Trustees at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art asked a New York state court on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit against them brought in late May by students, faculty and alumni claiming they had mismanaged school finances.

The dismissal motion said that the plaintiffs’ claims “have no legal or factual support.”

The Manhattan art, architecture, and engineering college granted full tuition scholarships to its entire student body for more than a century. But in April of 2013, the school announced that it would begin charging about $19,000 in tuition, beginning in fall 2014, to “prevent insolvency,” according to school officials.

In their lawsuit, plaintiffs calling themselves the Committee to Save Cooper Union, Inc. seek to stop the school from introducing tuition and to prompt a court investigation into how the school’s trustees managed school finances.

The motion to dismiss the case says that the plaintiffs’ claims that charging tuition breaks the school’s charter is “based on a false premise” that Cooper Union’s founding documents require the institution to be free....Continue Reading

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