NJPIRG Students Chapters launched the fall semester with a goal of engaging thousands of our peers in making tangible change in our community. Making social change takes people power, so we start every semester with recruitment. We reached thousands of Rutgers students with information on our internship and volunteer program.
Save The Bees
Bees are essential to our lives. They pollinate 75% of all the foods we eat, and their pollination helps protect outdoor spaces we love. That’s why we started a campaign to get our local city Mayors to declare the city a Bee Friendly City, per the Bee USA Standards. So far, we’ve collected over 1,000 petitions across campus in support, spoken at the City Council Meeting, and talked to the Mayor directly about our proposal. We successfully secured a commitment from Berkley Heights, thank you Mayor Angie Devanney!
New Voters Project
This generation is the largest and most diverse in our nation’s history. We know that when we show up to the polls and make our voices heard, we can make a difference. That’s why we run the New Voters Project to be able to register and educate hundreds of young voters. We worked with partners including the Eagleton Institute of Politics, RUSA, the Office of Student Life and Leadership, as well as the Intercultural Resource Center to educate students and turn them out to vote. We helped hundreds of students register to vote and find their polling locations!
Affordable Textbooks and Zero Hunger
In addition to the New Voters Project, we ran our Affordable Textbooks campaign promoting the library’s free textbook program available to professors, known at OATS (open and affordable textbooks.) For our Hunger and Homelessness campaign, we completed over 400 service hours, collected over 1,200 donated items from sanitary products to clothes to non-perishable foods, and ran a successful free thrift for the student body. Let us know if there are any events you would like to see more of, or what needs we can meet for the student body!
Looking Forward
In the spring, our chapter will prioritize our campaigns to:
- Save the Bees: We’ll work to get more New Jersey to declare their cities bee friendly
- Fight Hunger and Homelessness: We’ll host two large clothing and food drives to donate necessary items to shelters in our area, while raising awareness about student hunger on campus through dedicating 500 hours of service.
- Make Textbooks Affordable: We’ll work to educate faculty about the importance of using Open Source materials, and help the Libraries market the Rutgers Open and Affordable Textbooks program.
- Right to Repair is a new corporate campaign we are running, calling on Apple to create airpods with replaceable batteries, so we can keep using our favourite products. On top of this, Apple can lead the landscape to decrease the amount of e-waste we are producing. Every day, we produce nearly 400,000 phones worth of e-waste.
The Referendum
Next fall, we will be running our referendum, a process that helps us secure our funding. We are completely funded by students who, every three years, support our work by voting to continue NJPIRG’s waivable $13.01 per semester fee. Every referendum we prioritize educating the entire Rutgers community about the work we do, and the importance of having their very own student-run and student-funded non-profit on campus. #voteyesNJPIRG
A Thank You
All of this work is made possible by our team of student volunteers and leaders who dedicate so much of their time to making a difference. It also wouldn’t be possible without our friends and allies in the Rutgers Community. From the professors who let us do class announcements, to the administrations who helped send out campus wide emails, to the staff who helped us reserve rooms, and of course the students who came to our tables and engaged with us, we are so appreciative of everyone’s support.
We look forward to a Spring semester filled with fun campaign events, but above all, we can’t wait to continue making New Jersey and Rutgers a place where students can organize, and win.
