Who is Logan Hollar? Rutgers bars unvaccinated student from attending remote classes
SANDYSTON TOWNSHIP, NEW JERSEY: A New Jersey student claims that he has been barred from taking classes at Rutgers University because he has not been vaccinated. What is troubling about his allegation, however, is that he is only studying virtually from home.
As per a report in NJ.com, Logan Hollar transferred to Rutgers University in 2020, spending his junior year taking virtual classes from his Sandyston home in Sussex County, more than 70 miles away from the New Brunswick campus. For his senior year, the psychology major decided to sign up for all virtual classes.
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The 22-year-old said that he was locked out of his Rutgers email and related accounts when he went to pay his tuition at the end of August. He said he was told that he needed to be vaccinated. But Hollar hasn’t taken and doesn’t want the COVID vaccine. “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. “If someone wants to be vaccinated, that’s fine with me, but I don’t think they should be pushed.”
Rutgers was the first university in the country to mandate vaccines for students at all of its campuses last year. But it didn’t require them for students in fully remote online degree programs or online-only continuing education programs. However, even though Hollar has all virtual classes, he is not part of the online programs that don’t have a vaccine requirement.
“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.”
He said that he completed a required survey about the coronavirus vaccine in August. He reportedly checked a box that said the vaccine mandate didn’t apply to him, “which I believed to be the case,” he said. “After submitting the survey, I got no pop-up indication that I still needed the vaccine — like I had seen in the past — and since I was online and the survey said I was all set, I assumed the emails in my inbox pertaining to (the vaccine) must apply to in-person students,” Hollar said. “This turned out not to be the case.”
He said he called the university’s vaccine hotline, and a representative said he had to be vaccinated even if his classes were all remote. Hollar said that he made multiple attempts to ask why he had to get vaccinated if he was not on campus. One representative reportedly said Hollar could request an exemption, so he did. If accepted, it could take two to four weeks before he was reinstated.
“Days later, I called back since I hadn’t received anything. They told me that unfortunately, they had decided that they would not grant waivers for anyone who had put in for them past August 23, even though I was told that I could get one with no problem on the 27th,” he said. Hollar’s step-father, Keith Williams, said he was “dumbfounded” when Hollar told him what was happening.
“I believe in science, I believe in vaccines, but I am highly confident that Covid-19 and variants do not travel through computer monitors by taking online classes,” said Williams, who did choose to be vaccinated. “He chose to remove himself from an on-campus experience so he would not need to be vaccinated. Now to be removed and shut down from his Rutgers email and online classes during the start of his senior year seems a bit crazy.”
The university spokeswoman Dory Devlin said that as per Rutgers’ policy, “Registering for classes that are fully remote (synchronous/asynchronous) is not the same as being enrolled in a fully online degree-granting program.” She added that 98.8 percent of Rutgers students were in compliance with the vaccination policy. Devlin said, “We continue to work with students who have not yet uploaded their documentation so they can gain access to university systems and classes,” adding that Rutgers continued to accept and process waiver requests for medical or religious reasons.
“I find it concerning for the vaccine to be pushed by the university rather than my doctor,” Hollar said. “I’ll probably have to transfer to a different university. I don’t care if I have access to campus. I don’t need to be there. They could ban me. I just want to be left alone.”