Oh please.
I love Rutgers. The best 4 years of my life were spent there. The 3 grad years were in Newark which was, well, less than ideal, but I still love my state university. It DOES have problems though and it would be irresponsible for anyone or any graduate who loves their alma mater to ignore. Rutgers needs a lot of improvements if it wants to be on par with it's peers in the Big Ten and it starts with the student experience.
I think part of the comments directed at you is that you're seem to be implying that Rutgers is unique with the issues you described. Do you really think issues don't exist at other B10 schools, or other major universities?
When I was an undergrad at Hopkins, a lot of my friends at Rutgers would complain about the "RU Screw". But when they described their complaints, I just laughed at them. Hopkins had similar bureaucratic issues. And friends who went to other schools experienced the same. Maybe it is because Rutgers has a name for it, or maybe it is a Jersey thing, but Rutgers students seem to overly complain. That is not to say that Rutgers (or Hopkins, or any other school) shouldn't strive to be less bureaucratic or improve the student experience. But Rutgers students seem to be uniquely crybabies about it.
So let's look at your complaints in your first post in this thread:
(1) Convocation was held on a hot day in an non-air-conditioned space. While it would be ideal for universities to have air conditioned spaces for all their convocation ceremonies, the fact is that most old universities don't have enough large air conditioned spaces to do so. Pretty much any large space older than about 30 years is not going to have air conditioning. (Heck, the Carrier Dome at Syracuse is named after an air conditioning company and doesn't have air conditioning.) So while it would be nice to have enough air conditioned spaces for all the convocation ceremonies, the fact remains that not enough of those spaces exist. I guess Rutgers could stagger the convocation ceremonies, holding some on Thursday, some on Friday, etc. But then someone would complain that they had to hang out for three days between Graduation and Convocation.
(2) You were told that you could have 6 guests, and then 4 guests, and other programs were allowed more than 4 guests. Without reading the communications you received, I have no idea what happened. Maybe they changed the number of guests; maybe you misread the communications. As far as different programs allowing different number of guests, so what. When my niece graduated from a different university a few years ago, undergrads were allowed 2 guests to the morning ceremony and 6 guests to the afternoon ceremony. PhD students were allowed 6 guests to the morning ceremony and no limit to the afternoon.
(3) You received different emails telling you different times to report. Again, without seeing the emails, I don't know what happened. Maybe they changed the time, or someone made a mistake, or you misread something. Again, going back to my niece's graduation from a different university, undergrads and grad students had different reporting times. Also, the evening before graduation, my niece had to attend a mandatory reception which was given at the same time she was required to pick up her robes. Since she couldn't be in 2 places at once, she sent me to pick up the robes and I missed half the reception. Could have been handled better, but certainly not unique to her alma mater or Rutgers.
(4) The event was supposed to start at 4:30 but didn't start until 5:00, while you "watched the event organizers fumble around with what to do". I hate to tell you this, but when an event like this starts 30 minutes after the scheduled starting time, that really isn't unusual. For the rest of your life, you will be waiting 30 minutes or longer plenty of times. As far as the organizers fumbling around, you really don't know what they were doing. Maybe they were waiting for a VIP who was stuck in traffic. Maybe they were trying to find out if they could bring in air conditioners. But I really doubt that you know what they were doing.
So, yes, Rutgers (and Hopkins, and my niece's alma mater) can do better. But they are big universities, and sometimes not everything goes as smoothly as you'd like. But the only thing that seems to be unique to Rutgers is the continual complaining about getting screwed.
