 "Photo: Photo by Simon Sulit/The Ram")
As a Jesuit institution, Fordham promotes many teachings of the Church, which are infused into the curriculum and students' daily activities. The Office of Residential Life has dedicated particular buildings like Queen's Court and Tierney, as well as several floors in O'Hare to Integrated Learning Communities, or ILCs. Each program has a specialized mission, promoting community or business and science proficiency. With the opening of The West Wing in O'Hare this fall, Fordham's newest specialized floor, ResLife is only expanding a system that is internally flawed.
In principle, ILCs are a unique living experience that incorporate Jesuit teachings in to a living environment. However, once in practice, all of these programs fall short of their idealistic expectations. All ILCs involve an application process, including essays submitted for acceptance into Queen's Court or interviews for Wellness. Unfortunately, this process involves judging students on their character rather than any quantifiable merits. ResLife turns away students based on arbitrary qualifications, discriminating against students who the housing staff deems not "well-enough." This judgment of character is a direct contradiction of the Jesuit teachings of community and acceptance these ILCs are intended to promote.
Further, the selectivity of these ILCs promotes, elitism and isolation among students. Queens and Tierney both emanate the persona of pompous students enjoying superfluous luxuries to which the common man is not privileged to. Wellness residents reside in fifth-floor tower rooms, with a view of the Manhattan skyline, while Fordham's marginalized are crowded into the depths of Martyrs' Court.
Accompanying these penthouse suites, ILC residents are privy to extensive programming, including discount tickets to Broadway plays and community dinners, while traditional dorms are lucky to have floor meetings. By entitling these residents to these extravagances, ResLife has created a caste system, with Fordham's aristocratic elite populating the ILCs, with the proletariat confined to the dilapidated edifice of Martyrs'. These ILCs create barriers and factions among the student body, rather than develop communal harmony that they claim to promote.
Beyond the flaws in the application process, the abundance of ILCs inevitably leads ResLife to admit people into these communities who are not living up to the specified standards. There are prevalent drinking cultures in Queen's Court and Tierney Hall, both of which are freshman dorms where students pledge sobriety. Requiring over 300 freshmen living in ILCs, split evenly between Queen's and Tierney, there will inevitably be more students forced into these communities than those dedicated to this lifestyle. Inevitably ResLife will be admitting students who are more concerned with the air conditioned rooms than the Manresa Program. Once students such as these are given housing in ILCs and begin to drink, they compromise the entire program, promoting alcohol in a dorm where other freshman applied in an attempt to escape that behavior.
Policies are enforced as if students are governed by a dictatorship. Community is not encouraged in ILCs; rather, students are attached to dorm-wide chain gangs, forced to interact with fellow students.
In Queen's, Knight Court is a mandatory program, with each resident required to sign an attendance sheet or face the wrath of an resident assistants' documentation. Wellness mandates that each room hold one program each semester on a $25 dollar budget. These activities are only frequented by the host's immediate friends, with a potential appearance by a courageous soul hoping to score free food. There is no community building in these activities; instead, these required programs encourage the isolationist behavior that they are meant to eradicate.
Promoting oaths, such as the freshmen pledge in Queen's and Tierney, to abstain from drinking is hypocritical. All incoming freshmen are below the drinking age, and therefore, it is illegal for them to consume any alcohol. By requiring some students to sign a contract stating they will not partake in this already illegal activity while others do not implies that the university is turning a blind eye to the underage drinking that occurs in non-ILC dorms. These dorms should require freshmen to commit to a studious and communal lifestyle. By enforcing a stricter drinking policy in particular dorms, Fordham is subtly giving other dorms a free pass at drinking.
For a university that promotes a holistic learning experience, evidenced by its expansive core curriculum, Fordham permits only a select few into the ILC programs. Instead, these seemingly privileged students are handicapped by requirements and contradictions. To expand a program that is inherently deficient only further deprives Fordham students of adequate housing without the deficiencies of ILCs.
Brian Kraker, FCRH '12, is a communication and media studies major from Pompton Lakes, N.J. He can be reached at kraker@fordham.edu.
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The Wellness lottery allows students to participate without a specified roommate, so many students end up in it for that reason. That is not elitist. Maybe science majors who'd feel most comfortable living near their friends who are also science majors would like to live in SILC. That is not elitist. ILCs may be overrated and they may be overextended, but they are not necessarily elitist.
And considering that this school costs about $50,000 a year regardless of where you're living, I think you're being a little melodramatic characterizing Martyrs as the home of the "proletariat." Get over yourself.
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