Leaving Your Mark on Fordham's Student Life

Fordham offers a variety of clubs, at Rose Hill as well as at Lincoln Center. However, if you still can't find a club that appeals to you it's up to you to change this and just found one yourself. I recently experienced the process of founding a new club at Fordham. While I didn't start the initiative, I became an eboard member in the early stages of the new German Club, DSK. The general process to start a new club takes about 1 semester. First, you need to develop a club constitution including the purpose and regulations of the club. Then you have to get it approved by the United Students Government (USG) and the Dean of Students through a process consisting of multiple steps. Our German Club has been approved in October. However, after your club got approved the work is just starting.

The life of an eboard member includes advertising, gaining members, developing ideas for new events, applying for budget for the events, and of course organizing and implementing the events. You can organize all kind of different events. The German Club as a cultural club, for example, is organizing a bi-weekly meeting for people who speak German or want to learn it to get a coffee and chat in German. You can also organize other cultural events, as the German Club created a timeline of the story of Eastern Germany on November 9, the day of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Film screenings are another possibility for clubs to gain more recognition on campus, which we are doing for next semester. And in addition to on-campus events, you can also organize various excursions. The German Club, for example, went to MoMA in May 2011 for an annual German film festival and we even had the opportunity to meet the director of one of the movies. This semester we have been organizing trips to the Goethe Institute, a German institute in Soho that is currently screening German movies that were nominated for the Oscar.

As you can see, there are lots of opportunities for club activities. I hope I could give you a little insight in what involvement on Fordham's campus can look like. Although it entails a lot of work, it is absolutely worth it if you want to get involved and represent your interests. Fordham offers a lot of opportunities, but in the end you have to seize them in order to make the best out of your 4 years at Fordham.