Who Rules Cooper Union?--Part 3

WHO RULES COOPER UNION?—Part 3: A Look at Cooper Union’s MITRE/Pentagon, Con Ed, and Real Estate/Gambling Industry Connections Historically

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

Besides being a trustee of The MITRE Corporation, the former Cooper Union president who’s still being paid over $178,000 a year by the trustees of Cooper Union also sits on the board of directors of Con Edison; and Cooper Union President Emeritus Campbell is, in fact, the chairman of the compensation committee of Con Edison’s board of directors that recently “gave Con Ed’s top executives more than $600,000 in extra bonuses…on top of the annual bonuses” that “executives” like “Kevin M. Burke, the company’s chairman and chief executive” who “got an additional $315,000, taking his total pay for the year to $7.4 million,” received, according to an Apr. 25, 2013 "New York Times" article by Patrick McGeehan.

Yet at the same time the Con Edison board compensation committee, that Cooper Union President Emeritus Campbell chairs, spends the money the “public utility” company obtains from overcharging its customers for the electricity they require on Con Ed executive bonuses, Con Edison now seeks “a $400 million increase in the rates its customers pay annually,” according to the Apr. 25, 2013 "New York Times" article. So not, surprisingly, as McGeehan also notes in the same article, “Con Edison’s executive-pay practices had already earned the company low marks from monitors of corporate boards;” and “GMI Ratings gave the company a grade of “D,” citing it for, among other flaws, having over half of its directors on the board for more than 10 years and three of them for two decades.”

In addition to sitting on the boards of The MITRE Corporation and Con Ed, Former Cooper Union President Campbell has also been a member of the boards of directors of Barnes and Noble, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and a trustee of Monefiore Medical Center in recent years. And at the same time the former president of the tuition-free Cooper Union president has still been receiving over $178,000 annually from the Cooper Union board of trustees, Campbell has also been sitting in recent years on the board of trustees of Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute—a 4-year college in Troy, New York which was charging its students an annual tuition of $16,000 in 2009.
(end of part 3)