The Dowdometer is supposed to be about gauging Student Association President Pat Dowd’s performance, with the ulterior motive of developing in him a Pavlovian response to our approval. This week, though, the Dowdometer is all about being angry, because Pat seems to want to have the University ban Juicy Campus from campus internet. From Friday’s Hoya (emphasis mine):

Some projects are already in the works to stop the spread of the Juicy infestation. GUSA President Patrick Dowd (SFS ’09) is speaking with the administration about having University Information Services block JuicyCampus.com from the Georgetown network. This would make it impossible to access the Web site via any of the wireless networks on campus, or via any Internet connections in campus housing. Dowd feels strongly about the issue, saying about JuicyCampus.com, “It’s despicable, and there’s no place for that type of that hurtful speech in our community. … It doesn’t help anyone, and it has no place at Georgetown. Maybe there are some people that disagree, but few will be sorry to see it go, and if they are, maybe they need to ask themselves some tough questions about why.”

Deliciously, The Hoya, the same people who want to go independent so they can use their 1st Amendment rights, say Georgetown and GUSA should be “applauded for any steps they take.” The Hoya doesn’t represent students, though, and Pat supposedly does, so I had to confirm his application to the Greg Mottla School for Little Dictators.

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“Spread to the four winds!”

The GUSA Senate formed the Student Commission for Unity last spring in response to last year’s bias-related incidents and The Hoya’s “Jena 6″ snafu last fall. In April, the SCU conducted a survey on race, discrimination, and segregation at Georgetown which gleaned over 1,500 student responses. While they’re not publishing the numbers just yet, a sneak peak on Tuesday night revealed:

•   Only 4% of bias incidents that occur on or near campus get reported to DPS
• Black and Hispanic students often feel uncomfortable here because of their race in face greater numbers that white students
•   Catholics and Protestants find religious discrimination to be less of a problem than Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu students
•   New students find the bias reporting system far more adequate than veteran Hoyas do
•   SFS kids are pretty convinced that self-segregation is a problem (frustrating for their vigorous networking efforts)

For some reason, when they break down their survey based on religion, responses from Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindi students get grouped together. Kesten said it’s because they’re fewer in numbers. Unfortunately, if they respond in radically different ways to specific questions, we may never know.

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The latest morsel of campus-wide email fun comes from GUSA president Pat Dowd and his vice-president James Kelly, both of whom really really want you to get involved in student government.The first part of the email is a heads up about the annual/semesterly/whenever GUSA Senate elections. But bear with it; the second half is the good stuff. Pat and James want you to join GUSA Grassroots, “a new subsidiary of the Executive that reports directly to the President of the Student Body.”

The execs go on to explain that “In the same way that involvement in national politics tends to begin at the grassroots level, GUSA Grassroots is the perfect place for you to begin your own career in campus politics.” It’s admirable that P and J want to get someone other than the usual GUSA types involved, but GG is bizarre for two reasons:

1. How can another committee do anything for GUSA?
2. Since when is grassroots activism initiated by the people in power?

Obviously the second point is rhetorical, because even GUSA execs aren’t exactly “in power”. The email’s after the jump.

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You might remember Munir Jawed (SFS ‘08) for losing the 2007 GUSA election along with running mate Enoch Bevel (COL ‘08). You might also remember him from Enoch’s hat (above), a veritable appendage that appeared in all their campaign material. The hat was so big that a year later, while I was telling a story about Munir, the person I was talking to didn’t know who he was until I mentioned the hat.

That’s all in the past, though, because Munir has finally stepped out of the hat’s shadow. He’s been awarded a Fulbright fellowship to do research about independence and oil in Baku, Azerbaijan. Good on him.

I didn’t think much of GUSA President Pat Dowd when he was running. Neither did the Voice editorial board, which endorsed his opponents. With GUSA Summer Fellows coming together so soon and his pretty good response to our latest crimes, though, I’m feeling better about his reign.

Things will change, though, and probably for the worse. It’ll be hard to keep track of whether Pat Dowd’s better or worse than we expected him to be. That’s why we’ve come up with the Dowdometer, a device to measure whether he’s exceeding (admittedly low) expectations. So far, things are rosy. But who knows what next semester will bring?

A year after GUSA Prez Ben Shaw and Veep Matt Appenfeller pledged to get free newspapers on campus and a month after the planned date for their Georgetown debut, the papers have finally arrived on campus. Sleek tan distribution boxes are now set up in Alumni Square and Red Square (and, supposedly outside Leo’s and in Leavey, though I haven’t seen these ones yet). Just slide in your GoCard, pull down the door and help yourself to as many New York Times, Washington Posts and USA Todays as your little heart desires.

The papers have come in the nick of time for Shaw, who told the Voice in January, “If the newspapers aren’t here by the third week of February, anyone who wants a Washington Post can come find me and I will buy it for them.” Nevertheless, props are in order for GUSA for finally accomplishing something substantive (and the Corp and, lest we forget, InterHall feat. Caitin Chen). I’ve got to say though, having free papers on campus isn’t as great as I thought it would be. I’ve become so accustomed to getting my news online that when I snagged a NY Times on Monday, it felt unweildly and a little bulky (and, unlike the constantly updated Times website, was missing any mention of prostitutes, New York governors or potentially unsafe sexual acts).

Though the program is run by USA Today, it seems like that’s the last paper people want to grab (see photo). (Maybe Obama was just trying to be nice when he called USA Today a “respectable paper”?) Judging from what I’ve seen, people also seem to prefer the Times above the Post.

The million dollar question, though, is whether or not the deal includes the Sunday Times. I’m guessing it doesn’t—this would be too good (and expensive) to be true—but until Sunday rolls around, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed anyway.

Photo by Sam Sweeney, Blog Editor

The Election Commission announced tonight that Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) and James Kelly (COL ’09) won the run-off election and will be the next GUSA President and Vice President.

After three rounds of instant run-off voting, Dowd received 1,304 of the 2,549 votes cast. Runner-up Kyle Williams (COL ’09) received 1,070. D.W. Cartier (COL ’09) and David Dietz (COL ’10) finished third and fourth, respectively.

In the meeting in which the results were announced, Dowd reached out to the other candidates and said he wanted them “to be part of what we’re doing.”

“Definitely the first thing we want to do is meet with the other candidates,” Dowd said after the meeting. “[We want to] sit down with them and make sure their voice is heard.”

The run-off election was called after the GUSA Senate voted to deny certification of the first election’s results, based on problems with the confusing ballot, improper application of instant run-off voting, and the correlation between alphabetical order on the ballot and the number of votes received in later rounds.

“Whoever wins can be said to have the clear voice of the student body behind them, and will be a stronger force for change on behalf of the student body because of it,” GUSA Speaker of the Senate Eden Schiffman wrote in an email earlier today. “The runoff included a more manageable ballot, IRV correctly applied, and even higher turnout than the original vote, and has been, from all indications so far, a complete success.”

All eight candidates agreed to a run-off between the top four, according to Election Commissioner Maura Cassidy (COL ’08). However, Sean Hayes (COL ’10), who placed fifth, and D.W. Cartier (COL ’09), who won the first election, later raised objections.

Photo by Juliana Brint, Associate News Editor

If you made it through the nine rounds of IRV voting in the first election, you probably noticed the Exit Poll GUSA tacked on to the end. GUSA Speaker of the Senate Eden Schiffman said the poll was an effort to figure out who was (and was not) participating in GUSA and what was most important to them.

The Freshman and Sophomore classes cast the most votes—31% of voters were Sophomores, 29% were Freshmen. Blame it on being jaded or simply smaller class sizes, the Junior class accounted for only 20% and the Seniors were a mere 12% (7% didn’t respond).

Voting was pretty estrogen-heavy, even if the field of candidates wasn’t. 49% of voters were female, 42% were male (9% didn’t respond).

The racial breakdown was a pretty accurate reflection of the University’s composition. The participation rates for minorities were slightly higher than their percentage of the student, body, but not significantly so. 67% of voters identified as White (non-Hispanic), 7% Hispanic, 8% African-American, 9% Asian, 7% Other and 12% did not respond. According to statistics on the University website, 6.4% of students are Hispanic, 6.7% are African-American and 8.7% are Asian.

The biggest determinant in who people voted for was face-to-face meetings (56% of voters checked that box), followed by candidates’ platforms (34%). Club and Paper Endorsements came in last, influencing a measly 13% of voters. So much for the power of the Fourth Estate…

Some took the free-response “What are you looking for in your candidates?” question as chance to engage the time-honored Georgetown past-time of GUSA-bashing—one response was “Inability to deal with simple problems and overall ineptitude”—but most answered pretty earnestly. Common themes were leadership ability, dedication to the job, charisma, enthusiasm, experience, honesty and the ability to represent students and communicate with administrators.

There was a split between those who wanted the president to address the school’s alcohol policy—“alcohol policy reform” was one of the most common phrases—and those who wanted to move past it, i.e. “Someone who seems to understand there is a world beyond the alcohol policy.”

It looks like the national presidential campaign trickled down into GUSA race a bit. One voter wanted someone with “the strength to lead in this post-9/11 world, while others were looking for “change I can believe,” “Someone who can bring change. Like Matt Appenfeller. Yes we can .. hope” or, to put it bluntly, “A president that is like Barack Obama.”

A few wanted a nominee who would channel past-presidents—“Ben Shaw Re-incarnated” or “twister 2.0, someone with a cool name.”

Here are a few of my other personal favorites:
“Attractiveness, Promiscuity, Drinking Habits, and Religion”
“Being a sweet bro and magical powers”
“Chicken, Bacon, Cheese, Onions, Peppers, Bread, Barack Obama”
“feathers and ability to count. Seriously. No, seriously.”
“Height, Hair and Optimism.”
“Someone who is chill and not a pinko, gay loving, anticatholic communist”
and, finally, whoever wrote “The Voice’s endorsement is key”

With four GUSA presidential candidates left in the ongoing run-off election, the four who were bounced find themselves in a unique position to play kingmaker, owning a combined 482 first-place votes between them in the original election. While I don’t know of any specific endorsements yet [Ed. Note: Reliable sources inform me that Brown-Sevin will be endorsing Williams-Kesten], the ex-ticket of Sean Hayes and Andrew Madorsky have thrown themselves into the role with audacious aplomb. The pair sent the following e-mail to the remaining contenders, and then also forwarded it to both the Voice and the Hoya:

From: “Sean Hayes” <(redacted)>
To: (redacted)
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:26:09 -0500
Subject: Election Endorsement

Alright, so Andrew and I are out….

You have all asked me in the last 24 hours for our support/endorsement and we figured that we, being REALLY cool fun guys, would have some fun with this one.

We WILL, in fact, be endorsing a candidate very soon.

As for the two of us, we have already put in our own personal votes, but we do still have a facebook group with 160 members and don’t forget that smashing 182 we got in the primaries!

Therefore, there is only one fair way to decide who we will endorse.

GUIDELINES:
- No monetary bribes (we are not trying to get in trouble)
- PLAY BALL!

You can find our contact info on www.hm2008.org

So boys, now the question is: What can YOU do for H&M?

Love,
Sean Hayes & Andrew Madorsky

Sure, it’s attention-craving, but that’s not exactly out of line for ex-politicians (ahem, Al Gore). At any rate, it worked. But the question is, with voting already underway, how many of those votes can they actually still deliver?

As the above graph shows, it turns out there’s an incredibly strong correlation between how many members each GUSA ticket’s Facebook group has and how many first round votes they got. Not an incredibly surprising fact when you think about it; the factors that lead to a large Facebook following—popularity, working hard on your campaign, relentlessness—also help bring in the votes. I would make some statement about youth harnessing the power of the internet, but then I’d have to stop reading this blog in protest.

For those of you who’ve taken some kind of stat class, the value for their correlation is 0.968586 (the closer it is to one, the stronger the correlation). For those of you who haven’t taken any stat classes, consider yourself lucky.