Identity Politics
By Deirdre Heavey, May 2021
I’m often asked why I chose Manhattan College, only to offer some sliver of the truth about loving New York City or my dad’s days of playing Gaelic football on our campus field. In actuality, I never wanted to go to Manhattan College. But as I approached my graduation from high school, I started receiving texts from my estranged godfather, former Dean Michael Carey. He spoke of the opportunities I would have–to walk onto the girl’s soccer team if I wanted, the internship experiences that were waiting for me and a guaranteed employment opportunity. When I came to Manhattan College for the first time, Carey gave me a tour of the campus himself–buying me coffee, introducing me to the women’s soccer coaches and sharing secrets about the best residence halls on campus. I was sold.
During my first semester at Manhattan College, Carey secured my first job in the Office of Residence Life. By the second semester, Carey recommended my name for a student worker position in the most prestigious office on campus–the Office of the President. Dean Carey has since left the school for undefined reasons, resuming our estranged relationship, but his position at the College has forever ushered me onto my current professional path. As an Irish-Catholic woman with familial connections at Manhattan College, the doors to success were held wide open for me to achieve.
My time in the Office of the President was dissimilar to that of the typical student worker position. I was encouraged to dress professionally–dresses, long skirts, dress slacks, etc.–as I was told the Office of the President is the face of the school. When visitors–typically donors, distinguished alumni or representatives from other colleges–would arrive at the door of the office, my boss and I greeted the almost exclusively white cisgender men with a smile, she introduced me as a student from the School of Liberal Arts, we shook hands, then we took our guests’ coats and hung them up in the coat closet. The coat closet directly faces the President’s restroom, and distinguished guests can use it at their will. However, the two women who worked in the office and the student workers were discouraged from doing so; instead, we utilized the facilities on the other side of the building.
Meanwhile, across campus nestled in a corner of Kelly Commons is the Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center (LWGRC). Established by gender and sexuality professors out of a student push for a gender-inclusive space on campus, the LWGRC offers an inclusive, intersectional environment for students to relax, engage in dialogue or educate themselves on various topics pertaining to sexuality. Just across the hall from the LWGRC is a gender-neutral bathroom stocked with free menstrual products and lined with posters promoting resources for victims of sexual violence. “Gender Advocates” in the LWGRC host student-led support groups for victims of sexual violence, collaborate with the Black Student Union on race dialogues and invite struggling students to take a seat on the chic beanbag chairs for candid chats. The LWGRC represents the community of activists on campus who are committed to creating a more accepting and inclusive culture at Manhattan College.
Manhattan College Parkway separates the Office of the President, located behind the grand outdoor staircase within the brick walls and stained glass windows of Memorial Hall, from the modern LEED gold building of Kelly Commons, where the LWGRC resides. Main campus feels representative of the college’s roots with Smith Auditorium and the Chapel of De La Salle situated directly in the center of the Quadrangle, brick buildings create an enclosed campus reminiscent of a university you’d expect to find in a rural college town. Riverdale, a rich suburb on the border of the Bronx and Westchester, is home to high school prep schools rivaling the steep tuition at Manhattan College. The College’s little corner in Riverdale is sandwiched between the elitist Fieldston community, with its gated communities and homeowners’ security patrolling the streets, and Kingsbridge, with its community thrift stores, innumerable bodegas and dollar stores. Manhattan College’s evolving geographical location transcends into the College’s ethos--that of which feels caught in the crossroads of two worlds without any conception of which side of the tracks they belong.
When Manhattan College was first established by the Christian Brothers, it was located in Manhattan. As the student body grew and resources were limited in the growing Manhattan borough, the Brothers moved Manhattan College to the Bronx, building our modern campus. The College justifies its geographically confusing name with the Brothers’ desire to maintain the legacy Manhattan College had established prior to its move uptown. Coining our new Riverdale, New York, zip code rather than a Bronx, New York, zip code, markets a particular demographic. In the basically-Westchester Riverdale, white and wealthy parents from the Tri-state area can feel safe to send their students to a school in New York. Praised for its close proximity to “The City,” Manhattan College creates disillusionment about our Bronx location. While there is a commuter population at the College, most students are not from New York City and opt for a residential college experience. Commuter Services & Outreach is a program at Manhattan College designed to better integrate commuter students into the community, as the relationship between resident and commuter students often feels like an impenetrable social wall. Commuter Services & Outreach is located in Kelly Commons, along with the LWGRC, the Multicultural Center, the Fitness Center, multiple dining options, a game room, open study spaces and couches to lounge on and meet up with friends. As the newest facility on campus particularly designated as a student commonplace, commuter students are known to frequent Kelly Commons.
Kelly Commons is the tangible representation of the evolving identity of Manhattan College; it offers respite to the students on campus who do not fill into the cookie-cutter appearance of the white cisgender Irish-Catholic male athletes normalized in the O’Malley School of Business. Whereas Memorial Hall is the space in which the overwhelming white men of our Board of Trustees congregate as I take their coats to the closet in the Office of the President located across from the bathroom I am forbidden from using, Kelly Commons is the space that recalls our racist, misogynistic roots; where queer professors discuss the heteronormative nature of Manhatttan College and students of color share their experiences with microagressions. Located just a few steps south toward Kingsbridge, Kelly Commons has the potential to represent the evolving identity of a Liberal Arts school located in the Bronx. Yet, there is one glaring barrier to that progress: the former police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, to which the building is named after.
There were protests against the naming of Raymond W. Kelly ’63 Student Commons when it was dedicated in 2014. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, petitions to rename Kelly Commons circulated around campus. Manhattan College administration has failed to address the student’s disapproval with the memorializing of Raymond W. Kelly. As commissioner, he was responsible for enforcing “stop and frisk” which disproportionately racially profiled Black and Hispanic men in the “war on drugs.” Kelly’s promotion of “stop and frisk” led to an increase in hyperincarceration in New York City, that of which targets low-income Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities. The Bronx community is majority low-income BIPOC communities, so the enforcement of “stop and frisk” by Raymond W. Kelly directly contributed to the white washing of the Bronx through the policing of Black and Hispanic bodies. Whilea the school has yet to address our increasingly-progressive student body’s desire to rename Kelly Commons, student activists on campus created a movement amongst ourselves to refer to Kelly Commons as the “Student Commons.” This effort serves to remove the power from Raymond W. Kelly’s name in an effort to return power to the outcasts on campus who find respite in the “Student Commons.”
Following the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Brennan O’Donnell issued a statement condemning the actions of those involved in the insurrection. One of the loudest voices in the call for violence on the days leading up was distinguished alumnus and former Mayor Rudolph Giulani. Manhattan College students have protested the College’s praise and connection to the former mayor who similarly enforced racist “stop and frisk” policies in New York City. However, it took an insurrection of the Capitol for the President of the College to make a statement against Rudolph Giulani, their esteemed benefactor and most esteemed alumnus for decades.
In this moment of political polarization, the administration of Manhattan College has demonstrated their desire to align with progressive ideology against the far-right hatred ignited by former President Donald Trump. This is the same Manhattan College whose annual President’s Dinner—an invitation-only event designed to raise money for the College—is flooded with white people, in an alarming display of identity politics representative of the ethos and interests of the white, cisgender, Irish-Catholic, wealthy man. At this crossroad—the Manhattan College Parkway positioned between our old Irish-Catholic roots and the growing activism of students who embrace their Bronx identity—Manhattan College is caught between its history and its legacy. I graduate from Manhattan College this May with a clear sense of what the school has provided for me. In full recognition of the privilege that brought me across the country to a school in the Bronx, I had the unique opportunity to become a participant observer, gaining new perceptions of how white institutions serve to fragment communities of color. I wonder how long Manhattan College can stand with one foot in the door and one foot out—seemingly unaware of their desperate need to change with an evolving student body who is desperately begging them to stand on the right side of history.
