Makin’ bank

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released its database of executive compensation at colleges and universities for the 2007-08 school year and Georgetown’s own John DeGioia isn’t doing too poorly for himself.

With a total compensation of $642,582 (that’s $607,939 in pay and 34,643 in benefits), DeGioia was the 63rd highest paid private university president in the country in 2007-08, according to the Chronicle’s data.  That salary was a $50,965 upgrade from what he received during the 2006-07 school year.

But DeGioia was outdone in the District by the president of American University, Cornelius Kerwin, who was the fifth highest paid private university president with $1,419,339 in total compensation.  The real record-holder, though, was George Washington University’s former president, Stephen J. Trachtenberg.  With a total compensation of $3.7 million, Trachtenberg was the high paid current or former university president by a margin of $2 million.

Photo by Lexie Herman.

The Princeton Review just released its annual rankings, and Georgetown got some
real nice accolades (registration required):

• Georgetown was named the eighth best college town, up two from last year’s 10th place showing.
• We also moved up two place to number eight on the rankings of politically active student bodies.
• We’re number seven in terms of popularity of study abroad programs, a new ranking for us.

As strong as our showing is, it’s hard not to get a little crosstown envy. George Washington University was ranked first for most politically active students, second for best college town, and eighth for best dorms; American University was crowned second for most politically active students, seventh for best college town and 19th for best career services.

As far as D.C. schools go, it feels an awful lot like we’re playing third-fiddle in the Princeton Review’s eyes…

No T-Pain for you, AU

Last week, the Voice’s Sean Quigley had some harsh words for Spring Concert performer T-Pain (to refresh your memory, some of those words were: underwhelming, lackluster, repetitive, tiresome…). But at least we had the chance to experience the auto-tuned wonder, as disappointing as he may have been. Our peers at American University weren’t even that lucky.

The Eagle reports:

The T-Pain concert, scheduled for 8 p.m. [Monday], has been cancelled, according to Student Union Board Director Josh Offsie.

T-Pain was forced to cancel the concert due to laryngitis, according to a source familiar with the situation.

These watchdogs of democracy are busy reporting important national news

American University’s The Eagle doesn’t have a reputation for being umm… any good at all. Wrote City Paper back in August:

One [AU] writing professor joked that his colleagues spend their end-of-semester party opening a random issue and doing shots for each grammatical error …. In some cases the paper even quotes its own opinion columnists as sources.

Ouch! So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the author of the article reporting that the seat in ANC 3D reserved for a student representative is vacant clearly didn’t have a clue as to what the heck an ANC-thingy does.

Still, the fact that The Eagle staff has only just realized (or worse, only just reported) that they don’t have a rep on the ANC is truly frightening. Seriously guys, elections were in November! And another thing! The article downplays the importance of an ANC to an absurd degree:

The Advisory Neighborhood Commission’s Ward 3D commission – part of the governing body for D.C. neighborhoods – meets once a month and discusses issues that could be pertinent to AU students, but the committee has no AU student representation.

Issues that could be pertinent to AU students? I seem to remember that there are undiscovered caches of chemical weapons still buried on your campus leftover from WWI, when you were a chemical weapons testing site for the army.

The Army has been cleaning up chemical weapons buried in AU’s neighborhood since the nineties. But ANC 3D Commissioner Thomas Smith (who is currently AU students’ only representative on ANC 3D—two of AU’s dorms lie in his district, 02) worries that there’s nothing safe about the way American University is going about it (more to come in this week’s Voice).

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you part of the freshman spillover that every year dominates one floor of Village C East? There are some American University students who totally get you. This fall semester, American University faced a housing crisis and as part of their solution, housed 50 to 60 student in the Georgetown Holiday Inn on Wisconsin Avenue.

Had no idea? It’s no wonder. American University delivered these students, who you might have expected to see trekking the two miles to their classes by bike or on foot, from Georgetown to their Mass. Avenue campus by car or by limo nearly every day for the entire semester. But don’t feel too jealous:

“The living condition has been so bad,” says [Shuo] Li, 21. “The study environment-you know, this is a hotel, so we don’t have much room. And the light here in the room is not so good.”

The guys’ room has a circular wooden desk that has barely enough room for a laptop and a book. So they’ve improvised: In another part of the room, they’ve set up an ironing board that holds a lamp and a cup of pens.

Worse yet, friends of the Holiday Inn residents claim their hoity-toity living has made them adverse to the main campus’ “binge-drinking culture”–the horror!

Peta2 released its annual list of vegetarian-friendly schools this week, and we’re on it. In the grand tradition of the Jacksonville game, we made it, but barely, scraping into 10th place:

Placing in the top 10 for the second year in a row, Georgetown has continued to win rave reviews from students and faculty alike. Some of the many highlights include barbecued veggie-riblet sandwiches, Asian sesame lo mein, and vegan tacos. No wonder Georgetown sits comfortably among the most prestigious universities in the country!

I haven’t seen such breathless copywriting since the season finale of Mad Men, but hurray for Leo’s.

What’s up at first-place American University? I’m sure the AU Eagle is taking the rankings in stride and not acting like it’s BREAKING NEWS…

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s edition of Modern Love, the New York Times’ treacly Sunday Styles feature, comes from Randon Billings Noble, a literature professor at American University.  “War Weary From a Dangerous Liaison” is about a Valentine’s Day email from her most significant ex-boyfriend (the one she still thinks of as her “safety net”) that forces her to break the news to him that she’s married:

I had always carried him in the back pocket of my heart. He was my safety net. During my catastrophic breakups, he was always faintly in the background, ready to be called if needed. And he felt the same way about me. At 19 we decided that if we weren’t married to anyone else by 30, we would marry each other. But by our late 20s we had broken up, gotten back together, broken up again. Thirty came and went in silence. I had thought he was the love of my life.

There are some heavy-handed trapeze metaphors and presumptuous comparisons to Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, but it’s got some poignant insights into the painful process of getting over that person you never thought you could.  That said, from a student’s perspective it’s kind of TMI and would probably make taking a class with Professor Noble a little awkward–another reason to be glad you don’t go to AU!

Will the AU Eagle ever stop steering us wrong? First they were wrong about Georgetown “taking action” against Juicy Campus, and now, it turns out they’re wrong about the Cuddler hitting American and GW. Voice reporter Eric Pilch talked with the Metropolitan Police Department today and they said they didn’t think the attacks were related. That’s even creepier, when you think about it–there are at least two people sneaking into beds in the District.

The Cuddler, last seen sneaking into the beds of Georgetown women and spooning or attempting to rape them(depending on the incident), has branched out. He recently hit the areas around George Washington University and American, and this City Paper article makes mention of earlier crimes at the University of Maryland.

Given the seriousness/scariness of the Cuddler’s attacks, we need to get this guy a new nickname. “The Cuddler” just sounds way too sweet, like he’s a child scared of the dark and in need of affection. The Voice was bandying around the Crapist (cuddle/rapist) earlier, and while accurate, that’s too close to grapist. Ideas?

We checked in with VP of Student Affairs Todd Olson to see if there was any truth to claim by American University Dean of Students Sara Waldron that we’re “taking some action” against Juicy Campus. His response? Umm, no.

I just don’t know where that understanding came from. We are not pursuing any action against Juicy Campus.

Sorry AU, looks like you have to figure out a policy on your own.