O’Scanlon Calls for Investigation into Rutgers Athletics $450K DoorDash Bill

Paired with outdated covid mandates leads to larger concerns

Following news that Rutgers University football players racked up more than $450,000 in DoorDash orders paid for with taxpayer funds since May of last year, Senator Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth) called for an investigation into the program.

“We saw two stories in two days depicting what amounts to indictments of flagrant incompetence on the part of those charged with overseeing this university,” said O’Scanlon. “It is absolutely mind-blowing that this was allowed to happen without the notice of someone overseeing the accumulating invoices. The person responsible for that lack of oversight needs to be held accountable. Between financial scandals and completely ignoring the newest CDC guidance on outrageous masking mandates, vaccination, and testing policies—and virtually the rest of the science-following-world’s long overdue removal of those mandates—it paints a concerning picture to taxpayers. And to anyone who had faith in those running the institution.”

O’Scanlon has been a vocal opponent of continued, outdated masking, vaccination, and testing mandates for the last two years and has called out Rutgers before regarding their ongoing, long outdated and disproven covid-zero protocols.

“We’ve spoken to the university over the last few months on the testing requirements for indoor events, swimming events, and the overall mandates in all departments,” O’Scanlon continued. “Our state institutions of higher education should be striving to lead the way on covid protocols, but instead they’re lagging behind the rest of the world—including an absurd masking policy which calls for masks in classrooms and libraries…but nowhere else. Those in charge of inflicting these policies should be ashamed. They are insisting on boosters for students who may have had a negative vaccine reaction—or who just had covid recently and are protected by antibodies. We have heard some truly tragic circumstances occur with students due to these illogical mandates.”

Rutgers Athletics also accumulated a $73M deficit in 2021 and has been the focus of dozens of news stories in the last few years regarding misuse, mismanagement, and excessive spending. They’ve since defended the $450,000 DoorDash bill stating that many student-athletes come from economically disadvantaged circumstances and they needed to look out for their welfare during covid.

“Defending the high cost and purchases because it was for student welfare isn’t an acceptable defense. It’s a nonsensical attempt to justify this mess. Sorry, it doesn’t fly. The problem isn’t that the university provided the option to student athletes to meet their nutritional and welfare needs during the pandemic. The problem is that apparently no one was paying attention to the invoices and spending to catch blatant misuse—which is a larger recurring issue.”

“It was only a little over a month ago that we saw other articles exposing Rutgers athletics’ misuse of Rutgers credit cards. Almost $10M on insanely inappropriate lavish charges with—again—seemingly no oversight. Meanwhile Democrats saw fit to hand them $100M for an indoor practice facility this past June in a budget deal. This type of behavior is completely unacceptable and an investigation should be launched immediately. The residents of New Jersey deserve accountability, both from the people guilty of these decisions and actions, and from those covering for them. We must be better than this.”