It’s that time of year again. Vox has sent the 2010 version of its annual Georgetown University Student Association Candidate Survey to each of the four Presidential and Vice Presidential hopefuls and we’re posting their (usually long-winded) responses as we receive them.

This year, we’re asking candidates things like what they think of club funding reform, how the University has handled the 2010 Campus Plan, and how they’d evaluate President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Vice President Jason Kluger’s (MSB ‘11) time in office. (Or in Angert and Kluger’s case, their own time in office).

Up today is Hillary Dang (SFS ’12) and Katie Balloch (COL ’12).

What are three goals you’d try to accomplish as GUSA execs?

Our slogan says a lot about what we’re trying to do: “Simplify and unify.” We’re hoping that if we get elected, we will be able to make the entire campus more productive by utilizing current resources and simplifying the steps it takes to get things done.

1. Ensure success of the newly amended funding structure so that GUSA can effectively allocate the proper funds to student organizations.

2. Increase safety on campus and facilitate better relationships with neighbors. We’d like to reform SafeRides so that in conjunction with the loop, there would be an on-call car for people who feel they are in emergency or extenuating circumstances and can’t wait until the scheduled pick up time. We really like the effort that students have taken in starting Georgetown Samaritans and would like to take this type of “neighbors helping neighbors” measure further so that the surrounding neighbors respect us as mature adults.

This type of relationship will make both parties happier because students will be more conscious of noise at parties, and the neighbors will think twice before called Metro and issuing a noise complaint. By having SNAP as the first response, we hope to help more effectively mediate between students and residents of the Georgetown community.

Read the rest of this entry »

This Wednesday, campus media representatives will be moderating a debate among the four candidates running for Georgetown University Student Association President.

Of course, we’re coming up with our own questions, but we want to know what you’d like us to ask them. So, if there’s something you’d like to know about the candidates before you go to the polls, tell us in the comments section.

Questions may be candidate-specific or broad and directed towards all the candidates. If you’re shy, Vox has been tasked with representing the Voice, so you can also send your questions to blog@georgetownvoice.com.

It’s that time of year again. Vox has sent the 2010 version of its annual Georgetown University Student Association Candidate Survey to each of the four Presidential and Vice Presidential hopefuls and we’re posting their (usually long-winded) responses as we receive them.

This year, we’re asking candidates things like what they think of club funding reform, how the University has handled the 2010 Campus Plan, and how they’d evaluate President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Vice President Jason Kluger’s (MSB ‘11) time in office. (Or in Angert and Kluger’s case, their own time in office).

Up today is current Senator Arman Ismail (COL ’11) and running mate Tucker Stafford (COL ‘12). NB, they have declined to answer “How would you characterize Angert’s time in office?”

What are three things you’d try to accomplish as GUSA execs?

One of the issues that we plan to address is the transparency of GUSA. In putting together this campaign, we discovered just how hard it is to get important information from GUSA. Sometimes it is impossible for us to get the information we need, and when we get information we need it is sometimes so complex that it is hard to interpret. We plan on not only making it possible for a student to get a hold of any GUSA paperwork but also to be able to understand it. We will simplify the information coming out of GUSA (particularly with budgeting) so that students can know where their money is going.

We also plan to make the students’ experience at Leo’s a better one. We will take measures to pressure Leo’s to ensure that there are enough utensils for everyone. In addition we will address the concerns of those who have medical or religious dietary restrictions. Sometimes food is not labeled properly, so some students are unsure what is in their food. We will ensure that all food in Leo’s is marked properly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Roscitt (MSB ’11) and William McGeehin (MSB ’11) may have dropped out of the race for GUSA President and Vice President, but not before they answered Vox‘s annual GUSA Candidate Survey.

This year, we’re asking candidates things like what they think of club funding reform, how the University has handled the 2010 Campus Plan, and how they’d evaluate President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Vice President Jason Kluger’s (MSB ’11) time in office. (Or in Angert and Kluger’s case, their own time in office).

Here’s what Roscitt and McGeehin had to say:

Thanks for taking the time to consider our ideas.

The question driving our campaign is whether Georgetown is ready for the solution instead of being part of the problem. We hope that Georgetown is ready. In a sneak peak of our platform, we would like to offer a few solutions:

1. No more fires in freshman dorms

2. Amazon Kindles > Textbooks = More money for students

3. No more guns for freshman at Midnight Madness

4. A Wendy’s and Waffle House located in the Leavey Center/and or Hariri Building

5. More Blizzards

6. Helicopters.

I hope this is helpful in considering our campaign. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

Sincerely,

Brian Roscitt and William H. McGeehin

Asked whether Vox could still run their survey answers now that they had exited the race, Roscitt revealed the depth of their convictions.

“[T]hat sounds good. We just don’t want anyone to think we’re actually running/take us seriously,” he wrote in an e-mail. “However, we still do steadfastly stand behind our ideas and platform.”

It was a bold vision while it lasted.

Update February 9, 1:31 p.m.: Brian Roscitt has told the Voice that he and William McGeehin are dropping out of the race.

—

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:

1. Hillary Dang is running for President with Katie Balloch as her running mate
2. Current President Calen Angert is running for reelection with current Vice President Jason Kluger as his running mate. Angert and Kluger announced their intentions to seek reelection last week.
3. Former GUSA Senator and FinApp Chair Matt Wagner is running for President with Emmanuel Hampton as his running mate. Hampton was one of four student senators who resigned from the GUSA Senate under pressure for having excessive absences.
4. Brian Roscitt is running for President with William McGeehin as his running mate
5. 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 we will 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Calen Angert and his executive office have an ambitious list of goals for what could be their final months in office.

Noting how little time he has left in his term before elections take place in February, Angert told the Voice that his focus will be on solidifying the gains he and others in the executive office had already made. “Our goals will be to really tie up things we began last semester,” Angert said.

Angert said that the executive branch would continue to work on reducing the number of 61D citations issued to students. According to Angert, only three 61D citations were given out last semester. The executive would continue to lower that number, Angert said, by increasing student awareness of the citations and by working with neighborhood groups to resolve the issue of student noise.

Angert and the executive branch are also looking to finally kick off the student-driven Saferides program. “We’ve cleared all the legal hurdles for Saferides, and we’re honestly just waiting on DPS to give us the go ahead,” Angert said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Go ahead and give your GUSA Senator one—or eleven—of these!

Three hours and forty-five minutes. That’s where the second meeting of the full GUSA Senate clocked in. But the 21 Senators got the most out of their time, electing 11 people to various internal positions, including Adam Talbot (COL ’12) as the Senate’s new Speaker and Chris Pigott (COL ’12) as Vice Speaker.

Talbot and Pigott were both vocal freshman Senators last year and seem to be good friends. They gave each other ringing endorsements when the other stepped outside to be elected to his position. (Both races were uncontested). The personal relationships don’t end there: newly elected Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ’12) is Talbot’s roommate.

There’s no funny business going on here, though. The Senate was aware of the love triangle that now dominates its upper offices. Ungar, Pigott, and Talbot were simply the best men for the job—with the possible exception of Nick Troiano (COL ’11), who led the Senate’s Transition Team.

Troiano has said from the beginning that he would prefer not to be Speaker, though.  When nominated by a well-meaning Senator, he respectfully declined the nomination.

Troiano did, however, score the position of Chair of the Finances and Appropriations committee, which comes with the chance to sit in on Funding Board meetings—an excellent vantage point from which to continue his public war with SAC.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another GUSA Senate election’s come and gone, but you would hardly know it. There was little of the controversy that usually accompanies a GUSA election.

Only three of the five seats expected to be empty had no winner. Sandy Glassberg (COL ’11, Nevils) and Nicholaus Nelson-Goedert (COL ’10, McCarthy) stepped up to the plate as write-in candidates. There was one vacant district we didn’t catch: Harbin floors 6-9, which remains Senator-less, along with the townhouses and Village A E-H.

Nelson-Goedert is one of six returning Senators. The other five are Chris Pigott (COL ’12, At Large), Adam Talbot (COL ’12, LXR), Josh Mogil (COL ’11, Off Campus), George Roche (COL ’10, Off-Campus) and the hard-working, famously uncompromising Nick Troiano (COL ’11, Village A A-D).

Overall, the election went off without a hitch, with one possible exception: the commissioners’ liberal interpretation of the Senate bylaws for write-in candidates.

As Election Commissioner Ryan Gavigan (COL ’11) noted when he announced the results at Sunday’s meeting, the commissioners decided that a write-in candidate didn’t qualify for the race until he or she had received at least 5 votes. So you couldn’t get elected to GUSA if, say, your two roommates decided to write you in as a joke. (Sound familiar)?

This election is the first time the rule has been applied, but it seems like it could only do good things.

Read the rest of this entry »