Rutgers AAUP-AFT | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

Growing resentment evident in overwhelming vote to cut Rutgers athletic budget, faculty say

February 02, 2012

By Jarrett Renshaw/Statehouse Bureau

Mike Roy/The Star-LedgerRutgers Athletic Director Tim Pernetti appears in this January file photo.

NEW BRUNSWICK — Battered by budget and salary cuts as spending on sports increases each year, faculty at Rutgers University’s school of the Arts and Sciences Wednesday called for cutting university subsidies to the athletic department and giving students a voice in how their money is spent.

Faculty members who packed Voorhees Hall said the 174-3 vote shows their growing resentment over pumping millions into an athletic department that is among the biggest money-losers in the nation.

“There is deep and broad dissatisfaction among the faculty with the decisions the board of governors have made, the direction the administration has pursued and the catastrophic failure and waste of the athletic program,” Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry, told the crowd of professors.

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Rutgers University faculty calls for cuts to athletic department subsidies

February 01, 2012

By Jarrett Renshaw/Statehouse Bureau

Tom Wright-Piersanti/The Star-Ledger. Old Queens on the College Avenue Campus in New Brunswick.

NEW BRUNSWICK — Battered by budget and salary cuts, the faculty at Rutgers University’s school of the Arts and Sciences overwhelmingly supported a resolution today that called for cutting university subsidies to the athletic department and giving students a voice in how their money is spent.

The resolution, which passed by a vote of 174-3, symbolizes the faculty’s growing resentment over the athletic department’s increased consumption of university dollars that could otherwise be used for academics. Budget cuts forced faculty to forgo raises and even office phones.

“This is an unmistakably clear expression of how the faculty feels,” said Mark Killingsworth, a economics professor who has pushed for the resolution since the fall. “Parents got to know that the value of a Rutgers degree is under threat.”

The school of arts and sciences, which includes departments like history and economics, has a faculty of 910 professors, which account for about half of all professors at the New Brunswick campus.

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Rutgers-Camden, Rowan may marry, but they should keep their names

January 31, 2012

Kevin Riordan, Inquirer Columnist

Gov. Christie’s proposal to “merge” Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University under the Rowan name looks less like a collegial partnership and more like a hostile takeover. Or perhaps a shotgun wedding.

Whatever you call it, the plan – part of an effort to reorganize, if not revolutionize, higher education statewide – feels like a foregone conclusion.

It arrived last week, floating on promises of more money, more jobs, more . . . more. And like so many decisions with enormous consequences for Camden, it appears to have been made with little input from people who live or work there.

Is it possible Camden and South Jersey would be better served by linking Rutgers and Rowan in a way that retains their identities? Could the schools gain academic and economic clout in a merger that more resembled a collaboration?

A “consortium,” such as that proposed by the Rutgers-Camden faculty, could combine some programs at the universities, leveraging strengths but maintaining separate operations.

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Lawsuits threatened over planned merger between Rowan and Rutgers-Camden

January 30, 2012

EILEEN STILWELL, Courier-Post Staff

A plan to roll Rutgers-Camden and Rowan into a single university under the Rowan banner could produce a barrage of lawsuits from Rutgers faculty, according to a union leader at the Camden campus.

“We are very much outraged by this proposal for many reasons. We think it’s fraudulent for one nonprofit, as in Rutgers, to dispose of its assets to another nonprofit, i.e. Rowan,” said Janet Golden, a professor of history at Rutgers-Camden.

“We also believe it’s illegal because everyone here with tenure is protected. Lots of lawsuits will follow because professors are granted tenure exclusively to Rutgers,” said Golden, a member of the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers.

Christie plan for university reshuffling means another chapter for Rowan

January 30, 2012

GLASSBORO — Twenty years ago, Rowan University’s reputation was synonymous with its teachers college, which prepared hundreds of elementary and special education instructors for South Jersey classrooms each year.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerThe Cooper Medical School of Rowan University is currently under construction in Camden. The building will house the first new medical school on the state in 30 years.

Back then, the school in Glassboro was known as Glassboro State College, and students looking for a bustling college town with a robust nightlife or a research institution with endless courses of study had to look elsewhere.

The run-down Gloucester County college town, once buoyed by a glass-manufacturing industry, was surrounded by peach orchards and featured two pizza joints, one bar and a lot of empty storefronts. The closest movie theater was 15 minutes away in Deptford.

Today, Rowan is a school transformed.

A $100 million gift in the early 1990s by engineer and businessman Henry Rowan kick-started a revival of both college and town, and a plan Gov. Chris Christie unveiled last week to dramatically change the state’s university system means another restructuring is on the way.

Christie’s plan calls for Rowan to take over the nearby Camden campus of Rutgers University, including its law and business schools. The plan also allows Rowan to maintain control of its new medical school, which is set to open in September.
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Not everyone is convinced about the benefits of the restructuring plan. Rutgers-Camden’s faculty union released a statement condemning the plan to strip the campus of its Rutgers title.

The union instead called on legislators to endorse a “consortium model” that would allow Rutgers Camden and Rowan to share some services while maintaining their distinction.

“The loss of the Rutgers brand name for South Jersey, and the unnecessary costs of merger, would do more harm than good,” said Patrick Nowlan, executive director of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT.

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Rutgers One Delivers 6,000-Plus Petition Calling on University to Pay Frozen Wage

October 13, 2011

McCormick Public Statements Ring Hollow as Rutgers Workers Lag Behind Rest of State

NEWARK…Rutgers workers have gone the longest without a raise among state workers, despite President Richard McCormick’s public statements that he intends to pay long withheld raises, according to the Rutgers One faculty, staff, student and alumni coalition. “Rutgers management withheld negotiated raises in 2009, asked for and received an agreement from us to defer then withheld the deferred raises again last year,” said Lucye Millerand, President of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers, which represents approximately 2,000 campus workers. The union is a part of the Rutgers One coalition of faculty, staff, students and alumni which generated more than 6,000 signatures calling for affordable tuition and fair treatment of workers, delivered to the university’s Board of Governors meeting today.

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McCormick addresses contractual concerns in Q&A

September 17, 2011

Professor of Education Catherine Lugg, who is entering her 16th year at the university, was one of many who voiced concern and displeasure over the delay in paying unionized workers, disputed salary increases. Lugg is a member of American Association of University Professors-American Federation of teachers (AAUP-AFT).

“It’s delay, delay, delay,” she said. “They announced a salary freeze in June 10, 2010. In 2009, the faculty agreed to delay implementation of our raises, and some of our colleagues have been frozen since back in 2008. We’ve heard words, but it’s just happy talk. It’s not Rutgers being a family.

“If it is, it’s one of the most dysfunctional families I’ve seen in a long time.”

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Another Round at Rutgers

August 24, 2011

Catherine A. Lugg, a professor of education and treasurer of the faculty union, believes, as do others, that the university’s trajectory toward big-time sports began with a few outspoken members of the Board of Governors who wanted Rutgers to become a football powerhouse — and the power and tunnel vision of those members made voices of opposition irrelevant, they say. Even as things haven’t turned out as planned, the university has kept with it. “I think it’s just the proverbial snowball coming down a hill, picking up speed,” Lugg said — a few problematic decisions made years ago have been exacerbated with time.

As Lugg pointed out, Rutgers’s very geography works against a unified fan culture. The disjointed main campus is actually broken into five pieces, requiring a bus to get from one end to the other. And it sits between the two American professional sports meccas of Philadelphia and New York. While Rutgers football undoubtedly draws more of a crowd now than it did in the past, it still finished 4-8 last year. (A losing record of 59-63 over 10 seasons makes the $2 million salary of head coach Greg Schiano, already a symbol of misdirected priorities for many frustrated faculty members, even more contentious.)

“I don’t think anyone got up first thing in the morning and said, ‘We’re just going to decide to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort that won’t succeed’…. But it’s kind of like, when do you fish or cut bait?” Lugg said. “Athletics — it adds to student culture, yes, but should it displace academic mission? No. I’m a former high school athlete. I love sports. But you know, it’s an issue of priorities.”

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Rutgers faculty decry spending on athletics

August 19, 2011

BY PATRICIA ALEX
STAFF WRITER
The Record

The faculty union at Rutgers University is crying foul after a report this week that the school’s athletic department got $27 million in annual subsidies while pay for professors and staff was frozen and student fees were hiked.

Rutgers’ drive to build a big-time football program has soaked up considerable resources over the past decade.
Rutgers’ drive to build a big-time football program has soaked up considerable resources over the past decade.

“It’s time to restore a balance to what we do at Rutgers,” said Adrienne Eaton, the faculty union president said in a statement issued Friday. “Classrooms and research first, athletics second … in that order.”

The state university spent more money on athletics than any other public institution in the six biggest football conferences during the 2009-10 fiscal year, according to the report by Bloomberg News, which appeared in The Record on Wednesday. More than 40 percent of sports revenue came from student fees and the university’s general fund, the report found.

The subsidies came as tuition and fees increased – Rutgers is one of the most expensive public universities in the nation – and state support for the university was slashed. The drop in state funding has had an impact university-wide, resulting in cuts to academic programs and staff.

“If the McCormick administration can find $27 million each year to subsidize athletics, then it can surely find smaller amounts of money in its $2 billion budget to respect its employee agreements and maintain the quality of our instruction and research,” said Eaton, the head of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, referring to the university President, Richard McCormick.

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Rutgers Athletics Grow at Expense of Academics

August 16, 2011

Rutgers Grows Athletics, Trims Academics
By Curtis Eichelberger and Oliver Staley – Aug 16, 2011 12:00 AM ET

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) — Rutgers University students and alumni talk about about the New Jersey state university’s increased funding for its sports programs amid cuts in the school’s academic budget. The 245-year-old university spent more money on athletics than any other public institution in the six biggest football conferences during the 2009-2010 fiscal year, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. More than 40 percent of sports revenue came from student fees and the university’s general fund. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who gained national prominence after cutting state aid to cities, towns and school districts by $1.3 billion last year, declined multiple requests to discuss the Rutgers sports funding. So did Rutgers President Richard McCormick, who is retiring from the top job in June 2012. (Source: Bloomberg)

Rutgers University forgave $100,000 of the football coach’s interest-free home loan last year. The women’s basketball coach got monthly golf and car allowances. Both collected bonuses without winning a championship.

Meanwhile, the history department took away professors’ desk phones to save money and shrank its doctoral program by 25 percent. After funding cuts by the deficit-strapped Legislature, New Jersey’s state university froze professors’ salaries, cut the use of photocopies for exams and jacked up student tuition, housing and other fees.

Rutgers also increased funding for sports. The 245-year-old school spent more money on athletics than any other public institution in the six biggest football conferences during the 2009-2010 fiscal year, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. More than 40 percent of sports revenue came from student fees and the university’s general fund.

“I am dumbfounded,” said New Jersey Assemblyman David Wolfe, a Republican who is a professor of psychology at Ocean County College in Toms River. “Rutgers officials appear before the Legislature every year and claim they are underfunded and need more money. Now we find out we have the No. 1-subsidized athletics program in the country.”

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