(Courtesy of Brian Reardon)

This year’s United Students Government (USG) election cycle showcased the incredible leadership and dedication that our peers are willing to commit in order to better our university.

With these considerations in mind, the executive board of The Fordham Ram has decided to endorse Brian Reardon, FCRH ’18, and Abigail Kedik, FCRH ’18, for president and vice president of USG. The executive board believes that this ticket will provide our student body with the support it needs to thrive and succeed in the current tense political atmosphere felt on campus.

We at The Fordham Ram are impressed with Reardon and Kedik’s contributions to Fordham. Reardon’s work as USG’s Vice President of Fordham College Rose Hill is nothing short of impressive. In addition, Reardon is the only candidate to have prior and extensive USG experience. We believe this prior USG experience is essential for a successful executive duo.

In addition, Reardon is an active member of other Fordham organizations such as Rose Hill Society, Campus Ministry and Fordham Club. We feel that Reardon’s wide-reaching campus involvement makes him a perfect “bridge” to mend the gap between Fordham students and USG.

Kedik’s role as the secretary of Fordham’s branch of UNICEF demonstrate her passions for social justice. Further, her tenure as a resident assistant gives her unparallelled experience dealing personally with both students and administration that the other candidates are simply unable to match. Kedik’s involvement in UNICEF and Fordham Residential Life allows her to offer a well-educated perspective regarding social justice and unique insight to interpersonal relationships on campus,.

Reardon and Kedik’s emphasis on fostering and upholding social justice programs reflecting the Jesuit identity of Fordham is essential for the future of our university, especially taking into consideration current events. With issues coming about such as proposed changes to the faculty’s health care benefits, adjuncts inability to unionize and students lack of free speech on campus, we need to have leaders who are proponents of social justice.

The performance from both Reardon and Kedik during the debate this past Tuesday exemplified their strong ideas and leadership capabilities. The executive board was particularly impressed by several of Reardon and Kedik’s specific plans to combat issues on campus.

In particular, when further discussion regarding the LGBTQ+ community arose during the debate, Kedik said her ticket plans to further the fight for gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. In addition, Reardon and Kedik plan to educate incoming students on the LGBTQ+ community through changes to CORE programming.

“It is not our job to dictate your identity, but to help you realize and inspire pride in your identity,” Kedik said. “It is our job to acknowledge these communities by creating a campus that is open to everybody.”

Changes to CORE programming also came about during the debate in regards to campus sexual assault. Reardon and Kedik reported that they hope to revamp this training and extend the education past CORE programming freshman year, in order to create continuous education regarding consent and college rape culture.

“CARE on campus needs to be reinforced, explained, distributed and understood beyond a simple email at beginning of each year and beyond a mandatory CORE programming session freshman year,” Reardon said.

These are just a few of Reardon and Kedik’s impressive and tangible plans for our university’s future. Watch them speak more about their plans on The Fordham Ram’s video coverage of the debate.

The Fordham Ram demands the most adept and qualified individuals to speak on behalf of the student body regarding sensitive issues, such as detrimental hook-up culture, sexual assault and LGBT+ issues.  We believe that Reardon and Kedik are best suited to be a voice for all members of the student body.

We acknowledge the atmosphere of this year’s elections at Fordham in light of the vote of no confidence by the faculty and the overall climate on campus. We hope the gravity of such events inspires a greater awareness and participation from our student body in this year’s elections. Thus, we believe that the Reardon and Kedik ticket would indeed provide a voice for the voiceless on our campus, and further promote student advocacy and involvement here at Fordham.