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. 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.
2. 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 for finance and
administration will have the same authority.
3. A statement will be read by the appropriate officers as
specified in (2) 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 (2) 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 for finance and administration 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 colleges 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.
