Student overcomes odds with help from Educational Opportunity Fund
East Orange native says he's ready to face challenges ahead

By Jessica Starkman

Like the phoenix tattooed on his right leg, Lamar Carter has risen from the ashes multiple times on his road to graduation.

His record of beating the odds began as a young child, when he tested negative for the HIV virus. Carter’s mother died of AIDS when he was age 2, and his grandmother raised him in a single-parent home in East Orange. He says he always felt like an outsider.

“I had to struggle to find my place and a lot of times that place was ‘stage-left’ – away from everyone else,” he said.

As Carter sees it, life began for him in seventh grade when he entered the New Jersey SEEDS program, designed to give high-achieving, low-income youth the opportunity to attend private school. He graduated valedictorian of his middle school class at the Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts in East Orange, with an academic scholarship to Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange.

The school became his ticket out of East Orange. “[Seton Hall Prep] was a new chapter for me, and it was time for me to use all those life lessons … a chance for me to do more, and to shine brighter than anyone else had in my family,” he said. Carter believes it saved him from the pressure of drugs and gangs in his neighborhood. He found the environment intellectually challenging, and as part of the Griffin-Bridges program, he received extra attention, along with academic, social, and financial support. “I always had someone pulling for me,” he says.

He also credits the experience with preparing him for Rutgers by exposing him to different ideas and diverse cultures. In 2004, Carter entered Rutgers with the support of the Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF), a program for educationally and economically disadvantaged students. “EOF gave me a tight support group, which a lot of people don’t have when they come to a university this large,” he says.

But Carter struggled at Rutgers, winding up on academic probation his first year.

He had never been away from home for an extended period, and college was a huge transition. “I was so used to living with my grandmother and dealing with things there,” he says. “If I had issues at Seton Hall, I could always come home,” Carter says.

Things turned around during the spring semester of that year, and Carter remained in good standing at the university; however, during the spring of his junior year, he struggled with a range of emotional issues, including depression, which again threatened his academic standing. Then, in June 2007 he got a letter saying that he was being released from the university and would not be eligible to return in the fall. Living with his grandmother for the summer, he hid the situation from her while he took two music classes on the Newark Campus and worked a summer job.

“I felt ashamed,” he said. “I feel ashamed when I can’t please people.”

Determined this time to succeed, Lamar earned A grades in both classes, which allowed him to re-enter Rutgers in the fall of 2007 as a communication major with a minor in sociology.

Despite these setbacks, Carter has managed to soar at Rutgers. He spent two years in the Paul Robeson Special Interest Section on the College Avenue Campus. He has taken photographs for the Daily Targum and worked as a practice player on the women’s basketball team. He also has the distinction of having one of his photographs published in women’s basketball Coach C. Vivian Stringer’s best-selling autobiography, Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph.

“I've followed the team since the beginning of my time at Rutgers,” Lamar says. “It's a professional highlight in my brief photography career – and a personal one as well.”

Receiving his diploma will be a major triumph for Carter. “Everything that I’ve done, all the awkward moments that I’ve had, didn’t stop me from achieving something that most people don’t achieve, especially in my family,” he said.

As for the future, Carter is interested in the fields of public relations, photography, and graphic design. He also loves coaching. But first, he will join Camp Starlight in Pennsylvania this summer as an assistant head of basketball.

“Whether it’s a higher power or fate,” he says. “I’ve always been able to get through situations, to be able to rise again when I’ve been annihilated.” He now feels ready to face life as an adult and believes the challenges in his life have made him a stronger person. “They taught me to be comfortable in myself – and comfortable in the person that I am.”