The Cougar's Byte

Issue date: 6/18/07 Section: Campus News

On June 7, 2007, sponsors, faculty and staff, special guests and students attended the 10th Annual Gala. Harwood Arena looked drastically different as guests walked into the amazingly transformed building for the night's event. This year's theme was "Cougars of the Caribbean", and as soon as you walked through the door the room was hypnotizing as it had low blue lighting, walls lined with tapestry with vivid pirate images of ships and treasures on it, mist that lined the balcony stage that resembled a ship and the aura of the Caribbean all around.

The event started at 5:30 p.m. with cocktails, while people arrived, socialized, tasted some of the delicious appetizers and were entertained by people, who in the spirit of the theme, were dressed in traditional pirate costumes with pirate hats and plastic swords. At 7:15pm the dinner and dancing portion of the evening began as guests began taking their seats at the carefully decorated tables, which each had a beautiful glass centerpiece filled with shells and sand.

The evening festivities officially began when Doug Nelson, President of the Kean University Foundation, began his introduction speech. He welcomed everyone to the Gala and in traditional Kean manner he expressed a great amount of pride for Kean and all of its' accomplishments. He also encouraged the crowd to give applause for the Kean baseball team and their recent victory as the 2007 NCAA Division III Baseball National Champions.

Of course no event as important as this would be complete without words from the President of Kean University, Dr. Dawood Farahi. He explained the importance funding scholarships for students and stressed the importance of public higher education and generosity. He reflected on his own college experience by saying, so many college students would never have had the opportunity to go to college had it not been for someone they did not know providing money for scholarships. Some statistics he gave to the audience included there are more than 250 scholarships given out to students and 90% of students work to pay their tuition and benefit from all of the sponsors who have it in their hearts to give to Kean.

The evening was filled with speeches from past Gala honorees such as Don Conklin, last year's recipient, Ann Evans Estabrook, Rob Wood, and Jim Hynes, just to name a few. The Gala this year did not have a person selected as an honoree, but it did honor Kean and its 10 year anniversary as a University. John Kean was a special guest at the gala who took the time to speak about the recent partnership between Kean University and Liberty Hall, an essential part of his family history that he is now giving Kean access to.

The night was special for all, including Kean at Ocean County College student, Maureen McCarroll-Scullion, Elementary Education MS major, whose first visit to Kean was for the Gala and who will be attending classes at the Union campus in January. "This is my first time at this campus and it is breath taking", she said about her experience at the gala.

A beautiful night filled with lots of laughs, thankfulness and Cougar pride ended with Kean's very own, alumnae and singer, Jennifer Vaughn singing classic songs with a band which made everyone put their dancing shoes to work. As the night ended, one thing was crystal clear; this ship, known as Kean University, won't be sinking anytime soon as long as sponsors, alumni, and Kean faculty care enough to make sure students have the financial resources to achieve their dreams and goals at Kean.

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