Rider to receive $13 million in WCC property settlement

This story was updated on Sept. 30 at 11:13 p.m.

By Caroline Haviland 

After more than half a decade of lawsuits, Rider received a fraction of the value of the Princeton land where Westminster Choir College once stood.

Rider will receive $13 million from the settlement reached in July with the Princeton Theological Seminary from the sale of the property to the Municipality of Princeton, which acquired the property in April for $42 million through eminent domain. The Seminary will receive the remaining $29 million — 69% of the proceeds.

According to the court order filed in Mercer County Superior Court on July 23, Rider received reimbursement for “the substantial investments it made, and losses it incurred, in maintaining the Westminster Choir College campus in Princeton.” 

In 2018, the Princeton Theological Seminary sued Rider, claiming that once the university stopped operating a choir college on the land, the property should revert to the Seminary, per the wishes of the original donor of the land.

In response to this settlement, Vice President of External Affairs Kristine Brown said, “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on litigation.” 

In 2017, WCC operated in a $3 million surplus, according to attorney Bruce Afran, which he stated would have accumulated over $20 million in the last eight years had former Rider President Gregory Dell’Omo not “destroyed” the world-class school. Afran represented WCC alumni and faculty who challenged Dell’Omo’s attempts to first sell the college, then later merge it on the Lawrenceville campus in order to sell the land.

Afran said with Rider’s $13 million settlement on the Princeton property, which Dell’Omo hoped to sell for around $40-60 million in 2017, the most it could make now is about $900,000 a year.

In a Sept. 29 interview with The Rider News, College of Arts and Sciences Senior Associate Dean and WCC Associate Professor of Music Education Jason Vodicka said he does not know if the $13 million settlement will go toward WCC, and said he was only made aware of the reached settlement from a Sept. 26 article published by The Rider News. 

The agreement happened weeks after Rider President John Loyack took office on July 7 and while Dell’Omo was awaiting his tenure’s conclusion on July 31. There was no public settlement announcement by Rider. 

Assistant Grievance Officer of Rider’s chapter of American Association of University Professors David Dewberry said the lack of an announcement regarding the settlement was questioned by faculty.

“Why wasn’t it shared? You could say there was a transition, but this is pretty significant though,” Dewberry said. “I could understand that there was an overlap, a transition going on, maybe it slipped through the loops. This is too important for that though.”

Rider and WCC’s history

Dell’Omo officially announced his plan to sell Westminster’s campus in March 2017, with the intention of “saving Rider,” Dewberry said, as the university was nearing a $1 million cash deficit, according to ProPublica’s database of Rider tax forms. However, in the end, a judge decided the campus was not Rider’s to sell.  

WCC moved to its former Princeton campus in 1935 when philanthropist Sophia Strong Taylor donated the property to the choir college “to advance the training of ministers of music of evangelical churches,” according to the Mercer County Superior Court records. In Taylor’s stipulation, she specified that if WCC could no longer carry out her requirements, the title would be passed to Princeton Theological Seminary.

Nearly 60 years later, in a financially troubling time for WCC, Princeton Theological Seminary said they could not commit to administering the college. Rider then undertook the college and signed a merger agreement with WCC in 1991, according to court records. To uphold Taylor’s terms, the agreement stated Rider must “preserve, promote, and enhance the existing missions, purposes, programs and traditions” of Westminster. 

With Dell’Omo’s decision to abandon the Princeton campus and move WCC’s operations to Lawrenceville, a judge determined that Rider violated Taylor’s terms and caused the title to shift to the Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Dell’Omo’s WCC decision was met with backlash from university constituents, resulting in lawsuits from students, parents and the Westminster Foundation, a group of WCC alumni and students who were seeking to stop Rider from selling the music school. 

Afran said the alumni and students at WCC were angered and saddened when Dell’Omo and his administration “senselessly destroyed a world-class institution.”

In the years since Dell’Omo tried to first sell the school, and then sell the land, a number of longtime WCC faculty left and enrollment plummeted. 

“I’ve never heard of an academic institution that would do such a thing. Colleges protect these things when they get them. Instead [Rider] treated it like they were selling a shopping mall,” Afran said. 

WCC’s transition to Lawrenceville 

Vodicka ’03, has been a part of the WCC community since he began pursuing his undergraduate degree in 1999. With his appointment to WCC associate professor of music education in 2018, Vodicka experienced the entirety of WCC’s journey to Lawrenceville.

Most of the WCC facilities on Rider’s campus have been renovated since 2020, according to Vodicka, coming with new technology, flooring, painting and ceilings. 

Vodicka said the upgrade in Lawrenceville is substantial compared to their Princeton campus, as most of the spaces there had not been updated since its construction in the 1930s. 

However, a major addition to the Fine Arts building, proposed in 2019 to accommodate WCC faculty and staff and provide 20 additional practice rooms, was never built.

Prior to WCC’s move, enrollment already began to dwindle, Vodicka said. In 2016, WCC had 438 students, according to a November 2022 The Rider News article. As of Sept. 28, Vodicka said there are 81 students enrolled in WCC’s undergraduate programs, 32 students in the “on-ground” graduate programs and 88 partaking in their online master’s programs. 

To recruit more students, Vodicka said the college has launched a new social media campaign and increased its attendance at college fairs, all of which are funded through donors and endowments for these purposes.  

“Things are different and I think some of that is because of the move, but things are also different because the world is different. We have to keep trying to find ways to make ourselves relevant, to make what we teach relevant,” Vodicka said. “So, are things exactly the same? Absolutely not, but seven years down the line I don’t think things should be the same even if we stayed on the other campus.”

Rider’s current financial situation

As of fiscal year 2024, Rider remains in a financial deficit of $21.8 million, according to the university’s most recent federal tax forms.

Loyack, who in the past has brought two universities he administered out of financial crises, said in an interview with The Rider News on Sept. 15 that he plans to “make some real progress on the financial condition of Rider.”

Despite his hopes of a brighter future for Rider, Loyack recently announced in a Sept. 19 universitywide email that Rider’s financial condition is “more severe than expected,” calling for urgency in addressing the university’s weakening funds. 

The email said, “While Rider’s financial foundation has been weakening for many years, recent and significant unforeseen events have made the situation more urgent,” but did not specify the nature and scope of those events. 

As a result, the formation of a Campus Resource Preservation Committee was announced in an email sent to all faculty and staff on Sept. 24 by Interim Vice President for Finance and Chief Administrative Officer Thomas Papa, to “provide tighter oversight of University expenditures.”

The email explained, effective immediately, that Papa and three additional top-level administrators will review and approve all expenditures at Rider greater than $1,000. 

While these new initiatives were implemented to combat Rider’s finances, Dewberry expressed a sentiment for the need of transparency and communication with faculty and staff on university matters to prevent a repeat of negative experiences, like in the past administration.

Dewberry said, “If the administration is not going to be transparent with us then it is clear to many faculty that the honeymoon is over and we’re back to normal.”