Five Members of Cooper Union's Board of Trustees Resign

THE COOPER UNION

Five of Cooper Union's trustees resigned yesterday,including Mark Epstein, the school's chairmanemeritus. This is according to CSCUFCSCU (TheCommittee to Save Cooper Union from theCommittee to Save Cooper Union), which publishedthree of the letters of resignation on its website.

Epstein wrote:

During my term as Chairman we were able to putthe school on a path to sustainability. It was goingto be a difficult path with some hurdles to get over.We were on our way, but have now gotten so far offof that path due to the actions (or inactions) of theBoard that I no longer want to participate. I knowthat there are some in the Cooper Community thatwill take my resignation as a false victory of somesort. I am not resigning due to any pressure fromthat group, rather that I no longer want to associate

with them.

He goes on to say that he is "withdrawing my financial support for the college."

Monica Vachher, another trustee who resigned, wrote:

As a fiduciary of Cooper Union, I began my board engagement with great enthusiasm andexcitement about restoring the institution to a financially stable position, and renewing andburnishing the preeminence Cooper Union had historically enjoyed.

Regrettably, it has become clear that these fiduciary goals are not shared by many on the board, andthat the board is unwilling to make or support often difficult decisions that would be in the long-termbest interests of the institution.

Daniel Liebskind, another trustee, wrote in hisresignation, "I do not support the leadership anddirection of this Board. I believe that decisions beingtaken are not in the best interest of Cooper Union."

Epstein was the person who announced in 2013 thatthe school would start charging tuition for the firsttime in its history, to much controversy among theinstitution's students and in the press. In a 2013article in Reuters, Felix Salmon wrote that Epstein "was intimately involved in most of CooperUnion's worst decisions," unlike the university's president, Jamshed Bharucha, who "has shoulderedmuch of the blame," and whose tenure has been highly maligned. On Tuesday, Angus Johnson on theblog Student Activism described the five trustees who resigned as "some of the staunchestsupporters of charging tuition."Cooper Union's press office has not returned a request for comment,

and attempts to reach the trustees have been unsuccessful.

http://www.artnews.com/2015/06/10/five-members-of-cooper-unions-board-of-trustees-resign/