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Commencement 2008: An old-fashioned tradition celebrating future generations
Livingston College graduate Charles Simmons breathed a sigh of relief at this year’s universitywide commencement ceremony May 21. Famed broadcaster Gwen Ifill was delivering the keynote address when she assured the crowd, representing 10,852 Rutgers graduates, that it was OK not to know what’s next.
“You cannot get too wedded to the ‘should’ in life. You know, you should be married ... you should be in graduate school ... you should make a lot of money,” said Ifill, a longtime print and broadcast journalist and moderator of the PBS program Washington Week. “I suggest you spend these next few weeks and months of your life thinking of the ‘coulds.’ What could you do?”
Simmons, a resident of Elizabeth,
New Jersey, who received his
bachelor’s degree in sociology and criminal justice, took comfort in the words
coming from such an accomplished woman.
“I am one of those students that kind of doesn’t know what’s going to happen. So it was inspiring to know that you don’t have to have it all figured out,” Simmons said.
The thousands of Rutgers students who officially received their bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at university commencement – and marked the occasion at two dozen convocation ceremonies in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick – have varying plans that include graduate school, travel, career, and endless opportunities.
Some are looking no farther than New Brunswick. Rutgers
College graduate Garrett Blitz wants
to use his degree in sociology in a job at Rutgers.
If successful, he will continue a family tradition at Rutgers
that dates back to the 19th century. His grandfather, Ralph Voorhees, is a
Rutgers alumnus and presented Blitz with his degree at the Rutgers College
convocation May 22.
“[Graduation] was better than anything I was expecting it to be. It was a special moment,” said Blitz, who remembers attending Rutgers basketball and football games with his grandfather as a child.
“Garrett is a fine young guy. We would go to a lot of Rutgers events, and I guess he always heard about the [family’s] involvement with Rutgers,” the 82-year-old Voorhees said. His grandfather, Oscar M. Voorhees, was a student at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary and penned the 1927 book Ralph and Elizabeth Rodman Voorhees: a Tribute. The Voorhees family came to America from the Netherlands in the middle of the 17th century, and their name is kept alive throughout New Jersey. At Rutgers, there is Voorhees Chapel, Voorhees Hall, and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, which retired stockbroker Ralph Voorhees was instrumental in establishing to honor his mother.
The commencement
ceremony is special because it is distinguished by that centuries-old tradition.
President Richard L. McCormick in 2004 moved the ceremony to Voorhees Mall, the
historic heart of the New Brunswick Campus. A lively array of colors and
costumes punctuated the processional, which stepped off as the bell in Old
Queen’s tolled. The academic regalia worn by graduates, faculty members,
trustees, governors, and administrators echo the daily uniforms of academics
dating to the period of the Colonial Colleges, the nine institutions of higher
education chartered before the American Revolution. Rutgers, the College of William and Mary, and seven current Ivy
League institutions comprise the Colonial Colleges.
Gonfaloniers wrestled against the sometimes blustery wind with large crossbars holding multihued banners of Rutgers’ 27 degree-granting schools. In the background, the new World War II memorial plaza provided a reminder of lives lost. The memorial, “A World Turned Inside Out,” honors the 247 Rutgers men and women who lost their lives in that war. Its centerpiece is the sculpture “In Side Out,” which has stood in front of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum on Hamilton Street since 1963.
President McCormick took a moment in the midst of his traditional greetings to charge the graduates to remember other, more recent lives lost – those in East Africa, China, and Myanmar following a pair of natural disasters and a devastating famine. The mall was heavy with silence for several moments, as sun peeked through clouds threatening the ceremony with whispers of rain showers. (Attendees were spared a major downpour.)
“Today we express and affirm our university’s values, both
ancient and modern, and the most fitting way to do that is to celebrate our
graduates,” McCormick said. “They are the most recent expressions of the values
we cherish – equality of opportunity to learn, freedom of inquiry, and service
to society.”
McCormick called the 2007–08 academic year a “milestone” for Rutgers University, citing the transformation of undergraduate education in New Brunswick; the first-ever doctoral program in Camden; and the nation’s first undergraduate major in public service at Rutgers–Newark.
Undergraduate student speaker Melanie Spero attributed her success at Rutgers to the university’s ever-growing depth and breadth. Numerous opportunities paired with the encouragement she found in the university’s small communities led her to Rutgers’ championship crew team and a research position in her sophomore year at the Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment.
“Leaving my tiny hometown for such a large school took me entirely out of my comfort zone,” said Spero, a native of East Gransby, Connecticut, where there were only 53 high school seniors in her graduating class. “But looking back I now realize that choosing Rutgers was one of the best decisions of my life.”
After accepting her honorary doctor of letters degree, Ifill recounted her personal connection with Rutgers: Both the university and Ifill have withstood racially charged insults from radio host Don Imus. Ifill said that since that incident more than a year ago, women from Rutgers have approached her with spontaneous hugs and myriad Rutgers gear.
Ifill was spurred to write an op-ed for The New York Times, which received attention and praise. “As I poured my thoughts into my laptop, it occurred to me that I was not the only one who could say I had once been a target of this same DJ,” Ifill said. “But more important, after years in journalism, I had access to the megaphone these young women did not.”
Ifill said the slur struck her not only as a black woman but also as a “citizen of the world.” With world citizens brought closer together through technology while the globe’s problems grow more pressing, globalization is on the forefront of many graduates’ minds. Yale Ferguson, a member of the Rutgers–Newark faculty since 1966 and co-director of the Center for Global Change and Governance, outlined the challenges students will face and said that the Newark student body is particularly suited to the challenge.
“When I started at Rutgers–Newark, ‘diversity’ meant a few African-American students and two groups of Hispanic students, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. Now, for over a decade, we are rightly proud to have been rated the most diverse university campus in the United States,” Ferguson said. “The world has never been so cosmopolitan in many respects, and surely most of us are richer because we partake of other cultures.”
Rutgers–Camden alumnus Richard Aregood, a longtime newspaper journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1985, had a local focus. Aregood, who is now senior vice president of the Marcus Group public relations firm, recalled the heights and the humorous pitfalls of his collegiate career in Camden. He then urged graduates at the joint convocation of Camden’s College of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School, and University College, to resist the persistent trend of declining support for public higher education.
“There is value to the four years – or six – that we spend in college. We sometimes act stupid, but we learn. We learn important academic things, but we also learn the lessons of community and friendships and hard work that last long after we’ve forgotten how to develop a quadratic equation,” Aregood said. “We also learn the value of public education. Without a state-supported university, I would never have achieved much of anything.”