It’s been called a venerable throwback, a hidden gem, a cathedral of college sports. Since its inaugural game in January 1925, ‘Rose Thrill’ has always been much more than a gym.

They don’t make them like they used to, you might say, and you’d be right. Consider Rose Hill Gym’s exterior walls. The builder’s “local gray stone” is likely a mix of Fordham gneiss and Manhattan schist—the ancient, gritty bedrock upon which much of New York City is built. Could there be a more symbolically apt building material for a Fordham icon?

Through the decades, the gym has been the site of countless athletic contests. It’s where students push themselves to excel—amid the roar of the crowd or just the echoey squeak of sneakers on hardwood. And it’s where generations have gathered for momentous events, from Fordham presidents’ welcome addresses (where many students and families first fall in love with the University) to unforgettable concerts, baccalaureate Masses, and award ceremonies.

As the gym turns 100, here’s a look at some of the many moments and people whose energy, camaraderie, grit, and grace have brought the building to life since 1925.

The strength of the Fordham athlete finds root in spirited competition, a strong will to win, forbearance in defeat, and tempered joy in victory.

John Francis “Jack” Coffey

Widely considered the father of Fordham sports, Jack Coffey, a 1910 grad, served as the graduate manager of athletics and baseball coach for nearly 35 years, overseeing the Rams’ rise to national renown, particularly in football.

When Coffey retired in 1958, Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist and fellow Fordham grad Arthur Daley wrote that Coffey always “seemed as much a part of the Fordham landscape as the university’s gymnasium.” He called Coffey “the soul of erudition,” not just a coach and administrator but “a friend, confidant, and advisor of … generations of athletes.”

Test Your Rose Hill Gym IQ

Rose Hill Gym has been the beloved stomping grounds of many a Ram. Do you know it well enough to knock out this quiz as quickly as the Fordham Flash* might have?

Check out the answers at the bottom of this story.

* Who’s the Fordham Flash? None other than Frankie Frisch, Class of 1920. Arguably the Fordham sports GOAT, he excelled in baseball, track, football, and basketball before going on to a Hall of Fame pro baseball career.

1. The gym was considered so big for its time that Rams called it …

• The Meadow
• The Prairie
• The Plains

2. When it opened, the gym boasted …

• Equipment for weightlifting
• Three 400-square-foot boxing rings in the basement
• A swimming pool, with cutting-edge machinery for filtering and purifying water

3. Which Fordham men’s basketball star was the latest to have his number retired and jersey hoisted to the gym’s rafters?

• Ken Charles
• Ed Conlin
• Charlie Yelverton

4. What did Cindy Vojtech do for a Rose Hill Gym encore after her stellar volleyball career?

• Sang the national anthem
• Joined the WFUV broadcast team
• Delivered a valedictory address

5. Which women’s basketball star’s buzzer-beater against Rhode Island inspired a SportsCenter anchor to kick off the night’s highlights from the “Boogie Down Bronx”?

• Anna DeWolfe
• Mobolaji Akiode
• Abigail Corning

Highlights in the History of the Rose Hill Gym

1925 Brought a Flurry to Fordham

Fordham was in the midst of “a million dollar year” when the Rose Hill Gym opened in 1925, declared the Maroon yearbook staff. In addition to the gym, they cited a new campus bookstore and seismic lab along with a new library that was halfway to completion.

But it was the gym that dominated the team’s attention: “The sight of its huge, though artistically proportioned bulk is quite enough to instill in every Fordhamite a full-grown superiority complex.”

Fordham leaders clearly had great confidence in the gym’s architect, Emile G. Perrot, who also designed what would become Duane Library. “Architecture,” Perrot once said, “is the incarnation in stone of the thought and life of the civilization it represents.”

Keepsakes Lie Behind the Cornerstone

When the gym’s cornerstone was laid on a Sunday afternoon in early November 1923, a copper box of treasures from those times was buried alongside it. A list in the Walsh Library archives documents the contents.

Some items speak to Fordham’s Catholic and Jesuit ties, among them a medal of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. There are U.S. stamps, coins, and a flag bearing 48 stars along with copies of New York newspapers from the day.

There is no mistaking the school pride of the collection’s curators. Included are the Fordham catalog, University seal and colors, a copy of The Fordham Ram, and photos of campus buildings and grounds.

Finally, recognizing the gym’s calling as a home for sports and community, the copper box boasts Fordham athletics schedules, popular University songs, and the athletic association’s constitution.

A treasure trove, indeed—one now more than a century old.

1925: The new gym opens, hosting its first basketball game on January 16. The Rams beat Boston College 46-16 in a contest refereed by former four-sport star Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash, then a second baseman for the New York Giants.

Coach Ed Kelleher’s “Wonder Fives” go on to win 85 games and lose only nine between 1924 and 1929, christening the gym in spectacular fashion.

1927: A record 6,000 fans turn out to see Fordham beat City College of New York on January 22, a crowd well beyond the gym’s current 3,200-seat capacity.

1936: Foul weather forces the football Rams to practice in the gym. The team’s nationally renowned line, the Seven Blocks of Granite, includes Fordham senior and future pro football icon Vince Lombardi.

c. 1940: Trainer Jake Weber operates out of the gym’s basement. A fixture at Fordham for more than three decades until 1942, he also trains U.S. Olympic teams and is known for his “magic elixirs” and “baking machines” used to soothe student-athletes’ sore muscles.

1943: Bob Mullens earns All-America honors and leads the Rams to their first appearance in the National Invitation Tournament. He goes on to play for the New York Knicks in their inaugural season (1946–47), and in 2019, Fordham retires his No. 7.

1953: In his third season as head coach, Johnny Bach, a 1948 grad, leads the Rams to their first NCAA Tournament berth. He goes on to become Fordham’s all-time winningest coach, compiling a 264-192 record in 18 seasons. He departs Fordham in 1968 and later joins the NBA. As an assistant coach, Bach helps lead the Chicago Bulls to three straight titles in the early 1990s and leaves an indelible mark on Michael Jordan, who calls him “truly one of the greatest basketball minds of all time.”

1964: Women’s basketball begins as a club sport after Barbara Hartnett Hall and several of her classmates pitch the idea. “We went to talk to the athletic director … and [he was]surprisingly open to it,” Hall, a four-year captain, later recalls.

1965: The gym is the scene of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s final high school game. Then known as Lew Alcindor, he leads Power Memorial to victory in the New York Catholic High School Athletic Association Championship on March 7.

Video: Watch highlights of the NBA legend’s standout performance in a packed Rose Hill Gym.

1966: The Beach Boys bring their surf rock to the Bronx on March 18, at the height of their popularity. The Lovin’ Spoonful is also on the bill.

On December 3, Simon and Garfunkel perform the first of their two concerts at the Rose Hill Gym, taking the stage for Winter Weekend. The following year, they return on October 13 to play Homecoming.

RELATED STORY: Rockin’ Rose Hill: A Look Back at Campus Concerts Since the ’60s

1967: Men’s basketball beats Iona on February 25 to launch a school-record 25-game winning streak in the gym. The home streak lasts until December 17, 1969.

The Supremes, featuring Diana Ross, perform in the gym on March 11. Future stars Gladys Knight & the Pips open the show.

1970: Women’s basketball debuts as a varsity sport, beating NYU in its first game.

“We started winning games we weren’t supposed to win, and you couldn’t get in the Rose Hill Gym. It was … a real happening. When that team played, it was New York City’s team.”

Frank McLaughlin, FCRH ’69, former longtime athletics director, on the magical 26-3 season of the 1970–1971 men’s basketball team. He was an assistant to head coach Digger Phelps that year, when the Rams rose to No. 9 in the national rankings.

1971: With gritty team play, men’s basketball captures the hearts of New Yorkers, packing the gym and selling out multiple games at Madison Square Garden on the way to a 26-3 record and a top 10 national ranking. The magical season ends with a loss to Villanova in the NCAA Tournament’s East Regional Semifinals.

RELATED STORY: ‘The Darlings of New York’: An Oral History of the 1970–1971 Fordham Men’s Basketball Team

1974: Women’s volleyball posts a 4-3 record in its first season.

1975: Eight years after his last performance in the Rose Hill Gym, singer-songwriter Paul Simon returns to tape a skit for the second-ever episode of Saturday Night Live. In the skit, which airs on October 18, he goes one-on-one with basketball great Connie Hawkins. Despite a 1-foot-4-inch height disadvantage, Simon pulls off the upset—and some deadpan comedy. “First of all, when my outside shot is on, it’s really on,” he says in a mock postgame interview with broadcaster Marv Albert.

1983: Men’s basketball upsets top-seeded Iona to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title.

1984: The Ramones play their hits in the gym on April 27. But basketball is also on the mind of NYC’s seminal punk band, according to concert committee chair Joe Cerra, then a Fordham senior. “[We] had to keep giving Joey Ramone updates on the Knicks game,” he recalled in a 2013 interview with this magazine.

1990: Jean Prioleau hits a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to lead Fordham to a 69-68 win over Seton Hall on November 29, spoiling Fordham grad P.J. Carlesimo’s return to Rose Hill as Seton Hall’s head coach.

Video: “Bang!” Fordham grad and Hall of Fame basketball broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, makes the call as Prioleau hits the game-winning shot. Fans rush onto the Rose Hill Gym floor to join the celebration as Prioleau is carried off the court.

1991: Men’s basketball wins the first of two straight Patriot League titles.

1992: Women’s basketball claims its first Patriot League title, a feat the Rams would repeat in 1994.

2000: Volleyball star Cindy Vojtech becomes the first (and, to this date, only) Ram to earn three straight Academic All-America honors, picking up the awards in two sports. Following her senior volleyball season, she joined the women’s crew and helped lead them to a second-place finish at the Dad Vail Regatta in 2000.

She went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics and is currently a principal economist with the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Fordham President’s Council, helping to provide scholarship support to Fordham students.

2001: Fat Joe and Ashanti use the Rose Hill Gym in their “That’s Luv” music video.

2004: Fordham retires the No. 11 jersey of Ed Conlin, a standout player for the Rams who went on to a 10-year NBA career after graduating in 1955. “He played with a passion,” Conlin’s former Fordham coach, Johnny Bach, says at the ceremony. “We need people like Ed Conlin, people who love the game and who love Fordham.” He remains the men’s team’s all-time leading scorer (1,886) and rebounder (1,930).

2010: Fordham retires Anne Gregory O’Connell’s No. 55. A 1980 grad, she led the Rams to four consecutive postseason appearances and remains Fordham’s all-time leading scorer (2,548) and rebounder (1,999).

2012: Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Stephen Colbert meet in the gym on September 14 for “The Cardinal and Colbert: Humor, Joy, and the Spiritual Life.” The discussion, moderated by bestselling author James Martin, S.J., draws a crowd of more than 3,000 “cheering, stomping, chanting students,” The New York Times reports, calling it “the most successful Roman Catholic youth evangelization event since Pope John Paul II last appeared at World Youth Day” in 2000.

2014: Women’s basketball captures its first Atlantic 10 title and holds an NCAA Tournament selection show watch party in the gym. They would go on to win the title again in 2019.

2021: The rapper A$AP Ferg (now known as Ferg) headlines the November 4 “Late Night on the Hill” event that kicks off the 2021–2022 basketball season.

2022: Fordham hosts—and on November 22, the men’s basketball team wins—the first Konchalski Classic, an annual basketball tournament to honor the life and legacy of 1968 Fordham grad Tom Konchalski, one of the most trusted basketball scouts in the country. His four-decade career included assessments of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James as high schoolers.

In February 2021, one day after Konchalski’s death at the age of 74, New York Knicks broadcaster Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, told viewers that while Konchalski “may not have been what’s called a household name, in basketball homes, he was legendary.”

“Tom was the most influential, the most respected, and the most loved high school basketball scout in the country,” Breen said. “He helped thousands of young men, thousands of high school basketball players, achieve their dreams of playing college basketball and beyond. And every single day, he did it with kindness and humility.”

On November 29, the gym floor is designated the Frank McLaughlin Family Court—a tribute to Frank McLaughlin, the 1969 grad and former basketball star who became a devoted coach and longtime athletic director.

2023: After raucous home crowds seem to will the men’s basketball team to a pair of impressive victories in January, head coach Keith Urgo coins a new nickname for the historic gym when he opens a press conference with five words: “How about Rose Thrill, man!”

RELATED STORY: The Rise of ‘Rose Thrill’: Fans Fuel Fordham Basketball Resurgence

2024: In September, the University unveils a new court surface featuring a prominent Fordham script wordmark set over the silhouette of a large Ram head.

Did we miss your favorite Rose Hill Gym moments?

Share your own Rose Hill Gym story on the Fordham athletics website celebrating the gym’s 100th anniversary.

Answers to the ‘Test Your Rose Hill Gym IQ’ Quiz

1. The Prairie 2. A swimming pool 3. Fordham retired Charlie Yelverton’s No. 34 in 2023. 4. Cindy Vojtech was the valedictorian of the Gabelli School of Business Class of 2000. 5. Anna DeWolfe hit the game-winner against Rhode Island on February 22, 2023.

VIDEO: Watch DeWolfe’s game-winning shot.

Like many universities, Fordham suspended its sports programs in 1943. “The war, lack of students, and the advent of the Army [have]curtailed all extra-curricular activities,” the 1944 Maroon yearbook staff wrote.

In June 1943, the gym and much of campus were given over to the U.S. War Department, which selected Fordham to host two units of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). For nearly a year, Fordham Jesuits and lay professors taught upward of 800 troops pre-engineering and languages. The goal of the program was to meet the wartime need for technically trained junior officers and soldiers. The troops in training slept in the gym, and at the program’s height, cafeteria workers were dishing out more than 2,750 meals from 4 a.m. to midnight every day.

Many of the undergraduate students who remained on campus—including basketball star Bob Mullens—were members of Fordham’s ROTC program and would soon leave Rose Hill for active duty. The ASTP troops were a much-needed infusion of life and revenue for Fordham, which had seen a precipitous decline in enrollment, from 8,100 in October 1940 to 3,086 four years later.

With “most of the athletes gone” to enlist in the military by their senior year, the 1944 Maroon editors decided to revisit earlier victories, including the basketball team’s “drive for national fame” in 1943, when Mullens led the Rams to their first National Invitation Tournament berth and became the third Fordham basketball player to earn All-America honors. That “last court team to don the Maroon colors until peace [is] restored … proved to be on par with the ‘greats’ of the past,” they wrote.

RELATED STORY: Celebrating 100 Years of Rose Hill Gym: A Thrilling Legacy

Among Fordham’s many rich traditions, the ringing of the Victory Bell outside the Rose Hill Gym holds special significance. The bell tolls at the start of every commencement, and it signals hard-fought wins in Fordham sports venues. In May 2019, the University’s Office of Military and Veterans’ Services instituted a bell-ringing ceremony to honor veterans in the graduating class.

Here’s your chance to brush up on the roots of these historic traditions.

Original use: The bell was a fixture on the Japanese aircraft carrier Junyo during World War II.

How it came to Fordham: Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who had received an honorary degree from the University in 1944, presented the bell to Fordham in 1946 and dedicated it as a memorial to “Our Dear Young Dead of World War II.”

First campus bellringer: U.S. President Harry S. Truman, visiting Fordham on May 11, 1946, to mark the University’s centenary under a New York state charter, was the first person to ring the bell in its new home on campus. Fordham presented Truman with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and in a speech, the president stressed the need to support higher education to “master the science of human relationships” and build peace throughout the world.

VIDEO: Watch this short 2016 piece on the history of the Fordham Victory Bell.

RELATED STORY: Celebrating 100 Years of Rose Hill Gym: A Thrilling Legacy

As the historic gym enters its second century, it has a newfound identity—and momentum.

“How about Rose Thrill, man!” After raucous home crowds seemed to will the men’s basketball team to a pair of impressive victories in January 2023, head coach Keith Urgo started a postgame press conference with those words. The name stuck.

As the gym enters its second century, Ram fans have high hopes. The recently completed Cura Personalis fundraising campaign focused new attention on athletics, especially basketball. Donors contributed to the New Era Fund, which supports the women’s and men’s teams. And a rejuvenated student section fired up players and fans alike.

Here are three recent wins for Fordham basketball.

A Record Three-Year Run

The men’s team achieved its highest three-year win total since joining the Atlantic 10 in 1995. The highlight? Going 25-8 in 2022–2023, just one win shy of the famed 1970–1971 team’s 26-3 record.

An Atlantic-10 Surge

The Rams reached the semifinals of the A-10 Tournament at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2023. “It was great,” recalled Nikhil Mehta, a fan who graduated that year. “On the way to the games, you had ‘let’s go Fordham!’ chants ringing throughout the [subway] cars.”

Revived Ram Spirit

With slogans like “It’s a great day to be a Ram!” and shout-outs to fans for their support, Urgo has helped build a spirited culture on and off the court. And the men’s team’s 2022–2023 performance led to a 113% rise in ticket sales last season.

For Sam Jones, a Fordham senior who helps run an Instagram page to publicize games and other events, the energy around athletics has been “an absolute dream.”

“It changes your college experience—just to be walking around campus and hear, ‘Oh, are you going to the basketball game?’” he said. “I love it.”

RELATED STORY: Celebrating 100 Years of Rose Hill Gym: A Thrilling Legacy

From Vin Scully to Mike Breen and beyond, WFUV and the Rose Hill Gym have nurtured some of New York City’s and the nation’s top sportscasters.

Bang! Basketball fans across the country know Hall of Fame broadcaster Mike Breen’s signature on-air call. But how many know that it started from the stands at the Rose Hill Gym?

“When a Fordham player made a shot, I would scream, ‘Bang!’” the 1983 grad once told a reporter. “I tried it on air as a student a couple of times. I said, ‘This doesn’t work.’ … Then I went back to it when I started doing TV and felt it was a nice, concise [phrase] in a big moment. You say a one-syllable word, and the crowd rises and you don’t have to scream over it. One easy word. I’m from the Vin Scully … school of conciseness.”

Vin Scully, of course, was the 1949 Fordham grad widely regarded as the best baseball broadcaster of all time. But Scully, who died in 2022 at age 94, was also among the first to call a basketball game for WFUV, Fordham’s public media station. By January of his senior year, he was doing it from a new booth in the Rose Hill Gym’s east balcony, The Fordham Ram reported.

Since those days, WFUV and the gym have been a launchpad for many grads in sports media. Breen is the voice of the New York Knicks on MSG Network and the lead broadcaster for ABC and ESPN’s national coverage of the NBA. Chris Carrino, GABELLI ’92, is the longtime radio voice of the Brooklyn Nets.

There’s also CBS Sports broadcaster Spero Dedes, FCRH ’01; ESPN host Tony Reali, FCRH ’00; and Ryan Ruocco, FCRH ’08, a lead play-by-play announcer for pro and college basketball games on ESPN who has called the WNBA Finals since 2013.

“It’s this simple,” Ruocco once told this magazine. “If I did not go to Fordham and work at WFUV, I would not be here doing what I’m doing today. Period.”

RELATED STORY: Celebrating 100 Years of Rose Hill Gym: A Thrilling Legacy

Two decades ago, Jamie Kutch made a bold and life-changing decision. The 1996 Fordham grad quit his job as a trader with Merrill Lynch on Wall Street and headed to northern California to become a winemaker under the mentorship of Michael Browne, co-founder of the award-winning Kosta Browne Winery.

Kutch has since built a reputation for signature vintages from grapes harvested across 25 acres, including his 12-acre estate vineyard in Sebastopol, California. His pinot noir and chardonnay have earned high scores from critics. Antonio Galloni, CEO and founder of the world-renowned wine publication Vinous, scored Kutch’s 2021 Bohan Vineyard Graveyard Block pinot noir 95 points, calling it “seriously impressive” and “a gorgeous wine.”

Today, Kutch wines are sold directly to consumers, distributed throughout New York, New Jersey, and Europe, and featured in many Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris.

What inspired your career change from finance to fine wine?
When I left Fordham, I began my career on Wall Street and developed an interest in wine as a hobby. I read the wine chat boards and that led me to connecting with Michael Browne of Kosta Browne Wine. I told him he was living my dream. When I offered to come out to California for a week or two to help with the harvest, his response was, “Why don’t you leave your job and come out for a year? If it doesn’t work, you can always go back to Wall Street.” So, I packed a bag and got on a plane. That was in 2005. I made six barrels of wine, which equates to about 150 cases. This year, I’ll make 150 barrels—about 4,000 cases.

Now, instead of commuting four hours a day to and from work, my “office” is outdoors on vineyards under the sun. It’s hard work, but I love it. There’s something magical about watching the vines grow and creating fruit and picking it.

Napa Valley Wine Academy once praised you for becoming one of the most respected producers of pinot noir and chardonnay in California by refusing to give in to market trends. What have you done differently?
That first year, the market wanted big fruit-driven, California rich, dark, heavier wines. But I started making the style of wine I like and that is lower alcohol, food friendly, high in acidity, fresh tasting. I pick early and leave the stems on with the grapes. That’s called whole-cluster fermentation, and it gives a very different aromatic and taste profile. At the time, it wasn’t the norm to make wines that are 12% alcohol. When you pick grapes late, the sugars are much higher, so they’re much sweeter and that leads to higher alcohol. I find that it doesn’t pair as well with food.

Today, the pendulum has swung way back and there are more natural wines, low alcohol wines, and whole-cluster wines, so that’s exciting to see.

How are you adapting to climate change and the risk of wildfires?
In older Napa and Sonoma, people would plant corner-to-corner grapes, and they’d plant according to how their land ran, so they would look for the longest-distance rows that they could create. Today, with global warming, it’s about figuring out the angles of the sun and the way the sun travels, then planting accordingly to keep your vineyard cooler. I planted 20 degrees off north-south, which creates a cooler climate and more shade.

We have an irrigation system that we can operate remotely, so we can water the vineyards on a moment’s notice if the temperature spikes. We also prune early so the new growth starts earlier in the springtime. Sometimes getting your fruit off the vine even a week early can make the difference in avoiding smoke damage from wildfires. Most of the time, you’re not going to lose your vineyard to fire because the vineyards act as a fire break, but if smoke permeates the skin of the grapes, the wine will smell and taste like it. That’s the problem.

How do you integrate sustainability into your winemaking process?
I have a battery-operated tractor. I also reuse barrels and use lighter glass for bottles. If you make 36,000 bottles, and each bottle is half a pound or a pound lighter, that has a big impact on the footprint.

We also plant cover crop—such as barley, rye, peas, and clover—which sequesters carbon. We try not to till our soils, which releases carbon into the atmosphere. We have native bee boxes, raise worms, and plant butterfly milkweed. We’re also planting different species of fruit trees. It’s been an adventure to work with others to figure out the best ways to plant and respect the land.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Claire Curry.

The Rams rose to a tie for No. 1 in the nation—higher than any Fordham team ever—after winning their fourth straight Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference title. “We’re in the strongest position we’ve ever been in as a program,” said head coach Brian Bacharach, a former national champion at UC Berkeley who recently completed his 12th season at Fordham.

A big reason for the team’s historic success? Members who are as tightly knit as they are talented.

“What I like the most about playing water polo is the energy [of] being part of a team,” said Jacopo Parrella, a senior from Italy. He and his teammates are a worldly group, with players from as close as Brooklyn and as far as South Africa. First-year student Andras Toth, pictured in action above, is one of four players from Hungary.

After winning the conference title, the Rams earned the No. 3 seed at the NCAA Championship, held at Stanford University. They beat Long Beach State 16-11 on December 6, but their incredible undefeated season—and their quest to become the first East Coast water polo team to win a national title—ended in the semifinals, where they lost to USC in overtime.

Still, the Rams finished with a 32-1 record, their finest season ever, and advanced farther than any Fordham team in an NCAA Championship tournament.

An Essay by Afrika Owes, Fordham Law School Class of 2024

When I returned to jail this past summer, I lost a bet I made with a correction officer in 2011—that I would never set foot in Rikers again. Back then, I also wrote in my journal that I’d become a lawyer. I kept that pledge. As I walked through those familiar halls, this time as an invited speaker, I recalled the number they once gave me: ‍6001100148. That number stripped away who I was. It was a constant reminder that I was just a body, a statistic, a faceless soul among hundreds in a system designed to forget me. But that number couldn’t erase my name, my identity, my aspirations.

I returned to Rikers in July to talk with young women at the Rose M. Singer Center, where I had been incarcerated at 17. In their eyes I saw the same fear, the same sadness, and the same yearning for hope that mine had reflected 13 years earlier. I had been one of them, convinced that a bright future wasn’t something I deserved. But now I stood before them not as ‍6001100148 but as a woman who had fought like hell to reclaim her name and her power.

Less than 10 miles from where I served my six-month sentence, Fordham Law School was integral in that battle. Drawn to the University by the support and leadership of the Black Law Students Association, whose president went so far as helping me with my law school application, I soon found mentors who believed in me and opportunities that led to my success.

At Rikers that day, I told the women the truth: The system wasn’t built to rehabilitate them. It would try to break them. I had been where they were—lost, angry, ashamed, and hungry for love. My life felt like a series of small deaths. Every court date that got pushed back, every visit that never came, every letter that went unanswered. I feared I would never be seen as anything more than that number.

But what I didn’t know then, and what I needed them to understand, was that resilience—the kind that carries you through—isn’t found in the world around you. You build it within yourself, piece by piece. As I studied for the GED and SAT exams in my cell, I wasn’t just chasing a way out; I was keeping hope alive.

Hope was something no one could take from me, and it’s something I urged the women to hold on to as well. Though fragile, their hope was their power. Together with strength and purpose, it could propel them forward.

I shared the darkest parts of my journey: The nights I cried alone in my cell. The moments I thought my life was over. How after my release, the world didn’t suddenly open its arms to me. Bank accounts were closed, job offers rescinded. I was rejected again and again.

But every time someone told me “no,” I told myself “yes.” Every time the world tried to reduce me to my mistakes, I dared to believe that I was more than my past. And with each step forward, I built a new life—a life that no one ever expected me to have.

As I spoke, I watched their faces. Some were stoic, guarded, skeptical. I get it—hope is dangerous when the world has only ever let you down. One young woman, tears in her eyes, stood up and shared that she had passed her GED. She hadn’t thought it was a big deal—until that day. She realized how powerful that achievement truly was. In her, I saw my younger self—the girl who once thought she had nothing left, but now, standing before them as a lawyer, knew that she was unstoppable.

As I departed, I didn’t feel lighter. I felt the weight of the women I met, the lives they still had to live, the battles they would face. But I also felt hope. I made a promise—to myself, to those women, and to every girl who has ever been buried by the weight of the world: That world may feel impossible, but its soil is where you’ll grow.

Even within the coldest of concrete of Rikers Island, a rose will find its way to the light. Hope, like a rose breaking through concrete, defies the odds. It grows where it shouldn’t. And once it blooms, it transforms everything around it—quietly, relentlessly, and without permission.

—Afrika Owes is a 2024 Fordham Law graduate and a first-year law clerk in the tax practice group at Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Strange recently announced a new album produced in part by Jack Antonoff (who has worked with Taylor Swift, Lorde, St. Vincent, and Fordham grad Lana Del Rey, among others). Due out in February, Horror is inspired by his experiences growing up Black and queer in Oklahoma.

“Sober,” the incredible new single from the album, is Strange at his best: honest, raw, and vulnerable. In his own words, “This song is about falling short in a relationship, over and over, and drinking because of it. Being in love but not being the best at showing it or feeling successful within it.” Falling musically somewhere between Fleetwood Mac and the War on Drugs, the song is a culmination of the immense talent Bartees Strange has shown in such a short period of time. I, for one, cannot wait to see where the new music takes this amazing musician and songwriter.

WFUV Discovery is a new music recommendation from Russ Borris, music director at WFUV (90.7 FM, wfuv.org), Fordham’s public media station.

When we emptied out the house, you wanted to keep everything.
Books no one was ever going to read jammed into a storage unit
with the handbags we could never afford and the photos of everyone
alive. You left for Saigon with his sweaters and a suitcase full of letters
you asked to be buried with. The ink fades where your fingers trace the chin
of each line and you’re beginning to forget what some words mean
in English: epic, majestic, covenant, eternal. What will time make of us?
Years brackish with partial truths, I could almost float on what I don’t
say: I want to get better before I see you again. If I go first, who will help you
feed the spirits? When I call, it’s tomorrow on your side of the world,
the sea at a simmer, the wind readying its fists. You tell me Dì Sáu came back
a swallowtail and helped you make the bed. You’ve been buying lottery tickets.
I know this means you’re afraid to die. This, our only language: omens, unlucky
numbers, butterfly hauntings, tales of women who die weeping and come back
as trees. You make me promise to keep the couch he died on, remind me to give
Pippa the pearls when you’re gone. I look at the oak outside my window,
remember you crouched in the dirt, gloved to the elbows, raining seeds
from your fingers. Someday, you said, this will all be yours.

—Theo LeGro, FCLC ’10

About this Poem

I wanted to explore how grief tethers us together and makes us alone, and,
whether immediate or ancestral, is eternal, inescapable, a burden, and in so
being, ultimately a form of love.

About the Author

Theo LeGro is a queer Vietnamese-American poet and Kundiman fellow whose work has earned nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Their work appears or will appear in Blood Orange Review, Brooklyn Poets, diode, Honey Literary, Plume, The Offing, Raleigh Review, and others. They live in Brooklyn with a cat named Vinny.

This poem was originally published in Brooklyn Poets.

Whether she’s exploring the life and legacy of a feminist sex educator (The Disappearance of Shere Hite) or the right-to-die legal battles surrounding Terri Schiavo (Between Life & Death), a common thread binds together many of the films she’s produced.

“They each unmask underlying power structures in society through deeply personal narratives, and question how we can do better to create a more equal and more just world,” said Ferdinando, a 2004 Fordham graduate and the executive producer of NBC News Studios.

She began working on her latest film—The Sing Sing Chronicles—in 2016. That’s when she visited Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez at the maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility, about 30 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, where he’d been serving 25 years to life for a murder he didn’t commit.

“He was a father desperate to get home to his children, and even though there were many glaring issues in his case, he’d exhausted all of his appeals,” Ferdinando said. “I connected with JJ immediately, and it was clear there was an important story to tell.”

Eight years and more than 1,000 hours of archival footage later, The Sing Sing Chronicles—a four-part docuseries—is bringing that story to light. The series premiered at the DOC NYC film festival on November 16, and it aired on MSNBC the following weekend. (It’s available for streaming on NBC’s website.)

The Sing Sing Chronicles highlights the bond NBC News investigative producer Dan Slepian formed with Velazquez over two decades—an unlikely connection that led to the exoneration of six men who were wrongfully convicted, including Velazquez, who was granted clemency in 2021 and finally exonerated on September 30 of this year. The docuseries is built on more than 20 years of investigative reporting by Slepian, who also recently authored a book recounting the experience.

As showrunner and executive producer of the series, Ferdinando said she’s extremely proud to be a part of a project detailing the complications of the criminal legal system and how a wrongful conviction can impact generations.

Launching a Media Career at WFUV

The award-winning journalist and filmmaker credits her success to the principles of journalism she learned as an undergraduate at Fordham, where she double majored in communication and media studies and Spanish language and literature. While completing her studies, she worked as an anchor, producer, reporter, and eventually news manager at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station.

“That radio station changed my life,” said the Staten Island native who chose Fordham after becoming familiar with the Lincoln Center campus while attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

She did her first news broadcasts on WFUV shows Mixed Bag with 1967 Fordham grad Pete Fornatale and Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight, where she continued working five years after graduating.

With 20 years under her belt at NBC, Ferdinando recently returned to the University for “Fordham to the Frontlines: Alumni Journeys in News & Media.” The event, sponsored by the Career Center, featured several other successful grads and brought them together with students—an experience she described as “really heartening.”

“Career paths are unpredictable,” Ferdinando said. “If you don’t put yourself out there and say what you want to be doing, it’s hard to bring that to fruition. We really encouraged them to hone in on what they want to be doing and go after it.”

—Erica Scalise, FCRH ’20