Within the next week, Vox will introduce you to the student ANC candidates who will appear on the ballot on November 6. Here we bring you Peter Prindiville (SFS ’14), who campaigns to represent Single Member District 08. This district encompasses Henle, Harbin, Copley, Nevils Halls, Alumni Square, and a cluster of university-owned townhouses.  

Vox Populi: Which aspects of the campus plan provisions do you like/dislike most?

Peter Prindiville: In terms of the campus plan I think we’ve seen a lot of really great advancements. Obviously the changes in party registration, but also a culture of trying to make the campus more of a social hub.

I think there are many things that are quite terrible. First and foremost, I think it’s important to note that students were markedly absent from most of the campus plan discussions and final deliberations. Even Jake Sticka, who was an elected representative on a district commission, was markedly absent.

I think both from the ANC side and the University side, there was a lack of student involvement and a lack of student voice, and I think that’s quite terrible. I think that needs to change. I’m looking forward to working with the GCP [Georgetown Community Partnership], which is a collaborative effort between the ANC, some of the various neighborhood associations and the University…I think that’s a really good opportunity and I think the GCP might be a venue for providing a student voice. The more we can get some student representation, I think that’s really good.

There are obviously a lot of things I don’t like about the campus plan. The push to move Magis Row townhouses…I think it might just be misguided.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday evening, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E held a special meeting to consider proposed revisions to the Georgetown Campus Plan. The ANC commissioners in attendance voted unanimously, 6-0, to endorse the revised plan. Then the floor opened up to residents (to complain more about student behavior) and students (to attempt to maintain our dignity).

“The university is very encouraged – the members of the community and the students here echoed a lot of sentiments that were expressed in the negotiations and through this process,” university spokesperson Stacy Kerr said to Vox. “This isn’t a victory for one side or the other, but for everybody, and it’s a path to move forward.”

The next step entails filing the plan with the DC Zoning Commission by June 18. According to ANC Chair Ron Lewis, the Zoning Commission should have a decision by July, setting off a series of processing deadlines for both the University and ANC. But, as Lewis noted during the meeting, “If the Zoning Commission says ‘OK’, this [remainder of the process] becomes a formality.”

Read the rest of this entry »

While us undergraduates are battling it out on the sidelines for our compromised interests in the Campus Plan, we tend to forget that graduate students are affected by these provisions too. At tonight’s advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting on the campus plan, ANC Chair Ron Lewis mentioned that “graduate students will be parking ‘downtown’ in the next few years.” A cursory statement like that holds a lot of weight for these adults who live and study at Georgetown but also have families, children, and established lives.

For graduate students, on-campus housing is not provided as an option. Many students live in Foxhall and West Georgetown to decrease their commute, especially given Georgetown’s lack of access to a Metro station.

“Basically the first year of grad school I was on Connecticut Ave. and I would commute by Metro and shuttle bus and it really made it difficult to schedule time,” Alison Thomas (MSFS ’13) said. “You end up wasting a lot of time in transit or waiting for transit. This year, living near campus made a huge difference to my quality of life.”

Read the rest of this entry »

In a unanimous vote at last night’s ANC2E meeting, Georgetown neighborhood leaders quashed an proposal for later bar hours during three-day holiday weekends. There are 19 three-day weekends, and the hours would be extended till 4 a.m. The idea was part of Council Chairman Kwame Brown‘s effort to raise $1.5 million in the District budget.

Budget balancing through later bar hours was, unsurprisingly, not a hit with the neighbors. Commissioner Bill Starrels headed the resolution. The commission voted against the proposal for several reasons. The bars would close after Metro hours, encouraging people to drink and drive. Another reason cited by Cookie Cruse, CAG’s spokesperson on alcohol, was that foot traffic may strain police resources by “encouraging street crime,” according to the Georgetown Dish.

If you were hoping to stay up till 4:00 a.m. singing your last rendition of “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon on Labor Day at Mr. Smith’s, well, get over it, pack up, and go home.

Via Georgetown Dish

On Wednesday, at the Citizens Association of Georgetown’s meeting, Mayor Vincent Gray hinted that an agreement has been reached between neighbors and the University over the campus plan. At the meeting, the mayor said, “We’re 95% to getting this solved,” according to the Georgetown Dish.

But, as we all know, it ain’t over till it’s over.

On April 2, the University and neighborhood groups announced that negotiations for the 2010-2020 GU Campus Plan would restart. ANC2E chair Ron Lewis said that no reports would be issued from the meetings to allow them to be “conducted as candidly as possible.” So far, the meetings have been carrying on behind closed doors.

University spokesperson Stacy Kerr expressed a positive sentiment about the negotiations that took place during the past few weeks. Vox is still waiting for an official response.

The meetings remain private; an agreement at this point is speculation. “It is my understanding, though, that Mayor Gray is right to say that the talks are moving in the right direction. I am certainly looking forward to a resolution of the campus plan controversy and continue to hope that whatever agreement is reached will be one that advances the interests of undergraduate students,” ANC Commissioner Jake Sticka (COL ’13) said in an email to Vox.

Check back for updates after the ANC 2E’s meeting on Monday.

In the past few weeks, many Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in D.C. voted in favor of placing medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. So far, ANC 2B voted 7-0 in favor of a medical marijuana start-up Herbal Alternatives in West End. ANC 6B approved the Metropolitan Wellness Center’s application for a dispensary in Barracks Row, voting 9-0. ANC 4B voted this past Tuesday 6-2 to approve a dispensary located at 6925 Blair Road NW in Takoma.

However, on the same day that ANC 4B approved a dispensary, ANC 5C voted against an application from Center CityCare to operate one at 1334 N. Capitol Street NW. Six ANCs in 5C voted against the dispensary. The discussion centered on the possibility of increased crime, and the potentially negative effects the dispensary would have on neighboring businesses.

What does this mean for us? Based on the proposal approved by ward 2, a medical dispensary Herbal Alternatives might appear in DuPont. According to the DCist, “if granted licenses, the dispensaries will be able to sell up to two ounces of medical marijuana a month to qualifying patients or their caregivers.” The owner of Herbal Alternatives, Jennifer Brunenkant, submitted a letter of intent which was approved by the DOH last September. The location of the shop will reportedly be between L and M streets on 20th Street, just blocks away from GW and Foggy Bottom.

By the end of this week, the ANCs will submit recommendations to the Department of Health on the four medical dispensaries seeking licenses. The final approval from the DOH will be sent out June 25.

Via DCist

Last week, neighborhood groups and the University announced the restart of negotiations over 2010 Campus Plan, asking the Zoning Commission to postpone their hearings on the matter to allow the new round of talks to proceed.

An exasperated Steven sees the process extending into the next calendar year:

It’s literally going to be 2013 before we approve a plan that was supposed to affect what we did in 2010.

typical asked the question that immediately came to Vox‘s inflatables-obsessed mind. And the answer is no:

does this mean we can have georgetown day back?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight, Georgetown University, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E, Citizens Association of Georgetown, and the Burleith Citizens Association announced they would restart negotiations about the 2010-2020 Georgetown University campus plan. They also requested that the Zoning Commission postpone its filing deadlines and an upcoming hearing to allow the negotiations to unfold.

The parties announced their decision at tonight’s public meeting of ANC2E, where Chair Ron Lewis said, “Today we, together, have filed a letter with the Zoning Commission requesting that they postpone the filing deadline on the 12th [of April] and on the 19th [of April] and then the hearing afterwards for 60 days so we can explore the possibility of reaching common ground in our talks about the campus plan.”

This decision comes after Zoning Commissioner Anthony Hood suggested at the February 9 hearing that university administrators meet regularly with community leaders to resolve the objectionable impacts of students. At the hearing, the Zoning Commission said that all parties must file documents commenting on the efficacy of the university’s mitigation efforts by April 12 and 19. The 60-day extension would move the deadlines to June 11 and 18 with the small-scope hearing moved to June 25.

Georgetown University Director of Media Relations Rachel Pugh issued the following statement:

At the last DC Zoning Commission hearing on February 9, all parties in our campus plan process – the university, our neighbors and the city – were asked to continue to work together to work toward agreement. Over the past six weeks we have been engaged in extensive work towards this goal, meeting with city and neighborhood leaders. This approach reflects our continued efforts to seek common ground and to engage with city and neighborhood leaders. Joining with our neighbors in requesting an extension is a meaningful sign of progress in a long process. We are pleased that the result of our work together over the last six weeks is a mutual agreement that it is in our best interest as a community to work together and with the city to find common ground.

Lewis added at the meeting that no reports would be issued from the negotiations.

“We can have better conversations if they can be conducted as candidly as possible,” he said.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission[PDF] and the Burleith Citizens Association/Citizen’s Association of Georgetown[PDF] filed their final responses to the University’s latest appeasement efforts with the Zoning Commission. And nothing’s changed. All three organizations want all students on campus, and all of the University’s actions have been nothing but ineffective posturing. But let’s jump into the interesting parts of their monstrous filings.

• First Vox is going to question the legality of the ANC’s filing. A resolution affirming this filing on behalf of the ANC 2E was not adopted at a public meeting, and Commissioner Jake Sticka (COL ’13) told Vox that Georgetown Metropolitan’s post was the first he saw of this. This was probably written by Commissioners Jeff Jones, Ron Lewis, and Ed Solomon (who included personal testimonies at the end). This wouldn’t be the first time certain ANC2E commissioners engaged in some misrepresentation of authorship.

• The BCA/CAG filing has multimedia by our favorite wanna-be paparazzi Stephen R. Brown, who included a youtube video of a student house in Burleith. Although still creepy as ever, Vox is happy he is expanding his artistic horizons. Maybe next he’ll shoot in 3D. Surroundsound? 60FPS?

• Not only have Georgetown’s efforts been ineffective, but they’ve actually made the problem worse! “The GU trash collection efforts (1.5 tons of trash per day, according to GU!) has [sic] perversely lead to even greater student disregard for trash collection times and container requirements.”

Also, those reimbursable details the University is paying for? They don’t just ignore the problem houses, but their very employment by the University means they can’t be hired by BCA/CAG. “This situation recently lead CAG to terminate its own reimbursable detail and rely instead on patrols by private security officers.” The ANC adds on that “moreover, the officers know they are sponsored and paid by GU, an institution that has demonstrated a disturbing lack of enthusiasm for effective MPD enforcement against student misconduct and noise.”

Read the rest of this entry »