By Monsy Alvarado and Patricia Alex, Staff Writers, The Record
One by one, students stood before members of the Rutgers governing body on Thursday to tell them they could not afford tuition increases at the state institution — which has spent millions on construction, athletics and most recently a huge medical school merger.
Katherine Hood of Jackson, a junior at Rutgers, holds up a sign during the protest at a hearing by the Rutgers Board of Governors on Thursday, April 23, 2015, in New Brunswick.
“We need a tuition freeze because so many of my friends are struggling with this,” said Hannah Roe, a senior from Montclair. “This is an issue of our generation.”
About 75 students, many carrying placards, and Rutgers University staff attended the hearing on the school’s budget, tuition and fees for the 2015-16 school year. The gathering was held at the Student Center on College Avenue in New Brunswick. Tuition is set in the summer.
[…]Several Rutgers staff members who belong to the Union of Rutgers Administrators attended the meeting and spoke about their need for raises. The union’s contract expired in August.
Lucye Millerand, president of the union, pointed to the $1.2 million in severance pay Rutgers made to Mike Rice, a former men’s basketball coach, Tim Pernetti, former athletic director, and John Wolf, former interim senior vice president and general counsel, after their departure following a public outcry over a video that showed abusive behavior by Rice toward players on the court.
“Rutgers’ budget seems to have money for crazy priorities,” Millerand said. “That 1.2 million would be about a 1 percent raise for my entire union of 2,300 people. If there is money to reward people that embarrassed the university so badly they had to go, why does management tell us they don’t have that much money to bring an equivalent settlement with Rutgers’ faculty.”
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