These little piggies want to keep their votes

When the Funding Board reconvened yesterday after the board’s contentious meeting two weeks ago, it approved the GUSA Fund once GUSA agreed to amend its request of $30,000 and instead ask for $26,000 from the general Funding Board reserve. GUSA now plans to provide $4,000 from its own operating budget, pending Senate approval.

Advisory board members indicated that GUSA investing some of its own money would be a show of good faith since advisory board members were concerned about investing such a large sum in a new funding structure. Last meeting, all six advisory boards voted down the GUSA Fund. After this meeting’s amendment, the five advisory board members voted yes, with only GPB Chair Matt Brennan (COL ‘10) voting no. Brennan had said he wanted the Funding Board to allocate even less to start up the Fund and then reconsider how much the Fund needed in the spring.

The Funding Board came to its decision after Erika Cohen-Derr, Director of Student Programs, encouraged the group to seek “consensus based opinion” instead of a unanimous decision. GUSA members wanted to move forward in the meeting, but advisory boards reiterated the need for more discussion before the group moved to a vote.

“At every funding board meeting I’ve been to before this, after each proposal, we actually talk about it, talk about changing it, and try to figure out a proposal that’s acceptable to everybody, whereas this year, we’ve voted and waited 10 days,” said Club Sports Chair Nick Calta (COL ‘10).

Read the rest of this entry »

The planned GUSA Fund would make it rain

Leaders from all six advisory boards voted against creating the GUSA Fund at a Funding Board meeting today, but the Finance and Appropriations Committee will still be able to pass the GUSA Fund through the Funding Board without their approval.

At the meeting, advisory board leaders voiced concerns that GUSA would not have the knowledge to run the GUSA Fund. They asked what kind of experience the GUSA Fund members would have, how GUSA would know if events were duplicities of events that already existed, and how the GUSA Fund would handle clubs that went over budget.

GUSA senators also learned at the meeting that the Funding Board has $51,412 in reserve, unlike $69,687 like they had previously believed. The GUSA Fund plans to draw $30,000 from that reserve, meaning the GUSA Fund will now require more than half.

GUSA Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ‘12—LXR) said the GUSA executive will be looking for GUSA fund members who can bring both funding experience and club management experience. In regards to event duplicities, Finance and Appropriations Chair Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A, A-D) replied that because of access to benefits, advisory boards would still need to approve official club-sponsored events before the GUSA Fund could allocate funds.

Advisory board members suggested this would make an already tedious process even more bureaucratic.

“Clubs are looking for funds, and they’re willing to jump through hoops to get it,” GUSA Chief of Staff Tim Swenson replied. “While we’re trying to make it as streamlined as possible …. this is our way of addressing that temporarily.” [Edited at 10:21 p.m.]

Read the rest of this entry »

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CLUB FUNDING: Senator Matthew Hoyt (COL ’12—Alumni Square/Village B) introduced a bill to allocate $300 to the International Relations Club to host a musical group called “White Flag” dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12—LXR) said the Israeli and Palestinian performers work together to use music to promote discussion about peace and social justice. SAC and various other groups are also co-sponsoring the event. The bill passed unanimously.

Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13—Harbin 2-5) pointed out that this would be the kind of event the new GUSA Fund would sponsor in the future.

“It’s an introduction to the idea of GUSA finding part in student funding,” Hoyt agreed. “When a group isn’t able to [attain] enough funding from the different funding boards they can come to GUSA, especially for such student-wide, campus community events.”

“THE FUND” PROGRESS: Speaking of the new GUSA Fund, GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) says he intends to convene the Funding Board November 23 to get the Fund off the ground. Additionally, the executive plans to start an application process for members of the Fund. Talbot said, “It will take a couple of weeks to pull it all together.”

GUSA will also be holding a “Club Summit” to get input from club leaders and announce the findings of the Club Funding Survey. The Summit will be held this Saturday at 1 p.m. in Healy 104 and will be livestreamed.

Read the rest of this entry »

GUSA will not stand for these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane campus

GUSA FUND: The big news from this week’s meeting was that the Senate passed the long-debated GUSA Fund, which will allow them to fund clubs directly. For more information, check out Vox’s post from earlier this morning.

HATE CRIMES: GUSA passed a revised version of Senator Josh Mogil’s (SFS ’11—Off Campus) changes to the Student Code of Conduct regarding hate crimes on a vote of 16 to two, with one abstention.

The new version of the resolution adds Hate-Crimes as a Category C violation, but keeps bias as a “parameter” for other violations that are not “criminal acts of hate,” but are motivated by the aggravating factor of bias.

Mogil said he decided to leave in the section on “bias-related incidents” after speaking with Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson about the resolution.

Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A, A-D) still had doubts about the necessity of the resolution.

“There’s no practical difference between someone who’s adjudicated based on a criminal act that would otherwise fall under Category C violations and those that would now fall under the sub-category,” Troiano said.

Read the rest of this entry »

After years of clashing with SAC and bandying about the possibility of GUSA-sponsored club funding, the GUSA Senate passed a bill yesterday afternoon creating a GUSA Fund which will allow GUSA to provide an alternative mode of funding for clubs.

Longtime SAC-critic Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A A-D) introduced the bill, which would create “the Fund” to “[serve] as a resource for the Georgetown community by co-sponsoring events and activities that are initiated by or benefit students.”

The Fund will consist of five members nominated by GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and confirmed by the Senate. The Fund will meet once a week to consider applications for funds received through an online application.

The Fund will be able up to $500 per organization, event or initiative, but the Senate must approve any requested allocation over $500. The Fund will only be able to give money to groups that have already been granted access to benefits through SAC, and organizations receiving money from the Fund will have to “make it known” that GUSA has co-sponsored the event.

Where will money for the Fund be coming from?  According to Troiano, GUSA will seek to gain about $30,000 from the Funding Board’s $69,000 surplus.

Troiano said the Fund should be ready to allocate funding by December or the start of next semester.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tracy Flick for GUSA Senate!

SPECIAL ELECTION RESULTS: The election commission ran a successful special election that culminated in the election of the following senators:

• Townhouses: Matthew Ginsberg with 35 votes
• Harbin 6-9: Clara Gustafson with 46 votes
• Copley: Shaalin Parekh with 52 votes
• Village A E-H: Nolan Johnson with 15 votes

The only apparent glitch was that students in the districts received “about three emails or so” for ballots because of a problem with Hoyamail, according to the election commissioners. Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A A-D) thanked the election commissioners for running such an impressive election, compared to last year’s chaotic special elections.

The election commissioners noted there were far more candidates per capita for the special election than the actual election. The Harbin seat had nine candidates, the Copley seat had seven candidates, the Townhouses seat had five candidates, and the Village A seat had three candidates. They said in the normal election, there were 35 candidates running for 34 seats, whereas in this election, there were 24 candidates running for four seats.

GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) attributed the peak in interest to run for GUSA Senate to the timing of the elections.

“You have to have the Senate in place at a certain time, and I think students don’t have their lives together until a certain time,” Angert said. “I think this was a very good indicator of why there wasn’t a good turnout [of candidates] at the start and why there was a good turnout now. There wasn’t any additional advertisement.”

The new senators agreed with Angert’s reasoning and added that the seats seemed more accessible because no one had the elections “wrapped up.”

GEORGETOWN FUND PLANS: Angert told the Senate there was “nothing super new to report on,” but the senators wanted to hear more about the executive’s plans for the proposed GUSA Georgetown Fund. Angert said the current plans are only a rough outline that have not yet been sent to the Finances and Appropriations Committee, but the Senate discussed several aspects of the potential Georgetown Fund.

Read the rest of this entry »

GUSA, protecting students from tyranical landlords

RATE MY LANDLORD?: During the Executive Briefing, GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) announced that  the executive wants to tackle the “lack of readily available information” about off-campus student housing. He said there is no official name yet, but the executive wants to create a “Rate my Landlord”-type website to help students with housing.

“It’s miserable, and it’s hard to get a house, and you always feel like you’re getting gypped, and you always feel like there’s so much pressure … Georgetown students are going to get screwed,” Kluger said. “So it’s just another initiative to get more information on it… for kids to know their options so they don’t have to pay as much as they think they might.”

In the rest of his briefing, Kluger mentioned that the executive should be part of an upcoming discussion with the administration about the main campus plan. He also updated the Senate on the free newspaper program.

HATE CRIMES AND THE STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT: Senator Josh Mogil (SFS ‘11—Off Campus) introduced a resolution to start a discussion about updating the Student Code of Conduct.

Mogil wants to make hate crimes—“crimes motivated by race, disability, gender, gender identified, ethnicity, and/or sexual orientation”—a separate offense under category C.

Currently, bias-related incidents are only treated as parameters of other category C violations, but Mogil seeks to make them their own category of offense, and include in the definition of “bias-related incidents” those that are motivated by disability or physical handicap.

“It sends a message because I was a victim [of a hate crime,] and I couldn’t do certain things within the School Code of Conduct,” Mogil said. “I couldn’t face my attacker because it wasn’t its own thing. It was only a parameter. So it still isn’t treated as seriously. I was a victim of assault.”

Read the rest of this entry »

GUSA debates rats and the perennial publicity problem

STUDENT ACTIVITIES FEES: The Senate waded further into the morass of club funding, passing a bill about the Student Activities Fee. Students currently pay a $100 Student Activities Fee, half of which goes into the student activities budget, and the other half of which goes into a student activities portion of the endowment.

Students cannot use the student activities portion of the endowment until the total sum reaches $10 million, and the interest accrued on the account is rolled over into the university endowment.

Many Senators weren’t too happy about that arrangement.

“They’ve been robbing us,” Josh Mogil (SFS ‘11—Off Campus) said.  “It’s completely unacceptable.”

GUSA wants the interest to be put into the student activity fee account, and they want to consider a way to recoup the interest that has already been rolled over into the University’s endowment. Some Senators voiced concern that it would be difficult to get the administration to implement such a policy, though.

RATS: Senator Arman Ismail (COL ‘11—Reynolds) has found his issue: Rats.  He wants GUSA to step in and address the rodent menace plaguing campus.

However, Mogil voiced concerns that such a project would harm “the spirit of the new GUSA.”

“I’d like to remind everyone that if we tackle a problem we can’t solve, it’s not going to help our image,” Mogil noted.  He said GUSA is not the right body to eradicate the rats, and expressed concern that “The Hoya will cover it in their front article: ‘GUSA tries to kill rats, complete failure.’ Everyone will be laughing at us, it will be embarrassing.”

Read the rest of this entry »

If last night proved anything, it’s that nothing gets a Georgetown classroom packed like one of the most liberal members of Congress discussing what he considers “the next civil rights movement”—healthcare.

During his speech, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D—Ohio) focused primarily on the importance of passing the bill he co-authored, HR 676, or, “Medicare for All.”  The bill would take the existing Medicare system and expand it cover everyone.

Of course, the big question is how such an expansion would be paid for.  Kucinich’s comeback to that concern was that “We’re already paying for a universal standard of care we’re not getting.”

“2.4 trillion dollars a year we spend on healthcare in America,” he explained in his speech. “One out of every 3 dollars, or $800 million a year goes for corporate profit, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, and the cost of paperwork. So the for-profit healthcare system has a lot at stake here.”

Kucinich also mused on the current healthcare bill’s prospects in Congress, saying he predicts the House will have a public option in its version, but the Senate won’t.

“The public option is not likely to survive a conference committee,” he said.

During the question and answer portion of the talk, he also expressed disagreement with the idea that passing Senate Finance Chairman Max Bachus’s (D—Mont.) healthcare bill would be “better than nothing” and criticized the power that has been given to insurance companies.

Photography by Jackson Perry.