Every year, students broadcast dozens of Fordham sporting events on WFUV (90.7 FM, wfuv.org). And each live broadcast—from football to basketball, water polo, softball, and beyond—requires the work of a team of on-air talent, behind-the-scenes producers, studio hosts, and more.

It’s an experience that has helped launch countless careers since 1947, when the station was founded. That fall, a Fordham junior and future Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, called the Fordham-Georgetown football game “by Western Union wire, some three hundred miles from the actual scene,” he wrote in The Fordham Ram, providing a sense of the way “a quiet radio studio in Keating Hall” was “transformed into a beehive of activity, where at least ten men scurry busily but without sound to the staccato beat of the telegrapher’s key.”

Since then, the technology has changed but the character of the experience is pretty much the same. And the WFUV sports legacy has grown to include Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, voice of the Yankees; Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, voice of the Knicks; Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, voice of the Nets; Dan D’Uva, FCRH ’09, voice of the Vegas Golden Knights; and Tony Reali, FCRH ’00, host of Around the Horn on ESPN, among others.

“It’s incredible,” said Julia Moss, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2023 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public media at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “Words could never do it justice, what WFUV does just to get you prepared for the real world. Specifically in New York, people look for WFUV on resumes—for good reason.”

For students like John Warner, a junior in the Gabelli School of Business, being part of a broadcast crew is a dream come true.

“I was that kid when I was very little, playing fake announcer in my head while running around with a football or running around with a Wiffle ball,” he said with a smile. “Being able to do that at the level WFUV allows us to, it’s pretty amazing.”

In October, Fordham Magazine joined Warner and his fellow WFUV crew members for the annual Homecoming game at Rose Hill, when Fordham football rallied for a last-second victory against Lehigh. Here’s a glimpse of what the experience was like behind the airwaves.

10:31 a.m. The station, located in the basement of Keating Hall, begins to fill with students who are a part of the gameday crew, which is supervised by Bobby Ciafardini, sports director for WFUV.

Will Tallant, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and the on-site producer for the game, packs the broadcast kit—headsets, microphones, and other pieces of equipment—before he and play-by-play announcer Lou Orlando, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and color analyst Brian Rabacs, a senior in the Gabelli School of Business, head across Constitution Row to the broadcast booth at Moglia Stadium. It’s a wet walk, with a steady rain coming down.

10:52 a.m. Julia Moss, the game’s studio producer, gets settled behind the board in Studio 2. “When I’m producing, I make sure [the broadcast] is going, the highlights are going, the engineering is going,” says Moss, who is also the sports manager for the station.

There’s an additional challenge this morning: Some members of the WFUV sports staff are in the main sports studio to pretape interviews for One on One, New York’s longest-running sports call-in show. That means that while the microphones are live, Moss and her gameday crew need to find creative ways to communicate with each other without making a sound.

“We do a lot of nonverbal cues—like your highlights,” she explains, gesturing to Warner, who will be hosting the halftime and postgame shows that day. “I always count him down, ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1,’” she says, “but [only] with hand signals.”

“We also go on Snapchat—black screen—and then type something and make it bigger,” she says, showing how she holds her phone up over the board to communicate with Warner and Chris Carrino, the update anchor, a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill—and the son of Brooklyn Nets broadcaster Chris Carrino, who got his professional start at WFUV in the late 1980s.

Working as a Team

11:32 a.m. Orlando and Rabacs, who had already called at least five games together in 2023, go over their notes for the broadcast. “I think it helps a lot—having the same crew together, you can kind of feel each other out, know what each other’s tendencies are,” Rabacs says. “Also, Lou and I are very close friends.”

Earlier in the week, Orlando had finished his “boards,” where he keeps details about each team to reference during the broadcast. But as he starts to lay them out, he realizes that the spot where he usually keeps them is wet, as the window in the booth was slightly open to allow for the broadcast team’s “crowd mic” to capture the sounds of the fans.

He decides that taping the boards to the booth’s wall is the best solution to keep them dry.

12:07 p.m. Back in the studio, Moss and Crinieri go through all the pieces they’ll need for the broadcast. There’s a pregame interview with Fordham coach Joe Conlin, for example, spot promos for the station that feature alumni like NBA Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, and graphics for the station’s YouTube stream.

“I’m kind of like the glue that holds the production together,” Crinieri, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, says laughing. “If there’s a problem with the highlights, I go and help. If there’s something wrong with the Tieline, I’m in communication with the on-site producer to try and help any way I can.”

12:24 p.m. With the rain pouring down, the Tieline—the device used to connect the booth at Moglia Stadium to the main studio—goes down, and Crinieri’s help is needed.

After a few minutes of adjusting the connection, and a retest, Tallant says they’re ready to go again. “Now I’m making sure all the right buttons are pressed, the right levels are adjusted where they need to be,” he says as he turns the broadcasters’ microphones back off following the test. “So, they sound good. And they sound good in the studio as well.”

After troubleshooting the situation, Crinieri discusses a backup plan with Moss. If the line goes down again, the broadcasters would call into the studio on their phones.

And We’re Live!

12:51 p.m. Crinieri checks in on the student trainees who are in the studio to cut audio highlights of big plays during the game. Some of those clips will be played on the air during the halftime and postgame shows.

Moments later, Moss officially “takes over the station” from WFUV DJ Delphine Blue by playing the prerecorded intro to the Fordham football pregame show, hosted by Rabacs and Orlando.

1:31 p.m. As the first quarter wraps up with Lehigh holding a 7-0 lead, Orlando and Rabacs send the broadcast back to the studio for a “scoreboard update.” For Carrino, that means highlighting scores from around college football—and other sports—in a minute or so.

It’s a tight window to fit in all the scores he wants to share, so after the update, he works with Warner to remove a few games from the list for the next update.

1:43 p.m. The game had started slow for Fordham, with rain-soaked conditions making it hard for the offense to get going, but with 12 minutes left in the half, quarterback CJ Montes runs the ball in from the 4-yard line for the Rams’ first touchdown of the day, tying the game at 7.

For the studio crew, that means cutting the first Fordham highlight of the day. The live broadcast is fed into two computers in the newsroom, and trainees, under Crinieri’s supervision, are responsible for capturing that piece of the recording and saving it as a new audio file.

2:13 p.m. With halftime approaching, Moss checks in with Warner to confirm the highlights she has ready. “It’s super collaborative because I have to make sure [the team knows] what I’m putting in here,” she says, gesturing to the audio board. “He has to narrate it and then I play it, so we’re constantly making sure the script is exactly the order that I have.”

Warner, meanwhile, has spent the game tracking plays and writing notes about some of the big moments in order to host the halftime show. “As those come in, I’m simultaneously writing one- to two-sentence scripts,” he says. “It’s fun too because it’s an opportunity to insert a little bit of your personality.”

A Walk-Off Win

4:03 p.m. With just about 11 minutes to go in the game, Fordham trails by 11 points in front of a resilient Homecoming crowd that has been cheering on the Rams through hours of pouring rain. But now, as the rain eases up, the Fordham offense really turns it on.

First, CJ Montes throws a 14-yard touchdown pass to MJ Wright. Next, Brandon Peskin kicks a field goal to tie the game at 35. With less than a minute to go, the Rams get the ball back and drive 62 yards on seven plays, including an 11-yard reception by Garrett Cody, who goes out of bounds with one second on the clock.

“Fordham and Lehigh tied at 35, Fordham looking for their first conference win of the season,” Orlando tells listeners as Peskin returns to the field to attempt the game-winning kick. “Forty-four yards out, the kick from Peskin—it’s up, it’s through the uprights! Fordham wins 38-35, Brandon Peskin the hero in the final second!”

As Orlando’s voice crescendos in the booth, fans cheer in the stands, and the Rams rush Peskin on the field before heading to the Victory Bell in front of the Rose Hill Gym to celebrate their Homecoming win.

Shackil said that he had been told earlier in the year to keep the weekend free to potentially fill in for the broadcast, but the news came as a surprise to Berbari.

“I was at WFAN about a month before just doing a regular shift, and I went to talk to one of my bosses—I thought it was going to be a five-minute-long catchup,” he said, laughing. “Then they asked me if I had ever been to Pittsburgh. … I walked out of it like, ‘Wow, I’m going to be doing the series with Justin.’”

From Mentee to Co-Broadcaster

While this was the first time the two teamed up for a broadcast, their relationship goes back to 2017, when Berbari was just a first-year student at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, and he sent broadcasting tapes to Shackil for feedback.

“There’s a particular sort of pride that I’ve had watching him flourish in these roles at a young age,” Shackil said, “and then to share a booth that is at a really high level—it was really comfortable, because I’ve known about Emmanuel’s work, his cadence and rhythm, so there was no easing-in period. And we’re cut from the same cloth: WFUV.”

The WFUV Legacy

Both Shackil and Berbari said that their approach to calling games stems from Marty Glickman, the famous Knicks, Jets, and Giants broadcaster who became an advisor to WFUV Sports in the late 1980s. Glickman brought on Bob Ahrens, who became WFUV’s first full-time executive sports director and carried on his teachings.

“Consider the listener—that’s a Marty Glickman credo,” Berbari said. “I try to put myself in the seat of the one person that could be driving on the highway listening, and what do they need to know in this moment?”

Shackil said that he draws on lessons he learned from Ahrens.

“I’m really all about the fundamentals of describe, describe, describe, because our job is to inform and educate, and at the same time, entertain as best we can,” he said.

Working for the Yankees

Even when they’re not calling the games, both are involved with Yankees broadcasts. Shackil, who is the backup play-by-announcer, hosts the postgame show on the radio and fills in on the YES Network, in addition to calling boxing matches and hosting a podcast with legendary Yankees pitcher and announcer David Cone. Berbari fills in on the postgame when Shackil is calling the games, in addition to working on-air at WFAN and calling games for Siena College.

Both said that it’s been incredible to work with and learn from Sterling and Waldman.

“John, at 85 years of age, the energy stands out above everything—he’s so passionate,” Shackil said. “For Suzyn, she’s a Radio Hall of Famer, she’s a reporter at heart, she’s probably the best reporter in the Yankee sandbox—just the way she approaches the job is unmatched.”

Berbari and Shackil said that the opportunity to fill in for those legendary broadcasters—and work with each other—was an incredible experience.

“I kept thinking about how rare something like that is—not only getting to work with Justin—but I was thinking for us both in this booth, at the same time, at this level, what are the odds of that happening?” Berbari said.

“What does it mean to work to convey to software engineers how to understand and reduce bias? How do you bring a social justice ethos or cura personalis into your work life?” asked Lauri Goldkind, Ph.D. an associate professor in the Graduate School of Social Service.

These are the kinds of questions she hopes to focus on through Fordham’s membership in the Public Interest Technology University Network.

Working with Jesse Baldwin-Philippi, Ph.D., associate professor of communications and media studies, and Vice Provost Jonathan Crystal, Ph.D., Goldkind pursued a connection to the group, which welcomed Fordham as a full member this month.

Ethics and the User Experience

Fordham students are already focusing on the human aspects of their work in the digital space.

One example Baldwin-Philippi gave is the User Experience Design: Design for Empowerment course, offered as part of the New Media and Digital Design major.

The course focuses on how human-centered design and participatory design methods can be used when creating websites and email campaigns.

“It’s not just trying to get people to do everything but click the unsubscribe button, which is bad practice and bad ethics. It’s about designing privacy notices that actually inform people rather than trick them into giving up their data,” said Baldwin-Philippi.

“There are people who are dedicated to thinking through both what an actual, legally binding opt-in policy looks like, and also what user experience design looks like.”

A More Just Tech Ecosystem

The course is one example of the ways that Fordham students can learn how to ensure that technology is harnessed for good. It’s part of a growing field known as “public interest technology.”

The field is the focus of the Public Interest Technology University Network, which brings 59 universities and foundations together to answer the question ‘What does a more just tech ecosystem look like?’

Goldkind said the field is similar to the focus on justice in law education.

“Many schools have public interest-facing law that is oriented around social justice, the legal process, and equity and access,” she said.

“This is the same paradigm applied, broadly speaking, to the digital sector. So it’s addressing everything from government institutions and making more equitable public policy around technology to how to make the corporate sector in the tech space more equitable, inclusive, and open.”

Opportunities for Faculty Grants and Research

Goldkind said the most immediate benefit to membership in the Public Interest Technology University Network is that it opens doors to faculty for research and teaching grants. In her own research, for instance, Goldkind has extensively explored the role that artificial intelligence can play in social work.

Building New Tech-Ethics Courses Across Disciplines

The network also offers a different spin on interdisciplinary teamwork, both for faculty research and student engagement. Goldkind said grants offered through the network could be used to build courses that tap into multiple disciplines.

“What it means is that we could work with someone in say, the department of computer and information sciences, or information systems at the Gabelli School of Business, on a course that cuts across majors and minors and focuses on tech ethics,” she said.

The new membership is an opportunity, Goldkind said, to focus on ethical questions across sectors, and potentially in areas where they “hadn’t been previously thought about.”

In the newsroom, Maya Sargent, a graduate fellow from Fordham’s public media program, sat at a computer editing What’s What, the station’s daily news podcast on current events, cultural news, and issues affecting the New York City area. Down a few seats, Sam Davis, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, chatted with Bobby Ciafardini, the station’s sports director, about the guests they’d feature on One on One, the city’s longest-running sports call-in show. A few hours earlier, Jim O’Hara, FCRH ’99, associate director of technical operations, met with several students who would document the next day’s recording session with beabadoobee, a Filipina British artist, in the station’s intimate Studio A setting.

Elsewhere, Rich McLaughlin, FCRH ’01, GABELLI ’10, the station’s program director, met with General Manager Chuck Singleton to review the rundown for the station’s On the Record event, which would take place the following week. And music director Russ Borris was finalizing details for the station’s annual Holiday Cheer concert—a lineup headlined by venerable indie rockers Spoon and featuring Lucius, Grammy-winning blues prodigy Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and the Brooklyn-based band Say She She.

But afternoon drive host Dennis Elsas tuned all of that out when he stepped up to the microphone in Studio 1. “That is Beck and ‘Loser’ from 1994. And new before that: Arctic Monkeys, ‘I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am’—here at WFUV,” Elsas said, then quipped “I’m here!” with comic timing and a smile that traveled hundreds of miles across the airwaves. He cued up the next song, and as he hit play, said, “Member-supported and supporting each other, it’s WFUV.”

It’s the kind of scene that has played out, almost hidden from sight, in Keating Hall on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus for more than 75 years. Before Dennis Elsas, there was Pete Fornatale, FCRH ’67, who created the station’s first pop music show as an undergrad in 1964. Before Sam Davis, there was Malcolm Moran, FCRH ’75, who launched One on One as a student and went on to become a Hall of Fame basketball journalist; and there was Vin Scully, FCRH ’49, the late, legendary baseball broadcaster who was among WFUV’s original voices. Before Maya Sargent, there was Alice Gainer, FCRH ’04, the Emmy Award–winning anchor and reporter at WCBS-TV, New York; and Charles Osgood, FCRH ’54, former longtime host of CBS Sunday Morning.

A Unique Beginning

“1947 was quite a year,” Fordham Provost Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., told the crowd of more than 200 attendees at WFUV’s On the Record event, held November 2 on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. “Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and the transistor was invented. And at Rose Hill, New York’s first noncommercial, educational FM station signed on the airwaves. The University’s 25th president, Robert Gannon, S.J., remarked that ‘Fordham in her time has seen many beginnings. Today, we mark a beginning that is unique.’”

In mid-October, the University’s recently installed 33rd president, Tania Tetlow—who had her own unique beginning at Fordham as the first woman and first layperson to lead the institution—stood onstage in front of Walsh Family Library. “We’re here to celebrate 75 years of WFUV, the coolest thing about Fordham University,” she said during a station-organized concert that was part of the inauguration festivities. The station still trains “students who are learning journalism and sports broadcasting and everything about the industry,” and now, in addition to serving the city, it reaches “300,000 listeners in all 50 states—Idaho and Hawaii listen to WFUV—and we’re just so proud of what it is.”

Throughout its 75-year history, many things have changed. For starters, in the mid-1980s, the station became a professionally run NPR affiliate, with ample training and broadcast opportunities for students. Darren DeVivo, GABELLI ’87, now the station’s Saturday afternoon and weeknight host, was working at the station as a Fordham undergraduate at that time.

“When I got here, there was a general manager who was a paid Fordham employee. We had a chief engineer who was a paid employee from Fordham, and everyone else was students—program director, news director, music director, all student-run,” he said. “If you had some skills or had some abilities, you worked your way up.”

In 1985, Ralph Jennings, Ph.D., was hired as the station’s general manager. He brought a fresh vision to the station, working to create an authentic sound, filled with more consistent, impactful programming that would attract an audience and help the station receive financial assistance to support its growth.

“You’re bringing change to what had been a college station—there’s a mix of responses to that,” said Singleton, who started as the station’s first professional news director in 1987 and later served as program director before succeeding Jennings as general manager in 2011. “I think for a lot of alums and students at the time, there was a fear that the students would just be swept out.

But Singleton, who expanded WFUV’s coverage of community issues and helped develop its robust news journalism training program, said that WFUV strived to employ a different model. “It’s not the pure student station, it’s not the pure professional public station: It’s a professional, public station with a lot of public service impact, but one where students are a core part of this. And those opportunities [for students] are really core to the station’s mission.”

In the late 1980s, there was also a shift overall in the field of radio, according to Singleton. “You couldn’t offer a little bit of this and a little bit of that—it wouldn’t get you anywhere,” he said. “So there was new understanding that for a public radio station to attract a loyal audience, you had to be consistent in what you were offering.” Jennings and his team studied the market and found “holes that we could fill,” Singleton said, and at the time, that was primarily singer-songwriters in an “acoustic vein.”

“That format—by the early ’90s—I think it was the first sparks of what it is that we have today,” Singleton said. He noted that these efforts, in addition to technological advances like internet streaming, have paid off and allowed the station to expand its reach: WFUV went from having around 30,000 to 50,000 listeners a week in the 1980s to around 325,000 a week today. At times, the station has reached as many as 450,000 listeners.

Today, staff and students at WFUV are using new platforms like TikTok and podcasts to reach audiences beyond the radio dial. The station’s studios have even moved—from the third floor of Keating Hall to bigger, state-of-the-art studios on the lower level of the Rose Hill campus’ signature academic building. But despite all of its iterations and evolutions, WFUV’s mission and goals have remained consistent—to be a home of music discovery in New York; to be a training ground for the next generation of journalists, broadcasters, and behind-the-scenes wizards; and to provide the community with significant public service.

Home of Music Discovery

Throughout its history, WFUV has played a variety of music—from opera and jazz in its early decades to rock in the ’60s and ’70s. But it really found its place more than a quarter century ago, as commercial radio stations began making their playlists “tighter and tighter,” according to Singleton. That left less space for DJs “who had done great creative work”—FM rock pioneers like Dennis Elsas, Vin Scelsa, Pete Fornatale, and Meg Griffin, he said. Elsas, whose legendary career has included a famous two-hour in-depth interview with John Lennon of the Beatles, said that shift came for him after working in commercial radio for more than 25 years. More and more “shock jocks” were coming in and classic rock DJs like himself were being phased out. When he heard about an opening at WFUV in 2000, he jumped at the chance.

“I felt at times challenged because while I was playing a lot of music that I was very familiar with, I was also learning on the job because we were digging way deeper into blues and some more esoteric music,” he said, adding that this allowed him to “expand my musical horizons even further.”

Elsas said that he believes the station’s tagline—Music Discovery Starts Here—fits its work in more ways than one. “You could discover new music, which you couldn’t necessarily find on any other station on the market, and I think it also gave us the opportunity to say you could rediscover old favorites,” he said, adding that he’s had his own discoveries at WFUV, including the pleasure of working with and mentoring students.

DeVivo said that he personally has enjoyed finding new music and sharing it with his audience. “A band like the Jayhawks is a good example, [or] singer–songwriter Freedy Johnston—I remember the day that the album came in, and I put it in and go, ‘Holy smokes! Why don’t we hear this on whatever commercial rock station, because these guys are great,’” he said.

WFUV’s national reputation as a home for music discovery can be traced to Rita Houston, who delighted in introducing listeners to artists from a wide range of genres—folk, blues, indie rock, hip-hop, electronica, and more—and who came to be regarded not only as a tastemaker in the industry but also a trusted mentor and friend to the stars.

For more than 25 years at the station, in her roles as a DJ, music director, and program director—and with her unerring ear for talent—Houston helped elevate the careers of countless artists, including Norah Jones, Brandi Carlile, and Mumford and Sons. When Houston died of ovarian cancer in 2020 at age 59, Carlile recalled how Houston was “the very first person to play my music on the radio.” She also helped Carlile feel accepted and welcome as a fellow LGBTQ woman. Carlile recalled a time when she was showing Houston photos, and a picture of her girlfriend popped up on her phone.

“‘Is that your plus one?’” Houston asked. “‘It’s OK to talk about it.’ She could immediately tell that I was uneasy with people in the music business knowing I was gay,” said Carlile, who was 22 years old at the time.

But Houston, who joined WFUV in the mid-1990s, didn’t stop at artists. She also helped launch the careers of WFUV employees, including McLaughlin, who succeeded her as program director, and Alisa Ali, PCS’14, the station’s midday host, who has helped carry forward Houston’s passion for supporting artists, particularly local musicians.

Houston is the reason Ali came to WFUV—and Fordham—in the first place. She was listening to WFUV, thinking about how she’d love to work there, when she heard Houston say that she was going to give a talk at the Museum of Television & Radio.

“And like any naive person, I was like, ‘I’ll just go see Rita and ask her if I could get a job there and she’ll give it to me,’” she said. So Ali went to Houston’s talk and waited around to chat with her after. “And I’m like, ‘Hi, I love the station. Can I work here?’” she said, smiling at the memory. “She’s like, ‘That’s cute. No, of course you can’t. You have no experience.’”

Ali said that Houston paused and asked her if she was a Fordham student, which was “the only way you could work at FUV” without having any experience in radio.

“I went home and looked up ‘how do you enroll in Fordham University?’” she said. “I was kind of at a crossroads in my life because I didn’t really like what I was doing. And since I never graduated college, I was like, ‘Well if I don’t get a job at WFUV, at least I’ll have a college education.’

“The day after I was accepted, I came back to the station. I was like, ‘Hi, remember me from the talk? I go to school here now. May I have a job now?’” Ali said. “[Houston] was like, ‘All right, kid. I like you. You remind me a lot of myself.’”

At that point, Houston was the midday host and music director, and Ali became a production assistant. She worked her way up to morning show producer and then host of The Alternate Side, which allowed her to discover and play new artists. More recently, as the midday host, she created a segment called “NY Slice,” which features local musicians from the tristate area.

“In New York City, we have so many opportunities to see huge bands, and I think a lot of these little bands get overshadowed,” she said, describing how she came up with the idea for the segment. “Local bands actually have it easier outside of New York City—it’s a disadvantage to be a local, small band in New York City. So I just want to support these people.”

That support has helped artists including Rén with the Mane and Blonde Otter. The two bands were featured on “NY Slice” and later chosen to perform at the October concert following the inauguration of Tania Tetlow. “I love you, Alisa Ali!” Rénee Orshan, the artist behind Rén with the Mane, said from the stage that night, adding that Ali and WFUV are the “only radio station” to play their music.

The concert also featured New Orleans’ legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which has been celebrating its 60th anniversary with a national tour. The group marched down Old Elm Road with the horn section playing the gospel classic “I’ll Fly Away.” As they reached the stage, Tetlow, who grew up in New Orleans, added her own soaring voice to the mix to the delight of the crowd. She later said she was grateful to WFUV and to all the performers for helping her “feel at home here at Fordham.”

Greater Connection to the Artists

The inauguration concert was a prime example of WFUV tying its penchant for music discovery to its commitment to live music. O’Hara estimated that in a typical year, the station hosts about 200 sessions in Studio A and 20 to 30 live concerts and performances at venues throughout the New York City area.

“Live music really gives you a good insight [into]who the artist is,” O’Hara said. “You really get to understand a lot about them by hearing them perform their songs live,” and then listening to a WFUV host interview them in the studio. “It really presents a greater connection to the artists. I think that’s a great thing that we provide to our listeners.”

One of his most memorable sessions came in 2017, when Gorillaz, the Damon Albarn–led British band that doesn’t do a lot of live appearances, reached out to bring their “huge, full-scale tour” to Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. “When we first took the phone call about this, I was like, ‘Well, there’s no way this is going to happen,’” he said, laughing. “Along the way, I was expecting any one of a number of issues to be the deal breaker.” But those issues, ranging from bringing semi-tractor trailers onto campus to hooking up the band’s equipment to the building’s main power source, didn’t stand in their way. The session was a go.

“It was literally an all-day process—we got here, I think it was 7 a.m., and we didn’t leave until like 8 or 9 p.m.,” O’Hara said. “They took over the entire station. They brought the entire tour, what they would bring into Madison Square Garden. And I had just an assembly line of students, working the elevator out there, bringing stuff in, bringing cases back out. I think there had to be 30 members of their team. Every studio was filled up with something.”

But O’Hara said the takeover was absolutely worth it. “It was unique content—we were the one station that got to do that, so it was affirming as to who we are in the industry that we were offered that and were able to accomplish it,” he said. “It was just a really great source of pride for me.”

While Fordham students Allen Wang and Caitria Demeroto weren’t at WFUV for the Gorillaz performance, they’ve gotten their share of hands-on opportunities. The studio sessions typically range from two to four hours and include up to 10 students working on the production—three to four audio engineers, four to five videographers, and usually a few trainees—while the live performances at city venues also call for a mix of students and external contractors.

“There was a show for Phoebe Bridgers at Forest Hills Stadium, which is actually in the neighborhood I grew up in,” said Wang, a junior in the Gabelli School of Business. “So to go and be part of the backstage team, it was a very fulfilling experience. It was also really insightful to see how larger productions work in terms of production teams and sub crews and what their day is like.”

Demeroto, a Fordham College at Rose Hill junior, said she really enjoys the personal, intimate setting of Studio A, where she shot video of the session featuring Gang of Youths, an Australian alternative rock group.

“I think it’s just really authentic—and you feel very close,” she said. “And it definitely is a different sound than a recording. It’s so cool to see them, without any editing yet, and how they interact in their creative process—actually capturing that on camera is really great.”

Launching Pad for Success

Paul Cavalconte, FCRH ’83, a longtime radio host, got his start as a Fordham undergraduate at WFUV before his career took him to WQXR, WNEW, and Q104.3. He came back to WFUV as a guest host in 2013.

“I owe my radio career to 90.7 FM,” he said from the stage of the inauguration concert last fall. “And this is a very, very proud moment for us. We have a unique training program in sports and journalism—some of the most famous voices in media have come through Keating Hall and out into the airwaves of the world.”

That’s a credit to the hands-on training the students receive at WFUV, which Robin Shannon, the station’s news director, described as “vastly different than a lot of other organizations.” Over the past two decades, Shannon and former news director George Bodarky, FCRH ’93, who now serves as the community partnerships and training editor for WNYC, helped to grow and enhance the training program that Singleton established in the late 1980s. Today, “we have a reputation in the broadcast world of training students in a way that is going to benefit newsrooms all over the country,” Shannon said.

A big reason for that is the work of Bodarky, who was honored at WFUV’s On the Record event in November for his more than 20 years of service to the station. From 2001 until last year, he helped train many Fordham journalists.

“The thing about George is that dozens, maybe hundreds of people could be giving these remarks right now, telling you how George changed their life, how George opened the door to what became their career and their vocation,” said one of his former students, NPR White House correspondent Scott Detrow, FCRH ’07.

Shannon said the journalism program is about giving students ample opportunity to practice their skills in a professional environment. “It’s not just opening a book and reading about microphones or reading about interviews— it’s learning the equipment, going out, and covering stories that people are talking about.” She said students are also “allowed to make mistakes” and, with her guidance, they can “explore and experiment and kind of see what works for them.”

For Liam Dahlborn, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, that opportunity to explore allowed him to develop his own role at the station—running the news department’s social media accounts. “That kind of position wasn’t really something that they were necessarily training for, but I was able to talk to Robin and talk to George, and be like, ‘This is something that I think we need to build on, the digital assets, now that we’re transitioning into a digital world,’” he said. “And they were really supportive of that.”

Dahlborn said that all the skills he’s acquiring at WFUV, which include writing a weekly subscriber newsletter, posting to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and launching the station’s TikTok account, will help him pursue a career in media when he graduates from Fordham.

“Being able to have this professional environment in college is something that’s very unique,” he said. “Being able to work in a newsroom that’s professional, that’s state-of-the-art—that’s something that I think you don’t really get at other universities. And to be in New York City, pretty much everyone who I’ve talked to in New York City knows of WFUV.”

Noah Osborne, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said that his experience at WFUV opened doors for him, including his most recent internship at BronxNet television.

“That wouldn’t have been possible without WFUV,” he said. “Having WFUV anywhere on a resume seems to be the big talking point. I feel like a lot of my communication skills were honed here—especially as a reporter, as an anchor, even as a podcaster.”

Osborne said that until he worked at WFUV, he hadn’t thought much about podcasting and how it can be a great way to communicate with the audience. “I feel like it’s just made my delivery of certain lines of the news just so much more authentic, a lot more conversational, a lot more relaxed. It definitely did build my confidence as an aspiring media person.”

On the sports side, the WFUV legacy runs back to Vin Scully, the late, legendary voice of the Dodgers, who is considered the patron saint of Fordham-trained sportscasters, an ever-growing group that includes NBA Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83; Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, the voice of the Yankees; Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, radio voice of the Brooklyn Nets; Tony Reali, FCRH ’00, host of ESPN’s Around the Horn; Bob Papa, GABELLI ’86, the radio voice of the New York Giants; and Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, of the YES Network and ESPN.

When WFUV shifted from a student-run station to a professional staff overseeing the students in the late 1980s, Marty Glickman, the former New York Knicks, Jets, and Giants announcer, came on board as a coach, schooling the young sports journalists in the art of play-by-play and other types of broadcasts. He hired a producer named Bob Ahrens, who took the sports department to the next level, helping them gain press access to all 11 of the New York– area professional teams.

It’s that tradition that current sports director Bobby Ciafardini looks to build on. “I like to think that a big part of the legacy that I’m hoping to carve out here is that we have expanded the programming to include a lot more of the video component and the streaming part of what we are doing these days,” he said.

For example, One on One, New York’s longest-running sports call-in show, was founded in the 1970s, but now, in addition to catching it on the radio, viewers can tune in to a livestream and watch video clips on social media.

“The students are … learning more now than ever because they are multimedia sports professionals,” Ciafardini said. “When Sam [Davis] goes to a game now, he’s not just going to get audio; he’s doing a standup and interviewing players in both capacities.”

Davis, whose roles include social media coordinator, Mets beat reporter, and on-air broadcaster for Fordham sports, said that he wouldn’t have gotten the opportunities WFUV offered him anywhere else. “I think that covering the professional New York teams—as far as I know, I don’t think there’s really another college in the country that does that,” he said. “With the fact that everything is video now, we’re getting a lot of hands-on experience … not just being on air … but also video editing and pushing that out on social media, learning what works and what doesn’t.”

Both the news and sports departments have grown more diverse in recent years and provided more opportunities to students, something that is a strategic goal of the station, according to Singleton. For example, the sports department, which has traditionally been mostly male, now has an all-female sports podcast, All In.

Breen, who received the department’s Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting last year, said that he’s proud of the students who are a part of the station’s legacy. “Every Fordham student who decides to join this amazing radio station feels a responsibility, a responsibility to uphold the standards that all the previous students and student broadcasters have set,” he said, noting that he and his peers certainly felt it during the 1980s. “You’ve not only upheld the standards,” he said, “you’ve raised them. And I say bravo.”

Companionship for People

Students who work at WFUV said that they were drawn to the station—and Fordham in general—not only for the chance to hone their technical skills but also to be part of its public media mission. That certainly was the case with Maya Sargent, which is why she applied to Fordham’s master’s degree program in the field. The program led her to a fellowship at WFUV, where she gets to tell the stories of a diverse group of New Yorkers.

“I’ve always kind of had that intrigue to learn more and find out more about communities, and New York feels like the epicenter of cultural engagement,” said Sargent, who came to Fordham from the U.K. “It’s such an eclectic mix, and I think that injects a lot of life into the media that we produce.”

That connection to local communities is something that Thao Matlock, co-chair of the WFUV Advisory Board, has found especially helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s a companionship for people, and I think it’s what kept a lot of us sane during the pandemic, especially the first part when it was all doom and gloom,” she said. “A lot of us tuned in to WFUV because it was great music—we just kind of hung out; there was no anxiety. And then, the news part, the COVID news, was very calm, very sane.”

That’s been a hallmark of WFUV for decades—giving its listeners the news and music they need to find community and a reason to believe, especially in trying times. WFUV DJs received responses similar to Matlock’s from listeners in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m a nurse,” read one March 2020 message. “Today I listened in, [and] for the first time all month, danced in my kitchen, relaxed for the first time in ages. Grateful to WFUV for helping us stay safe, stay sane, stay connected in these uncertain times.” Another listener said the station’s DJs kept her company. “Now more than ever, many of us, myself included, are alone, and music means so much in our daily mindset.”

Breen, who went on to become a Hall of Fame basketball broadcaster, recalled his time as a late-night DJ for WFUV. He was on the air on December 8, 1980, the night John Lennon was killed. “The phones rang off the hook, and they were talking about what John Lennon meant to them,” he said. “One gentleman told me how he was about to commit suicide, but John Lennon’s song stopped him. Another told me he had a drinking problem, and John Lennon helped them through that. And it was the first time in my life I realized what music meant to people.”

Chuck Singleton, general manager of WFUV, said September 11, 2001, was another time when the power of music and the strength of the WFUV community were evident to the team at the station. “That day, as we reported on [the terrorist attacks], we were there for people. … I have a whole folder of letters and emails that people sent us that in their own, individual way, said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you.’”

Never Stopped Moving

Rich McLaughlin, who got his start at WFUV as an undergraduate just over two decades ago and is now the station’s program director, said putting all the pieces together—the commitment to music discovery, training young journalists, and providing a compelling public service to the community—is what makes WFUV “completely unique and dynamic.” “Not only do we take part in training that next generation of media professionals, but we really rely on our students to help push WFUV forward into the future,” he said. “And that’s one of my favorite things about working here because I find when it comes to social media, when it comes to music, when it comes to just general technology, our students, they know as much or more than some of us.”

One way to make sure the station remains unique and dynamic is to continue to diversify—both the musicians it plays on air and the staff it employs, Singleton said. For example, three years ago, Houston helped spearhead the station’s EQFM initiative to take on the issue of gender disparity in the music industry. It has a goal of 50% representation of women and gender minorities in music programming, events, and online features. Those efforts help the station continue to grow and reach new audiences, McLaughlin said. “Wherever there’s a platform that a WFUV listener is looking to listen to the station, or consume our content—wherever they are, we want to be.”

That spirit of innovation has run through the station since 1947, he said. “It’s really important that we maintain that heritage and the tradition that we have and take that with us as we move forward. I think you can do both—you can change and think about things differently from a content standpoint, from a technology standpoint, and still take into consideration the station’s history and legacy. I think that’s what the station has done all along.

“WFUV is celebrating 75 years—it’s never stopped changing. It’s never stopped moving. And that’s why it’s still as relevant as it is today.”

—Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15, is an associate editor of this magazine. As a Fordham undergraduate, she was a WFUV sports reporter, host, and producer from 2012 to 2015.

Correction: An earlier version of this story, including the version that appeared in the winter 2023 print edition of Fordham Magazine, mistakenly indicated that Chuck Singleton “initially developed WFUV’s coverage of community issues.” In fact, he expanded coverage that began more than a decade earlier. Thanks to John J. Robb, FCRH ’76, who served as WFUV’s founding public affairs director from 1974 to 1976, for helping us set the record straight. 

“For some people it did work out; for some people, it did not,” said Stovall, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, during the June 17 panel discussion offered as part of the virtual 2021 Block Party reunion for the Lincoln Center campus.

Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer, moderated the discussion of Juneteenth, which marks the date—June 19, 1865—when the abolition of slavery was completed with the arrival of Union troops at Galveston, Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The discussion ranged from the history of Juneteenth celebrations to the emancipation process in Caribbean nations to the aftermath of slavery’s abolition in the U.S.

Liberation “was something that Black people fought for themselves; they weren’t just sort of waiting around for it to happen for them,” said Stovall, author of White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2021). The Civil War saw the largest slave revolts in American history, as well as “massive mobilization” of formerly enslaved people to serve in the Union armies, he said. But promises of the land that former slaves needed to establish their own farming livelihoods fell through, for the most part, forcing them into sharecropping, a form of pseudo-slavery in which they were “under the thumb of their former masters,” he said.

One of the panelists, Tyesha Maddox, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Fordham Department of African and African American Studies, described how many formerly enslaved people turned to benevolent associations or mutual aid organizations “in which they came together [and]pooled their resources of money in order to take care of themselves in the ways that the government was not providing help for them.”

“We see a similar thing happening post-emancipation in the Caribbean, where these people are trying to … make lives for themselves and not just survive post-emancipation, but thrive, and set up communities for themselves and live as equal citizens,” she said.

The Struggle in the Caribbean

Panelists described a fitful abolition of slavery throughout Caribbean nations, with freedom often seeming precarious. As in the United States, many slaveowners in these nations still continued with slavery months or years after it was abolished “so that they can continue with this free manual labor,” Maddox said.

Stovall noted that Haiti was isolated and made to suffer after achieving its independence in an 1804 revolution that abolished slavery. The government had to pay reparations to the French for the seizure of slaveowners’ property, and it wasn’t until the early 21st century that France finally abolished all duties on Haiti stemming from its revolution, he said.

In Guadeloupe, slavery was abolished for only about a decade before it was reestablished under Napoleon, and during World War II there were rumors that France’s Vichy government would bring slavery back to the Caribbean, he said. “There was always this sense that … you couldn’t rely on [freedom],” he said.

The Growth of African American Communities

Another panelist, Michele Prettyman, a scholar of African American cinema and visual and popular culture in the Fordham communication and media studies department, noted the wave of Black elected officials in the U.S. following the Civil War as well as the growth of African American communities—like the one ravaged during the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

“Tulsa is … the most striking embodiment of what happens as a result of this incredible wave of business and leadership and education,” she said. At the same time, “even killing people in a very literal sense did not destroy this animating impulse of Black life that comes out of these moments of just real despair and real darkness and … just tremendous odds and obstacles,” she said.

Later, asked how the idea of freedom is expressed in Black creativity, she said it is not just under the purview of historians. “If we keep it in our poetry and our art and our music and our culture, it becomes something that is owned and shared, and not just something that’s commemorated on single days or in single moments,” she said. “It should be a part of all of our lives, intimately, and how we legislate, how we vote, how we commemorate.”

Democracy for All?

Asked by Zapata about the current “assault on voting rights” in the U.S., Stovall said that “there’s a real lack of respect for the very idea of democracy.”

“Even though you have, of course, the rejection of this being in any way racially characterized … it is really hard to escape the impression that if Black people were not able to vote, a lot of conservative white people would be a whole lot happier,” he said.

Stovall said the federal government’s creation of a Juneteenth holiday “has all come together really fast,” but also pointed out state legislatures’ recent moves to prevent school districts “from teaching the idea that racism is an intrinsic part of American history.”

“So how you can hold these two concepts together at the same time is frankly beyond me,” he said, “because if you acknowledge the role of slavery to the extent that you have a national holiday to celebrate its abolition, that says something very profound about American history, and so I think this is a country that’s still very much struggling with how do you deal with these different concepts.”

Stovall ended the event by turning his computer to show a lit lamp that was owned by his great-great-grandmother, who was born a slave. “The lamp still shines,” he said. “Our history still shines. And I think Juneteenth represents the fact that our experience as a whole still shines, down to the present day, and will shine in the future.”

“I was struck by the diversity of projects featured, but what most impressed me was the creativity and resilience of our students, several of whom had to reinvent their projects in the face of pandemic restrictions,” said Stark-Gendrano. “It was inspiring to see such good work come out of such challenging conditions.”

From combating global warming to undermining misogyny to embracing immigration to parsing gender identity and sparking the attention of boys with ADHD—the ideas of graduating seniors and their undergraduate peers filled four days of sessions on Zoom.

This Land is Her Land

Senior Selena Juarez-Galindo, a visual arts major, presented her multimedia work in a project titled “Exploring my Mexican Family History through Art.”

“My family are all basically undocumented immigrants and I am the first generation,” Juarez-Galindo said, noting that since she was born in the U.S. she has full citizenship.

Juarez-Galindo’s family is from a town called Guerrero, where people native to the land still speak Mixteco, a language that predates the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The intention of her artwork is “to chase a native narrative” and portray distinct images of her family’s culture and show others that it’s not unlike their own.

She noted that her required courses in theology deepened her understanding of the plight of her family and the struggles faced by immigrants and refugees.

“When it comes to immigrants here, there has to be a kind of morality that’s above the law, especially when American nationalism can create really horrible effects,” she said of the consequences facing people crossing the border, such as separating children from their parents. “There have been so many immoral things in history that were legal, such as slavery. Our morality has to come first.”

Keeping Boys’ Attention During Online Programs

Senior Arbi Kumi, a psychology major, has always been interested in what makes the mind tick, though he had never concentrated on the mind of a child. His study, “Exploring the Feasibility and Effectiveness of a Virtual Summer Treatment Program for Children with Behavioral and Social Problems,” sprang from an internship at the Child Mind Institute, a mental health nonprofit clinic for children. There, he was assigned to a virtual summer camp for boys with ADHD. With permission from the institute and from parents, he studied how boys’ attention improved and/or degraded during a virtual adaptation of a summer camp program. Instead of five days a week at six hours a day, the program ran for just two hours a day for five days a week. The boys, who worked in peer groups, showed substantial gains during treatment that sought to improve their social skills over the course of the program, he said.

“We knew anecdotally that screen fatigue was a problem and it might not be interesting enough to keep the boy’s attention, so online games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox were used as a reward and something we could use to teach them new social skills,” said Kumi.

By using parental surveys and a point system administered by camp counselors, Kumi found that post-treatment levels showed significant improvement in social skills, including group discussions, helping or being flexible, and sticking to a plan—particularly with peer support. However, he said, certain problem behaviors, such as interrupting, did not improve. Beyond the findings, Kumi said that he learned a lot about his own perceptions of children.

“It was so much fun; this one boy had a new nickname for me every day, he was so funny, so smart,” he said. “I also realized how much stigma is placed on mental health as opposed to physical health.”

Delving into Arabic LGBTQ+ Identity in NYC

Senior Batool Abdelhafez, who goes by the pronoun they, majored in anthropology and psychology. For their project titled “Identity, Duality, and Kinship Among LGBT Arab-Americans in the American Diaspora,” they interviewed 15 members of the LGBT+ Arab American community and the Southwest Asian and North African community (SWANA). They set out to find what gave people in the group a unique sense of personhood, and in what spaces the group felt free to be true to themselves. Lastly, they sought to define whether LGBT+ Arab American and SWANA individuals consider themselves to be a separate subculture from the LGBT+ community at large.

“The emergence of colonialism demonized and categorized LGBT+ Arabs as something to be duly exoticized, but also viewed as somehow degenerate, backward, or uncivilized,” they said. “We see this context even today just for Arabs in general, right? But it’s even more so for LGBT Arabs.”

They noted that all their subjects were proud of being LGBT+, which helped them dissect layers of identity that included class, national identity, and being LGBT+ in New York City. Their study found that all subjects expressed sentiments about being racialized, being discriminated against, and feeling exoticized. The group’s experiences were unique enough that a community separate from the LGBT+ community has formed, they said. They spoke of a burgeoning scene expressed in art, music, and culture at nightclub parties such as Yalla! and via community groups, such as Tarab NYC.

Teenage Girls on the Verge

Senior Gillian Russo majored in journalism. Her presentation, “Women Of Mass Destruction: Power, Violence, and the Supernatural in Teenage-Girl Theatre,” examined four recent plays that combine violence and witchcraft as perpetrated by teenage girls. The plays were produced and directed by women and non-binary artists. Russo asserted that the plays shocked audiences with an uncomfortable truth that teenage girls—”the last group you’d expect to be violent”—could also be viewed as “natural partners” to horror.

Russo chose the plays because she saw a trend developing between magic, witchcraft, and teenage girls in the theater. She also noted that the plays took on societal views of women more broadly. Too often media employs the catty girl trope, she said, and ignores the depth of adolescent emotion that could rise to the level of theatrical violence.

“Most girls aren’t necessarily this violent in real life, but in the elevated world of the theater you can go to extreme examples,” she said. “What better way to drive that home than putting it live on stage in front of you, and showing the most extreme thing that a girl can do, like violence, so she can lead her own charge for self-recognition and self-realization?”

Going Rooftop Green

Lydia Hallett, a senior majoring in environmental studies, presented on “The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Urban Green Roofs.” After studying abroad in Sweden, Hallett saw a proliferation of green rooftops there and decided to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of green rooftops in New York. She found herself with more questions than answers.

“In my research that I wanted to understand these kinds of large solutions, and what it actually means for a city to take that on,” said Hallett.

Hallett identified public benefits that green roofs provide, including stormwater management, biodiversity, and improved air quality. However, she also found that high up-front installation costs often overshadowed returns on investments for most developers.

“No one wants to put a price tag on nature, but that’s kind of what has to be done for order in order for people to understand the benefits of green roofs,” she said.

“I love that character so much; I think that Golda Rosheuvel, who plays her, is just brilliant,” said Quinn at an event hosted by the Department of English on Zoom on March 24. “I wish I had her in the book and in some ways I’m glad I didn’t because I don’t know if I could have done it as well.”

Quinn credited producer Shonda Rhimes and a diverse team of writers for giving her stories a new twist, not the least of which was casting the English queen as Black. She said colorblind casting was something that “hadn’t occurred” to her, but that she’s loved the emotional reaction to it.

“This is what I look like, I’ve always been able to see myself in the stories,” said Quinn, who is white, referring to her own skin color.

“As the show came out I began seeing the reaction from people being like, ‘Oh, my brown-skin queen!’ she said. “We now have people saying, ‘Finally someone who looks like me in the fancy dress.”

Fact and Fantasy

Well before the event, Brandy Monk-Payton, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication and media studies, and Susanne Hafner, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of the German program, discussed the “blind casting” of Black actors in the show’s upper-crust 18th-century London setting. Payton is a media and Black cultural studies scholar and Hafner is currently researching Black culture in medieval Europe. The two teased fact from fantasy for the show’s major characters, particularly Queen Charlotte.

Monk-Payton noted that Rhimes has been doing colorblind casting for quite a while, with shows like Grey’s Anatomy.

“And when I say colorblind casting for her, she talks about starting the show and not casting actors based on their race or ethnicity. So this is how you get a chief of surgery on Grey’s Anatomy that is Black, that never discusses [it], but has this very powerful role on the program, and is in a position of authority, right?” she said. “Later on in the show, they very much discussed racial issues, but those early seasons were not necessarily informed by perspective on Blackness or racial politics.”

She said that Rhimes brings that casting experience to the table with Bridgerton. But she added that Blackness cannot always be mapped onto stories that are based in whiteness, because there are other dynamics at play. She noted that one of the major criticisms of Bridgerton is that the show ignores the very real specter of racial violence and slavery of the time.

“There’s been a lot of discussion around the desire of doing this kind of colorblind casting and that’s always the question–how it’s trying to intervene in the historical record,” said Monk-Payton.

History’s Harsher Reality

During their discussion, Hafner noted that the Crusades first introduced Europe to Black people, though at the time the definition of Black extended well beyond the continent of Africa.

“There were people who moved to Europe because of the Crusades and trade with the East who had dark skin,” she said. “Part of the problem for me and my research is trying to figure out what Black really means, where these people were from, and what they actually looked like.”

The cross-cultural exchanges of the Crusades also brought about a fetishization of Black bodies, said Hafner.

“Black skin was considered erotically attractive and people were even more interested in what the children of a white person and a Black person might look like,” she said.

Mixed-race children were depicted in art of the time with black and white polka dot skin or like a magpie, she said. Over time, a “fair number of princes” had affairs with Black and brown women and Europeans began to see what the children of an interracial relationship actually looked like, she said. By the late 18th and early 19th century a drop of Black of brown blood was no longer considered exotic, but a cause for derision.

The actual Queen Charlotte was married to England’s George III in 1761. Hafner said that the myth that she was part Black probably began as an oft-repeated insult. Born Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Germany, Queen Charlotte entered the English court as an outsider and was dubbed a mulatto by her detractors.

“This myth about her being Black has been passed around, so this is not something that the creators of Bridgerton invented, it has always been around,” she said. “But it seems to have started just with unkind comments from people about her looks.”

Among Queen Charlotte’s aristocratic ancestors was the 13th-century King Alfonso of Portugal whose mistress was allegedly the origin of a Black bloodline in that particular German house. Hafner said that the recent dust-up with the House of Windsor over Meghan Markle has sparked in renewed interest among scholars seeking to locate Black bloodlines among the royals.

Expanding Opportunities with Casting

While depicting Black royals on stage and screen has been rare, there have been recurrent roles in which Black actors are cast, such as Shakespeare’s Othello. (Though Hafner noted Othello was still played in blackface on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera as recently as 2015.) Still, opera was blind casting long before television with Black sopranos Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman holding court at The Met throughout the 1970s.

Today, blind casting has expanded opportunities in television for Black and brown actors, said Payton. She noted that Black actress Jodie Turner-Smith has been slated to play the lead role in “Anne Boleyn,” a show about the ill-fated wife of Henry VIII on British TV. Monk-Payton noted that during the ’60s and ’70s, most of the representations on television of Black people were of the poor and working class.

“The Jeffersons may have been moving on up, but mostly we don’t see rich Black people until Diahann Carroll played Dominique Deveraux in Dynasty, which has its own kind of this-can’t-be feel,” she said.

Monk-Payton said she that as she watched Bridgerton with her mother, the two embraced the full-on fantasy aspect of the show.

“There are moments in Bridgerton that I find delightful as a Black woman, like the queen and her elaborate 19th-century wigs that use braids or an afro,” she said. “There’s this Black culture and Black expression in a European period piece, which up till now has been by and large a story of whiteness.”

The film “MASK,” produced by Yang Xu, FCLC ’21, and Mengxuan Annie Du, FCLC ’20, portrays a private phone call between an Asian mother and daughter who live on opposite sides of the world. In their conversation, they ruminate on the coronavirus-related racism and xenophobia that many people have been experiencing. 

“The film speaks to the racial prejudice so many Asians are experiencing in real life, and it does so in such an intimate and personal way,” said Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of communication and media studies. 

Xu and Du’s film won “Best Drama” in Fordham’s inaugural One-Minute Film Festival, a student competition sponsored by the Department of Communication and Media Studies and Fordham’s chapter of the New York Film and Television Student Alliance. Their film was among six award-winning videos that were screened at the Story 2020 Summit on March 7. The all-day summit at the Lincoln Center campus featured panels and Q&A sessions with leading entertainment industry professionals.

“It was an accomplished film that showed real storytelling talent as well as a passion for speaking out against social injustice,” said screenwriter James Jennewein, a senior lecturer in Fordham’s communication and media studies department who helped spearhead the conference. “At times like these, we must be more vigilant about racial and ethnic bias than ever.”

Eastman was a central figure committed to a wide variety of causes, which proved problematic for forging a clean heroic narrative, said Aronson. Eastman co-founded the National Woman’s Party and the Women’s Peace Party, an antiwar group, and in 1917 she engineered the founding of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which eventually became the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She co-published the socialist magazine The Liberator with her brother Max Eastman and is credited with co-authoring the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Yet, her story was largely lost to history because her interests and causes remained so diverse.

“I think her problem involves more than sexism, although that’s certainly part of it. I believe it was Eastman’s intersectionality—her multiple movement identifications—that destabilized her image and her status,” said Aronson. “It complicated her connection to what scholars identify as the mainstays on which historical recognition and remembrance are built.”

Aronson said that Eastman envisioned herself as “one of those circus chariot ladies” with one hand “driving a tandem of the arts and the law,” and “the other hand holding aloft two streaming banners—love and liberty.”

“Although some of her politics were compatible with other progressive activists at the time, most activists eventually evolved and prioritized and chose one major organization to be affiliated with. Eastman never did,” said Aronson.

“The challenge with a complicated narrative is to try to find a way to create some coherence out of it. As scholars, we have to become more conscious of that rather than take the easy ‘role model’ narrative, leaving out the challenging voice, rather than embracing it.”

But Eastman’s forward-thinking philosophy proved hard for Aronson to resist. For example, Eastman refused alimony after divorcing her first husband for infidelity in 1916, saying “no self-respecting feminist would accept alimony—it is a relic of the past.” By her second marriage, she had taken on feminist dilemmas in family life.

“She led debates on issues still pressing today: reproductive rights, paid parental leave, economic partnership within marriage, wages for housework, shared housekeeping and childcare, single motherhood by choice, and work-family balance,” said Aronson.

In an unpublished manuscript written sometime after 1917, she proposed a newspaper column about the silenced longing of married mothers for substantive work outside the home, a yearning that anticipates Betty Friedan’s “problem that has no name”—nearly half a century before the breakthrough of The Feminine Mystique in 1963.

“And I want to emphasize that this was a woman born before the invention of the fly swatter, the zipper, the ice cream scoop,” Aronson said.

Passing the Torch

As faculty day kicked off, Aronson and her husband Michael Kimmel, Ph.D., mingled with fellow faculty. She spoke of her book launch held last month in a Tribeca loft. There, more than 20 members of Eastman’s family showed up, many of whom Aronson interviewed for the book. Several of them had never met and others hadn’t seen each other in years. After the event, family members continued to socialize and celebrate their ancestor at another locale.

The anecdote provided a glimpse into Aronson’s research methods that include a penchant for interviewing primary sources. It’s a method fostered by her journalist background, yet steeped in academic rigor. More than a quarter of the book is filled with footnotes, which she described as “fragments and whispers of her from disparate sources.”

“My hope is for someone else to take up the research and get Eastman back into the conversations,” she said. “I want to see someone pick it up where I left off and make it better. This is a foundation to enter the story.”

Following her talk, Aronson and the rest of the faculty retired to the Law School for cocktails and dinner. There, awards were given for graduate mentoring, as well as for teaching in STEM, social sciences, and humanities. Sarit Kattan, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology, was honored for graduate mentoring and teaching. Christine Breiner, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematics took home the STEM award. Tom McCourt, Ph.D., associate professor of communication and media studies, was recognized for social sciences. Andrew Clark, Ph.D., professor of French, received the humanities award.

“Herb Granath’s passing is a great loss to Fordham, and of course to his family and loved ones—and in the latter category I would include everyone who ever had the pleasure of meeting him,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Herb brought to Fordham a steadiness of heart, openness of spirit, and a strong faith that there was a world of possibilities waiting over the horizon. His great gifts of heart, mind, and spirit were readily apparent whenever Fordham’s Board of Trustees convened: when he spoke, we all listened, and listened intently.”

Born and bred in Brooklyn, Granath started in the television industry as an NBC page during his college years and steadily climbed the ranks of entertainment juggernauts, moving from NBC to ABC to ESPN and the Broadway stage. He made his name in the then-nascent world of cable television, rising to become chairman of the board of ESPN (and later chairman emeritus) after ABC purchased the cable channel in 1984. He’s the recipient of two Tony Awards and six Tony nominations, an International Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in International TV, and a U.S. Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in Sports.

His career was a tribute to a liberal arts education. He parlayed an undergraduate education in physics to a graduate degree in communications, and spoke specifically to the value of both degrees in advancing his career.

“One of the reasons I enjoyed physics was looking into the essence of things,” he said in an interview with Fordham just before the University honored him with its Founder’s Award, adding that a course in logic was among the most influential he ever took. “It is amazing to me in American business how little a role logic plays. It has been a hallmark of the way I approach business.”

His stint working evenings as a page at NBC inspired the young Granath to pursue graduate work in communications at Fordham. What followed was a career that redefined an industry. But when he saw the page position pinned to a bulletin board at Dealy Hall, he didn’t even know what the job entailed. He simply needed the work to get through school.

He also credited financial aid with helping him get his degree. He continued to generously support Fordham throughout his life and served as an honorary co-chair of Fordham’s Excelsior | Ever Upward fundraising campaign.

“Without financial help, I never would have been able to attend Fordham. Supporting the campaign is one way for me to repay the moral grounding I received at the University, which has served me well over the years both in my business and personal lives,” said Granath, who was elected to Fordham’s board in 1993.

At ESPN, Granath backed his business savvy with a sports fan’s enthusiasm. And while his love of sports helped the network grow to become one of ABC’s single largest profit centers, his other interests also spurred networks that would become household names, including A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime.

In its infancy, during the 1980s, A&E was truly an arts and entertainment network that featured opera from La Scala and ballet from Paris, Granath said.

“It was gorgeous stuff,” he said. “We were the darlings of the critics.”

He also helped ABC branch into theater, managing its investments in partnership with the Shubert Organization. The relationship gave the network first dibs on plays that might make good television series. Ironically, Granath told his bosses at the network that he didn’t necessarily see Broadway as a profit-making venture.

In an amusingly understated 2004 interview for the McGannon Center TV Oral History Project, Granath told Fordham communications professor Albert Auster, “We got into something very early called Cats, we got into something called Phantom of the Opera, we got into Les Miserables, we got into the things that really have over the years turned out large sums of revenue and, therefore, profits for those who invested.”

Amidst the glamour of stage and screen, Auster noted that Granath maintained a low-key demeanor in an industry filled with massive egos. When asked how he managed to remain unassuming and rise so swiftly, Granath credited Fordham.

“Everyone knows that if you’re a Fordham graduate, no matter what it says on that piece of paper, you really majored in philosophy,” he said, which allowed him to take a “bit of a different point of view” and stay focused on what matters, a trait that came in handy in the entertainment business’s notoriously meandering meetings.

“My first reputation was established, I think, when I would sit back and listen to all this babble, and then about 20 minutes or so into the meeting, I’d restate the reason for the meeting. And people would go, ‘Wow, that guy really has it together,’” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a very simple prescription for success, but I’m afraid it may be all that simple.”

Granath held a number of other leadership positions, including trustee of the American Museum of the Moving Image, president of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, governor of the National Academy of Cable Programming, director of the International Radio and Television Society, and president of the Veterans’ Bedside Network. He served in the U.S. Army, assigned to Special Services as a writer/producer.

For all his success, Granath said business should always take a back seat to family.

“Business is business. It’s part of a life,” he told Auster. “The things that are the most important to me are the fact that I’ve got a wife and four young people that we brought into this world and they, in turn, now are forming their families.”

Granath is survived by his wife of 61 years, actress Ann Flood, and four children, Kevin Granath (Danielle), Brian Granath (Kathleen), Peter Granath (Elizabeth), and Karen Charlton (Michael). He also leaves behind 11 grandchildren: Nicole, Caroline, Will, Terence, Gavin, Farrell, Benjamin, Amanda, Leigh, Jane, and Nolan.

Gregory Donovan, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies and co-founder of the Fordham Digital Scholarship Consortium, organized the conference with department chair Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D.

Instead of paying a fee, conference-goers were asked to send donations to Goddard Riverside at Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, which offers services to the Amsterdam Houses across the street from Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Digital mapping is a process that merges data with maps to create a virtual online image that can be static or interactive. Donovan said focusing on social justice issues through the lens of digital mapping allowed for a cross-disciplinary approach that wouldn’t ordinarily be found at a typical geography conference. Professors came from a variety of disciplines, including history, art history, urban planning, Latinx studies, psychology, social work, and education.

“Spatial media have politics, these are not neutral things,” said Donovan, who teaches a course of the same name as the conference for the Masters in Public Media.  “We need to look at how our subjects are using digital mapping in their own lives and not just use this technology to study them from afar, like a scientist with a clipboard.”

In panel titled “Mapping the Local: A Focus on New York,” Jennifer Pipitone, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the College of Mount St. Vincent, and Svetlana Jović, Ph.D., assistant professor of developmental psychology at SUNY Old Westbury, presented research that essentially handed the digital “clipboard” over to the Bronx Community College students they were teaching —and studying. At the time, the two were writing fellows at the college.

In an effort to map what “community” meant to the students, the researchers used geo-locations of photos taken by the participants “in order to illustrate and make sense of their experience of belonging in the city,” they wrote in the abstract. The maps revealed that students restricted their movements to above Central Park, “delineating participants’ lived boundary of race and class.” The method is referred to as “participatory action research.”

Throughout the conference, dozens of examples were given on how mapping technology can be used to heighten consciousness and problem solve. Adam Arenson, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Manhattan College, also on the Focus on New York panel, talked about how he worked with his students to help map slave burial sites in the Bronx, many of which sit unmarked on New York City parkland.

“These are all ways to memorialize the injustices of the past, to map them in the landscape and to be aware of them,” he said. “Though the information is incomplete, and we must do what we can to fill out the map, make the connections, and demonstrate how the injustices of slavery still shape New York City today.”

In her keynote address later that day, Sarah Elwood, Ph.D., professor and chair of geography at the University of Washington, took a theoretical look at how mapping with communities through participatory methods helps “unprivilege the map,” thereby making it less of a colonial process.

As one of the early theoretical thinkers in the field of geographic information systems, known as GIS, she said she is still learning how to infuse her work with “critical race thought” that has surged in academia over the past five years. After the lecture, she recalled a moment at a mapping justice conference in Baltimore when she noticed the diversity of the participants.

“I looked around the room and I realized that it was a different room than one that I had ever been in, in this critical mapping world,” she said. “It was full of activists and young scholars and people of color, queer folks, thinking and theorizing in ways that were not part of my first 20 years in this field.”

She called the moment an “epiphany.” She said while she continues to incorporate Marxist critique that allows her “to get at some structural processes of inequality” in mapping, her work is now heavily informed by black feminism, queer theory, and Latinx studies.

“Once you’ve had an epiphany like that, it’s like, ‘Well, duh, obvious!’ but yet, you’re also embarrassed that it’s taken so long for this epiphany to happen,” she said. “I always think, in those moments, ‘Thank God we have our whole life to become ourselves.’”