VIDEO: S.A.G.E.S. Petitions at Ram Town

By IAN MCKENNA

“I can’t hear you!” a man with his Ram Town t-shirt slung over his shoulder yells over an Ariana Grande song at a Students for Sex & Gender Equality and Safety (S.A.G.E.S.) representative who asked him to sign her petition.

Despite the blasting of pop hits and the hooting and hollering of the crowd throughout the gymnasium on Friday, Oct. 18, S.A.G.E.S. seemed to make the best of the opportunity to reach a mass audience of fellow rams during Ram Town. Their initial count from just a couple of the circulated clipboards was over 400 students.

The petition helped to educate the student population about their demands, as listed on their Tumblr page.

These are the full 8 demands we are asking for, in bold are the 4 demands that we emphasize in our campaign:

  1. Free condoms in accessible community spaces to foster an environment in which students are encouraged to talk about sex in healthy and safe ways
  2. Free and confidential access to birth control and STD testing on campus on a consistent and reliable basis.
  3. GYN services at the Health Center done by GYN professionals
  4. Resources for pregnant women and child care for Fordham community members.
  5. A Free Speech Zone in an open and visible space allowing students to voice concerns and engage in free and open discussion with anyone on campus
  6. Sex positive programming in freshmen orientation that extends into dorm programming or as a sustained dialogue
  7. Eliminate Fordham’s sex-shaming, gendered dorm pass policies, which are paternalistic, infantilizing, and heteronormative. These policies ignore student’s potential for co-ed friendships.
  8. Implement co-ed, non-sex-segregated dorm options for trans and gender non-conforming students so that housing options reflect the breadth of student social and sexual experiences, keeping students safer and happier