First off, we’d like to give an official Vox Populi welcome to the Class of 2016, for officially graduating from “pre-frosh” to bona fide freshmen. As you begin your career on the Hilltop, you’re going to notice that, although your fellow classmates may have different interests and hail from different corners of the Garden State, there is one habit that unifies the student body like no other: Complaining about the University. Here, Vox has compiled a rundown of Hoyas’s most common topics of complaint, why they do so, and how to deal with them a little more effectively.

Facilities

• Why we complain: Blame it on Target catalogues that show college dorms with enough room for home theaters and popcorn machines, but most kids go to college under the delusion that their dorms will be big, perfectly furnished, and spotless. So it’s easy to forget before moving in that your room has been lived in by an unfathomable number of people, many with doubtlessly questionable hygiene and destructive living habits, before you. So your blinds might fall off (Editor’s Note: Mine did), your toilet might overflow, your lights will burn out, and you’ll have to wait some undesirably long amount of time before Maintenance comes around to fix them.

• What to do instead: Make sure you report everything, and we do mean everything, in the Room Condition Report you fill out in the beginning of the year—it’ll keep you from being charged for the mess that the inhabitants of yesteryear left in their wake. If you have any problems with your room’s facilities that you really can’t deal with on your own (burnt-out light bulbs, broken drawers, even low water pressure in your shower), put in a work request immediately: Sure, it will still take a couple of days, but the worst thing you can do is wait.
• Read the rest of this entry »

DJ Vox is in the building, here to announce that Daniel LaMagna is in the building! Part-time GUSA senator representing some of the chill inhabitants of Henle Village, and full-time worshipper at the altars of the rap gods, this sophomore junior and rising star on the Georgetown University Student Life Committee has been making sure that his constituents know what he and the rest of the crazy cats in GUSA are up to.

In two Youtube videos (also embedded below), one posted Saturday and the other in October, LaMagna’s topic of choice is “Facilities…and why they suck.” In his October video, he reminds his audience that he feels their pain too: “I know my shower hasn’t been fixed for about two months.” He dedicates himself to getting some answers.

The song that plays over the introduction and credits of his first video, which has been viewed over 500 times, is none other than J Cole’s “Who Dat”, in which the rapper frequently uses a word that former Republican presidential candidate and pizza magnate Herman Cain has no problem saying.

In his second video, LaMagna happily reports that Facilities is a priority for the administration, and a major overhaul is planned for next summer. Until then, students can personally contact the Director of Facilities Richard Payant (payantr@georgetown.edu) whenever their work orders aren’t filled. Accompanying this video is Jay-Z’s “Politics as Usual” from what LaMagna calls the artist’s best album, Reasonable Doubt (1996).

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Wednesday, October 12, Georgetown’s Chief Operating Officer, Christopher Augostini held the first “Hoya Roundtable” to ask students how Georgetown could best serve them.

New to the job, Augostini started the meeting by saying, ”The best way for me to orient my self to the issues to the student body was simply to ask you.”

There were only about ten or so student in attendance who were not affiliated with the Roundtables innitiative, and they were vastly outnumbered by administrators and staff who packed the room. Luckily, the Google Moderator questions ensured that the most pressing issues were addressed–well, they were at least mentioned.

Let’s go over the highlights:

Technology services

Kevin Murphy, interim Chief Information Officer, presented on behalf of UIS.

• They have ordered the antennae to give wireless for Copley lawn, and they should arrive in about 45 days. Similar wireless for Healy lawn are due to be installed next spring.
• Faculty and staff and being moved to Google mail, so they will have full access to apps like Google Calendar, Docs, etc.
• They are looking into programs like lecture capture and additional printing locations
• They are planning on changing printing to five cents per page. Murphy admitted that the cost was arbitrary and mainly intended to discourage students from printing “hundreds of thousands” of pages.

Facilities Management

• Work orders: annually, facilities gets 40,000-50,000 work orders, and they received around 2-3,000 work orders per week during the first month of school. They are looking into buying a new computer system to manage the number of orders.
• Facilities also addressed the state of some of the rest rooms on campus. They were in stark disagreement with one student in the audience about the state of women’s restrooms in the ICC.

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This Wednesday, Chief Operating Officer Christopher Augostini will be holding a forum with University leaders in the Department of Public Safety, auxiliary services, student housing, facilities, and University Information Services to solicit student feedback. The event, held in Sellinger Lounge from 5 p.m. will be the first of a series of discussions in an effort to increase conversation between students and University offices.

The series, called the Hoya Roundtables, was set in place by Augostini over the summer.

“I just need to know what [the] issues are. Right now at the moment, I’m not quite clear if I fully understand all the issues that students want to lay out for me that that I should understand,” said Augostini.

He used concerns with technology at Georgetown as an example. “The issue of wireless has really improved … [students say] it’s better but there is [more]. I understand the issue of technology but I want to get more granular.”

Augostini, who assumed the position of COO last summer in addition to his responsibilities overseeing the Office of Financial Affairs, said the Roundtables were a vehicle he was going to use in his new role to improve responsiveness to issues of student life.

Over the summer, Augostini first met with student leaders on campus to gauge some of the issues that were most relevant to students. He then met with the management team to come up with a structure that they believed would be most effective way to reach students.

“I don’t want it to be just me talking to the students,” Augostini said. “I want it to be a venue for them to raise issues and I wanted not just me responding, but whoever the head of that unit is.”

The structure of the Roundtables is flexible, and will be modified if they find that it is not the most effective way of reaching out to students.

Michael Wang (MSB ’07) has been working with Augostini’s office to reach out to student leaders. “[We reached out to] the Corp, GUSA, the Credit Union to the Chinese Student Alliance, LASA…. Not just what you would think as the top three student organizations, but to cover what Georgetown represents across the University. There are a lot of voices that aren’t heard but we really tried to cover [them all],” said Wang.

“Frankly if one student shows up, we’ll have the event,” said Augostini. “Every institution has lots of constraint, but to the extent we can’t respond, we have an obligation to tell you why.”

Edit: Here’s the link to the Google Moderator they are using to collect questions beforehand.

First off, we’d like to give an official Vox Populi welcome to the Class of 2015, for officially graduating from “pre-frosh” to bona fide freshmen. As you begin your career on the Hilltop, you’re going to notice that, although your fellow classmates may have different interests and hail from different corners of the Garden State, there is one habit that unifies the student body like no other: Complaining about the University. Here, Vox has compiled a rundown of Hoyas’s most common topics of complaint, why they do so, and how to deal with them a little more effectively.

Facilities

• Why we complain: Blame it on Target catalogues that show college dorms with enough room for home theaters and popcorn machines, but most kids go to college under the delusion that their dorms will be big, perfectly furnished, and spotless. So it’s easy to forget before moving in that your room has been lived in by an unfathomable number of people, many with doubtlessly questionable hygiene and destructive living habits, before you. So your blinds might fall off (Editor’s Note: Mine did), your toilet might overflow, your lights will burn out, and you’ll have to wait some undesirably long amount of time before Maintenance comes around to fix them.

• What to do instead: Make sure you report everything, and we do mean everything, in the Room Condition Report you fill out in the beginning of the year—it’ll keep you from being charged for the mess that the inhabitants of yesteryear left in their wake. If you have any problems with your room’s facilities that you really can’t deal with on your own (burnt-out light bulbs, broken drawers, even low water pressure in your shower), put in a work request immediately: Sure, it will still take a couple of days, but the worst thing you can do is wait.

Read the rest of this entry »

A power outage in East Campus that began this afternoon has yet to be fixed, according to East Campus Hall Director Billy Colona.

“At this time, neither I nor Housing have any information on the restoration of power or what actually caused it,” Colona wrote in an email to Nevils residents at 4 p.m.

The University has taken steps to help students during the outage, which has coincided with D.C.’s first major snow storm of the year. Residents can pick up flashlights—one per apartment—at the East Campus RHO or through their Resident Assistants. Facilities plans to install a light tower in the LXR courtyard this evening.

In a later email, Colona suggested that residents visit Sellinger Lounge, Leo’s, Lauinger Library, and Yates Field House to enjoy light and heat.

Freezing your ass off because of the outage? Looking for a warm place to stay? Let us know in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

While every dorm won’t have wireless internet access by the beginning of the semester, students can still expect something new—washing machines!

The front-loading, high-efficiency washing machines, which are manufactured by Speed Queen, will cut down on the University’s water and electricity consumption.

“They’re low-energy machines,” Vice President for Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank said. “They use a lot less water and a lot less power.”

The new washing machines are part of the Georgetown’s “Green Initiative,” which aims to reduce the University’s energy footprint.

Unlike their traditional counterparts, high-efficiency washing machines use small amounts of detergent.

Frank recommended that students use special, high-efficiency detergent, but Vox has a thrifty tip for you all—regular detergent works just fine, so long as you only use one-fourth the suggested amount.

UPDATE: We’ve heard from a concerned source that regular detergent can’t be used in the new washing machines. Although the above tip came straight from the mouth of VP Karen Frank, the Internet suggests otherwise, we’re going to err on the side of caution.

Not in my backyard

This semester, Georgetown students and residents alike complained loudly about rats and mice invading the neighborhood.

In the Georgetown University Student Association Senate, Arman Ismail (COL ‘11—Reynolds) led efforts to mollify what he called “a growing problem” that have culminated in a $200 allocation for waste disposal awareness and improvement.

On the georgetownforum listserv, a neighborhood complained that the problem had gotten out of hand using some vivid imagery:

“We have a never ending supply of monster sized ravenous rats boring through the walls of my house. [T]he whole neighborhood is over run with rats,” the resident wrote, adding that introducing snakes to Georgetown was a possible solution.

But when asked if Facilities had been receiving more work orders regarding vermin recently, Director of Facilities Karen Frank wrote in an e-mail that her office “[has] in fact noticed a sharp drop off of calls about vermin.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Housing changed its mind. Scroll down on this post for the information you need for cleaning.

There are now 146 food-poisoned students who went to Georgetown Hospital, according to today’s email from Todd Olson. Despite this high number, the University has apparently instituted a you-puke-it, you-clean-it policy for affected students.

Kathrin Verestoun’s roommate vomited on their carpet after eating at Leo’s, and Verestoun sent a request to Facilities asking them to clean the vomit under her roommate’s bed. She got this email back from Facilities (caps lock theirs):

We have assigned work ticket number SEE NOTES
to the following request:
Comment: YOU ARE RESPONSILBLE FOR ANY CLEANUP INSIDE OF YOUR APT.

It’s outrageous enough that the University is deducting from your meal plan for the privilege of dining in their laughable Leo’s replacement, Leavey’s Center Grill, which offers a only smattering of fried goodies and a dismal, withered salad bar. But making students cleanup the University’s mess, too? That ain’t right.