Last summer, the native of Storrs, Connecticut went to Mexico to do research for her senior thesis on refugees from the Spanish Civil War who took asylum in the Mexican Embassies. Although international law in the 1930s dictated that Mexico--which was antifascist and leftist--had to accept all political refugees, these Spanish refugees were mostly conservative and fascist sympathizers.

"Jennifer is really a first-rate student," says Instructor in Social Studies Marta Gil, Gordon's thesis adviser. "She's very unassuming. She could really have a brilliant future in academia, but I have a feeling that her deep interest in social issues will prevail."

Thoroughly Committed

"The most impressive thing about Jennifer is her commitment to Centro Presente. It seem to me to be an incredibly difficult job, one that requires her to get involved politically and psychologically. She's thoroughly committed to it, and in a lot of ways, she takes the job home with her," says Gordon's roommate Betty Achinstein '87.

Gordon's involvement with refugee issues and her compassion for their problems manifests itself in other spheres of her life. A poem she wrote, Manuela in Boston, which won first place last year in the Jane Grey Untermeyer poetry contest, expresses the spirit of the refugee experience.

In the half-light

of this country,

I hold my foreign belly in my hands

At night I dream my language,

the smell of corn carried

on smoke, the babies crying after me,

my mother's song. When I open

the door to watch them, their

backs are turned.

Walking front-heavy and afraid, I move from one world to the other.