As we wrap up another school year, I’m struck by what a historic year
it has been. We are at a defining moment as a generation. Over and over
again, I am amazed and inspired by what we can accomplish by
volunteering our time, organizing on our campus and advocating for
change locally and nationwide.
I want to thank everyone on campus who has supported New Jersey Public
Interest Research Group Student Chapters this year and let you know a
quick summary of what your support has accomplished.
During what was possibly the most important election of our lifetime,
we helped register and turn out young voters. At the three main Rutgers
campuses across the state, we registered 6,000 students to vote and
made over 28,000 reminders to students during the days leading up to
Election Day through e-mails, calls, canvassing, tabling and text
messages. We saw turn out increases as high as 66 percent in New
Brunswick’s student-heavy precincts. Across the country, there were 3.4
million more young voters in 2008 compared to 2004. The youth share of
the electorate also surpassed that of people over 65 — an impressive
feat.
As our country continues to face one of the worst economic crises since
the Great Depression and more people are forced into poverty every day,
we worked to meet immediate needs and make a long-term impact. We
joined the national Hunger Clean-Up, an annual one-day serve-a-thon to
generate volunteer power and funds for local, national and
international agencies fighting poverty. We are proud to say that
Rutgers New Brunswick held the most successful Hunger Clean-Up out of
any school in the country, mobilizing 148 students to volunteer in
their community and raising more than $7,000 to fund projects like
Elijah’s Promise’s new soup kitchen facility in New Brunswick. We also
organized the 2009 National Student Conference on Hunger and
Homelessness, where students from New Jersey and other states attended
a Faces of Homelessness Panel hosted by formerly homeless individuals,
an Issues Panel hosted by University faculty experts on poverty-related
issues, a lobby training hosted by New Jersey Assemblywoman Linda
Greenstein, D-14, and more.
We are really proud of our progress promoting solutions to one of the
most pressing problems facing our planet: global warming. In January,
we worked to make sure that the economic stimulus package included
critical funding for programs that will create jobs and protect the
environment, including $16 billion for public transit and $78 billion
for clean energy and green infrastructure. Then we continued to
generate more than a thousand signatures and hand-written letters to
Congressman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., urging him to fight for legislation
to put us on a path to solve global warming by increasing clean energy,
reducing emissions and creating new jobs. We brought Pallone to campus
to speak last week on a global warming solutions panel, and presented
him with University students’ signatures and letters of support. Now we
are continuing to work with him to make sure he tells Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi to push for a global warming bill that is as strong
as it needs to be.
We do not need to tell any readers that the cost of college keeps going
up, while textbooks companies artificially inflate the price of books
by bundling them with CDs and coming out with unnecessary new editions.
We helped convince Congress in January to include measures in the
economic stimulus package like a $17 billion increase in Pell grant
funding, more work-study aid and bigger tax credits for low-income
students and their families. When Obama proposed a 2010-2011 budget
that significantly reinvests in the Pell grant and pays for itself by
cutting excessive subsidies to banks, we made sure Pallone would
encourage his fellow members of Congress to keep those provisions in
the budget. We filled a mock “textbook” with petition signatures, got
students to call in and even met with him one-on-one last week.
We continued to fight for clean and fishable waterways. New Jersey
Community Water Watch, a joint project of NJPIRG and AmeriCorps,
mobilized more than 700 volunteers in New Brunswick and Piscataway this
semester to clean up their local communities. We brought together 13
organizations statewide holding clean-ups in 23 communities. More than
1,500 volunteers were mobilized to clean up the Raritan River in honor
of Earth Day. Through our “Education Week,” 46 students traveled across
the state in four days and taught 2,225 K-12 kids about how they can
impact their local waterways and be active community members.
Many of you have either volunteered your time to one of these efforts,
signed a petition or came to an event. Thank you so much for your
support; congratulations on what we have accomplished together, and we
look forward to continuing to make positive social change in the fall.
Mohit Bhake is a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore majoring in
business. He is the College Avenue chapter chair of NJPIRG Student
Chapters.
