The most obvious opportunity to increase student enrollment and graduation in college is to increase the amount of the individual Pell Grant award.

As background, Pell Grants are the largest student aid program and the foundation of federal student aid. Unlike student loans, students do not have to repay grants and they are awarded from the federal government to qualifying low-income students—not to the institution—for undergraduate study at all colleges and universities. This is important, because it means students can use their Pell award even if they transfer to another institution. Students are given the freedom to determine where and how they want to enroll in college.

Increasing Pell awards from $6,495 to $13,000 ensures community college is free for all Pell-eligible students and will reduce debt taken on by Pell-eligible students attending four-year colleges and universities. We know grant aid helps to keep low-income students in college and on track to graduate. Doubling Pell will put more money in the hands of students first and allow them to use it at the college or training program that best fits their educational needs. Forty years ago, Pell Grants covered more than 75% of the cost of college; today, the maximum grant covers less than 30% of the college experience. It is crucial that Congress acts now to increase the Pell Grant amount students can receive.

The need for financial aid is growing across the country and in our own backyards, and I am proud that Fordham meets over 76% of our students’ financial need. From 1980 through 2019, the number of students eligible for Pell Grants jumped from 2.7 million to 6.7 million students. Fordham is part of a vibrant community, and we are grateful to call the Bronx home to our Rose Hill campus. In 2019-2020, $28.4 billion in Pell grants was awarded nationally, with 431,358 students in New York state receiving $1.9 billion in Pell aid, and 15,347 of our own Congressional district’s students were awarded over $65 million in Pell Grants. The power of additional federal grant aid to students in my community would have a tremendously positive impact for years to come.

If the Pell Grant is doubled, not only will current students receive increased grants, but the pool of students eligible for Pell Grants will grow, providing more working-class students access to aid and therefore access to higher learning. Approximately 7 million Americans receive Pell Grants each year, with nearly 60% of Black students; half of American Indian or American Native students; nearly half of Latinx students; and 30% of white students using Pell Grants to help pay for college.

Doubling Pell is not only the most effective way to make college affordable and accessible for students, but also the easiest and most efficient way for Congress to make higher education a reality for all students who want to attend college. It does not require new social programs and already has longstanding bipartisan support.

The impact of doubling the Pell Grant can have life-changing effects on America’s traditional and adult students and will limit their debt so the next generation is able to have greater economic stability once they join the workforce. This effort would take some of the immediate financial burden off students with high financial need, which means they can focus, alongside their peers, on the educational experience rather than the expense.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., is the president of Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York.

The magazine said the list “recognizes the many local leaders, both in and out of government, who are getting the borough back to the boom times.” It noted Father McShane’s nearly 20 years of service at Fordham, which it called the borough’s “premier institution of higher learning,” and lauded him for securing a $35 million gift last year from investor Mario Gabelli, the largest single gift in the University’s history.

In the Bronx, Father McShane currently serves as a distinguished counsellor to the Board of the New York Botanical Garden. He has long given his time to many New York City organizations and government, with service on the mayor’s Applied Sciences in NYC Advisory Committee, the board of the Museum of Civil Rights in Harlem, and task forces convened by the mayor’s office on future of higher education, the future of media, and work force development.

Likewise, he has dedicated time to New York state. In 2008, then governor David Patterson asked him to serve on the board of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and he was a part of the MTA Commission on Financing, also known as “The Ravitch Commission.” Most recently, he was asked by Governor Andrew Cuomo to work on the State of New York’s plan for reopening after the pandemic. 

Father McShane also serves on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies. In 2017, he was honored by the 100 Year Association for Fordham’s commitment to community service and its contributions to New York City.

I write to you to remind you that (as I mentioned to you in a letter that I sent to the University community last June), the University has established Juneteenth (the date upon which news of emancipation finally reached Galveston, Texas, on 19 June 1865, more than two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation) as an annual paid holiday for all Fordham employees. Since Juneteenth falls on a Saturday this year, the holiday will be observed and celebrated on Friday, 18 June.

This Juneteenth also marks a tragic anniversary: it is almost exactly 100 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre. On May 31, 1921, a mob of white people stormed “Black Wall Street,” a wealthy Black neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, murdering hundreds of its residents, looting their property, and burning their homes. Our own Dr. Olivia Hooker, a longtime professor of psychology at Fordham, survived the Tulsa massacre as a child. In addition to serving generations of Fordham students as a teacher, mentor, and advocate, she was the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard, and a pioneer in the field of psychometrics.

The unprovoked Tulsa attack was far from the only case of white violence in the Jim Crow era: I invite you to explore the University’s Anti-Black Racial Violence Resources page, and especially the books and multimedia conversations listed therein, for further information.

In the coming days, Rafael Zapata, our Chief Diversity Officer, will be sharing with you the details about the slate of programming that he, his colleagues and his staff, and departments across the University have developed for the observance of this important date on the University’s calendar.

Let us pray that the work of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans and their allies in the past year—a year bookended by the death of George Floyd and the conviction of his killer—will mark a turning point in our nation’s history. I know you join with me in the hope that the momentum that they have created will lead to the formation of that “more perfect union” of the Constitution, a more perfect union in which racial justice and equality will reign in our hearts and throughout our country.

Finally, please know that I continue to keep all of you, and especially the Black members of our community, in my daily prayers.

Sincerely,
Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

I am writing to you while we are between the diploma ceremonies for the Classes of 2021 and 2020. Therefore, as you might imagine, our students and the experience that they have on campus are very much on my mind. It has been a great joy to see the pleasure with which students (and faculty and staff) have been greeting one another at in-person diploma ceremonies, after what has been a year’s absence for some of them. As you might also imagine, as I looked at the faces of our students and our faculty in the course of the many ceremonies that I have been fortunate enough to attend, once again, I was deeply aware of all that we have missed in the course of the past difficult 15 months.

Even as we were preparing to celebrate the members of the Class of 2021 and their many achievements, we have been giving a great deal of thought to what the coming academic year will look like, and what it should look like. Therefore, I would like to share with you the University’s direction for 2021–2022.

It goes without saying that we hope for full enrollment this year, not least to ensure that we can deliver a robust student experience and desirable environment in which to teach and work. Robust enrollment is also important in the next few fiscal years as the University regains its financial footing. If we want the students to return to campus, we have to be here to greet them.

As we all know from experience, our promise to provide our students with the cura personalis that is at the center of Jesuit education is best delivered and experienced in a vibrant, high-touch, in-person environment. Every member of the Fordham community, regardless of their role, contributes to the campus culture, and shapes the educational and work experience for students, faculty, and staff. This is just another way of saying that the full Fordham experience, for students and for all of us, is best achieved when most of us are studying, teaching, and working together in person. Since we all value the student-centered environment for which Fordham is justly famous, as I mentioned to you in a note that I sent out on March 9, we have made the decision to return to a fully on-ground format for all undergraduate students in the 2021–2022 academic year (the Office of the Provost will share guidance for graduate and professional schools). In order to do so, we want to ensure that we provide all of the members of the University community with as COVID-safe an environment as we possibly can.

Therefore, all students will be required to be vaccinated for COVID-19 for the fall semester. In addition, it is our strong expectation that all University personnel (faculty, staff, and administrators) will be fully vaccinated as well, no later than the opening day of the fall semester. While Fordham hasn’t made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for employees, other schools and employers are beginning to do so, and we will be weighing whether we will follow their lead in the coming months. Requests for medical and religious accommodations will be considered. Our rationale for considering moving in this direction is a simple one: In addition to protecting your health as individuals, vaccination helps protect your colleagues and our students. This belief has been buttressed by the dramatic impact that the broad vaccination of our students has had on our caseload and positivity rates: As soon as our students were fully vaccinated, our caseload and positivity rates plummeted.

In addition, we will continue to follow the directives that we receive from both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and New York State Department of Health. Therefore, we will require that their mandates with regard to masking, maintaining social distance, sanitation, and hygiene be followed at all times. You may have noticed that over the course of the pandemic, COVID-19 regulations and precautions have evolved. We expect further easing of mask and social distancing restrictions as a greater percentage of our population becomes vaccinated, and we expect that we will be allowed to have full-capacity classrooms, residence and dining halls, and event spaces in the fall. This is how good public health policy works: as evidence accumulates, policies are updated to reflect the latest scientific analysis.

Human Resources Management has been drafting policies that will prepare us for the full-scale return to campus in the fall. I assure you that the policies that are developed will be practical, equitable, and will serve Fordham’s mission well. In order to ensure that we get it right, there will be a University Town Hall meeting (via Zoom) in June to review such details.

Also, allow me to remind you again of the importance and effectiveness of vaccination against COVID-19: Last week’s Five Things email charts the abrupt decline of new COVID-19 infections as on-campus vaccinations increased. As of May 25, we have a 14-day streak of zero new infections. Fordham still has an abundant supply of vaccine doses on both campuses: Hours, locations, and other details are available here.

Anyone who has been fully vaccinated should send an image of their completed vaccine card to [email protected] and [email protected] (use the same addresses to inform the University of COVID-19 test results).

Over the next several months you will receive a variety of communications regarding the return to campus policies and procedures from various offices (including the weekly Five Things updates). Those communications will be in addition to more town halls as we come closer to the beginning of the academic year.

I am very much looking forward to seeing you all in person in just a couple of months. This has been a difficult year for many of us, and has certainly stressed the University community in ways we could not have anticipated in March 2020. Until then, I hope you can enjoy a summer with loved ones and friends free of COVID-19 restrictions—you more than deserve it.

You are in my prayers,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

Though a truce is in effect between Israel and Hamas, the conflict has provoked anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic attacks globally, including one in Times Square on Thursday, in which a Jewish man was beaten by protesters. He survived yet suffered injuries.

The victim, Joseph Borgen, said he was surprised at the level of hate against him, and said that there is a larger issue with hate against minorities in the city: “I have coworkers of Asian ethnicity who are afraid to go on the subway at night because you know, they are afraid they are going to get attacked on the subway. The amount of hate that is taking place these days is just mind-boggling to me. I mean, that shouldn’t happen to anyone in New York City.”

To which I say, it should not happen to anyone, anywhere, and especially not among the family of People of the Book. We owe our Jewish and Muslim cousins the same respect and love that we desire as Catholics. An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us, and violence inspired by anti-Semitism (as is apparently the case with Mr. Borgen), or because of any kind of racial or religious hatred, is especially appalling.

This weekend we pray for an enduring peace in the Middle East, and a cooling of ethnic and religious hatred here and around the world. I know you all join me in opposing the violent actions of mobs inspired by the current conflict in Israel and Gaza, and in working toward a world in which justice and understanding prevails among the warring factions.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

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