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SERVING THE FORDHAM UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR OVER 90 YEARS
1918-2011
NOVEMBER30, 2011
VOLUME 93, ISSUE 22
Paralyzed Student Sues Fordham By CONNIE KIM NEWS EDITOR
Kei Usami, GSB ’13, became paralyzed from his neck down after he fell from his lofted bed in Finlay Hall back in February while intoxicated. Usami’s story became known when New York Post published an article regarding the incident on Nov. 14. “Back on Feb. 20, I fell off from my lofted bed in Finlay Hall,” Usami said. “I was taken to St. Barnabas, but they said I had to have an immediate surgery or else I would not be able to walk forever.” Usami claims that he does not remember anything — the fall, the transportation or the surgery — up until this point. “When I woke up, I tried to move in my bed, but I couldn’t,” Usami said. “I was able to raise my arms, but my hands were closed and my fingers were all curled in. My legs were so heavy; it felt like they were steel. I was in the ICU for about two weeks, then taken to the stepdown unit for about three to four SEE PARALYZED ON PAGE 3
By CONNIE KIM NEWS EDITOR
nee must possess in order to have a chance at winning the presidency. “One is for candidates to try and show that they are solidly conservative candidates in line with the values of the Republican base,” Fleisher said. “Second is the thread that candidates try to show that they are electable and most likely to beat President Obama in the general election. And so, we see these two things, both electability and being on the right side of issues that are important to the Republican base, affecting the strategies of all of the candidates involved.” Fleisher suggested that the inability of one candidate to meet these
Dr. Kirsten Swinth, an associate professor in the history department, is currently working on a book which will be titled Competitive Society: Forging the Working Family in America. In her research, Swinth is at work on a cultural history of the working mother in the United States since 1950. She focuses on the transformation in the American workforce since World War II and explores the ways that the entrance of women, particularly mothers, not only transformed the work place, but also remade American families. The fellowship and grants the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship awarded her in 2007, a travel grant from the Sophia Smith Collection in 2008 and a Research Support Grant from the Arthur & Elizabeth Schlesinger Library in 2008, enabled her to embark on her research. “It started out as a book about the working mother and the ways that working mothers were what I consider, like, ‘lightning rods,’ which are the figures that became focal points for all kinds of controversies in American culture since the period after World War II,” Swinth said. “I explored all of these controversies around the fact that more and more mothers were going to work and began to discover that those controversies had a lot to do with how roles in families were changing, what kind of policies would be in place to support families in the workplace and how people’s expectations about their lives were shifting.” Swinth’s research interests center on gender history, cultural history and U.S. visual culture. Her longtime interest in women and work made her begin her research on this topic. “I wrote a book before about American women artists and looked at how women in the late 1800s and in early 1900s managed to make careers as artists, such as how they went to art school and studied in Paris and sold their works in galleries and exhibitions and made a living as artists,” Swinth said. “So I have always had an interest in that. And I began to think about this project also at a time when I had young children and I was really in the midst of taking care of small children myself.” During the time she started research, there were a lot of books
SEE ELECTION ON PAGE 2
SEE RESEARCH ON PAGE 3
COURTESY OF KEI USAMI
Kei Usami, GSB ‘13, became paralyzed after falling off from his bed in Finlay Hall in February while intoxicated.
Russ Talks Pro-Life Ethics in the Media By KAREN HILL STAFF WRITER
COURTESY OF RAM ARCHIVES
RHA has replaced local pizza eatery Pugsley’s pizza for future Fordham events.
RHA Replaces Pugsley’s in Food Programming By EMILY ARATA ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
After a series of financial mishaps with Pugsley’s temporarily left the Residence Halls Association (RHA) stranded, RHA has chosen to work with other food service locations in the neighborhood. “There was an issue with Accounts Payable where the charges weren’t lining up with the records they had,” Elisa DiMauro, FCRH ’12 and president of the RHA executive board, said. “So they sent out a memo to all the Fordham departments and asked them to stop invoicing from Pugsley’s.” When RHA orders food for
Professor Researches History of Working Mother
its programs, it chooses to use invoices on orders made several days ahead of time to avoid having each individual front the money him or herself and go through the reimbursement process. According to DiMauro, using invoices adds a great deal of convenience and ease to the process of organizing programs. ““If an invoice isn’t set up, our residents have to use their own money to get reimbursed,” DiMauro said. “So invoices are easier.” Even though the invoice process has caused discrepancies between the amount of food ordered and the final charge, DiMauro SEE PUGSLEY’S ON PAGE 2
On Monday, Nov. 21, Fordham’s Respect for Life group hosted a lecture by broadcast journalist, Dick Russ. The Emmy Award-winning managing editor and news anchor of Cleveland’s NBC affiliate WKYC-TV, Channel 3, has worked in journalism for over 35 years. In this time, he has witnessed the growing trend of pro-choice dominance in the media. Russ was raised Catholic and his father was one of 17 children.
As a result, he is a “pro-lifer” who refuses to conform to the majority view in the media industry. “We had a very good spiritual life in our family and a very good balance of the sanctity of life,” Russ said. “When you try and analyze it objectively, even when you are raised in that milieu, you know that it is right and it is always true,” he said. Russ’s lecture delved into the controversy of pro-life versus pro-choice. He introduced the subject by presenting the staSEE PRO-LIFE ON PAGE 3
Professor Analyzes Presidential Race By EDDIE MIKUS STAFF WRITER
Between now and November 2012, the American media will be dominated by names including Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul. These are several of the Republicans seeking to take down the incumbent President Barack Obama in next year’s election. Fordham political science professor Richard Fleisher tried to explain it all in an interview with The Ram. Fleisher believes that there are two qualities any Republican nomi-