It was a chilly, but cloudless day, on March 14th, when members of the Fordham community––following in the footsteps of over 30,000 other students across the nation––gathered on Edward’s Parade to commemorate the one-month anniversary of the shooting that took place on Valentine’s Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As the Keating bells struck 10, crowds of students and staff members filed out of classroom buildings and clustered by the fence facing the Lombardi Center to stand in solidarity with the victims of the shooting, as well as the students actively fighting for urgently-needed gun reform laws.
Category: Fordham
In the wake of the horrific mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which seventeen people were killed, there has been a sustained and significant activist movement for gun control and a substantial shift in public opinion on the issue. This has given many hope that this horrible incident could potentially lead to change, even after the continued inaction that has fol-lowed previous mass shootings, such in Sandy Hook, Orlando, and Las Vegas, among countless others.
This past week, “in the spirit of fairness,” the Fordham Libertarians, in cooperation with the College Republicans, invited the Reverend Al Sharpton to speak on campus. For those who don’t know, Sharpton, along with being a Baptist minister and New York native, is a civil rights leader who got his start during the Civil Rights movement.
What do you define as free speech? In our age of hyper-politicization, the definition of free speech has become gray with well-founded opinions and hate-speech intersecting on social media. Fordham University and free speech have had, well to put it lightly, a complicated relationship. While Fordham claims to be champions of peaceful and respectful student demonstrations it has also shown on multiple occasions to be rather controlling of student speech and protest. The latest chapter in this story occurred last week when the Office of the President released a statement regarding demonstrations against gun violence.
Here at the paper, sometimes the flow of news gets slow, and instead of languishing in our own lack of stories, we then decide to make our own content. The mailroom in the McGinley basement is one of the rarely talked about, but vital services that Fordham provides.
Walter Naegle, a Fordham alumnus, was the long-term partner of Bayard Rustin, the civil rights leader who served as chief strategist of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and mentored Dr. King in practical non-violence. In this interview, Mr. Naegle reflects on his life in NYC, the progress of LGBT rights at Fordham, and Rustin’s lasting legacy.
At one of their weekly meetings, the College Democrats executive board announced that they had selected David Axelrod as their speaker for the Spring semester. The former Obama advisor will speak at Keating Hall’s 3rd-floor auditorium on Monday, April 9th from 8 to 9pm, taking place after Spring Break and before finals start.
Smoking: It is true! People in France smoke! Like a lot! This isn’t really news! MTV worked really hard to educate children in the U.S. about the dangers of smoking, but their efforts were not received well in France because these cancer sticks are clearly still as prominent as ever! It’s silly how a country filled with such tasty food is willing to destroy their taste buds (AND LUNGS) for a quick drag.
On Tuesday night, I and my co-editor Andrew, went to check out the College Republicans’ guest speaker over in the Walsh Library auditorium. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but the first two rows of the middle were for the most apart filled with what I could only assume were the College Republicans.
The fire is the deadliest one to affect NYC since the 1990s.