The fundraiser? An online auction, the third such event hosted by the Fordham College Alumni Association (FCAA), with a novel twist this year: celebrity alumni. Several offered virtual face time to the highest bidder, helping to propel the event far beyond its usual total.

The auction “gets bigger and better every year,” with all proceeds going toward scholarships and grants for students, said Debra Caruso Marrone, FCRH ’81, the association’s president.

It’s one of several events sponsored by the FCAA each year, complementing the broader efforts of the Fordham University Alumni Association, the Office of Alumni Relations, and other groups that serve students and the alumni community.

Founded in 1905, the FCAA is the University’s oldest alumni organization, and primarily serves Fordham College at Rose Hill students and alumni.

Contacting Celebrity Alumni

The idea of featuring celebrity alumni in December’s auction was driven in part by the pandemic, which put the kibosh on, say, auctioning off event tickets. “We really had to pivot,” said Christa Treitmeier-Meditz, FCRH ’85, who spearheaded the effort to reach out to various prominent alumni.

In the end, they were able to auction off a virtual comedy writing lesson with Saturday Night Live writer Streeter Seidell, FCRH ’05 (someone bought that for his wife, an aspiring comedy writer, Treitmeier-Meditz said). They also got help from some prominent alumni thespians: Golden Globe winner Dylan McDermott, FCLC ’83, contributed a virtual meet, and Golden Globe winner and former Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82, contributed a virtual master class and a post-pandemic in-person engagement—dinner out and tickets to the next Broadway show she appears in.

People also contributed various items, memorabilia, or experiences, such as a master cooking class or a trip around Manhattan by yacht. “It’s everything and anything,” Treitmeier-Meditz said. “The Fordham alumni community is very generous.”

Other planned events were canceled due to the pandemic lockdown last year: a sit-down for a dozen alumni with John Brennan, FCRH ’77, former CIA director and counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, and an event with sportscasters Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, and Mike Breen, FCRH ’83.

Through such events, the association has raised money for various funds, including a summer internship fund for journalism majors, recently renamed for Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner who died in 2020. A new scholarship fund named for Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, is for students who reach new heights of academic achievement after arriving at the University.

The association provides other important support such as funding for undergraduate research and for student travel, noted Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill. “I’m so pleased to see how that support has grown over the past several years,” she said. “I am grateful for their commitment to the college, to our alumni, and to the larger Fordham family.”

The association’s Giving Day gift—a matching gift—was split between two scholarship funds: the FCAA Endowed Legacy Scholarship, a need-based scholarship for legacy students, and the Rev. George J. McMahon, S.J., Endowed Scholarship, awarded to students at Fordham College at Rose Hill and the Gabelli School of Business.

Serving on the board is a labor of love, Caruso Marrone said. “We’re doing something good: we’re raising funds, we’re helping students go through school,” in addition to bringing alumni together at events, she said. “The members of our board [are] of various age groups, various backgrounds, various careers, [and] we all come together and do this work and enjoy it immensely. We have just a great group of people who are dedicated to Fordham.”

1. Close Encounter (2015)

“This one was the first one where it really just destroyed in the room. I feel like Lorne [Michaels] started to know my name after that one. It truly changed my trajectory here. It was the first one I had that really just crushed. And Kate [McKinnon] was so funny. Everything about that one just worked.”

2. Haunted Elevator (2016)

“This did great in the studio, but it didn’t start out that way. It didn’t really work until the final one on air. So it was just getting better each time [during the week], but going into the show, we were like, ‘I don’t know if people are going to like it.’ And then to have it hit as hard as it did was rewarding. Tom Hanks is just a hero of mine and Mikey’s, and just having him go all in on such a stupid thing, just trusting these two idiots—and Bobby [Moynihan], excuse me, these three idiots, to bring him through that thing … It’s just nice knowing Tom Hanks is as friendly and cool as you want him to be.”

3. Civil War Soldiers (2017)

“I did this one with Jimmy Fallon when he hosted where they’re singing this old Civil War song, and he keeps jumping in with what he calls his ‘fat catchy hook’ that just sounds like a modern song called ‘Party at My Parents’ House.’ I just loved it. It did pretty well on the show. Jimmy was so funny, and just got the concept right away. I love history stuff. Whenever I can get a history thing on, I get excited about it.”

4. New Mercedes (2016)

“We did this commercial with Julia Louis Dreyfus for a Mercedes car that ran on like 5,000 AA batteries. I love the joke, and the way it was shot was just gorgeous. But I think I love it more for the fact that they really bought like 20,000 AA batteries, and there was a guy on set whose job was just shoveling batteries. He had, like, a snow shovel. It would be, ‘Action,’ then 10,000 batteries fall out of a hole in this car. Then ‘OK, cut,’ and this dude had to come in and shovel batteries all day. It was just making me laugh.”

5. Rap Song (2017)

“Season 42 was just such a momentous season for the show, and this was from the last episode. I got to do a thing with the full cast, and I knew that Bobby [Moynihan] was leaving, and Vanessa [Bayer] was leaving, and Bobby in particular was one of my buddies, and so it was cool to just have everybody there. It was really fun on a personal level of like, ‘Oh wow, we got to do this really big, deeply stupid song thing at the end of the season.’”

—Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06, a social media editor at New York magazine, is a frequent contributor to this magazine.

Related Story: The Comedic Stylings of Saturday Night Live‘s Streeter Seidell