“We’ve been very open and engaged with faculty, students, alumni and staff,” he said, adding: “We’ve had a healthy debate, good discussion. I’m confident they we will have a vote on Thursday and that it will be a favorable vote.”  Mr. Hultin said the board had reviewed the charges of conflicts and determined that there were none.  But leaders of the alumni association have joined in criticizing the deal.  “We’re simply giving N.Y.U. our assets, and I don’t quite understand why you would do that,” said Thomas A. Mauro, a nonvoting trustee of Polytechnic’s board and the immediate past president of the school’s alumni association.  On Monday, several alumni leaders asked the State Education Department to intervene. They presented those officials with an array of documents that the alumni said demonstrated that N.Y.U. is barred from opening an engineering school without the Legislature’s permission because of a deal it struck in 1973, when it sold its Bronx campus to the state and merged its engineering program into that of Polytechnic, then known as Polytechnic Institute of New York .  Both N.Y.U. and Polytechnic say N.Y.U. is not prohibited from opening an engineering school. Department officials said they would study the issues, but would not take any action before the board vote.  Robert J. Flynn, a professor of computer science and the speaker of the Polytechnic faculty, said there had been no vote by the faculty, and the finalized deal has not been made public. He added: “The pros are simple: Access to a larger pool of applicants and a bigger collection of potential research collaborators. The cons are equally easy: Why lose independence if it does not result in something substantively better. I hope that it will.”  Polytechnic, an engineering school with about 3,300 students — many of them immigrants and low-income — has been on a roller coaster ride for years. After receiving an unexpected bequest of about $200 million a decade ago from the estates of a former professor and his wife, the school, ranked in the third tier by U.S. News & World Report, raced to expand, and added a new dormitory. But enrollment fell rather than rising, and the university found itself with a yawning deficit. When N.Y.U. raised the possibility of a merger four years ago, Polytechnic was interested.  But those talks failed — in part because the deal did not guarantee faculty positions — and the university made some cuts. Enrollment has crept upward, but it is still not as robust as needed, and Polytechnic has continued to face deficits of more than $2 million a year. So when N.Y.U. returned last year, proposing that merger talks be reopened, Polytechnic’s top officials again said they were interested.  In interviews, alumni leaders said they were concerned that the Polytechnic name and identity would disappear if the merger goes through, and that the students it serves would not find a place at the bigger university.  John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said there was no question that the merger “is going to change both of our institutions, and for the better, but in terms of maintaining their identity, their fear is misplaced.”  Despite such assurances, alumni are suspicious. They said they feared that space-starved N.Y.U. was more interested in Polytechnic’s 650,000-square-foot campus in Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center and its other assets, including the possible sale of air rights to a major developer, Forest City Ratner, than in rebuilding Polytechnic.  “We’re giving them 153 years of history, real estate, buildings, endowment,” said George Likourezos, the president of the alumni association, who traveled to Albany to see state officials. “We want assurance that they are going to help Polytechnic succeed.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Some Trustees Challenge Polytechnic-N.Y.U. Merger. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
New York University’s ambitious plan to merge with Polytechnic University in Brooklyn and acquire an engineering school is suddenly facing a rebellion.