Thursday evening will be the first test that the recently filed Georgetown University 2010 Campus Plan will need to go through before it goes to the D.C. Zoning Commission in April.

The special Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting—which will be held at nearby Duke Ellington School—begins at 6:30 p.m. and will likely include speakers from the Citizens Association of Georgetown, the Burleith Citizens Association, and, of course, the ANC commissioners themself.

Jake Sticka (COL ’13), a newly elected member of the ANC, said in an interview with Vox that the special meeting will focus solely on the plan and will be used to help draft a resolution from the ANC. The resolution will not be voted on until the next regular meeting of the ANC at the earliest.

Sticka also noted that public input—including students—is likely to be the focus of the evening.

In response to the special meeting, DC Students Speak created an online petition for those who support the plan to make it clear to the ANC.

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In November, Mike Trummel (COL ’10) won a $3,000 Reimagine Georgetown Grant from The Corp, co-sponsored by GUAFSCU and The Hoya, to start DC Students Speak, a grassroots student advocacy group. “Because there is little interaction with other DC students, there is consequently little opportunity to organize and have DC students’ voices heard,” Trummel wrote in his original project proposal.

Now, DCSS has launched their website, which Trummel said is the first step to achieving their goal of better connecting D.C. college students to lobby for student interests, like addressing 61-D violations.

“Our vision of this website is that it can be used as a tool for students to better understand the challenges that students collectively face,” writes DCSS. “More than just raising awareness, DC Students Speaks also strives to be an advocacy organization, with the aim of mobilizing DC students to work together towards common goals.”

The site, which launched on Tuesday, aggregates content from student publications at five area schools, American, Catholic, Howard, George Washington, and Georgetown, and it is looking to expand to include Trinity and UDC. On their events page, you can join their listserv, become a student representative for your school, or look for information on how to get involved in their events, like their first annual conference of area students at Georgetown in September.

“If we work together, we can become a voice that students use to make sure their concerns are heard,” DCSS says. “It’s time to organize.”