The Georgetown Dish is reporting that Burleith residents’ anti-Campus Plan lawn signs were burned and left on one resident’s front steps during the three-day weekend.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the signs were removed from the front lawns of at least two houses and burned between 11 p.m. on Sunday and 8 a.m. on Monday. Despite an open investigation, no witnesses have been identified.

“We’ve had signs disappear and vandalized, but we’ve never had signs that were burned,” Burleith Citizens’ Association President Lenore Rubino told the Dish. “There are legitimate ways for people to express their opinions, but when you have burning of the signs it takes it to another level.”

Since last June, Burleith and Georgetown residents have displayed the signs, which read “OPPOSE GU’s Campus Plan” and “Our Homes Not GU’s Dorm” to express their frustration with the University’s 2010 Campus Plan.

“The symbolism of burning something on someone’s front lawn is not to be lost,” Rubino told the Dish. “It’s intimidation and it’s meant to incite fear.”

Not much has changed since the University filed its plan in late December. While the Georgetown-area Advisory Neighborhood Commission will present its recommendations next Monday, the D.C. Board of Planning has yet to file its report with the D.C. Zoning Commission, which will ultimately approve or deny the plan.

Photo: Georgetown Dish

At last Thursday’s special Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting regarding Georgetown University’s 2010 Campus Plan, D.C. Students Speak—an advocacy group for students in the District—presented a petition to the commissioners in support of the plan.

As Scott Stirrett (SFS ’13) attempted to present the petition, Commissioner Jeff Jones questioned him about how legitimate the signatures for the petition were. He noted that when he had looked at map of the signatures there was an unusual amount of signatures from the same location in Kansas. Update: Commissioner Jake Sticka has informed Vox, and GoPetition has confirmed, that signatures without a listed zip code are classified as being from this location. This creates a credibility issue for these signatures in the petition, but negates Jones’ claim that all of them came from the same location in Kansas.

Stirrett said that although it is possible that this is true, a significant number of the signatures came from the Georgetown area—and included local residents—and many more signatures came in from across the country.

However, the D.C. Students Speak petition is not the only flawed petition in the Campus Plan debate.

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Last Monday, the Citizens Association of Georgetown hosted a forum to discuss proposed changes to city zoning regulations.

The meeting, which filled the Letelier Theater, brought Travis Parker of the D.C. Office of Planning to discuss what will be the first changes to the regulations since 1958. Although Parker mostly spoke about how the changes can affect the neighborhood, many questions focused around Georgetown University’s proposed campus plan.

According to the Georgetown Dish, one resident waited over an hour in an aisle to ask how the neighbors can have their voices heard without being “steamrolled” by the University. Parker responded to this, and similar questions, by directing neighbors to voice their opinions to the Zoning Commission.

“The Zoning Commission is, in my experience, very good about listening to concerns and if not resolving them, at least addressing them,” Parker said.

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Thursday night’s Burleith Citizens Association meeting featured an appearance by Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, who answered residents’ concerns about Georgetown’s 2010 campus plan.

While standing between two of the BCA’s ubiquitous “Our Homes, Not GU’s Dorm” lawn signs, Evans voiced his support for Burleith residents. However, he also told the crowd that he has little control over the D.C. Zoning Commission, the judicial body that will rule on the plan.

“It’s not something I can make happen for you, or make happen for anybody,” he said. “I wish I could solve your problem with a magic wand, but I can’t.”

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In this week’s edition of “How Burleith Residents Misunderstand the 2010 Campus Plan,” we take a look at Lenore Rubino, President of the Burleith Citizens’ Associations. This gem of a line is from an email Rubino sent out over the Burleith listserv:

“Good for all: More on-campus, affordable housing that accommodates student needs. I would think university students, no matter where they are located, would want and demand safe, affordable, convenient on-campus housing, especially at the tuition rates some universities are charging.”

Sigh. I’m not sure where Rubino thinks the University can build more on-campus housing. Neighbors often cite the fact that an architectural firm identified space for 800 additional beds on campus—if the University built on every plot of open space there exists on campus. (And built only dorm-style housing that no student would ever opt to live in as an upperclassman.)

I’m also not sure why Rubino thinks that new on-campus housing would be less expensive than off-campus housing. It certainly isn’t more affordable now.

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7/8 UPDATE: It looks like the University switched out Dimolitsas’s letter for a more-detailed chart [PDF]. At the bottom of this post, we’ve republished a copy of the original letter.

On Tuesday, a Georgetown University official finally responded to mounting opposition to the 2010 Campus Plan.

In an open letter addressed to “Friends and Neighbors,” Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Spiros Dimolitsas addressed concerns about the 2010 Campus Plan—with hopes that the University and the surrounding neighborhoods can “move forward together.”

Without directly addressed specific “mischaracterizations,” Dimolitsas briefly outlined details about the University’s enrollment figures, student housing, off-campus conduct, and air quality.

While the information in the letter is nothing new, it nonetheless comes during a contentious time between the University and local residents. Both the Burleith Citizens’ Association (BCA) and the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown (CAG) are in the midst of months-long fund raising campaigns to fight the University. In recent weeks, the BCA circulated form letters and an online petition to galvanize opposition to the Campus Plan. (And don’t forget about those pesky lawn signs. Or ours!)

The University is expected to file its 2010 Campus Plan with the D.C. Office of Planning sometime this summer.

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Attention Burleith residents:  If you don’t have time to write your own letter about Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan to University officials and local politicians, don’t worry—the Burleith Citizens Association is here to help.

The BCA created a form letter for residents of Burleith to send to a number of people who have the ability to affect the 2010 Campus Plan, including President John DeGioia, Mayor Adrian Fenty, Councilmember Jack Evans and Harriet Tregoning, Director of D.C.’s Office of Planning.

Like any good political campaign, the letter has a few misleading points—many of which Vox debunked following last month’s BCA meeting.

One such issue is the number of students that the University plans to add.  The BCA’s letter states that the current plan “to add close to 3,400 new students by 2020 without providing additional housing on campus or in satellite communities is unacceptable.”

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Our trip into Burleith yesterday got us thinking about a few things. Why should the residents be the only ones who get to have fun with signage? How can students get involved with the 2010 Campus Plan? And why has it been months since our last contest?

And so, in the spirit of fairness, we’re launching a “2010 Campus Plan” sign contest. All next week, we’ll be checking blog@georgetownvoice.com for submissions. If you’d like to enter, don’t forget to include your name, school, year, and a little bit about what inspired your sign.

Next Friday, we’ll choose our favorite signs and then pit them against one another in a vote. That’s right—you choose the winner! Lucky you!

The winner will receive a yet-to-be-determined prize.

After the jump, we’ve posted a sample sign to spark your creativity.

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If you’ve walked through Burleith lately, you’ve surely seen the red and white signs that have popped up on residents’ lawns over the past week.

The signs, which read “OPPOSE GU’s Campus Plan” and “Our Homes Not GU’s Dorm,” are a part of the Burleith Citizens’ Association’s campaign against the 2010 Campus Plan. As we’ve reported here (many, many times), Burleith residents largely oppose the 2010 Campus Plan because they worry about the consequences of increasing the graduate student enrollment.

Vox decided to take a stroll through Burleith this afternoon to talk to some residents about the signs. While some residents are knowledgeable about the 2010 Campus Plan, others remain poorly informed about the Plan’s details. And many, such as S Street homeowner Larry Torrez, only put up signs after BCA representatives knocked on their doors asking for support.

“Personally, I like the thought of living in a college town,” he said. “To be honest, this is a nice, sleepy, little neighborhood.”

But if student behavior can be ascribed to “college students being college students,” as Torrez argued, then why did he agree to put up the sign?

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Although nothing agitates the blood of a Vox reader quite like a post about a Citizens Association of Georgetown meeting about the 2010 Campus Plan, you’ve got to hand it to our neighbors in West Georgetown—they know that plan backwards and forwards. CAG seems to have a clear idea about what exactly in the plan they don’t like and why it threatens their neighborhood.

Don’t believe me? Then you should go to the next Burleith Citizens Association meeting about the 2010 Campus Plan, where their take on the plan is unfortunately beset by speculation and half-truths.

If you read our coverage of the first meeting the BCA held about the final plan draft in April, you’re already familiar with Burleith residents’ main gripes with the 2010 Campus Plan. And if you didn’t, I’m sure you can guess the usual suspects. The plan doesn’t add new on-campus housing for undergraduates; it adds over 2,400 graduate students to the school in the next ten years; it threatens to increase traffic in the neighborhood; and in general, it gets residents talking about how awful it is to live near students. With a few adjustments, the slides at the two meetings that the BCA held this past Saturday and Sunday to talk about the 2010 Campus Plan were more or less the same as the last meeting.

So I’ll spare you another rundown of what Burleith hates about the plan. What’s more interesting is what they just don’t get about it.

Let’s start with the portion of the presentation led by Candith Pallandre, the BCA’s treasurer, which consisted almost entirely of assumptions and misunderstandings. Pallandre zeroed in on the road that will run the length of campus between the woods and Kehoe Field, the tennis courts, and the power plant.

“This was supposed to be a service road, and now they’re saying that buses are service vehicles,” she said. With a knowing smile, she continued, “Buses carrying students are not really service vehicles.”

Pallandre didn’t give any clues as to why it would be a problem for GUTS buses to drive along a road that is bordered by woods and Georgetown University property. But it’s clear that she assumed the University thought it was being sneaky by classifying GUTS buses as service vehicles, and that this would have sneaky consequences.

In reality, the road will allow Georgetown University to pick up passengers from the north end of campus and then exit out Canal Road—which is what Burleith residents have been demanding for years.

After the jump, we recap the rest of the gripes from last weekend’s BCA meeting.

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