Is the Rowan merger dead? The new plan being floated is to cut the Newark and Camden campuses off from Rutgers-New Brunswick, keeping the same names but giving each a separate governing board in the process. This is an atrocious deal for Rutgers-NB, as those other boards would assuredly be dominated by local political cronies. Essentially, Norcross and Joe D get brand new toys that they can pack the board for. If a campus bears the Rutgers name, it must be governed by Rutgers University. Period. This is non-negotiable. To do otherwise would threaten the Rutgers brand; we can't have George Norcross setting academic policy in Camden that doesn't meet the standards of Rutgers-New Brunswick. Likewise, this proposal unfairly gives the satellite campuses greater autonomy while still benefiting from the Rutgers name. This is better for Camden in a sense that it will be able to avoid merging with Rowan (at least right away, but you can bet a board packed with Norcross-approved patsies will set the wheels in motion on that down the line), and they do get the unfair advantages described above, but at the cost of letting Norcross take over the campus over time.