COMMENTARY Stronger reasoning required to
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label border wall as immoral
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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—NEW BRUNSWICK
FRIDAY JANUARY 25, 2019
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NJ Film Festival brings indie culture to Rutgers BRENDAN BRIGHTMAN STAFF WRITER
The New Jersey Film Festival for the Spring 2019 semester begins today. For the next three weeks, independent films will play almost every night at Voorhees Hall on College Avenue. The festival is run through the Rutgers Film Co-op, the New Jersey Media Arts Center and the Rutgers University Program in Cinema Studies. Albert Nigrin, the executive director and curator of the New Jersey Film Festival and professor at the program in Cinema Studies, said the 22 films showcased have gone through a two-tiered jury process. Jurors are past winners,
Rutgers faculty members, students and journalists. Fran Magen, a manager of the festival, said interns look though the films submitted to pick the ones that move on from the first round. This year, the festival received 560 entries from around the world, then the judges narrowed the submissions down to approximately 150 for the second-tier jury. “We are looking for good films that are original and creative,” Nigrin said. “It does not have to look slick.” The films come from many genres — they can be animated, documentaries, experimental, shor t films or feature films. The SEE CULTURE ON PAGE 5
The film festival includes many genres ranging from documentaries, animations, short films and feature films. One type of film that will be shown is the “super 8,” shot on the vintage 8-millimeter film format. WIKIMEDIA
2018 wettest year in NJ’ s recorded history BRENDAN BRIGHTMAN STAFF WRITER
The wettest year on record for New Jersey was 2018, with a statewide average of 64.3 inches of precipitation, said David Robinson, a distinguished professor in the Department of Geography and state climatologist. The data, gathered by the Office of the New Jersey Climatologist, includes rain, snow and sleet in its measurements. Robinson has run the office since 1991, managing all climate-related data for the state. The yearly average for statewide precipitation in New Jersey is approximately 46.36 inches a year, based on the office’s database of the past 30 years. “So we’ve blasted past that by almost 18 inches,” Robinson said. He said that this precipitation record occurred without any major flooding events such as Hurricane Irene which made landfall in 2011, the second wettest year on record with 63.95 inches of average statewide precipitation. Instead, Robinson said, the large amount of precipitation most likely came from the large number of smaller weather events occurring at any of the approximately three dozen local weather stations across the state. There were 11 days with a station recording more than 4 inches of precipitation, with the largest day-long weather event occuring in Lakewood, N.J. with 6.98 inches.
Robinson said that Lakewood received nearly 76 inches of precipitation throughout the year, but Mine Hill, N.J. received the most with 78.18 inches. “We’ve got a handful of stations with 75 to 80 inches this year,” he said. The years between 2011 and this year, as well as the years since New Jersey’s last drought, have fluctuated in extremes, Robinson said. Statewide precipitation has been below average in 4 of the last 7 years, and in the last decade before 2011, there were at least three years with averages above 50 inches. The first year of a two-year drought in the state was 2001, which had 35.55 inches of average precipitation. He said this was the fourth driest year on record. Even so, there have been a lot more years on the wet side overall. The data from the past 17 years is showing extremes, Robinson said, adding that 2011 and 2018 are both at least 5 inches of precipitation above the third largest year on record. “It just shows you, wow,” Robinson said. “It depends on the atmospheric pattern that locks in for weeks and weeks at a time. You can be ver y wet, or you can ver y dr y.” These extremes are perhaps a result of climate change, but the increased wetness definitely has an underlying climate change signal to it. Robinson said as SEE HISTORY ON PAGE 4
Fiery explosion, power lines down on Cook CATHERINE NGUYEN STAFF WRITER
The two wettest years in New Jersey’s history have been in the last 10 years: this year and 2011, which received a statewide average of 63.95 inches of precipitation. RUTGERS.EDU
VOLUME 150, ISSUE 124 • UNIVERSITY ... 3 • OPINIONS ... 6 • INSIDE BEAT... 10 • DIVERSIONS ... 11 • SPORTS ... BACK
Yesterday morning a truck caused an explosion on Cook campus when it hit a telephone pole, according to NBC News. New Brunswick police reported that the collision occurred at 10:30 a.m., which caused the pole to collapse. The transformer, which is an electrical device that reduces the high voltage of power plants to lower voltage electricity for factories, offices and homes, on top of the pole exploded on the ground as a result. Video footage, found on NBC News, revealed that the transformer was sparking and shooting small explosions near a body of water. Emergency services were already at the scene during the time the video was shot. According to energy company PSEG, the incident also caused 180 of its customers to lose power for more than an hour. Though the University was not available for comment, Campus Information Ser vices sent an email that same morning informing students that College Farm Road between NJ Route 1 and Dudley Road was closed until fur ther notice due to downed power lines. The condition of the truck driver and reason for the crash were also not available.