A Personal Note
A few words before the next post appearing below! This blog has been quite an experience with 352 and counting “hits” by nice people like you! There is a place on the page here to click on to be notified of new posts. Then there are the encouraging “replies” posted by readers. Plus, do you see the word, “About,” top left on the site here? Click on that for a short bio. Some nice person even replied to that! And then the emails and telephone calls generated by the blog, all so rewarding. I’m learning so much. I’m trying to avoid being pigeonholed. That is, I want to talk to all age groups and about any topic I feel I have a little something worthwhile to say. I’ve learned that the “grunt work” is not in the writing, but in networking/linking to other people and sites to build a reader base. So, if you want to spread the word about the blog, just click on your computer, top left, “File,” and under that click “Send Link.” There you can send an e-mail message with excuseusforliving.com automatically appearing in blue for them to effortlessly click on and join us! Thanks! Phil
Update Rutgers!
Do you remember that story #2 in my last post about Governor Christie’s advisory committee on restructuring higher education in New Jersey? Besides the committee’s recommendations, unveiled Wednesday, January 25, about UMDNJ, I focused my criticism on the recommendation to have Rowan University in Glassboro take over the Rutgers-Camden campus (undergrad programs, law school, and business school). In “Excuse Us For Living” fashion, I said what about “loyalty, tradition, and Alma Mater.” And then there was the little matter of getting the Rutgers Board of Governors and Board of Trustees to vote “yes” before this could become a reality. –Not likely a “slam dunk” of a vote, would you not agree? I predicted that Governor Christie would not easily get his way this time with the decades of graduates/alumni, faculty, and millions, if not billions, of dollars invested in “Rutgers South” over the decades.
Well, it took all of 12 days for “Alma Mater” to come through! By Monday, February 6, Rutgers-Camden students were protesting outside the Statehouse. Then, Rutgers University President Richard L. McCormick appeared before the State Senate Higher Education Committee. He out and out stated that the University would not give up the Rutgers-Camden campus if given the choice. –a voice, by the way, which it clearly has through the votes of the Boards of Governors and Trustees! Dr. McCormick went on offering the magnanimous suggestion of a “formalized collaboration” between Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University. This, he said, would be another way of achieving the restructuring committee’s goals of “improving access to higher education and increasing research education in South Jersey.”
With the ball back in Governor Christie’s court, his spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said in making the decision, the Governor is talking with “legislators, the universities, and the stakeholder community.” (Now do you think that’s Glassboro or Camden?) One option, Drewniak continued, is to submit that plan to the Legislature, which would have 60 days to vote on it. Really? Is that so? What about the Rutgers Boards of Governors’ and Trustees’ required votes? Ball Rutgers. “Go Rutgers! RU, rah, rah! Fight team, fight!”
Excuse us for living.
Excuse Us for Living 
I recall when Douglass College was forced into Rutgers there was a similar uproar. Interestingly, the Douglass College Alumni Fund, is seperate from the College, so when the merger eventually happened, Rutgers did not get access to the various endowments and that formed a bulwark for negotiating the continued existence and rights of the College to act on its own. In academics as in politics.. Follow the money
By: John on February 12, 2012
at 7:36 pm
John,
VERY interesting!!! I did not know that! “Follow the money,” is right! I’ve learned that one. Any time I come to a dead end re why on anything, I pause & then say, “the money.” As a Rutgers alumni, I followed the reorganization closely. It meant the end of Rutgers College, New Brunswick, where I graduated from, as we knew it. Now it’s the College of Arts & Sciences that encompasses most of the undergrad program of Rutgers University, thus, no “Rutgers College.” We had a fight preserving the Rutgers Alumni Association (one of the oldest in the USA) as opposed to the Rutgers University Alumni Association. Must have been the money there too! They must be waiting for us all to die out! But back to Douglass College, what was created was Douglass Residency College (something like that) for all things extracurricular & for academics Douglass has been absorbed into Rutgers University. But until your comments, I never knew why accept to think that Douglass just fought them off. Also Cook College, the agricultural school, survived. Not money, rejection! Phil
By: philipfontana on February 13, 2012
at 12:18 am
I’m exploring your early posts and hope that you have T-shirts that say, “Excuse us for living.”
By: Russel Ray Photos on March 24, 2014
at 8:43 pm
Russel, Good idea! You deserve one for all your viewing here! Phil
By: philipfontana on March 25, 2014
at 9:29 am