By Maddie Orton
Arts Correspondent
This Saturday, Rutgers will roll out the scarlet red carpet to the public for Rutgers Day. The annual campus-wide celebration is less than a decade old, but it has roots dating back to the turn of the last century. The event was built upon the already-popular New Jersey Folk Festival and historic Ag Field Day.
It all started here in 1906 on what’s now Cook Campus. The state Board of Agriculture wanted to connect farmers with the work being done at New Jersey’s Agricultural Experiment Station.
“The whole idea of an agricultural experiment station in the U.S. and colleges of agriculture as we were at that time, was to produce knowledge and extend it to stakeholders,” said Dr. Bob Goodman, executive dean of the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “They were learning about crop fertility, they were learning about genetics which was just at its start back then.”
The festival still has a heavy emphasis on science, but has blossomed over the decades to include several different focuses and be more family-friendly. The Entomology Department hosts cockroach races for kids, food science students sell ice cream and everyone is welcome to visit the farm animals — including Hyacinth, the famed fistulated cow. The hole in her side allows students to research the digestive process.
Of course if you’d rather stick with horticulture, “We have a huge, huge, plant sale,” said Goodman, “so the master gardeners are here.”
Over on Douglass Campus, New Jersey Folk Festival Director and Founder Dr. Angus Gillespie is helping his students prep for the festival he started over 40 years ago.
“I think folk art deserves a place in the spectrum of art appreciation,” Gillespie said. “We have about 100 craft vendors, we have about 80 food vendors…the singers, the dancers, the musicians and the storytellers.”
The Folk Festival explores a new culture every year. This year is a slight deviation with a focus on bluegrass music. Junior Alex Fuchs is taking the Folk Festival as a class, and he says managing performances has helped him hone skills he needs as a business major.
“Really learning how to plan things in advance,” he explained. “Because there’s a lot that goes into the festival, so there’s a lot of planning that goes into it, and planning is really the key to success.”
With the advent of Rutgers Day as an umbrella for these events, the university has taken advantage of the opportunity to show off its work to festival attendees. Last year that was a whopping 91,000 people.
“It’s kind of bringing together the whole tradition and history of Rutgers University,” said Patricia Kastner, associate director of the Office of Community Affairs. “I think people will be very surprised to see what Rutgers does.”
This year’s celebration will be especially big. For the university’s 250th anniversary, Rutgers Day has expanded to include the Newark and Camden campuses.