Ex-Rutgers cancer doc accused of filming women in the bathroom, admits theft, gets off with 300 days in jail

A former Rutgers professor and director at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey who was accused of filming women in a workplace bathroom was sentenced to 300 days in jail, court documents show.

James Goydos, 60, faced 160 charges, including more than 100 counts of invasion of privacy. He pleaded guilty in December to only six: burglary, impersonation, official misconduct, possession of an assault weapon and two counts of computer theft.

Patch first reported his sentencing, which court records show occurred on July 7. He was also sentenced to four years of probation.Authorities said Goydos, of … Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

President Obama to speak at Rutgers commencement

PISCATAWAY a U.S. President Barack Obama will speak at Rutgers University’s 250th anniversary commencement, the White House announced Thursday. The announcement comes more than two years after Rutgers President Robert Barchi wrote to Obama asking him to speak to the graduating class. This year’s graduation ceremony is on May 15 at High Point Solutions Stadium in… Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Christie Nominates Prominent National Democrats To Rutgers Board Of Governors

Susan McCue. photo via Message-Global.com

Governor Chris Christie this morning nominated two distinguished Rutgers Almuni to serve on the University’s Board of Governors.

Susan McCue,  of Alexandria, VA, is the President of Message Global, a public affairs firm she founded in 2008 after serving as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999-2007.

“One of the nations’s top political strategists,” according to her website, McCue co-founded and co-chairs Reid’s Senate Majority PAC.  She is on the board of American Bridge 21st Century SuperPAC, with whom she shares her Washington, DC office space, according to the NY Times .

American Bridge has a page on it’s website that features videos of Christie.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Former Gov. Tom Kean to replace Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers commencement speaker

Former Gov. Tom Kean to replace Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers commencement speaker (via NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Former Gov. Tom Kean will replace Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers University’s commencement speaker, the school announced today. Kean will deliver the address at the May 18 ceremony at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway. Rice,…

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Tolerance takes a beating at Rutgers

By Joe Schilp

Joe Schilp

As a Part-Time Lecturer for 5 years at Rutgers University, I was looking forward to attending my first Commencement Ceremony later this month, particularly to hear guest honoree, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  But today, Secretary Rice withdrew from Commencement following a protest at Rutgers featuring 50 students.  On a campus that has over 55,000 students, 50 students represents just 0.001% of the student population, and those students were between the ages of 8 and 12 during the Iraq War, about which they were protesting because Rice was a National Security Advisor during the run-up to and beginning of the war.

Clearly, these students have been coached.  And clearly, they are misguided.  Aside from the fact that Secretary Rice did not “lie” about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the internet is littered with quotes from Democrat Party leaders droning on about the presence of WMD’s that were made both before and after Bush was elected president; were they lying, too?), the war resolution passed in Congress listed over a dozen reasons for authorizing war.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Condoleezza Rice pulls out of giving Rutgers commencement speech

Condoleezza Rice pulls out of giving Rutgers commencement speech (via NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out of giving Rutgers University’s commencement speech today amid growing opposition among the school’s students and faculty. In a statement, Rice said she informed Rutgers President…

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Christie spends $100 million on cancer research, proposes to spend $18 million more in coming year

Photo by Paul Scharff

Throughout the relative austerity of  the last five state budgets, Governor Chris Christie somehow managed to spend $100 million in cancer research through Rutgers Cancer Institute.  In his current proposed budget for fiscal year 2015 (July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015), Christie has proposed funding the program at the same level it was funded in fiscal years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, $18 million.

Christie proposed spending $18 million in the FY 2014 budget too. In negotiations with the legislature the amount was raised to $28 million for the current year.

Now Rutgers Cancer Institute and their friends at The Star Ledger are spinning the new $18 million proposed for the coming year as a cut of $10 million.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Drones may fly over Jersey Shore, under Rutgers research project

Drones may fly over Jersey Shore, under Rutgers research project (via NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Sea gulls and banner planes may not be the only things flying along the Jersey shoreline this summer. The Federal Aviation Administration announced last month that a consortium of universities, including Rutgers, was one of the winners…

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Front Page News?

The big story in yesterday’s Asbury Park Press was the political spat between southern Jersey lawmakers and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg over the proposed Rutgers-Rowan merger.  Large photos of State Senate President Sweeney and Lautenberg covered most of the front page.

In case you haven’t been following, Governor Chris Christie has proposed reorganizing Rutgers, Rowan and the University of Medicine and Dentistry.  Rutgers-Camden would become part of Rowan. Rowan would get a medical school associated with George Norcross Univeristy Cooper University Hospital.  Robert Wood Johnson Hospital would become part of a medical school at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and it will be a while before there are more UMDNJ indictments.

MMM hasn’t been following it all that much.  Our young legal eagle friends at Save Jersey don’t like it because they think it will devalue their law degrees if they apply to a firm that doesn’t know the difference between Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark.  And then there’s the two idiots who don’t like the deal…that former Navy SEAL that ran for Assembly who got into it with Christie at a Town Hall meeting and Lautenberg.

If not for the idiot SEAL and the idiot U. S. Senator nobody from New Jersey who isn’t directly affected by the merger would know about it, except for news junkies like us.

Lautenberg wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging the proposed merger is improper and copied U.S. Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Paul “New Jersey is not corrupt” Fishman, thereby implying that the merger is criminal. 

Having already used “idiot” and “numb-nuts” with great fanfare, Christie’s team dubbed Lautenberg’s letter as “outrageous,” “uninformed,” and “bizarre.”

None of that was front page newsworthy.  It took Norcross and Sweeney launching  Sweeney’s 2014 campaign for Launtenberg’s job to make the front page of the APP.

Wednesday morning Sweeney emailed a scathing open letter attacking Lautenberg for opposing the merger and for his failure as a U.S. Senator to bring home Washington money for New Jersey’s higher education institutions.  Several other south Jersey lawmakers, including two Republicans, signed with letter with Sweeney. Norcross later sent a statement calling Lautenberg a “great Senator for north Jersey” who has failed southern New Jersey to the same email list.

The Sweeney/Norcross statements are not really about the Rutger-Rowan merger.  The real message is that Lautenberg’s career is coming to an end.  That message has been confirmed by the silence of Democratic leaders who have staid out of this fight.  U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Assembly Speaker Sheilia Oliver, Democratic State Chairman John Wisniewski, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have all been silent.  No one is backing up Lautenberg. 

The message to Lautenberg…prepare for retirement… just don’t quit and let Christie appoint your replacement.  The message to Democratic donors…don’t give to Lautenberg’s 2014 reelection campaign.

So, the point of the last 460 words is that The Asbury Park Press made the 2014 race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate front page news yesterday.  That wouldn’t be so bad if there were not a U.S. Senate election between two relatively unknown candidates, U.S. Senator Bob Mendendez and State Senator Joe Kyrillos this year.

• Tweet

Higher Education Restructuring

Last month Governor Chris Christie announce a complex restructuring of New Jersey’s medical schools.

Under the proposal,  Newark’s UMDNJ would be replaced by New Jersey Health Sciences University, University Hospital would be placed under non-profit management and Rutgers-Camden and its law school would become part of Rowan University.  Cooper Medical School in Camden would become part of Rowan.

Mark Magyar has an excellent piece on the proposed restructuring at NJSpotlight.

Alarmed by the prospect of losing the prestige that comes with the Rutgers name, many at Rutgers Camden, including our friend Brian McGovern of Save Jersey are fighting the move to Rowan.  Save Jersey has become Save Rutgers Camden today with a lengthy post about how to legally block the merger.

Magyar in his NJSpotlight piece noted that the name of the South Jersey institution is important to advocates of the merger as well:

The absorption of Rutgers-Camden, with its 6,000-plus students, into Rowan, with more than 11,000 students, was not so much a matter of numbers as of name. Sources said that the family of Henry Rowan, who donated $100 million to expand his alma mater, Glassboro State College, into Rowan University, balked at the idea of the Rutgers name displacing Rowan.

Furthermore, Norcross, as head of Cooper University Medical Center, had been heavily involved in the creation of the new Cooper Medical School at Rowan University, and both he and Sweeney have talked about the importance of a South Jersey university that would not be a stepchild to the much larger Rutgers University in New Brunswick, as the Camden campus was sometimes perceived to be.

The South Jersey merger with Rowan has also gotten some push back from Rutgers-Camden faculty,  Rutgers retiring president Richard McCormick.  Colleen O’Dea outlines reports both sides of the controversy in a  NJSpotlight piece today.

• Tweet