The turnout was terrible, but the content was great.

That was Admissions and Recruitment Working Group Co-Chair Ryan Wilson’s (COL ’12) assessment of today’s open meeting about the recommendations that his working group released last week.

Just ten people attended, most of whom were already involved in the working group’s endeavors, but a few outsiders provided helpful critiques of the working group’s draft of recommendations to the University. (The draft includes suggestions such as adding a diversity-oriented option to the Georgetown application’s essay question and diversifying campus groups like Blue and Gray and GAAP).

Katerina Kulagina (GRD ’09), for example, the Associate Director of Admissions for the MSB’s Executive Degree Programs, asked about diversity of Georgetown’s own undergraduate admissions staff. Senior Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions Jaime Briseno replied that of the 15 or so people working in admissions, he and Assistant Director Kamilah Holder (SFS ’02) were the only two non-white staff members.

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Subbaraman in the LGBTQ Center

LGBTQ Center Director Sivagami Subbaraman told the Voice that yesterday’s incident—which was described in the campus-wide email as “a written slur posted on the door of the LGBTQ Resource Center”—involved a note addressed to her personally that was taped to center’s door.

Subbaraman did not reveal the exact wording of the note, but said it was directed at her personally, not the wider gay community.

“I have no idea whether this is because of the recent hate crimes or not, but whatever it is, I just want to say that I’m not afraid of their fear,” Subbaraman said. “They are afraid of me, but I’m not afraid of their fear.”

Subbaraman said she was pleased with the University’s inclusion of her in the response to the crimes through every step of the process, including drafting the emails that went out to students after each incident.

Now, she said, the power to fight homophobia lies with the campus community. Subbaraman encourages students of all orientations to use the LGBTQ Center as a safe space, but also as an informational resource for those who are unfamiliar or disagree with homosexuality.

“We have to put out a call to say, ‘Look, we can talk this out,’” Subbaraman said. “We have made so much progress since the Center was opened. I’m nervous that this is going to set us back.”

Full text of the e-mail Subbaran sent to members of GU Pride Monday afternoon after the jump.

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A couple hundred students gathered in Red Square Monday evening holding candles to speak out against the recent anti-gay violence.

Representatives of student groups from GU Pride to the Georgetown branch of the NAACP spoke at the vigil, as well as Georgetown faculty, staff, and administrators. Chris Farris and Todd Metrokin, Co-Chairs of the D.C. group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence, and Sergeant Carlos Mejia from MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit also made an appearance.

“We are here today in solidarity with the victims of these crimes,” Co-President of GU Pride Joseph Graumann (SFS ’11) said. “But solidarity is more than sympathy. It’s more than just standing by. It’s about action.”

Students at the vigil advocated a range of responses to improve student safety and address what they perceive as a campus culture that tolerates homophobia. Among the suggestions were a student community watch program and higher pay for DPS officers, as well as individual precautions like programming the DPS number into cell phones and reporting crimes when they occur.

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After the demise of the free newspaper program early this year, student leaders have been pushing to bring the Washington Post back to campus, according to Will Cousino (SFS ’12) of Interhall. Cousino, GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) and Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ’10), are still deciding between a new offer from the Washington Post, and older offers from USA Today‘s Collegiate Readership program and the New York Times.

The details of the Washington Post deal may change, according to Cousino, but as of earlier this week the Post was willing to provide 200 papers a day for a cost of $1200.

As Cousino said, it’s “pretty much the same offer as the Times. Difference being that the Washington Post can also deliver the New York Times (albeit at a high cost… more than $1 a copy).”

According to Kluger, the number of copies of the Post the Times that this deal would include has not yet been nailed down.

In addition to which papers to include, Kluger emphasized that distribution methods are a critical factor in the decision. The Post delivers their own papers, whereas USA Today hires a Georgetown student to put out the papers every morning.

“Also, there’s the question of physically what to put the papers in,” Kluger said. “The [containers] we had before, [which] you had to use your GOCard to get into, were part of the Collegiate Readership program. We have to see if we can still use them.”

The next step for the free newspaper movement is narrowing the three offers down to one, definitive deal. Kluger is eager to incorporate student input in the ultimate decision.

“Whatever our final choice comes down to, unless student feedback comes down really hard on one side or the other, we have a survey set up to get out in an email to the student body,” Kluger said.

The e-mail will be sent as soon as Cousino, Kluger, and Goodman narrow down their options, a process which could still take a few weeks.

Go ahead and give your GUSA Senator one—or eleven—of these!

Three hours and forty-five minutes. That’s where the second meeting of the full GUSA Senate clocked in. But the 21 Senators got the most out of their time, electing 11 people to various internal positions, including Adam Talbot (COL ’12) as the Senate’s new Speaker and Chris Pigott (COL ’12) as Vice Speaker.

Talbot and Pigott were both vocal freshman Senators last year and seem to be good friends. They gave each other ringing endorsements when the other stepped outside to be elected to his position. (Both races were uncontested). The personal relationships don’t end there: newly elected Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ’12) is Talbot’s roommate.

There’s no funny business going on here, though. The Senate was aware of the love triangle that now dominates its upper offices. Ungar, Pigott, and Talbot were simply the best men for the job—with the possible exception of Nick Troiano (COL ’11), who led the Senate’s Transition Team.

Troiano has said from the beginning that he would prefer not to be Speaker, though.  When nominated by a well-meaning Senator, he respectfully declined the nomination.

Troiano did, however, score the position of Chair of the Finances and Appropriations committee, which comes with the chance to sit in on Funding Board meetings—an excellent vantage point from which to continue his public war with SAC.

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Another GUSA Senate election’s come and gone, but you would hardly know it. There was little of the controversy that usually accompanies a GUSA election.

Only three of the five seats expected to be empty had no winner. Sandy Glassberg (COL ’11, Nevils) and Nicholaus Nelson-Goedert (COL ’10, McCarthy) stepped up to the plate as write-in candidates. There was one vacant district we didn’t catch: Harbin floors 6-9, which remains Senator-less, along with the townhouses and Village A E-H.

Nelson-Goedert is one of six returning Senators. The other five are Chris Pigott (COL ’12, At Large), Adam Talbot (COL ’12, LXR), Josh Mogil (COL ’11, Off Campus), George Roche (COL ’10, Off-Campus) and the hard-working, famously uncompromising Nick Troiano (COL ’11, Village A A-D).

Overall, the election went off without a hitch, with one possible exception: the commissioners’ liberal interpretation of the Senate bylaws for write-in candidates.

As Election Commissioner Ryan Gavigan (COL ’11) noted when he announced the results at Sunday’s meeting, the commissioners decided that a write-in candidate didn’t qualify for the race until he or she had received at least 5 votes. So you couldn’t get elected to GUSA if, say, your two roommates decided to write you in as a joke. (Sound familiar)?

This election is the first time the rule has been applied, but it seems like it could only do good things.

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Promising news for print journalism fans: although the Collegiate Readership Program, which provided free newspapers on campus, was suspended this year due to lack of funding, there are two replacement offers on the table.

Members of GUSA, the Corp, and Interhall have been working to restore free papers to campus. According to Will Cousino (SFS ’12) of Interhall, both options would provide roughly half as many papers as last year at about half the cost.

The first offer came from the New York Times and would include 200 copies of the Times and no other papers. USA Today, which sponsored last year’s program, also made an offer late last week that would include USA Today, the Washington Post and the Times.

Cousino and GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) will sit down next Monday to discuss which plan they, along with Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ’10) and GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11), would like to pursue.

Both offers are currently at $12,000, according to Angert and Kluger. But they’re hoping to haggle them down.

“We’d love to start a bidding war. That would be ideal,” Angert said.

“As for distribution locations, last year we had four and this year they would probably be reduced to three or two,” Cousino said. “The one we’re pretty sure we’d cut would be the site at Uncommon Grounds.”

USA Today collected data about how many papers were picked up at what location, according to Cousino. On average, 134 papers a day were picked up in Leo’s, 133 in Red Square, 105 in Alumni Square, and 88 at Uncommon Grounds, he said.

“Once we pick a program, all the focus will be on raising the funds to get it and keep it sustainable,” Kluger said.

Last year, the Collegiate Readership Program was sponsored by five organizations, donating $5,000 each. Those organizations were GUSA, the Corp, Interhall, the Senior Vice President’s Office, and the Provost’s Office.

The Corp and GUSA are the only confirmed sponsors of the free newspaper program so far, according to Angert. The students are also hoping to get funding from the Dean of the MSB, among other sources.

Photo by Sam Sweeney.

I have never seen a GUSA meeting so full in my entire life. 29 Senators were there and 20-some odd visitors, including representatives from SAC, CSJ, Relay for Life, Club Sports, and the Lecture Fund. If you want kids to get interested in student government, all you have to do is threaten to take their money away.

President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) was the first to speak on the budget issue during his executive briefing at the beginning of the meeting. In a surprising change of heart, he suggested the Senate should pass the budget—but not before some hostile shout-outs to SAC and Senator Matt Wagner (SFS ’11), Chair of the Finance and Appropriations Committee.

Calen said SAC was “acting irresponsibly,” sitting on top of an enormous reserve fund and using “scare tactics” to unneccessarily alarm the clubs it funds. Matt, Calen accused of deliberately choosing not to reconvene the funding board so that a new budget couldn’t be drafted. After giving his support to the budget because he said he believed clubs would suffer too much from its failure, he abruptly left, taking his Vice President, Jason Kluger (MSB ’11), with him.

Matt’s response and much more, after the jump!

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Sunday’s GUSA meeting wasn’t all serious budget battles, far from it! For those of you whose heads are swimming from all that bickering over real stuff, never fear. The fun side of GUSA is back.

Remember those pesky absences the Senate was trying to fill before the end of the year? Well, they held a totally drama-free election just before Easter break, and the results are in: 11 students can now proudly call themselves GUSA Senators—including two who didn’t even know they were running.

Two write-in candidates won a GUSA seat: Matt Sam Wiles, representing the townhouses of 36th and 37th Streets, and Simone Popperl, representing off-campus students [full disclosure: Simone used to write for the Voice].

Simone quickly informed Speaker Reggie Greer (COL ’09) that she could not serve when she was notified she had won the election, as Reggie told the Senate at the beginning of Sunday’s meeting, but Sam Wiles showed up. (A little late, but then again, you can’t blame him? He didn’t know he was going to be a Senator). Although he didn’t speak much, he voted with the best of them on a bill that expanded the Senate to include a treasurer position and four at-large Senate seats that cannot be held by freshmen.

All of this begs the question, exactly how many votes did the two write-ins need to have to get a Senate seat? According to Election Commissioner Mirco Haag (SFS ’09), the number wasn’t very high.

“For the vacant district of townhouses, no one was running, so anyone who got a vote won. The other one was Off-Campus, and since there were four open seats, you didn’t need that many votes [to win],” Mirco said. “Sam Wiles needed one vote. Simone needed more. I think there were about 40-50 votes in her district, so she would have needed about 10.”

If Sam sticks it out until the last meeting tomorrow, he, along with the 9 other new Senators, could be critical in whether or not next year’s budget gets passed. The one person who wrote him in may have tipped the scales on a decision that controls thousands of dollars of funding for campus organizations. The joke’s on you, student body!

How is GUSA doing on this year’s approval of the budget? I’m glad you asked. Here’s how Matt Wagner (SFS ’11) broke it down to the Senate yesterday.

“We have a budget the Senate voted ‘no’ on, and no new budget from the Funding Board, [the group of seven Senators and six heads of other student groups that creates the budget every year]. We either approve a budget on Wednesday, or we don’t.

What happens if the year ends and the Senate does not approve a budget? I talked to Erika Cohen-Derr, and she said there are two possibilities. A) clubs simply don’t get a budget from us, period, and that money is saved and rolled over into next year. That means a third of the funding for some of these groups is gone. B) administrators, namely Erika and her second-in-command Bill McCoy, give these student groups whatever budget they deem appropriate because the student government they over see failed to do that.

(Emphasis and paragraphing mine.)

You’d think that, seeing as the budget for next year was hashed out roughly two months ago, GUSA would have approved it by now. Instead, they’ve rejected it twice and are pushing hard to get it approved before the last day of classes.

What’s gotten our favorite student bureaucrats into this mess? It’s a “huge conspiracy,” according to Senator Johnny Solis (SFS ’11). Check out the full story after the jump.

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