Time for the last reading of the Dowdometer, the machine that measures now-former GUSA President Pat Dowd’s success at living up to low expectations. The red bar is my expectations.

Pat grew his mustache today because he’s looking to live the life only available to Thomas Friedman. Describing his trip to Finland, Pat said (emphasis added):

“I got a Thomas Friedman level of access when I was there to ask questions. The trip was really cool, because I got a chance to take all the theory and conceptual stuff I learned at Georgetown and apply it to a real issue,” Dowd said.

I don’t know about that, but if “Thomas Friedman level of access” means stripping down to your birthday suit, here is Pat Dowd naked. The Dowdometer was very pleased when I fed that JPEG into its disk drive, so that may account for the sky-high rating today.

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Buried in last week’s GUSA coverage was a bit about GUSA President Pat Dowd’s (SFS `09) latest, and perhaps last crusade: raising funds for a Hindi language program here at Georgetown.

Dowd and a fundraising team intend to solicit funds for the program from the tech community in Silicon Valley, he said. He estimated that it would take $80,000 to provide for one professor for one year of the program, but with $2 million, “we can endow a chair for the Hindi language program.”

Showing student initiative comparable on some levels to Brian Kesten’s (COL `10), when the University shuffled its feet over the Hindi program, (“It’s been really hard to get the departments to cooperate to share the cost,” Dowd said), Dowd decided to look beyond the University for the money to fund the program.

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It’s Christmas-time at Georgetown, a time when all hearts on campus turn to one man who promised us salvation: Student Association president Pat Dowd. That makes for a perfect time to evaluate Pat’s term thus far using the Dowdometer, which judges Pat’s performance against my low expectations (the red bar).

The last time the Dowdometer was turned on, Pat was floundering after the collapse of his pumpkin giveaway. How do things look now?

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It’s time for another appearance of the Dowdometer, where we gauge how GUSA President Pat Dowd is living up to expectations. He’s a pumpkin today in honor of his fall giveaway. Despite being a happy pumpkin, Pat is still floating under the red expectations bar, just like last time!

First of all, the much-vaunted pumpkin party fell apart. While it was sweet seeing him cut a monster pumpkin in John Carroll’s lap, GUSA Grassroots members soon left their posts and a swarm of students made off with the pumpkins.

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The Dowdometer is supposed to be about gauging Student Association President Pat Dowd’s performance, with the ulterior motive of developing in him a Pavlovian response to our approval. This week, though, the Dowdometer is all about being angry, because Pat seems to want to have the University ban Juicy Campus from campus internet. From Friday’s Hoya (emphasis mine):

Some projects are already in the works to stop the spread of the Juicy infestation. GUSA President Patrick Dowd (SFS ’09) is speaking with the administration about having University Information Services block JuicyCampus.com from the Georgetown network. This would make it impossible to access the Web site via any of the wireless networks on campus, or via any Internet connections in campus housing. Dowd feels strongly about the issue, saying about JuicyCampus.com, “It’s despicable, and there’s no place for that type of that hurtful speech in our community. … It doesn’t help anyone, and it has no place at Georgetown. Maybe there are some people that disagree, but few will be sorry to see it go, and if they are, maybe they need to ask themselves some tough questions about why.”

Deliciously, The Hoya, the same people who want to go independent so they can use their 1st Amendment rights, say Georgetown and GUSA should be “applauded for any steps they take.” The Hoya doesn’t represent students, though, and Pat supposedly does, so I had to confirm his application to the Greg Mottla School for Little Dictators.

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I didn’t think much of GUSA President Pat Dowd when he was running. Neither did the Voice editorial board, which endorsed his opponents. With GUSA Summer Fellows coming together so soon and his pretty good response to our latest crimes, though, I’m feeling better about his reign.

Things will change, though, and probably for the worse. It’ll be hard to keep track of whether Pat Dowd’s better or worse than we expected him to be. That’s why we’ve come up with the Dowdometer, a device to measure whether he’s exceeding (admittedly low) expectations. So far, things are rosy. But who knows what next semester will bring?