The Fordham Ram Serving The Fordham University Community Since 1918 Volume 95, Issue 15
FordhamRam.com F dh R
October O b 22, 2013
The Search for Spring Weekend Artist(s) Begins Local Community Celebrates
Hispanic Heritage Month By KRIS VENEZIA STAFF WRITER
ELIZABETH ZANGHI/THE RAM
Last year’s Spring Weekend concert featured Grouplove and Andy Grammer, a lineup that was generally well-received.
By ANDREW MORSE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Spring Weekend concert survey was sent out last week and, as always, it has created a buzz around campus. The survey is composed mostly of lesser-known alternative rock artists, but features a few prominent acts such as Cage the El-
ephant and The Goo Goo Dolls. Debate will continue from now until the Campus Activities Board and faculty make the official announcement of which artists are booked. However, students must take into account that the artists’ availability, budgetary concerns and the appropriateness of the music, as these all factor into the final
College Dems and Reps Face Off in Heated Debate By KATIE MEYER ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
On Thursday of last week, Fordham’s College Democrats and Republicans faced off in Flom Auditorium for their first debate of the semester. The issues under contention were Syrian intervention, current economic policies, possible voter ID laws and the Affordable Care Act. Rev. Bentley Anderson, S.J., associate professor of African and African American studies at Fordham, moderated the debate. The debate followed the same format that has been used at Fordham in the past. For each topic, both speakers were allowed two minutes for opening remarks. They then engaged in six minutes of back-andforth debate, followed by a threein this issue
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minute period in which the audience was allowed to ask questions. The debate concludes with one minute of closing statements from each representative. Each debate continues for roughly 10 to 15 minutes. Before the debate started, Anderson made a point of noting that the debate was to be kept friendly at all times. “We will not imitate television. The debaters, the presenters, the question and answer folks, everyone will be civil,” Anderson said. “If you’re not,” he continued, smiling, “I will cut you off at the knees.” The participants in the debate generally followed Anderson’s directions, though there were a few heated moments between debaters. The first topic discussed was whether or not the U.S. should intervene in Syria. The Republicans, represented by Luke Zaro, FCRH ‘16, president of the College Republicans, argued against intervention, while the Democrats, represented by Anthony Carl, FCRH ’16, argued for it. The Democrats spoke first. Carl argued that the situation in Syria has escalated to the point that military intervention is quickly becoming the only option. The only reason to launch a military strike, said Carl, is if the Syrian government were using chemical weapons. Since that is the case, Carl argued that a strike is the best course of action. “The Assad regime has and will continue to use all means possible SEE DEBATE, PAGE 5
decision, according to CAB members. “The basic process is having the concert meeting, then the survey, analyzing the results, submitting the artist to administration for content approval, then going to our booking agent for pricing and availability,” said Patrick McCarren, GSB ’14, CAB’s concert SEE CAB, PAGE 2
Fordham University students at Rose Hill’s campus do not need to add another class onto their schedule to learn the history of Latin influence in the area just outside the school’s gates. The Bronx County Historical Society has a collection of artifacts, including photographs and news clippings, which depict numerous stories about the Hispanic community in the Bronx. The collection contains a poster from Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican-born Bronx borough president who served from 1966-1970. After leaving this post, Badillo continued to represent the Bronx in Congress as a United States Representative from 1971-1977. Another part of the collection contains some history of Fordham University, which used to be known as St. John’s University until a name change in 1907. There is a list of baseball players who participated in a club ball team at
St. John’s. Many of those players came from Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican descent. National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. President Lyndon Johnson planted the seeds for Hispanic Heritage Month when he put Hispanic Heritage Week into effect in 1968. The week turned into a month when President Ronald Reagan made National Hispanic Heritage Month a law in August of 1988. Angel Hernandez, educator for the Bronx County Historical Society, has been working on the collection of artifacts for two years. He said in the early to mid20th century, Puerto Ricans were moved to the Bronx for a better life, and today, other Hispanic immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Mexico continue to move to the area. “The Bronx was used as an incubator for immigrants because they come here penniless and then all of a sudden [immigrants] are owning their own businesses, SEE MUSEUM, PAGE 2
Professor’s Novel Depicts the Realities of Street Life By EDDIE MIKUS STAFF WRITER
While Fordham professors are no strangers to the task of writing and publishing books, one faculty member recently branched into a form far more different than the scholarly works usually associated with professors. Mark Naison, professor of history and African American studies, recently co-authored a novel titled Pure Bronx, which will hit stores in e-book form on Oct. 15 and will receive a print release in November. “It’s a book about two young people who are living in the Bronx, supporting their families through activities that many people regard as disreputable,” Naison said. “The young man is a drug dealer and part-time car thief. The young woman works at a strip club. They both support their mothers, their siblings and feel that, given their education levels and where they are, this is the only way they can do it by doing things which most of society looks down on. And then it’s like a crime novel. They decide to kidnap her client at the strip club and hold him for ransom, and then the whole story kind of takes off from there.” When asked how he came up with the novel, Naison explained that it was part of a genre which details the hardships of street life. “The idea is that there was this whole new form of popular fiction which started in the late 1990s,” Naison said. “Most of the books were written by people in prison
QINRUI HUA/THE RAM
Fordham professor Mark Naison’s novel, Pure Bronx, will be released Oct. 15.
about their lives in the drug business, in the underground drug business and in jail. They’re books that are not widely known by the general public, but sold enough so that you could find large numbers of them in the bookstores.” As such, Naison came up with idea of assigning the hip-hop and street literature class he was teaching to write one of these novels. “We decided to do a course that looked at this form of popular fiction, alongside of hip-hop because they came from basically the same neighborhoods,” Naison said. “So I gave a challenge to the class: Why don’t we write a book of our own in this genre? And I was taken
up on the challenge by a young woman in the class named Melissa Castillo-Garsow, who was a creative writing student at Fordham and an aspiring novelist and poet. So I made up this male character, Khalil, and she made up this female character, Rasheeda. And we just started writing back and forth. And then after we got about a hundred pages, we showed it to some people and they said, ‘You know, you could get this published.’” Naison also described the process of collaboration between him and Castillo-Garsow, who is now an American studies Ph.D. student at Yale University. SEE NAISON, PAGE 3