Push By Rutgers Student Government Builds Bipartisan Momentum For A Bill in Trenton
After lobbying efforts by members of the Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA), a committee hearing will be scheduled to move forward legislation to give a student representative voting rights on Rutgers University’s chief governing body.
“Other students from Rutgers in previous years have come and met with us, some have advocated for the bill but this is probably the strongest push to date that we’ve seen from the Rutgers students and their representatives in terms of moving the bill,” said Tom Lynch, chief of staff for New Jersey State Senator Patrick Diegnan (D-18), who has been the primary sponsor of the legislation since 2005, when it was first introduced.
Currently, the student representative to the university’s highest administrative body cannot vote on any business before the board.
“It would bring some sort of realism to the Board of Governors since none of them are in college or have been in college for a couple of decades,” said RUSA President Justin Schulberg.
The voting members of the board have not attended college or university as undergraduate students in at least 29 years.
Schulberg, along with RUSA Vice President Evan Covello and Student Representative to the Board of Governors Anish Patel, feel that the board is out of touch with what students care about.
“It could be anything from the [the new contract with Coca Cola] to building new academic buildings. Students know which academic buildings they need. The administrators who are never in these academic buildings don’t necessarily know,” Schulberg said.
“Its asking for a seat at the table for students; a way for students to be involved in the process and really start helping solve some of the problems that we face as students,” said Patel.
Schulberg, Patel, and Covello have been visiting legislators around the state, asking them to co-sponsor the legislation or support the effort to pass it in both the Assembly (as bill A2134) and Senate (as bill S2249).
Want to contact your local representatives in support of A2134 or S2249? Use this form:
The push by the three Rutgers students has lead to the most movement the bill has seen since it was first introduced into the Assembly in 2005 by Diegnan, who was an assemblyman at the time.
Diegnan has introduced the bill in every legislative session since then, but requests to hear the bill in committee had not been acted upon, according to Lynch.
“Hopefully, with the advocacy and the lobbying that the students from Rutgers are doing, we might be able to get the bill up in committee,” Lynch said.
The Assembly version of the bill is already set to be scheduled for a committee hearing by Assemblywoman Mila Jasey, Higher Education Committee Chair, after the Rutgers students reached out to Jasey to advocate for passage of the legislation.
Schulberg said they have not received any opposition from legislators yet and that they do not intend to take their foot off the gas on this issue, knowing that they have a long road ahead.
The legislation must be scheduled for a hearing and passed in the Senate and Assembly higher education committees before moving towards a vote by the entirety of each chamber.
In order to reach the floor of each chamber, the legislation must curry favor with Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-3) and Speaker of the Assembly Vincent Prieto (D-32).
If it passes both houses, it would need to be signed by Governor Chris Christie to become law.
“There are so many obstacles on this road…but it could be at the end of this that we put in dozens of hours on this one bill just to have Governor Christie veto it, which is why we need so much student support behind it,” Schulberg said.
A petition on Change.org started by Covello is one of the key tools in their lobbying effort, Schulberg said.
“We say, ‘Hey, it’s not just three people in this room who are advocating for this bill, we have 1,500 students behind us.”
Want to sign the petition to add a voting student member to the Rutgers Board of Governors? Here it is:
The petition started with the goal of 100 signatures just four weeks ago and now Covello hopes to reach 2,500.
“We are well aware that with every big decision made by our board of governors, that we are the ones — as students — that are on the frontlines of those decisions,” Covello said.
“It’s our chance as students to have proper representation at our university,” he said.
The demographic makeup of the board is not representative of the population which they govern. While women make up over 50 percent of the student population at Rutgers University, the board of governors is two-thirds male.
Over 80 percent of students at Rutgers University are New Jersey residents while 40 percent of the voting members of the board of governors live outside of New Jersey.
Other supporters of the legislation not yet mentioned include Senator Bob Smith (D-17), Senator Robert Singer (R-30), Senator Gerald Cardinale (R-39), Assemblywoman Nancy Pinkin (D-18), and Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (D-17).
Rutgers University’s Director of University News and Media Relations, E.J. Miranda, did not respond as to whether the university supports the legislation.
Instead he replied that “There is nothing that prohibits a student from being appointed to be a voting member of the [Board of Governors]. The governor has full authority to appoint any person that he or she feels is fit for the appointment,” in an email exchange.
No governor of New Jersey has ever appointed a student to serve on the Rutgers University Board of Governors. Christie’s most recent nomination to the board is Keith Banks, the president of U.S. Trust, a subsidiary of Bank of America that was acquired in 2006 for $3.3 billion. Banks received his undergraduate degree from Rutgers University 39 years ago.
