可乐视频: When did you become interested in law?

JB: I served as the captain of Fort Hamilton High School鈥檚 law teams. I was able to fine-tune my public speaking, writing, and reasoning skills, but the most incredible experience was that I got to participate in a moot court competition at the Peace Palace in The Hague in the Netherlands. It was in front of a team of judges who sat on the International Criminal Court. It was there that I became committed to learning about international humanitarian law.

可乐视频: As a pre-law student, you majored in psychology? What made you choose that field of study?

JB: I was interested in studying psychopathic traits and criminality. I鈥檝e been examining relationship differences between primary and secondary callous unemotional adolescents鈥攖wo variants of the psychopathy dimension. I think that violent crimes and prison recidivism can be reduced by identifying and addressing the biological and social roots of these particular psychopathic traits and implementing tailored and early intervention.

可乐视频: Have you received any awards?

JB: I received the Stanley Geen Memorial Award. It鈥檚 a grant used to finance pre-law internship and fellowship stipends and tuition fees for LSAT prep courses. Because of the award, I was able to complete an internship at the office of New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. Working there sparked my interest in public interest law. I am so grateful for the opportunities that have opened up for me because of awards like this.

可乐视频: Any other experiences at 可乐视频 that stand out?

JB: I am a student representative for the Psychology Department鈥檚 curriculum committee. I also did work in Professor Ana Gantman鈥檚 lab in human morality and in the psychophysiology lab led by Associate Professor of Psychology Yu Gao.

In May of last year, I was an intern at the United States Attorney鈥檚 Office for the Southern District of New York. I was allowed to assist in ongoing investigations and trial preparation. It was my most informative experience outside of the classroom. It was amazing to be in the courthouse all the time and gain hands-on experience with cases.

可乐视频: What are your plans?

JB: I have been accepted to Columbia Law School through early admissions and will attend in the fall. I plan on pursuing a juris doctorate and a Ph.D. in psychology. I want to use all of the access, knowledge, and experience I gain to be able to make a difference in chronic issues like crime, poverty, and human rights violations. I鈥檒l know that I鈥檓 successful when my work has a much more significant impact, far beyond what I can do now.

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FM: Working as a young farmhand, I realized that life was not for me. Right after I graduated high school, I moved to New York City. I was 17 and had my birthday a couple of days later.

可乐视频: You enrolled and were accepted to 可乐视频 and . . .

FM: My freshman year was a bit of a rollercoaster experience. I had to put things on hold after my first year due to financial difficulty and not taking things seriously. It was after I came back that I realized that I wanted to be there more than anywhere else.

As a political science major, I was pushed to challenge myself in higher-level classes, and my professors let me know they saw potential in me. Intensive writing programs shaped me into becoming a better legal writer. Rigorous courses in critical race theory helped me look beyond the text when approaching difficult societal issues. Internship programs helped me to gain the requisite legal experience.

可乐视频: You interned at the Brooklyn Public Defender Services office. What did you do there?

FM: I was an investigative assistant. It is a nice title for an unpaid intern. Fortunately, I received a stipend through the Magner Career Center so I could take the position because I had to quit my full-time job. As an investigator in the public defender鈥檚 office, you鈥檙e tasked with the same job as an investigator in the district attorney鈥檚 office. Granted, I didn’t get a shiny badge, but that鈥檚 OK.

Most of our clients were unable to afford attorneys. My job was to independently probe the circumstances of their arrests to help bolster their legal case in the best way possible. That would often involve spending a lot of time banging on doors in Brooklyn neighborhoods to talk to family members and neighbors of the accused. I would ask whether they witnessed things like police brutality. We also investigated whether the police had probable cause to enter an apartment, whether somebody had seen a weapon in the hands of our client. I spend a lot of time behind the counters of many of New York鈥檚 finest delis and bodegas collecting video surveillance footage.

可乐视频: So you did what they do in shows like Law and Order. In that show, they don鈥檛 show what happens when you do get footage.

FM: I would spend hours behind a deli counter looking at footage on the premises to the point where customers would come in, and the deli guy running the counter would be there, but he鈥檇 say, 鈥淐an you please hand me the smokes?鈥� So there I am, helping out the deli guys while I鈥檓 trying to collect this video footage in a very cramped area.

可乐视频: What if folks are not cooperative?

FM: Unfortunately, you usually end up subpoenaing people for the video. I鈥檇 have to come back with a written subpoena, which is not fun. It鈥檚 a very strange thing to do. I am an intern with no law degree. I’m not licensed as a process server. New York law says I can only serve ten subpoenas before I have to get a process server鈥檚 license. So here I am with no real legal authority commanding someone, by order of an attorney I work for, to produce the evidence. I felt like an idiot sometimes, but it was a very cool experience.

可乐视频: It must take an emotional toll.

FM: I spent a lot of time getting to the root of many of the issues that clients had. Most of the time I worked low-level felonies and misdemeanors, many of them juvenile cases. Talking to people and seeing the struggles that they鈥檙e going through and having them text me in the morning and say, 鈥渃ome on, bro, I need you out here fighting for me鈥� It鈥檚 moving. And it is emotionally challenging work, for sure. Along with the emotions surrounding it, It鈥檚 also tough to deal with the realities of the job. Some clients are guilty as charged.

可乐视频: And they will tell you they are guilty?

FM: Some people are utterly remorseless about doing terrible, terrible, terrible things. And I have seen that. I was 23 years old working this job, and I felt at times I was just in over my head, questioning people who were obviously victims of an accused client. Of course, the person who is being charged deserves a constitutional legal defense but, gee whiz, is it ever tough to interrogate somebody that has clearly been the victim of a violent crime and to try to catch them in a lie or disprove them in some way that will help the defense of a client who may have committed that violence. At times it鈥檚 a morally challenging job.

可乐视频: Do you think you will go into public defense as a career?

FM: I think public defense is one of the most noble things that a person can do. It鈥檚 nearly volunteer work considering you get paid a relatively low amount of money. Still, you’re doing something that is truly a societal benefit and for people that need it. People fighting systemic inequality and criminal justice systems that disproportionately affect our poor and communities of color throughout the city. It鈥檚 a rock-star thing to do. You can feel the vibe in the public defender鈥檚 office鈥攖his is civil rights work. But it is also reactionary work; you’re not making the laws, you鈥檙e fighting back against them. And that can be tough. I find myself constantly going back and forth between whether criminal defense is what I want to do for the rest of my life or whether that’s even what I want to do for a short time.

可乐视频: Now you鈥檙e at Brooklyn Law working towards your degree.

FM: And I owe an immense amount of thanks to so many amazing professors at 可乐视频. They spent countless hours of their own time helping me apply to law school and navigate that process. They also helped me secure a $90,000 [$30,000 a year for three years] Richardson scholarship [named for the co-founder and dean of Brooklyn Law School William Payson Richardson] so I could attend full time and concentrate on my studies.

可乐视频: Any advice to 可乐视频鈥檚 undergraduates?

FM: The most important part of my time at 可乐视频 was spent outside the confines of the classroom, meeting with other students, debating with teachers, thinking about things that I wanted to know more about, and actively exploring them. It鈥檚 not accurate to say that doing all of these things make finding a job or life after college easy. It鈥檚 not at all. But if you spend time in college searching for something you want to do, rather than what you feel obligated to do, it will make things a whole lot easier.

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The Class of 2018 was one of the largest in the borough, with more than 4,100 graduates鈥�3,035 baccalaureate, 1,029 master’s, and 67 Advanced Certificate students. The very diverse body of scholars come from more than 125 countries and speak over 85 languages. Approximately 88 members of the class identify as disabled, and 37 students are veterans or currently enlisted in the U.S. military.

Introduced as a hero and a legend by CUNY Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Christopher Rosa,聽disability right activist Judith E. Heumann聽gave the keynote address and accepted an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, presented by President Anderson.聽Known as the “mother of the independent living disability rights movement,” Heumann’s work has had a significant impact on the implementation of legislation and policies that benefit and protect people with disabilities.

“Without ever planning to, my parents, who had come from Germany and had lost so many family members聽in the Holocaust, taught me the value of advocacy,” Heumann shared. “They taught me that if a situation feels wrong, it probably is wrong. They taught me about the need to join with allies to speak up and, especially, to speak up for equality and rights in the face of discrimination and injustice. Eventually, the time came when I needed to become my own advocate. Some of you would say, ‘stand up on your own.’聽I would say, ‘sit up in my own wheelchair.'”

Born in 1947, Heumann grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were German Jewish refugees who came to the United States in the 1930s. In 1949, Heumann contracted polio, resulting in her being a quadriplegic and using a wheelchair for mobility. The New York City Board of Education deemed it sufficient to provide Heumann with only 2.5 hours a week of home education until the fourth grade, at which time she was allowed to go to P.S. 219 special education classes. Heumann’s mother and other mothers banded together to force New York City’s Department of Education to make some of their high schools accessible.

Commencement Webcast

In 1970, Heumann became the first public school teacher in the New York City system to use a wheelchair. During the Clinton presidency, Heumann served as assistant secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Education. She then served as the World Bank’s first adviser on disability and development, and was also the director for the Department on Disability Services for the District of Columbia. In the Obama administration, she was appointed as the very first special advisor for International Disability Rights in the U.S. State Department from 2010卢2017. She continues to advocate on behalf of disabled people globally, participating in protests and giving lectures, including a popular TED Talk titled “Our Fight for Disability Rights and Why We’re Not Done Yet.” Recently, she was the featured subject of Comedy Central’s very popular web series, Drunk History.

“Here’s this immigrant from the West Indies, who has lived his dream of working in the NBA for 24 years, and talking to these stars, all these stars, the future leaders of this country. This is what makes America great,” said NY Knicks Head Athletic Trainer Roger Hinds ’77, this year’s recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Quoting Norman Vincent Peale,聽he continued, “‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars.’ I’m in the midst of stars. Chase your dreams, graduates.”

Hinds been an athletic trainer for some of the most well-known athletes in basketball. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Hinds moved to Brooklyn with his parents and five siblings at age eight. He earned a Bachelor of Science in physical education from 可乐视频 in 1977.

Hinds was the strength-and-conditioning coach for the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic Team at the 1996 Atlanta Games. He is the contributing author of two books: Condition the NBA Way (Cadell & Davies 1994) and Total Fitness the NBA Way (Perennial Currents 2000). Currently in his 24th NBA season, Hinds spent four seasons as assistant athletic trainer and strength-and-conditioning coach, for the Atlanta Hawks; eight years as the head athletic trainer for the Dallas Mavericks; and also served as host athletic trainer for the East squad at the 2015 NBA All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden. He is entering his 14th season as head athletic trainer for the Knicks. Hinds is just the sixth head trainer in the franchise’s 70-year history, joining Jim Nevins, Don Friederichs, Bill Norris, Danny Whelan, and Mike Saunders.

Hinds is also an active 可乐视频 alumnus. Since 2016, through an alliance with the Magner Career Center, he has taken time to guide current 可乐视频 students as well as high-school seniors in the 可乐视频 Academy, and provide them with the benefit of his industry expertise through class visits, panel discussions, and career mentorship.

The valedictorian of the Class of 2018, William E. Macaulay Honors College Scholar and English education major Margaret Iuni, inspired the audience by sharing a hopeful philosophy and challenging to audience to reach for the highest of common goals.

“We are more likely to believe that our individual success is determined by our own hard work than citizens of nearly any other country in the world,” she said. “The narrative of individual achievement without the assistance of others is a fiction that persists in American culture. We cannot and will not succeed without one another.”

She continued: “Together we can be fearless, we can be confident, and we can learn. We can create communities that foster individual growth without forfeiting our need for human connection. We can take the meaningful relationships we have forged over the years we have spent at 可乐视频聽and help redesign our world to be a more unified and filial one. Remember the words of the American poet, author, and teacher Gwendolyn Brooks: ‘We are each other’s harvest; we are each others’ business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.'”

The theme of聽inclusiveness and triumph continued聽throughout the day.

“My first bit of activism on the聽可乐视频 campus was a small organization called S.O.F.E.D.U.P., having Tourette’s syndrome that meant a lot to me. So thank you for your work,” said New York City Council Member Jumaane D. Williams ’01, ’05 M.A. “Some of my proudest achievements are my 可乐视频 degrees. This is the best education I could have gotten. The education I got inside and outside the classroom was simply amazing.”

Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams shared: “They told me I could not be a captain in the police department; I became a captain. They told me I couldn’t be a state senator; I became a state senator. They told me I couldn’t be the first person of color borough president; I became borough president. In three years they say I can’t be the mayor; I will be the mayor. There are only two types of Americans: those who live in Brooklyn and those who wish they could.”

During the conferral of degrees, 可乐视频 Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs William A. Tramontano called for a moment of silence to honor Jean Rovenel Joseph. Joseph, who majored in kinesiology and was anticipating graduating with his fellow students in the Class of 2018, passed away suddenly last week, stunning and saddening the entire campus community. His bachelor’s degree will be awarded posthumously.

Other distinguished guests and speakers included outgoing CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken,聽U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, and members of the 可乐视频 50th Anniversary Class of 1968, 可乐视频 Foundation Board of Trustees, and 可乐视频 Alumni Association.

Additionally, 106-year-old Ethel Lagarenne Hagquist ’32, the sole surviving member of 可乐视频’s very first graduating class, for the newest members of the 可乐视频 alumni family, providing keen advice and well wishes for the future.

For more on 可乐视频’s 2018 Commencement Ceremony, follow the hashtag #可乐视频Grad2018 on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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Hinds has spent more than two decades in the (NBA) as an athletic trainer for some of the most best known athletes in the sport. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Hinds moved to Brooklyn with his parents and five siblings at age eight. He was a member of Brooklyn Preparatory High School’s final graduating class in 1972. He earned a bachelor of science in physical education from 可乐视频 in 1977, and a master of cience in physical education from Indiana State University in 1978. He became a National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA)聽Certified Athletic Trainer in 1981.

Prior to entering the NBA, Hinds was an avid NY Knicks fan. He enjoyed a 12-year tenure at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, serving as the school’s head athletic trainer from 1980 to 1990, and director of sports medicine from 1990 through 1992. He was also an adjunct professor in the College of Charleston’s聽Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation.

Hinds was the strength-and-conditioning coach for the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic Team at the 1996 Atlanta Games. From 2001 to 2004, he served as president of the National Basketball Athletic Trainers Association Foundation (NBATA), a nonprofit charitable organization that promotes the athletic training profession and raises funds for deserving groups and charities. He currently serves as liaison between the NBATA and NATA. He is the contributing author聽to two books: Condition the NBA Way (Cadell & Davies, 1994) and Total Fitness the NBA Way (Perennial Currents, 2000).

Now聽in his 24th NBA season, Hinds spent four seasons as assistant athletic trainer and strength-and-conditioning coach, for the Atlanta Hawks; eight years as the head athletic trainer for the Dallas Mavericks; and also served as host athletic trainer for the East squad at the 2015 NBA All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden. He is entering his 14th season as head athletic trainer for the Knicks. Hinds is just the sixth head trainer in the franchise’s 70-year history, joining Jim Nevins, Don Friederichs, Bill Norris, Danny Whelan, and Mike Saunders.

In August 2009, Hinds visited his birthplace for the first time in more than 30 years, hosting a basketball training workshop for the Trinidad and Tobago Basketball Federation in Port of Spain. In 2009 and 2010, he was a guest reader for preschoolers as part of the City of Newark’s Head Start health awareness program for youth and parents. In the summers of 2010 and 2011, he traveled to Mexico City to help coordinate basketball clinics for the Eduardo Najera Foundation. In 2010, Hinds co-hosted an online Web program for the NBA/Taco Bell Light Menu Initiative, teaming with Brandon Jennings and Basketball Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo to promote the partnership between the two corporations.

Hinds is also an active 可乐视频 alumnus. Since 2016, through an alliance with the Magner Career Center, he has taken time to guide current 可乐视频 students as well as high-school seniors in the 可乐视频 Academy, and provide them with the benefit of his industry expertise through class visits, panel discussions, and career mentorship.

For the latest on Roger Hinds and his NBA experiences, follow him on .

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Much of Cramer’s work includes overseeing the print and microform collections, and online resources for the federal, New York State, and New York City governments. A librarian at the college since 1990, Cramer continues to provide statistical, demographic, and other related material from the school’s vast document archive to CUNY students, faculty, staff, grant writers, small business owners, and the broader community.

Cramer hosts one to two interns a year at the library, and with the college’s education librarian, Assistant Professor Matthew Harrick, introduces high school students to the government documents collection in a cooperative program with 可乐视频 Academy and Science, Technology, and Research (STAR) Early College High School at Erasmus. She also mentors new documents librarians and library school students, and co-chairs the (METRO) and Government Documents Special Interest Group (GoDIG).

Named in memory of Mildred Lowe, the director of the Division of Library and Information Science at St. John’s University and a tireless champion of public access to government information, the prize honors librarians who have made significant contributions to government documents librarianship, access to government information, and the encouragement of document use in New York State libraries and archives.

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The teens are students at Erasmus Hall High School and participants in the Science, Technology and Research (STAR) program, a collaboration between 可乐视频 and the New York City Department of Education. Taught by the college’s faculty, who also provide research opportunities, the students earn up to 30 college credits and receive important support and guidance to steer them toward college.

In August they volunteered for an archaeological dig at the , one of the oldest homesteads left in New York City. Supervising their work is H. Arthur Bankoff, professor of anthropology and archaeology, who also oversees and approves archaeological work for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. A good-natured man with the patience of Job, he heckles everyone to drink water while shouting instructions on how to lay out guide lines around the different excavation sites. It’s only 10 a.m., and most everyone is already sweating and gritty. More than a few are wondering out loud why they signed up in the first place. Even their biology teacher, Marcus Watson, watches over the students with a wet hand towel draped over his head. “The students are receiving hands-on experience in science and local history. It’s discovery learning at its best,” he says.

Watson is finishing his Ph.D. in archaeology by writing his dissertation on the Lott House excavation, which helps him understand both the tediousness of the work the students are doing and the joy they will experience if they find something that will reveal the past. 聽The work is hard but it’s clear that every student is bent on discovering the well and what may be inside.

Watching the students begin to dig in the four trenches they will be working in for the next two weeks, Bankoff says, “What we find in the well will be more important than the well itself. Previous digs at the house have revealed almost 300 years of the Lotts’ everyday life. The house was little more than a lean-to when it was built in 1719. By 1792, with the family’s wealth and social standing on the rise, a slightly grander addition was constructed. The property, once comprising 200 acres of farmland stretching from Kings Highway to Jamaica Bay, has now been reduced to a single acre in the middle of Marine Park.

“When I heard about doing this, it sounded like a lot of work,” admits Tarik Smith, a junior. “Then I started reading about what archaeologists find, and it sounded like fun.”

By the fifth day, the trenches are deep enough for students to rest their back against the sides. After hours of sifting dirt through fine screens, they have excavated toy soldiers, a silver quarter, a clay pipe and a small stone wall that may have been a rock garden. But no well.

Ben Christiansen, one of five 可乐视频 students helping to supervise, watches the teenagers unearth a large flat stone. They’re at the point in an archaeological dig when picks are traded for spades and brushes. “The whole experience has made the students in my team realize how long New York City has been around,” says Christiansen.

Later that day, the stone begins turning into something more substantial. When sophomore Enrique Spencer first hit the stone, he admits he thought, “Shoot, now I’m going to have to keep digging.” But the stone and several others around it were too perfectly placed to be natural; it had to be the well. Everyone stops what they’re doing and stares down at the stones capping something round. “I didn’t think about work after that. I just felt proud,” Spencer says.

A round hole is revealed once the top stones are lifted. Bankoff has his doubts, but Watson holds out hope. By the end of the day, the men are convinced it’s not the well but a cistern, a receptacle for water. They measure the depth and find it is not as deep as a well would need to be, and an old clay pipe jutting from one side would have siphoned any water away. None of this seems to matter much to the students.

On the last day the students will spend at the Lott House, Bankoff hunkers in the ditch watching two of his former doctoral students, now archaeological consultants, poking around the hole, exploring what the cistern is made of and trying to see what is at the bottom by taking photos with a long lens. The teenagers ring the pit, listening.

“Well, the capstones are from Manhattan,” one of the consultants says.

“So how did they get here?” Bankoff asks. “What was being built at the time? The Brooklyn Bridge?”

“The Atlantic Avenue train tunnel,” the other consultant ventures.

Spencer and Smith lean in close. “Maybe it’s where they hid slaves,” Smith says, referring to the theory that the house was part of the Underground Railroad.

Bankoff looks up at him and smiles. “We couldn’t even fit you in there, and you’re thin.”

“Yeah,” Smith admits. “Still.”

Bankoff and the consultants continue to scrap around the cistern while the students are instructed by Watson to begin filling in the trenches they had so carefully excavated the last two weeks. The toy soldiers, the coin, the bit of clay pipe and the cistern capstones will be taken back to the college’s archeological lab, where the students will spend their final week documenting the finds and learning how to properly store the artifacts. When asked, almost all think the well was somewhere near their individual trenches, perhaps underneath the collapsing garage 鈥� the last remaining modern structure on the property. The archeologists have to wait until the city tears down the garage to see if that’s true, but in the meantime, some of the students are talking about coming back next year.

“I had to take two buses and two trains to get here every day, and I learned to be responsible to show up and help out with everyone else,” says junior Darnell Bent. “Finding what we did made everything we went through worth it. Finding the well next time 鈥� that’s what I want to do.”

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This year, out of the 19 students accepted into the program, nearly half call 可乐视频 home. Andrew Akcelik, Shane Brown, Monhazul Islam, Rahmia Nayeem, Abdul Rehman, Bhanu Seth, Dawn Springer and Robin Varughese have all enrolled in EME this summer.

As one of the four academic medical centers in the SUNY system, Downstate hosts the colleges of Medicine,聽Nursing and聽Health Related Professions as well as a School of Graduate Studies and a 376-bed teaching hospital, the University Hospital of Brooklyn, with full facilities.

“The program is building in content that鈥檚 closer and closer to what students will experience in medical school, so the transition is not so traumatic,” says Steven Silbering, director of pre-health professions advisement at 可乐视频. Silbering serves as a guide for both potential students and those enrolled, and his work includes penning individual letters of recommendation.

Once accepted, each student must maintain a minimum science GPA of 3.00 as well as a non-science GPA of 3.20 and receive an acceptable score on the Medical College Admissions Test. The program consists of three summer sessions, two four-week sessions and a final six-week session during which students live at the college. There are no costs for the program other than books and supplies and, upon completion, the student is guaranteed acceptance into SUNY Downstate’s College of Medicine.

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