Many students at Hayes—as the school is known—are potentially the first in their families to attend college. Most are Hispanic and African-American, and many come from single-parent homes in the South Bronx whose families struggle financially, said the school’s principal, William Lessa. 

Four years ago, Fordham developed a partnership with Hayes that began with a mentoring program and has expanded to include work with WFUV, the Gabelli School of Business, the Graduate School of Education, and Fordham-based Jesuits. The collaboration has evolved into a symbiotic relationship between two schools that share similar missions and values, said staff from both institutions. 

“Our partnership with Cardinal Hayes is a critical one,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Students cannot aspire to a life they do not know exists, and they cannot achieve that life unless they are taught that it belongs within their grasp. If that were the only reason for the partnership, it would be enough. But engagement with the Hayes students, their families, and their community also enriches Fordham. We are wiser, better grounded in the lives of our neighbors, and the beneficiary of great talents that would otherwise go untapped, were it not for this partnership.”

The ties between the two schools have given Fordham students a window into what life in the South Bronx looks like, said Roxanne De La Torre, FCRH ’09, GRE ’11, director of campus and community leadership for Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning. 

“For our students to get more exposure to the Bronx—the South Bronx, in particular—for our students to get out of our campus and meet people who live and work and go to school here in the Bronx, is a huge positive,” said De La Torre, who helped drive the partnership between the two schools. 

And for many young men at Hayes, exposure to Fordham’s staff and students has broadened their horizons and opened doors. 

“Our kids are fascinated by them … They have no idea who lives out there,” said Lessa, adding that the partnership is also important to his students’ families. “I think our parents have decided to invest a considerable amount of money into their sons’ education in the hopes that they’ll be the first person in their homes to go onto college. Education is transformational and can be a change agent in their lives.” 

‘The Best Tutor’ 

Several days a week, Fordham students visit Hayes and tutor students in an after-school academic support program called Period 9. 

“Although [the Hayes students are]  tired from a full day of classes, they attend Period 9 so they can get that extra help they need in a particular subject,” said Emily Padilla-Bradley, the school’s dean of studies. “Throughout the years, I’ve realized that the students have learned to appreciate, more and more, the help from the tutors from Fordham.” 

One of those tutors is Manuel DeMatos, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior who will be studying adolescent education at the Graduate School of Education next year. 

“Just knowing that you’re having a positive impact and that these kids are improving their potential life—not just in high school, but into the future—is super rewarding,” said DeMatos, who wants to become a high school social studies and French teacher. 

The Cardinal Hayes students in Period 9 are an eclectic bunch. There’s Calvin Lanier, a junior who plays football. There’s Leonel Nepomuceno, a senior who sings in the school choir and loves animals—including his three pets, Hailey the miniature poodle, Joshua the orange tabby cat, and Rango the turtle—so much that he’s considering studying veterinary science in college. Then there’s Albert Alexander Almanzar, a self-described class clown who often played around instead of focusing on his studies. But his years at Hayes—and a Fordham student named Thomas Bradley—changed him, he said. 

Almanzar called Bradley, a student at the Gabelli School of Business, “the best tutor.”

“[He] gives me more motivation to want to do better in my classes because it shows me somebody that cares,” Almanzar said of Bradley, who tutored him in U.S. history and writing. “All day in school, people show that they care. But somebody that’s a little younger, I feel like I could relate to more… that means more to me.”

Finding A Passion for Public Radio 

For the past three years, members of WFUV, Fordham’s public radio station, have paid an annual visit to Cardinal Hayes and, in a conversation with the entire junior class, shared what the students can learn at the station. 

“There is this station that is right within their borough, within the University, that offers the kind of opportunities that they’re not going to find at other colleges and universities across the United States,” said Chuck Singleton, general manager at WFUV, which is ranked among the top 20 college radio stations by the Princeton Review. 

Those visits have led to three paid internships for Hayes students, including Ramon Liriano, a senior who worked in the sports department last summer. Like many of his high school peers, he’s potentially the first in his family to complete a college degree. Thanks to his internship at WFUV, he said, he’s also discovered a potential career in sports broadcasting. 

“I’ve seen my family struggle, especially my mother, who works two jobs [as a housekeeper]. I’ve seen her come home looking tired, especially late at night—sometimes, 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Liriano. “She’s put me in a Catholic school, pushed me to become better than what she has done in her life … I want to take this opportunity to study something really good in the world that can help provide for my family.”

Giving Students A Voice

Last year, a dozen Hayes honors upperclassmen took a corporate communications course through the Gabelli School of Business. From fall to spring, they learned how to deliver the perfect personal elevator pitch and put together an engaging presentation. They analyzed a Fortune 500 company that experienced a diversity-related crisis, like Starbucks, and presented a new diversity plan to their classmates. But perhaps most importantly, they learned how to become better communicators.

“The difference in how the students presented their work in class, how confident they were in their verbal responses, how confident they became in their social circles, all based on the communication competencies they learned in class … that, to me, was the most rewarding thing,” said Clarence Ball, lecturer and interim director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Gabelli School of Business, who teaches the course at Cardinal Hayes. 

Five students from the initial cohort of Ball’s course are now first-year students at Fordham, including the 2019 Hayes valedictorian, Andy Lin. 

Lin described himself as a shy student, who, as a high school freshman, used to read his speeches word-for-word from a piece of paper. Instead of making direct eye contact during presentations, he would look down. But by the end of Ball’s program, he saw a huge change in himself. 

“Before I went up on stage to give my [valedictorian]  speech, I did the exercises that Professor Ball always had us do,” said Lin, now a first-year Fordham College at Lincoln Center student who plans on studying computer science. “I messed up a few words here and there, but I was able to recompose myself and keep moving on.”

These relationships that Fordham professors and students are fostering in the community are something the University hopes to build on, said Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for mission integration and planning, who helped found the Center for Community Engaged Learning. Using its Hayes relationship as a model, Fordham is now working on a similar partnership with Aquinas High School, an all-girls Catholic high school in the Belmont section of the Bronx. 

“My hope is that our partnership with Cardinal Hayes is one of many such partnerships with institutions in the Bronx, where students can engage their community more effectively,” said Father McCarthy. “We want to help faculty leaders to connect with community leaders to build up student leaders.” 

Trading Teachers Across the Bronx

Several Hayes teachers have studied at the Graduate School of Education, thanks to the support of a Fordham scholarship that almost halves tuition costs for full-time professionals in faith-based non-public schools, said principal William Lessa.

And in the past three years, three Fordham-based Jesuit scholastics have volunteered at Cardinal Hayes. These young Jesuits who have just finished novitiate are deepening their faith through local community service, said Joseph O’Keefe, S.J., GSAS ’80, a current scholar in residence at the Graduate School of Education and Fordham trustee who was just chosen to lead the new USA East Jesuit province. 

“The idea is to work in the Bronx community and to reflect on that as part of their preparation to become priests,” Father O’Keefe said. 

At Hayes, the scholastics have counseled students dealing with tough situations at home, taught religion classes, and helped seniors navigate the college admission process. 

“They’re there to help. But they also learn from people’s experiences,” said Father O’Keefe. 

An Alumnus from Both Schools 

At the heart of the partnership between the two schools is Donald Almeida, Fordham trustee and retired vice chairman of PwC. 

Almeida, who grew up in Yonkers, New York, is a ’69 Hayes and ’73 Fordham alumnus who now serves on the boards at both schools. Over the past several years, he has spearheaded the partnership between his two alma maters and, with his wife, supported many students—including young men who have experienced homelessness.

Among his mentees is a Hayes student whom Almeida chose not to identify by name. The student plays basketball so well that he will likely receive many Division I offers, said Almeida, who has attended his sports games and cheered him on from the sidelines. He’s also occasionally taken the student and his mother out to dinner. 

“I’m his ‘bro,’” said Almeida. “That’s what he calls me.”

A while back, Almeida learned that the student was considering leaving Hayes and attending a prep school, in hopes of being recruited by better college sports teams. But Almeida said he was more focused on getting the student into the best academic college program. 

Almeida recalled the day he sat in his Rhode Island home, gazing at the ocean, when his cell phone rang. It was the student’s father. For two hours, they debated whether or not the student should stay at Hayes. 

“Thirty seconds after I hung up the phone with his father, [the student]  calls me to tell me he’s staying at Hayes,” said Almeida, noting that the student is not the only one benefitting from their relationship. “The more you impact their lives, the more satisfaction you get.”

Cơm Tấm Ninh Kiều

This unassuming spot under the 4 train on Kingsbridge Road greets visitors with a warm atmosphere that smells of basil, coffee, and rice. Cơm tấm is Vietnamese for broken rice, referring to a dish made from fractured rice grains, explains Ruby Nguyen, the co-owner of the restaurant, and Ninh Kiều refers to the urban waterfront district Cần Thơ. Many of the restaurant’s dishes are classics from Saigon, the hometown of chef Chang Lam, Nguyen, and many of their Vietnamese neighbors in the Bronx. Nguyen’s favorite dishes are Bún bò Huế, inspired by the city of Huế, with spicy beef, pork broth, beef brisket, Huế-style sausage, pork knuckle, and blood cake, and Cơm tấm Ninh Kiều, a rice plate with grilled pork chop, meatloaf, eggs, crispy shrimp dumplings, and shredded pork. Don’t forget to try the Vietnamese iced coffee, made with sweetened condensed milk and strong enough to power you through a 12-hour day. 

Price: $, family-friendly

La Morada 

La morada is Spanish for both purple and dwelling place or home. The menu offers traditional Oaxacan dishes, including six different types of mole. Two favorites are mole Oaxaqueño, which is made with seven types of chiles, and mole blanco, made with pine nuts, almonds, and cashews. Chef-owner Natalia Mendez and her daughter Carolina created the menu. Mendez owns the place with her husband, Antonio Savaadra; all three of their children are involved in the business. Marco, an artist and poet, is the host; his watercolors can often be found on the purple walls. “It’s about sharing who we are,” he said. Protest banners and art also adorn the space, and there’s a sizable lending library in the back. Try their food and the need to return that book won’t be the only thing calling you back!

Price: $-$$, family-friendly

La Masa

La Masa is a bustling family restaurant in the heart of Morris Park. The founders, Joswar Montalvo and his wife, Laura, started the business five years ago, showcasing food from Montalvo’s homeland of Colombia. Empanadas are what La Masa is famous for, and there is one for everyone’s taste; they’re filled with everything from cilantro lime chicken, shrimp, and roasted eggplant to Nutella and apple pie—made special for Montalvo’s daughter who wouldn’t eat any of the others. Try the passion fruit flan!

Price: $-$$, family-friendly

 Al-Aqsa + Premium Sweets

Al Aqsa is a Bengali restaurant on Starling Avenue in Parkchester that makes everything from biryani to bhorta. Biryani is a dish made of fragrant rice, meat, and ghee, and often prepared for holidays. Bhorta is a mash of vegetables, fish, or legumes and is a staple dish in many Bengali homes. Mohammed Hasnat, the owner of Al-Aqsa, said his favorite dishes are the fish curries. This writer’s favorite is the shutki bhorta which is made of dried fish and red chili peppers. Hasnat started the restaurant in 2007 because there was a growing population of Bengalis in the community; his dishes are ones that you would find in a traditional Bengali home. After you’re done with lunch or dinner at Al-Aqsa be sure to stop by Premium Sweets, just across the street, for a cup of cha and Bengali desserts.

Price: $, family-friendly

Mama G’s African Kitchen

Marked by a graffiti mural on White Plains Road, this spot has a bar-like ambiance complete with a large TV playing soccer in the back. But unlike other sports bars, you won’t find burgers and fries coming out of the kitchen. Africans from Nigeria to Senegal gather in this welcoming spot, where house favorites include okra stew and banku, a kind of bread made with fermented corn mixed with cassava. The owner, Mama G, said the menu is full of recipes passed down from her mother and grandmother. Mama G, short for Gina Nti, is from Accra, Ghana, but the Bronx has been her home for over 20 years. The borough is her heart, she said, and she encourages those who have never had African food to stop in and try some. 

Price: $-$$

Havana Cafe  

Havana Cafe was opened in 2010 by three friends, Troy Perez, Kevin Alicea, and Ruben Rodriguez, all of whom grew up in the East Tremont area where the restaurant is located. The New York State Assembly citation framed on the wall inside reads, “Havana Cafe brought the Cuban experience to the Bronx, celebrating Cuban culture, cuisine, and customs.” The trio has extensive experience working in the restaurant industry in Manhattan, and they wanted to bring that Manhattan vibe to their home in the Bronx. Their menu includes many Cuban classics, but also features dishes from Puerto Rico and other Latin cuisines. Try the pastelon, a lasagna layered with meat, cheese, and sweet plantain. 

Price: $$, family-friendly

Ali’s Roti Shop 

Ali’s Roti is a small hole-in-the-wall place that packs a serious flavor punch. The family-owned Trinidadian restaurant has been around since the ’70s. It’s located next to a Montefiore Hospital, so you’ll see many nurses in line for lunch. They are famous for their enormous roti, round flatbreads made with flour and served with either meat or vegetables. The menu offers a lot of vegetarian options, including lentil, chickpeas, and cabbage dishes. The roti can easily be split between two people and come with a tangy tamarind sauce. Try their juices; their peanut punch is a perfect post-roti desert.

Price: $, cash only

Kingston Jamaican Bakery

Kingston Jamaican Bakery was started by John and Joyce Levi in 1970 in the Wakefield section of the Bronx. There is always a long line here, especially on weekends, but it’s well worth the wait. There are three options for patties: beef, chicken, and vegetarian. These are not your typical patties, says Caroline Sinclair, the sister of the owner, with a smile. Many locals say that you haven’t had a patty until you’ve had one made with coco bread from Kingston Jamaican Bakery. The patties are freshly baked using seasonal ingredients, and the dough is made from scratch. Their carrot cake rivals Lloyd’s Carrot Cake in the Bronx. It’s dense with butter and laces your tongue with nutmeg. 

Price: $, cash only

Narciso Bakery 

Take note: not all the Bronx Italian bakeries are on Arthur Avenue! This one, on White Plains Road, is a family-owned business run by Sicilian native Vincent Passafiume, his wife Giovanna, and his daughter Rose. The signage out front is simple and the window displays a line of freshly baked bread. The place has an old-world vibe complete with a vintage bread slicing machine. The raisin swirl bread is filled with walnuts. Mini-cheesecakes are filled with custard and berry jams. Passafiume has been baking here for over 30 years. He immigrated to the United States in 1974 when he was 17 years old and has worked only in Bronx bakeries ever since. What’s special about this bakery is the diversity of people who come through the doors. The customers hail from the Caribbean, Korea, and everywhere in between, and Passafiume and his family all make them all feel at home.

Price: $, cash only

Seven Spices

An ode to Guyana, Seven Spices is adorned with an awning brightly decorated with palm trees and the Guyanese flag. George DaSilva, a gold miner from the nation’s Berbice region with a passion for food, opened the restaurant in 2011. It is one of only three Guyanese restaurants in the Bronx. The vegetable sides are almost like desserts. The pumpkin and spinach have a creamy consistency and a light sweetness from coconut milk. The okra is lightly spiced, a perfect companion to rice and peas. The mac and cheese and oxtail here are customer favorites. Both are cooked to perfection: a crispy crust of cheese sits on top of the mac and the butter beans in the oxtail dish are melt-in-your-mouth soft. Also on the menu are goat curry roti, baked salmon, and cook-up rice, a dish made with a variety of meat and herbs. DeSilva’s father and grandfather were bakers in Guyana and he has kept up the tradition. He makes pastries from scratch including cassava pone, a cake made from yucca. Their lunch special is $6 and keeps you full all day. 

Price: $, family-friendly

Go forth and eat! 

This year, nearly 200 students participated at close to 20 sites, partnering with grassroots community organizations.

“We have students attend a wide variety of sites so that they receive a rich experience and they are encouraged to continue to engage throughout the year, either through the center or on their own,” said Candace Johnson, assistant director of operations and evaluation at the center.

Up in the Bronx, students from the Rose Hill campus stood in the rain in the West Farms neighborhood waiting for the gates of Drew Gardens to open. Nearby, the Bronx River swelled, providing ambient noise to compete with the traffic on Tremont Ave. Students played team-building exercises to pass the time. Despite the wet weather, spirits were high.

Nick Suit, a Gabelli School of Business student from Abington, Pennsylvania, said the group had already been through training that included readings and group discussions about the borough’s sometimes-tumultuous history. They talked about what it means to volunteer in underserved communities and how to listen before helping. They also parsed the difference between intentions versus impact. Sometimes, good intentions can come across the wrong way, he said. However, focusing on impact can make all the difference. He gestured to a tree he was planting with Aidan Avel of Poolesville, Maryland, and Kate West of Fishkill, New York.

“This tree can have an impact; maybe one day a kid from the neighborhood can read a book next to it,” he said. “Maybe years later it’ll be big enough that a community event could happen under it.”

Under a mild drizzle, Mario Figueroa, a volunteer with the garden, guided the students past meandering boxwoods and pear trees laden with fruit. He told students the garden has come far from the bad old days, but they remain vigilant about upkeep. He said that the park was once a de facto garbage dump and a haven for drug addicts, known to the locals as “Zombie Land.” The community pulled together to clean the area, but people still toss garbage into the park and volunteers remain vigilant about keeping drug use out.

“It’s our little Central Park,” he said.

Figueroa told them that the area is facing a housing shortage and gentrification has become a looming threat to long-time residents who created the garden. He then invited students to come back as often as they like to participate in barbecues, yoga, or gardening. Next, he broke the students up into groups. Some set out to plant trees, others to plant shrubs by the river, and others mixed cement help create a pond for koi to swim.

Keegan Roeder, a new Fordham College at Rose Hill student from East New Brunswick, New Jersey, said he’d never been north of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, but the area reminded him a bit of Northern Manhattan neighborhoods he’s visited, like Washington Heights, where people are “just working and living.” He said he was aware of negative perceptions of the Bronx, but he didn’t buy into them. The garden was a perfect example.

“I like the way this community takes pride in refreshing this place, they’re not complacent and they’re eager to make change,” he said.

He added that the program made him rethink the manner he’d do service in the future.

“You can’t help people without enlisting the guidance of people who live there,” he said.

Lily Kissich of Los Angeles, also at Fordham College at Rose Hill, agreed. She drew the distinction between service versus engagement.

“You need to learn about one another,” she said. “If you engage, then it’s more than just going to volunteer one time, you’re more invested, you come back.”

The outreach began when Nancy Wackstein, GSS director of community engagement and partnerships, called her former colleague Susan Matloff-Nieves, deputy executive director at Goddard Riverside. Wackstein said that besides educating social workers, GSS also conducts important research that she thought could help the nonprofit fine-tune programming.

“Fordham is a neighbor, and I thought that if we find out what the residents need then maybe we can engage in the next steps on how our school can help,” she said.

For their part, Matloff-Nieves said that the settlement house does not have resources or the expertise to design a questionnaire and conduct survey in a systemic way.

“We haven’t done a deep dive into what people in Amsterdam houses need, so it’s really great to have Fordham’s support in this,” she said. “We were looking for hard data and a way to do significant outreach into the neighborhood, because we serve about 1,000 people a year of whom about two-thirds are Amsterdam Houses residents.”

The collective effort was made possible through a grant from the New York Community Trust and additional support from Fordham’s Ravazzin Center, under the leadership of Janna Heyman, Ph.D. The questionnaire was developed with Goddard Riverside staff, GSS graduate students, and residents from Amsterdam Houses. Design and execution were supervised by Smita Dewan, Ph.D., GSS director of assessments, and Lawrence Farmer, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the GSS doctoral program. Dewan said that the initial stages began with interviews and focus group discussions.

“The kind of data you have in focus group is very different from how you get it in a survey; they’re discussions, so they’re all talking to each other and generating information as opposed to a survey where you just look at a question and respond,” said Dewan.

Farmer said that the community then helped with wordsmithing existing surveys of other housing communities so that their survey was specific to Amsterdam Houses.

“Some of what we built in was from other surveys, where some of the same issues have come up, like the need for recreational spaces and for arts and crafts,” he said.

On an early summer afternoon, recent GSS grads joined, staff, professors, and community leaders from Amsterdam Houses to help residents fill out surveys at stations set up in the lobby of their building.

A good portion of the new survey examines the residents’ backgrounds, including education, marital status, and employment, before delving into programming needs, such as assistance in applying for social security or affordable legal services. Questions about the community needs, such as public parks and recreational opportunities, are followed up by questions on specific needs within adult education, youth and children’s programming, family support, and health.

During the workshops, the researchers encouraged participants to spread the word about the work they were doing so that the community would be aware of their presence.

“I think it helps we were from Fordham because they know that we are invested in knowing them,” said Dewan.

Indeed, Patricia Ryan, a president of one of the building associations in the complex, said that she’s grown familiar with the University over the years as they have helped the community in purchasing security cameras and sponsoring family day.

“Oh, Fordham? Fordham shares. I’m telling you, Fordham is good,” said Ryan. “You know Lesley Massiah (Fordham’s associate vice president for government relations and urban affairs), That’s my girl; when I need anything I contact her she gets right back in touch with me.”

For Rosanna Minaya, GSS ’19, the survey represented the culmination of a year’s work. She worked on it from the start as part of her second-year practicum.

“It was amazing. I got to see research methods and how important they are. And I was there to see how it was developed, give input to the pilot of the survey, and help to set up today.”

She added that she was happy to report that she landed a job with the Center for Urban Community Service in employment placement, “helping New Yorkers find jobs.” As she took in the scene she smiled.

“This is what research looks like; it’s so much different than what I initially imagined,” she said. “I love doing interviews and hearing what people have to say and their stories.”

On June 26, several experts explored that question at the Fordham forum “Healthy Cities: How Special is New York?” held at the Lowenstein Center on the Lincoln Center campus. The event, hosted in cooperation with the Manhattan Psychological Association and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues-New York (SPSSI), featured three main speakers: Harold Takooshian, Ph.D., professor of psychology and urban studies at Fordham and chair of the New York group for SPSSI; Arline Bronzaft, Ph.D., an environmental psychologist who helped design the current New York City subway map and update the city’s 2007 noise code; and David Vassar, a Fordham librarian who has advocated for safer and cyclist-friendly urban streets for the past two decades. 

“What really makes New York unique goes back to Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby—that New York is the realization of the place where not only people can create themselves, but the city also creates itself,” said Lee Klein, a New York tour guide who gave welcome remarks at the forum. “Anything that people can think of, it can happen here.” 

The focus of the forum was New York City’s environmental psychology—the city’s relationship with the millions of people who inhabit it. 

“[Environmental psychology] studies the impact of the physical environment on the individual—not other people, not crowds, not interpersonal relations, but the physical environment,” Takooshian explained at the beginning of the forum. 

New York City has long wrestled with its physical environment—namely, noise pollution, said Arline Bronzaft, a member of the board of directors for GrowNYC, an organization that aims to improve New York City’s quality of life through community-based environmental programs. 

Too much noise can damage not only our sanity but also our sense of hearing, she said, citing a list of documented cases. 

Bronzaft herself was involved in one. Her 1975 co-published research paper studied the effects of noise on children’s learning. She found that students at P.S. 98, a school located at the northern tip of Manhattan, were negatively impacted by the nearby No. 1 line train tracks. Children in classrooms facing the tracks performed far worse academically than those on the quieter side of the building. 

In time, Bronzaft helped persuade the city to partially soundproof the classroom ceilings, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to install rubber pads along the tracks near the school, as she explained in a recent story by The New Yorker. 

But she said there’s beauty in the noise, too.

“We don’t want to get rid of the sounds at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. We don’t want to get rid of the shouts around the Fourth of July. And we do want shouts at the Mets’ stadium and Yankee Stadium because we want those teams to win. That’s the beauty of the din in this city,” Bronzaft said. 

“On the other hand, we don’t want our neighbors waking us at 5 a.m. We don’t want the construction sounds working after hours. You have to balance it,” she concluded, referring her audience to grownyc.org for advice on local noise issues. 

In recent years, New York City has also paid more attention to its streets and cyclists, said David Vassar. 

More than 300 miles of conventional bicycle lanes and 74 miles of protected bike lanes were added to New York City from 2007 to 2017, said Vassar, who cited statistics from the Department of Transportation in his presentation. 

Today, bicycles—eco-friendly vehicles, compared to their gas-guzzling cousins—are a popular form of transportation. Twenty-four percent of adult New Yorkers ride a bike at least once every year, and nearly 800,000 of them regularly ride a bicycle, Vassar added. 

“I’m saving money, I’m getting healthier,” said Vassar, an avid cyclist. “I’m getting vitamin D from the sunshine, which I don’t get sitting in my fluorescent-lit library, as much as I love libraries.” 

Toward the end of his presentation, he urged the audience to spark further change through campaigning, voting, and attending town hall and community meetings. But the overarching theme of the afternoon event was bigger than bikes and environmental psychology—it was about love for the iconic city. 

Thomas Mariani, a third-year psychology student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center and a U.S. Marine Corp veteran, had tested the topic in a scientific study. At the forum, he spoke about his research: an anonymous survey with 152 study participants that measured whether most New Yorkers live in the city because they “like to” or because they “have to” due to work or family responsibilities. Survey participants were asked to consider factors like the city’s fast pace, streets full of people, and constant sounds of the city, in addition to the unpredictability of experiences and ethnic diversity. 

He said he found that 58% of his study participants live in New York City because they like it, while 42% live here because they have to. 

Mariani, a lifelong New Yorker born and raised in Brooklyn, also gave a personal testimonial. 

“I can tell you,” he said, “from having traveled to over 30 countries—both due to the Marine Corps and working at the 9/11 [Memorial] Museum—that people love this city.”

“I often like to refer to the justice as the other Sonia from the Bronx,“ began Manzano, getting a laugh from the crowd sitting in the sunshine on the Walsh Family Library lawn. Manzano, an actress and writer, is most noted for playing Maria on Sesame Street. She is the author of Becoming Maria and A Miracle on 133rd St, among other books.

Sotomayor has penned a few books of her own since being appointed to the nation’s highest court in 2009. She is the author of My Beloved World (2013) and a children’s book called Turning Pages (2018). She is also expected to release Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You in September.

Sotomayor said she wrote My Beloved World to remind herself, and everyone, that none of us succeed alone.

“Nobody can do it by themselves. No matter what you do in life, people help you do it. My book was for me to remember that always. All of those people and experiences that started here in the Bronx, that made me— that’s what I wanted to write about.”

The Bronx Book Festival, just in its second year, included a full line-up of author-led panels. The Bronx Book Festival is organized by The Bronx is Reading, founded by Bronx native and book publicist Saracia Fennell. This year the event was co-sponsored by Fordham University. Panels were held on both the Fordham’s Rose Hill campus and Fordham Plaza. Bronxites and folks from all over NYC lined up at 8:30 a.m. in front of the University to attend the Bronx Book Festival and listen to Sonia Sotomayor speak.

At their in-conversation style event, Sotomayor told Manzano how much she admired her work on Sesame Street.

“You reached out to a community of Latinos that were ignored in mainstream television at the time,” she said.

Manzano and Sotomayor met on the set of Sesame Street for the episode The Justice Hears a Case. Over a cafecito, Sotomayor explained the role of supreme court judge to the show’s characters.

Just as they did on Sesame Street, at the Bronx Book Festival they both spoke in a way that was accessible to the many young children in the audience.

Sotomayor asked the organizers to place a row of child lawn chairs at the very front. “I put all the kids in the front because I remember being a kid and having to sit in the back, and I couldn’t see anything, and I hated it,” said Sotomayor.

At times, the justice spoke directly to the kids. She told them about her library and why it was important to her.  

“One of my favorite places was and still is the library. It was one of the places I escaped to after my dad died. My house was very, very sad when my dad passed away. So, I would go to the library and get lost in books. I traveled around the world when I read books,” she said as she pointed to a picture of her library card in her book Turning Pages.

“Does every child in the audience have a library card?” she asked, encouraging those that didn’t to “ask your mommy or daddy to get you one.”

Sotomayor told the crowd that Lord of the Flies was the book that inspired her to become a lawyer. “I learned something very important,” she said of reading the 1954 William Golding novel, in which a group of boys are marooned on an island and attempt to govern themselves—with tragic results.

”Laws help us figure out how to treat each other better,” she said, “and how to share things in this world together.”

She also cited the importance of her mother purchasing the Encyclopedia Britannica for her while they lived in the projects in the Soundview section of the Bronx, now named the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses. The volumes helped her learn about the world beyond her home borough.

“You cannot dream about becoming something you don’t know about,” she said.

In the middle of the conversation with Manzano, Sotomayor got up and said she was “going to go for a walk so that the people in the back can see me.”

“I give out hugs freely,”  she added as she walked down to the audience members in the lawn.

Panelists Share their Stories

Like many of the authors on the festival lineup, Lilliam Rivera, a keynote speaker and young adult author of Dealing in Dreams and The Education of Margot Sanchez, was in the audience for Sotomayor’s and Manzano’s session. In her own talk, Rivera discussed the significance of the festival itself.

“I write about my home, and those connections,”  said Rivera, who set all of her books in the Bronx. She held her book launch for Dealing in Dreams last spring at the Bronx’s only independent bookstore, The Lit. Bar, founded by Noelle Santos.

Growing up near Fordham Plaza, she said, “If you wanted to buy a book you had to go to the city.”

Like Sotomayor, Rivera and her family got their books from the New York Public Library.

Rivera was inspired by her father to become a writer. “Growing up, my father used to recite poetry at events. He still does. My parents are very proud of my career. They are always making me sign books for their doctors or neighbors.”

Readers young and old said that the festival inspired them.

Jasmine Cordero of Soundview said that coming to the festival last year sparked her interest in reading.

“I bought two books last year, and I read them in a month. I didn’t know that I could read that fast. Now, I’m always looking for Latinx or African-American writers. I look for writers that look like me and writers that write about the community that I live in.”

The Bronx is both home and a source of inspiration for many of the panelists. For Josue Caceres, poet and brand manager of Bronx Native, the Bronx is more than a place.

“The Bronx is its own character in my writing. It’s important to be here and share the space with both kids and adults and show them that people in the Bronx read and write, and that it’s part of our culture.“

Last spring, Jost taught Community Service and Social Action. His students complete 30 hours of service in the Bronx at more than a dozen community-based organizations. Markey, who taught The City and Its Neighborhoods, had her students immerse themselves in the study of a particular Bronx neighborhood. Both will be teaching the courses again next spring. 

Both raised outside of New York City, they are now raising families and working in the Bronx. Markey is an investigative reporter who teaches journalism at Lehman College; Jost is director of organizing at Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, a housing-focused nonprofit in the South Bronx. 

The two recently sat down with Fordham News at 188 Bakery Cuchifrito, a Puerto Rican eatery just off the Grand Concourse. As neighbors popped in to buy coffee, crispy chicharrón, tropical fruit drinks, and lottery tickets, Jost and Markey talked redlining and gentrification, as well as art, food, music, and all things Bronx.

TS: When did you feel like you were from the Bronx?

EM: It happened over time. I have a memory of coming back one summer, I must have been picking up a friend or something. I remember driving in on Kingsbridge Road and it being hot and hearing all the music from the street and thinking, “I really miss the Bronx.” In terms of moving here, I knew that I wanted to come to the Bronx because I knew this neighborhood from my time at Fordham and from the newspaper. We were young adults, recently married, settling down. This was the place where we were gonna live permanently now. And then a bunch of other friends moved into our building, other Fordham people who chose the Bronx, who stayed and who were all doing work here. Most of those families are still around. But I think an important transformation—when I stopped thinking of myself as a Fordham person who moved to the Bronx—was really when I had kids. Then you really belong to a neighborhood and you have to make all these moral decisions around schools.

TS: Gregory, what about you? When did you feel that you were from the Bronx?

GJ: I think the real shift comes when you realize that you and everybody around you are actually in something together, that these are all your friends, your neighbors. For me, it was a work in progress, because coming out of a strong service-oriented model I had a lot of issues to come to terms with around power, personally. I had to switch to a framework of not doing anything for people, but doing things with people.

TS: How can Fordham students distinguish their residential role from that of a tourist?  

EM: It’s become more and more clear to me that the way we speak about neighborhood change and gentrification, we use the exact same terms as when talking about conquest. Terms like “pioneers of the neighborhoods,” or “settling neighborhoods,” or “I’ve discovered this neighborhood.” I don’t even like to use the word “explore.” I’m a journalist, so one of the students’ first assignments is to do what reporters do. It’s called a “beat note” of a neighborhood. When a reporter takes over a beat, you produce a big document about the geography, where the schools are, where the houses of worship are, who’s leading them, how old they are, etcetera. I’ve been really struggling not to use the word “guidebook.” I don’t want students to be part of tourism, which is really impossible to remove from a colonial history. A better way to say it would be “asset inventory,” because I want to get across this idea that neighborhoods have strengths. I think one difficulty is that students arrive in the Bronx and only see the problems. Sometimes that comes out of a decent, generous do-gooder instinct, but it doesn’t lead to good things. This neighborhood has tremendous strengths; it’s not a problem that you need to solve.

TS: As someone who lives and works in the Bronx, does it bother you when you meet students don’t know much about the borough and its past?

EM: I mean, one wouldn’t know unless you took a class, right? I didn’t know post-modern literature until I took a post-modern literature class. But I have students who are juniors and seniors who don’t know the Bronx.

TS: How do you teach that responsibly?

GJ: We’re really talking about power, and wealth is a piece of that. Students need to understand why there’s massive wealth disparity—opportunity disparities that exist even between students in the classroom, but then definitely between Fordham students and people who live in the neighborhoods surrounding campus. And that’s not just the history of the Bronx, that’s a history of the whole country.

TS: If that’s the case, how do students make the connection?

GJ: Most of the kids at Fordham, their parents used to live in the city, or their grandparents. You can see your family story in this natural story by asking, “Where did we live in the city? Why did we move out? How did we benefit from moving out? How were we able to build wealth through that?” Now I can come back into the neighborhood, and I’m in a position now to do service or just go explore—in a way that there is a power dynamic. If you’re not aware of that different power disparity when you’re going out into neighborhoods, you’re not going out in a responsible manner.

TS: What’s the difference between service learning and social justice?  

EM: For me, when I was a high school kid at a diocesan Catholic school in Massachusetts, we did lots of community service. It was better than not doing community service, but it’s not as good as doing social justice work. When I came to Urban Plunge, we got this history lecture about the fires, the ’70s, disinvestment, and suburbanization. A lot of institutions pulled up stakes and left, but what Fordham did instead helped to found Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, which helped the neighborhood, but from within. We were invited to be, and this is so cool, to be a part of history.

GJ: When I’m on a panel and we’re talking about gentrification, this is exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re doing service without acknowledging the power disparity and then doing something to rectify that, then we’re not actually solving any problems. We’re not dealing with the underlying issue. You want to be looking at the structures. There’s a structural injustice, there’s systematic injustice, and there’s a perfect corollary to that in Catholic social teaching: that’s a structural sin. It’s a good thing to go do service for a couple hours in the soup kitchen, but we need to dig deeper into what we can do to disrupt the systems that keep people relying on soup kitchens in the first place, and create a society where we don’t have that inequity.

TS: Could some of these disruptions simply be going out to a restaurant or concert or learning about the culture by simply participating in the culture?

GJ: The best Urban Plunge experience I ever witnessed was everyone walking up to Poe Park. It happened to be the day of one of those free live concerts and they got the mobile stage, and it was salsa music, and everyone was out dancing. There was no power dynamic present.

I mean, if you want to talk about the things that came out of Bronx, it’s music and food. In good times and bad times, from Latin jazz and doo-wop to hip-hop. All these different moments, there’s a ton of creation happening, something that people value. And so, this is where it comes to a value question and who has value to contribute.

TS: The Bronx is back and it is extremely attractive, suddenly, to investors. What now?

EM: All these good things are things that the people who survived fought for, and those things didn’t happen because white people from the Village wanted them. It is because people who survived organized and fought and demanded it. People fought tooth and nail for 20 years to reclaim their river and to reclaim their parks. If they don’t get to live there anymore, which is a hundred percent happening, it’s so awful because the only reason it’s nice is because the people who were there made it nice and fought for it to be nice, and fought for it against tremendous resistance.

TS: Sounds like redlining in reverse.

GJ: It is so important to talk about like race and place, the reason neighborhoods were redlined was because of “infiltration” of people of color.

EM: Which is the term that was used on government paperwork.

GJ: There was a systematic devaluing of land based on the presence of people of color. And the flip side is that now when you have a piece of land that is attractive to white people there’s a system of mass displacement that’s generally pushing people of color around. You could say the Bronx is the last stand in New York City.

“My research goal was to take this socially charged debate and recognize there’s not enough data for either side of the issue, so we need to provide some empirical data that can be a starting point for some for these discussions,” said Jordan DeVylder, Ph.D.

In a paper released late last year on JAMA Network, DeVylder, associate professor of social work at the Graduate School of Social Service, found police violence posed a significant risk to public mental health in communities where such violence was prevalent.

The research will be featured this May on the Academic Minute, a radio program produced by Albany-based WAMC and broadcast nationally on NPR.

DeVylder said he began the research in Baltimore soon after the death of Freddie Grey, the 25-year-old African American man who died in police custody, igniting demonstrations throughout the city. At the time, DeVylder was doing work at the University of Maryland that focused on workplace discrimination, immigration, and urban living as risk factors for psychosis.

“The uprising was all around in west Baltimore, so I did a quick literature search and found that while there are some data from criminologists, there was very little in terms of public health,” he said. “The last time someone had looked at police violence from a public health perspective was in 2004. We needed to assess it from the standpoint of the community.”

DeVylder said he is well aware that police officers may take issue with these findings. But he said the research isn’t just for the benefit of the community, but for the police as well.

“Addressing police violence is not saying there’s something wrong with the police,” he said. “My expectation is that police who don’t engage in this kind of behavior would benefit for this to be addressed. It can’t be easy to work with people who engage in abusive behavior.”

The study, conducted in 2017, was not limited to underserved communities of color that are often associated with a prevalence of police violence. Rather, it examined a cross-section of Baltimore and New York City, studying adults of the same race breakdowns, median age, and sex in the two cities as derived from the 2010 census.

It looked at past-year exposure to police violence using the Police Practices Inventory, a metric designed by DeVylder for the survey. The violence experienced was categorized by types of violence as defined by the World Health Organization, such as physical, sexual, psychological, and neglectful. While police killings get the lion’s share of media attention, DeVylder said that other the other categories can be more nuanced, such as sexual violence, which can take the form of an inappropriate strip search, or neglect, which can take the form of unanswered emergency calls.

“I looked at each of these categories separately, and it surprised me how common these things are reported,” he said.

The paper, titled, “Association of Exposure to Police Violence with Prevalence of Mental Health Symptoms among Urban Residents in the United States,” found that four mental health variables (psychological distress, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and psychotic experiences) were significantly affected by four variables of police violence (physical violence with and without a weapon, sexual violence, and neglect). This does not necessarily mean that 100 percent of those reporting mental health symptoms also reported police violence, but that people exposed to police violence were two to seven times more likely to report mental health symptoms, depending on the type of exposure.

Overall, suicidal ideation, attempts, and psychotic experiences were reported by 9.1 percent, 3.1 percent, and 20.6 percent of the sample, respectively. The prevalence of police violence was 3.2 percent for sexual violence, 7.5 percent for physical without a weapon, 4.6 percent with a weapon, 13.2 percent for psychological, and 14.9 percent for neglect. Police violence exposures were higher among men, people of color, and those identified as lesbian, gay, or transgender.

“The more assaultive forms of violence were the most psychologically impactful,” said DeVylder.  “On a more personal level, my feeling is we should look for alternatives for violence so that we’re on par with nations that are as developed as we are.”

“We’re gathered to celebrate the women who made the county what it is—they who lived with faith and worked with hope and made love a reality here in the borough, [even]when they did not believe in the borough,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, said to a crowd of more than 100 in Keating Hall. “They took to heart the motto of the Bronx: Ne cede malis. Never give in to evil.”

The event, hosted by the Bronx Borough President’s Office, featured five women from different walks of life: Alessandra Biaggi, LAW ’12, New York state senator; Nathalia Fernandez, assemblywoman for the 80th District; Karines Reyes, assemblywoman for the 87th District; Sunny Hostin, ABC News senior legal correspondent and co-host of The View who moderated the panel discussion; and Deputy Bronx Borough President Marricka Scott-McFadden, who served as emcee of the night.

What they all have in common are their ties to the Bronx. Hostin was born and bred in the South Bronx. Biaggi, whose senatorial district includes portions of the Bronx, is the granddaughter of Italian immigrants who lived in Hunts Point. Fernandez’s father and mother immigrated to the Bronx from their native Cuba and Columbia, respectively. And although Reyes and Scott-McFadden aren’t Bronx natives, they have made the borough their home.

“I am originally from Georgia. I wasn’t lucky enough to be born in the Bronx,” Scott-McFadden said to laughter from the audience.  

A Woman’s Perspective in Politics

The panel spoke about the need for women legislators who can vouch for the importance of women’s reproductive health, universal childcare, and reducing maternal mortality in New York state.

“When I hear men stand up and matter-of-factly talk about a woman’s body and how things happen in operating rooms that don’t really happen—because I’ve been in operating rooms; it’s my profession—and hear all these people that don’t have a medical background sway how legislation affects us … it’s scary,” said Reyes, who’s worked as a registered nurse in Montefiore Medical Center’s oncology ward. “It’s important to have more women at the table. But [also]more professionals with different backgrounds.”

Another issue that women face is a lack of childcare, said Biaggi. Although today’s U.S. mothers are spending more time in the workforce than in the ’60s, they’re also spending more time on childcare.

“What we would like to see—and this is why our voices are so important and why it’s so important that we’re in the room—is childcare everywhere,” Biaggi said. “When you have children, they don’t disappear just because you’ve gone to work.” A few women in the audience expressed their agreement.

The panelists also discussed a disturbing trend affecting mothers in New York state—the rising rate of deaths in the delivery room. The rate of maternal deaths in the state rose from 13.2 per 100,000 live births in 2006 to 25 per 100,000 live births in 2015.

“The women who are dying in this state … they’re educated. They’re lawyers, they’re doctors, they’re teachers, they’re nurses. They’re literally your neighbors, and they’re dying at higher rates than they’ve ever died before,” Biaggi said. “And the women who are mainly dying are women of color.”

“It happened to Serena Williams,” Hostin chimed in. “She almost died because they [the doctors]weren’t listening to her.”

“And it’s Serena Williams. Like … what? How can this be?” Biaggi said, searching the eyes of the audience. “We have a real problem with women’s voices [not]being heard.”

A Personal Fight for Equal Pay

The five women also discussed the gender pay gap in the U.S. On average, female workers earned around 80 cents for every dollar a man made in 2018.

Hostin recalled the day she was signed onto The View. When she received her deal sheet from her male agent, she was ecstatic. “When I say I’m a kid from the South Bronx projects … I had never seen money like that,” she said. “I was dancing around.”

Then her cell phone buzzed. It was Sherri Shepherd, a previous co-host on The View. Shepherd revealed to Hostin her personal pay history from a decade ago. It turned out, said Hostin, that Shepherd was offered more money than her successor.

“[It’s only because] she opened up and shared with me her deal history and her salary that I now have the deal that I have,” said Hostin, who renegotiated her deal sheet with her agent. “And I shared that deal with everybody that came after me.”

It was a lesson Fernandez could relate to. She remembered working in a team where she was the only woman. Two months into the job, she discovered she was making less than all her male colleagues. She was told she was paid less because she was a new employee. But eventually, she said, she received a pay raise to match the men’s salaries.

Speak up when you see discrepancies, Fernandez said—be brave enough to demand your worth.

Leaving a Legacy in the Bronx

At the end of the night, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. presented each panelist with a citation of merit and thanked them for their service to the Bronx community. He asked the audience to give a round of applause for the women who work with him every day. And, in a candid speech, he spoke about the women who have shaped him into who he is today. 

Diaz Jr. grew up in a maternal community of abuelitas and mothers in the Bronx, whom he called “the force of the household.” Eventually, he met a woman who became his wife, Hilda Gerena Diaz—the person who became the family breadwinner while he ran for office.

“Even though I lost that first race, she’s the one who paid the bills in our house,” he said to thunderous applause and whistles from the crowd.

He added that the Bronx—home to more women than men—is also the birthplace of women like Jennifer Lopez, Grammy Award-winning rapper Cardi B, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“In this borough, when you give a woman the opportunity, she will conquer her craft,” Diaz Jr. said. “And she will conquer the world.”

Last summer, the New York State Department of Education awarded Fordham GSE a contract to establish a center that will work with existing community schools, K-12, to improve their services and help other New York City public schools transition to community schools. Last November, it officially opened and hit the ground running.  

“We are providing webinars and citywide and borough-wide workshops to build the capacity of the existing schools and work with other public schools that are considering the Community Schools strategy,” said Anita Vazquez Batisti, Ph.D., GSE associate dean and director of the Center for Educational Partnerships.

Fordham was awarded a five-year, $1.6 million state contract to establish the Technical Assistance Center for the New York City region, home to more than a million students. New York City is one of three regions, and Fordham will work collaboratively with the other two centers in New York State.

What distinguishes community schools from other public schools is that they heavily collaborate with their surrounding community in specified ways. They partner with community organizations and secure resources for after-school programs, school-based health clinics that can provide free vision screening, and adult education programs for parents, Batisti said.

“There are some schools, in certain areas, where parents have better access, where parents pay for tutoring, Suzuki violin, or karate lessons. But not all parents can do this,” Batisti explained. “The community schools give access. It’s special funding—and the services are free [to students’ families].”

It takes time for a traditional school to transform into a community school, said Michael Pizzingrillo, director of the new Technical Assistance Center at Fordham. One of the first things that a potential school completes is an asset/needs assessment—an inventory of what they have and what they’ll need on an annual basis.

“Sometimes schools can be challenged in finding help,” he said. “They may need guidance from those who have an understanding of the grand scheme of what resources the five boroughs can provide.”

The University is already partnered with two community schools in the Bronx: MS 331 and PS 85. Some of the issues that community schools face are evident at these schools, where challenges range from high absenteeism to a paucity of parent engagement.

“Fordham can definitely help,” said Bruce Wallach, Fordham’s Community School director at MS 331. “Training parents, helping individuals who want to work, but for various reasons aren’t able to.”

For the next five years, Fordham’s Graduate School of Education will remain at the forefront of assistance for New York City’s community schools through this state-contracted center, he said.

“The community school is at the heart of Fordham’s mission because it recognizes the importance of addressing the whole person,” Pizzingrillo said. “Fordham [now]has this Technical Assistance Center, and can deliver for thousands of New York City public school kids.”