immigrant – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Wed, 24 Apr 2024 18:55:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png immigrant – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 A Colombian Immigrant Finds Beauty in Art and America https://now.fordham.edu/arts-and-culture/a-colombian-immigrant-who-found-beauty-in-art-and-america/ Wed, 02 Mar 2022 14:45:32 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=157907 Photos courtesy of Melissa MejiaMelissa Mejia has always been an artist. Growing up in Colombia, she painted school murals and took extracurricular art classes on weekends. As a teenager in New York, she was awarded first runner-up in a national high school art competition. She also won several art scholarships and created two pieces that were featured in the Museum of Modern Art. 

But Mejia said she couldn’t choose art as a career. A degree in the fine arts was too costly, especially for a first-generation college student with limited financial resources like herself. 

After exploring different options across the world, Mejia found a home at Fordham. Last February, she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, magna cum laude, from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies. This summer, she will complete her master’s degree in public media from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

“I’ve always been interested in media, especially since I started studying political science. This is public media, which is even better because I’ll be working for a good cause,” Mejia said. “And I can find a way to integrate the arts.” 

‘Art Was My Escape From Reality’ 

Mejia was born in Medellín, Colombia, in the early ’90s—one of the most dangerous periods in the country’s history. Her city was recovering from many years of internal conflict, especially drug trafficking, and it wasn’t easy to find jobs, said Mejia. When Mejia was a toddler, her mother made a difficult decision. 

Two paintings: one of a young woman, and one of an elderly woman
Portraits of Mejia and her grandmother on Metro Cards

“My mother, whom I deeply admire for her bravery, moved to the U.S. with her sister in the hopes of providing a brighter future for me and my sister. She worked several jobs, including as a waitress. She saw that this was the only way for her to support us,” said Mejia, who left her father, aunts, and grandparents in Colombia as a teenager to join her mother, whom she had lived apart from for most of her childhood. 

Mejia said she struggled to adjust to her new life. 

“We imagine New York as that little piece of Times Square that’s so brilliant, beautiful, and perfect, like Disneyland. Then you realize that there’s so much more. I first lived in the Bronx, which did not look exactly like what I had seen in the movies. I liked living in The Bronx, but it was a big cultural change for me,” Mejia said. “I would sit with my sketchbook and paint and draw. Art was my escape from reality.”

A painting of a woman with colorful rainbow hair against a bright sky
Mejia’s painting that placed in a 2011 Congressional Art Competition

Her temporary escape became a permanent passion. As a student at Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School, she won a scholarship to study at the Art Students League of New York, one of the oldest independent art schools in the U.S. For two consecutive summers, she also participated in a program at the Museum of Modern Art, which featured her artwork. In addition, one of her paintings was selected as a first runner-up in a national high school art competition. 

“My painting was inspired by the Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.’ That song just made me so happy,” said Mejia, who submitted a painting of a woman with flowers in her hair to the 2011 Congressional Art Competition. “My painting reflected this moment in high school when I was starting to learn English, make friends in New York, and feel like I was finally part of a community.”

A Reality Check 

But Mejia said she realized that a career in the arts wasn’t feasible. Everything about it was expensive, including fine arts school tuition and supplies, and she couldn’t afford the long-term investment. Instead, she spent years working in retail, saved money, and then returned to school. In 2018, she earned an associate’s degree in communication studies from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, while working a full-time job. 

“Communications studies is so broad that I thought it could lead back to the arts,” Mejia said.  

A letter
2011 Congressional Art Competition award letter

Over the next two years, her personal life took her across the world: to Sweden, where she studied political science at Stockholm University, and to Paris, where she continued her education at the Paris Institute of Political Studies until the pandemic. She returned to New York, where she found Fordham and completed her bachelor’s degree in political science. 

Mejia is now pursuing her master’s degree in public media so she can become the person she wishes she had when she was a young artist, she said. 

“What I’ve realized after living in New York City, Colombia, and around the world is there are so many scholarships and opportunities for artists, but so little information about them unless you are well-connected. There’s a lot of aid out there that’s not being marketed effectively. But people who work in public media can spread the word about these opportunities,” Mejia said. 

Mejia said she is considering becoming an immigration lawyer. Although she was able to become an American citizen, she saw many immigrants struggle to have a brighter future. She said she wants to be able to assist those who are chasing their dreams through academics, especially Dreamers. 

“It’s not about the diploma. It’s about the challenge and fulfillment that you feel along your journey,” Mejia said. “You are not alone. There are many students like you who are paving the road for others.”

A woman stands on a ladder in front of a mural and smiles.
Mejia paints a mural in Elmont, New York.
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Father McShane Joins With University Presidents in Support of Undocumented Students https://now.fordham.edu/university-news/father-mcshane-joins-ajcu-presidents-in-joint-statement/ Thu, 01 Dec 2016 20:37:11 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=59480 To the Members of the Fordham Community,

At this moment when our undocumented students are most vulnerable and afraid, I am writing to you to inform you that I have signed three documents that I hope make it clear that Fordham sees and embraces undocumented students as valued and loved members of our community, that Fordham stands with them, and that we will do all we can to be effective advocates for them. Since my signature signals not only my endorsement, but the endorsement of the entire University community of the sentiments contained in them, I assure you that I did not sign them lightly. Rather, I did so only after a great deal of research and prayer.

Because he was himself an immigrant and the victim of prejudice and discrimination both in Ireland and in the United States, and because he was the bishop of a largely immigrant community that suffered from the same discrimination from which he had suffered, Archbishop Hughes was passionately devoted to America’s immigrants. Therefore, when he founded Saint John’s College (Fordham University) in 1841, he did so to create a school that would make it possible for the immigrants whom he served to receive an education that would both confound their enemies and enable them to take their rightful place in American society.

For its entire 175-year history, Fordham has kept faith with its founder’s vision and committed itself in a special way to serving immigrants and their sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. To be sure, the ethnic identities of the students whom Fordham has served have changed in the course of time. Through the decades, however, the University has never deviated from its historic mission of welcoming and serving new Americans, a mission that has shaped and defined us, and a mission that has enriched us beyond measure. I would be less than honest if I didn’t tell you that as the grandson of four Irish immigrants and the son of a first-generation college graduate whose life was transformed by the education that he received here at Fordham, the University’s devotion to and service of generations of new Americans is especially close to my heart.

Of course, Archbishop Hughes’s legacy is not the only reason that the University has always been drawn to the service of new Americans. Far from it. Our Catholic roots remind us of the Gospel mandate to serve those at the peripheries, and to ‎treat them as cherished sisters and brothers. Our Jesuit identity places upon us the sacred responsibility to treat every student in our care with cura personalis, that is to say, we are called and challenged to treat every Fordham student with reverence, respect and affirming love.

In light of the powerful forces that have shaped us, we can never turn away from those members of our community who are most vulnerable. To do so would be a betrayal of both the ideals that we hold most dear and the sacred mission to which we have devoted ourselves for the past 175 years. We simply cannot do that. We will not do that.

Below is the complete text of the statement written by the presidents of the member schools of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), and links to the 2013 AJCU statement, the Pomona Statement, and the statement of the member schools of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

As I close, let me ask you to pray for all of our students, and especially our undocumented students. I assure you that you all remain in my prayers.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.
President

Statement of AJCU Presidents – November 2016

As Presidents of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities we feel spiritually and morally compelled to raise a collective voice confirming our values and commitments as Americans and educators. We represent colleges and universities from across our nation with more than 215,000 students and more than 21,000 faculty, and more than 2 million living alumni.

Grounded in our Catholic and Jesuit mission, we are guided by our commitment to uphold the dignity of every person, to work for the common good of our nation, and to promote a living faith that works for justice. We see our work of teaching, scholarship and the formation of young minds and spirits as a sacred trust.

That trust prompts us to labor for solidarity among all people, and especially with and for the poor and marginalized of our society. That trust calls us to embrace the entire human family, regardless of their immigration status—or religious allegiance. And experience has shown us that our communities are immeasurably enriched by the presence, intelligence, and committed contributions of undocumented students, as well as of faculty and staff of every color and from every faith tradition.

Therefore, we will continue working:

  • To protect to the fullest extent of the law undocumented students on our campuses;
  • To promote retention of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA);
  • To support and stand with our students, faculty and staff regardless of their faith traditions;
  • To preserve the religious freedoms on which our nation was founded.

As we conclude this Year of Mercy, we make our own the aims enunciated by Pope Francis: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.”

We hope that this statement will inspire members of our University communities, as well as the larger national community, to promote efforts at welcome, dialogue, and reconciliation among all that share our land. We welcome further conversation and commit ourselves to modeling the kind of discourse and debate that are at the heart of our nation’s ideals. And we promise to bring the best resources of our institutions – of intellect, reflection, and service–to bear in the task of fostering understanding in the United States at this particular time in our history.

AJCU 2013 Statement

Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities Statement

Pomona Statement

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