On Tuesday I visited the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side. Why did I choose the Tenement Museum I hear you asking me? Well, I missed the baseball team’s meeting on the 7th, I was running out of options, and I live 5 minutes away from it, so, it was my best bet. Fortunately though, it wasn’t as bad as a last option might sound. I learned about the Wong family, the Epstein family, and the Velez family and their struggle to make it in New York City as immigrants. The Wong’s got by from the mother of the family working in sewing shops in Chinatown, the Epstein’s were Holocaust survivors, and the Velez family came from Puerto Rico for new opportunities and “The American Dream.” While the tenement of what the museum is based around housed over 10,000 families over it’s time of being a residency, the museum chose to focus on these specific families. I believe they did this to show the diversity this city has and how everyone is just someone trying to make it, which I believe reflects Baruch. Baruch is a diverse college with over 132 countries being represented, but the Tenement Museum opened my eyes to show me that it’s a small world after all.
-Matt Salcedo
When you get your life together, you have to go to the basketball meeting because I need a picture of you doing something on campus. If you need to know when the dates are for basketball, I can help you out because I have a few friends that are on the team, so let me know. However, I will take this for the career blog that you will have to do later on. On the bright side, that is really good that you learned these stories about immigrants because I also feel like the immigrant stories aren’t really told as often as they should.
If you could take better selfies you should’ve took a better selfie but we can’t all look like me