The results are in from this year’s GUSA senate election. The election and referendum saw the largest student voter turnout in recent history, as well as a large number of candidates in some districts.

• Representing Village A are  Nate Tisa and Lawrence Slusky.

• The senator from LXR is Zach Singer.

• Representing Nevils and Village B are Jay Factor and Vetone Ivezaj.

• Copley ‘s senator is Elizabeth Oh.

• Representing students in townhouses is Sheila Walsh.

• Of the 18 students who ran for Darnall and Harbin’s three seats, Billy Bowers, Shweta Wahal, and Tim Rosenberger won.

• Representing New South and Village C West are Seamus Guerin, Chandini Jha, and Abby Cooner.

• Robert Shepherd will represent Village C East.
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Yesterday’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association senate found itself preparing for several big issues of the upcoming semester, including the endowment referendum, the student life report, and the executive election.

Poll-dancing

The senate passed an act to install a physical voting booth in Leo’s to give students another reminder to vote on the endowment referendum. The booth would have three computers and be monitored by a paid, independent worker from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the three days of voting later this month.

According to the act’s author, Nathaniel Tisa (SFS ’14), this would be the first physical polling location since GUSA switched over to voting via email.

Besides allowing the election commission to better monitor election analytics, the polling booth would ideally increase voter turnout and help the referendum pass its 2,000-vote threshold to be deemed valid. The polling location will also serve as a pilot program for future elections.Once the voting booth is in place, no electioneering will be allowed with Leo’s.

Speaking of public displays of politicking, GUSA Vice President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) informed the room to expect another giant banner sponsored by a few members of the GUSA executive in favor of the three endowment referendum proposals to appear in Red Square.

The executive’s briefs

During the executive briefing, Laverriere announced the official date for the release of the student life report: February 6. Before then, the authors of the completed report will discuss the findings with President John DeGioia and Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson. He declined to give away any of the report’s findings.

Laverriere also said that the executive had a general meeting about the student code of conduct with several university administrators involved with discipline. This week, they are having a follow-up meeting to formalize the role of the Student Advocacy Office in university disciplinary proceedings. One way it is being included is that the email a student receives about being written up will include on campus resources like the SAO, campus ministry, and RAs.

Finally, the senate also altered existing bylaws to create a three-week transition period for newly-elected GUSA executives to learn the ropes. This transition period would only nominally affect the annual budget summit in that, instead of the president and vice president presenting their budget, the president- and vice president-elect will be present.

In this week’s edition of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate, the senators had some fun with democracy, and came dangerously close to acting like ANC2E.

Equal representation, schmequal schmepresentation

Last night, the ad hoc committee in charge of redistricting presented their plans to reduce the discrepancies among GUSA Senate districts sizes. The gist is that smaller districts are being consolidated but the representation per district is increasing. For instance, Harbin and Darnall, previously three districts, are now one district with three senators.

This way, the population of each district is consistent within 10% to ensure a constitutionally mandated equal representation–with one exception: Copley Hall. Copley exceeds the limits to “preserve the system in general,” according to Vice Speaker Nathaniel Tisa (SFS ’14).

That’s right: GUSA exceeded their 10% deviation using the “neighborhood cohesiveness” argument. To boot, one senator suggested scrapping this plan in favor of one that would give freshman more representation because they vote in higher numbers (and no one off-campus votes). Since [EDIT] this plan increases the number of off-campus seats to five but only four people ran in the last election the senate now has three seats empty (constitutional violation in itself!), it would be easier to reallocate the seats to freshmen who actually, y’know, run. Anyway, the Senate might be misinterpreting that whole “equal representation” clause.

At this point, Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) went there and compared these suggestions to the ongoing vaguely illegal ANC redistricting process. “The concern of whether or not we can find people to run is an institutional concern and not a representational concern,” said Talbot.

One issue brought up by Senator Laura Kresse (SFS ’12) was that, assuming that the larger districts will increase competition for Senate seats and that competitive races have tended to see less female participation, won’t this plan make GUSA even more bro-y? Maybe Kresse didn’t say it exactly like that, but this is a valid concern. But it was determined that it would be better to address GUSA’s gender disparity in other ways.

Ultimately, the redistricting bill passed as proposed.

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Time for some pizza parties

On Sunday, the GUSA Senate voted to create budgets for the Student Life, Community-Building and Outreach, and Academic Affairs Committees to draw small amounts of money from without going to the Finance and Appropriations Committee.

Student Life and Academic Affairs recieved $250 each, while Community-Building and Outreach snagged $500.

The budgets are not set in stone, though; if a committee exceeds its budget, it will simply revert back to the old plan of approval of case-by-case, itemized appeals. The bill passed almost unanimously, with only one tongue-in-cheek “nay” vote.

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The Georgetown University Student Association Senate elected senators for internal leadership positions during this week’s meeting; next week, the body will begin to debate legislation.

The new leadership includes Speaker of the Senate Adam Mortillaro (COL ’12), Vice-Speaker Ben Bold (COL ’13), Director of Technology Ben Goldhaber (SFS ’12), Parliamentarian Kolby Keo (COL ’14), and Secretary Laura West (COL ’13).

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GUSA election results are in, people. Time to get excited!

After a long week of election previews—and thankfully, plenty of excuses to bring out our favorite blingee—the GUSA Election Commission announced the winners of the elections.

Vox congratulates all of the winners. (And for those of you who ran failed write-in campaigns, take solace in the fact that your comments entertained us.)

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To help foster a (hopefully) more informed student body for this year’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate Elections, Vox invited all candidates to complete a short questionnaire regarding their candidacies. And, to our surprise, some of them even responded!

Voting began last night and will close shortly after midnight. Students are allowed to vote in their respective districts and for the at-large positions. If your district is sans a candidate, or you don’t want to vote for those listed, write-ins are allowed. (And write-in campaigns do exist.)

Earlier this week, we covered the freshmen candidates and the candidates in the other dorms, and now we’ve got the rest.

[Editor’s note: The questions for transfers differ slightly from the questions for students who were at Georgetown students.]

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To help foster a (hopefully) more informed student body for this year’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate Elections, Vox invited all candidates to complete a short questionnaire regarding their candidacies. And, to our surprise, some of them even responded!

The election is scheduled for this Thursday, although the exact 24-hour voting period is dependent on when the e-mail from the University goes out to students.

Students are allowed to vote in their respective districts and for the at-large positions. If your district is sans a candidate, or you do not want to vote for the candidates listed, write-ins are allowed.

Yesterday we brought you the freshmen candidates, now we’ve got the candidates for the other dorms. Check back tomorrow morning for the off-campus, apartment, and at-large candidates.

[Editor’s note: The questions for transfers differ slightly from the questions for students who were Georgetown students last year.]

Read the rest of this entry »

To help foster a (hopefully) more informed student body for this year’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate Elections, Vox invited all candidates to complete a short questionnaire regarding their candidacies. And, to our surprise, some of them even responded!

The election is scheduled for this Thursday, although the exact 24-hour voting period is dependent on when the e-mail from the University goes out to students. Students are allowed to vote in their respective districts and for the at-large positions. If your district is sans a candidate, or you do not want to vote for the candidates listed, write-ins are allowed.

Today, we’re covering the candidates from the Class of 2014. Check back tomorrow for the rest of the candidates.

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Last year’s woeful attendance at Georgetown University Student Association Senate meetings seems to be a thing of the past.

Following our look at the attendance records of GUSA Senators for the fall semester, which found that only one senator—cheerleader-cum-delegate Eric Cusimano (SFS ‘10)—had missed enough meetings to qualify for a review by the Ways and Means Committee, Vox did a followup that found, incidentally, the exact same thing for this semester so far.

Although many senators have missed three or more meetings or two consecutive meetings, only one senator’s attendance record includes enough unexcused absences to warrant review by the Ways and Means Committee. (Three or more missed meetings or two consecutive missed meetings qualify for review if they are unexcused.)

“[R]ight now, the other Senators have all provided excuses deemed valid by the Speaker to bring them below the limit,” GUSA Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) wrote in an e-mail. “We have never lacked quorum at a single Senate meeting and it is infrequent indeed that a Senator misses consecutive meetings.”

The senator whose record makes his continued service as a Senator questionable is, once again, Eric Cusimano, who has missed four meetings each semester. Talbot said his record has been referred to the Ways and Means Committee for review, and a tentative hearing about it has been scheduled for this Sunday. Vox was not able to get in touch with Cusimano. Earlier this semester, when he was chided for his repeated absences, he said that they were due to his commitments to cheerleading for the Georgetown Basketball team.

Last year’s Senate, by contrast, saw meetings where Senators were unable to make quorum without calling up absent members to ask them to resign (or lost quorum when a member stepped out to take a phone call), and six senators had such bad attendance that they were eligible for forcible removal from the Senate.

Here are the Senators with the most absences this semester. Most explained to Vox that all or most of their absences were excused.

• Shaalin Parekh (Copley) – 3 this semester, 3 total
• Kyle Pienaar (Village C East) – 3 this semester, 5 total
• Nolan Johnson (Village A E-H) – 3 this semester, 5 total
• Geraldine Miranda (Village C West) – 3 this semester, 4 total
• Ace Factor (At-Large) – 3 this semester, 4 total

Three Senators—Talbot, Nick Troiano (COL ’11), and Colton Malkerson (COL ’13)—have shown perfect attendance all year. (See trophy, above).