Kevin Riordan: 'Doublespeak' author criticizes Rutgers-Rowan restructuring plan

As New Jersey legislators struggled Monday to concoct a politically palatable or perhaps magical mechanism to - affiliate? amalgamate? - Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University while "restructuring" higher education statewide, I called Bill Lutz.

Who better to shed light on these murky machinations than the quotable author of Doublespeak and other books about the often opaque language of politics?

"Their lack of clarity flows from a lack of clear thought," said Lutz, 71, a consultant who retired in 2005 after 35 years as a Rutgers-Camden professor of English.

"The language of avoidance is pretty much what politicians do," he adds. "It sounds good, it's noble, but it's vague and abstract, and says nothing.

"With no thoughts, there are no words. There is no thinking here. That's why we can't have clarity or communication. Because there's nothing to communicate."

But isn't this restructuring supposed to yield some sort of new research university in South Jersey, better than the one (Rutgers-Camden) that's already in South Jersey?

"Whatever [legislation] they pass might sound good, but in practice . . . it will be nothing substantive." Lutz advises. "Anything substantive is going to take years and cost money."

Gov. Christie has been promoting the start of a "Jersey Comeback" that somehow transcends mundane matters such as declining revenue projections and, despite recent gains, a stubbornly high unemployment rate. So perhaps it's no surprise that cost estimates for statewide higher education restructuring are all over the map.

"If I were a taxpayer in New Jersey, I would want to know: Are we writing a blank check?" Lutz asks, adding, "This whole thing hasn't been thought through."

Indeed, the Rutgers-Rowan proposal occupies barely a handful of platitudinous pages in the gubernatorial commission report that launched restructuring fever - and sparked a grassroots rebellion that clearly took proponents of the plan by surprise.

But since his initiative was announced in January, immediately inspiring headlines about a "takeover" of Rutgers-Camden by Rowan, Christie has insisted the new day of higher education will dawn - by his deadline of July 1 - because it's good for us.

"It's shoot-from-the-hip Christie," Lutz says. "He did this without any real understanding.

"The politicians don't have a clue because they don't understand how academics works. Faculties are extremely different. Credentials are extremely different. Something as mundane as the pay scales at the two institutions are different.

"It's like, 'Let's invade Normandy, and figure out how to do it later.' Can you imagine a business doing a merger without due diligence? The most important questions haven't been asked."

Such as?

"Why? What is the reason for all this . . . turmoil and expense? How does it make things better? In what way? And what are you going to do? How do we come up with something better than what we have?

"The why has never been addressed by anyone in this whole process."

Meanwhile, those most familiar with the actual needs of the two institutions - for instance, the faculties of both Rutgers and Rowan - have "never been asked," says Lutz.

"What's the impact of all this going to be on education statewide, not just higher education, but K-12? Because who educates the teachers for those schools? Rowan and Rutgers educate a significant number of teachers.

"I love being uninvolved in all this," adds Lutz, who recently returned to his Center City home after a sojourn in Paris.

That's the sort of distance from the Rut-Row drama the rest of us can only hope for.