Board of Governors reviews University issues, AAUP-AFT stages protest at meeting

The semester’s first Board of Governors meeting, held two months ago at Rutgers-Camden, was a quiet affair. Of the several rows of seats, only the first was filled.

At the semester’s second and final Board of Governors meeting, held Dec. 9 at Winants Hall on the College Avenue campus, members from the Rutgers chapter of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers shouted rally cries. Almost every seat was filled by a protester.

The AAUP-AFT members’ clamoring could be heard from outside Winants Hall: “What do we want?” they chanted. “Fair contracts. When do we want them? Now.”

The protestors, representing union allies in the Union of Rutgers Administrators, Health Professionals and Allied Employees and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, among others organizations, toted large red and white signs displaying messages such as “President Barchi: Fair contracts now,” and “Rutgers works because we do: Bargain in good faith.”

University President Robert L. Barchi kicked off the meeting by lauding Rutgers’ football team on their success and wishing them luck at Detroit’s Quick Lane Bowl on Dec. 26, where they will play the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The AAUP-AFT members booed and jeered loudly at his praise of the team.

In line with the agenda for the day, Barchi proposed a recommendation regarding membership for the Board of Managers at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, which passed without dispute.

Greg Brown, chair of the Board of the Governors, chief executive officer of Motorola Solutions and Rutgers alumnus, then took to the remainder of the agenda, starting by recognizing academic achievement.

Dipak Sarkar, a distinguished professor in the Department of Animal Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, was named a Board of Governors Professor for his research regarding how stress raises the risk for infection, cancer and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

According to a news release from Rutgers’ Office of Media Relations, Sarkar, a graduate of Calcutta University and Oxford University, began teaching at Rutgers in 1999. He has published more than 200 research articles, 10 reviews, 13 book chapters, 200 conference proceedings and one book.

“Professor Sarkar’s dedicated study into the effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy might one day eradicate a costly public health problem,” Barchi said.

James Harrington, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was awarded the Donald H. Jacobs Chair in Applied Physics for his work with fiber optics.

The Donald H. Jacobs Chair, established in 1990, recognizes senior faculty that have made distinguished accomplishments in the field of applied physics, the branch of physics that is the basis for modern technology, according to another release.

While Sarkar and Harrington were being awarded their titles, members of the AAUP-AFT periodically called “Give him a contract” while fellow AAUP-AFT protestors cheered and applauded.

After honoring the two professors, the Board of Governors approved revisions to the Code of Student Conduct.

Until yesterday, the code excluded its rights to students enrolled in the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and units under Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. Students were thus held liable to UMDNJ’s “Student Rights, Responsibilities and Disciplinary Procedures.”

With the revision, all students in UMDNJ and RBHS are held to the same standards under Rutgers’ Code of Student Conduct.

The Board of Governors also gave final approval to endorse legislative changes to the Rutgers Act of 1956 that the New Jersey State Legislature and Gov. Chris Christie will review, according to a news release from the OMR.

According to the text of the Rutgers Act of 1956, Board of Governor membership is classified and consisted of “five [members] ... by the Board of Trustees, from among their members elected.”

The changes would reduce the size of the Board of Trustees from 59 voting members to 41 and eliminate dual office holding, according to the release — a member of the Board of Governors could not also sit on the Board of Trustees, and vice versa, thus directly repealing one provision of the act.

“Rutgers today is a vastly comprehensive and prominent global research university,” Brown said. “The action that the Board of Governors took today reflects the broadly held belief that governance at the University can, and must, keep pace with the dramatic changes that have occurred at Rutgers in the past few years.”

Following in the idea of governance, Sivan Rosenthal, a member of Students for Shared Governance, the group most notably known for creating the “Where RU Barchi” campaign this fall, stood to give a speech to the Board of Governors.

"Educational institutions exist to prepare students for the real world, one in which they will have to advocate for themselves and hopefully for those around them," said Rosenthal, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore.

At Rutgers, there is a shared governance body for students — the student assembly, she said. But in her opinion, an important part of shared decision-making processes at the University includes the provision of the space in which student, staff and faculty come together to collaborate.

She said the space that students, staff and faculty can collaborate has been created, but it was made because of a collective frustration with a lack of access to administration.

Many student groups have voiced grievances about the inability to meet with Barchi, she said, and not because students want to bypass speaking with Chancellor Edwards every month, when he holds an open forum in the College Avenue Student Center to discuss student issues over lunch.

“Ultimately, President Barchi is responsible for issues affecting all three campuses, and students would like the opportunity to discuss university-wide issues, such as our payroll contracts with him,” she said.

Other issues include faculty and staff contracts, she said, a topic that is also of interest of students.

“Faculty contracts and salaries determine how much time our professors can comfortably spend on outside research or helping students after class,” she said. “Staff contracts determine health benefits and a comfortable wage for employees, and set precedent for the way Rutgers students view labor.”

David Hughes, a member of the AAUP-AFT and a professor in the Department of Anthropology, also weighed in on faculty contracts. He asserted that a top-notch university depends on the quality and enthusiasm of its instructors, both of which are largely driven by comfortable compensation.

Since September, faculty have been working without a contract, he said. The University agreed to meet with the AAUP-AFT to negotiate the next contract, two days before the last contract expired.

He said the last contract rode on the "Subject to" clause, meaning that the University pays salaries or raises subject to allocation appropriation by the state. The University is trying to renew the "Subject to" clause into current contracts.

“Would you ever sign a contract or show up to work knowing that your employer could violate that subject to your employer’s availability of funds?” he asked. “I don’t think so, because that’s not the way businesses operate. That’s not the way adults make agreements with each other.”

In response to the AAUP-AFT’s protests, Rutgers spokesperson E.J. Miranda said in an email statement that Rutgers cares deeply about its employees, and that the University is hard at work negotiating fair and reasonable contracts with many of the unions representing Rutgers employees.

“Rutgers strives to compensate its employees fairly,” the statement said. “We have always placed a high value on faculty and staff excellence, and we have provided our employees with salary and benefit packages that are among the most competitive in the nation for public research universities.”