Faced with the prospect of Rider University’s sale of Westminster Choir College and other cost-cutting measures designed to offset a projected $13 million deficit, students, alumni, and faculty members held a rally Monday afternoon on the green at Westminster’s Walnut Lane campus.

“We have a president and a board who have imagined they are running a corporation,” Rider Professor Art Taylor, president of the University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), told the gathering. “It’s happening [in colleges] all over America, and it’s chilling. It comes down to, what is it you value? I know what they value С It’s the land you’re standing on,” he said, referring to Rider President Gregory Dell’Omo and Vice President for Finance Julie Karns.

Rider, which is in Lawrenceville, has owned Westminster since 1992. Rider’s mounting deficit and a decline in enrollment inspired the plan to sell off the Westminster campus. The AAUP chapter, which recently voted no confidence in the University’s leadership, is also opposed to proposals that would erase limits on class size, end support for faculty research, increase teaching load, and cut outside-of-class contact with students.

While Mr. Dell’Omo said efforts are being made to find a buyer that would keep Westminster in Princeton, Rider will sell to an institution that would relocate the school if the first option fails to pan out by 2018. It is also possible that a buyer would only be interested in the choir college, leaving Rider to sell the campus to a third party. Protestors say selling Westminster is a bad idea all around, and they want Rider to reconsider and rescind what Mr. Taylor called “a terrible, terrible fiscal decision.”

The AAUP contract expires September 1 and negotiations between the union and Mr. Dell’Omo are scheduled for this summer.

The Coalition to Save Westminster Choir College in Princeton was represented at the rally by Westminster Alumni Council member Laurie Bischof. “Our number one goal is to keep Westminster in Princeton,” she said. “This must happen. We have serious concerns about the campus being uprooted.” The Coalition has been “working around the clock,” has hired legal counsel, and has contacted an organization that represents academic affiliations. That organization has reached out to Rider, but has gotten no response, Ms. Bischof added.

Rider sociology Professor Jeffrey Halpern, who is chief negotiator for the AAUP chapter, said in a press release that selling Westminster would result in “prolonged legal battles, loss of endowment and donor base, decline in overall enrollment, and broken promises to more than 400 students.” At an earlier rally held on the Rider campus, he said, “What’s at stake for students is the reputational value of your degree. In 15 years, if someone asks you where you went and you say Rider, they will say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s that fourth-rate place in New Jersey, where there’s no scholarship and no real faculty, just a lot of under-qualified instructors.’”

Tom Barclay, who teaches in Rider’s education department, was among those showing support at the rally. “To me, Westminster is the jewel in the crown,” he said. “I’d probably take a different route and make the plan more cost-effective. This is a unique place. The Westminster students have found a home here, and they deserve to have a home. This is not a business, it’s a service. I think the University could go a better way.”

Rider Communications Professor David Dewberry was also on hand, with 18-month-old Robbie on his shoulders. Mr. Dewberry’s wife, Alisa, teaches viola at Westminster Conservatory, which is Westminster’s community music school. “I’m here to support the cause and let people know that what Dell’Omo is doing is bad judgment,” he said. “This plan would affect the conservatory as well as the college. It’s all part of the same thing.”