By The Editorial Board
On the rare occasion that the average Fordham student mentions United Student Government (USG), it is usually to gripe about how the group does nothing. Anyone who has been to a USG meeting, however, knows this is not true. Much of what USG does is not exciting or glamorous, but it can be important nonetheless.
That being said, we at The Fordham Ram have significant doubts regarding the current state of Rose Hill’s USG.
Frankly, it feels like a great deal of the USG docket these days consists of picking a “club of the month.” Apart from its campaign to raise the student activities fee in September, which we applaud and, in fact, officially supported in a previous staff editorial (The Fordham Ram, V. 95, i. 13), USG has done nothing noteworthy this semester.
Normally, it would be hard to criticize USG for failing to take on many big initiatives; there are just not that many serious problems for the group to tackle at Fordham. But, it was only last semester that USG published a 45-page “Report on Speech and Expression of Student Organizations at Fordham University,” which passed with unanimous support. The report was the result of weeks — if not months — of work collecting testimonials from students and student organizations in an effort to improve free speech conditions at Fordham.
Students spent countless hours compiling the report because they saw a problem at this university. Unfortunately, this problem remains unresolved. Simply publishing a report does not make a problem go away. It is merely step one.
Instead of treating last semester’s report on free speech as a first step among many, the Reynolds-Francolini administration appears to have dropped the issue altogether. Executive President Aileen Reynolds and Executive Vice President Brendan Francolini were both on USG last year when the report was published, but it seems they have forgotten about free speech issues at Fordham.
USG’s report on free speech should have been a conversation starter, but the conversation appears to have ended, and little has changed.
Prior to their election, Reynolds and Francolini spoke about increasing USG’s transparency, another important issue. Regrettably, USG appears to have stagnated on this issue as well. By our count, there have been at least 11 USG meetings this semester. The minutes for only four of those meetings have been posted to USG’s website.
For reference, this means only a little over one-third of USG’s meeting minutes this semester are available online. Additionally, the most recent minutes available are from Oct. 10, over one month ago. It seems that the only way to know what is going on at USG meetings is to attend them in person or to personally know a USG senator. This is hardly transparent.
Former New York City Councilmember Henry Stern once observed that the city council amounted to even less than a rubber stamp, because “at least a rubber stamp leaves an impression.”
There is still another semester left for this edition of USG to leave an impression and build a legacy of improving free speech at Fordham. Will the Reynolds-Francolini administration amount to less than a rubber stamp, or will it make an impression?
I find this editorial interesting, considering it was published the same day as an article named “USG Senators Question Security Office about Alert Protocol.” Based on the contents of the article, I would say USG is planning on working on that issue. I agree that USG does need to work on timely uploading of documents but I would say the evidence of the article in your own paper gives counter evidence to your point that “USG has done nothing noteworthy this semester.”