Here Now: Rutgers 250

Our 250th Anniversary Year in Photographs (1766–2016)

Here Now: Rutgers 250 documents Rutgers University in the year 2015–2016 as a celebration of the university’s 250th year.

Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248 zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu This crowdsourced photographic project, comprising an exhibition, digital gallery, and book, was developed by Marti Mayo, Director (Interim); Donna Gustafson, PhD, Curator of American Art and Mellon Director of Academic Programs; and Stacy Smith, Manager of Publications and Communications, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, to celebrate 2015–2016 during Rutgers University’s 250th anniversary. The exhibition was on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University from January 19 through July 3, 2016. Here Now: Rutgers 250’s digital gallery remains live through December 2017. The photographs will be archived at the university.

This book is partially supported by the Class of 1937 Publications Endowment Fund.

The exhibition was made possible by the Estate of Ralph Voorhees, PNC Bank, and donors to the Zimmerli’s Major Exhibition Fund: James and Kathrin Bergin, Alvin and Joyce Glasgold, Charles and Caryl Sills, Voorhees Family Endowment, and the Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Foundation, Inc. –Stephen Cypen, President. Related public programs are supported by the Friends of the Zimmerli Endowment Fund.

The Zimmerli’s operations, exhibitions, and programs are funded in part

by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and income from the Avenir Foundation Endowment Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment Fund, and the Voorhees Family Endowment Fund, among others. Additional support comes from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Estate of Victoria J. Mastrobuono, and donors, members, and friends of the museum.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016953457 © 2016 Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9822602-1-0 General Editor: Donna Gustafson Publication Manager: Stacy Smith Copy Editor: Carolyn Vaughan Designer: Minor Design Typeset in Neutraface Book Printed and bound in the USA

Individuals who submitted photographs to the Here Now: Rutgers 250 project agreed to detailed Terms and Conditions, including granting the Zimmerli and Rutgers permission to reproduce the photographs in any publication. They affirmed they had obtained permission from others depicted in the photographs before submitting the images online, that the Zimmerli, Rutgers, and their affiliates would be held harmless from and against any and all claims by third parties, and that the Zimmerli would not be held responsible for unauthorized use of the photographs by third parties. Photographers retained ownership rights to their images.

The names of the photographers and other information contained in the identifying information provided with each photograph reproduced in this publication were checked with the individual submitters. If they did not provide additional or corrected information, the information appears as it was first submitted.

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Contents

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Foreword and Acknowledgments Marti Mayo, Donna Gustafson, and Stacy Smith

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Rutgers University President’s Statement Robert L. Barchi

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Rutgers University–New Brunswick Chancellor’s Statement Richard L. Edwards

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Snapshot of a Decade Evie Shockley

16 Jurors’ Statements

Donna Gustafson Arnold Lehman Marti Mayo Gary Schneider Kelly Sidley Sarah Stolfa 22

250 Photographs for Rutgers 250

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2016 Convocation Speech

President Barack Obama

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Index of Contributors

283

Rutgers 250 Planning Committee

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Foreword and Acknowledgments

The book that you hold is the culmination of a two-yearlong project celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding in 1766 of Rutgers University, known then as Queen’s College. Conceived as a gift to the university from the Zimmerli Art Museum, Here Now: Rutgers 250 included an exhibition, a website and digital gallery, and this publication. Our idea was to create a dynamic celebration of the anniversary year that looked at the present and into the future, in contrast to the many events and commemorations on campus that focused on history and past accomplishments. We wanted to foreground our contribution in the present and actively involve the community, especially the students, because one of our fundamental beliefs is that the university art museum is a space dedicated to student learning and engagement. With examples of excellent crowdsourced photography shows to guide us, notably at the Carnegie Museum of Art (A People’s History of Pittsburgh and Oh Snap! Your Take on Our Photographs) and the Brooklyn Museum (Click!), we developed our own take on a community portrait.

The project’s website, herenow250.rutgers.edu, went live on November 10, 2015—Charter Day—as part of the university’s inauguration of this celebratory year, with a call to the community for images of their experiences at Rutgers. We set few rules, hoping to engage the imagination of our population and willing to push the boundaries of the project as needed. Photographs came in showing fans at football and basketball games, team photographs from the women’s rugby and fencing and equestrian teams, theater and art performances, classrooms and study abroad, campus landscapes and dorm rooms, and the political activism of students.

In short, we saw a community working, playing, and experiencing life at a major research university. The more than 2,000 images contributed by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and visitors to Rutgers in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden were printed and hung in the museum galleries, the accumulation growing organically

as the weeks went by and the news spread through social media, word of mouth, and an active publicity effort. The exhibition was on view from January 19 through July 3, 2016; the digital gallery of all images remains live through December 31, 2017.

Here Now: Rutgers 250 was remarkable on many counts. It was an experiment that taught us much about our audience and the social connections on campus.

Presenting us with a view of an extraordinarily diverse and geographically decentralized research university in 2015–2016, it also showed us what we as a community see as important in our everyday experience: community, diversity, and engagement. We also benefited from the opportunity to work with colleagues from Camden, Newark, and the five campuses in New Brunswick, student organizations, the School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program, the new Honors College, faculty across the curriculum, staff, and alumni. Needless to say, our ambitions for the project grew as we began to implement our plan. Consequently, we owe a debt of gratitude to friends and colleagues who helped make this project in all its manifestations a success.

First and foremost we offer our heartfelt thanks to every photographer who participated. Each submission added to the composite portrait of Rutgers in this important anniversary year. While a fraction of the total of images was chosen to be included in the book, every one submitted contributed to the picture of Rutgers, here and now. The full set will be archived here at the university, where they will be available for many years to come.

We are especially grateful to our jurors, who embraced the premise of the project and enthusiastically participated, selecting the 250 photographs that make up this book: Arnold Lehman, former director of the Brooklyn Museum, senior advisor at Phillips auction house, New York; Gary Schneider, photographer and associate professor of photography, Mason Gross School of the

Arts, New Brunswick; Kelly Sidley, curatorial assistant, Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Sarah Stolfa, founder and director of the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. The jurors met for a daylong session to review and discuss the works with us and select the images for the book. Each has contributed a statement for this publication. We are also deeply grateful to Evie Shockley, associate professor of English and poet, for her thought-provoking, elegant, and moving tribute. Ms. Shockley’s essay succinctly describes what makes Rutgers and our students exceptional and this institution truly remarkable.

The museum is grateful for the continuing support it receives from the university’s administration, especially President Robert L. Barchi and Chancellor Richard L. Edwards, as well as their staffs. Both recognize the place of an art museum in the education and campus life of Rutgers students and have contributed statements to this publication. In this and all our work, especially in this anniversary year, we applaud their commitment to the arts in the life of a great research university.

We are equally indebted to the members of the Rutgers 250 Planning Committee, who worked so hard to make this anniversary year memorable. They are listed on page 283. Our sincere thanks go to the Department of University Communications and Marketing, especially Matthew Weismantel, senior director, and April Coage, assistant director of the Rutgers 250 Anniversary Office who supported our project from the start and worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm to encourage participation across the university. We also wish to acknowledge the additional support and special efforts of the Rutgers 250 team, including Saskia Kusnecov, Mohammad Nazmussadad, Julie Park, Elijah Reiss, Aishwarya Sharma, Steve Shimchick, and Tom Struble.

We are also grateful to Allan Hoffman, associate director of Strategic Communications; Jeremee Johnson, senior web editor; and Maria Hall, senior web designer, who

helped find creative ways to promote and market the exhibit across campus and beyond.

We thank Rutgers’ Office of Creative Services, also from the Department of University Communications and Marketing, for their critical counsel and cooperation as we developed a plan for our website and digital gallery.

Joanne Dus-Zastrow, senior director, and Eve Burris, assistant director of web communication, attended initial web strategy development meetings and provided identity and site creation guidance throughout the early design phases of the project, for which we are most grateful.

At the Zimmerli, we wish to particularly thank our student coordinator for the project, Angela Bouton, who graduated in May 2016 and is at Pratt Institute for graduate work. Angela worked hard to involve students in the project and was key to our success. We also want to acknowledge the efforts of Bernadette Clapsis, manager of business affairs, and Joyce Szabo, administrative assistant; Judy Soto, assistant to the director; Whitney Prendergast, director of development; Randy Suchcicki, IT consultant; Theresa Watson, communications coordinator; Leslie Kriff, registrar; Edd Schwab and Keith Bull, museum operations; Betty Jarvis, graduate curatorial assistant; and Deanna Fredericks, head of security, and her student guards.

One of our partners, RUPA, Rutgers University Programming Association, the university-wide student programming council, understood—instantly and without questions—our ambitions for the project and embraced it wholeheartedly. They organized and funded the winter celebratory event that launched the exhibition itself with refreshments, buttons that identified participating artists, and their own enthusiastic presence. We’re grateful to everyone in the organization who helped and participated, especially Maria Bayas, director of the Arts and Culture Committee; Jennifer Simon, associate

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director of Major Events and Programs, and Julia Crimi, assistant director of Major Events and Programs.

Professionals and friends outside the Rutgers family were pivotal in the development stages of Here Now: Rutgers 250’s organization and launch. For speaking with us about the daunting issues associated with a project such as this, we owe thanks to the Carnegie Museum of Arts’ Katie Reilly, director of publications, graphics, and photographic services, and Hannah Silbert, exhibitions manager, as well as the Andy Warhol Museum’s Jeffrey Inscho, manager of the Innovation Studio at Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh (formerly of the Carnegie Museum of Art).

For building the project’s dedicated website, we are grateful to Matt Griffin and Matt Braun, designers, and Caralyn Green and Elaine Zelmanov, strategists, at Bearded, a UX web design agency in Pittsburgh.

For hosting and maintaining the site, our thanks go to Andrew Libby, senior solutions architect, and Daryl Boyer, consultant, xforty technologies, in Royersford, Pennsylvania. Their efforts ensured that the site was appealing, worked 24/7, and was user-friendly for all—from the tech savvy to electronic novice. For her patient and skilled editing of the manuscript, we thank Carolyn Vaughan.

We also acknowledge with gratitude Craig Minor, Cheryl Beckett and the staff of Minor Design, Houston, for the arresting graphic identity of the project. It graced all printed matter, informed the exhibition installation, and became a familiar logo throughout Rutgers campuses, from the initial announcement to the banner on our building to electronic communications to, ultimately, this publication.

The Zimmerli’s operations, exhibitions, and programs are funded in part by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and income from the Avenir Foundation Endowment and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment, among others. Additional support comes

Foreword and Acknowledgments

from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; the Estate of Victoria J. Mastrobuono; and donors, members, and friends of the museum.

The exhibition Here Now: Rutgers 250 was made possible by the Estate of Ralph Voorhees, PNC Bank, and donors to the Zimmerli’s Major Exhibition Fund: James and Kathrin Bergin, Alvin and Joyce Glasgold, Charles and Caryl Sills, Voorhees Family Endowment, and the Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Foundation, Inc.-Stephen Cyphen, President. Related public programs are supported by the Friends of the Zimmerli Endowment Fund. The book is partially supported by the Class of 1937 Publications Endowment Fund.

And finally, we and the entire Rutgers community are thrilled and honored that President Barack Obama agreed to deliver the commencement speech in this momentous year. President Obama put it best when he looked out at the graduating class of 2016 and their guests and declared, “America converges here.” It was an incredible year, and having the forty-fourth President of the United States speak to the graduates and their families and friends, celebrate Rutgers’s achievements, and offer thoughtful counsel for the future was a remarkable and auspicious moment. This book, which concludes with photographs of that commencement and includes the text of the president’s speech, provides an abbreviated yet fully three-dimensional portrait of Rutgers University as it was in 2015–2016.

Marti Mayo Director (Interim) Donna Gustafson Curator of American Art and Mellon Director for Academic Programs Stacy Smith Manager of Publications and Communications

Rutgers University President’s Statement

This book is the “here and now” of Rutgers on its 250th anniversary. The photographs on these pages capture moments from a single year in a long, often illustrious, and almost always complicated history.

Although they are not meant to be comprehensive, the images represent much of what makes Rutgers such an endlessly fascinating place. In these photographs we glimpse Rutgers celebrations and traditions, gatherings and friendships, commitments and causes. The quiet of a study room. The jubilation of commencement. Our long agricultural heritage and our increasingly global scope. Many photos reflect the excitement and uniqueness of our yearlong commemoration of a milestone anniversary, one achieved thus far by only seven other US universities; many more photos are simply records of life as it happens today on our campuses.

You can’t help noticing so much scarlet. More important, so much diversity. Far from the carefully cultivated “diversity shot” you might see in some admissions brochures, it’s simply a picture of what’s in front of you every day and everywhere—in the stadium, at the bus stop, in the lecture hall, in the lab, in your residence hall. As we have been reminded in powerful and moving discussions during this anniversary year, the rich diversity of our student body has been hard-won, and we still have more work to do in matching that diversity on our faculty and administration. But its benefits and its impact on our history are unmistakable; as President Obama said in his commencement address at Rutgers, “America converges here. And in so many ways, the history of Rutgers mirrors the evolution of America—the course by which we became bigger, stronger, and richer and more dynamic, and a more inclusive nation.”

higher education; inviting alumni back to speak about their experiences at Rutgers; hosting anniversary celebrations and ribbon cuttings for important new buildings in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden; mounting an exhibit of historical artifacts at the University Libraries; and raising money for scholarships in the health sciences through a “donate a photo” campaign. Each of these events—and so many more— has helped us to reflect on the enormous changes that have transformed a small private college for men into a comprehensive public research institution proud to be the State University of New Jersey. Just as important, during the year, the Zimmerli Art Museum invited all members of our community to participate in the celebration and to capture Rutgers life in 2016 by contributing their own photographs directly to its Here Now: Rutgers 250 exhibition, from which this book’s selections were culled. I am grateful to the Zimmerli and gratified by the wide array of photos displayed at the museum and now represented in this volume.

Imagine yourself looking through this book twenty or thirty years from now. Of course, you will be sure to notice the hair and clothing styles of the period, and perhaps the architecture or technology or picture quality will seem outdated. But what will endure, I am certain, is the energy and vitality of this remarkable Rutgers community, captured so vibrantly on these pages. Happy anniversary, Rutgers!

Robert L. Barchi President Rutgers University, May 2016

Rutgers has spent these past months commemorating our 250th anniversary in a variety of ways: producing a pictorial history and a new scholarly history of the university; hosting symposia on the future of public

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Rutgers University–New Brunswick Chancellor’s Statement

For an institution as old as Rutgers, one would think that by now, any birthday would be just about like all the other ones. But of course, so very few institutions in the United States have the occasion to celebrate their turning of a quarter of a millennium, and we should not—and have not—let the opportunity to cheer and reflect go by the wayside.

people of New Jersey for Rutgers Day. Rutgers also touches all corners of the globe, converging in the still frames featured here that show the iconic Douglass College fir making an appearance on the Great Wall of China, a selfie from the French Department high atop a mountain in the South of France, and a smiling group shot from our study abroad students in Romania.

Rutgers University–New Brunswick, as the flagship of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, plays a prominent and unique role in the long story of our institution. As the birthplace of Rutgers, we are mindful of the glittering but sometimes complicated course of history that has played out on our grounds. On our historic campus, one cannot wander far in any direction without reading the notable colonial names that adorn our street signs and hallowed academic halls. But history alone does not define an institution as dynamic and vital as ours. That point is played out perfectly in the photographs in this book. The Rutgers University in New Brunswick of 2016 has written its pages in the history books carrying the same spirit that has defined the other 249 years.

This book perfectly encapsulates the yearlong celebration of our 250 years of existence. In our history, there have been many momentous years and events to celebrate, from Charter Day in 1766 to Paul Robeson’s graduation in 1919 to our entrance into the Big Ten in 2014. The common thread you see throughout our history is the unstoppable beat of progress and change. As you flip through the book, look carefully, and you’ll see that beat in every photo, moving us along, page by page.

President Obama’s address at commencement served as a highlight in the yearlong celebration. I was struck by how accurately he captured the essence of Rutgers and its historic home in New Brunswick, stating that “America converges here,” aptly crystallizing the idea that the Rutgers of today is where diverse people come together and where diverse ideas are nurtured and debated, in a university that has continued to evolve over 250 years.

Nowhere is this idea of convergence of people and ideas displayed better than in these pages. Our community is tied together with local and global strands.

As you flip through, you easily find the former: the passionate support for our football team, the inspiring gathering of thousands of students for our Dance Marathon charity event, and our engagement with the

Richard L. Edwards, PhD Chancellor of Rutgers—New Brunswick Rutgers University, May 2016

Snapshot of a Decade

by Evie Shockley

You might think that after ten years of teaching at the same institution, a professor would find the job a little bit stale, more than a little routine. I myself feared it might be so, earlier in my career. But as it turns out, my decade at Rutgers University has presented me with more than enough opportunities, challenges, and changes to keep my work as a teacher—largely of undergraduates—absorbing, instructive, and enlivening.

For me, this work began with my coming to understand who my students are. When I arrived at Rutgers in the fall of 2005, I had been on the faculty of a small private university in the South, where my classes were uniformly small, the vast majority of my students were very young adults who enjoyed normative racial and class privilege, and the campus climate was decidedly religious (Christian, specifically). I walked into my Black Poetry course that September evening, in the basement of one of the College Avenue “river dorms,” to face a class that was double the size of any I’d previously taught. A number of my students had come straight from fulltime jobs to class; at least a few had children waiting for them at home; and too many would need to work hard or make sacrifices to purchase the books we would be reading. As I had done before, I began the semester with the work of poet Phillis Wheatley, who had been born in West Africa and enslaved as a young child, and—while still enslaved in Boston—had become the famed author of, among other things, devoutly Christian elegies. But this time, I could not take my students’ familiarity with the Christian Bible for granted any more than I could assume their ability to recognize heroic couplets. I soon discovered, however, that what I could count on from these students was an intense hunger for knowledge that would help them make sense of the world in which they were living—a hunger that came with a greater clarity than my previous students had had about the degree of senseless disparity, disempowerment, and injustice that most people today must face. If they weren’t necessarily moved by Wheatley’s religious poems, they were deeply engaged with the issue of how and why a poet who did not have her own individual

freedom would write passionately about the American colonies’ desire for freedom from British tyranny in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. By the end of that segment on Wheatley, I had learned a first important lesson about who my new Rutgers students were.

Those lessons continued, in the classroom and beyond.

One of the things I remain most grateful for was the opportunity to participate the following summer in one of the New Faculty Bus Tours of New Jersey, sponsored by then-President Richard McCormick. A group of around thirty of us, all within our first three years on faculty at Rutgers, had the great fortune of spending five days together, traveling to different parts of the state, and learning about the differences in topography, industry, and demographics of each region. Up till then, my sense of New Jersey had been based almost entirely on the way things looked in New Brunswick and Highland Park (where I lived that first year), on the turnpike between exit 9 and the Holland Tunnel, and at Newark Airport—with brief forays into Jersey City (which would soon become my new home base). In one week full of fascinating lectures, tours, and conversations, we saw the Jersey Shore and learned about solutions to the problem of sand erosion from the state’s beaches; toured the state capitol building in Trenton and met with elected representatives from Rutgers’ legislative districts; attended a reading by the state’s first poet laureate, Gerald Stern; strolled through the pine barrens and walked barefoot in a cranberry bog in the southern part of the state; dined in Newark’s Ironbound district while listening to the eminent New Jersey historian, the late Dr. Clement Price, moderate a conversation among Newark residents about the city’s history and politics, on the night Cory Booker was elected as Mayor; visited a dairy where sheep’s milk cheese is made; stopped in Lambertville and took a riverboat ride past the place where George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River; explored the amazing art at the Grounds for Sculpture; met students at the high school in the town of Dover; looked out over the Great Falls in the once booming industrial

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town of Paterson; and spent a night on the ski slopes of northern New Jersey, in all their summer greenery. For a very small state, New Jersey covers a lot of ground!

That week helped me understand how my students, who come primarily from within the state, could nonetheless have such different backgrounds: urban, suburban, and rural; some students coming from towns with almost entirely homogenous populations, while the majority (by far) are quite accustomed to great cultural diversity. Indeed, New Jersey’s status as one of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the nation not only shapes the demographics of my classes but deeply informs our discussions of the material I teach.

As I come to realize this more fully, it transforms the way I approach my teaching and syllabi. The class that I think of as my favorite to date is a case in point.

The course was called Contemporary Narratives of Slavery. The challenge for me, at our first meeting, was to get the students to let go of the assumptions they are frequently encouraged to make about “slaves.” If we were going to really grapple with the issues facing late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American writers like Charles Johnson, Toni Morrison, Sherley Anne Williams, and Octavia Butler in writing novels set during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, the whole class needed to be clear that the historical figures on whom their characters are modeled were people, with all the three-dimensional complexity that implies. As I looked around the room, I decided to ask the students to introduce themselves, each in turn, by giving their name and hometown, and by indicating how many generations of their family had lived in the United States. There were certainly several students who, like me, could not say precisely how many generations ago their ancestors had traveled here: more than four or five, certainly, but how many more? However, the majority of the class, by a significant margin, were themselves immigrants or were the children or grandchildren of immigrants, from places in North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.

That was a foundation I could build on. A bit later, when I was outlining what the course would cover, I paused and asked them, “How many of you, or your parents, or grandparents, upon arrival in the United States,

Snapshot of a Decade by Evie Shockley

immediately forgot the language you spoke?” I saw puzzled looks. No hands went up. “How many of you found yourselves and your families suddenly unable to remember your families, your beliefs, or your cultural practices?” Silence. “Raise your hand if your family’s arrival in the United States wiped out your memory of how your society was structured, or rendered you unable to recall what people in it considered beautiful or appropriate or valuable or correct.” There were no takers, but a few heads began to nod knowingly.

“Exactly,” I said. “Now, what you need to understand right from the beginning in this course is that the traders in this atrocious system of trafficking did not find ‘slaves’ in western Africa and did not carry ‘slaves’ away on their ships. They bought, abused, tortured, demanded labor and obedience from—that is, enslaved—people.

People. The people who were seized and forced into the system of transatlantic slavery had the same kinds of intelligence, aspirations, personal histories, knowledge, emotional ties, and skills that any other immigrants might have, and those attributes, talents, and connections—those qualities of their selfhood, in other words—did not disappear just because they were treated with unthinkable cruelty. This human complexity is what too often is obscured or erased by the word ‘slave.’ Yes, enslavement was dehumanizing, but it did not ever reduce people to a sub-human state.” I could see the shift in perspective on their faces. The energy in the room was palpable. The first hand went up, and the semester’s work took off. It was a quintessentially Rutgers moment. The richness of experience that our students bring to the classroom directly contributes to and shapes what they take away.

Rutgers students are not encased within an ivory tower during their years in our classes—indeed, none of us are, at any institution, but at Rutgers, not even the illusion of a remove from the “real world” can take hold. For example, I maintain my expectations of regular and timely class attendance, but I recognize that the realities of commuting to class on New Jersey’s congested highways, as so many students do, or of using an understaffed bus system to move about the sizeable territory of Rutgers–New Brunswick’s five residential campuses require some measure of flexibility on my part. The greatest challenges I face as a professor

at Rutgers involve this kind of tension between the students’ need and desire to obtain the high-quality education that Rutgers offers and their efforts to do so in the face of what are often great obstacles and limited resources. When I see a student struggling with the course material, I might suggest they make an appointment to meet with me in office hours. But when they must load their schedules with back-to-back-toback classes two days a week to make possible a nearly full-time employment schedule during the remaining days, a meeting can be incredibly difficult to arrange.

Other times, I’ll discover that a student who is clearly capable of top-notch work misses assignments because they’re taking an inadvisable course overload, in an attempt to shave off a semester and save their parents the associated tuition costs. Or I might recommend a certain sequence of literature courses to a strong student in their “first year at Rutgers,” only to discover that they have transferred in from one of New Jersey’s community colleges and have two or three more semesters—rather than years—in which to complete their degree requirements. Some of these kinds of problems can be resolved, or at least mitigated, with a little generosity (if one’s own schedule permits) or with the institutional savvy and support of our amazing, dedicated staff. But other concerns arise just as frequently—such as poor health care resulting in undiagnosed physical ailments and undertreated mental conditions, or family burdens (financial, emotional, or otherwise) falling primarily upon their shoulders— that can be beyond the ability of faculty or staff to effectively address.

Still, it doesn’t surprise me that Rutgers students, despite these obstacles and all the other demands upon their time and energy, not only succeed in their studies, but also are incredibly involved in social activism, volunteering, and various initiatives oriented toward helping others. For every student missing a class to translate for their parents at a doctor’s appointment, for instance, there is another participating in a servicelearning program to increase English literacy among New Brunswick’s Latino population. Rutgers students have taken their experiences with economic disparity, racial injustice, and anti-queer discrimination and used them—along with the analyses and skills their education

brings them—to fuel their work in the Occupy or Black Lives Matter movements or to help fight for same-sex marriage or transgender human rights. They dance, run, paint, bake, and build to raise money and support the causes they believe in. And, most of the time, they study what they study—be it feminist history, biology, comparative literature, ecology, or music—as though they know that their lives (and all of our lives) depend on our knowledge about ourselves and our world.

In learning about Rutgers students—who they are and how to teach them—I learn from them. While helping a creative writing student sharpen the structure of an essay, I gain a fuller picture of how women in college today are dealing with rape and rape culture. During a conversation with a psychology major about a poem, I comprehend something more about how poetry speaks to non-specialist readers and listeners. A class discussion about the relationship between a human woman and a non-gendered “alien” in a science fiction future clarifies for me the role and importance of gender-neutral pronouns in our present time and place.

In the process of advising the honors thesis of a student who hopes to become a professor, I get an education on the hurdles a DREAMer must clear in order to realize that dream. My students are unpredictable, brilliant, determined, funny, giving, resourceful, and inspiring.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to spend the last decade of Rutgers’ first 250 years in their company.

Evie Shockley Associate Professor of English Rutgers University—New Brunswick

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Jurors’ Statements A jury consisting of Donna Gustafson, Arnold Lehman, Marti Mayo, Gary Schneider, Kelly Sidley, and Sarah Stolfa chose the photographs included in this book from the more than 2,000 photographs submitted, which constituted the exhibition portion of the project.

Donna Gustafson

Curator of American Art and Mellon Director for Academic Programs, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers

Selecting representative and visually literate images from among the nearly 2,000 that were contributed to our crowdsourced project proved more difficult than I had anticipated. Many of the images fell into the categories that we see all over social-media sites— selfies, posed group shots, and conventionally beautiful landscapes. Others suggested deep connections with particular spaces at Rutgers and/or deep connections with Rutgers people and an awareness of the university’s past and future paths—these were the photographs that we selected.

As a member of the Rutgers community, I had a predisposition toward certain types of images. Two of the most visible and characteristic qualities of Rutgers are the diversity of the students on the five campuses of New Brunswick and those located in Camden and Newark, and the wide range of academic research that goes on at the university. There were examples of each, but I was also surprised by the number of photographs that depicted the landscapes in all seasons at Rutgers, especially on the New Brunswick campus.

The many photographs of Rutgers Gardens on Cook Campus (home to the agricultural college), the Nature Preserve on Livingston Campus, the landscaped spaces between academic buildings on all campuses, and views of the Raritan River (which separates College Avenue, Cook, and Douglass from Busch and Livingston Campuses) suggested to me that the natural environment is important in fundamental ways to students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

There are also photographs of the new buildings on Honors College, Livingston Campus, and the historic buildings of Old Queens, and pictures of the Kissing

Jurors’ Statements

Bridge and Passion Puddle at Douglass. The legends around the Kissing Bridge and Passion Puddle reference finding love at college—it is no wonder that these two places were so often photographed. The statue of Willie the Silent (William I of Orange) that has stood in Voorhees Mall since 1928 and that of Walt Whitman, New Jersey’s most famous poet, on the Camden campus were other favorite subjects. Those are historical markers—of Rutgers’ roots in Dutch culture and Whitman’s presence in the city of Camden—but more recent histories were also acknowledged: Douglass College as the New Jersey College for Women, founded in 1918, and Livingston’s rise from experimental branch of the university wrought out of the social upheavals of the 1960s to a full academic member.

It was heartening to see how the past continues to resonate deeply in the spaces of Rutgers and equally heartening to see that students at Rutgers questioned the celebration of the 250th anniversary with valid reminders of the university’s complicity in history’s darker stories. Politics, which inevitably plays a role at the university, is visible in the photographs that show students agitating for change, working for social justice, and expressing their opinions, as President Barack Obama urged them to do in his address to the graduating class of 2016. To register other sides of the celebration and tell a more complex story, we included images that suggest multiple perspectives on the anniversary year.

While the photographs as a whole speak of shared experiences, of friendship and social action, sports and spectatorship, learning and teaching, they also visualize a community reflecting on the past and looking ahead to the future.

Arnold Lehman

Marti Mayo

Former Director of the Brooklyn Museum, Senior Advisor at Phillips auction house, New York

Director (Interim), Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers

For many years now, I have not accepted an invitation to serve on a jury for an exhibition or any other artrelated project. However, I broke my self-imposed rule for Here Now: Rutgers 250, because its purpose—of both the exhibition and this book that evolved from the exhibition—served a purpose that trumped my rule.

As a museum director for over four decades, the public values that I supported and advocated in my work were always community, diversity, and inclusion. And when called upon to help select works from an exhibition about these very values—community, diversity, and inclusion—for the book that is in your hands at this very moment, I felt I had no choice but to agree to join this jury. This obviously silent, but to me truly resonant, document of an exceptional moment in time for one of America’s great universities allows us in microcosm to look at who we are today as a nation—whether that view is on the streets of Brooklyn, where I live, or almost anywhere, USA. This volume of photographs, drawn from a much larger group in the exhibition, is certainly not about great photography. While there are some great photographs in this volume and lots of good photographs, our judgment as a jury was focused on representing the vibrant, colorful, and diverse life of a university, one of the largest in the nation, which serves its students, region, state and, ultimately, its country well.

After (or if) you read these words, please look at these photographs as a representation of where we are today and where I hope we will be tomorrow. Community, diversity, inclusion.

As a juror and the Director (Interim) of the Zimmerli, I experienced this project in two stages. The first was its conception and organization. Zimmerli staff had many discussions about possible projects to mark the 250th anniversary; none seemed quite right. All appeared to be extensions of expected programs at the museum. At some point, a no-holds-barred, crowdsourced photo exhibition was proposed, one that would involve myriad parts of the campuses and communities that comprise Rutgers. We had a eureka response and decided to go ahead. It would be broad, unexpected, inclusive, beyond normal “museum” boundaries, and open to all. We decided to make a reality-based portrait of our university, as it is, here and now.

Once the project was announced, photos began to come in. We worried. Would there be enough? Would they be interesting? At first, it was hard to tell from the assortment that arrived each morning. But, slowly, it happened. The submissions on the website began to form a portrait of Rutgers, in all its historic, scholarly, serious, crazy, enormous, frustrating, varied, and playful parts, a picture of a specific space and time. When it came time for the jury to meet and decide which 250 photos would be included in the book, we were a bit nervous. Could they, would they, see what we saw? Were they prepared to exercise generous, open, and inclusive judgment while reviewing these hundreds of photos?

As a member of that jury, I can report that my fellow jurors did. They saw it; they saw our Rutgers. They saw its history, its energy, its aspirations, its wonderful and varied students, loyal alums, devoted faculty, and staff.

They saw the whole, not its parts—something many of us are all too prone to focus on. Each of us made comments, expressed opinions; sometimes we agreed and sometimes we disagreed. Majority ruled. We each

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gave up a favorite or two and accepted someone else’s.

In the end, a strong, comprehensive representation of the year emerged to be included in this descriptive, lively book.

I don’t think Here Now is the portrait of Rutgers in its anniversary year. But I do believe it’s a true picture of the spirit and energy of a time and a place—an important place—where the business is the education of young people. Perhaps a place where you can earn a degree that allows you to enter a profession or procure employment, but most certainly a place where you will learn about ideas other than your own, people not like you, and places, cultures, and customs that are unfamiliar. It’s a space where you can become an informed global citizen, where you will learn to understand history and appreciate human values and to be the kind of person who will remain curious about and interested in the world throughout life.

Gary Schneider Photographer, Associate Professor of Photography, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick

Donna Gustafson invited me to be on a six-member panel charged with selecting 250 images from the more than 2,000 submitted by our Rutgers community over the past two semesters. The images were to be reproduced in a book that would tell the story of our school today. I was approached because I am an artist and photographer who teaches at the Mason Gross School of the Arts here at Rutgers. However, as a panelist, I found myself ill-equipped to judge these images, which were mostly snapshots of friends and events, or formal and informal group portraits, along with a few more offbeat submissions and some from the art school. I don’t travel with a camera, nor do I participate in social media; when my students present me with snapshots like these, we carefully discuss their

Jurors’ Statements

ideas and how they can fully develop a story in which each image is more deliberate, or we talk about ways to edit the story so that each image is essential to its narrative. Should the focus of the student’s project be editorial, documentary, or journalistic? Or is there a need to experiment with fiction in order to tell the story?

As I walked to the panel’s meeting at the museum, I passed through a number of fascinatingly diverse displays: a small but powerful collection of David Wojnarowicz’s photographs, prints, drawings, and sculpture; prints and photographs by Andy Warhol; and a group exhibition of geometric abstractions influenced by Josef Albers.

That walk prepared me for the selection process, helping me refine my point of view. In the main galleries were all the submissions to Here Now: Rutgers 250. I kept searching for the authors behind these 2,000 plus photographs and finally suspended my need to discover art—my obsessive natural instinct—and instead discovered a powerful collective desire to share experiences and affections. The Zimmerli Art Museum had created a place where Rutgers’ extended communities were sharing their love for their school in moments both intimate and public, with as many points of view as there were pictures.

I realized that I wasn’t going to vote for the most artistic pictures, and I finally accepted that I didn’t even need to vote for those that exhibited the most visual literacy.

It was the panelists’ job to select the images that told a story about Rutgers University as completely as possible, to choose a mosaic of moments emblematic of the high points of each submitter’s year, alongside a few more intimate revelations.

Sometimes as many as ten images by one photographer were chosen; sometimes a single image recording, for example, a group outing to the Geology Museum on College Avenue Campus. There was a gag photo of scary food on a table with three coconspirators (showing hands only); there were also many purely political images from

Jake Comito’s “No More” campaign, which we on the panel were moved to foreground in the book. There would be holes in the story, but it would be a story of the many schools of this great State University of New Jersey. Rutgers is so vast that it is spread over three cities in three distinct parts of the state. The story that unfolded, as we projected the images one by one, was recognizable to me as a faculty member of one small school in New Brunswick, but I also realized that I would never truly be able to form a clear picture of Rutgers in its entirety.

Editorial content was suddenly of utmost importance.

I begged to know how our selection would be arranged in the final composition of the book. While that question seemed paramount for a time, I eventually reconciled that desire with the next critical layer of the process, the sequencing by other eyes of what we six had selected. Would they be grouped by theme or location or event, or simply published as one image per page? That would be the final discovery once I had the book itself in my hands.

Kelly Sidley Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York

This crowdsourced project democratically turned over its creation process to students, faculty, staff, and alumni who submitted photographs of any element of Rutgers that they chose to capture with their cameras over the course of a year. In one sense, this book is an anti-yearbook: an unsanctioned, freeform compendium of what individuals deemed interesting and important.

That it is not a methodical rendering of each nook and cranny of campus life is precisely why it fashions a lively, nuanced, often surprising visualization of the school.

These 250 images capture people, places, and things,

or—in art-historical terms—portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. When collaged together on these pages, the three genres depict the essential elements of the institution.

Campus landscapes convey a distinct sense of place.

A library filled with diffuse light provides a quiet spot for studying. In the placement of the RevolUtionary Monument next to a neoclassical building, a mash-up of old and new hints at the never-ending process of blending longstanding structures with fresh elements.

A quad used for rambling and sunbathing during the day becomes a platform for political and social expression at a nighttime rally. Places of refuge—the warm waters of a campus swimming pool, a contemplative gallery at the Zimmerli Art Museum—offer counterpoints to the Dance Marathon, tailgate parties, and music concerts. At the football stadium, a photographic focal point, games are played and eagerly watched, regardless of whether they are ultimately won or lost. The stadium transforms into an arena where President Barack Obama strides to the podium to impart his hard-earned wisdom to graduates at commencement, the most hallowed day of the academic calendar, when students and their families recognize knowledge gained and futures imagined.

Against the background of these landscapes, still lifes— the how and what of the community—find platforms in often-overlooked spots. Snapshots of late-night study sessions offer dizzying views of tables piled with takeout containers and cups amid notebooks and computers.

A miniature sculpture of the Scarlet Knight holds a garden hose to water the prized Rutgers 250 tomatoes. Swaths of colorful T-shirts hang on clotheslines, emblematic of campus efforts to combat domestic violence. These still lifes are quiet evidence of daily life and special occasions, hard work and well-earned play.

Specific places and things help define a school, but its people literally and metaphysically embody a university.

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It is not just in the laboratories and at the library that one accumulates knowledge. Singing, dancing, playing, and resting together knit thousands of individuals into a community. Many pictures of student organizations emphasize that only as a group is a sport played, a theory debated, or a shared concern addressed. To this point, very few of the photographs present individual portraits. Instead, it is the connectivity of students to other students, of faculty to students, and of alumni to the current Rutgers community that emerges in portrait after portrait.

Sarah Stolfa Founder and Director of the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center

Now more than ever, photography has become the greatest democratic art form; it is absolutely everywhere and almost everyone has the ability to take a picture.

An estimated 350 million photographs are posted to Facebook each day. The opportunities for engaging people in the creation of images for whatever purpose, art or documentation, are endless, and that is a good thing. Anyone now has the ability to take part, to share their vision and place in the world with the snap of the camera on the phone that is in their pocket.

At the launch of Rutgers’ 250th anniversary celebration, the Zimmerli Art Museum invited the Rutgers community to take pictures of what that milestone year looked and felt like in that moment. Being the eighth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States doesn’t hold Rutgers back from embracing the technology and culture of today to help illustrate the values and shared experiences that have been at the core of the community since 1766. More than 2,000 pictures were submitted and every one of them was displayed online and in an exhibition; all pictures were treated equally, each one unique.

Jurors’ Statements

As we look through the pictures, themes and styles begin to emerge: the color red and its use as a symbol of what Rutgers is to each person; the human ambition to advance knowledge and to invent; the instinct to nourish and protect the body; the belief that we are all creative—even the “bad” photographs are good ones in the way they engage in that process. Yet the theme that stands out the most is connectivity, through group photographs that show that each unique individual makes the community stronger. Rarely, if ever, do we see a picture of a lone person.

This record of a year in the life of Rutgers not only honors the university’s achievements but even more importantly, it provides the opportunity for future generations to see how much those values and shared experiences remain unchanged over time, and it contributes an archive for those in the community when Rutgers celebrates its 500th anniversary.

250 Photographs for Rutgers 250

Anthony Alvarez friend—AnthonyAlvarezPhoto.com Ribbon-Cutting for the Reopening of the 15 Washington Apartments and Kickoff of Rutgers 250 Newark Campus

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Volkan Karaoglu staff Way Back Home at Rutgers Day College Farm Road, Cook Campus

Cindy Krampah student Kissing Bridge Douglass Campus

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Matthew Howarth student—Marine Biology, Class of 2018 Mason Gross Students Discover a Tree Set in the Key of E flat Douglass Campus

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 #RutgersTalent Busch Campus

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Barry Qualls faculty—Department of English Spring Arrives on College Avenue, March 2016 Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

Sue Shapses faculty—Department of Nutritional Sciences Migratory Birds at Rutgers College Farm Road, Cook Campus

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Michael Martini student—Urban Forestry and Ecology, Class of 2017; staff The Whole World Is Our Classroom Rutgers Ecological Preserve, Livingston Campus

Nida Hussain student Study Breaks Douglass Campus

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Mike Marion staff U love R Old Queens, College Avenue Campus

Nicole Guzman student—Environmental Science, Class of 2016; alumni Sunny Afternoon by Passion Puddle, September 2015 Cook/Douglass Campus

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Peichin Patty Su alumni The Bamboo Forest at Rutgers Is an Amazing Playground Rutgers Gardens

Pak Chau student The Rutgers School of Nursing Student Senate Leaders at Their Annual Retreat Camp Vacamas, West Milford, NJ

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Jessika Acilio staff Rutgers Alternative Break Trip: Better Together Volunteers at Urban Greens, Winter 2016 Washington, DC

Catherine Taylor student Muslimahs at Rutgers University–Newark Samuel Plaza, Newark Campus

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Catherine Taylor student WAITING ON OBAMA!!!!!

University Avenue, Newark Campus

Keri Oleniach student—Statistics, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Class of 2018 Bendy B Bus Busch Campus

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Deepti Ravi student Going Bananas on Halloween!

New Brunswick, NJ

Chinwendu Ukoha student International Students Squad Newell Apartments, Cook/Douglass Campus

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Cindy Rodriguez friend Rutgers Mom Inspiring Another Generation College Avenue Campus

Pak Chau student Students Reunite with Alumni at Annual School of Nursing Picnic Rutgers Gardens

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Michael Canavan alumni—Livingston College, Class of 1990 RU Hanging out with Chewbacca? Um, Yes…Party On!—Rutgers vs. Ohio State High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Jennifer Kim-Lee staff; student School of Arts & Sciences Honors Program Kicked Off the Start of the Peer Mentor Program with a Big Welcome from Dean Jones to the Class of 2019 Peer Mentees Werblin Recreation Center, Busch Campus

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Bailey Kimmel student—Animal Science, Class of 2017 Rutgers Mounted Patrol Busch Campus

Ziong Liu student 2015 Commencement High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Matt Weismantel staff; alumni High Point Solutions Stadium, October 2015—Rutgers vs. Michigan State High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Deirdre Casey student—Environmental Science, Class of 2016; alumni Best Game of Senior Year High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Rendell Tababan student Build a Human Pyramid in the Middle of the Football Stadium: Check!

High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Carl Burns alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1964 And the Kick Is Good High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Jacob Paul student Rutgers Scarlet Knights vs. Wisconsin Badgers High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Carl Burns alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1964 We Are Family High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Zachary Manning staff Although we did not come away with a win that night, you could feel the electricity in the crowd (cheerleaders & Scarlet Knight).

High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Zachary Manning staff Although we did not come away with a win that night, you could feel the electricity in the crowd (football player on field).

High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Tom Struble alumni—Cook College, Class of 1981 Members of the Rutgers Glee Club and Marching Band Sing “On the Banks” after Playing the 44th Annual Soup Bowl, Named after Legendary Glee Club Director Dr. F. Austin “Soup” Walter RC ’32.

The Bubble, Busch Campus

Richard L. Edwards faculty—Chancellor, Rutgers University–New Brunswick Wrestling at the RAC Rutgers Athletic Center, Livingston Campus

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Deanna Fredericks staff Rutgers Lady Knights Take on the Ohio State Lady Buckeyes (Fans come out despite record snowfall of nearly 30") Rutgers Athletic Center, Livingston Campus

Deepti Ravi student #Hardenballers Playing Intramural Volleyball Cook/Douglass Recreation Center

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Ashley Allen student—Exercise Science Sports Management, Class of 2018 Rutgers Women’s Rugby Team at Beast of the East Tournament Rhode Island

Kate Mitchell student—History and American Studies, Class of 2018 Rutgers Fencing Ladies. We Won 3rd Place!

Bucks County, PA

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Kristin Tangel alumni—Cook College and SCILS, Class of 2009 A T-Rex Finishes the Unite 8k College Avenue Campus

Marie Siewierski alumni—Douglass College, Class of 1961; faculty A Douglass Alumna Proudly Wearing Her Numerous Awards for Exceptional, Sustained, and Dedicated Service to the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College Douglass Campus

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Jesse Stratowski staff Keeping Things Exciting in the Werblin Pool with Outdoor Recreation Werblin Recreation Center, Busch Campus

Leora Brenowitz student—K-6 General Education, Class of 2016 Learning How to Scuba Dive for Certification Werblin Pool, Busch Campus

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Amina N. Bright student—Computer Engineering, Class of 2019 Rutgers Alumni Day, Scarlet Harvest Fest Rutgers Gardens

Muzdalifa Ayub student—Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Class of 2017 RU RAH RAH—Selfie with the Scarlet Knight—Rutgers 2015 Convocation Busch Campus

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Carl Burns alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1964 Scarlet Knight High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

James Bergin friend Scarlet Knight Rides into Action for Rutgers 250 New Brunswick

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Susan DiMaio staff Rutgers Dining Services: Best Meals on Wheels, Cooked to Order on the Knight Wagon! Go Dining Services!

Rutgers Athletic Center Parking Lot, Livingston Campus

Carl Burns alumni, Rutgers College, Class of 1964 Rutgers R on a ’57 Chevy Havana, Cuba

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Rebecca Brenowitz staff Rutgers Alumni Visit on Rutgers Day Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Carl Burns alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1964 Now, THAT’s a Tailgate High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Darlene Smith alumni—Rutgers University–New Brunswick, University College, Class of 2001, Rutgers School of Law–Newark, Class of 2006; Staff Walt Whitman Statue…Championing Keeping Rutgers in Camden Camden Campus Center, Camden Campus

Nick Romanenko staff Rutgers Day Parade Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

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Chirag Shah faculty—School of Communication and Information, Department of Computer Science Shah Twins Sarah and Zoe Wearing “All Aboard to Rutgers” Train Outfits Somerset, NJ

Karishma Motwani student—Finance and Communication, Class of 2017 My First RU Football Game (and I’m a Junior!) with a New Friend High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Alexandra Cecchini alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1992 The Books Are That Way! Rutgers Bookstore, New Brunswick

Michael Canavan alumni—Livingston College, Class of 1990 Just Accepted: Rutgers Class of 2020!

New Brunswick

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Jonathan Chuang student Cook/Douglass during the Winter Cook/Douglass Campus

Shazia Mansuri student—Business Analytics and Information Technology, Class of 2018 Outside Looking In Starbucks, Livingston Campus

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James Stapleton staff; alumni The Construction Progresses on the New Academic Building on Seminary Place College Avenue Campus

Jerry Michaels staff Baby It’s Cold Outside College Avenue Campus

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Michael S. Tublin friend Snowy Day in New Brunswick Bayard Street, New Brunswick

Barry Qualls faculty—Department of English Winter at Rutgers, New Brunswick Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

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Michael S. Tublin friend Blizzard in New Brunswick Paterson Street, New Brunswick

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 There’s Snow Way We’re Too Old For This Rutgers Honors College, College Avenue Campus

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Rutgers Gardens staff Green Chairs in Otken Memorial Garden Rutgers Gardens

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 Model Status #GQ Rutgers University Golf Course, Busch Campus

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Richard L. Edwards faculty—Chancellor, Rutgers University–New Brunswick The Blizzard of January 2016 College Avenue Campus

Esther Leaming student—Class of 2019 1/23/16, 12:28 am Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

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Danielle Llaneza student Sunset—Even on Busch, Is Something to Look At Busch Campus

Stephon A. Jeter student The Beauty in Architecture Rutgers Business School, Livingston Campus

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Karishma Motwani student—Finance & Communication, Class of 2017 Rutgers University Programming Association’s Fall Kickoff Concert, Featuring New Politics (close up of lead singer David Boyd) Livingston Student Center, Livingston Campus

Stacy Smith staff Art After Hours Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Jennifer Kim-Lee staff; student School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program Peer Mentors Planned an Open Mic Night for Students to Relax and Enjoy the Display of Talents Graduate Student Lounge, College Avenue Campus

Michael S. Tublin friend Mason Gross Cats Jamming for the New Brunswick Jazz Project Garden State Ale House, New Brunswick

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Calvin Schwartz alumni—Rutgers College of Pharmacy, Class of 1969; friend Christmas Concert Kirkpatrick Chapel, College Avenue Campus

Nick Romanenko staff Marching Band at Rutgers 250 Launch Old Queens, College Avenue Campus

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Max Ohring student, Journalism and Media Studies, Class of 2018 The Rutgers University Glee Club on Their 2015 European Tour Greenwich, England

Rosanne Tona friend The Beautiful Clock at Rutgers University Bookstore Displaying a Reflection of Trees College Avenue Campus

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McKay Imaging friend Confrontation Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Melissa Tomich friend Donna Gustafson at an Opening Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Frankie Busch friend Nancy Dodge explains Norton Dodge’s vision for the Dodge Soviet Nonconformist Art Collection to Ksenia Nouril, a Dodge Fellow Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Donna Gustafson staff One of My Favorite Artists, Alumnus Melvin Edwards, at His Retrospective at the Zimmerli Art Museum on 1/7/2016 Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Jason Baerg student­—Fine Arts, Class of 2016; alumni Three Members of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Red Blanket Singers Perform in an Art Installation by Jason Baerg at MFA Opening, March 4, 2016 from left: Duncan Munson, Carl Green, and Hassan Ridgeway photo: © Ali Osborn Mason Gross School of the Arts

Dianne Finkelstein alumn—Graduate School–New Brunswick, Class of 1982 Donna Gustafson lectures. We listen.

Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Beth McKeown staff Everywhere! Art Popping Up in the Bathroom!

(End of semester projects throughout the building, no space untouched) Civic Square Building, Mason Gross School of the Arts

Sharon Cocuzza staff Enjoyed a Fantastic Performance of The Soldier’s Tale in Celebration of the Mason Gross School’s 40th Anniversary Mortensen Hall, Mason Gross School of the Arts

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Maximiliano Ferro student, Fine Arts, Class of 2016; alumni; faculty Print 1A at the Geology Museum College Avenue Campus

Eli Liebell-McLean student, English & Political Science, Class of 2018 I Put Up Posters to Make Myself Look/Feel/Act Cultured College Avenue Campus

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Rendell Tababan student Meeting the Founder of Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton Douglass Student Center, Douglass Campus

Myong-Ahn Sunim friend Soshimsa Buddhist Fellowship End-of-Semester Tea Ceremony

by Ven. Myong-Ahn Sunim Student Center, College Avenue Campus

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Brian Nealon student—Journalism & Media Studies/Political Science, Class of 2016; alumni The Artists behind the Rutgers 250th Reenactment Painting: Murtuza Hussain, Christina Gramieri, and Brian Nealon Mason Gross School of Arts, Piscataway

Jacob Foster student—Visual Arts, Class of 2017 Progress of a Painting from Painting II, Taught by Margery Amdur Camden Fine Arts Building, Camden Campus

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Jennifer Lorenz staff Ali Osborn, Mason Gross School of the Arts Graduate Student Looking at Brodsky Center Works of Art on View at Pulse Contemporary Art Fair New York, NY

Amanda Potter staff Master Papermaker Anne McKeown at Work Brodsky Center at Rutgers, Civic Square Building, New Brunswick

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Amanda Potter staff Art Students at Work in the Printmaking Studio at Mason Gross Civic Square Building, New Brunswick

Amanda Potter staff Zimmerli Art Museum Docents Learning about Lithography from Professor Barbara Madsen at Mason Gross Printmaking Studio Civic Square Building, New Brunswick

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Monica Torres student The “250 Years—On the Other Side of the Scarlet Tape” collage on canvas has been displayed in the Honors Program Building, Center for Latino Arts and Culture, and on the cover of Voice Magazine Rutgers University–New Brunswick

Ellen O’Neill alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1983 Demarest Hall Lounge: Demarites—especially those who had the privilege of living in the basement rooms, back in the day—always believe in leaving their mark, especially when they haven’t been back for 30 years.

College Avenue Campus

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Ayana Phoenix student—Psychology & Human Resource Management, Class of 2016; alumni Black Lives Matter Is Not Just a Hashtag was the name I gave to a mural I saw while on a service trip organized by Rutgers Alternative Breaks. It spoke to Black lives in America and the lives of all residents from the forgotten and abandoned communities.

Detroit, MI

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 I Dance For...

Dance Marathon, Rutgers Athletic Center, Livingston Campus

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Manqi Yang student Dance Marathon 2016 Rutgers Athletic Center, Livingston Campus

Rendell Tababan student From Dawn to Dusk—Dance Marathon 2015!

Rutgers Athletic Center, Livingston Campus

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Rendell Tababan student The Rutgers University Programming Association Team—Dance Marathon 2015 Rutgers Athletics Center, Livingston Campus

Julia Fasano student Rutgers Dance Marathon Morale Captains 2015 Rutgers Athletic Center, Livingston Campus

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Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 “My only goal is just to be.” RENT Cabaret Theatre, Douglass Campus

Jeff Friedman faculty—Dance Department Dancers Bria Bacon, Madison Wiggins, Nicolette Alberti, and Samantha Lore Excerpted from “Blood,” Lee Saar Company, 2015 photo: © Jaqui Medlock Loree Studio Theater, Douglass Campus

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Patti Verbanas staff The Rutgers High School Musical Theater Academy Teaches Talented Teenagers from the Tri-state Region to Excel in Musical Theater photo: © Kathy Keelan Mason Gross School of the Arts Extension Division

Mona Cholowinski friend Mason Gross Level 3 Actors Rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London

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Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities staff The Feminist Art Project Day of Panels at College Art Association Annual Conference: “Performing Identity as Intersectiona,�

Performance by Danielle Abrams School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities staff Public Lecture by Chitra Ganesh, 2015–16 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist in Residence Douglass Library

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Bev McCarron staff Town Criers Get the Rutgers 250 Kickoff Celebration Started on November 10, 2015 Old Queens Gate, College Avenue Campus

Brian Nealon student—Journalism & Media Studies/Political Science, Class of 2016; alumni Rutgers 250 Anniversary of Charter Signing Winants Hall, College Avenue Campus

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Peter Jacobs friend Impromptu Collaboration with Painting Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Carl Burns alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1964 GO Rutgers at the Quick Lane Bowl Detroit

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Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 “What do you do when you can’t dance anymore?”—a chorus line Cabaret Theatre, Douglass Campus

Stephon A. Jeter student Turn Ordinary into Extraordinary Quad Bus Stop, Livingston Campus

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Donna Gustafson staff Working for Change College Avenue Campus

Sarah Ferreira student—Art History, Class of 2018 November 10, 2015 #Reclaim250 #ReclaimRevolution Old Queens Lawn, College Avenue Campus

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Allan Hoffman staff Revolutionary at Old Queens Old Queens, College Avenue Campus

Charlene Glascock staff; friend; alumni Chemistry Undergraduate Students and Advisors Participating in the Annual “Jean Wilson Day Celebration of Undergraduate Achievement�

Wright-Rieman Quad, Busch Campus

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Susan DiMaio staff Rutgers Catering Chef Peter Imranyi Presents the Famous “R” Display Made with 2,500 Cupcakes by Dining Services Bakeshop Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

Eagleton Institute of Politics staff; alumni Damilola Onifade, an intern with the Eagleton Institute’s Youth Political Participation Program, helped Rutgers Students register to vote during the Student Involvement Fair College Avenue Campus

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Carmen Castro staff; alumni Amazing Display at Rutgers Day 2015 College Avenue Campus, New Brunswick

Nicole Chen student—Human Resource Management & Labor Studies, Class of 2017 Summer 2015 New Student Orientation: The Chen Clan BAMM Complex, Busch Campus

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Matteo Ronga alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1973 The Bus Stop Awaits Livingston Campus

Deepti Ravi student Purpose, Knowledge, and Curiosity College Avenue on Rutgers Day

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Beth Dollard friend Best Part about Being a Freshman at RU: The People You Meet! clockwise from top—Monique Klitbo, Mary Twaddle, Annie Zhang, and Delaney Dollard—a.k.a. “The Core 4” Honors College, College Avenue Campus

Emily Calvo student—Communication & Social Work, Class of 2018; staff RU Pride for Homecoming Weekend College Avenue Campus

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Melissa Moghadam student—Accounting, Class of 2017; staff Nothing Like Some Scarlet Pride!

High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 Cook/Douglass Campus Was the Place to Be on Rutgers Day! Cook/Douglass Campus

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Stacy Smith staff Rutgers Day 2015 Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

Jennifer V. Jones alumni Graduate School of Education Alumni Association Board President Dr. Jennifer V. Jones, Board Members-at-Large Dr. Cecilia Arias and Dr. Marilyn Gonyo, and GSE Dean Dr. Wanda Blanchett Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

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Deanna Fredericks staff The Annual Clothesline Project, Division of Student Affairs Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

Stacy Smith staff Art on Voorhees Mall, Rutgers Day Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

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Emily Calvo student—Communication & Social Work, Class of 2018; staff Orientation Leaders Having Fun While Welcoming New Students Kirkpatrick Chapel, College Avenue Campus

Rendell Tababan student Making the Largest Bubbles Ever at Convocation Carnivale!

Busch Campus

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Rendell Tababan student The Mud Run! Rutgers Ecological Preserve, Livingston Campus

Roohi Patel alumni Holi Color Celebration Field by Livingston Plaza, Livingston Campus

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Shannon Gilbert student—Health Administration & Classics, Class of 2018 Written in the Sand by 15 Students on the SAS Honors Program’s Spring Break Trip Puerto Morelos, Yucatan, Mexico

Program In American Language Studies (PALS) New Brunswick faculty—English Department PALS as One: Can you tell who is who? We all come from diverse and amazing backgrounds, but are connected as one Discovering America, Summer 2015 Point Pleasant, NJ

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Jennifer V. Jones alumni Malcolm Alexander Copeland Enjoys Petting a Piglet at the Homecoming Pregame for Families President’s House, Piscataway

Lauren Frazee student—Ecology & Evolution, Class of 2018 Just Starting to Plant Blackseed Plantain Seedlings for a Common Garden Experiment at the Vegetable Research Farm Horticulture Research Farm 3, East Brunswick

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Rebecca Brenowitz staff Our Pride & Joy with Glorious Foliage All Year Long Rutgers Gardens

Dolores Chupela alumni—Douglass College, Class of 1975, SCILS, Class of 1984 Chanticleer, the First Rutgers Mascot, and the Scarlet Knight, the Present-Day Mascot, “Tending” to Newly Planted Rutgers 250 Tomatoes Edison, NJ

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Sade Osuji student Heart Emoji lol Rutgers Gardens

Muzi Li student A Lovely Spring Day, Spent with Three Other Cute Girls Metzger Hall, Busch Campus

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Sam Urdang student Gallery-Ception Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Michael Gevertzman student “Will You Marry Me?�

Zimmerli Engagement Rutgers Marriage 250 Michael Gevertzman & Rella Firat Zimmerli Art Museum , College Avenue Campus

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Bailey Kimmel student—Animal Science, Class of 2017 Homecoming with Rutgers Mounted Patrol Busch Campus

Cheyanne Judd student—Social Work, Class of 2017 Rutgers University Equestrian Team at Horse Show photo: © Bethany Longfellow Kutztown, PA

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Frankie Busch friend Honors College Ribbon Cutting New Brunswick

Julio Nazario staff; alumni Dean Matsuda at George Segal’s Bus Stop Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Sarah Ferreira student—Art History, Class of 2018 #Reclaim250 Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Megan Kenny student—Linguistics, Class of 2018 The Plant Wall at the New Nutrition Building Cook Campus

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Christine Staton student Metzger Hall Staff 2015–16 Busch Campus

Javier Robles alumni Rutgers Day Plant Sale Cook College Campus

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Na-Yeon Park student—Political Science & Chinese, Class of 2017 Selfie with the 42nd President at the 2016 Clinton Global Initiative University Berkeley, CA

Claire D’Amato staff Hanging Out with the Cake Boss!

Geology Hall, College Avenue Campus

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Chinwendu Ukoha student Jim Decided to Take all His Teaching Assistants Out to Dinner at the End of the Semester Rutgers Club, College Avenue Campus

Eagleton Institute of Politics staff; alumni Participants at the Center for American Women and Politics “Ready to Run� Campaign Training Mark their Experience with a Selfie Douglass Student Center

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Joanna Kinney student Fat Sandwiches Are a Black-Tie Affair R.U. Grill & Pizza, Easton Avenue, New Brunswick

Rendell Tababan student Hot Dogs & Trikes—Rutgers’ Annual Hot Dog Day Morrell Street, College Avenue Campus

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Mahasti Hashemi staff; alumni Brazil—Honors Students, Study Abroad, January 2016 São Paulo, Brazil

Christeen Badie student—Social Work, Class of 2017 Study Abroad Group Outing Brasov, Romania

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Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 All successful trips must come to an end, and my trip with Engineers Without Borders was no exception.

Kolunje, Kenya

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 The language barrier is one of the most difficult parts about traveling to a foreign country, but it sure was fun learning from these kids.

Kolunje, Kenya

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Heather DiTullio staff; alumni Rutgers in Bahrain!

Manama, Bahrain

Jasmine Lin student­—Cell Biology & Neuroscience, Class of 2016; alumni Rutgers Girls Visiting Athens during Study Abroad, Spring 2015 Athens, Greece

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Samantha Kralle student—Social Work, Class of 2017 On Top of the World in Israel with Rutgers University Hillel Members Israel

Vanessa Coleman student—Liberal Studies, Class of 2016; staff; alumni Rutgers 250 in Guatemala during Spring Break 2016 Guatemala

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Na-Yeon Park student—Political Science & Chinese, Class of 2017 Rutgers and Douglass Residential College at the Great Wall of China Great Wall of China

Outdoors Club student The Fleeting Moments of the End of the Day Bring Rutgers University Outdoors Club Together New River Gorge, WV

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Michael Martini student—Urban Forestry & Ecology, Class of 2017; staff The Best Way to Get to Know a Person Is on a Hike Hudson Valley, NY

Carole Allamand faculty­­—French Department Three-week Winter Program Organized by the Center for Global Education and the French Department photo: © Amy Tang Mont Sainte-Victoire, Aix-en-Provence, France

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Michael Martini student—Urban Forestry & Ecology, Class of 2017; staff Aspire to Make It to the Top No Matter What Your Goals Are Allamuchy Mountain State Park, NJ

Asad Abbas student Holding a Plank at Rutgers Day to Get a Free Gift!

Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

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Lauryn Adams student—MD Candidate, Class of 2018 Robert Wood Johnson Medical School 2015 Orientation Team and Peer Mentors New Brunswick

Ryan Watters Staff Rutgers Homecoming 2015 Off campus, New Brunswick

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Anthony Smizaski alumni—School of Arts & Sciences and SC&I, Class of 2015 Sigma Alpha Mu & Their Alumni at the Annual Homecoming Tailgate High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Michael Canavan alumni­—Livingston College, Class of 1990 More Happy Tailgaters!

Piscataway

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Mike Marion staff Who Knew?

Highland Park, NJ

Angie Bonilla staff #WeRTheOnes Newark Campus

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Edd Schwab staff West Point Cadets Tour the Zimmerli’s Russian Art Collection Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

Carl Burns alumni—Rutgers College, Class of 1964 Rutgers Army ROTC with Old Friend at Military Appreciation Day High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Sy Adamowsky Student—Computer Science, Class of 2016 Scarlet Pride Runs Deep with Deep Treble, Rutgers’ Premier Coed A Cappella Group Rutgers Student Center, New Brunswick

Elise Petronzio student Camp U Knight 2015 Leaders, the Facilitators of a Pre-orientation Program Run by the Department of Leadership and Experiential Learning to Help New Students Develop into Leaders Stony Acres, Marshalls Creek, PA

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Benjamin Clapp staff US Senator Cory Booker Discusses his New Book, United, with Friend, Makeup Artist, and Businesswoman Bobbi Brown (presented by the Eagleton Institute of Politics and Barnes & Noble at Rutgers University) Trayes Hall, Douglass Campus

Karima Woodyard staff #stemHERstoryRU, Sponsored by Busch Campus Partners, Celebrates the Women Who Dedicate Their Careers to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics while Raising Awareness in the Rutgers Community Busch Campus

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Joey Lupo student Campus MovieFest Jury Award Winners Livingston Student Center, Livingston Campus

Rendell Tababan student This Is What Best Friends Look Like!

College Avenue Campus

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Debra O’Neal alumni OMG! Look who I met at the 2016 Hall of Distinguished Alumni Awards...

Devin and Jason McCourty!

George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick

Tristen Wallace student—Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2019 Honors College Winter Formal 2016 Honors College, College Avenue Campus

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Kate Mitchell student—History and American Studies, Class of 2018 Fall 2015 Barbara Voorhees Mentors Voorhees Chapel, Douglass Campus

Ksenia Nouril student—Art History, Class of 2017; staff Dodge Fellows and Graduate Students in the Art History Department Celebrate the Opening of Vagrich Bakhchanyan: Accidental Absurdity.

Anna Rogulina, Ksenia Nouril, Olena Martynyuk, and Corina Apostol Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Nicole Ramos student—Nutritional Sciences, Class of 2017 “God Make Me Worthy of My Friends” photo: © Nicole Tallman School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Cook Campus

Muzdalifa Ayub student—Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Class of 2017 We Are the Douglass Difference, Douglass Orientation Committee, Fall Orientation 2015 Trayes Hall in Douglass Student Center

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Anusha Reddy student #RUSaysNoMore Quad Circle, Livingston Campus

Miquel-Catlyn Gabbidon student—Political Science, Class of 2016; alumni

Anusha Reddy student

Miquel-Catlyn Gabbidon student—Political Science, Class of 2016; alumni

#RUSaysNoMore Rutgers University

#RUSaysNoMore Quad Circle, Livingston Campus

#RUSaysNoMore Rutgers University

Jake Comito student—Marketing, Class of 2017

Miquel-Catlyn Gabbidon student—Political Science, Class of 2016; alumni

Anusha Reddy student

#RUSaysNoMore Rutgers University

#RUSaysNoMore Rutgers University

#RUSaysNoMore Quad Circle, Livingston Campus

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Danielle Weber-Soares staff A Quiet Moment in an Old-World Space Gardner A. Sage Library, New Brunswick Theological Seminary

Ashani Rana student When the Stress of Finals Is Starting to Get to You...

Alexander Library, College Avenue Campus

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Gabrielle Tenn student—History, Class of 2018 My Roommate Alison Riguerra Studying Hard during Finals Dana Library, Newark Campus

Megan Kenny student—Linguistics, Class of 2018 Study Buddies Douglass Campus

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Susanne Ruemmele staff School of Environmental and Biological Sciences “Fundamentals of Evolution” Course, Poster Presentation Foran Hall, Cook Campus

Stacy Smith staff Study After Hours Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Eli Liebell-McLean student—English and Political Science, Class of 2018 Assembling a Dresser Using a Letter Opener College Avenue Campus

Yvans Tsague student Tryna Flex on These Finals One More Time Alexander Library, College Avenue Campus

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John Emerson friend A Student Works with a Patient in a Rutgers School of Dental Medicine Clinic Newark

Thomas Montville faculty—Department of Food Science Graduate Students Jennifer Merle and Danielle Voss Posing with Undergraduate Researcher Hanna Clune in the Montville Laboratory Department of Food Science, Cook Campus

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Susanne Ruemmele staff School of Environmental and Biological Sciences Plant Diversity and Evolution Lab Foran Hall Teaching Lab, Cook Campus

Jennifer Forbes staff Students from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Learn about Health Care Challenges in South Africa During the School’s Annual Global Health Fair Arline and Henry Schwartzman Courtyard at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick

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Kwesi Dawson-Amoah student Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s First-Year Student Doctors Teaching Local Students at Upward Bound Program Busch Campus

Christine Zardecki faculty Belle Lin and Christopher Markosian Review Archival Illustrations by the Artist Irving Geis in His Namesake Gallery Center for Integrative Proteomics Research, Busch Campus

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Kelsey Hotz student—Pharmacy, Class of 2019 A Bird’s Eye View of the Finals Struggle photo: © Deepti Ravi Alexander Library, College Avenue Campus

Sarah Ferreira student—Art History, Class of 2018 #Reclaim250 Cook/Douglass Campus

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Sade Osuji student It was a rough day...But worth it! We met Yuna!

Livingston Student Center, Livingston Campus

Nick Romanenko staff Professor of English Barry Qualls’s Last Class before Retirement Murray Hall, College Avenue Campus

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Kara Donaldson staff Time for a Quiz in “The Coming Apocalypse” Livingston Campus

Keri Oleniach student—Statistics, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Class of 2018 The Excitement of a Calc Lecture Science and Engineering Resource Center, Busch Campus

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Crisanto Joseph Jorda alumni A Selfie at 2015 Douglass Convocation Antilles Field, Douglass Campus

Shan Meisner student At the HereNow Exhibition, Recreating the Three-way Selfie We Took Last Year (recast for the role of Crisanto) Zimmerli Art Museum, College Avenue Campus

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Sara K. Obnial student—Biological Sciences, Class of 2016; alumni Revolutionary for 250 Years photo: © Julia DiPietro Outside High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Sara K. Obnial student—Biological Sciences, Class of 2016; alumni Class of 2016 photo: © Julia DiPietro Outside High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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James Stapleton staff; alumni Rutgers Day 2016 Voorhees Mall, College Avenue Campus

Tom Struble alumni—Cook College, Class of 1981 Rutgers Glee Club Alums Dan Kluchinski (CC ‘85), Tom Struble (CC ‘81), and Matt Weismantel (CC ‘85) at the 144th Annual Rutgers Glee Club Spring Concert. Saturday, April 23, 2016 Nicholas Music Center, Douglass Campus

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Bev McCarron staff Graduates at the Rutgers School of Health Professions Celebrating at Convocation 2016 photo: © Alexis Fulks New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark

Aramis Gutierrez staff Rutgers Future Scholars Invited to Washington by First Lady Michelle Obama Washington, DC

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Hébert Peck, Jr. staff Rutgers University–Newark 2016 Commencement Ceremony Prudential Center, Newark

Hébert Peck, Jr. staff School of Business–Camden 2016 Commencement Ceremony Raymond Ackerman, Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree BB&T Pavilion, Camden

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Steve Hockstein friend Dental Industry Leaders and Rutgers Administrators at Rutgers School of Dental Medicine’s 2016 Convocation: first row, left–right: Dr. Cecile A. Feldman—Dean, Dr. Brian Strom—Chancellor, Rutgers Biomedical and Health and Sciences third row, far left—Dr. Anthony R. Volpe—alumnus Newark

Jennifer Forbes staff Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Graduates Being Hooded during the School’s Convocation The State Theatre, New Brunswick

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Jamie Cann staff; alumni; student Rutgers Graduate School of Education Alumnae and Faculty Preparing to Walk into Convocation, May 16, 2016 College Avenue Gym

Jennifer Simon staff School of Environmental and Biological Sciences Convocation—The Procession Passion Puddle, Cook Campus

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Carla Yanni faculty—Art History Art History Professors Biked to Commencement High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Jose A. Ebanks student New Brunswick Theological Seminary 2016 Graduation Ceremony College Avenue Campus

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Shazia Mansuri student—Business Analytics and Information Technology, Class of 2018 Oh, the Places You’ll Go College Avenue Campus

Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Carla Yanni faculty—Art History Seth Koven, Professor of History High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Calvin Schwartz alumni—Rutgers College of Pharmacy, Class of 1969; friend Commencement 2016 8:33am High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Jeremee Johnson alumni—Rutgers College, 1997, School of Communication and Information, 2013; staff Capturing a Selfie of Rutgers’ Historic 250th Anniversary Commencement, Featuring President Barack Obama photo: © Nick Romanenko High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Deborah Shuford alumni—Douglass College and School of Communication Professor Deborah D. Shuford at Commencement with Her Former Student, Eric LeGrand High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

John Mikolajczyk staff; alumni The Entire Graduating Class of 2016 Rises to Their Feet to Cheer the President’s Arrival High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Hébert Peck, Jr. staff Marine Corps MV-22 Ospreys over High Point Solutions Stadium Herald the President’s Arrival High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Leo Weismantel student—Music Education, Class of 2019 Perks of Being in the Glee Club High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Richard L. Edwards faculty—Chancellor, Rutgers University–New Brunswick Chancellor Edwards and President Obama Shake Hands Following the President’s Address at the 2016 Commencement photo﹕ Roy Groething for Rutgers University High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

Nick Romanenko staff Commencement 2016 High Point Solutions Stadium, Piscataway

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2016 Convocation Speech by President Barack Obama Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Piscataway, New Jersey May 15, 2016 1:04 p.m. edt The President:

Hello Rutgers!

(Applause)

R-U rah-rah!

(Applause)

Thank you so much. Thank you. Everybody, please have a seat. Thank you President Barchi, for that introduction. Let me congratulate my extraordinarily worthy fellow honorary Scarlet Knights, Dr. Burnell and Bill Moyers. Matthew, good job.

(Applause)

If you are interested, we can talk after this.

(Applause)

One of the perks of my job is honorary degrees.

(Laughter)

But I have to tell you, it impresses nobody in my house.

(Laughter)

Now Malia and Sasha just say, “Okay, Dr. Dad, we’ll see you later. Can we have some money?”

(Laughter)

To the Board of Governors; to Chairman Brown; to Lieutenant Governor Guadagno;

Mayor Cahill; Mayor Wahler, members of Congress, Rutgers administrators, faculty, staff, friends, and family—thank you for the honor of joining you for the 250th anniversary of this remarkable institution.

(Applause)

But most of all, congratulations to the Class of 2016!

(Applause)

I come here for a simple reason—to finally settle this pork roll vs. Taylor ham question.

(Laughter and applause)

I’m just kidding.

(Laughter)

There’s not much I’m afraid to take on in my final year of office, but I know better than to get in the middle of that debate.

(Laughter)

The truth is, Rutgers, I came here because you asked.

(Applause)

Now, it’s true that a lot of schools invite me to their commencement every year.

But you are the first to launch a threeyear campaign.

Emails, letters, tweets, YouTube videos.

I even got three notes from the grandmother of your student body president.

(Laughter)

And I have to say that really sealed the deal. That was smart, because I have a soft spot for grandmas.

(Laughter)

So I’m here, off Exit 9, on the banks of the Old Raritan at the site of one of the original nine colonial colleges.

(Applause)

Winners of the first-ever college football game.

(Applause)

One of the newest members of the Big Ten. (Applause)

Home of what I understand to be a Grease Truck for a Fat Sandwich.

(Applause)

Mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers on your cheesesteaks...

(Applause)

...I’m sure Michelle would approve.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

Photo: Nick Romanenko, 2016

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But somehow, you have survived such death-defying acts.

(Laughter)

You also survived the daily jockeying for buses, from Livingston to Busch, to Cook, to Douglass, and back again.

(Applause)

I suspect that a few of you are trying to survive this afternoon, after a late night at Olde Queens.

(Applause)

You know who you are.

(Laughter)

But, however you got here, you made it.

You made it. Today, you join a long line of Scarlet Knights whose energy and intellect have lifted this university to heights its founders could not have imagined.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, when America was still just an idea, a charter from the Royal Governor, Ben Franklin’s son, established Queen’s College. A few years later, a handful of students gathered in a converted tavern for the first class. And from that first class in a pub, Rutgers has evolved into one of the finest research institutions in America.

(Applause)

This is a place where you 3D-print prosthetic hands for children, and devise rooftop wind arrays that can power entire office buildings with clean, renewable energy. Every day, tens of thousands of students come here, to this intellectual melting pot, where ideas and cultures flow together among what might just be America’s most diverse student body.

But America’s progress has never been smooth or steady. Progress doesn’t travel in a straight line. It zigs and zags in fits and starts. Progress in America has been hard and contentious, and sometimes bloody.

It remains uneven and at times, for every two steps forward, it feels like we take one step back.

Now, for some of you, this may sound like your college career.

(Laughter)

It sounds like mine, anyway.

(Laughter)

Which makes sense, because measured against the whole of human history, America remains a very young nation— younger, even, than this university.

But progress is bumpy. It always has been.

But because of dreamers and innovators and strivers and activists, progress has been this nation’s hallmark. I’m fond of quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

(Applause)

It bends towards justice. I believe that.

But I also believe that the arc of our nation, the arc of the world does not bend towards justice, or freedom, or equality, or prosperity on its own. It depends on us, on the choices we make, particularly at certain inflection points in history; particularly when big changes are happening and everything seems up for grabs.

(Applause)

Here in New Brunswick, you can debate philosophy with a classmate from South Asia in one class, and then strike up a conversation on the EE Bus with a firstgeneration Latina student from Jersey City, before sitting down for your psych group project with a veteran who’s going to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

(Applause)

America converges here. And in so many ways, the history of Rutgers mirrors the evolution of America—the course by which we became bigger, stronger, and richer and more dynamic, and a more inclusive nation.

And, Class of 2016, you are graduating at such an inflection point. Since the start of this new millennium, you’ve already witnessed horrific terrorist attacks, and war, and a Great Recession. You’ve seen economic and technological and cultural shifts that are profoundly altering how we work and how we communicate, how we live, how we form families. The pace of change is not subsiding; it is accelerating.

And these changes offer not only great opportunity, but also great peril.

Fortunately, your generation has everything it takes to lead this country toward

2016 Convocation Speech by President Barack Obama, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

a brighter future. I’m confident that you can make the right choices—away from fear and division and paralysis, and toward cooperation and innovation and hope.

(Applause)

Now, partly, I’m confident because, on average, you’re smarter and better educated than my generation—although we probably had better penmanship...

(Laughter)

...and were certainly better spellers. We did not have spell-check back in my day.

You’re not only better educated, you’ve been more exposed to the world, more exposed to other cultures. You’re more diverse. You’re more environmentally conscious. You have a healthy skepticism for conventional wisdom.

So you’ve got the tools to lead us. And precisely because I have so much confidence in you, I’m not going to spend the remainder of my time telling you exactly how you’re going to make the world better. You’ll figure it out. You’ll look at things with fresher eyes, unencumbered by the biases and blind spots and inertia and general crankiness of your parents and grandparents and old heads like me. But I do have a couple of suggestions that you may find useful as you go out there and conquer the world.

Point number one: When you hear someone longing for the “good old days,” take it with a grain of salt.

(Laughter and applause)

Take it with a grain of salt. We live in a great nation and we are rightly proud of our history. We are beneficiaries of the labor and the grit and the courage of generations who came before. But I guess it’s part of human nature, especially in times of change and uncertainty, to want to look backwards and long for some imaginary past when everything worked, and the economy hummed, and all politicians were wise, and every kid was well-mannered, and America pretty much did whatever it wanted around the world.

Guess what. It ain’t so.

(Laughter)

The “good old days” weren’t that great.

Yes, there have been some stretches in our history where the economy grew much faster, or when government ran more smoothly. There were moments when, immediately after World War II, for example, or the end of the Cold War, when the world bent more easily to our will. But those are sporadic, those moments, those episodes. In fact, by almost every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago.

(Applause)

Set aside life in the ’50s, when women and people of color were systematically excluded from big chunks of American life.

Since I graduated, in 1983—which isn’t that long ago...

(Laughter)

...I’m just saying. Since I graduated, crime rates, teenage pregnancy, the share of Americans living in poverty—they’re all down. The share of Americans with college educations have gone way up.

Our life expectancy has, as well. Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks in business and politics.

(Applause)

More women are in the workforce.

(Applause)

They’re earning more money—although it’s long past time that we passed laws to make sure that women are getting the same pay for the same work as men.

(Applause)

Meanwhile, in the eight years since most of you started high school, we’re also better off. You and your fellow graduates are entering the job market with better prospects than any time since 2007.

Twenty million more Americans know the financial security of health insurance.

We’re less dependent on foreign oil. We’ve doubled the production of clean energy.

We have cut the high school dropout rate. We’ve cut the deficit by two-thirds.

Marriage equality is the law of the land.

(Applause)

And just as America is better, the world is better than when I graduated. Since I graduated, an Iron Curtain fell, apartheid ended. There’s more democracy. We

virtually eliminated certain diseases like polio. We’ve cut extreme poverty drastically. We’ve cut infant mortality by an enormous amount.

(Applause)

Now, I say all these things not to make you complacent. We’ve got a bunch of big problems to solve. But I say it to point out that change has been a constant in our history. And the reason America is better is because we didn’t look backwards, we didn’t fear the future. We seized the future and made it our own. And that’s exactly why it’s always been young people like you that have brought about big change—because you don’t fear the future.

That leads me to my second point: The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it’s becoming more connected every day. Building walls won’t change that.

(Applause)

Look, as President, my first responsibility is always the security and prosperity of the United States. And as citizens, we all rightly put our country first. But if the past two decades have taught us anything, it’s that the biggest challenges we face cannot be solved in isolation.

(Applause)

When overseas states start falling apart, they become breeding grounds for terrorists and ideologies of nihilism and despair that ultimately can reach our shores.

When developing countries don’t have functioning health systems, epidemics like Zika or Ebola can spread and threaten Americans, too. And a wall won’t stop that.

(Applause)

If we want to close loopholes that allow large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, we’ve got to have the cooperation of other countries in a global financial system to help enforce financial laws. The point is, to help ourselves we’ve got to help others...

(Applause)

...not pull up the drawbridge and try to keep the world out.

(Applause)

And engagement does not just mean deploying our military. There are times

where we must take military action to protect ourselves and our allies, and we are in awe of and we are grateful for the men and women who make up the finest fighting force the world has ever known.

(Applause)

But I worry if we think that the entire burden of our engagement with the world is up to the 1 percent who serve in our military, and the rest of us can just sit back and do nothing. They can’t shoulder the entire burden. And engagement means using all the levers of our national power, and rallying the world to take on our shared challenges.

You look at something like trade, for example. We live in an age of global supply chains, and cargo ships that crisscross oceans, and online commerce that can render borders obsolete. And a lot of folks have legitimate concerns with the way globalization has progressed—that’s one of the changes that’s been taking place— jobs shipped overseas, trade deals that sometimes put workers and businesses at a disadvantage. But the answer isn’t to stop trading with other countries. In this global economy, that’s not even possible.

The answer is to do trade the right way, by negotiating with other countries so that they raise their labor standards and their environmental standards; and we make sure they don’t impose unfair tariffs on American goods or steal American intellectual property. That’s how we make sure that international rules are consistent with our values—including human rights.

And ultimately, that’s how we help raise wages here in America. That’s how we help our workers compete on a level playing field.

Building walls won’t do that.

(Applause)

It won’t boost our economy, and it won’t enhance our security either. Isolating or disparaging Muslims, suggesting that they should be treated differently when it comes to entering this country...

(Applause)

...that is not just a betrayal of our values...

(Applause)

...that’s not just a betrayal of who we are, it would alienate the very communities

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at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism. Suggesting that we can build an endless wall along our borders, and blame our challenges on immigrants—that doesn’t just run counter to our history as the world’s melting pot; it contradicts the evidence that our growth and our innovation and our dynamism has always been spurred by our ability to attract strivers from every corner of the globe. That’s how we became America.

Why would we want to stop it now?

(Applause) (Four More Years!)

Can’t do it.

Look, our nation’s Founders—Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson—they were born of the Enlightenment. They sought to escape superstition, and sectarianism, and tribalism, and know-nothingness.

(Applause)

They believed in rational thought and experimentation, and the capacity of informed citizens to master our own fates. That is embedded in our constitutional design.

That spirit informed our inventors and our explorers, the Edisons and the Wright Brothers, and the George Washington Carvers and the Grace Hoppers, and the Norman Borlaugs and the Steve Jobses.

That’s what built this country.

(Laughter)

Which brings me to my third point: Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science—these are good things.

(Applause)

These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens.

(Applause)

That might seem obvious.

(Laughter)

That’s why we honor Bill Moyers or Dr. Burnell.

We traditionally have valued those things.

But if you were listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from.

(Applause)

So, Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be. In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue.

(Applause)

It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about.

(Applause)

That’s not keeping it real, or telling it like it is.

(Laughter)

That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.

(Applause)

And yet, we’ve become confused about this.

And today, in every phone in one of your pockets...

(Laughter)

...we have access to more information than at any time in human history, at a touch of a button. But, ironically, the flood of information hasn’t made us more discerning of the truth. In some ways, it’s just made us more confident in our ignorance.

(Applause)

We assume whatever is on the web must be true. We search for sites that just reinforce our own predispositions. Opinions masquerade as facts. The wildest conspiracy theories are taken for gospel.

for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, while actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we’ve got a problem.

(Applause)

You know, it’s interesting that if we get sick, we actually want to make sure the doctors have gone to medical school, they know what they’re talking about.

(Applause)

If we get on a plane, we say we really want a pilot to be able to pilot the plane.

(Laughter)

And yet, in our public lives, we certainly think, “I don’t want somebody who’s done it before.”

(Laughter and applause)

The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science—that is the path to decline. It calls to mind the words of Carl Sagan, who graduated high school here in New Jersey...

(Applause)

...he said: “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”

The debate around climate change is a perfect example of this. Now, I recognize it doesn’t feel like the planet is warmer right now.

(Laughter)

Now, understand, I am sure you’ve learned during your years of college­—and if not, you will learn soon—that there are a whole lot of folks who are book smart and have no common sense.

(Applause)

That’s the truth. You’ll meet them if you haven’t already.

(Laughter)

So the fact that they’ve got a fancy degree— you've got to talk to them to see whether they know what they’re talking about.

(Laughter)

Qualities like kindness and compassion, honesty, hard work—they often matter more than technical skills or know-how.

(Applause)

But when our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they’re not held accountable

2016 Convocation Speech by President Barack Obama, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

I understand. There was hail when I landed in Newark.

(Laughter) (The wind starts blowing hard.)

(Laughter)

But think about the climate change issue.

Every day, there are officials in high office with responsibilities who mock the overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists that human activities and the release of carbon dioxide and methane and other substances are altering our climate in profound and dangerous ways.

A while back, you may have seen a United States senator trot out a snowball during a floor speech in the middle of winter as “proof” that the world was not warming.

(Laughter)

I mean, listen, climate change is not something subject to political spin. There is evidence. There are facts. We can see it happening right now.

(Applause)

If we don’t act, if we don’t follow through on the progress we made in Paris, the progress we’ve been making here at home, your generation will feel the brunt of this catastrophe.

So it’s up to you to insist upon and shape an informed debate. Imagine if Benjamin Franklin had seen that senator with the snowball, what he would think. Imagine if your 5th grade science teacher had seen that.

(Laughter)

He’d get a D. (Laughter)

And he’s a senator!

(Laughter)

Look, I’m not suggesting that cold analysis and hard data are ultimately more important in life than passion, or faith, or love, or loyalty. I am suggesting that those highest expressions of our humanity can only flourish when our economy functions well, and proposed budgets add up, and our environment is protected. And to accomplish those things, to make collective decisions on behalf of a common good, we have to use our heads. We have to agree that facts and evidence matter. And we've got to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable to know what the heck they’re talking about.

(Applause)

All right. I only have two more points.

I know it’s getting cold and you guys have to graduate.

(Laughter)

Point four: Have faith in democracy. Look, I know it’s not always pretty. Really, I know.

(Laughter)

I’ve been living it. But it’s how, bit by bit, generation by generation, we have made progress in this nation. That’s how we banned child labor. That’s how we cleaned up our air and our water. That’s how we passed programs like Social Security and Medicare that lifted millions of seniors out of poverty.

(Applause)

None of these changes happened overnight. They didn’t happen because some charismatic leader got everybody suddenly to agree on everything. It didn’t happen because some massive political revolution occurred. It actually happened over the course of years of advocacy, and organizing, and alliance building, and deal-making, and the changing of public opinion. It happened because ordinary Americans who cared participated in the political process.

(Because of you!)

(Applause)

Well, that’s nice. I mean, I helped, but...

(Applause)

...Look, if you want to change this country for the better, you'd better start participating. I’ll give you an example on a lot of people’s minds right now—and that’s the growing inequality in our economy. Over much of the last century, we’ve unleashed the strongest economic engine the world has ever seen, but over the past few decades, our economy has become more and more unequal. The top 10 percent of earners now take in half of all income in the US. In the past, it used to be a top CEO made 20 or 30 times the income of the average worker. Today, it’s 300 times more. And wages aren’t rising fast enough for millions of hardworking families.

Now, if we want to reverse those trends, there are a bunch of policies that would make a real difference. We can raise the minimum wage.

(Applause)

We can modernize our infrastructure. We can invest in early childhood education.

We can make college more affordable.

(Applause)

We can close tax loopholes on hedge fund managers and take that money and give tax breaks to help families with child care or retirement. And if we did these things, then we’d help to restore the sense that hard work is rewarded and we could build an economy that truly works for everybody.

(Applause)

Now, the reason some of these things have not happened, even though the

majority of people approve of them, is really simple. It’s not because I wasn’t proposing them. It wasn’t because the facts and the evidence showed they wouldn’t work. It was because a huge chunk of Americans, especially young people, do not vote.

In 2014, voter turnout was the lowest since World War II. Fewer than one in five young people showed up to vote— 2014. And the four who stayed home determined the course of this country just as much as the single one who voted. Because apathy has consequences.

It determines who our Congress is. It determines what policies they prioritize.

It even, for example, determines whether a really highly qualified Supreme Court nominee receives the courtesy of a hearing and a vote in the United States Senate.

(Applause)

And, yes, big money in politics is a huge problem. We’ve got to reduce its influence. Yes, special interests and lobbyists have disproportionate access to the corridors of power. But, contrary to what we hear sometimes from both the left as well as the right, the system isn’t as rigged as you think, and it certainly is not as hopeless as you think. Politicians care about being elected, and they especially care about being reelected. And if you vote and you elect a majority that represents your views, you will get what you want.

And if you opt out, or stop paying attention, you won’t. It’s that simple.

(Applause)

It’s not that complicated.

Now, one of the reasons that people don’t vote is because they don’t see the changes they were looking for right away. Well, guess what—none of the great strides in our history happened right away. It took Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP decades to win Brown v. Board of Education; and then another decade after that to secure the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. (Applause)

And it took more time after that for it to start working. It took a proud daughter

279

of New Jersey, Alice Paul, years of organizing marches and hunger strikes and protests, and drafting hundreds of pieces of legislation, and writing letters and giving speeches, and working with congressional leaders before she and other suffragists finally helped win women the right to vote.

(Applause)

Each stage along the way required compromise. Sometimes you took half a loaf.

You forged allies. Sometimes you lost on an issue, and then you came back to fight another day. That’s how democracy works. So you’ve got to be committed to participating not just if you get immediate gratification, but you’ve got to be a citizen full-time, all the time.

And if participation means voting, and it means compromise, and organizing and advocacy, it also means listening to those who don’t agree with you. I know a couple years ago, folks on this campus got upset that Condoleezza Rice was supposed to speak at a commencement. Now, I don’t think it’s a secret that I disagree with many of the foreign policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration. But the notion that this community or the country would be better served by not hearing from a former Secretary of State, or shutting out what she had to say—I believe that’s misguided.

(Applause)

I don’t think that’s how democracy works best, when we’re not even willing to listen to each other.

(Applause)

I believe that’s misguided.

If you disagree with somebody, bring them in...

(Applause)

...and ask them tough questions. Hold their feet to the fire. Make them defend their positions.

(Applause)

If somebody has got a bad or offensive idea, prove it wrong. Engage it. Debate it.

Stand up for what you believe in.

off because you’re too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities. Go at them if they’re not making any sense.

Use your logic and reason and words.

And by doing so, you’ll strengthen your own position, and you’ll hone your arguments. And maybe you’ll learn something and realize you don’t know everything. And you may have a new understanding not only about what your opponents believe but maybe what you believe. Either way, you win. And more importantly, our democracy wins.

(Applause)

So, anyway, all right. That’s it, Class of 2016...

(Laughter)

...a few suggestions on how you can change the world. Except maybe I’ve got one last suggestion.

(Applause)

Just one. And that is, gear yourself for the long haul. Whatever path you choose— business, nonprofits, government, education, health care, the arts­—whatever it is, you’re going to have some setbacks. You will deal occasionally with foolish people.

You will be frustrated. You’ll have a boss that’s not great. You won’t always get everything you want—at least not as fast as you want it. So you have to stick with it. You have to be persistent. And success, however small, however incomplete, success is still success. I always tell my daughters, you know, better is good. It may not be perfect, it may not be great, but it’s good. That’s how progress happens—in societies and in our own lives.

(Applause)

Look at somebody like Madison Little, who grew up dealing with some health issues, and started wondering what his care would have been like if he lived someplace else, and so, here at Rutgers, he took charge of a student nonprofit and worked with folks in Australia and Cambodia and Uganda to address the AIDS epidemic. “Our generation has so much energy to adapt and impact the world,” he said. “My peers give me a lot of hope that we’ll overcome the obstacles we face in society.”

That’s you! Is it any wonder that I am optimistic? Throughout our history, a new generation of Americans has reached up and bent the arc of history in the direction of more freedom, and more opportunity, and more justice. And, Class of 2016, it is your turn now...

(Applause)

...to shape our nation’s destiny, as well as your own.

So get to work. Make sure the next 250 years are better than the last.

(Applause)

So don’t lose hope if sometimes you hit a roadblock. Don’t lose hope in the face of naysayers. And certainly don’t let resistance make you cynical. Cynicism is so easy, and cynics don’t accomplish much. As a friend of mine who happens to be from New Jersey, a guy named Bruce Springsteen, once sang...

(Applause)

...“they spend their lives waiting for a moment that just don’t come.” Don’t let that be you. Don’t waste your time waiting.

(Applause)

Don’t be scared to take somebody on.

Don’t feel like you’ve got to shut your ears

graduates are already making. Look at what Matthew is doing. Look at somebody like Yasmin Ramadan, who began organizing anti-bullying assemblies when she was 10 years old to help kids handle bias and discrimination, and here at Rutgers, helped found the Muslim Public Relations Council to work with administrators and police to promote inclusion.

If you doubt you can make a difference, look at the impact some of your fellow

2016 Convocation Speech by President Barack Obama, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Good luck. God bless you. God bless this country we love. Thank you.

(Applause)

END 1:47 p.m. edt

Index of Contributors A

31

Nida Hussain

D

136

Peter Jacobs

Claire D’Amato

93

Kwesi Dawson-Amoah

139

Susan DiMaio

263

Jeremee Johnson

155

Jennifer V. Jones

Asad Abbas

193

Vanessa Coleman

36

Jessika Acilio

221

Jake Comito

208

Sy Adamowsky

200

Lauryn Adams

199

181 234

J

Stephon A. Jeter

197

Carole Allamand

60

Ashley Allen

70

23

Anthony Alvarez

144

67

Muzdalifa Ayub

190

Heather DiTullio

164

150

Beth Dollard

242

Crisanto Joseph Jorda

B

240

Kara Donaldson

173

Cheyanne Judd

106

Jason Baerg

145

24

Volkan Karaoglu

69

James Bergin

183

177

Megan Kenny

205

Angie Bonilla

257

219 187

Christeen Badie

65

Leora Brenowitz

57

72

Rebecca Brenowitz

90

E

Eagleton Institute of Politics Jose A. Ebanks Richard L. Edwards

66

Amina N. Bright

51

Carl Burns

230

53

127

68

141

71

176

73

237

225 45 46

John Emerson

172

F

184

Joanna Kinney

192

Samantha Kralle

Sarah Ferreira

25

Cindy Krampah

91

Esther Leaming

137

110

Maximiliano Ferro

169

107

Dianne Finkelstein

111

233

Jennifer Forbes

Frankie Busch

151

C

Emily Calvo

158 44

Michael Canavan

Jasmine Lin

47

Zilong Liu

165

Lauren Frazee

92

Danielle Llaneza

58

Deanna Fredericks

116

Jennifer Lorenz

212

Joey Lupo

54

Zachary Manning

156 Jeff Friedman

G

Jamie Cann

221

49

Deirdre Casey

171

Michael Gevertzman

146

Carmen Castro

162

Shannon Gilbert

78

Alexandra Cecchini

143

Charlene Glascock

132

Center for Women in the Arts & Humanities 105

35

Miquel-Catlyn Gabbidon

Pak Chau

249 33

43 147

Nicole Chen

131

Mona Cholowinski

186

81

Shazia Mansuri

258 32 204

Aramis Gutierrez

196

30 Nicole Guzman

198

H

134

Mahasti Hashemi

M

55

Donna Gustafson

140

133

Eli Liebell-McLean

228 191

203 254

Muzi Li

Jacob Foster

129

79

L

115

253

174

Bailey Kimmel

Julia Fasamo

207 104

Jennifer Kim-Lee

96

271

166

K

Mike Marion Michael Martini

Bev McCarron

248

80

Jonathan Chuang

252

Steve Hockstein

102

McKay Imaging

167

Dolores Chupela

142

Allan Hoffman

108

Beth McKeown

210

Benjamin Clapp

236

Kelsey Hotz

243

Shan Meisner

109

Sharon Cocuzza

26

Matthew Howarth

83

Jerry Michaels

281

265 61

John Mikolajczyk

75

103

Melissa Tomich

Kate Mitchell

99

101

Rosanne Tona

239

120

Monica Torres Yvans Tsague

216

Nick Romanenko

152

Melissa Moghadam

259

229

231

Thomas Montville

260

84

77

Karishma Motwani

266

86

267

97

94 175

N

268

Julio Nazario

272

114

Brian Nealon

273

244

Matteo Ronga

Ksenia Nouril

226

Susanne Ruemmele

O

232

Sara Obnial

88

245 100 39

Max Ohring Keri Oleniach Debra O’Neal

121

Ellen O’Neill

168

Sade Osuji

238 195 180

Outdoors Club (RUOC)

P

Na-Yeon Park

194

Sam Urdang

130

Patti Verbanas

Rutgers Gardens

S

27 87

Calvin Schwartz

89

76

Chirag Shah

128

29

Sue Shapses

138

98

V

W Tristen Wallace

123

262

241 214

170

Edd Schwab

206

U

Chinwendu Ukoha

182

148

135 217

41

Michael S. Tublin

Deborah Shuford

153

63

Marie Siewierski

188

255

Jennifer Simon

189

74

Darlene Smith

215

95

Stacy Smith

201

Ryan Watters

154

222

Danielle Weber-Soares

264

161

Roohi Patel

157

270

Leo Weismantel

52

Jacob Paul

227

48

Matt Weismantel

Hébert Peck, Jr.

202

Anthony Smizaski

211

Karima Woodyard

251

82

James Stapleton

269

246

124

Manqi Yang Carla Yanni

250

209

Elise Petronzio

178

Christine Staton

256

122

Ayana Phoenix

64

Jesse Stratowski

261

117

Amanda Potter

56

Tom Struble

34

Peichin Patty Su

113

Myong-Ahn Sunim

Barry Qualls

50

Rendell Tababan

R

125

119 163 28

Program in American Language Studies

Q

Nicole Ramos

126

223

Ashani Rana

159

40

Deepti Ravi

160 185

59

213

149 220

T

112

85 218

235

247

118

Anusha Reddy

221 179

Javier Robles

42

Cindy Rodriguez

Index of Contributers

62

Kristin Tangel

37

Catherine Taylor

38 224

Gabrielle Tenn

Y

Z

Christine Zardecki

Rutgers 250 Planning Committee The following individuals contributed to the Rutgers 250 planning efforts from 2012–2016 Chair Jorge Schement Vice President Office of Institutional Diversity *Linda Bassett Senior Director Community Affairs Pam Blake Assistant Vice President University Communications & Marketing *Lavinia Boxill Vice President Rutgers Foundation Jeanne E. Boyle Associate University Librarian Rutgers Libraries Sherri-Ann Butterfield Associate Professor Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice Faculty of Arts and Sciences–Newark Joseph Cashin Former President Rutgers University Student Assembly Paul Clemens Professor History School of Arts and Sciences

*Anthony Doody Director Student Life Student Centers & Programs Joanne Dus-Zastrow Senior Director Creative Services Richard Edwards Chancellor New Brunswick Ann Fabian Professor American Studies School of Arts and Sciences

Executive Dean School of Environmental & Biological Sciences Douglas Greenberg Distinguished Professor History School of Arts and Sciences Florence Hamrick Professor Education Psychology Graduate School of Education Shaun Illingworth Director Rutgers Oral History

*Richard Falk Former Acting Executive Dean Professor Mathematics School of Arts and Sciences

Roger Jones Chair Distinguished Professor Chemistry & Chemical Biology School of Arts and Sciences

John Farmer Special Counsel to the President Professor School of Law–Newark

Larry Katz Director Rutgers Cooperative Extension

*Leslie Fehrenbach Secretary of the University Carlos Fernandez Director Center for Latino Arts & Culture

*April Coage Assistant Director Rutgers 250

*Thomas Frusciano University Archivist Rutgers Libraries

John Connelly President Rutgers University Student Assembly

Jai Ganesh Dean School of Business Camden

Kayo Denda Librarian Research & Instructional Services Rutgers Libraries

*Robert Goodman

Marianne Gaunt Vice President Information Services University Librarian

Neil P. Kypers Former Editor in Chief The Daily Targum Aldo Lauria-Santiago Professor Latino & Hispanic Caribbean Studies School of Arts and Sciences Ji Lee Director Asian American Cultural Center *Jan Lewis Professor History Newark/NJIT Associate Dean Faculty of Arts and Sciences–Newark

*Executive Committee Academic Affiliation is New Brunswick, unless otherwise noted

283

Jacquelyn Litt Dean Douglass Residential College

Felicia E. McGinty Vice Chancellor Student Affairs, New Brunswick

Gwen Mahon Dean Associate Professor School of Health Related Professions Newark

Pamela Navrot Former Student Representative Board of Governors

*Kim Manning Vice President University Communications & Marketing Peter March Executive Dean School of Arts and Sciences *Michael Marion Associate Vice President Rutgers Foundation *Matt Matsuda Academic Dean New Brunswick Honors College Dean College Avenue Campus Professor History School of Arts and Sciences *Marti Mayo Director (Interim) Zimmerli Art Museum Courtney McAnuff Vice President Enrollment Management *Peter McDonough Senior Vice President External Affairs Howard McGary Distinguished Professor Philosophy School of Arts and Sciences

*Isabel Nazario Associate Vice President Academic & Public Partnerships Francine Newsome-Pfeiffer Assistant Vice President Federal Relations Irene O’Brien Vice Chancellor Development Newark Dan O’Connor Associate Professor Library & Information Science School of Communication and Information *Helen Paxton Director of Communications Newark Ryan Pisarri Chief of Administration Intercollegiate Athletics *Delia Pitts Assistant Vice President Student Affairs Clement Price (1945–2014) Professor History Faculty of Arts and Sciences–Newark *Michael Sepanic Associate Chancellor External Relations Camden

*Executive Committee Academic Affiliation is New Brunswick, unless otherwise noted

Rutgers 250 Planning Committee

Glenn Shafer Dean Rutgers Business School Newark & New Brunswick *Rayman Solomon Chief Academic Officer Dean School of Law Camden *George B. Stauffer Dean Distinguished Professor Musicology Mason Gross School of the Arts *Donna Thornton Vice President Alumni Relations Cheryl Wall Distinguished Professor English School of Arts and Sciences Marlie Wasserman Director Rutgers University Press *Matt Weismantel Senior Director Rutgers 250 John Worrall Professor Economics Faculty of Arts and Sciences–Camden