It has been just under a week since Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) left office as president and vice president of the Georgetown University Student Association after two terms.
Although Angert and Kluger have been praised quite often for their tenure, we here at Vox were curious to see if they followed through on their reelection campaign platform.
[Editor’s note: The official campaign website, calenandjason.com, no longer is operational. The following goals are those that they opted to highlight on their Facebook page.]
Create a “gusaHELP” email account to answer student questions about anything ranging from the Student Code of Conduct to maintenance concerns.
Although it sounds like a helpful idea and similar to 2011 GUSA candidate Charlie Joyce’s (COL ’12) WikiHow website idea, this email account never came to fruition.
GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11), along with 14 other student body presidents from across the country, recently participated in a cultural exchange with their counterparts in Russia.
As a part of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission’s Education, Culture and Sports Working Group, the group met with student leaders in Russia as well as members of the Russian government.
“We met with the majority leaders of both houses […], individuals from the Russian State Department, a Russian think tank, and several students,” Angert wrote in an email.
Chang Suh, director of the Open World Leadership Center, an organizer of the trip, stated that the mission of the trip was to “identify the future leaders of America and acquaint them with Russian culture.” Suh also claimed that there is good reason for selecting these students because former U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton (SFS ’68) were student body presidents. (However, any GUSA historian would know that Clinton lost his race for student body president.)
“I did not expect our Russian contacts to field our questions so directly. The acknowledgment and candid discourse during these meetings helped transform my view of Russia from a Cold War carryover to a developing democracy,” Angert told America.gov.
This is not the first time a GUSA president has participated in a cultural exchange program. Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) traveled to Finland in a similar trip in 2009.
The exchange lasted for eight days, and was paid for by the Russian government.
From time to time, the Washington Post attempts to provide good hyper-local coverage of D.C.—and they almost always fail stupendously. Recently, the Post found a new, similarly out-of-their-purview beat to epically fail at: college campuses.
Their college news blog, Campus Overload, features either tame rehashes of mildly interesting stories from campuses all over the country, or completely inane original stories. Par exemple, within the past week, Campus Overload offered readers such gems as this “hilarious video,” “Spring Breaking It Down,” and a totally vapid interview with Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ’11).
Vox has no idea what the point of this interview—and its thought-provoking questions, like, “What’s allowed and not allowed on your Facebook profile?” and “When’s the last time you pulled an all-nighter?”—was supposed to be. To show readers how the sleepless, social-networking other side lives?
To edify student government leaders on other campuses?:
[Post]: What advice do you have for students on other campuses who are launching student government campaigns?
[Angert]: Make sure your heart and head are in the right place, and tell the truth.
[Post]: What’s the best way to get to know your fellow student government members?
[Angert]: E-mail them or call them. Anyone I know who is involved with student government would love to meet and talk about current issues and future initiatives.
To show off the Post’s incredibly high editing standards, where “haha” is a word?:
[Post]: How much sleep do you usually get?
[Angert]: Too little, haha. I’m fully operable on 4 hours — anything less and my productivity suffers.
Beats us. Even the interview’s more substantive questions, about funding reform, mystify us. Who cares to read about that who isn’t a Georgetown student? And if some reform-minded soul was interested, why would they turn to the Post for their nuance-free, after-the-jump coverage of it?
Oh well. At least now we know what Angert’s favorite Georgetown bar is (Saloun), what his favorite admissions essay was, and what he wants to do when he grows up.
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.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
It has been just under a week since Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) left office as president and vice president of the Georgetown University Student Association after two terms.
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