Senior Profile: Alexandra Loizzo, BC

Well before she arrived as a transfer student in fall 2006, Alexandra Loizzo knew two things: She wanted to study English, and she wanted to do it at Barnard.

Now, having satisfied both of those goals, she graduates with a Phi Beta Kappa nomination, an abundance of Barnard T-shirts, and a literary legacy.

Loizzo lost no time in jumping into campus life after her transfer from Swarthmore College. Soon after she took her long-awaited first steps through the Barnard gates, she began looking for a literary magazine to devote her energies to. But the choices she found left her mystified. After trying—and failing—to find a general campus publication, one that wasn’t specific to a particular culture or religion, the passionate student from West New York, N.J. decided to take matters into her own hands.

So began Echoes, the literary magazine Loizzo started to give a platform Barnard’s many creative voices. She obtained the Student Government Association’s approval for the new publication during her first semester at Barnard. By her second, Loizzo and her team, inundated with submissions, were already cranking out the issues.

“She’s a doer as well as a writer and a reader, with a fine critical intelligence,” English professor Achsah Guibbory wrote in an e-mail.

A doer indeed. Loizzo, a bilingual Spanish minor, also served as president of the relatively new Cuban and American Student Association, which runs both political and cultural events on campus. She also interned at the publishing company McGraw-Hill for over a year. And her interests range beyond the literary—from an additional minor in psychology to a penchant for anime and video games.

Come fall, the self-described “bookish nerd” will enter a two-year program at Fordham University to obtain a master’s degree in English literature. After that, she will have to decide whether to go for a doctorate or enter the workforce.

Loizzo said she will miss everything about Barnard, especially her beloved English department. “I’ve loved every English professor I’ve had here,” she said. And Barnard has come to feel more like a home than anything else.

But Echoes, Loizzo’s carefully nurtured brainchild, will outlive her graduation date.

Speaking of her decision to establish the magazine, she laughed slightly. “If there’s not one, then I guess I have to make one,” she said. “I guess that’s just how I am.”