PRINCETON: Princeton University president discusses town-gown relations and other topics with the Packet

By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
   Government relations, the largest redevelopment project in recent history and being a Princeton resident were some of the topics Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman and Robert Durkee, vice president and secretary, discussed in an interview with the Packet this week.
   During the hour-long meeting, the conversation focused on the university’s role in the community and their roles both as administrators and citizens. Ms. Tilghman is a 25-year resident of Princeton Borough and a 15-year resident of the township before that; Mr. Durkee now resides in Princeton Township, and has lived in the borough.
   The Dinky and the Lewis Center for the Arts
Q: When you stood up last January and made the ultimatum (to pull the $300 million arts, education and transit project that will move the Dinky some 460 feet and construct the Lewis Center for the Arts and other university spaces), did you mean it?
   A: “Absolutely,” replied Ms. Tilghman. “I never say anything I don’t mean.”
   Q: Did you have an alternate site in mind?
   A: “At the time we were thinking of two or three other possibilities. We were really serious about it; we had the planning firm exploring other options, we spent quite some time looking at other options, so we were absolutely serious. I said at that meeting I have a profound obligation to Peter Lewis (the donor of the money for the Lewis Center) to get this done because he has made a historic commitment to the university and I have a really, really serious responsibility to him.”
   ”The other is to the students. We are now attracting students to this university that we would never have seen 10 years ago who are very serious about their art and hope to have a career in the arts, but they understand they will be better artists and have a back-up plan if they have a liberal arts education. We promised them that and I can’t deliver that without additional facilities to make it possible.”
   ”I was at a point where I was running out of options.”
   Q: Now you are at the stage where you have one more board to deal with (the Planing Board) and are you confident that they’re not going to try and throw a monkey wrench into this plan?
   A: “What we’ve certainly seen in this past year is that the Planning Board in general has been much more sympathetic to the plan than in particular, the Borough Council was. So we feel we are going before a board that is much more positively disposed toward the plan.”
   ”I think the other thing that has happened over the last month or so since we’ve had the approvals in place is we’ve begun to talk about where Steven Holl’s thinking is, particularly in the sighting of the buildings for the Lewis Center and how we are thinking about the plaza differently than we were in the past.”
   The newly modified plans pull the project further south and creates a “beautiful landscaped green space” in the corner. “From the perspective of the community it now faces the plaza toward the south, which is much more opening, welcoming. One criticism we had is the project has its back to the community.”
   Q: The transit ordinance that has been proposed to protect the rail right of way, how it that impact the project?
   A: “My understanding is the legal grounds for doing that are extremely shaky. So we are not proceeded with any expectation that that would succeed.”
   Q: Are you concerned with the lawsuit that the members of the community have filed against the university (to stop the moving of the Dinky)?
   A: “We are not. We also believe in that case the legal grounds are extremely shaky and the university will prevail.”
   Mr. Durkee and Ms. Tilghman had the same answer in response to a question about a second lawsuit that is challenging the tax exemption status of several university buildings.
   Special improvement district
   Q: What do you think of the proposed Special Improvement District?
   A: “I think we approach it with some degree of caution. We’d like to understand much better what the intent and purpose and what the goal is. We’re not absolutely opposed to having something like that, but we’re approaching it with caution.”
   Q: You wouldn’t suspect any people might be trying to pull something over on the university?
   A: “We’re approaching it with caution.”
   Q: The thing that has come up with that proposal primarily is that the possibility of the university not having any say in (the SID); it does not make any sense.
   A: “We’ve done a lot of work looking at the underlying statue and it’s absolutely clear, and I think this was reaffirmed at a Borough Council meeting, that when you create a district like that the majority of the board members need to come from the district that’s affected. The one they’ve proposed for University Place is a bit odd that every property in that district is owned by the university except one, which is the house owned by the Episcopal church for its chaplain on campus. So, you would expect to create a governing structure where the majority were people from the university, and that’s obviously not the proposal they have made, but that is what the underlying statue requires.”
   The university is still in talks to discuss how a SID would be managed.
   ”I don’t think this conversation is on the front burner at this point,” said Mr. Durkee. “I think there is more thinking going on. And of course the question is whether there would be a second proposal to create another SID for the Nassau Street area and the merchants have gotten very interested in that question; they don’t believe its needed.”
   Town-gown relations
   Q: During the recent election, now Mayor Yina Moore, an alumna, was so outspoken against the university, how are you going to work through that with her to move things forward?
   A: “I don’t think there is any alternative but lots of communication and transparency. We saw Yina at the basketball game on Feb. 10, and we like the fact that she’s participating in university events.”
   Q: Has she reached out to you to extend an olive branch or open the door of communication?
   A: “Mayor Moore was part of a group, which included both municipal mayors, that met with university trustees a couple of weeks ago.”
   ”She is one of the people who had very nice things to say about the way the plan evolved,” said Mr. Durkee. “I don’t know if she will be voting for it this time, and she has been making an effort to identify areas of agreement and where there is disagreement to see if we address some of them.”
   ”Just to back up for a minute, at various points we were in front of the Planning Board this year as they were responding to the zoning ordinances. She is one of two people who voted against the ordinances, so that’s unfortunate that there is a history of not being supportive of this particular project,” said Mr. Durkee. “But I think once you become mayor you take on a whole new set of responsibilities and I think she’s very aware of the fact that she will be the last mayor of Princeton Borough and I think has taken seriously the fact that she now has this set of responsibilities that are different than she had before.”
   Consolidation
   Q: You are in this unique position as head of the largest landowner and largest employer, yet as a resident, you have a voice. How do you feel about what is going on in your hometown?
   A: “I think this is a once in maybe a century opportunity to rethink its governance and rethink its municipal government. A lot of it is historic, a lot of it is you tweak here, you tweak there, it’s like the Rube Goldberg approach to government. Rarely is there an opportunity to start from basic principals and say ‘What should be in place so we can make this as successful a community as possible?’ I think we’ve got that chance this year and I frankly wish the university had a greater voice in the consolidation committee. We were disappointed.”
   Q: Are you going to take a role in the consolidation process, whether its attending meetings and speaking out and being heard, both as university officials and residents? Are you going to make your voices heard and shape the process anyway you can?
   A: “I think the answer to that is yes, and if we could do it, particularly in the way you framed it, as residents. We live in this town, probably the majority of the people that work at this university live someplace in the borough or the township, so we have an enormous stake as citizens of this town. I do think this is one of the most attractive places to live in the country, there are so many wonderful things about living in this town and it deserves, frankly, better government than it has received in the last few years and this is our chance to get it.”
   ”It is impossible for me to show up at a meeting or for Shirley to show up at a meeting and be accepted as just a resident,” said Mr. Durkee. “We can’t be there and not be speaking for the university, sometimes we try, but we can’t escape that. We as a university live in this town and we have a stake in it, so we will participate in these conversations where we have expertise.”
   Communications
   Doing a better job getting the message out about what the university contributes to the community is a priority for Ms. Tilghman.
   ”Clearly we are not communicating our commitment to this community as effectively as we should. The evidence for that was clear over the last year. The question is what more should we be doing?”
   She and Mr. Durkee talked about the auditing program, which allows members of the public to audit classes for $100, the public lectures and athletics.
   ”One example where I think we did a better job of communicating was when we were publicizing our campus plan.”
   Q: One of the things I found interesting in the past year is the way people from Princeton react to the university; I find there are people who live here their entire lives who think the university can do nothing right, and the university thinks its all powerful. I’ve heard the same thing from Princeton grads and I’m wondering why you think that is and is there anything you think the university can do about it?
   A: “Communication and transparency, I think, is the answer to what the university can do about it. Why it is so I think it really goes back to the dynamics of being the largest employer in Princeton, the largest landowner in Princeton, helping to create a very positive impression of the town of Princeton in the tri-state area. As much as it can be frustrating on a beautiful April day when you are trying to go to Nassau Street and do something you do every weekend and find the town teeming with people who have come out on the first day of spring and just want to walk around a beautiful place, that’s part of who this town is and it’s happening because the university is here.
   This is not happening in Hopewell. It’s not happening in Lawrenceville and its not happening in Pennington the way we draw people to Princeton, New Jersey. If you look at the benefits and the costs and people can differ as they weigh the benefits and costs of having a great, world-class university in their community.
   I would still argue the benefits to this town dramatically outweigh the costs, which is traffic, parking and a sense this isn’t a sleepy Central Jersey town; it’s a vibrant, exciting community to visit and we get them as well as to live in.”
   ”We are not the only small town with a large and impactful university that has these kind of tensions that arise between the community and the university. I think town-gown relations happen in big cities, but they are passionately felt in small towns.”
   Becoming an Ivy League president
   Q: How does one go from a professor of biology to become an administrator of a university? And do you miss being a professor?
   A: “I always feel as though I’m the accidental president. Because the way I went from being a professor of molecular biology, happy as a clam, to being president was by running for election to the search committee.”
   Her goal, then as director of the infant Genomics Institute, now known as the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, was to find a president who was supportive of science.
   ”As it turned out, I ended up being asked to leave the search committee and to become a candidate. With some trepidation, I agreed to do that. It was not a plan to be president of this university.”
   One of the ways she keeps from missing her life in science is to teach a course every year, which for the past few years has been epigenetics
   ”It keeps my hand in it. It keeps me thinking about my profession.”