academy awards Over-politicizing of events
at Oscars is problematic
BLACK ARTS FESTIVAL Modern Art Solutions hosted a black arts festival to celebrate art and culture
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MEN’S BASKETBALL Rutgers sends two seniors off against Illinois on Senior Night
WEATHER Windy and sunny High: 40 Low: 18
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friday, march 3, 2017
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Junot Diaz says writing was shaped by Rutgers Kira Herzog news editor
Junot Diaz published his first short stor y collection, “Drown,” four years after graduating from Rutgers University. The Rutgers alumni has since become one of the most critically-acclaimed writers in the contemporar y fiction genre, garnering national and international recognition for his eclectic representation of the immigrant experience. In 2011 he won the Pulitzer Prize for literature, and last January, Diaz was named in The New York Times, alongside Toni Morrison and William Shakespeare, as one of former President Barack Obama’s personal favorite authors. In an exclusive inter view with The Daily Targum, Diaz said his writing was largely shaped by the landscape of New Jersey and, more specifically, Rutgers. “Understand, for some students Rutgers is their safety school of a compromise between parents or money or a waystation before reaching a better place,” Diaz said in an email. “Some students come from cities that make New Brunswick seem woefully provincial.
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But I came from a poor isolated Central New Jersey community and growing up I was star ved for art, scholarship, film, bookstores, politics or activism. At Rutgers, I found all of that and more.” This included an administration that “wasn’t all that responsive to students,” Diaz said, but nevertheless, Rutgers introduced him to a diverse community of intellectuals that shaped the work he would create later in life. Douglass College was still separate from the larger University when Diaz was a student at Rutgers. He said one of the biggest mistakes administrators have made was revoking the autonomy of individual colleges. “The intellectual and political fer vent at Douglass — these extraordinar y women — had a lasting impact on me. I had never met people of color like the ones that became my friends at school and that too changed me,” Diaz said. A portion of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” takes place on campus at Rutgers — with the College Avenue campus playing a particularly prominent role in the stor y.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Targum, Pulitzer prize-winning author, Junot Diaz, talked about activism, the Rutgers housing lottery and the current state of American politics. KIRA HERZOG / NEWS EDITOR One of the main characters in the novel, Yunior, receives a high lotter y number upon entering his senior year and winds up living in Demarest Hall. Diaz, who lived in the residence hall while at Rutgers, told the Targum he chose the
setting to show that hierarchies exist, even among “outcasts.” “I wish I could recall the number precisely,” Diaz said, when asked about his own lotter y number. “But it was something like eight from the bottom. All I remember is
showing the number to this senior I was dating and her saying: F---.” It is impossible to accurately condense an experience as nuanced as college into a single answer, Diaz said, that the topic would warrant at least one or two books. “I had to work all the time and didn’t have much loot for anything and the racism was pretty thick on the ground. The school certainly wasn’t sensitive to our needs as first generation students and there were zero resources, which sucked,” he said. “On the other hand, Rutgers was wonderful because I never had a chance to study and to learn and to grow intellectually before and so the hardships were easily offset by the opportunities and the incredible friendships I made … for me, those were the years when I began to live, but they certainly came at a cost.” The tension that exists today between administrators and students was present, to a similar extent, a decade ago, he said. Universities have a long histor y of leaving marginalized students behind and failing to live up to their claims, and standing up to injustices and inequality is at the heart of democracy, he said. “Rutgers students who walked out and sit-in give me a lot of hope for the future. Considering our See writing on Page 4
Ray Lesniak attends town hall on campus Nikhilesh De correspondent
The Rutgers University Democrats invited State Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-20) to speak at a town hall meeting on Wednesday night. The gubernatorial candidate said he would increase state aid for higher education. DIMITRI RODRIGUEZ / ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR
State Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-20) would appoint a Rutgers student to the University’s Board of Governors if he is elected to New Jersey’s highest office this November. The state’s longest-serving active legislator attended a town hall hosted by the Rutgers University Democrats on Wednesday night in Van Dyck Hall on the College Avenue campus, where he spoke about his experience and why he believes he should be elected as the Garden State’s 80th governor. During the question-and-answer session that followed his pitch, he voiced support for putting a student on the Rutgers Board of Governors and said he is a cosponsor on a bill which would amend the Rutgers Act of 1956 to put a current student with full voting powers onto the body. “It fits in with my concept of giving the public a voice and a vote in the government, by putting real commuters on the Port Authority board, and bus and train riders on the New Jersey Transit board, and real environmentalists on the (environmental commissions), not just someone
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who’s my political friend but recommended from those organizations,” he said. Lesniak said that he does not think it is likely that the bill would come up for a vote, given how much time it has already spent in committee. Unlike primary competitor Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-19), Lesniak would not commit to providing free tuition for public institution students whose families made $125,000 or less, because the state would be unable to pay for it. “What we should do is increase state aid to higher education,” he said. “We’ve been decreasing it for 20 years. We should also make the loan program more affordable for our students, we can do that, (but) we don’t have the money to make it free for that many students.” Lesniak said he would support reforming how student loans are collected so that no student would pay more than 10 percent of their income, as well as increase the general amount of aid distributed to students. He proposes rededicating some of the funds the state currently See campus on Page 4