Published: April 13, 2011

Members of Fordham University’s United Student Government (USG) and 26 other students traveled to Washington, D.C. on March 30 to hold their annual Congressional Reception at The Rayburn House Office Building. The goal of the trip was to press the importance of federal aid for Fordham students due to Congress’ recent eagerness to make cutbacks that would directly affect Fordham students.

Fordham’s office of government relations hosted the gathering on the administration end, while USG presidents for both Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses organized details on the student end.

Fordham paid for all of the event’s expenses, including bus transportation from both Fordham campuses to D.C. and back.

In preparation, the Fordham Office of Government Relations set up roughly six meetings with representatives from Rose Hill and Lincoln Center in D.C., where Rev. Joseph McShane, S.J. spoke on behalf of the university for the first part of the day.

“The rest of the day all students from both campuses were able to really just explore and visit whatever Congressman or Congresswoman they felt like visiting,” Ryan O’Toole, FCLC ’12 and USG committee member, said. “They could visit their home district or another New York district, and most importantly speak freely for Fordham.”

According to O’Toole and USG, Fordham would be adversely affected if a lot of federal funding were cut. “The expectation was that we contact and visit as many offices on the house as possible, and make our case known in terms of keeping federal funding for financial aid in the federal budget for this year,” he said.

Together, Fordham students made their presence known [at the event] by visiting all the New York professional offices the New York Senator’s offices, and multiple other state offices of their home districts.

“I went to the offices of New York congressmen and women who had personal connections to Fordham; whether they had gone to our school or taught here at some point in their lives, we wanted to get across that these cuts would affect our students who rely on financial aid very much,” Patrice Kugler, FCLC ’11, said.

Even students who wouldn’t directly be affected by the federal budget cut attended the trip to Washington. Chris Chromey, FCLC ’12, who also attended, said, “I personally don’t rely on financial aid but I know it’s something that a lot of students rely on, and need.”

It’s hard to predict what the actual result will be as of now. “Most of the staff said ‘thank you, we understand your concerns,’ and that they were definitely going to work on keeping as much funding as possible for students in the budget…however, they weren’t able to give us definitive answers on much they were going to keep,” O’Toole said.