Law School leadership moves
- Thread starter srru86
- Start date
No such luck; the vacancy has already been filled. Nothing wrong with hoping, though.
Yes, Hobbs' total mishandling of the swim coach affair has turned me against Hobbs. I can't imagine why he didn't have an investigation done instead of firing the coach based on newspaper reports that apparently had no basis. No executive with any sense -- particularly not one who was a lawyer, law professor, and dean -- would do such a thing.
And if he did a lengthy investigation, people would bitch and moan about the $ being spent on that. It's always something here. Listen, I don't think Pat is perfect, he's definitely made some mistakes, but the guy has done a lot of good for our athletic department. If he goes, I bet you Rutgers would regret it.
People might bitch, but their bitching would be wrong. Notice how private industry does investigations to deal with allegations of sexual harassment; the charges aren't just accepted. The same kind of thing should have been done here.
By the way, Kim Mutcherson, a Camden faculty member, is now the Camden co-dean. The administration decided not to opt for having her be an acting or interim dean.
A very underwhelming hire, but I suppose it is hard to attract top talent to be a “co-dean.” The whole notion of co-dean is ridiculous. The law schools are merged and need a single leader.
The problem is that a single dean at either campus would likely favor that campus, and putting the single dean at New Brunswick would isolate him or her from both schools. Probably what we have is the best that can be done. I agree that it is hard to attract top talent for a co-dean role. But we don't know for sure, because there was no search prior to selection of the new Camden co-dean, and so therefore we don't know whom we can attract. OTOH, the new Newark co-dean has little or no law school experience, although that is not necessarily a disadvantage.
I have it on very good authority that at least in Newark, the law school administration has suffered greatly since the merger and the lack of a strong leader. Maybe the new co-dean in Newark will help. I hear it can’t get any worse. It’s really a shame.
The merger was imposed on the Newark and Camden faculties by the then-deans. Neither faculty is particularly happy. The deans sold the merger to President Barchi (who cares even less about legal education than he does about sports), and then said to the faculties, "President Barchi says this should happen!" I am told by someone who would know that the Newark faculty was told that the merger would not result in any changes to the status quo. Both faculties thought they were being sold a pig in a poke, and they were right. That said, I know of no particular problem with the Newark administration except that many Newark faculty feel their administration has been "too soft" in dealing with Camden. (The Camden faculty feels the same way in reverse about Newark.)
As an alumn of Rutgers Newark Law, my interaction has been with current students who almost uniformly think the administration is bloated and totally incompetent in running the daily activities of the law school.
Camden is bloated, too, but not because of the merger. All university bureaucracies have gotten ridiculously big over the last 30-40 years. As for competence, that concern, at least here, predates the merger. Newark may be better off once David Lopez, the new co-dean, figures out how the place works.
