Braun: New Rutgers president tightens grip on university’s reins

By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist

NEW BRUNSWICK — Robert Barchi, Rutgers University’s new president, is scheduled to take on a new role today with the kickoff of the campaign to pass the $750 million bond higher education issue. He will be, with three political leaders, promoting the borrowing plan. In a little more than a month, he has made it clear he is a player in state higher education, fully in charge of a $2 billion state university that is shortly to become a $3 billion state university.

He has acted quickly, he says, because, “One of the things that comes with age” — he is 65 — “is that short term really means short term.’’

That was meant as a joke, but it’s clear Barchi wants to show that, at a politically perilous time for Rutgers — it came very close to dismemberment at the hands of a Republican governor and a Democratic party boss — the state university is in the hands of a forceful leader who wants no one to believe he’s a place holder.

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