Yesterday, at Georgetown University Student Association’s final session of the semester, the Senate passed a resolution in favor of raising the burden of proof standard to “clear and convincing” in the Student Code of Conduct. The resolution, voted on at yesterday afternoon’s Senate meeting, received unanimous consent.

This clause, recently approved by the Disciplinary Review Committee, must now be implemented by Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson. The current Code of Conduct standard holds a “more likely than not” burden of proof to find a student guilty of a violation.

GUSA President Clara Gustafson (SFS ’13) created a Hoya Roundtables Ideascale post that has garnered almost 200 votes in the past 24 hours. The vote is part of an effort to uphold the DRC recommendation and encourage Dr. Olson to follow through with implementation as soon as possible. Ideascale, crowd-sourced ideas forum created by the COO Chris Augostini’s office, allows students to submit ideas or concerns related to student life and other students can vote these ideas up or down based on whether or not they support these ideas. The idea submitted by Gustafson reached the third rank in terms of popularity, followed by an idea to allow non-MSB students full access to the Hariri Building and an idea to provide campus-wide wireless Internet.

This past Sunday, the GUSA Senate amended its bylaws regarding the election of committee chairs, requiring that all chairs, not just the chair of the Finance and Appropriations Committee, be elected by the entire senate. Some dissenting senators worried that changing the process would allow the cliques in GUSA to form undemocratic voting blocs.

Other committees are just as important as FinApp

Before the change, only the Senate Speaker, Vice Speaker, Chair of the Finance and Appropriations committee, and the members of FinApp were elected by the entire body. Due to “SAFE reform and their responsibility over the GUSA budget,” the FinApp chair is voted on by the entire senate, explained Senator Ben Weiss (Col ‘15). “The reason Vice Speaker Nate Tisa (SFS ‘14) changed this bylaw was to make it so that all committees are of equal importance, especially now that SAFE reform is essentially over,” Weiss said. Besides creating more equality between the committees, Weiss hopes the change will encourage committee chairs to have clearly defined goals. “One of the main critiques of student life and CBO [Community Building and Outreach] is they don’t have clearly defined goals,” but with this process “chairs will have to have clear goals going into the year,” Weiss said.

Dan LaMagna doesn’t fit in with GUSA cliques

Senator Dan LaMagna (COL ‘13) raised concerns before Sunday’s vote. He describes the voting for Speaker, Vice Speaker, the Chair, and members of FinApp as a highly political process. “I do realize this is student politics and its what people are sort of in it for, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good thing,” LaMagna said. For him, there is no need to change the current system because it works well. “People should be electing the people who will be leading them on a weekly basis,” LaMagna explained, adding “I don’t know why I need to be voting for the chair of FinApp, [but] I can understand why we vote for the members of the committee because it does control all the money.” Senator LaMagna serves on the Student Life committee. At the meeting LaMagna and others raised concerns of power blocs forming in the senate, considering that approximately 15 senators are returning every year and would be able to, in effect, control who becomes committee chairs. “There are cliques in the Senate, and one tends to be more powerful than the other. You want to make things as democratic as possible, and I think the best way to do that is voting within committees,” LaMagna said.

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This Thursday at 8:30 p.m. in the Leavey Program Room, the authors of the Student Life Report 2012 will unveil some findings from their brainchild: a 40-something page report on student life and involvement at Georgetown. And if Thursday is too long to wait, Vox has a preview for you.

The authors of the report found a high correlation between engagement on campus and student satisfaction. So, to improve student life, participation in student organisations need to be made easier and more enjoyable. As the authors said in a press conference yesterday, engaging student interests should come before paperwork. The authors identified three key themes for improving student life: autonomy, transparency, and assessment.

Although the release date for the document itself is still TBD and the list of recommendations isn’t finalized, Vox has some of more specific (and heavily paraphrased) recommendations from SLR 2012.

• Centralized space booking and published space costs
• Online access for student groups to their cost centers
• More timely charges by OCAF to groups
• More student control of student money
• Codification of sanctions for groups and a fairer appeals process
• Continuation of the Hoya Roundtables
• Office hours for President DeGioia and Vice President Olson
• More transparency and consistancy in the SAC funding process
• Merge What’s After Dark and GPB
• Encourage more undergraduate research
• Hold a second SAC fair during the year

If this isn’t enough for you, we have the executive summary after the break.

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Last Monday, Vox published its standard GUSA roundup, recapping the goings on at the weekly GUSA Senate meetings that took place the previous day. Our post provoked a pleasantly amusing string of comments from GUSA types, concerning a relatively confusing bill about e-readers and other such technological things that senators Ziad Jawadi (COL ’15) and Daniel LaMagna (COL ’13) had introduced.

Vice Speaker Nate Tisa (SFS ’14) said:

Ultimately, I just really wish I had an iPad.

Jawadi gave us an update on the next, supposedly stronger iteration of the resolution, which has a much shorter but still very long title (spoiler alert: it failed on the senate floor yesterday):

Fun Fact: The Resolution 2.0 (ahahah get it? DJ LaMagnz came up with that…) has a new title that is only 16 words long now! Almost 1/7th the first one!! But no seriously, we revamped it and it is now a much stronger bill. The Senate ought to pass this unanimously.

Meanwhile, #coherenceappreciated raised the stakes considerably:

If Georgetown doesn’t adopt a serious policy about electronic textbooks then the University will go down in apocalyptic fire.

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Since November, the Georgetown University Student Association has operated a SafeRides van on weekend nights. This Thursday, the humdrum experience of using SafeRides is about to get more interesting for a few unsuspecting Hoyas, as GUSA plans to launch a trial run of a Cash Cab-style game show in the SafeRides van that GUSA operates. Speaking to potential copyright issues, GUSA Vice President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) wrote in an email to Vox, “For the time being we are technically calling it ‘Snack Cab.’”

Driven by a desire to promote collaboration between students and administrators and to encourage students to wait for the SafeRides van to show up, the “Snack Cab” will consist of Sporcle-based category questions, in which participants will have the entire duration of the journey to give as many answers as possible. Prizes will be paid for by the office of the Chief Operating Officer, Chris Augostini Prizes will be paid for with sponsorships from local businesses. Concerning the prizes, Laverriere wrote:

The prizes would be based on how many answers you got right. For example, a question could be “Name the neighborhoods in DC.” If you got all of them or nearly all of them, you get a gift card to a local business, but if you only got 2-3 you get a bottle of water.

Don’t expect to see any scandalous behavior in the videos that will eventually be published though. Any student that doesn’t want to participate will just be taken to their destination. Any students that do agree to participate will sign a waiver at the end of their journey. The next day, GUSA will follow up with the students in question to confirm that they are okay with GUSA using the footage.

Once GUSA puts together a complete show, the Office of Communications must approve it before it is released. “We don’t want to be posting any information that could be damaging to the University,” Laverriere wrote.

The program can be chalked up as a success of Augostini’s new initiative, the Hoya Roundtables. According to Laverriere, the idea emerged after a roundtable last semester. Laverriere, Special Assistant to the COO Michael Wang (MSB ’07) and GUSA senator Bridget Power (COL ’12), first brainstormed the idea, which is being test-run at the end of this week.

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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Hoya thinks this “White Student’s Union” is much ado about nothing:

We already have a White Student Union. It’s called GUSA.

Tim has an idea for the future of the Corp:

Working cameras, pursuing a suspect, and getting a license plate? Sounds like the Corp should run DPS.

Babs isn’t impressed with our expansive bureaucracy:

I think the question should be: do we need a funding board that circumvents access to benefits?

Interrogative delicately poses a question that has been troubling their mind:

What the balls is Page 13?

In response, outraged hurts our feelings:

What they replaced the only good section of The Voice with.

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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On Monday, November 7, members of the Georgetown University Student Association met with University President Jack DeGioia, Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson, and other University administrators to discuss issues of student space on campus. During this meeting, the administrators officially reported that the plan for Healy Pub, after taking a few hits hits from the University in recent months, is no longer on the table.

According to a GUSA press release, this decision came after a “lengthy feasibility study” conducted by the University revealed that a Healy Pub is not in line with Georgetown’s goals for student space allocation. Efforts moving forward will focus heavily on the New South Student Center, and a redesign of Dahlgren Quadrangle that will include more student space in Healy.

On Sunday, October 23, the Georgetown University Student Association held its fourth general senate meeting. The meeting dealt with last bits of administrative tasks left for the beginning of the year, and legislative business handling several bylaws.

GUSA Speaker Adam Talbot (COL’12) brought to attention a few campus issues, including the Ann Coulter’s controversial appearance last week and the upcoming public phase of the Capital Campaign, a fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $1.5 billion, which is suspected to be a big deal on campus this coming weekend.

The senate also congratulated Jack Appelbaum (COL ’14) on being elected SAC chair.

The administrative duties on the agenda were the elections of the new Secretary and Director of Technology. Abby Greene (COL ’14) and Joe Fiorica (COL ’14) were elected, respectively.

As for legislative business, the Senators embarked on a series of rigorous debates on a couple of revisions to the group’s bylaws. After a heated discussion that lasted almost two hours, the senate approved the charter of the GUSA Fund, a council under the authority of the senate, which provides resources for Georgetown undergraduates who request funding or institutional assistance for events. In addition to providing funding, the charter will provide co-sponsorship status for events that student groups organize.

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