[Robert Barchi] Hi, I'm Bob Barchi.
What a great year we've had celebrating Rutgers' 250th Anniversary.
I want to thank the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and everyone else who's helped us
to make this such a meaningful milestone in our university’s long history.
Now, let's take a look at some of the highlights of our anniversary year.
[cheer: Upstream Red Team, Red Team Upstream!
Rah! Rah! Rutgers Rah!]
[Robert Barchi] Henry Rutgers donated a bell to Old Queens which has been there since 1825.
It's a bell that we ring on very special occasions.
We're going to ring it tonight to celebrate the beginning of our 250th birthday.
[bell ringing]
[Sarah Colamarino] Every time you donate a photo, it triggers a dollar donation from
Johnson and Johnson to health care scholarships for underserved students.
[Jorge Schement] 3...2...1...Go
[crowd cheers]
[Robert Barchi] J&J thank you very much.
This is a neat thing.
It's going to move around the university.
It's going to move around this campus.
It's going to move to Camden, and Newark.
And all you have to do is get up there and take a selfie, once a day, every one of you.
And for every one of those pictures we're adding another buck to that scholarship fund.
[Tyrus Jackson] I dressed up and came out to this event today because I love Rutgers
and I wanted to support the 250th anniversary.
[Louisa Tinapey] It's been around for so long, even before the country was developed, so
I think it's great to celebrate with everyone and all the alumni who are here too.
[Robert Barchi] We have to keep in mind the whole history of Rutgers.
We have to own that whole thing.
We were there through protest after protest, but we also have to celebrate all the things
that we've done.
[Phoebe Haddon] We are Rutgers in South Jersey.
And we are so proud to be an important part of Rutgers' 250th year celebration.
And we're part of Rutgers' bright future.
[Robert Barchi] A few days ago when we rang the bell in Old Queens, we could hear the
echo of the bells ringing down here.
And when we turned the lights on, on that old part of campus, we could see the reflection
of the scarlet lights on City Hall and on the Ben Franklin Bridge, just indicating the
fact that we are all part of the same university here.
[Phoebe Haddon] Today we dedicate our new Writers House.
The Henry Genet Trent house and it was built in 1885, and is on the national register of
historic sites.
And I'm so pleased to report that Rutgers has truly restored it to its former glory.
[Oliver Quinn] This event marks the launch of the 250th anniversary celebration of Rutgers
here at Rutgers–Newark.
[Robert Barchi] I don't want to give you the impression that we’re looking back.
We're looking back at 250 years of Rutgers, we’re looking back at 350 years of Newark.
No.
We're standing here with this building reopening because we are looking forward.
[Nancy Cantor] So as we launch Rutgers 250th anniversary here.
As we think about another 250, or whatever, transformative years, our greatest aspiration
for this building is that it will be a key piece of Newark's civil infrastructure that
will help us build a more just social infrastructure.
We want 15 Washington to become one of our signature third spaces of collaboration that
helps us create opportunity.
[Steve Shimchick] It’s been really incredible to see how a university this large can come
together across Newark, New Brunswick and Camden.
[Matt Weismantel] We saw people come on board; departments get involved to see how they could
connect with the anniversary and make it important in their work.
Folks in Human Ecology put together a class on the 250 years of the culinary history of
the university.
Federal Relations put on a reception in the US Botanical Gardens right next to the Capitol
building for all of our representatives in Washington.
The Black on the Banks conference that took place bringing back alumni from the 1960s
and 70s who took a leadership in moving our institution forward and becoming more diverse,
and looking at diversity as something that was important for the institution.
The Institute for Research on Women has also looked at the history of women at Rutgers
for the last 250 years.
[Julie Park] The 250 mobile application lands on a page called Today in History with timely
information connecting the 250th with events.
It has tours that you can take of each campus.
[Matt Weismantel] Rutgers Day had been expanded to the Newark and Camden campuses.
Prof. Paul Clemens wrote an excellent academic history, and he and Prof. Rudy Bell have created
an online course on the history of the university that's been taught now for students from Newark,
Camden and New Brunswick.
[Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui] I want to thank Kathy Lopez and Paul Clemens for their extraordinary
work in assembling the panels, but also in sharing with us some ways to rethink this
history and to place that history at the heart of the university.
[Matt Weismantel] There had never been an illustrated history of Rutgers University.
We're very proud of it and it was quite an accomplishment.
[Kim Manning] The idea to invite the President of the United States as our commencement speaker
developed with the Planning Committee for Rutgers 250.
The whole thing started though, with Pres. Barchi
writing a letter of invitation to Pres. Obama
asking him if he would please come and be our commencement speaker.
Our New Jersey delegation got involved.
They also issued letters, they issued a press release.
The Chair of our Board of Governors, Greg Brown, happened to be serving on one of
Pres. Obama's commissions.
He hand-delivered the letter again.
There were a lot of people involved.
I think what really made all the difference is what our students did.
[Steve Shimchick] I was tasked to coordinate how student government and different organizations
can come together and figure out how they can bring up the student involvement, and
then I also worked with RU-tv, the student video team, to create a video.
And the video was an invitation that was sent out to the White House, working with
Federal Relations in DC.
[April Coage] We never gave up hope.
We wanted to keep pressing forward, and we were excited when we got the “Yes.”
["Hail to the Chief"]
[Pres. Barack Obama] Hello Rutgers!
It's true that a lot of schools invite me to their commencement every year, but
you are the first to launch a three-year campaign.
E-mails, letters, tweets, I even got three notes from the grandmother of your student
body president.
And I have to say that really sealed the deal.
Every day tens of thousands of students come here to this intellectual melting pot.
Where ideas and cultures flow together among what might just be America's most diverse
student body.
America converges here.
Throughout our history a new generation of Americans has reached up and bent the arc
of history in the direction of more freedom and more opportunity and more justice.
And Class of 2016, it is your turn now to shape our nation's destiny as well as your
own, so get to work!
Make sure the next 250 years are better than the last!
Good luck.
God bless you.
God bless this country we love.
Thank you.
[Barbara Lee] Thank you all for coming to help us celebrate our 250th anniversary.
Today is one of the highlights of our year of celebration, and I'm just thrilled that
we've been able to bring all of you together and have these fabulous speakers from both
outside the University, and on our own faculty.
[Robert Barchi] I want to welcome you to what is the second of our three symposia in this
250th year anniversary celebration for Rutgers.
You'll recall the first one was on the future of higher education, and the last one will
be on why Humanities matter.
Today were talking about transformational science.
[Kim Manning] The anniversary year featured hundreds of activities.
Some focused on the past.
Others focused on the future, including the launch of Rutgers Health.
[Brian Strom] Rutgers Health is really the clinical arm of Rutgers University.
The goal is really to be able to achieve best care for patients.
That best care for patients includes care when patients get sick on one hand, but also
includes keeping patients healthy on the other hand.
So where other practices all around the country are focused on the physician and are
physician oriented, Rutgers Health will really be patient oriented, and will include the physician,
of course, but also nurses, pharmacists, dentists, physician's assistants…
all of the people who can mobilize together to be able to keep our population healthier.
[Devin and Jason McCourty] Happy Birthday Rutgers!
[Steven Chazen] Happy 250 Rutgers.
[Sung Poblete] Happy Birthday Rutgers.
[Phuti Mahanyele] Happy birthday from your Rutgers family.
[Bell ringing]
[Richard Edwards] Bells were rung for 250 seconds at the Honors College, and in churches
in all of our host communities, in Newark and Camden as well.
We're now also going to have a flag raising and a Dogwood tree planting as part of the
ceremony.
[Robert Barchi] Earlier this year Congressman Frelinghuysen had a US flag flown over the
Capitol building in Washington, and he has presented us with that US flag in commemoration
of our 250th anniversary and it is that flag that we are going to raise today.
[Richard Edwards] The act of planting a tree has special significance for many reasons.
It represents the continuing cycle of life, and the very idea of growing a memory.
[Robert Goodman] As you pass this way next spring, and next fall, and for the years to
come this will be a pleasing reminder to all of you of this glorious, historic charter day
and our 250th anniversary celebration.
[Robert Barchi] We have over 80 of our distinguished alumni in Camden, and Newark and here in
New Brunswick, who have come to Rutgers from around the world and presented lectures
on their area of expertise.
We call these people our Rutgers 250 Fellows.
They have shared their insights with students across the University.
[Hina Walajahi] My generation has benefited from inheriting a certain standard of what
it means to be a Rutgers student.
We never settle, and that is what makes Rutgers revolutionary.
[Students] Happy Birthday Rutgers!
[Jorge Schement] This is the biggest, most elaborate anniversary celebration of any university
in the United States, and I know because we checked them all out.
This has been a huge celebration that couldn't have happened if everybody hadn't been willing
to get involved.
[Fireworks]