By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist
Months of hand-wringing, dithering indecision, back-room dealing, and official silence are apparently about to end. Members of Rutgers University’s two governing boards are scheduled to hold a rare joint meeting Wednesday to do what they should have done long ago — act openly to protect the structural integrity and political independence of the state university.
If it’s not too late.
Since January — the boards, especially the Board of Governors — have allowed politicians to define the debate over a proposed reorganization of higher education in New Jersey. They have allowed Gov. Chris Christie and South Jersey boss George Norcross and the ambitious Newark mayor, Cory Booker, to try to bend the state’s university to political needs by making it give up its Camden campus and take on the Central Jersey campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).
Finally, a month ago, the trustees, a vestige of a private past, voted overwhelmingly to refuse to give up Camden. Now, the trustees have invited their more timid, if more powerful, colleagues on the Board of Governors to attend an emergency meeting Wednesday — and to find their spines.
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