Protesters greet Rutgers board in Camden

Hundreds of students and faculty protested at Rutgers-Camden Wednesday ahead of a meeting at the campus of the university's board of governors.

As a crowd waved signs and chanted "We are Rutgers!" students from both the Camden and New Brunswick campuses slammed a proposal by Gov. Christie to merge Rutgers-Camden into Glassboro-based Rowan University.

"We are not just a satellite campus," yelled Elizabeth Kilborn, 22, a senior at Rutgers-Camden. "We are not going to be pawned off as if we are not a university."

The protest capped three tumultuous weeks since Christie announced a sweeping plan to overhaul the state's public universities.

Both Rutgers President Richard McCormick and Rutgers-Camden Chancellor Wendell Pritchett have pushed back against the proposal to merge the Camden campus into Rowan.

Another element of the plan, to merge the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and other institutions currently housed within the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey into Rutgers, has received support from university officials.

McCormick told the board that he and other university officials had urged the governor's task force for months not to recommend a merger of Rutgers-Camden and Rowan but instead opt for a consortium of all the higher education institutions in South Jersey.

"(Rutgers-Camden) is an essential campus of Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey," McCormick said, prompting loud applause from the hundreds gathered to watch the meeting. "But they concluded it would be best for the region for Rowan to become a comprehensive research university."

A key backer of the merger, State Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), urged the officials not to "kill an idea that you don't know what it is yet."

Boos rumbled through the crowd as Sweeney spoke. At one point people started yelling, "Time!" and the board chairman, Ralph Izzo, asked Sweeney to conclude his remarks.

"I came here expecting it," Sweeney told the crowd. "That's fine. You won't vote for me."

A poll released by the Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics Wednesday found that the majority of New Jersey residents are opposed to Christie's plan, specifically the merger of Rutgers-Camden into Rowan.

With Christie insisting his plans would be implemented - avoiding the fate of plans from past administrations who also had tried to overhaul Rutgers and UMDNJ - the board of governors passed a resolution Wednesday stating that were the proposal to go through, Rutgers-Camden students enrolled by the start of the next academic year would be able to earn a Rutgers degree over one from Rowan.

"I am opposed to the recommendations for Rutgers-Camden as they are written in that report," said Pritchett. "However we also have a university to run, and the report has created uncertainty for our students that I thought it important we addressed."