Nearly 11,000 receive degrees at university commencement
President Richard L. McCormick started off commencement 2007 with a warning.
“We do believe the storm is on the way,” McCormick said. “If it comes, I’ll graduate you all in a flash, and we can take appropriate shelter.” The audience – representatives of the 11,000 degree recipients this year, their friends and family, and Rutgers faculty and staff – responded with laughter.
Indeed, the reading of the names of doctoral candidates had to be cut short when the skies darkened and tree branches began to sway. Thousands streamed off of historic Voorhees Mall and onto College Avenue, looking for their cars or some kind of shelter.
The meteorological disturbance, however, didn’t put a damper on an event filled with tradition and insight from guest speakers. This year, television and radio host Tavis Smiley delivered the commencement speech, and journalism and media studies major Fraidy Reiss was the student speaker.
Commencement is the universitywide ceremony in which all Rutgers graduates, this year estimated at 10,990, are granted their baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral degrees. But graduates of schools and colleges in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden also received recognition at 23 other ceremonies during the third week of May.
Keynote speakers at those events included former New Jersey Governor Jim Florio at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy; Rutgers Board of Governors Professor Clement Alexander Price at the School of Social Work; Retired U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Bruce B. Bingham at the ROTC Commissioning Ceremony; Maggie Moran, deputy chief of staff to Governor Jon S. Corzine, at Douglass College; Arnold G. Hyndman, the outgoing dean of Livingston College at that school’s ceremony; New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes at the School of Criminal Justice; St. Benedict’s Preparatory School Headmaster Reverend Edwin D. Leahy at the Newark College of Arts and Sciences and University College convocation; New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice James Zazzali at the School of Law–Newark; and at the School of Law–Camden, the Honorable Marjorie Rendell of the Third Circuit U.S. Appeals Court and wife of Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell.
“All of the graduates have completed one phase of their formal education, and all are well prepared for the challenging work and programs of study to which they have now chosen to devote themselves,” McCormick said. “Each of them has worked hard and has sacrificed to earn the degrees they now receive.”
University commencement also is a time to honor the Rutgers faculty, and Executive Vice President Philip Furmanski highlighted many of the awards and distinctions achieved by Rutgers professors, including the election of two professors to the National Academy of Sciences, “giving Rutgers one of the largest numbers of fellows in this prestigious organization.”
Undergraduate speaker Fraidy Reiss told a personal story of defying familial expectations and achieving a dream. As an “ultra Orthodox Jew … I was expected to marry as young as possible and to have as many children as possible. There is no room in that life for college or a career,” she said.
Reiss married at 19, had her first child at 20, and was a stay-at-home mom by 21. But at 27, Reiss decided to go to University College to fulfill her dream of becoming a journalist. “It was difficult, but I enjoyed almost every moment here at University College,” she said. “For the first time in my life, I made friends with people outside my community.”
After an undergraduate career that included an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Reiss will work as a full-time reporter for the Asbury Park Press. “Today, I challenge everyone here: Are you keeping your soul alive? If the answer is no, I dare you to be you – no matter what the consequences.”
Commencement speaker Tavis Smiley began his speech with a reference to a man known for his oratory prowess: Winston Churchill. “… He is rumored to have stood up at a podium something like this and after a grand introduction says: Never ever, ever give up. And he turned around and sat down,” Smiley said. “Churchill, respectfully, was only half right. … What’s wrong with the world we live in today is that they got the message of never giving up, but not the message of never giving in.”
Smiley again saluted the elegant response by the women’s basketball team to racism and sexism. He told the graduating class never to give in to “homophobia, race baiting, arrogance, elitism, small-mindedness, myopia.”
Rev. Edward Leahy, headmaster of St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark and recipient of an honorary degree at commencement, delivered the keynote speech at the joint convocation of Newark College of Arts and Sciences and University College–Newark. He also advised the graduates to steer clear of parochialism and prejudice.
“I demand of you today not to be like a pigeon sitting on the wires and the roof tops watching life go on below you and doing nothing. Or worse, making a mess of things by your self-absorption, narrow-mindedness, prejudice, power seeking,” Leahy said.
Vanessa Flores, the student speaker at the joint convocation in Newark, told her story about leaving her parents and her native country, Ecuador, to come to the United States. Today, she has her bachelor’s degree in biology and is headed to medical school. “I left Ecuador with the promise that if I ever lost my way I could come back home,” Flores said. “With my parents’ blessings, I packed most of my belongings, printed out every single NJ Transit schedule available on the internet and emigrated to the United States of America.”
“Each one of us came from a different place,” Flores said. “But we are here. I did. You did. You are the proof of your own effort. You are a miracle. Each one of us is a miracle.”
At the convocation of the School of Business–Camden, Campbell Soup Co. CEO, president, and director Douglas R. Conant instructed graduates to take a helpful approach in the highly competitive world of business and finance.
“I believe one of the two most important traits required for a business person to be highly effective in the 21st century, is the trait of bringing a “How Can I Help?” mindset to the work,” Conant said. “The second trait is closely connected to the first but it is so important that I choose to call it out separately ... you also need to display good character and honor those around you everyday.”