Bronx

Back To Basics: Challenges at the Community College Door

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For her mere 20 years, Gina Ortiz speaks with the polish and poise of a person used to impressing her elders. She says she loved the small public high school she attended—Riverdale-Kingsbridge M.S./ H.S. 141 in the west Bronx. She aspired to attend Boston University or Northeastern, en route to a career in government or law enforcement. Those schools didn’t accept her, so, with her regents diploma in hand, she enrolled at John Jay College to begin her postsecondary education. Well, sort of.

Bronx

Making Their Way

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For Tasnim Huque, the past few months have been full of surprises. Her Muslim parents, who immigrated to New York City from India’s sprawling eastern city of Calcutta in the late 1980s, are gradually allowing the 18-year-old to show some independence. While there’s little inhibiting most seniors at Hunter Science High School in Manhattan from attending the prom— except, perhaps, the cost of limos, gowns and tuxes— Huque was certain that she’d be missing it for a different reason: her 6 p.m. curfew. But her parents recently told her that she could, in fact, attend.“They even bought me a nice Westernized dress,” she says excitedly. And that’s not all she’s excited about.