STATEWIDE — The Star-Ledger’s giant cover story for today is a different sort of scandal than usual New Jersey fodder. The newspaper is blaring that Rutgers University’s student association — which is funded by mandatory activity fees charged to all undergraduates — paid “Snooki” from the reality TV show “Jersey Shore” $32,000 for a Q&A session at the school Thursday night.
That amount could pay for a student’s tuition, room, and board at Rutgers for a year and a half (not including the aforementioned annual activity fees)…or fund the town of Hoboken for three hours, based on the recently introduced $101.7 million budget.
In contrast, Rutgers is paying poet Toni Morrison $30,000 to give the university’s commencement speech at graduation in May.
“Snooki,” a.k.a. Nicole Polizzi, hosted two question-and-answer sessions, at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. They drew crowds of more than 500 people.
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