Alvin Velazquez mixes scholarship, street smarts and passion for service

By Franklin Crawford

When Alvin Velazquez first came to Cornell, the sound of a car backfiring would send him sprawling for cover.

May graduate Alvin Velazquez '00 stands in front of Seal and Serpent fraternity, where he served as president and social chairman. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

The newly minted alumnus grew up in Humboldt Park, Chicago, where street violence was common. But he never ducked the challenges of an Ivy League education, nor did he forsake the tough Chicago neighborhood where he grew up. He plans to return to Humboldt Park some day as an attorney versed in fair-housing and discrimination law.

For the four months before his May graduation, Velazquez spent weekends and school breaks on the streets of Spanish Harlem and in his hometown of Chicago, doing the legwork for a senior research project on the history of urban renewal and its effect on the Puerto Rican communities of Chicago and New York.

A government major, Velazquez was one of four students bestowed the first-ever grants awarded through Cornell's Latin Studies Program (LSP) in February. The $500 grant came in handy for Velazquez, helping him to cover travel to and from New York, where he conducted his first person interviews and research. In addition to the LSP grant, Velazquez received a $200 grant from Cornell's history department, which he also used toward traveling expenses.

"He has tackled this project with great zeal as he has with all his projects," said Maria Christina Garcia, associate professor of history and Latino studies and Velazquez's adviser. "He is the kind of student that every professor appreciates: hard-working, self-motivated, independent and enthusiastic. He has never taken his education for granted and has a deep hunger for knowledge and a commitment to service."

Last semester, Velazquez produced a study of Puerto Rican migration to Chicago based almost entirely on primary sources, said Garcia. That work will be published next year.

The semester's independent study has inspired Velazquez to pursue a career "in public interest law or civil rights law," he said. "I'm also interested in fair housing and discrimination law."

Velazquez has been accepted to law programs at Columbia University and the University of Chicago and is waiting on Harvard and New York universities.

Humboldt Park is located within Chicago's Puerto Rican community -- the second largest in the U.S. outside New York City. But that neighborhood is changing, and one of the reasons for the change is urban renewal programs which often displace resident populations. Velazquez has been a witness to this, watching his neighborhood transition from a predominantly Puerto Rican enclave into an area going through the ups and downs of gentrification.

Velazquez was in high school when his mother died of Lou Gehrig's disease; and his father, a custodian with the Chicago school system, was overjoyed to learn that his son was accepted to Cornell. It was a remarkable achievement: Velazquez was the first student from his high school to get into an Ivy League school in the past 30 years. Weber High School, now closed, was a tough Catholic school where violence was common.

"There were fights and a couple of shootings," said Velazquez. "Out of a senior class of 100, only 39 graduated. I didn't think that much about it until I got here."

He was a little shell shocked when he arrived in Ithaca. While walking downtown with fellow members of the Navigators, a Christian fellowship group, a car backfired.

"I hit the ground before I knew what happened," Velazquez said. "My friends said, 'Hey, relax, it was just a car.'"

Since then, he has adjusted to the calmer atmosphere of Ithaca, although his work as a counselor with the Ithaca Housing Authority helped to keep him in touch with at-risk youth. Velazquez served as a head counselor for IHA, a U.S. Housing and Urban Development-sponsored agency that provides affordable housing for low and very low-income families in Tompkins County. He supervised other counselors and was in charge of after-school programming, incorporating America Reads Challenge initiatives into his work with local youth.

While with the IHA, Velazquez worked with the nascent city of Ithaca Drug Treatment Court and the Alternatives to Incarcerations program, and he helped in establishing a police satellite office in the IHA's Northside apartment complex in the city. He also left his mark by helping to coordinate a community art mural project at Northside.

On campus, Velazquez is most proud of his service as the president and social chairman of Seal and Serpent fraternity, the most racially diverse fraternity at Cornell, Velazquez said.

"It just won the outstanding chapter award," said Velazquez. "I like to think my work as president went a long way toward our receiving that distinction."

Velazquez credits, in addition to Garcia, Richard Polenberg, Cornell's Goldwin Smith Professor of History, as an academic mentor.

Said Polenberg of Velazquez: "Alvin is an amazing student: intelligent, mature and just a good guy. You sometimes wonder where students are at these days, and then a person like Alvin comes along and you remember what teaching is all about."