On Thursday, March 30, the Fordham Rose Hill United Student Government (USG) met to discuss tuition increase and upcoming proposals.  

Executive President Santiago Vidal, FCRH ’24, began the meeting by giving an executive report. He explained that there has been a lot of feedback from the students about the student activity fees referendum.

Vidal also said  that USG will likely have money left over in their budget so they need to decide what to put that towards. He stated that the USG budget is different from the club budgets in the sense that, if they have money left over at the end of the year, they are allowed to have it rollover. The senate decided that some of the rollover money should go to purchasing new supplies for tabling events or other future events. 

Vice President of Fordham College Rose Hill Emma Balint, FCRH ’25, and Senator Molly Ewing, FCRH’‘25, presented the Dean’s Council proposal to cancel classes annually on election days. They explained that Fordham should be providing students with more opportunities to vote and should encourage them to advocate for their beliefs. They came up with two alternative options:  to cancel all undergraduate classes on election day,or  to have excused absence forms provided for students on election day. They stated that if Fordham was to approve of one of these options, the university would be actively setting the example for students to be involved in their community. Many universities, including Columbia University and Loyola University New Orleans, have already made the decision to cancel classes on election day and Fordham should also take action with this initiative. 

Midway through the meeting, Vidal interrupted to say that President Tania Tetlow just sent out an email to the Fordham community about the 6% tuition increase for the next academic year. He said that they would need to discuss how to address the Fordham community about the increase. He also said that he is not sure how this will affect some of USG’s current projects such as the activity fees referendum. 

After this interruption, the meeting went on accordingly. Vidal  stated that many clubs will be presenting during the last couple weeks of the school year and that the last USG meeting of the year will be held virtually on May 3 if there is unfinished business and is needed. 

Balint explained that the FCRH Dean’s Council students rights document was halted because of an issue with the legal aspect of the document. Balint stated that to make changes about student rights on campus, they would have to involve a legal team and they are trying to avoid that so they will be sending out a survey about student rights to the Fordham community instead. 

Senator Reese Dains, FCRH ’26, brought up a public concern regarding housing slots being full. Vidal explained that normally upperclassmen move to off campus housing but both the sophomore and freshman classes are bigger than they used to be, leaving less housing options available to students.