Photo Courtesy of Hofstra University

I am an optimist. I like to think that the alumni featured on the Unispan are more than a publicity stunt meant to lure prospective students in with the wholesome successes of their potential predecessors. I like to think that these famous faces are meant to inspire current students. But to the average student rushing to class, many of the names and faces are unrecognizable, incapable of providing that spark of encouragement. I love Madeline Kahn, for example, but besides my fellow film buffs, what young person even knows who that is? The Unispan needs another face, an alumnus guaranteed to provoke the imagination. When we gaze at the Unispan walls, it would be nice to think ourselves capable of rising beyond a humble upbringing. With a Hofstra education, we could become famous. Or, like Bernard Madoff, class of 1960, we could become infamous.

Madoff, who died this past April, left behind an incomparable legacy of financial fraud. He orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history, meaning, to all you financial illiterates like me, that he used new investors’ money to pay off the old investors. He managed to dupe some of the world’s leading lights, and for many years, he was able to outsmart the government officials who investigated his business operations. But in 2008, when the Great Recession hit and his clients wanted to withdraw their money, Madoff lacked the funds to fulfill these requests. Thus, the jig was up. Madoff’s crimes impacted more than 37,000 victims in 136 countries, the New York Post reports. In 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison.

Madoff’s crimes were so impactful that anything you say about them sounds oddly complimentary, as though his evil deeds have shrouded him in an odd glamour, making him more than mortal. Fellow prisoners held him in high esteem. Burt Ross, former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., notably said “May Satan grow a fourth mouth where Madoff can spend the rest of eternity.” Robert DeNiro played him in a movie called “The Wizard of Lies.” These are rare accomplishments. And who would have thought that Madoff could have such a spectacular rise and fall? His infamy is all the more remarkable considering his modest past. According to “Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff” by Erin Arvedlund, Madoff was the son of immigrants, and in his hometown of Laurelton, Queens, he was never the most conspicuous kid. But it seems as though his chameleonic nature was an essential part of his crimes. He could make himself fit in; his clients trusted him. Now few people inspire such reverent hatred.

When it comes to Bernie Madoff’s time at Hofstra, there is surprisingly little information available, so it’s impossible to say just how his time at Hofstra shaped him into the man he would become. I combed countless internet articles and two biographies, and apart from a banal account of the college-aged Madoff’s reckless driving habits, I found no bittersweet anecdotes, no stories from professors and peers that hint at the man Madoff would become and hardly any college reminiscences from the man himself, or at least none that I could find. We know that he graduated with a degree in political science, and we know the year he graduated: 1960, the same year as alumnus Francis Ford Coppola, who is honored on the Unispan. Besides the evidence of his Hofstra College ring, which sold at auction for $6,000, and a brief stint as a Hofstra trustee, to the public eye, it’s almost as though Madoff never attended Hofstra. 

Madoff may be one of the most famous people who has graduated from Hofstra, but he is not one of its most famous alumni. It is time for the University to change this fact, embrace the Madoff connection, time to at least publicly recognize itself as having provided this criminal mastermind’s college education. Adding Madoff to the Unispan’s pantheon is the first step in this recognition. Madoff’s disembodied face, hovering overthe daily commotion, would provide students with a powerful reminder: A Hofstra education is only what you make of it. But with a degree and a dose of intelligence and cunning, you can lie your way to the top.