This week, as the semester came to a close, a new set of Healy clock hands adorned the face of the tower. As Hoyas slowly leave the hilltop, Vox commenters had a few things to say.

Students woke up to replaced clock hands at the top of Healy Hall; it was initially unclear who the mysterious angels were who put them back up. GFK and Admiral Ackbar began ruminating on the possibilities:

GFK: The University did point out that extra hands were available in case the stolen hands were not recovered shortly. They must have gotten tired of waiting and installed the backups.

Admiral Ackbar: Or it’s a trap!

When Georgetown tapped Kathleen Sebelius as a graduation speaker, conservative Catholics condemned the University for its decision to honor a pro-choice politician. not typical anymore proposed we find more ways to incite the anger of the Cardinal Newman Society:

Can we do more things that get the CNS angry with us? As a non-reactionary Catholic, nothing would make me happier.

Read the rest of this entry »

George Washington University will introduce gender-neutral housing options during the 2011-2012 academic year, according to an announcement made yesterday. Male and female students who hope to live together will have to request the option, which will be offered in every one of GW’s co-ed residence halls.

“I credit our students with identifying the need and urging our administration to take an in-depth look at these issues,” Peter Konwerski, GW’s dean of students, said in a news release.

The push for gender-neutral housing in Foggy Bottom began last year, when students organized an effort that led to student government support and a University-led review committee.

Last month, the Georgetown University Student Association passed a resolution that encouraged discussion about gender-neutral housing that drew the ire of the Cardinal Newman Society. Despite the attention, neither GUSA nor the University have indicated official plans to change the on-campus housing policy.

George Washington University finally beat Georgetown. At getting infested with bedbugs.

Five residence halls on GW’s campus have reported infestations this semester, resulting in six confirmed cases of an infestation. According to the GW Hatchet, four of these cases have been fully treated, with the remaining two will be treated within the next week. At least two dozen bed bug infestations have been reported at GW in the last three years.

In September, a Georgetown University-owned townhouse was treated for a bedbug infestation. So, maybe it took us three years to finally catch on to the trend. We had no idea our neighbor school was such a trailblazer!

What’s next, GW? Norovirus? Beat ya.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

h/t GW Hatchet

Last Friday, George Washington University President Steven Knapp announced that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will give the GW’s commencement speech this coming May. Last year, First Lady Michelle Obama gave GW’s commencement speech.

“Sounds like GW got a terrific speaker,” Julie Green Bataille, associate vice president for communications, admitted in an e-mail.

If history is a precedent, Georgetown is unlikely to announce its commencement speaker for several more months. Last year, Georgetown didn’t officially release its list of speakers until late April.

Although Meghan Hogge, director of academic events, declined to comment on GW’s pick and the status of Georgetown’s own selection process, all signs suggest that this year’s announcement will have to wait until next semester.

“Georgetown will have individual commencement speakers for each ceremony and I do not anticipate having a final list until much closer to our actual commencement dates,” Bataille wrote.

At last May’s commencement ceremonies, the nine speakers—one for each school and one for the ROTC commissioning ceremony—included Dikembe Mutombo (SLL ’91) and Bob Schieffer.

Photo: Flickr user “shootingbrooklyn“

The Project on Student Debt recently published its figures for the Class of 2009—and it ain’t pretty.

American student debt is frighteningly high; according to the study, which was published by the Institute for College Access and Success, the national average debt for a graduating senior in 2009 was $24,000. Among all states, D.C. claims the highest debt rate per student ($30,033), although New Hampshire ($29,443), Maine ($29,143), Iowa ($28,883), and Vermont ($27,786) followed close behind.

Surprisingly enough, however, Georgetown doesn’t have the highest student debt among all schools in the nation’s capital. Corcoran College of Art and Design ($42,355) leads the pack, followed by American University ($40,966) and George Washington University ($31,299). The figures make Georgetown’s $25,085 average debt look paltry by comparison.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our friends in Foggy Bottom aren’t too happy about the Westboro Baptist Church’s protest next month. While one student group has already organized a counter-protest, GW freshman Daniel Wein and junior Daniel Reade decided to act differently.

Wein and Reade created Transcend Hate, a group that aims to raise money for those targeted by the WBC, according to the GW Hatchet.

“We didn’t like the idea of responding to noise with more noise, responding to yelling with yelling,” Wein told the Hatchet. “We didn’t really feel like that was a positive way to confront them even if you have silly signs.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The graffiti that appeared on the Village A rooftops last week is gone, and with it, all potential community charges.

Area Coordinator Cory Peterson, who sent an email to rooftop residents last week about the incident, told students on Friday they would not be charged for the graffiti clean-up.

“Thank you to those who emailed and stopped in the office to chat about the graffiti and your knowledge of when it appeared. And thank you to those residents who voluntarily cleaned it up,” he wrote in an email. “As a result of the quick community response, the matter was addressed and no community charges are necessary.”

Oddly enough, Georgetown isn’t the only D.C. school with response-to-vandalism problems.

GW’s Residential Property Management office emailed students in the Ivory Tower dorm last Friday, threatening to levy community charges on all residents for damages to the building. However, the message “was not authorized,” according to a successive email sent Friday night. Now, GW plans to reevaluate its listserv email policies.

Photo: Georgetown Housing

Fire, the specter that has haunted Georgetown’s campus all year, broke out this weekend at the house of George Washington University sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. In a rare turn of events, however, there actually was a fire this time.

Figures. Of course another D.C. school would try to show us up.

Deputy Fire Chief Timothy Gerhart told GWU’s The Hatchet that the fire started in one room of the house. Papers and books caught fire, but the flame was so small that the overheard sprinklers were not triggered. Firefighters threw the burning materials from the room through a broken window and quickly contained the fire.

As of now it is uncertain what caused the fire, but the remaining occupant of the room, who will stay with friends for the remainder of the year, claimed not to be home at the time it started. (However, some gossips on Twitter were quick to theorize about its cause.)

D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesman Pete Piringer reported that the damage could cost up to a few thousand dollars, an estimate that includes a broken window, water damage, and fire damage. Sounds familiar …

Photo by the GW Hatchet.

A study by the American Association of University Professors found that colleges and universities across the country gave faculty the lowest pay raises in the 50 years since the study began, and Georgetown University is no exception. At Georgetown, full professors’ pay declined by .1 percent, associate professors were given pay raises of .5 percent, and assistant professors’ pay rose by 1.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the rate of inflation at 2.7 percent, and average pay increases at American institutions for a full professor was 1.2 percent. Most other D.C. schools were stingy, but at George Washington University, faculty pay rose by 5.1 percent.

According to the study, Georgetown professors still took home an average salary of $155,500 (and average compensation was $191,700) last year. Associate professors averaged a salary of $100,700, and assistant professors averaged $83,600.

Interestingly, the study provided a gendered breakdown of faculty pay which revealed that in all categories, male faculty out-earned female faculty. Male professors, associate professors, and assistant professors earned average salaries of $157,200, $103,300, and $89,800, respectively, and female professors, associate professors, and assistant professors earned average salaries of $149,800, $96,800, and $76,400, respectively. Percent changes in pay by gender were not available.

Georgetown had originally planned to increase faculty pay to 2.25 percent above the rate of inflation for 2009, a goal which President John DeGioia announced the University had scrapped last January. He announced salary freezes for himself and other senior faculty in the same speech.

Via College, Inc.

Residents of East Georgetown typically don’t partake in Georgetown student-bashing or get involved in the major campaigns against University expansion in any form. They’re just too far away from our noise, trash, and general aura to care.

But they’re not too far away from George Washington students to complain about them. And on Saturday, when a gaggle of GWU students descended upon Rose Park to barbecue, they struck a nerve with an East village resident who sent this message out to the georgetownforum listserv:

“Today, a large group of GW students took over Rose Park with two volleyball nets and a cookout. Apparently they did have a permit, BUT they are completely tearing up the grass and there is a very big crowd there making lots of noise. I am mostly concerned about how torn up the grass will be after turning it into essentially two volleyball fields.

“Rose Park is scraggly enough looking as it is, unfortunately, and I think it was just sodded with new grass last fall. I also do not want to encourage GW students to make Rose Park and this corner of Georgetown an outpost of GW. Who approves these permits, and who can I complain to about the fact that this event was permitted?”

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

And here we were, feeling like the black sheep of the D.C. college family because George Washington’s Ten Year Plan process is going so much more smoothly than our 2010 Campus Plan.