To the Editor:

The drama pitting the Institute for Advanced Study against the Friends of Princeton Battlefield reached a critical point two weeks ago when the D&R Canal Commission, which a few days before rendered a decision failing to approve the Institute’s housing development in the Battlefield area, reversed course and approved the application based on a change of vote by one member, a state employee.

The most likely explanation is that someone “upstairs” in the executive branch of State government pressured the employee, demonstrating that the Commission is subject to corruption: intellectual, moral, and possibly legal.

The Commission is a public body charged with protecting the D&R Canal State Park which borders the Princeton Battlefield. When it considered the Institute’s development application, it sat as a quasi-judicial body, taking testimony, weighing evidence, and rendering a decision based on the evidence. The wisdom of the Commission’s decision in initially rejecting the Institute application can be questioned, as reasonable persons may differ. But it is beyond debate that the Commission acted with procedural integrity the first time when it heard testimony, weighed evidence, and reached a decision in public against the project.

A few days later, without taking any additional testimony, without additional weighing of any evidence, and without articulating any basis for the change in vote, the Commission abandoned all commitment to a rational and open legal process by re-deciding the Institute’s application completely contrary to what the Commission had previously decided — and approving it.

Who in State government persuaded the state employee to change his vote? What were the inducements or threats that brought about the change? Is such a tainted process an appropriate way for members of the Princeton community and the larger State community, including the Institute and the Friends of the Battlefield, to have their differences settled?

With such taint so brazenly demonstrated, the matter inevitably will be referred to the judiciary for review. How much more time and how many more resources of the community will be devoted to that effort? And can the public ever have confidence again in the integrity of the decision-making that underlies the Institute/Battlefield dispute?

Roger Martindell

Patton Avenue