Published: March 15, 2015

Let’s face it: We at Fordham at Lincoln Center are just not involved in the happenings on campus. Even though there are many changes we’d like to see at Fordham–whether it’s more class variety or better food–we don’t engage in such discussions to effect change. Half of our student population is composed of commuters and most of us have jobs, internships and other obligations outside of these four walls. In the midst of trying to make changes in the real world, we forget about the changes that need to be made at home.

Despite competitive elections for United Student Government (USG), a student organization that has such an integral role in implementing changes to provide more resources to students, very few students actually voted on April 8 and April 9. Only 12.6 percent of the undergraduate population voted for these USG elections, amounting to only 188 students. Our Rose Hill counterpart seems like it has similar problems: they had 579 students attend the virtual polls, a 16 percent participation rate.

Scrolling through various social media platforms, it is clear that Fordham’s CARE gets a lot of hate. We’ve read countless criticisms about Fordham’s sexist language, Fordham’s revictimization of survivors, frustration caused by the lack of female security supervisors on Fordham at Lincoln Center’s campus for immediate assault reporting- the list goes on.

At the Campus Assault Relationship Education panel hosted by Dean of Students Keith Eldredge and Director of Residential Life at Lincoln Center Jenifer Campbell on Wednesday, March 11, fewer than 10 students showed up out of the 255 people invited to the event’s Facebook page and the 40 who RSVP’ed. We hope the current Sexual Assault Climate survey put out by Student Affairs gets more engagement than the CARE event. It’s crucial for students to voice their own experiences with sexual assault and how safe they feel on campus because it is only then that the administration can take initiative. We have to meet them halfway.

[quote_center]We cannot make progress from the outside looking in.[/quote_center]

We know how active the Fordham Lincoln Center community is. We know how involved our student population is, going on Global Outreach (GO!) projects, participating in events on campus sponsored by the many of cultural clubs that host incredible panel discussions on a variety of social issues, work with the Dorothy Day Center for Social Justice (DDCSJ). Fordham students care, and they care deeply. It is important that we take part in a wider variety of discourses because we cannot make progress from the outside looking in.