Rutgers University held one of the largest and most inclusive commencements in its history Sunday, conferring degrees in the football stadium for the first time since the early 1970s and marking the first graduating class of the university’s School of Arts and Sciences (SAS).
“We gather here at Rutgers Stadium for the first time in many years, with the largest commencement crowd, and the largest graduating class, in our history,” declared Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick. “As the Jumbotron screen behind me and the stadium-wrapping ribbon boards around us attest, we have begun a new tradition at Rutgers.”
The university’s 245th commencement featured a powerful, provocative address by commencement speaker and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who told the graduates that simply pursuing personal success and happiness was a barren and trivial pursuit.
“It’s looking good instead of doing good,” Morrison said.
An estimated 12,890 graduates – a record, for the second consecutive year – received degrees from Rutgers this year. They include approximately 8,634 baccalaureate degrees, 2,999 master’s degrees and 1,257 doctorates (including professional doctorates).
About 28,000 people – including the graduates, their friends and relatives, as well as faculty and staff - attended Sunday’s commencement. And the excitement generated by the stadium surroundings was palpable throughout the morning despite the gray, wet weather and the inevitable traffic.
“It’s amazing how many people are here,” senior Josh Glatt, an SAS history major, and a Livingston, N.J. native said as he watched people milling into the stadium. “The stadium is a such a grand stage for this.”
The graduates began filing into the stadium after 10 a.m., and by 10:30, the football field had become a sea of red and black. The ribbon screens announced the names of the individual schools, while the Jumbotron captured the students processing to the 5,500 chairs that had been set up for the event. The giant screen also displayed the banners of the individual schools and academic units, as well as the University Gonfalonier.
“It’s exciting to be the first class to be able to do this,” said Josh Rys, a biomedical engineering major from Toms River. “It’s exciting to see so many people at one time and in the same place.”
In recent years, commencements have been held on Voorhees Mall, with the focus generally on graduate students. In addition, many of the academic units held separate, collegiate convocations where graduates were individually recognized.
The tradition of separate convocations on all three campuses continued this year, but was complemented by Sunday’s universitywide commencement aimed at bringing all members of the Rutgers community together to celebrate graduation.
The grandmother of one graduate said she was looking forward to attending both graduation events – commencement and convocation. Walking into Rutgers Stadium, Joyce Weeks said her grandson, engineering major Daniel Haefeli, is her first grandchild to graduate college.
“I’m just so thrilled to be here and to be part of these events,” she said.
Another ‘first’ for the 2011 commencement was having the first graduating class of the School of Arts and Sciences, created in 2006 as part of a major initiative to transform undergraduate education at Rutgers. The largest academic unit at Rutgers, SAS had nearly 5,000 graduates.
“Your graduation marks a milestone in the transformation of undergraduate education,” said Robin Davis, executive vice dean at SAS.
Davis told the gathering that the SAS graduates were distinctive in many ways.
“A third of you are the first in your family to graduate from college,” she said.
“Half of you are children of immigrants or immigrants yourselves. You speak among you several dozen languages.”
Adding to the excitement of the day was Morrison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and literary icon, whose commencement address was immediately hailed by McCormick as “extraordinary and unforgettable.”
Morrison began by lamenting the “chaos” that her generation has left for the graduates - including environmental degradation, violence, economic injustice, and the decline of standards in public discourse.
“We have left you a world in which the earth itself, seems to be literally breaking apart. . . . where employment is strangely scarce, while money rushes as no river does, up against gravity,” she said.
Morrison then told students that Rutgers has helped them shape their lives and help others by offering “instruments and strategies of critical thought and contact with fresh ideas.”
But she said it’s up to students to write their own life narrative, and she urged them not to simply pursue happiness. Indeed, she said she sometimes wished that the unalienable rights cited in the Declaration of Independence - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – had included meaningfulness, or truth, or knowledge, instead of happiness.
“Please don’t settle for happiness. it’s not good enough,” she said. “Of course you deserve it, but if that’s all you have in mind, I want to suggest to you, that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice - that’s more than a barren life. It’s a trivial one.”
Morrison received an honorary doctor of letters degree. Rutgers also presented honorary degrees to Ernesto J. Cortés Jr., community activist and co-director of the national nonprofit Industrial Areas Foundation (Doctor of Laws), and Brooke Mackenzie Ellison, stem cell research advocate, author and educator (Doctor of Humane Letters). The Honorable Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor, legal scholar and assistant to President Obama, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at her alma mater, Rutgers-School of Law-Newark, where, she will be keynote speaker at its convocation on May 27.
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