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 chancellor 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 chancellors 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.