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 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.