Administrative Procedures for Responding to Disruptions
An academic community, where people assemble to inquire, to learn, to
teach, and to reason together, must be protected for those purposes.
While all members of the community are encouraged to register their
dissent from any decision on any issue and to demonstrate that dissent
by orderly means, and while the university commits itself to a
continual examination of its policies and practices to ensure that
causes of disruption are eliminated, the university cannot tolerate
demonstrations that unduly interfere with the freedom of other members
of the academic community.
With this in mind, the following
administrative procedures have been formulated to guide the
implementation of university policy:
1. The president of the
university and the executive vice president for academic affairs will
have the authority throughout the university to declare a particular
activity to be disruptive. In the two geographic areas of Camden and
Newark, the respective provost will have the same authority. In New
Brunswick, the senior vice president and chief financial officer will
have the same authority.
2. Broadly defined, a disruption is any
action that significantly or substantially interferes with the rights
of members of the academic community to go about their normal business
or that otherwise unreasonably interrupts the activities of the
university.
3. A statement will be read by the appropriate
officers as specified in (1) or by such officers as they may designate
for the purpose of such reading and will constitute the official
warning that the activity is in violation of university policy, that it
must cease within a specified time limit, and where appropriate, that
no commitments made by university officials will be honored if those
commitments are made under duress.
4. If the activity continues
beyond the specified time limit as determined by the official in
authority, the authorized officers as specified in (1) will have the
discretion to call upon the university police to contain the
disruption. Ordinarily, the president of the university alone, or in
his or her absence the executive vice president for academic affairs,
will have the authority to decide that civil authorities beyond the
campus are to be called upon to contain those disruptions that the
university police are unable to handle. In extraordinary circumstances,
where neither the president nor the executive vice president for
academic affairs is available to make such a decision, the senior vice
president and chief financial officer in New Brunswick and the provosts
on the Camden and Newark campuses have the same authority.
5.
The deans of students are the chief representatives of the deans of the
schools in all matters of student life. Members of the university
community who are aware of potentially disruptive situations are to
report this to the deans of students on their respective campuses. In a
disruption, the deans of students and their staff members have a
twofold responsibility: to protect against personal injury and to aid
in providing for the order of the university. In the latter case, the
deans of students, as well as other university personnel, may be called
upon to coordinate or assist members of the academic community in
ending the disruption, directing it to legitimate channels for
solution, or identifying those who have violated the rights of others.
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