Guest column | Art Casciato

Hello, I must be going.

Thus Groucho Marx, who knew better than even cousin Karl that every statement turns into its opposite, that all that's solid melts into air.

And so - after two years as the first house dean of Harrison College House followed by seven as the first director of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships - hello becomes goodbye and poof! - I'm gone.

Maybe not as mysteriously as Lee Stetson or as unexpectedly as Joanne McCarthy or as significantly as Michael "We Hardly Knew Ye" Dyson and Elijah Anderson or as irreplaceably as Fran Dunphy, but as surely as all of these, I'm gone as gone can be.

To Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey: What gives with that?

Nothing very terrible or even surprising, not to those who know me.

I leave behind many wonderful friends - faculty Max, Mike, Jorge, Gieg, Janet, Richard, Andy, Dan, Ted, Nick and my pal Al; staff and administrators Peggy, Pat, Karlene, Bonnie, Julie, Krimo, Sharon, Leah, Jim, Greg and Eric; facilities and maintenance workers Joe, Danny, Gary, Steve, Dick, Ray, James, Lanier, Theresa, Athena and Calvin - these will have to stand in for all the others.

But, tell you the truth, when my old buddy Dunph moved on to Temple, I figured I wasn't long for Locust Walk. Without coach around, Penn didn't seem as much like home and strange to say, such things matter to me.

There were other losses.

My rabbi and goombah Peter Conn passed over for provost; David Brownlee, another friend and mentor, went back to his department; John Richetti, the Champ himself, retired on me - all these were body blows.

So now felt as good a time as any to move on, and the opportunity the good people up at Rutgers offered me was one I've come to relish: To help a Scarlet Knight or two to win a fellowship just as I had helped more than a few Quakers win a Rhodes or Marshall. Lipika Goyal, Ari Alexander, Adam Zimbler, David Ferreira, Harveen Bal, Gabe Mandujano, Aziza Zakhidova, Brett Shaheen - a young feller couldn't wish for better references than these.

I wouldn't have my new job if it weren't for all these Penn alums, and I thank them every one.

At Rutgers I face a challenge not very different than the one I found at Penn. No Rutgers student has won a Rhodes since 1994, and not one has been honored by Marshall recently either.

In 2000 when CURF began, no Penn student had been named a Rhodes for ten years, and only three of them had ever been selected as a Marshall since the award was established in 1953.

During my seven years as Fellowship Director, the distinguished Penn grads listed above won a total of three Rhodeses and five Marshalls.

I'm very proud of that. If Rutgers students do half so well on my watch, I'm pretty sure I get to be mayor of Piscataway.

Advice as I go out the door?

Find a grad program, at home or abroad, that makes sense for you, and then apply to every fellowship that will get you there. To paraphrase the poet William Carlos Williams, I wrote this to say good-bye to you, but you still have to try hard.

What else might be my legacy to Penn?

In Harrison College House some might remember that Cafe Prima was mine, even its name. There's CURF, the crazy little office that gets big things done, left in the able hands of Harriet Joseph and Cheryl Shipman. I miss them both.

And yes, lest someone forget, I've also given Penn the smartest and best director of critical writing that any university could ever hope to have.

As for fellowships, I didn't leave the cupboard bare. Steven Danley will try Rhodes and Marshall again and Joyce Meng and many others I could name are capable of winning big.

But, I have to tell you, this old horseplayer likes his chances up at Rutgers, too. Better watch out for me and mine. I've got myself some real nice runners ready to stretch out and reach for ground along the Raritan. I may be gone but not that far away.

President Gutmann gave me a bon voyage bottle I'm waiting to open mid-November when a Penn or Rutgers student (or both) wins a Marshall or Rhodes.

And when they do, I know my toast already: Many are deserving; few are chosen.

See you on the short line, friends.

Art Casciato is director of external fellowships and postgraduate guidance at Rutgers. His e-mail is casciato@oldqueens.rutgers.edu. He'll be teaching his Critical-Writing seminar, Something About a Horse, at Penn in the spring.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.