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/Piscataway, 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/Piscataway 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 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.
|
