What is this specimen? It’s sugary, it looks like a doughnut, and reminds me of my study abroad  semester in Spain. But  no. Churros at Leo’s. Not possible.

Apparently, it’s “Maximum Mexican” day at Leo’s. The last time you were at at the dining hall, you checked the box for grilled chicken, specifically wrote “no bun, please, just chicken” and got a grilled cheese instead (true story, photographed below). Now, you get to the dining hall and some man in a chef’s hat smiles at you as he arranges tiny plates of mango cilantro salad and some kind of weird Mexican cinnamon sticks. Isn’t mango season in June?

Sure, biting into the churro might make you feel like you’re about to chip a tooth, but hey, this is unreal. This is about as weird as the time they served cilantro-infused grapefruit water. We appreciate Aramark’s efforts to maximize the Mexican spirit, but can’t help but wonder if these “action desserts” are just a way to distract from what we all really miss and love: making our own damn pizzas.

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During the first Hoya Roundtable of the new school year, students had the chance to voice their concerns about the facilities at Georgetown. As usual, students were concerned about the most important facility at Georgetown: Leo O’Donovan Dining Hall.

Moderated by Chief Operating Officer Christopher Augostini, the Hoya Roundtable included the new Provost Robert M. Groves, Chief Business Officer for University Services Debbie Morey, Interim Vice President of Facilities Frank Tiscione, Associate Vice President of Auxiliary Services Margie Bryant, Marketing Manager Kendra Boyer, and Chief Operations Director of Dining Robert Tobin.

Groves began the Roundtable by introducing himself and reaffirming his dedication to creating a better environment for students. “One of the big things were trying to do is to integrate the financial side of the house with the academic side of the house a little more fully,” Groves said.  “That sort of integration should makes us better.”

Tiscione also announced a plan to develop a new facility to house students on Georgetown. “We hired a consultant to come in to help us with that. The original thing was to build an addition on the Leavey Center,” Tiscione said. “But we wanted to take a holistic approach on that and really take a comprehensive look at some other potential possibilities.”

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Last Saturday, amid the frenzy of GAAP weekend and the annual Run for Rigby event, Georgetown’s Grilling Society wasn’t the only group serving burgers and hot dogs in the 85 degree heat. Across from the long lines for GUGS burgers in Red Square, members of Georgetown Solidarity Committee set up tables and a grill on Healy Lawn for a barbecue with on-campus workers. The event was also cosponsored by GUSA and the Advisory Committee on Business Practices for the first time in the barbecue’s history.

GSC members hold this event each semester to give students a chance to interact with workers outside of the traditional service environment. “It’s fun, a lot of students played with workers’ kids and it was just a fun, informal atmosphere,” Rachel Milito (SFS ’12), a member of GSC, said. “It’s important to show appreciation for all the work that workers do on campus that often goes unnoticed, but more importantly it’s a forum for workers from different parts of campus to get together and see if they’re having similar experiences and have a sense of solidarity.”

Compared to past semesters, this semester’s barbecue had much higher attendance rates. “It was mostly Leo’s workers and Public Safety officers. We reached out beyond that but that was the best turnout we’ve had at a BBQ before,” Samuel Geaney-Moore (SFS ‘12) said. “It was nice that that GUSA cosponsored it, and some of the members of the Advisory on Business Practices came as well, which is more than we’ve got in the past.” Geaney-Moore pointed to the campaign negotiations for the union as a significant source of bonding between the students and workers.

In light of the recent firing of two Leo’s workers, the conversations at the barbecue inspired the workers to arrange a meeting for Thursday to outline the rights of a worker. “If you don’t speak up we don’t know what’s going on. You can’t wait till you get fired. The union can only protect you if you have a job. If you don’t have a job, what can you do? A lot of people don’t understand their rights. Because of the picnic we’re going to have a meeting on Thursday to outline those rights,” Tarshea Smith, Leo’s employee and member of the Unite Here! Leo’s branch Worker Committee, said.

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Shortly after 12:30 p.m. today, Leo’s workers, who are in the process of negotiating a union contract with Aramark, staged a demonstration on the upper floor of the dining hall. Coinciding with chicken-finger Thursdays and a day when Aramark managers are on-site, the unionizing workers demanded a fair contract from their employer. Joined by many members of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee, the brief demonstration ended to applause, with chants of “We’ll be back!”

Wednesday, October 12, Georgetown’s Chief Operating Officer, Christopher Augostini held the first “Hoya Roundtable” to ask students how Georgetown could best serve them.

New to the job, Augostini started the meeting by saying, ”The best way for me to orient my self to the issues to the student body was simply to ask you.”

There were only about ten or so student in attendance who were not affiliated with the Roundtables innitiative, and they were vastly outnumbered by administrators and staff who packed the room. Luckily, the Google Moderator questions ensured that the most pressing issues were addressed–well, they were at least mentioned.

Let’s go over the highlights:

Technology services

Kevin Murphy, interim Chief Information Officer, presented on behalf of UIS.

• They have ordered the antennae to give wireless for Copley lawn, and they should arrive in about 45 days. Similar wireless for Healy lawn are due to be installed next spring.
• Faculty and staff and being moved to Google mail, so they will have full access to apps like Google Calendar, Docs, etc.
• They are looking into programs like lecture capture and additional printing locations
• They are planning on changing printing to five cents per page. Murphy admitted that the cost was arbitrary and mainly intended to discourage students from printing “hundreds of thousands” of pages.

Facilities Management

• Work orders: annually, facilities gets 40,000-50,000 work orders, and they received around 2-3,000 work orders per week during the first month of school. They are looking into buying a new computer system to manage the number of orders.
• Facilities also addressed the state of some of the rest rooms on campus. They were in stark disagreement with one student in the audience about the state of women’s restrooms in the ICC.

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Just like last year, Vox is helping you get on top of “news you can use” with an excessively comprehensive review of last year’s important news stories. You’ve already heard of foolish things former freshman have done. Now, we cover the other on-campus issues that made headlines; Healy Pub, Uribe, and unions come after the jump.

Cash rules everything around me

The Georgetown University Student Association is your undergraduate student government.

Between a president, vice president, cabinet, and 25-member Senate (elected at-large and from dorms), the student association funds initiatives such as Summer Fellows, subsidized LSAT courses, free newspapers, and weekend GUTS busses.

Despite cleaning up its act in recent years, GUSA is also a source of endless entertainment: botched elections, interpersonal bickering, toothless resolutions, and campaign silliness.

Most importantly, though, GUSA allocates the student activities fee that students pay every semester.

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A union of Georgetown University’s Aramark workers was officially certified this week, marking the end of nearly two months of negotiations between Aramark, which operates several food service locations at Georgetown, and Unite Here, a union that represents 80,000 foodservice workers nationwide.

“The union at Georgetown for its Aramark workers at Leo’s, Starbucks,  Cosi, the Jesuit residence, and Dr. Mug has been certified,” David Schwartz (SFS ’12), a student who has been involved in the unionization efforts since last July, said.

Through their representation in Unite Here, Aramark employees who work in Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall, Wolfington Hall, the Cosi and Starbucks in the Leavey Center, and the Dr. Mug in the Preclinical Building now have the authority to negotiate with Aramark over health care options and wage increases.

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Aramark employees told their management on Feb. 9 that they intend to unionize as a part of Unite Here, a foodservice union. The announcement comes after more than a year of clandestine planning by Aramark workers, who were later joined by Unite Here union organizers and Georgetown students and professors.

The unionization effort by the Aramark employees—who operate Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall, Cosi, Starbucks, and other venues on campus—sparked on-going negotiations between Unite Here and Aramark.

Over at the Voice, Editor-in-Chief Molly Redden has the full story of the workers’ campaign to unionize.  According to multiple Aramark employees, the push for unionization was a direct response to disrespectful treatment from their managers, as well as poor pay and benefits.

“They made it easy for us to make this decision, the way we were getting treated,” Donté Crestwell, a 14-year Aramark employee, told the Voice. “Our pay raises are just horrible. Last time we had a raise, a lot of [employees] got 12 cents. Mine was 55 cents, and that was probably one of the highest.”

Nonetheless, Aramark has promised to comply with the University’s Just Employment Policy, which requires all vendors to respect workers’ rights, including the right to organize.

“Aramark is neither anti-union, nor pro-union,” Karen Cutler, the director of communication for Aramark, wrote in an email to the Voice. “We fully comply with the University’s Just Employment Policy process, in addition to our business conduct policy that requires equal treatment for all employees, and prohibits workplace harassment.”

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When Julie Patterson (COL ’12) bit down on something hard mixed in with her fried rice at Leo’s on Thursday night, she figured it was a bone—it wasn’t.

“It was so disgusting …  I realized it was round and I thought, oh God is it somebody’s ring?” she said. “And I spit it out and it was this nut, as in nuts and bolts. It was rusty.”

Patterson, who eating at late night, said her friends suggested she talk to personnel at Leo’s. In the end, she didn’t tell staff about the offending hardware, pictured left.

“I figured they would say, ‘Thanks for bringing this to our attention,’ and not do anything about it because it’s unlikely to happen again,” she said. (Disclosure: Patterson has written occasionally for Vox Populi.)

Update 02/20 8:04 p.m.:Vox received the following e-mail today from Executive Director of Dining at Georgetown Andrew Lindquist:

“Georgetown Dining takes food safety very seriously. We not only have a strict preventative maintenance plan in place to avoid such situations, but also have not had any reports of this specific issue previously.

“Following your note, our management team conducted a strict impromptu review of each location along with all of the equipment within Leo’s to identify a potential source and was unable to identify one. Nuts and bolts are somewhat hard to come by in a commercial kitchen to avoid such issues. Most of our equipment and utensils are constructed with welds and other fusing methods.

“If in the future a student does come across any foreign object we do ask that they notify management right away to identify the source and execute a solution.”

The Georgetown Solidarity Committee is protesting against the University’s food service provider, Aramark, accusing them of unjust tomato-buying practices, according to GSC’s blog. According to the post, large food service companies like Aramark and Sodexo, have been using their huge purchasing powers to keep tomato prices depressed, leading to low, stagnant wages for farmworkers.

Back in December, a representative from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworkers’ organization from a tomato-growing region of Florida, visited Georgetown’s food committee to educate them about the issue and to deliver a letter demanding that Aramark reform.

Since then, though, Solidarity hasn’t had much luck communicating the issue to the administration. According to the post, Andrew Lindquist, Aramarks’s Executive Director of Dining Services at Georgetown, denied Aramark’s culpability and has refused repeated requests for meetings. (Lindquist and other University officials have not yet responded to Vox‘s requests for comment.)

So this summer Solidarity has taken to a more guerrilla approach, hanging banners in prominent locations on campus, accosting tour groups, and handing out fliers to students in on-campus summer programs. They are also encouraging other students to call or email Lindquist to pressure him about the issue.

Photo from Solidarity’s blog.