The memo prepared by DeCotiis, FitzPatrick & Cole of Teaneck challenges the trustees’ contention that they continue to hold title to 1.7 acres of the 31-acre downtown Camden campus. The memo asserts that the Legislature transferred half of the disputed property to the state university in 1950 and later paid $495,000 for the rest.
“We have concluded, based on the public record and documents supplied to us by Rutgers, that the trustees have no factual or legal basis to assert anything more than an advisory role over the future of the Camden campus,” lawyer William Harla wrote.
“Between the two Rutgers governing bodies, only the Board of Governors has a formal legal position over the governance of the Camden campus.”
The trustees claim the 1956 Rutgers Act gives them authority over how the campus’ land is used and how the university is governed.
Rutgers law school professors, who teach at Camden, interpret the 1956 law that affirmed Rutgers as the state’s university as both a statute and a contract, meaning that changes would have to be agreed to by both Rutgers’ boards and the state of New Jersey.
The university’s two governing bodies—the trustees, which is mostly advisory, and the more powerful Board of Governors—are set to vote Wednesday on a statement opposing the deal being pushed jointly by Christie and South Jersey political boss George Norcross III. The resolution does not all-out reject a university restructuring, but opposes the deal that Christie and Norcross have proposed for South Jersey and the bill Senate President Steve Sweeney introduced on Monday.
The most recent proposal splits the Camden campus from the rest of the Rutgers system and establishes a joint Rutgers-Rowan governing board. Rowan, which gained a medical school in 2009 in partnership with Cooper University Hospital, would gain status as a research university. Norcross is chairman of the Cooper Health System and hospital boards.
