<p>The President, Father McShane, was uplifting, entertaining, and inspiring in his sales pitch. Refreshments were plentiful and tasty. Great access to faculty, operational staff, clubs, and students (despite six inches of rain that felt like forty days' worth). A few details in an otherwise great day deserve some adjustment: 1) Make it clear in the invitation that the opening speech begins at noon (so, don't register at noon and expect to get over to the gym and get seated in time to hear the whole bit). 2) If fire laws allow, put more chairs on gym floor to accommodate the crowd for the opening speech. 3) Block off the bleachers in the southern part of section 8 in the gym--couldn't hear anything when sitting under the loud HVAC unit there. 3) A volunteer student guide at the hall for faculty academic subject presentations said that each course presentation would take 15 minutes, so students could visit four in the allotted hour. Make sure faculty stick to that schedule--my visiting senior only got two. 4) Allow more time for interaction at the faculty/student club fair and for late-day campus tours. PS Already put down deposit; what we heard and experienced only increased our original enthusiam for FU (and didn't make us have any second thoughts).</p>
<p>My daughter attended and had similar comments about Father McShane. She was only able to attend only one subject presentation, because she was frantically trying to contact the airline and put together a Plan B in case her flight was canceled. (Kudos to Alison in the admissions office for help!) My D came home and said, "Mail the envelope, I'm going to Fordham!" She was a little bit apprehensive after looking at some of the Fordham facebook posts--she was starting to get the feeling that no one was going to Fordham to do anything but get drunk. As a non-drinker, she was concerned that she would be completely marginalized (her words: "I don't want to be the nerd at Animal House), but she felt better after meeting some other students who didn't talk about partying the entire time.</p>
<p>...I was very concerned myself, especially given the much higher number of alcohol policy violations at FU versus the average U.S. campus. Like you, I also heard the explanation from the campus security chief that those stats are high because FU holds its students to a higher level of accountability than other schools. I haven't seen the prospective freshmen's Facebook posts about their partying intentions (although I will check them out, now that you mention them). In another string, I asked for opinions on dorms, and it seems clear (as you would expect) that the choice of residence hall will partly shape our freshmen's ability to focus. I hope that the freshmen bear in mind that they will only get out of FU what they put into it.</p>
<p>It's a good think you're going to look at the Fordham Facebook groups today and not last week---some posts were extremely sexually explicit. Someone must have complained to the moderator, because those posts have been deleted.</p>
<p>Those message posts were from students at my school, St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>They were all a joke, and all of the students who posted them were suspended for a week. None of them are actually going to Fordham. The same group of kids did the same thing to the Facebook groups of accepted 2011 students for UPenn, Syracuse, and some other schools; Fordham was just the most recent, and the only school to report them to our dean of students. </p>
<p>I know one of the posters fairly well, and I can assure you that the comments, while grotesque and in bad taste, were purely jokes. They all posted apologies on the board before they left, and they meant Fordham no real offense.</p>