Rutgers-Rowan protests sweep across New Jersey

The protests that have swept Rutgers-Camden since Gov. Christie announced last month that he planned to merge the school into Rowan University reached a crescendo Wednesday as opposition spread beyond the small inner-city campus to Rutgers faculty and students across the state.

Students from the university's flagship campus in New Brunswick were bused in ahead of a board of governors meeting on the Camden campus. The president of the Rutgers University Student Assembly rallied students outside the library, while a faculty member of the university Senate spoke to oppose the plan, calling it "ill-advised."

"I don't think they foresaw the overwhelming opposition from the entire Rutgers faculty," said Jeanne Fox, a Rutgers trustee and a commissioner of the state Board of Public Utilities. "I can't imagine [the board of trustees] going against the faculty."

With university officials saying that both the board of governors and the board of trustees would have to approve any merger, the increasing opposition, including an extensive alumni network, seemed to put the Republican governor and New Jersey's largest university on a collision course.

After hearing more than three hours of angry criticism of the merger plan, Ralph Izzo, chairman of the board of governors and chief executive of PSEG Enterprise Group, said members would need more details from the governor before voting on any plan but had heard the protesters.

"There's nothing like seeing something firsthand," he said.

New Jersey's public universities have been in the crosshairs of governors going back a decade who wanted to see the resources of Rutgers, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and other state schools realigned to match up better with more competitive out-of-state schools.

While that idea has broad support, the details of moving schools and faculty among institutions with long histories has proved tricky.

In the case of Rutgers-Camden, the idea of merging two schools to create a larger research university that could compete for national funding - and potentially draw pharmaceutical and technology companies to South Jersey - has butted up against opposition from the Rutgers-Camden alumni and concerns among Rutgers officials that they might end up competing with Rowan for dwindling state funding.

A key backer of the merger, State Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), appeared at Wednesday's meeting and urged the officials not to "kill an idea that you don't know what it is yet."

Boos rumbled through the crowd as Sweeney spoke. At one point people started yelling "Time!" and Izzo asked Sweeney to conclude his remarks.

"I came here expecting it," Sweeney told the crowd. "That's fine. You won't vote for me."

State Sen. Donald Norcross (D., Camden) received a warmer reception even though he, too, backs the merger. He played to the crowd with the fact that his daughter attends the school and that he and Sweeney had "gone to the mattresses" to make sure the school got a new dormitory, which is set to open in August.

There was a sense among many of the plan's opponents, however, that their protests were having an impact.

Democratic leader George E. Norcross III, also a supporter of the merger, has suggested that the new school could take both the Rutgers and Rowan names.

And Sweeney, in a news release Tuesday endorsing Christie's proposal, said it was paramount that any plan "respect both universities' identities as this partnership takes place."

"It isn't a take it or leave it proposal," Fox said. "I think there's a reasonable compromise to be made."

A mainly commuter school with 6,600 students, Rutgers-Camden took on an angry atmosphere Wednesday. Students waved signs and chanted "We are Rutgers!" outside the library as officials filed into the nearby auditorium.

"We are not just a satellite campus," yelled Elizabeth Kilborn, 22, a senior at Rutgers-Camden. "We are not going to be pawned off as if we are not a university."

The quandary before Rutgers officials is whether they are willing to give up the Camden campus for an element of the plan that many at the university welcome and that is set to happen this summer - merging the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and other institutions currently housed within the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey into Rutgers.

Both Rutgers president Richard McCormick and Rutgers-Camden chancellor Wendell Pritchett have pushed back against the proposal to merge the Camden campus into Rowan.

McCormick told the board Wednesday that he and other university officials had urged the governor's task force for months not to recommend a merger of Rutgers-Camden and Rowan but to instead opt for a consortium of all the higher education institutions in South Jersey - including the creation of an $80 million biotech facility in Camden.

Rutgers-Camden "is an essential campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey," McCormick said, prompting loud applause from the hundreds gathered to watch the meeting. "But they concluded it would be best for the region for Rowan to become a comprehensive research university."

A poll released by the Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics on Wednesday found that the majority of New Jersey residents were opposed to Christie's plan, specifically the merger of Rutgers-Camden into Rowan.

With Christie insisting that his plan will be implemented - avoiding the fate of proposals from past administrations that sought unsuccessfully to overhaul Rutgers and UMDNJ - the board of governors passed a resolution Wednesday stating that were the proposal to go through, Rutgers-Camden students enrolled by the start of the next academic year would be able to claim a Rutgers degree over one from Rowan.

"I am opposed to the recommendations for Rutgers-Camden as they are written in that report," said Pritchett. "However, we also have a university to run, and the report has created uncertainty for our students that I thought it important we addressed."

Hours later, faculty and students still sat in the audience waiting their turn to speak.

Among them was Carol Singley, an English professor at Rutgers-Camden.

"I'm Speaker 38. I'll be repeating a few things," she began.