The Plinth

“I’ve just met a girl named Maria, and suddenly that name will never be the same to me. Maria”. Tony’s voice fills the night sky and the love he feel for Maria lights up the screen. West Side Story is an immensely popular musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in the 1950’s. The movie was critically acclaimed and won ten Oscars. The setting for the movie tells a much different story. By the filming of the Movie over 6,000 families had been uprooted and their homes paved over. This drastic upset was to build Lincoln Center as well as other various projects around New York City. Robert Moses was the “master builder” behind these projects and because of his actions many Latino and Black families were forced out of their homes.

Recently our school, Fordham Lincoln Center, put up a plinth in honor of Robert Moses calling him a “Friend of Fordham and a Mater Builder.” Immediately there was uproar, and I am proud to say that I was one of the voices. How can we as a school, a school who has very recently been besmirched with various hate crimes, put up a statue exonerating a man who marginalized entire communities, communities that our students are a part of. Acknowledging the success of his work is one thing but honoring him so publicly is another. So many families were affected by that move. More families than students of this University were forcibly removed from their homes. Their loss and their pain must be remembered.

It’s easy to say, “Well its just a statue, it doesn’t mean anything!” but this statement is wrong. It does mean something. Everyday, when students walk past it or incoming students see it on a tour, those families are forgotten. Not only are they forgotten, we say their lives were not as important as an opera house or a highway. We say we do not care what you went through. But we do.

Dorothy Day says in The Long Loneliness, “It is the people who are important, not the masses.” Each one of those families had a story. They had things that made them unique and those little intricacies are what make us human. Because of the sheer volume it is easy to forget that those were people who were hurt too, not just numbers.

The covering of the Robert Moses statue was the best thing they could have done with it until it can be removed. I would rather see cardboard everyday than the face of a man who is responsible for so much pain and suffering. We, the students of Fordham University College at Lincoln Center, do not support our school honoring someone of his caliber and never will. Every time we feel an injustice has been made our voices will be heard. The memories of those families are not forgotten, and we will never let them die.