“Most Liberties Lost Are Never Restored”: Joni Ruller P’23 Interview

On February 22, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joni Ruller P’23 about her activism on behalf of informed consent and medical liberty vis-à-vis college students. Before the pandemic began, Joni ran a small baked goods business called LuckyGuy Bakery™—she makes some of the tastiest blondies I have ever eaten. At the beginning of the pandemic, we college students believed we’d just get an extended spring break and then return to business as usual. But Joni anticipated that her son would not be returning to school anytime soon; she had him pack up all his personal effects and bring them to their home in Bloomington, Indiana. However, like most Americans, Joni “never suspected that we would be locked down in the way that we were for as long as we were.”

Not particularly political at the outset of the pandemic, Joni was dismayed by the enthusiasm of Bloomington residents “to comply and enforce compliance” with lockdown restrictions including county-wide mask mandates, restrictions on gathering, and mandatory business closures. Unlike other college towns, particularly those in the Northeast, Joni noted that “most places did not require the vaccine for people who came into their spaces, but many did and continue to do so to this day, even though we have long since known there is no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” 

It is absolutely crucial to highlight that Joni does not, I repeat does not, have any issue with individuals choosing to make informed medical decisions for themselves, including taking the COVID-19 vaccine of their own volition: “If you think you are at a high risk, you take the shot.” What Joni, like all civil libertarians, has a problem with is mandating a course of treatment: “[Her] problem is with mandates. In order for a mandate to be justified, three conditions must be met. The mandated product must be exceedingly effective. The product must be exceedingly safe. And there must be a large danger to the population. These conditions were never met, and certainly are not being met now.” Joni recalls that such mandates, like those at universities, were predicated on the notion that “we have to keep the community safe… my shot protects you.” Unfortunately for the ostensibly pro-science, pro-mandate crowd, this claim was anything but scientific: “That was never part of the clinical trials… [it] was woven out of thin air.” 

So, if COVID-19 vaccine mandates cannot be justified from a public health perspective, why were such stringent policies foisted upon college students—one of the youngest, healthiest, and least-susceptible populations? This question is at the heart of Joni’s activism on behalf of medical liberty. Not only were college students “at about zero risk of COVID pneumonia, hospitalization, or deaths due to COVID,” as Joni pointed out, but “you guys [acquired] natural immunity… [after] COVID ripped through campus a few times since the vaccine mandates came.”  

Not only do they fail to stop transmission, but the mRNA vaccines are associated with increased cases of myocarditis, particularly in young (18-29 year old) men, one of the populations least vulnerable to COVID-19. Yet, mandates remain in place at many colleges throughout the United States: “Nearly 1000 colleges in this country continued to mandate the primary series… There was J&J with a primary series, the two Moderna or Pfizer BioNTech. 200 of those colleges mandate at least one booster, like Dartmouth does, and then about an additional 20 mandate another booster for everyone who’s been boosted…” It is these senseless, invasive intrusions into college students’ personal medical decisions that motivated Joni to organize like-minded stakeholders, begin her independent activism, and work with Concerned Alumni of Dartmouth College to host its April 26 roundtable discussion and dinner event. Entitled “College COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: Scientific, Ethical, and Legal Considerations,” the event will be held at the Hanover Inn. Dartmouth students are invited to attend the event and can register at React19.org/DartC19. A donor has made a limited number of dinner tickets available for students. Interested students should email info@openlettertodartmouth.com.

An affable small businesswoman and mother, Joni was not a warrior in search of a war; in fact, Joni’s involvement in the anti-mandate space began “kind of accidentally.” After Dartmouth mandated the booster in January 2022, Joni took to the Dartmouth Parents Facebook group to announce her intention to write a letter to the College opposing the mandate and solicited the support of fellow parents. Unfortunately, Joni did not receive a particularly supportive response from Big Green parents.

Rebuffed, Joni tweeted to find “like-minded parents of college people” and, after gathering more support, made appearances on Fox News, first on Fox and Friends and then on The Ingraham Angle with Laura Ingraham ’85, a noteworthy former Reviewer, several weeks later. After her Fox News appearances, Joni and her fellow travelers finally had enough support to establish “networking tools” to facilitate “letter campaigns to colleges [and] trustees” as well as to share strategies on how to “navigate mandates, how to secure religious exemptions, which schools gave them, what worked on the ground for them, and what kind of medical exemptions were appropriate.”

Later in the interview, Joni lamented college students’ own compliance with the vaccine mandates and other draconian public health policies, such as compulsory testing, social restrictions, and masking: “I don’t mean to paint your whole generation with a brush. But you guys are pretty compliant… if everybody at school hated these policies, what did you do about it? I mean why are you not standing up?… Why should young people be punished?” Embarrassed at my relative lack of courage, I half-heartedly suggested that many students were afraid of academic suspension, expulsion, etc., and many were shamed into believing that not complying with vaccine mandates, daily screenings, and lockdown and social distance measures would jeopardize other people’s lives—would kill somebody’s grandmother. 

Joni explained how this social intimidation taught the younger generations to “lead by taking away choice, and coercion” and to “become compliant without thinking.” Joni went on: “People who raise[d] the question of whether we should be mandating, should be implementing these policies, [were] heavily marginalized at the university level and all through society. The fact that you cannot even raise the question should set off a huge alarm bell.” The fact that students at liberal arts colleges were encouraged not to scrutinize the data, not to raise countervailing normative concerns, and not to trust the scientific method but rather specific scientists and to consider their opinions sacrosanct seems self-evidently wrong. I agree with Joni that a useful rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether you allow people to question your premises and empirical evidence.

So what is this fierce advocate of medical liberty, bodily autonomy, and informed consent off to next? Much to my dismay, Joni did not answer “reopening LuckyGuy!” Although many of the most totalitarian COVID-era policies have been phased out, Joni echoed a truism known to all libertarians: “most liberties lost are never restored.” When I pressed her for specifics, Joni reiterated her work with Concerned Alumni of Dartmouth College: “First, I just want to make sure that these mandates are dropped. But I think then the fight for the future of freedom really begins…” “I don’t want to wake up in five years, and not be able to make my own choices about what I put into my body and where I can go… I don’t know, Jack, but there’s a lot of work to be done.” 

I, for one, am excited to see the causes of Liberty that Joni champions in the future.