STUDENTS and faculty at Rutgers University have condemned Governor Christie’s proposal to merge the university’s Camden campus with Rowan University since the higher education restructuring plan was announced about three months ago. Not so the Rutgers Board of Trustees, whose lack of comment while opponents were staging campus protests moved one trustee to say, “Our silence has been deafening.”
That has changed. The trustees have now spoken, and they did so in a big way, voting overwhelmingly last Thursday to oppose transferring Rutgers-Camden to Rowan in Gloucester County. A resolution that was backed 32-4 said the proposed severance of Rutgers-Camden was “inconsistent with the mission of Rutgers University.”
The resolution also said trustees would consider alternatives. That sounds like opening the door to meaningful discussion, but it’s a question if the governor will play along. More than once, Christie has said he wants his restructuring plan approved in total — and he wants it done by July 1, which is now less than two months away. Other parts of the plan have not generated as much opposition. They include breaking up the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark and giving some of its assets, including Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, to Rutgers.
The trustees’ action last week was significant. It crystallized what had been loosely-organized protests into a formal condemnation of the merger proposal.
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