To the Editor:

The time has come to put an end to endless objections to the perfectly reasonable and legal request of The Institute for Advanced Study to build needed faculty housing on its own property.

Every accommodation has been given to objectors to make their case, but they have failed to do so. After extensive hearings the Planning Board approved the Institute’s application. In a particularly thorough and thoughtful 72-page decision Superior Court Judge Jacobson rejected the objectors’ appeal, fully approving the Planning Board’s process, while soberly dissecting and refuting the objectors’ arguments.

Now once again this Thursday, the objectors come back to the Planning Board with still another attempt to block the Institute, this time its amended plan that completely addresses points made by the Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission last January. The Planning Board should quickly dispose of these objections, so flimsy they may well be little more than a last gasp attempt at more delay.

In my experience as Chair of the Borough Zoning Board (for 20 years or so, some years ago), there were occasionally times when I saw good citizens become so enamored of the rightness of their own positions that it became difficult for them to have an independent and fair perspective. I would like to think that is the situation here, rather than just vexatious obstructionism.

Others have spoken in these pages of the high standard of good citizenship the Institute has demonstrated in our town over many years, and throughout the whole history of this episode. It is an institution of world-wide renown and of local neighborliness. It is a genuine national treasure. Beyond all that, it has proven its legal right to build needed homes for its distinguished faculty.

It is time for closure. In our system, everyone is entitled to his or her day in court, but everyone is not entitled to his or her own decades in court. This dispute has gone on far too long. The town and the legal system have extended every right and benefit to the objectors, and the time has come to end this proceeding that no longer serves any purpose but delay.

John L. McGoldrick

Vandeventer Avenue