“I don’t normally go out on a school night! I’m a teacher. I get up at 4:45 in the morning,” she said shortly before the December 13 performance. “But for this? I am willing to make that sacrifice.”

The show has been a long time coming for Ruffin. She has been an Ailey fan for years—“If you are an inner-city Black girl, you’ve heard of Alvin Ailey,” she said of the famed company, founded and fronted by the boundary-breaking eponymous Black dancer. But she hadn’t been to a show since 2000. A lot of life has passed since then. Ruffin went to Fordham’s Graduate School of Education and earned a master’s degree. Now she teaches seventh-grade public schoolers in Manhattan. And she somehow missed the part where Fordham brags about its partnership with the Ailey School. Since 1998, the two institutions have been offering a joint BFA program through which students learn dance at Ailey while getting a full liberal arts education at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

“I had no idea that Fordham had this connection with Alvin Ailey. And if I would have known that, I would have been humming and bumming for tickets for my teachers a long time ago,” Ruffin said. Does it lend Fordham a little—“Street cred? Absolutely!” Ruffin beamed. “Fordham never—I must admit, they do not cease to surprise me.”

The bond between Fordham and Ailey was on full display that Tuesday evening. The alumni event attracted a varied cohort. Couples, young and old, chatted over wine and cheese plates in the 100-year-old theater’s gilded lobby. Lovers of modern dance came alone; others brought friends. There were families—a couple of teenage daughters sat off to the side on marble stairs, avoiding small talk. Fordham trustee emeritus John Costantino, GABELLI ’67, LAW ’70, did not. “A lot of the programs tonight, they really relate to people,” he said. “They mean something.”

Costantino was talking about the dances—including choreographer Jamar Roberts’ In a Sentimental Mood, which had its world premiere earlier in the year, and three classics by Ailey, who died in 1989: Reflections in D, Cry, and of course Revelations, the 1960 piece that ends nearly every Ailey performance. But he could have been talking about the Ailey/Fordham BFA, too. The program certainly means something to Courtney Celeste Spears, FCLC ’16, one of seven Ailey/Fordham graduates now dancing with the company. She would take the stage later that evening, but first, she addressed a room of Fordham alumni and friends in the lobby—an intimate moment before the lights went down.

“It was such a whirlwind of four years,” Spears said of her college experience. “I think so much of the foundation that I got there shaped me as a young woman, as a professional, as a dancer, as an artist in so many ways. It was such a well-rounded program.” But more than anything? “I always felt just very covered, and safe and advocated for.”

That was music to the ears of Andrew Clark, Ph.D., a Fordham professor of French and comparative literature who also co-directs the BFA program. Clark’s sister was a classical ballet dancer, on her way to a professional career, when she tore the ligaments in her hip. “That totally changed her life. She couldn’t dance ever again. … She had to pick another path,” he said.

Today, the Ailey/Fordham program offers students a best-of-both-worlds approach: a top dance education and a top classroom education in New York City. “Having other curiosities, having other skills and interests and passions [beyond dance is]really important,” Clark said. But don’t think for a second that he doesn’t care about dance. His voice rose talking about the first number of the night: Spears would be dancing with Christopher R. Wilson, FCLC ’17, whom Clark advised when Wilson was an undergrad. He is “such a beautiful dancer, and they dance together all the time and they’re amazing,” Clark said.

Minutes later, the theater filled up. The show began. The program was rhythmic, painful, energetic, beautiful. A New York institution, performing for a hometown crowd. It was worth losing sleep for.

—Jeff Coltin, FCRH ’15, is the City Hall bureau chief at City & State New York and a contributor to this magazine.

The Ailey performance was one of many cultural events hosted throughout the year by Fordham’s Office of Alumni Relations. Learn more at fordham.edu/events.

The 17th annual Fordham Founder’s Dinner, held March 19, raised a total of $2.2 million for the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund and Faith & Hope | The Campaign for Financial Aid. So far, $131 million has been raised toward the campaign’s $175 million goal.

Speaking on behalf of her fellow Founder’s Scholars, Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Genie Hughes, a biology and theology major, thanked the donors for helping the scholars overcome financial barriers to education, and for being “bothered into action.”

“It’s easy enough for a bio student to view life as a series of signal transduction pathways and neuronal networks that allow us to function,” she said. “But life—the thing we spend every day living—is made up of so much more than that.”

Founder’s Scholar Marla Louissaint, currently performing in the national tour of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, took the stage and sang a moving rendition of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” for the attendees.

A World of Infinite Possibilities

In thanking the donors for their generosity, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, said their financial support—indeed all forms of scholarship support—“opens up a world of near-infinite possibilities.”

Those possibilities are reflected in the lives of the donors themselves, “with their talents, their vision, their discerning wisdom, and their passionate integrity.” In particular, he called out the evening’s three Founder’s Awards honorees: John R. Costantino, Esq., GABELLI ’67, LAW ’70, PAR; Barbara Costantino, PAR; and William J. Loschert, GABELLI ’61.

“They have lived their lives in ways that bring lustre to the University,” said Father McShane. “It also means that, having reflected deeply on the transforming impact that a Fordham education had on them, they have come to the realization that like all of us, they were the beneficiaries of a legacy they didn’t create.”

Legacy Builders

Bob Daleo, GABELLI ’72, chairman of the Board of Trustees and the event’s co-chair, said the Costantinos had a “shared love” of the University, and were generous in their support for the new Law School building, Fordham athletics, WFUV, and two scholarships—the Costantino Family Endowed Scholarship Fund, and the Edelman Postgraduate Fellowship in Neuroscience.

In accepting the Founder’s award, Fordham Trustee Emeritus John Costantino paid homage to his parents; his father, an orphan who emigrated to America from Sicily when he was just 14 years old, had little chance for a formal education.

“The proudest day of my parents’ lives was the day they attended my graduation at Fordham Law School,” he said. Although his father passed away just two months after the graduation ceremony, Costantino’s mother always felt that his father had “gotten his wish” to see him become a lawyer.

Barbara Costantino said she was honored to share the stage with her husband of 48 years, whom she’d known when he was a student in 1963 at Fordham’s business school. Back then, she said, she’d read and typed his college and law school papers—free of charge.

“I have often felt that I probably should have gotten an honorary Fordham degree [for that],” she said jokingly, and to applause.

Trustee Fellow William J. Loschert, who has hosted more than 1,000 Fordham students at his home in London and is a steadfast supporter of Fordham faculty, scholarships, and building projects, captured the evening with the shortest acceptance speech—at approximately 30 seconds. He thanked Father McShane, Gabelli School of Business Dean Donna Rapaccioli, the Fordham faculty, and “most importantly the students.”

“Enjoy the rest of the evening, have another glass of wine, and God bless,” he said.

Although Loschert proved to be a man of few words, Father McShane called him “an extraordinary presence for Fordham in London … He has been a fatherly figure.” 

Into the Future

In his speech, Father McShane described Fordham’s founder, Archbishop “Dagger John” Hughes as “a fundraiser who was not afraid to knock on any door.”

“He was, thank God, incapable of dreaming small dreams,” Father McShane said. “Therefore, with zeal and urgency, he took on New York and American culture with what some thought was an unholy impatience.”

“Now I may be prejudiced, but the greatest of all his realized dreams was Fordham,” said Father McShane. “The dream was bold, its dividends have been rich—but the costs associated with ensuring the continuation of that legacy were, and are, high.”

He called the evening’s honorees “worthy successors” to the legacy of Dagger John. Just as Archbishop Hughes gave hope to the recent Irish immigrants, the Fordham Founder’s awardees have given the promise of an education to the scholars.

“You’re, for them, patron saints,” he said. “You are men and women, who, not knowing our students’ names, have harbored great hopes for them.”
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Watch Founder’s Scholar Marla Louissaint Perform ‘Will You Still Love Me’