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SERVING THE FORDHAM UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR OVER 90 YEARS
1918-2012
MARCH 7, 2012
VOLUME 94, ISSUE 6
National Security Adviser to Speak at Commencement Amidst Hate, By CONNIE KIM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
John O. Brennan, FCRH ’77, Obama administration’s deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, will deliver a speech at Fordham’s 167th annual commencement on May 19, according to office of the president. Brennan received his appointment in 2009, following a career that included 25 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, with a four-year stint as Middle East station chief in Saudi Arabia. In his role, he deals with homeland security issues and works with the federal government’s intelligence agencies and military brass on counterterrorism efforts around the globe. Brennan was raised in North Bergen, NJ and enrolled at Fordham as a commuter student. He soon became enthralled with the Middle East as a result of the lectures of John Entelis, Ph.D., professor of political science and director
of Fordham’s Middle East Studies program. “One of my most fond memories at Fordham was last Spring Weekend when, late that Sunday night, we heard the news that U.S. Special Forces had killed Osama bin Laden,” Bryan Matis, GSB ’12, said. “Hundreds of students gathered at the victory bell and later the 9/11 memorial in celebration, prayer and reflection. Our campus community really came together in solidarity that night.” “To know that a member of the FCRH class of 1977 had played a key role in that important works with the president to keep this country safe, and I’m excited to welcome him back to campus this May as our commencement speaker.” Timothy M. Dolan, cardinal and archbishop of New York, will be the principal celebrant and homilist at the Class of 2012’s Baccalaureate Mass, which will be held on May 18 in the Rose Hill Gymnasium, according to the Office of the President.
Compassion Prevails By CONNOR RYAN NEWS EDITOR
“Now, it has been faultily working since then,” McGinnis said. “It does not work as well, it will get stuck sometimes, but not to the point where it must be pried open.” Students have expressed additional concerns about the elevators all across campus. “I do not like the elevators on campus,” Briana Rotello, FCRH ’14, said. “They do not seem like they are up to date, especially the one in Faber Hall that makes me feel like I am on the Tower of Terror in Disney World. It scares me every time because it is rickety and it’s like the chords are going to snap at any moment.” Rotello’s colorful opinion of the elevators on campus is legitimate, and these problems on campus have been addressed. One student’s approach is to simply avoid the elevators. “I think they are unnecessary and promote obesity. I always use the stairs,” Caitlin Carr, FCRH ’14, said. While avoidance is one alternative, buildings like Walsh have 13 floors, and the stairs are not always the most viable option. This being the second entrapment within two months, Facilities is aware of the instability of some elevators on campus and have been working to improve the situation with much time, money and effort. The beliefs that the elevators are not kept up to date with inspections are false. While an elevator may read “last inspected
Two more “bias-related” incidents have occurred on Fordham’s grounds since a racial epithet was written on a resident assistant’s door in Walsh Hall on Feb. 7, accelerating an on-campus response and an off-campus reaction. The latest hate crime was reported at Rose Hill on March 2, when Custodial Services discovered a racial slur in a bathroom in Goupil Hall. And on Feb. 27, a homophobic slur was found written in a stairwell in McMahon Hall, a dormitory on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, according to security. Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, decried the attacks on Friday night shortly after the vandalism was discovered in McMahon Hall. “Disgust, in fact, is what I feel in contemplating these attacks,” McShane wrote in an email to the student body. “This behavior is — or it should be — far, far outside the range of acceptable expression at a Jesuit institution.” Since McShane’s email was set, major media outlets including NBC, CBS, National Public Radio and The New York Daily News have reported on the hate crimes recently found on campus. The Daily News identified Melissa Wright, FCRH ’12, as the black resident assistant whose door was vandalized in Walsh Hall on Feb. 7. In a photograph accompanying the story, The Daily News shows Wright holding a picture of the epithet that was scribbled on her door in black marker. The picture was originally published on the newspaper’s website exposing the complete slur, but was later cropped to hide most of the writing. Wright told The Daily News, “It was disbelief ” when she saw the “n-word” on her door. “The longer I saw it, it was really hurtful.” Wright said the slur was sanded over quickly, but her door was not repainted until nine days later. Wright told The Daily News that this was an example of the university’s poor response to bias incidents. “The university thinks this is an isolated incident, when in reality, students of color feel isolated every day,” Wright said. Fordham Security is currently investigating the incidents by “taking a multipronged approach,
SEE ELEVATOR ON PAGE 3
SEE HATE ON PAGE 3
COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA
John O. Brennan was announced as the keynote speaker for the commencement excercises for the Class of 2012.
Cardinal Dolan was named to the post in February 2009, succeeding Cardinal Edward M. Egan. He was designated a cardinal in Feb. 2012. Pope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Dolan to the College of Cardinals in Jan. 2012.
“It’s an honor that the new cardinal has chosen to celebrate mass here with the graduating class,” Rachel Malinowski, FCRH’12, said. “It will be an exciting time for us and his presence will make it even more special.”
FDNY Freed Students from Elevator Entrapment By KAREN HILL ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
The architects of Walsh Hall might have never received notice that having a 13th floor is bad luck, but the students who were trapped in an elevator on that topmost floor certainly did. On Saturday, Feb. 26 at 12:45 a.m., two students, Colleen McGinnis and Alice Romanelli, both GSB ’13, were entrapped in an elevator for an hour and a half. The two students were on the 13th floor and entered the elevator to go down, but it stalled. The girls called their friends for help, but there was nothing that could immediately be done. The next step was to call security, who responded within 10 minutes. “Security tried to get us down through manual buttons, but they couldn’t,” McGinnis said. “The fire department showed up after 30 minutes. They tried to use ladders and tried to use axes and whatever else to try and open the elevator, but could only get it open a little bit.” After an hour of strenuous efforts, the Fire Department of New York was finally able to free the students by using what McGinnis described as a version of the “jaws of life,” where vacuumed bags and compressors were used to pry open the elevator doors just enough for the students to exit. “After they got it open we had to crawl out through a little bit of space, and that was it.”
PHOTO BY CHESTER BAKER/THE RAM
FDNY opened the elevator doors in Walsh to let the trapped students free.
Security collected the students’ names and email addresses yet, to the dismay of the students, security never sent out an apology for the early morning inconvenience. “The only thing I was annoyed about was they never called us or emailed,” McGinnis said. “They never apologized or asked us the next day if we were okay.” Fortunately, the students were
physically unharmed, but the elevator door in Walsh suffered quite a bit of damage. The elevator was inoperable for the following 24 hours, and the doors still have a large dent from where the fire departments used their tools to pry it open. “The fire department has a bit more of an energetic approach to rescue,” John Puglisi, vice president of Facilities, said.