112th Commencement Honors More Than 850 Saint Peter’s College Graduates

34 Students Honored During Celebration May 19, 2003– Jersey City, NJ– Saint Peter’s College conducted its 112th Commencement on Sunday, May 18 at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. The ceremony saluted a graduating class of more than 850 full-time, part-time, evening and graduate students. The College bestowed Honorary Degrees upon 1956 graduate Reginald Stanton, who recently retired as the Superior Court Judge of New Jersey, Dr. George Borjas, a 1971 Saint Peter’s graduate who currently serves as the Robert W. Scriver Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Sister Vivien Jennings, OP, Principal of Saint Dominic Academy in Jersey City. Stanton, who is the College’s only Rhodes Scholar, offered the graduating class several points of advice in his Commencement address. He urged the students to be open to ideas and “be willing to look and listen with wonder and respect to any proposition put on the table.” He also spoke about the importance of being an optimist and explained they “have a moral duty to be competent in some area of useful work.” Judge Stanton concluded by explaining that the graduates “be convinced that you can and must be person of great personal integrity.” Rose Ann Holandez (Upper Montclair, NJ) was named the Valedictorian. Holandez, who will attend Cambridge University for the next two years as winner of the prestigious Davies-Jackson Fellowship, also addressed her classmates. Citing the construction of the College’s pedestrian bridge that connects the East and West campuses on the Jersey City campus, Holandez urged the graduates to build upon the friendships and sense of community learned and created at Saint Peter’s. “Whatever we become,” she said, “we will not only strengthen the bridges we built at Saint Peter’s, but lengthen them as we move on.” Thirty-four undergraduates and two graduate students were singled out at graduation for their outstanding achievements at Saint Peter’s College. See list of award reicipients