Sanctioned Student Shares Personal Account of Demonstration for Faculty Rights

Story from Fordham's The Paper

by Sarah Lopez

Last Thursday, protesters, including myself, were marching into Cunniffe in order to demand an answer from Father McShane about granting the union a free and fair election—an answer that the school promised but did not live up to. This was not the first action we organized to ask that the administration clarify their stance and respond to our inquiries, but the administration deflected or ignored our requests after each of our past actions. At an earlier demonstration on April 18th, students and faculty demonstrating outside of President McShane’s office were told that administration would give them an answer by the end of the day as to whether the university would allow a free union election for contingent faculty. Those students and faculty waited for an answer for four hours. At the end of the business day, students and faculty were told that the university’s president had more pressing matters to attend to than faculty labor rights.

That is why we decided to enter the building last Thursday—so we could see Father McShane in person and demand answers without being turned away. We were not looking to get involved in any physical altercations, nor to cause a huge commotion inside the building. We just wanted to have a presence there so the president would know that the student body and faculty were together on this issue, and that we were not going to stand by while it was ignored. However, the security blocked the doors as if we were criminals looking to cause harm rather than adults and concerned parties trying to be heard. We were students and faculty going to see our school president, which should be within our rights as he is meant to be the representative of our school. We were able to get inside because the door was unlocked.

However, once we were inside, Public Safety officers charged at us to scare and intimidate us....[Read more...]

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