From time to time, the Washington Post attempts to provide good hyper-local coverage of D.C.—and they almost always fail stupendously. Recently, the Post found a new, similarly out-of-their-purview beat to epically fail at: college campuses.
Their college news blog, Campus Overload, features either tame rehashes of mildly interesting stories from campuses all over the country, or completely inane original stories. Par exemple, within the past week, Campus Overload offered readers such gems as this “hilarious video,” “Spring Breaking It Down,” and a totally vapid interview with Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11).
Vox has no idea what the point of this interview—and its thought-provoking questions, like, “What’s allowed and not allowed on your Facebook profile?” and “When’s the last time you pulled an all-nighter?”—was supposed to be. To show readers how the sleepless, social-networking other side lives?
To edify student government leaders on other campuses?:
[Post]: What advice do you have for students on other campuses who are launching student government campaigns?
[Angert]: Make sure your heart and head are in the right place, and tell the truth.
[Post]: What’s the best way to get to know your fellow student government members?
[Angert]: E-mail them or call them. Anyone I know who is involved with student government would love to meet and talk about current issues and future initiatives.
To show off the Post’s incredibly high editing standards, where “haha” is a word?:
[Post]: How much sleep do you usually get?
[Angert]: Too little, haha. I’m fully operable on 4 hours — anything less and my productivity suffers.
Beats us. Even the interview’s more substantive questions, about funding reform, mystify us. Who cares to read about that who isn’t a Georgetown student? And if some reform-minded soul was interested, why would they turn to the Post for their nuance-free, after-the-jump coverage of it?
Oh well. At least now we know what Angert’s favorite Georgetown bar is (Saloun), what his favorite admissions essay was, and what he wants to do when he grows up.
At the start of the new club funding process, the Student Activities Commission requested $35,000 from the Georgetown University Student Association, the new guardians of our Student Activities Fee, only to be scoffed at: in the draft budget it proposed just before Spring Break, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee suggested that SAC get a total allocation of a mere $12,500.
The FinApp Committee meant this miserly counter-’offer’ as a rebuke of SAC for having refused to adopt some of GUSA’s six reforms for advisory boards—”in recognition that the Commission is in good standing with some, but not all, of the reform proposals,” in the words of the FinApp committee. But if the committee hoped its penny-pinching would coerce SAC into adopting the remaining reforms, for the moment, they’re going to be disappointed. In an e-mail to SAC club leaders sent today, SAC Chair Ethel Amponsah (NHS ‘11) tells clubs to brace themselves for the limitations the meager GUSA allocation will place on SAC allocation, even as it dips into its reserves.
“I would like to note that SAC has complied with 4 out of the 6 recommendations in an effort to compromise with the Committee,” she wrote. “The draft budget reduces SAC’s allocation budget by about 15%. Please consider how this will effect your organizational budget as this reduction will be felt across all SAC groups …. FinApp would like to mandate that SAC use the excess funds for its allocation budget. However, that is not sustainable as within two years the excess funds would be depleted and SAC would still receive insufficient funds from FinApp.”
SAC’s reserves, she said, are currently at $215,000, and the Office of Student Affairs has suggested that it should maintain reserves of at least $150,000.
In response to Amponsah’s claims, Chair of the FinApp Committee Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said that SAC had only made good faith efforts towards completing three of the six reforms GUSA would like it to make. They are still not disclosing how their individual members vote on allocations, he said, they do not yet have a plan to spend down their reserves, and they do not have a method for picking their leadership that is accountable to the student body.
Read more, plus Amponsah’s full message after the jump, and a statement from members of the FinApp Committee after the jump.
The Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee has drafted a budget for the fiscal year 2010 allocation of the Student Activities Fee. Here is the breakdown of the draft budget, along with comments made by the FinApp Committee explaining the draft allocation amounts:
The Georgetown Programming Board requested $45,000 and the FinApp Committee has suggested they receive $42,500
“This represents a substantial 11.84% increase in allocated student activity fee money from last year’s allocation ($38,000). The main reasons for the increased allocation are increasing busing costs, an increase in the number of cultural events, the desire to increase the caliber of the annual Spring Kickoff Concert, and to deliver more overall programming benefiting the student body.”
SAC requested $37,000 and the draft allocation is for $12,500, less than half of their request.
“In our draft budget, our committee decided to allocate the Student Activities Commission $12,500 out of its $37,500 requested this year, in recognition that the Commission is in good standing with some, but not all, of the reform proposals. The committee has set aside an additional $12,500 to be allocated if SAC comes to a compromise on the fourth and fifth points of reform.
“The potential total of $25,000 is significantly less than the funding request because the Commission, as determined by the Vice President’s office, possesses over $60,000 in excess reserve funds. We would expect the Commission to begin spending down this reserve to cover the balance of this allocation, and not cut back on club funding. Furthermore, it is noted that several members of the Committee have advocated a $0 allocation for the Commission for as long as it fails to comply with the outstanding two reform points.”
The first Georgetown University Student Association Budget Summit was a real doozey, lasting from 10 a.m. all the way to 8 p.m. on Sunday. During the meeting, the advisory boards presented their budget proposals to the Finance and Appropriations Committee of the GUSA Senate, which has taken on the role of the Funding Board.
There wasn’t a whole lot of deliberation among senators since the meeting was mainly focused on presentations and actual allocation will take place later this week, but there were some interesting clues—particularly regarding SAC—about how budgets may look next year.
First came the proposals from the Georgetown Program Board and the Center for Social Justice for $45,000 and $64,000 respectively. Both proposals were well-received by the committee, but CSJ’s request for 46 percent more funding than last year faced opposition. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ’11) made clear that since there was $55,000 more in requests this year than in available funds, some groups would not receive all the money they requested.
“We want to give [CSJ] more money, but I would doubt they’ll receive their full request,” Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), who sits on the FinApp committee said.
The next budget proposal, $25,000 for the Performing Arts Advisory Council, did not go as smoothly. The FinApp Committee felt PAAC’s budget proposal lacked specifics and didn’t make clear how the requested money would be spent.
This week’s Georgetown University Student Association meeting featured an irksome inauguration (just like Obama’s!) and tear-jerking eulogies to Philly P’s. Here’s the wrap:
Inaugurations: GUSA swore in the newly-reelected President and Vice President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11)—perhaps extraconstitutionally?
“There is a curious little quirk of the by-laws which requires the outgoing president and vice-president to administer the oath to the incoming president and vice-president,” Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ‘12) told the Senate. Given that the outgoing president and vice-president and the incoming president and vice-president were one and the same, Ungar decided to administer the oath himself.
After their swearing in, both candidates delivered speeches to the GUSA senate. Kluger called on the Senate to remember Gandhi’s words to become the change they want to see in the world, while Angert urged Senators to maintain their dedication to the GUSA senate and never be afraid to throw themselves into large and challenging projects. Angert then swore in newly-elected Senator Andrew Foley (MSB ‘10), who could not raise his right hand because his arm is broken—another suspect inauguration?
GUSA Fund Bolsters Funding Board: The GUSA senate approved a bill to transfer $15,000 from the GUSA fund to the Student Activities Fee Reserve account, which is used to provide funds to advisory boards. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said he had talked with GUSA Fund Chair Kate Petersen (COL ‘11) and that she said the GUSA Fund could limit its spending to $15,000 for the semester.
“We simply want to go into the budget process with as much money as we can,” Troiano said.
New Sign: GUSA unanimously approved a bill to appropriate $200 towards the creation of a vinyl sign bearing GUSA’s logo. The bill was introduced by Senator Nolan Johnson (COL’11), who said the sign was “a great way to make use of GUSA’s new logo”.
In a solid victory over runners-up Matt Wagner (SFS ‘11) and Emmanuel Hampton (COL ‘11) and two other tickets, Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11) have won reelection to the GUSA executive, student Election Commissioners report.
Angert and Kluger won in the first round, but since votes were close, Election Commissioners said, results were run to round two.
In a separate victory, this year’s GUSA Election does not appear to have involved the kind of catastrophes that have marred several previous elections, including trouble with instant run-off voting in 2008, and the adamantly protested, last-minute disqualification of two tickets in last year’s election.
Sam Ungar (COL ‘12), the Georgetown University Student Association parliamentarian, said in an e-mail that today’s election may have had the highest turnout of any GUSA election to date:
“Assuming an undergraduate population near 7,092 (the 2008-09 enrollment, which is the last publicly available figure on the University’s website),” he writes, “we had a turnout of approximately 44 percent in this election. It is believed that this is a new record turnout for a GUSA Presidential election, beating the previous record by some 500 votes—I will be working to confirm this over the next few days.”
Below is a graph Ungar compiled with data from the Election Commission, which is expected to release the results of the election at 11 p.m. tomorrow. So far, says Election Commissioner, there have been no major problems with voting.
Since the numbers are a little hard to read, here’s a quick breakdown (Speaker Adam Talbot tells Vox that you have to guesstimate times):
1,500 around 10:30 p.m. last night … 2,070 votes around 2 a.m. this morning
“He’s got the most shit in there … he’s got the warmest shit … and he’s got a fuckin’ ice table,” quoth a drunk student at a Village A rooftop party, where GUSA executive candidates Arman Ismail (COL’11) and Tucker Stafford (COL ‘12) seem to have filmed most of their second campaign video.
In a message from the “Arman Ismail and Tucker Stafford for GUSA 2010″ Facebook group, Stafford explained, “This is a new short vid shot just to keep the good times rolling and to remind everyone to keep spreading the word as elections are on this Tuesday Feb 23rd!”
And to remind everyone to “vote for the big sexy,” of course.
In case you missed it when we added it on to our post about Ismail and Stafford’s first video, GUSA alum Matt Stoller (COL ‘08) also tipped us off to the existence of a video of Ismail doing a delightful impression of Heath Ledger’s Joker.
This week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate included a heated contest to fill a vacant seat on the Finance and Appropriations committee, and a denouncement of Eric Cusimano’s extracurricular involvements. Here’s the wrap:
Finance and Appropriations Committee Post Filled
In perhaps the most contentious part of the meeting, Senator Ben Bold (COL’13) was selected by the full Senate to fill a vacancy on the Finance and Appropriations Committee. During his time for remarks, Bold said he had closely followed the work of the Finance and Appropriations Committee and had fully supported the funding board reform. Bold ran against Senator Matthew Ginsberg (COL’11), who said that he was suited for the job because he had an interest in financial allocations and had served as a director for the Corp.
During the debate over the confirmation, some Senators appeared to argue that Senator Bold was competent and self-motivated, and therefore should be opposed. Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ‘12) warned against a “leadership accretion” on the FinApp Committee, while FinApp Chair Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said, “Our committee has enough ambition and self-motivated people … We have to distribute this energy to all the committees.” Ultimately, however, Bold’s attributes were deemed more of a good thing than a bad thing, and he was approved by a 10-8 vote.
To break-up a very GUSA-heavy day, Vox has a video for all you folks who don’t give a hoot about the Georgetown University Student Association or their elections.
If you even bother to open the e-mail with the your ballot in it tomorrow—or if you don’t care to rank anyone else after the candidate you want to elect—we’re guessing this is who you’ll vote for.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, a weekly newsmagazine at Georgetown University. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
From time to time, the Washington Post attempts to provide good hyper-local coverage of D.C.—and they almost always fail stupendously. Recently, the Post found a new, similarly out-of-their-purview beat to epically fail at: college campuses.
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