Computer-generated Georgetown boathouse (the boathouse on the left)

The administration must love the crew team. Now, new lobbying disclosure reports from the first quarter of this year show that boathouse lobbying has cost Georgetown at least $1,030,000, up from $990,000 from the last time the Voice reported on boathouse lobbying.

The two reports, filed by lobbyists at the Carmen Group and Georgetown’s personal lobbyist Scott Fleming, report more than $40,000 spent on the boathouse. The Carmen report (embedded below) has $40,000 paid from Georgetown to the Carmen Group. This quarter, according to the report, the Carmen Group took a break from its usual job talking to the National Park Service and just helped Georgetown deal with environmental paperwork.

It’s impossible to figure out how much Fleming’s form (PDF) adds to the boathouse bill because the $30,000 he lists in lobbying fees includes advocacy for other issues like the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which was a pretty cool thing of Georgetown to lobby for.

Check out the Carmen Group’s documents after the jump!

Read the rest of this entry »

DPS did not interfere with the crew team’s antics

That’s right, streakers! When I saw posters advertising “STREAKERS IN FRONT OF LAU @ 9″ I wondered what the poster was a ploy for.

But there was no ploy. Tonight, ten male students from the lightweight crew team made a nude dash across Georgetown’s campus. They began at Village A, barreled down the library steps at top speed and made their way up Prospect toward Leo’s before returning to the Village A apartment from whence they came.

It was all part of crew team initiation—as if rising at the buttcrack of dawn to skim along the frosty Potomac every morning isn’t initiation enough. Before the “event,” crew team’s non-participants gathered a large audience from the library and handed out programs identifying the hazed—and each had their team number magic markered onto their chest to assure recognition as they whizzed by.

I just regret we don’t have a picture. If you’ve got one, do submit to mredden@staff.georgetownvoice.com!

Update: A former member of the lightweight crew team and a Voice staffer has emailed me to say that the crew team considers this a “relatively harmless ritual.” Given that the streaking is optional, he feels hazing is too strong a word. A fair point. What do you think?

Photo taken from Flickr user minifig under a Creative Commons license.