At this week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association, Senator Greg Laverriere (COL’12) announced that a deal had been reached with the Student Activities Commission, making the advisory board eligible for money from the student activities fee. The Senate also passed a resolution encouraging socially responsible investing, discussed solutions to a funding shortage that threatens to end the weekend GUTS bus service, and (most importantly) announced an event we’ve all been anxiously waiting for—a GUSA party. Let’s get to the wrap:

Deal reached with SAC: In the beginning of the GUSA meeting, Laverriere read to the full senate the text of the agreement that had been reached with SAC. Laverriere said the agreement had been passed by the Finance and Appropriations Committee and that it could be voted upon by the full senate next week. In the agreement SAC agrees to make public any votes held for lump sum funding, which will be instituted next year, but reserves the right of closed votes for all policy and sanction votes.

GUTS bus funding shortage: In his executive briefing, GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) asked senators for ideas on how to deal with the lack of funds for the weekend GUTS bus service. The service has traditionally been funded jointly by the SAC and GUSA. Angert questioned whether GUSA was the right source of funding for the service.

“Lots of people use [the weekend GUTS buses.] Why is the student government of this school funding this?” Angert said.

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The majority of this week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate was spent considering the arguments of Georgetown, Divest!, which is pushing the University to divest from companies that profit from human rights violations in Israel and Palestine. The Senate also spent some time debating the Academic Working Group’s diversity requirement recommendation, but did not vote on any legislation at the meeting. Here’s the wrap:

Georgetown, Divest!: Jackson Perry (COL ’12) presented the case Georgetown, Divest! is making to the Senate in the early part of the meeting. (Disclosure: Perry is an assistant photo editor for the Voice). Perry told the senators that his group has come to the conclusion that the University has exercised little oversight over the companies it has invested in, and has no process to ensure that the University was investing only in socially responsible companies which lived up to the University’s Jesuit principles.

Perry cited an article written by the Voice‘s Cole Stangler saying, “While divestment is non-negotiable to administrators, it appears that Georgetown’s Jesuit and Catholic identity is.” Perry said his group was focusing on pushing the University to institute a process that allows it to invest in a socially responsible way, and to specifically promise not to invest in eight companies selected by Georgetown, Divest! as particularly egregious in perpetuating human rights violations in Israel and Palestine. Several senators seemed to take issue with the group’s focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on eight companies in particular.

“There seems to be a political agenda here as well,” GUSA Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said.

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At this week’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate meeting, the Senate voted down the only legislation that came up for a vote—institutionalizing GU-SPAN—but not before they had debated the measure extensively. After rejecting the legislation, the Senate turned to voicing their opinions on recent area crimes and the suggestions of the diversity initiative, which they seem generally opposed to.

Institutionalizing GU-SPAN: It’s unclear what motivated Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) to introduce the “Act to Amend the By-Laws to Institutionalize the Georgetown University Student Public Affairs Network.” The network, better know as GU-SPAN, live-streams meetings of the GUSA Senate, and has approximately 5 regular viewers. Talbot’s bill would have created an administrator for GU-SPAN in charge of live-streaming the GUSA meetings.

Talbot suggested that the position, which would take four to five hours a week, include a stipend of around $300. Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) exhibiting the shrewdness that comes with serving on the Finance and Appropriations Committee, suggested accepting applications for the position without offering a stipend, and only offering the stipend if no one offered to volunteer. Ultimately, however, the Senate voted the bill down even after the Senate had amended the bill to simply make it the responsibility of the vice-speaker to make sure meetings were live-streamed.

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The Academic Working Group, one of the three working groups formed by President John DeGioia for the University’s Diversity Initiative, held an open forum Thursday evening to present the draft of its review of diversity in Georgetown academics, and its recommendations. Attending the forum were members of the working group, faculty, and students, some of whom had worked to help create the draft.

The draft report outlined areas where it felt the University failed to expose students academically to diversity and pluralism. It met some criticism from present faculty.

“Where Georgetown appears to fall short is in providing its students with a sense of the diversity… of contemporary U.S. society,” the report read.

Members of the working group said they had carefully examined Georgetown’s curriculum, which Eusebio Mujal-León, a co-chair of the working group, called “the central core of the university.”

One of the recommendations the working group presented in their report was the implementation of a diversity requirement, under which students would be required to take two “diversity requirement” classes, one examining issues pertaining to diversity on the national level, and other examining diversity issues on the international level. This requirement would be an “overlay requirement,” meaning it would not add to the number of courses students are required to take. Rather, certain classes that are already considered requirements by the university could also count towards filling the diversity requirement.

The proposal of a diversity requirement met some resistance among faculty.

“There are many more ways to encourage diversity on campus, to encourage sensitivity to issues… many ways of encouraging [that], but seeing the curriculum as the vehicle to do this, we open ourselves up to all kinds of problems,” Professor Charles King, from the government department, said.

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Tuesday night’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting may be remembered by historians as the start of a new chapter in the Georgetown neighborhood crusade against late night takeout eateries. Plus, MPD reaffirms its commitment to increased patrols in the neighborhood in response to recent burglaries. Here’s the wrap:

MPD is on the job

Early in the meeting, Lieutenant John Hedgecock of the Metropolitan Police Department presented his report on crime in the Georgetown neighborhood.

“Throughout the Second District we are seeing a large increase in burglaries,” Hedgecock said.

He noted that there had been 12 burglaries in the past month, and that in one instance, four masked men had entered a house and robbed it. He also noted that in a recent robbery a neighborhood resident was beaten until he required hospitalization. Hedgecock said that MPD had partnered with the University and had increased uniform and nonuniform presence in the area.

Oh crêpe, not again

About an hour and 45 minutes into the meeting, a small M Street business, Crêpe Amour, presented a request for changes to its Alcoholic Beverage Control License. The request, presented by Sri Suku on behalf of his father, who owns the business, is necessary if the business is to go ahead with its plan to remain open past midnight.

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The agenda of this Sunday’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association was dominated by the vote on the budget passed out of the Financial Appropriations Committee for fiscal year 2011 on Thursday.

But Senators still found time to remark on the most recent controversy at Georgetown, the Plan A protest held over GAAP weekend, and dream about convening the GUSA Senate in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.

GUSA Budget FY ’11: The GUSA Senate voted to approve the fiscal year 2011 GUSA budget, which allocated $0 to both the Student Activities Commission and the Performing Arts Advisory Council. The budget will increase the level of funding received by Club Sports, Georgetown Program Board, the Center for Social Justice, and the GUSA Executive, while funding for the Media Board will remain unchanged.

Members of the Financial and Appropriations Committee who presented the budget said they had brought the budget without funding for either SAC or PAAC before the Senate because they didn’t want to delay funding for the other advisory boards. They are working to reach agreements with SAC and PAAC on compromises so the two groups could meet GUSA’s six suggested reforms and receive money from the student activities fee.

The senators said they were confident that both PAAC and SAC would receive student activities fee from supplemental funding after they had complied with the reforms. Senators have said that the agreement with PAAC is only awaiting a review by its members. Meanwhile, Senators will meet with SAC soon to try to negotiate an agreement.

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This week, seduced by the beautiful weather, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate convened its weekly meeting on Healy lawn. Senators reclined on the grass as their fellow students blissfully threw footballs and beanbags and held a relaxed, banal Senate session, with no new legislation coming up for a vote.

Club Funding and SAC: The meeting featured a briefing from the Finance and Appropriations Committee, whose chair, Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said that his committee had created a draft budget for comment and appeal, but that the committee had received no comments or appeals.

Senator Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) provided a briefing on his meeting with representatives from the Student Activities Commission and University administrators. He said they had managed to compromise on several of the issue but still disagreed over open voting, which GUSA believes SAC should institute.

SAC has resisted open votes, noting that the nature of the votes can be very controversial. Laverriere said that several compromises had been proposed, including a trial run of open voting that could be ended if the process proved disastrous, but none of them had been agreed upon. Laverriere suggested that ultimately the university might select an impartial administrator to settle the dispute.

Executive Briefing: Both GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Vice-President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) provided briefings at the meeting. Angert said that he and Kluger had been making changes to the executive board.

“We’re definitely expanding the executive board in terms of size,” said Angert.

Angert also said that over spring break the GUSA Summer Fellows had received a $6,000 private donation, and that the application for the Summer Fellows Program would be online beginning today.

The first Georgetown University Student Association Budget Summit was a real doozey, lasting from 10 a.m. all the way to 8 p.m. on Sunday. During the meeting, the advisory boards presented their budget proposals to the Finance and Appropriations Committee of the GUSA Senate, which has taken on the role of the Funding Board.

There wasn’t a whole lot of deliberation among senators since the meeting was mainly focused on presentations and actual allocation will take place later this week, but there were some interesting clues—particularly regarding SAC—about how budgets may look next year.

First came the proposals from the Georgetown Program Board and the Center for Social Justice for $45,000 and $64,000 respectively. Both proposals were well-received by the committee, but CSJ’s request for 46 percent more funding than last year faced opposition. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ’11) made clear that since there was $55,000 more in requests this year than in available funds, some groups would not receive all the money they requested.

“We want to give [CSJ] more money, but I would doubt they’ll receive their full request,” Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), who sits on the FinApp committee said.

The next budget proposal, $25,000 for the Performing Arts Advisory Council, did not go as smoothly. The FinApp Committee felt PAAC’s budget proposal lacked specifics and didn’t make clear how the requested money would be spent.

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This week’s Georgetown University Student Association meeting featured an irksome inauguration (just like Obama’s!) and tear-jerking eulogies to Philly P’s. Here’s the wrap:

Inaugurations: GUSA swore in the newly-reelected President and Vice President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ’11)—perhaps extraconstitutionally?

“There is a curious little quirk of the by-laws which requires the outgoing president and vice-president to administer the oath to the incoming president and vice-president,” Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ’12) told the Senate. Given that the outgoing president and vice-president and the incoming president and vice-president were one and the same, Ungar decided to administer the oath himself.

After their swearing in, both candidates delivered speeches to the GUSA senate. Kluger called on the Senate to remember Gandhi’s words to become the change they want to see in the world, while Angert urged Senators to maintain their dedication to the GUSA senate and never be afraid to throw themselves into large and challenging projects. Angert then swore in newly-elected Senator Andrew Foley (MSB ’10), who could not raise his right hand because his arm is broken—another suspect inauguration?

GUSA Fund Bolsters Funding Board: The GUSA senate approved a bill to transfer $15,000 from the GUSA fund to the Student Activities Fee Reserve account, which is used to provide funds to advisory boards. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said he had talked with GUSA Fund Chair Kate Petersen (COL ’11) and that she said the GUSA Fund could limit its spending to $15,000 for the semester.

“We simply want to go into the budget process with as much money as we can,” Troiano said.

New Sign: GUSA unanimously approved a bill to appropriate $200 towards the creation of a vinyl sign bearing GUSA’s logo. The bill was introduced by Senator Nolan Johnson (COL’11), who said the sign was “a great way to make use of GUSA’s new logo”.

This week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate included a heated contest to fill a vacant seat on the Finance and Appropriations committee, and a denouncement of Eric Cusimano’s extracurricular involvements. Here’s the wrap:

Finance and Appropriations Committee Post Filled

In perhaps the most contentious part of the meeting, Senator Ben Bold (COL’13) was selected by the full Senate to fill a vacancy on the Finance and Appropriations Committee. During his time for remarks, Bold said he had closely followed the work of the Finance and Appropriations Committee and had fully supported the funding board reform. Bold ran against Senator Matthew Ginsberg (COL’11), who said that he was suited for the job because he had an interest in financial allocations and had served as a director for the Corp.

During the debate over the confirmation, some Senators appeared to argue that Senator Bold was competent and self-motivated, and therefore should be opposed. Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) warned against a “leadership accretion” on the FinApp Committee, while FinApp Chair Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said, “Our committee has enough ambition and self-motivated people … We have to distribute this energy to all the committees.” Ultimately, however, Bold’s attributes were deemed more of a good thing than a bad thing, and he was approved by a 10-8 vote.

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