This week’s Georgetown University Student Association meeting featured an irksome inauguration (just like Obama’s!) and tear-jerking eulogies to Philly P’s. Here’s the wrap:
Inaugurations: GUSA swore in the newly-reelected President and Vice President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11)—perhaps extraconstitutionally?
“There is a curious little quirk of the by-laws which requires the outgoing president and vice-president to administer the oath to the incoming president and vice-president,” Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ‘12) told the Senate. Given that the outgoing president and vice-president and the incoming president and vice-president were one and the same, Ungar decided to administer the oath himself.
After their swearing in, both candidates delivered speeches to the GUSA senate. Kluger called on the Senate to remember Gandhi’s words to become the change they want to see in the world, while Angert urged Senators to maintain their dedication to the GUSA senate and never be afraid to throw themselves into large and challenging projects. Angert then swore in newly-elected Senator Andrew Foley (MSB ‘10), who could not raise his right hand because his arm is broken—another suspect inauguration?
GUSA Fund Bolsters Funding Board: The GUSA senate approved a bill to transfer $15,000 from the GUSA fund to the Student Activities Fee Reserve account, which is used to provide funds to advisory boards. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said he had talked with GUSA Fund Chair Kate Petersen (COL ‘11) and that she said the GUSA Fund could limit its spending to $15,000 for the semester.
“We simply want to go into the budget process with as much money as we can,” Troiano said.
New Sign: GUSA unanimously approved a bill to appropriate $200 towards the creation of a vinyl sign bearing GUSA’s logo. The bill was introduced by Senator Nolan Johnson (COL’11), who said the sign was “a great way to make use of GUSA’s new logo”.
In a solid victory over runners-up Matt Wagner (SFS ‘11) and Emmanuel Hampton (COL ‘11) and two other tickets, Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11) have won reelection to the GUSA executive, student Election Commissioners report.
Angert and Kluger won in the first round, but since votes were close, Election Commissioners said, results were run to round two.
In a separate victory, this year’s GUSA Election does not appear to have involved the kind of catastrophes that have marred several previous elections, including trouble with instant run-off voting in 2008, and the adamantly protested, last-minute disqualification of two tickets in last year’s election.
This week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate included a heated contest to fill a vacant seat on the Finance and Appropriations committee, and a denouncement of Eric Cusimano’s extracurricular involvements. Here’s the wrap:
Finance and Appropriations Committee Post Filled
In perhaps the most contentious part of the meeting, Senator Ben Bold (COL’13) was selected by the full Senate to fill a vacancy on the Finance and Appropriations Committee. During his time for remarks, Bold said he had closely followed the work of the Finance and Appropriations Committee and had fully supported the funding board reform. Bold ran against Senator Matthew Ginsberg (COL’11), who said that he was suited for the job because he had an interest in financial allocations and had served as a director for the Corp.
During the debate over the confirmation, some Senators appeared to argue that Senator Bold was competent and self-motivated, and therefore should be opposed. Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ‘12) warned against a “leadership accretion” on the FinApp Committee, while FinApp Chair Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said, “Our committee has enough ambition and self-motivated people … We have to distribute this energy to all the committees.” Ultimately, however, Bold’s attributes were deemed more of a good thing than a bad thing, and he was approved by a 10-8 vote.
A little late out of the gate, President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11), who are running for reelection in Tuesday’s Georgetown University Student Association for President and VP, have posted their campaign video.
Their video, complete with outtakes, features “Eye of the Tiger,” slap fights, role playing, an endorsement by two men’s basketball players (they’re getting real political this season, aren’t they?) and no rap. Enjoy!
Update February 9, 1:31 p.m.:Brian Roscitt has told the Voice that he and William McGeehin are dropping out of the race.
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Below is the list of Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates for the Georgetown University Student Association, as provided to Vox by student Election Commissioner Ryan Gavigan. This list appears in the order the candidate pairs will appear on the ballot, Gavigan said:
Hillary Dang is running for President with Katie Balloch as her running mate
Brian Roscitt is running for President with William McGeehin as his running mate
GUSA Senator Arman Ismail is running for President with Tucker Stafford as a running mate
Campaigning will begin at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, February 9, and the election will take place on Tuesday, February 23.
Vox has included details about the candidates we’re familiar with, but wewill continue to update this post as we get relevant information about other candidates.
At Sunday’s meeting, GUSA established that this year’s presidential elections would be accompanied by a debate between all the candidates. God know what the actual elections will look like, though—Senators lost the bill they passed last year setting down the terms for this year’s election. They also approved some members for the GUSA Fund’s board and debated rescheduling this week’s Funding Reform Town Hall around students’ TV watching schedules. Here’s the wrap:
Election Season: In his executive briefing to the Senate, Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) announced that he and his vice president, Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11), would be running again for president and vice-president respectively. Angert said he and Kluger had discussed the option and decided that “there are a lot of things we still can get done.” (See Molly Redden’s post to read about the agenda Angert and Kluger are running on.)
But if the conclusion of this section of the meeting was any indication of how smoothly elections will go this year, after the catastrophe that was the 2009 elections, the outlook is not good. Our Senators, it turns out, could not find the bill they passed last year that dictate how this year’s elections would be held.
The bill, passed just before last year’s elections, established that this year’s elections would be held as an instant runoff. The Senators could find absolutely no trace of the bill, even after one GUSA senator went back to his house to search for it. So, although several vowed they had seen it, the Senate had no choice but to forget about the Loch Ness Election Bill and address other issues.
On Sunday, Georgetown University Student Association Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11) announced to the GUSA Senate that they planned to run for reelection in the presidential election on February 23.
In an interview with Vox, Angert said that they had been considering whether or not they would run again for some time now.
“We’ve been asked a lot whether or not we were gonna run again, but before we decided, we wanted to make sure that we had value added we could give, things that could continue to be improved upon, very real achievable goals,” he said.
Angert explained that he and Kluger will be running on an agenda platform that promises to achieve specific goals, one which they will reveal in more detail once campaigning actually begins. Their agenda will focus on improving student safety, campus and social life, and student space.
“I’m a huge fan of the word agenda as opposed to platform. People should expect a GUSA candidate to deliver on all of the items they’re running on,” Kluger said.
Without giving away what he and Kluger will be specifically promising—they said they would be exploring what they can realistically promise over the next week—Angert said that their agenda would probably include new initiatives to improve student safety and a push for more and better student space.
Calen Angert and his executive office have an ambitious list of goals for what could be their final months in office.
Noting how little time he has left in his term before elections take place in February, Angert told the Voice that his focus will be on solidifying the gains he and others in the executive office had already made. “Our goals will be to really tie up things we began last semester,” Angert said.
Angert said that the executive branch would continue to work on reducing the number of 61D citations issued to students. According to Angert, only three 61D citations were given out last semester. The executive would continue to lower that number, Angert said, by increasing student awareness of the citations and by working with neighborhood groups to resolve the issue of student noise.
Angert and the executive branch are also looking to finally kick off the student-driven Saferides program. “We’ve cleared all the legal hurdles for Saferides, and we’re honestly just waiting on DPS to give us the go ahead,” Angert said.
At yesterday’s GUSA meeting, Senators forged ahead with plans for the GUSA Fund and were briefed by the executive branch about the Readership program and buses to basketball game. Here’s the wrap:
The GUSA Fund
In a unanimous vote, GUSA passed a bill that would transfer $4,000 of its own funds into the recently created GUSA Fund. The $4,000 will be matched by $26,000 from the Funding Board for a total of $30,000. The transfer of $4,000 of GUSA’s own money was meant to show the Senate’s commitment to the new fund.
Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13), a sponsor of the bill, stated that “We do think the GUSA fund is important, necessary and will benefit students, so certainly we thought that GUSA could easily put forward $4,000.” Malkerson added that the bill was “an act of good faith for the GUSA fund.”
If you’re heading to the Verizon Center on Saturday to watch the Hoyas trounce (we hope) American University, your ‘best’ options for getting there—splitting a cab six ways, taking the GUTS bus to the Dupont Metro stop to Chinatown, or worst of all, taking the GUTS bus to the Rosslyn Metro stop to Metro Center to Chinatown—are all a real hassle.
But if things shake out the way Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) thinks they soon will, students will have a fourth, better option for getting to weekend games sometime during this men’s basketball season—buses that go directly to the Verizon Center.
GUSA Deputy Chief of Staff for Student Life Mike Meaney (SFS ’12) recently spoke to Abe’s Transportation, which runs Georgetown’s weekend transportation, which told him that they were happy to change the routes. He is preparing to speak to the director of transportation of the Athletic Department to work out the change with them.
“I don’t know if this will get off the ground before Christmas or after Christmas,” Angert said, but they are on track to happen this season.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, a weekly newsmagazine at Georgetown University. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
Ah! Buses!
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