The Immigrants (Part II)

To varying degrees, most American institutions of higher education reflect our nation’s immigration experience. During the nineteenth century, Saint Ignatius College was the immigration experience. As discussed in earlier vignettes, our history begins with Italian Jesuit immigrants, like Michael Accolti, S.J., who established the Jesuit order in California, and Anthony Maraschi, S.J., who founded Saint Ignatius Church and Academy. The first seven presidents of Saint Ignatius College were all Italian Jesuit immigrants: Fathers Anthony Maraschi, Nicolas Congiato, Burchard Villiger, Nicolas Congiato (a second term), Joseph Bayma, Aloysius Masnata, and John Pinasco. Robert Kenna, S.J., who became the eighth president of Saint Ignatius College in 1880, was the first Saint Ignatius College president to be born in the United States. Most of the faculty members during these earlier years were also Italian Jesuit immigrants. Some of the first lay faculty, like John Haley, Peter Malloy, James O’Sullivan, and Daniel Crowley, were immigrants from Ireland. One of the most prominent spokesmen and recruiters for Saint Ignatius Church and College during the second half of the nineteenth century, James Bouchard, S.J., had a French mother and a Delaware Indian father.

During its first decades, virtually all of the students at Saint Ignatius College were first- or second-generation Irish or Italian Catholics, a partial reflection of the population of San Francisco. For example, after the Gold Rush of 1849, the Irish came to San Francisco by the thousands, making up nearly one-third of the city’s population by the 1880s. Throughout the mid nineteenth century, and especially in the 1880s and 1890s, Italians also immigrated to the United States, and to San Francisco, in ever increasing numbers, swelling the population of San Francisco and expanding the enrollment of Saint Ignatius College to 650 students by 1880. In the 1880 national census, the population of San Francisco was 233,959, 44.6 percent of whom were foreign born. In that year, San Francisco was the ninth largest city in the United States, but first in the nation, even ahead of New York City, in the percentage of its population that was foreign born. By 1890, the population of San Francisco had grown to 298,997, making it the eighth largest city in the country and tied with New York City for the largest percentage (42.4 percent) of foreign born residents of any city in the nation. In addition to the Irish and the Italians, large numbers of Germans and French immigrated to San Francisco in the last decades of the nineteenth century, some of whom sent their sons to Saint Ignatius College, further adding to the European diversity of our institution by the turn of the century.

Today at the University of San Francisco, the tradition of educating the children of first- and second-generation immigrants continues. A survey of freshmen at USF, conducted in the fall semester of 2001, found that 11 percent of all first-time freshmen were immigrants to the United States, and about 44 percent of all first-time freshmen had one or more parents who were immigrants to this country. Our current student body, however, is ethnically much more diverse than it was in the nineteenth century. For the entire USF undergraduate and graduate student population in the fall of 2001, 17.3 percent were Asian, 5.9 percent African-American, 9.4 percent Hispanic, and 9.5 percent international. USF is currently rated as the seventeenth most ethnically diverse university in the nation. USF is also the most ethnically diverse institution among the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. Stephen Privett, S.J, our current president, had it exactly right when he said in his inaugural address of November 18, 2000, ?The diversity of our city and our university community closely mirror the rich complexity of our world. The University of San Francisco first served Irish and Italian immigrants who otherwise had no access to quality education. The original roster of student names has expanded over the years from Cleary, O’Brien, Pinasco, and Vanzinni, to include Nguyen, Aquino, Takashi, Gonzales, and Chang.? Providing a quality education to immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants will forever be a heart-felt concern of the Jesuit University of San Francisco.?


Bibliographic note: The ethnic composition of Saint Ignatius College during the second half of the nineteenth century is documented by Joseph Riordan, S.J., in his book The First Half Century: Saint Ignatius Church and College, published in 1905. Immigration statistics for San Francisco during this same time period are available from the U.S. Census Bureau at its web site, www.census.gov. The ethnicity of USF students in the fall semester of 2001 is portrayed in Table 17 of the document USF Registration Statistics, Fall Semester 2001, published by the Office of the Registrar and compiled by Fred Baldwin, Data Base Manager, Academic Services. Questions pertaining to the immigrant status of first-time freshman at USF in the fall semester 2001 were developed by Alan Ziajka, President’s Office/Institutional Research, for the annual UCLA-CIRP Freshman Survey. Other questions for the freshman survey were developed by Susan Prion in the Provost’s Office. The freshman survey is administered by the staff of Academic Services, under the direction of Dean B.J. Johnson. Fr. Privett’s inaugural address is available from the President’s Office through the President's web page, at www.usfca.edu/president