Gov. Chris Christie has had ample time and opportunity to eviscerate members of a defiant Rutgers Board of Trustees, but, so far, he hasn’t called them "dopes" or "idiots" or "jerks" or "numbnuts" or any of the other epithets he uses to intimidate those who disagree with him.

Is the governor mellowing? Nah.

More likely, Christie has finally run into a wall that, at least for the moment, can withstand the huffing and puffing. A wall of concerned, intelligent, competent, accomplished, often moneyed, either bipartisan or apolitical, unafraid men and women who stuck together to uphold their fiduciary responsibilities to a great institution — with the law on their side.

Clearly, that does not describe the Rutgers administration, which, in the past six months, has expressed more desire to dive into a financial abyss to take over part of the state’s medical school than it has to maintain the statewide integrity of the state university.

At Thursday's trustees' meeting, the one at which the board voted overwhelmingly to reject the loss of its Camden campus, top Rutgers administrators were clearly nervous about how and whether this show of courage and independence might draw a barrage from Christie and his Democratic allies in South Jersey who march to the wishes of political boss George Norcross.

They undoubtedly had in mind how members of that alliance attacked Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) for daring to criticize the dismemberment of the state university. Lautenberg can take the nonstop heat, but not so those in residence at Old Queens.

The trustees were loyal to something more important than political bosses and their own political skins. Even trustee Mary Chyb of North Brunswick, a member of the Republican State Committee, spoke out in defense of Rutgers.

"This is way overdue," she said of the resolution. "We need to say something. If we say nothing, that is compliance."

Here’s the first problem: Rutgers-Camden, as at least two trustees said aloud, is "bleeding." Faculty members and students are leaving, applications are crashing through the floor. The trustees had before them documents showing that, for example, its law school has been able to persuade only 25 new admits to sign up and come so far this year. Who wants to go to the "New Rowan University Law School" when they thought they were going to Rutgers?

The hemorrhaging is everywhere, especially in graduate and professional programs — applications have been down 16 percent and the number of students accepting offers of admission is down 17 percent.

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Christie and Norcross could not have chosen a better time to launch their attack on Rutgers if their goal was to cripple the Camden campus’s admissions prospects. Spring is when students decide where they are going in the fall — and they get scared off by controversy.

"There are students who say ‘I want to go there, but I don’t want to go there if it’s not Rutgers,’" said trustee Mark Hershhorn, chairman and CEO of CKS Associates, a management consulting firm. "Some part of this university needs to make a clear statement that this university clearly stands behind Camden."

But there’s more to it than just the bleeding. Trustees have a fiduciary responsibility — they are sworn to protect the assets of the state university. The 1956 law transforming the private Rutgers to the semi-public Rutgers kept the trustees as a vestige of the private past.

They hold title to all assets owned by Rutgers on Sept. 1, 1956. While that may include less than 2 acres of land and buildings in Camden, the law also vests in the trustees "properties, funds and trusts received by the corporation on or after September 1, 1956, by private gift, donation, bequest or transfer" if the initial transfers were dated before that date. It would take a court, a gaggle of lawyers, several years, and, probably, millions of dollars to sort that all out.

Another provision of the law guarantees "the university shall be and continue to be given a high degree of self-government and that the government and conduct of the corporation and the university shall be free of partisanship."

If the law is "amended or altered in any substantial respect or appealed," the trustees theoretically could get back all the assets put in trust for the state. In 1956, that was pegged at $50 million. With interest over 56 years — that’s a lot of money.

That’s a nuclear option, of course, and never will happen, but it’s quite a wall to run into, even for a governor like Christie. He doesn’t control the courts yet and he’s not gaining a lot of political points for hammering an institution that’s a source of pride to the state.

Trustees are not intransigent radicals who set out to embarrass Christie and Norcross. These are not the "bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check," as Christie famously characterized the nation. The trustees are the establishment, mostly business people.

"We have to act," said trustee Michael Bogdonoff, a Philadelphia lawyer and graduate of Rutgers-Camden’s law school. "This university is under assault from the governor’s office."

Related coverage:

• Rutgers trustees overwhelmingly reject merger that would lose university's Camden campus