This matches the current president's decline in popularity, as well as the defeat of all four elements of his November 1, 2011 "reinvention strategy" by the Revenue Task Force. The RTF embraced the full-tuition scholarship policy for the college, refusing to replace it with a policy of "access" for lower-income families. The RTF Report included a consultant report that even a temporary reduction in the scholarship past 25% would lead to the college's ruination. The RTF also rejected the current president's suggestion that entrepeneurial activity leading to profits from patents was unfeasable. The second rejection was relegated to an appendix. Instead of public service, the RTF recommended charging for pre-college programs, such as the Saturday Program. And there was no mention of the current president's globalization proposal, but instead a recommendation for new inter-disciplinary for-pay graduate programs.

The RTF also rejected the current president's characterization of "decades of deficit spending" by referring to the "current crisis." And in a rejection of the current president's recent characterization of the Deed of Trust as the mission statement of the college, the RTF published the mission statement, although it characterized it as the "current mission statement," and repeated the false narrative that the "free college" history dated to only 1902 instead of 1859 (see story below).

The RTF Report contains some disturbing recommendations, including reducing the size of the undergraduate programs from 1000 students to 700 students, destroying the five-year integrated engineering masters program by charging full-tuition to up to 350 graduate students, establishing new for-pay off-site programs for 200 graduate students, and possibly reducing the full-tuition scholarship by a percentage that could cost each undergraduate student over $9,500 per year in addition to the $1,500 per year student fee.

The document, released to the Cooper Union Community on November 14, 2012, is curiously dated October 12, 2012. Friends of Cooper Union has rejected the document, accurately stating on their website that the RTF acceptance of only $4M in annual budget cuts, and the emphasis on revenue generation, isn't the only way out of the fiscal crisis. FOCU proposes a 10-point plan, starting with 4 austerity measures: immediate cuts, long-range cuts, termination of all consultants who are not cash-positive, and a true hiring freeze. The 5th point is to use the 4 austerity measures to recalculate the needed revenue generation needed. Points 6 and 7 involve short-range and long-range planning, points 8 and 10 are for a bridge capital campaign and a new long-range capital campaign, and point 9 is to strengthen the role of the alumni with FOCU's help. FOCU rejects the "hybrid" framework, standing against graduate tuition and against even a partial reduction in the full-tuition scholarship for undergraduate students. Over 3,000 people signed FOCU's on-line no-tuition petition, and nearly a 1,000 people have endorsed "The Way Forward," the FOCU consensus document.

Faculty committee recommendations are expected by November 27, 2012 (a deadline extended from November 15, 2012, due to Post-Tropical Storm Sandy). Bharucha's plans are for the faculty and deans to present their recommendations to the Board of Trustees on December 5, 2012, and for an additional Board of Trustee meeting to be held in January 2013 to debate and approve a final response to the financial crisis.

Cooper Considers Sale of Residence Hall

Although the sale of the Residence Hall would also eliminate two revenue streams for Cooper, the college may actually be losing money each year on the Residence, given operating costs, staffing, and rental payments to Kamenstein Realty. Some critics of the announcement fear that the loss of the Residence Hall may result in Cooper returning to a "commuter school," as New York residents are forced to stay with parents and non-New York residents are forced to settle in outer borough apartments affordable to students, now that the East Village has gentrified and Manhattan real estate has become less affordable.

Ironically, the potential sale of the Residence Hall is similar to a fake story in April 2012 when the Gothamist blog was "punked" by a student's website claiming to announce a presidential sale of the New Academic Building to NYU.

It is unknown whether the announcement will reduce or eliminate "revenue generation" pressures on the three schools announced by current President Bharucha in August 2012. In a Bylaw change, the chair of the Board of Trustees investment committee recently gained oversight on union negotiations. John Michaelson, a non-alumni trustee previously in charge of the investment committee who has been widely criticized for his press announcements during what has been revealed as a time of great financial stress for the college, has been replaced by an alumni trustee, Thomas Driscoll ME'77. For the first time in its history, Cooper has a chairman, vice chairman, and investment committee chair who are all alumni, and, according to students who attended, an October 2012 trustee meeting was dominated by alumni trustees. At that same meeting, current President Bharucha made the unfortunate claim that the Charter and Deed of Trust were the college's "mission statement," and that the mission statement adopted in 2000 was intended to only be for a decade. At that same meeting, current CUAA President Peter Cafiero made a personal statement that the education "equal to the best" was more important than the full tuition scholarship policy when he applied.

Cooper Historians Find Peter Cooper Devotion to Free Education

Official Cooper Historian Peter Buckley had searched for the "free as air and water" quote in Peter Cooper's writings, and, in a scholarly article and presentation to an audience that included the Board of Trustees, had cast doubt on the historical accuracy of the quote. This research was then misused by Cooper trustees to justify a plan to re-write history, claiming that The Cooper Union wasn't free until 1902. The 1864 speech is quoted in other publications that pre-date the 1902 Hewitt address.

Students looking in to the Landmarks Preservation Commission plaque on the Foundation Building, declaring that the institution offers "free education to all," unearthed the LPC's 1966 grant of landmark status, which explicitly cited the college's historical significance as "one of New York's first free institutions." The LPC analysis cites "that innovations were made both in the physical structure and in the use for which it was designed" (emphasis added).

Pearson Molds Propaganda Campaign

Although Ms. Pearson's on-line profile lives on at Dartmouth and its blogs, her career since coming to New York City first in August 2010 is a mystery. Pearson Strategies (not to be confused with Pearson Education) has no website, and her only official link to Cooper is through her listing as "staff" at every Expense Reduction Task Force meeting. The Cooper Union confirmed that Ms. Pearson has been paid directly by the college as a consultant, simultaneous to the hiring freeze announcement. Ms. Pearson refused to comment for this article.

Referred to by one source as "the Karl Rove of the Bharucha administration," what is clear is that psychologist Bharucha has been using Ms. Pearson's advice in the media campaign that started with the Halloween Massacre and the announcement of the "reinvention strategy," led to a media blackout, the suppression of information about the Community Summit and other Friends of Cooper Union events, changes in the history section of the Cooper website (which no longer mentions Peter Cooper's oft-quoted "free as air and water" phrase, but instead now states, "He made his school free for the working classes"), the insistent use of "access" in all Cooper Union communications, and, eventually, the announcement of the "hybrid framework." Although ostensibly attributed to Lawrence Cacciatore, Secretary to the Board of Trustees, Pearson's hand can be detected in the pre-emptive "Board Report" released on September 20.

Pearson was at Dartmouth when its Board of Trustees attempted to dilute the influence of its alumni, resulting in a lawsuit. Coverage of the governance crisis dominated the Dartmouth website to such an extent that the Board of Trustees created a new website to bury the story. Bharucha left Dartmouth in 2002 for Tufts, prior to the Ivy League fiasco, although a key theme was an attempt to transition Dartmouth from an undergraduate institution to a graduate research institution, similar to Bharucha's unpopular "Reinvention Strategy" for Cooper and a similar money-generating goal at Tufts.

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Favorite Abraham Lincoln Quote #1:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Bharucha Threatens Deadline

Instead of increasing the $4 million in budget cuts, the President announced to the faculty that $12 million in "revenue generation" must be proposed and agreed to by November 15 to present to a board meeting on December 5. The "revenue generation" language is a variant of the "inventive and entrepreneurial activity" that has been an essential part of Bharucha's "Reinvention Strategy" announced on November 1, 2011, explicitly referenced by Bharucha as a Tufts accomplishment in this YouTube video.

(A senior's "translation" of the full text of the current president's announcement can be found here.)

In a letter to the academic deans that The Alumni Pioneer has gotten access to, the $12 million is broken in to three "revenue targets": $6 million from engineering, $3.6 million from art and $2.4 million from architecture - to be attained in five to eight years, with half of each target achieved in 5 years. In a curious turn of phrase, the president writes that if each school is not "self-sustaining," then the Board will decide "whether or not each school can be sustained." This has been taken by the Cooper Union Community as a threat to close the schools if the faculty do not cooperate.

The announcement comes a year after negotiations on renewal of the teacher's union contract stalled, and in the midst of numerous faculty and administration desertions over the summer. In an unexpected public salvo on the union issue, an FAQ attributed to TC Westcott claims that employee contributions to their benefits are only 6% at Cooper, compared to 25 to 35% "at most non-profit educational institutions." Faculty union sources confirmed that the administration refused to make any verbal or written specific proposals to the union prior to their contract expiring last year, instead agreeing to merely continue the contract as is for another year. This has happened again this year. The CUFCT President recently characterized the Cooper legal position as reluctance due to "uncertainty about the future structure of the institution." (stress added)

The same FAQ drops the "last resort" rhetoric used in November 2011 in reference to student tuition - introducing a new characterization of the full-tuition scholarship as "merit aid." On September 8, The Alumni Pioneer compiled its own Actual Questions Asked Frequently, and Friends of Cooper Union compiled a set of Frequently Unanswered Questions, or FUQ. FOCU was recently rebuffed in an attempt to address the September 19 BOT meeting, although a student protest did gain access. FOCU was invited to an October 5 meeting with the Chairman, Vice Chairman, and new investment committee chairman (replacing John Michaelson) instead.

Tell the Trustees what you think!

CUAA President Peter Cafiero, 2 Broadway, Room A17.55, NYC, 646-252-5510, pcafiero@ix.netcom.com
CU President Jamshed Bharucha, 21 Stuyvesant Street, NYC, 212-353-4100, president@cooper.edu.
Peter Cooper Great Great Great Grandson Joseph B. Dobronyi, Jr, c/o JP Morgan Asset Management, 245 Park Avenue, 2nd Floor, NYC, 212-648-0204
Chair Mark Epstein A'76, 30 Vandam St, NYC, 917-543-2432, izmo@mindspring.com,
Don Blauweiss A'61, 447 California Road, Bronxville, NY 914-779-6846, don@blauweissadvertising.com,
Michael Borkowsky ME'61, mborkowsky@aol.com,
Thomas Driscoll, ME'77, c/o Barclay's Capital, 745 7th Avenue, 17th Floor, NYC, 212-526-3557, thomas.driscoll@barclayscapital.com
Raymond G. Falci ME '86, 360 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor, NYC, 212-981-6959, rfalci@cainbrothers.com,
Audrey Flack A'51, audreyflack@hotmail.com,
Stanley N. Lapidus EE'70, 7 Maston Drive, Bedford, NH 603-472-8160 slapidus@lapidx.com,
Francois de Menil AR'87, 270 Lafayette St, NYC, 212-779-3400, info@fdmarch.com
Bruce Pasternack ME'68, 3340 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 650-561-9580,
Lee H. Skolnick AR'79, 7 West 22nd Street, 10th Floor, NYC, 212-989-2624,
Martin Trust ME'56, One Stiles Road, Suite 202, Salem, NH 603-898-0392,
Robert Bernhard, c/o McFarland Dewey & Co, 420 Lexington Avenue, Suite 2650, NYC,
Lawrence Benenson, 708 Third Avenue, 28th Floor, NYC, 212-867-0990x9010, lbenenson@benensoncapital.com,
Charles S. Cohen, c/o Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation, 750 Lexington Avenue, NYC, 212-590-5242, ccohen@cohenbrothers.com
Jeffrey Gural, c/o Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, 125 Park Avenue, NYC, 212-372-2400, jgural@newmarkkf.com
Vikas Kapoor, 135 Central Park W, Apt 7S, NYC, 212-769-1451, 713 Milton Rd, Litchfield, CT, 860-567-8878
Richard S. Lincer, c/o Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, One Liberty Plaza, NYC, 212-225-2560, rlincer@cgsh.com
John C. Michaelson, c/o Imperium Partners, 515 Madison Avenue, NYC, 212-433-1360, jmichaelson@imperiumpartners.com
Daniel Okrent, 100 D Street, South Wellfleet, MA, 508-349-5155, mail@danielokrent.com
Georgiana J. Slade, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, NYC, 212-530-5616, gslade@milbank.com

Favorite Abraham Lincoln Quote #2:

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.