Letters to the Editor: Nov. 12, 2009

Equalize retirement contributions for all employees

Regarding “Tilghman’s pay neared $800K during 2007-08 year” (Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009):

Your recent article about the salaries of Princeton’s most highly-paid employees inspires me to write this letter. It concerns a cost-saving suggestion that the University has decided is untenable: that contributions to the 403(b)s of our highly-paid employees be leveled to match those to the 403(b)s of our lower-paid employees.

Princeton puts 9.3 percent of each employee’s annual salary into his or her 403(b) retirement fund, up to the Social Security wage base (currently $106,800). Above that base, 15 percent is contributed.

A leveling of these contributions to 9.3 percent for all employees would save Princeton millions of dollars each year given that the average Princeton professor makes $180,300.

The extra 5.7 percent (the difference between 9.3 percent and 15 percent) contributed to the retirement funds of the seven people mentioned in your article would have amounted to $326,694 in 2007-2008.

Leveling all contributions to 9.3 percent is only one way to save money and still see that our retirement funds are adequate. We could cap contributions at some generous but reasonable amount or build into our program an incentive for employees to contribute their own money, as Yale does. In fact, if it’s generally accepted that it’s important to build retirement savings early in one’s career, wouldn’t it make sense to be more generous to our younger faculty members, not to mention the many employees who will never reach the Social Security wage base?

According to Executive Vice President Mark Burstein, the University has decided that it must maintain the differential in our current system in order to attract the very best staff. This may be so, but it is difficult to accept given the layoffs announced on Oct. 29.

Everyone in the Princeton community must be grateful that the University has decided not to alter benefits in order to achieve cost savings and that the layoffs are to be fewer than we feared several months ago, but the two-tiered retirement contribution policy is a benefit which affects only a minority of Princeton employees. Can it be considered either logical or fair considering our current financial situation?

Patricia Gibney

Cataloger, Western Languages Cataloging Team

Public Safety should give students advance notice before confiscating bikes

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When returning to Forbes last night, everything looked normal: There were a number of bikes locked to the racks outside. This morning, however, the racks were nearly empty, and I noticed a long chain of bicycles tied together on the lawn. I now know that these were bikes confiscated by the University, from an e-mail sent at 8:01AM:

“Dear Forbesians, Just a heads up: In accordance with University policy, public safety will be checking the grounds of Forbes this week, beginning at 8 am this morning, for unregistered bikes. Any bikes that are unregistered and improperly parked or bikes that appear abandoned will be removed by public safety.”

By the chain, I saw several students showing to workers the registration tags on their confiscated bikes. These bikes did not “display signs of significant neglect, such as flat or bent tires or missing parts” and were not “not registered by the University” — the two grounds for confiscation of bikes, stated on the University’s website. These bikes did not fit the criteria for confiscation in either the e-mail version or the website version of the policy.

Even so, why is the University’s first action to cut locks and confiscate bicycles? Surely, if the bikes the University found offensive were given some sort of ultimatum tag, many of the bikes’ owners would have fulfilled this request and by doing so would have reduced the number of bikes the University now needs to handle.

The University’s zero-tolerance policy benefited no one. “Heads ups” — in advance — would have reduced the amount of trouble this incident brought on both the University and the students.

Kevin Mantel ’13