Rutgers One: A Remarkable Group with Remarkable Goals
Rutgers University Management has been in some deep water regarding the quality of public higher education from many students, staff, etc. One particular coalition of students, staff, faculty and alumni — Rutgers One — joins to defend quality of public higher education at Rutgers University, to ultimately serve as an example for other public universities around the country. Rutgers One aims to take action to “restore education, service and support for students as Rutgers’ first priority increase public investment for higher education; keep RU affordable by freezing tuition and addressing student debt; enforce labor standards; and eliminate mismanagement.”
Rutgers One has identified a few factors that have led to these digressions in the first place, one of which was the lack of interaction between Rutgers University President, Robert L. Barchi and students, staff, faculty, etc. The administration has been criticized for distancing themselves from the actual Rutgers community. This distancing has taken the form of “dismissing” student protests, not cooperating with Rutgers staff to negotiate “fair” contracts, and putting an unreasonably large amount of tuition funds towards the athletic department, a mere extracurricular which excludes a majority of the Rutgers population. Conversely, $2 million dollars had been cut from the library budget, a move that unequivocally angered many students and faculty.
Stephen J Moorman, a professor in the neuroscience and cell biology department, has voiced his concerns about the lack of cooperation on the part of Barchi and other Rutgers Administrators in negotiating “fair” contracts for faculty in a 2014 interview. Moorman said, “they don’t want to recognize the contributions we make to a unified Rutgers campus.” Moorman has not received a raise in six years and on top of that, his paygrade has gone down. Despite that, he has committed to staying at Rutgers for morally motivated reasons: he is responsible for aiding the intellectual and moral growth of medical students. Moorman has implored President Barchi to treat the faculty with the same respect that he would like to be treated with.
With regard to the budget cuts in academics and the overspending on athletics, many professors are left feeling exploited and incapable of doing much about it. Conversely, and almost ironically, Rutgers monetarily supports the exploitation of men’s bodies in sports programs. These actions of Rutgers send a very harmful message to not only faculty and staff but also Rutgers students and other schools that Rutgers is more concerned with their financial prospects than the health and intellectual well being of the Rutgers community.
