By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Rider University was sued Tuesday by members of a group of Westminster Choir College alumni, students and others seeking to block Rider from selling the music school, as a federal class action lawsuit tries to get the courts involved in deciding the future of Westminster.
The 10 plaintiffs include two former Westminster trustees, C. Daniel Bergfeld and Howard McMorris, who were on the board when Westminster merged with Rider in the early 1990s. They contend Rider is violating terms of the merger agreement it had reached with Westminster back then.
As a result, they want a federal judge to force Rider to surrender control of the Choir College or impose other remedies that include having the court compel Rider to merge Westminster with another academic institution or entity.
The timing of the litigation comes with Rider in the midst of searching for potential suitors for Westminster, with the suit saying that Rider intends to stop operating the music school after the 2017-18 academic year. The plaintiffs claim Rider intends to use the sale of the school to plug a deficit and construct buildings on the Rider campus in Lawrenceville.
“When the two schools were merged, Rider agreed in a solemn undertaking to continue to operate and fund Westminster,” said Bruce I. Afran, the lawyer for the Coalition to Save Westminster Choir College in Princeton, in a news release announcing the suit. “Rider cannot sell out this world-renowned music college simply to cover its own deficit.”
In March, Rider President Gregory G. Dell’Omo announced that the university would look to sever ties with the Choir College; the two institutions had merged in 1992. But in charting the future of a university he had been leading since August 2015, Dell’Omo said Rider would seek a “new partner” for Westminster and had hired the firm of Pricewaterhouse Coopers to find one.
The options, laid out then, included finding an institution to take on the Choir College and keep it in Princeton, or if the institution wanted only the music school, Rider then would be left to sell the campus to a third party.
“We disagree with the contentions of this lawsuit, believe we have strong defenses and that we will prevail. We also do not believe such litigation serves the best interests of Westminster Choir College,” said Rider spokeswoman Kristine A. Brown on Wednesday.
“As we’ve told the Westminster community,” Brown said, “we firmly believe that the Choir College’s legacy can best be achieved with an institution that is better positioned to make the necessary investments. Working closely with the Board of Trustees and an outside firm, we’ve made significant progress on our search to find a new institution willing to acquire Westminster Choir College and continue its rich tradition.”
But the lawsuit claims the university “has failed to make good faith efforts” to find another academic institution to take on Westminster.
“Because Rider did not seek out merger partners from other universities but only offered to sell Westminster’s property at market value, the only entities responding to Rider’s solicitation circular are real estate developers or for-profit commercial businesses that do not operate nonprofit fine arts or liberal arts institutions of higher education,” the suit alleged.
The suit contends the university is considering offers from the likes of ERP Properties United States, Guanghua Education Group, Bloom, Garden Homes of Princeton, Weichert Development Company, Toll Brothers and others.
The lawsuit makes good on a promised threat the coalition had made last week: of suing to protect Westminster. The leader of the group, Constance Fee, in the same news release, explained why the coalition went this route.
“Rider had initially indicated that members of the coalition would be invited to participate in negotiations. When that opportunity never materialized, and no effort to schedule a follow-up meeting by the deadline was made, we were left with only one option, which was to do exactly what we said we would do, when we said we would do it, and proceed with legal action,” said Fee, president of the group.
The suit was filed in federal court in New York City, not in New Jersey. The suit says that the case should be heard there, given that McMorris and fellow plaintiff Mona Davids live there and Rider does business across the Hudson as well.
