NEW BRUNSWICK — Ralph Izzo, head of PSE&G’s parent company, was elected head of the Rutgers Board of Governors this afternoon as several hundred university employees gathered outside to protest a campus-wide salary freeze. Izzo was unanimously elected to head the 11-member board that oversees the state university. Izzo, who earned his master’s of business administration at Rutgers, will...
Ralph Izzo, chairman of PSE&G, was elected chairman of the Rutgers University Board of Governors today. Izzo speaks before a PSE&G shareholders meeting in a 2007 photo. NEW BRUNSWICK — Ralph Izzo, head of PSE&G’s parent company, was elected head of the Rutgers Board of Governors this afternoon as several hundred university employees gathered outside to protest a campus-wide salary freeze.
Izzo was unanimously elected to head the 11-member board that oversees the state university. Izzo, who earned his master’s of business administration at Rutgers, will serve a one-year term.
"The Rutgers community will benefit from his leadership on the challenges we face in serving our many stakeholders during these difficult economic times," said Rutgers President Richard McCormick.
Izzo takes over for the Rev. M. William Howard Jr., who stepped down after three years as chairman and will remain on the board. Gerald Harvey, a Roseland attorney, was elected vice chairman.
The new head of the Rutgers board takes over as the university is dealing with severe budget problems. Earlier this month, Rutgers officials announced the state university will freeze the salaries of all 13,000 campus employees to help close the state university’s budget gap.
Members of several Rutgers labor unions held a noisy protest outside Winants Hall in New Brunswick as the board of governors began their meeting. Union officials said Rutgers is violating its employment contracts and breaking previous promises by denying campus professors and employees their raises.
"We are calling on the board of governors to overturn this short-sighted decision and show a little respect for the people who do the work of the university. Just a little respect," said Lucye Millerand, president of the Union of Rutgers Administrators- American Federation of Teachers, which represents nearly 2,000 campus employees.
Union leaders questioned whether the board of governors violated the state Open Public Meetings Act when a campus police officer blocked the door to Winants Hall at the start of the noon meeting, keeping out protesters and members of the public. The board quickly convened the meeting and voted to go into a previously-scheduled closed session behind closed doors.
Union members, who were eventually admitted into the building, protested. They wanted to fill the meeting room to capacity at the start of the session to voice their displeasure about the salary freeze before the board went into its closed session.
Rutgers officials eventually admitted they made a mistake and the board of governors returned to the meeting room about 45 minutes later to start the meeting over. But by then most of the union members had left the building. Leslie Fehrenbach, secretary of the university, said it was unclear if the board had violated open public meetings laws.
"We always take great pains to do it right. It’s upsetting to me that it happened," Fehrenbach said.