the University to require COVID-19 vaccination for faculty and staff, which had more than 750 signatures in August, The Daily Targum previously reported.

Rebecca Givan, president of the Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT), said it has taken a long time to bring the University into discussions about implementing the mandate.

“We were in favor of a mandate for faculty and have been for some time, but the University chose to wait and follow state and then federal regulations that applied to us rather than being a little bit more proactive about setting a high standard for the safety of our campus,” Givan said.

Still, she said AAUP-AFT members are pleased more faculty and staff are now getting vaccinated and that the union is more concerned with creating the safest campus possible than the specific timing of the mandate. The AAUP-AFT has been bargaining with the University over the mandate’s impact on faculty and staff, though they have not reached an agreement yet.

Thomas Moomjy, a part-time lecturer in the Department of American Studies, said he has been vaccinated for so long that he saw this mandate coming but is also supportive of everyone being vaccinated.

“I understand that there is a personal choice aspect, but then there's also consequences that go along with that,” Moomjy said. “This has been, I think, an inevitability, and particularly given the fact that Rutgers was the first school to mandate this for students, ... it's been coming. And certainly, with the involvement of federal funding at Rutgers, that's obviously something that's going to be involved.”

Brian Householder, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Communication, said the issuing of the mandate was not something he thought much about, as he was under the assumption that receiving the COVID-19 vaccine was a common-sense practice by most people.

As someone who directs a program, he said no faculty members have come to him expressing any issues with the mandate so far. He said that if a faculty member did come to him trying to seek exemption from the vaccine, he would probably work with them to find a way to accommodate their continued teaching.

“But, at this point ... that would typically mean moving someone to online, and the University is really fighting the creation of any online instruction at this point,” Householder said.

Regarding how vaccine implementation has been handled in the current state of the pandemic, Moomjy said he thinks there could have been better coordination between federal, state and local responses.

Moving forward, Moomjy said he hopes crises can be responded to with more clarity, less personalization and more consideration for other people.

“I'm thinking back to previous situations like the polio vaccine campaigns of the late 1950s, 1960s, and it being for the public good,” he said. “We're still in a range where there are about 1,000 people in the United States dying a day. It's hard for me to fathom that we've lost sight of that. And I would encourage people to get vaccinated, simply because it's for the public good.”