LI'L VILLAGE

Sustainable Highland Park (Our Power HP), a committee dedicated to reducing the borough’s carbon footprint, held its regular meeting at borough hall on October 26th.

The group, first chartered as a working group to develop the borough's Green Community Plan, received in 2010 a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a local energy efficiency program.

The Rutgers African-American Alumni Alliance (RAAA) held its Eighth Annual Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony on October 15th at New Brunswick’s Hyatt Hotel with cocktails, dinner and music.

Evelyn Sermons Field praised generations of activists, including white college students, who lobbied for integration well before the 1950s. “I am mostly indebted to people I never knew, who made it possible for me to be one of the first two African-American women to live in the dorms on the Douglass campus,” she explained in her acceptance speech at New Brunswick's Hyatt Hotel

The Raritan River is a resource that belongs completely to New Jersey, with a 1200-mile watershed. It covers 100 municipalities and seven counties, serving over one million people.

In spite of this, there was no joint planning by the many governments involved, and there were no common goals for the river until the Sustainable Raritan River Initiative began. Individual groups did take on their own projects, but no one looked at regional planning.

Just hours after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Dream Act, which will allow illegal immigrant students to be eligible for state-funded financial aid at public universities and community colleges, celebratory email began circulating.

"Wow, this great and wonderful news for our Hispanic students. This is winning!" said one jubilant respondent to a mass email about the new legislation.