Unvaccinated Rutgers student says he’s being blocked from virtual classes

A Rutgers University student says he is being blocked from starting his virtual classes due to his unvaccinated status despite all his classes occurring online.

Logan Hollar, a junior at the university, told NJ.com he made sure to take all virtual classes, as he did not want to get the COVID-19 vaccine. 

“When they put out the guidance in March, I was reading through all the verbiage, which was if you plan to return to campus, you need to be vaccinated,” Hollar said. “I figured I wouldn’t be part of that because all my classes were remote.”

Rutgers was the first university in 2020 to announce a vaccine requirement for all students. The school has 98.8 percent of its students vaccinated.

Hollar said he was originally able to get into his school email and switch to all online classes, but things changed after he took a COVID-19 survey for the school.

He was locked out of his accounts on Aug. 27 and said he called the school and found out he needed to be vaccinated to take online classes. 

He was told he could get a vaccine exemption, but the school later said it wouldn’t give an exemption to anyone who didn’t submit an exemption request before Aug. 23, according to Hollar.  

The school’s spokeswoman, Dory Devlin, said in a statement to The Hill that the vaccine policy has not changed. The policy states that “registering for classes that are fully remote (synchronous/asynchronous) is not the same as being enrolled in a fully online degree-granting program.”

Devlin said the school is still working with students for exemptions and that it could take two to four weeks to process them.

“I find it concerning for the vaccine to be pushed by the university rather than my doctor,” Hollar told NJ.com. “I’ll probably have to transfer to a different university.”

“I’m not in an at-risk age group. I’m healthy and I work out. I don’t find COVID to be scary,” said Hollar, who is 22. “If someone wants to be vaccinated, that’s fine with me, but I don’t think they should be pushed.”

Updated: 4:28 p.m.