If you thought that last week’s snow storm caused problems with Georgetown’s administration, just wait til you hear what happened with George Washington University.

Since snow was delaying mail, admissions officials opted to send the official acceptance packets for the GWU class of 2014 by e-mail. So, everyone who was accepted to GWU under early action got one—but so did hundreds of applicants who had already been told they’d been rejected.

Senior Vice President for Student and Academic Services Robert Chernak told the GW Hatchet that the mistake was the result of a clerical error made when Admissions decided to e-mail instead of mail the packets.

“Executive Dean of Undergraduate Admissions [Kathy Napper] felt that it would be a good idea to send an e-mail to those people who were accepted, that was the theory, for Early Decision II,” he said. “As those instructions went down the chain of command in the admissions office to the operational level, the individual who sent out the e-mail… touched the wrong button on the list.”

“This afternoon, you received an email from me titled ‘Important GW Information.’ Unfortunately, this email was sent to you in error,” the Office of Undergraduate Admissions wrote in apology, “We are truly sorry for this confusion regarding your application to GW.”

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Georgetown isn’t the alone among area schools concerned about its levels of diversity. Last Friday, University President Steven Knapp announced two efforts to increase the number of non-Caucasian students at George Washington University: a President’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion, and the creation of a senior administrative position to improve minority access to education and diversity among university faculty, the associate provost for diversity and inclusion.

Interestingly, when Knapp made this announcement before the board of trustees, he said that the goal of these new initiatives was to respond to the demographic shift among American students by way of increasing diversity at GWU.

“The way demographics in the United States are developing right now, if you’re not reaching out to all parts of America then you’re really not going to have the kind of students, the kind of experiences and the kind of talents you need to be a successful institution,” the GW Hatchet reported Knapp said.

At Georgetown, meanwhile, diversity initiatives are not just a response to low rates of enrollment by minority students, but to concerns that Georgetown’s demographic breakdown has created an unwelcoming and divided environment at Georgetown.

The ethnic breakdown of Georgetown and GWU are fairly comparable. The most recent data from the National Center for Educational Statistics showed that 65 percent of Georgetown students were white, 6 percent were Hispanic/Latino, 7 percent were Black/African-American, and 9 percent were Asian, Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. Five percent did not list an ethnicity and 9 percent were non-residents of the U.S.

At GWU, data showed that 58 percent of its students were white, 7 percent were Hispanic/Latino, 7 percent were Black/African-American, and 10 percent were Asian, Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. Thirteen percent did not list an ethnicity and 6 percent were non-residents of the U.S.

Well, call us Capulet! George Washington University may have earned a resounding victory in yesterday’s snow battle against Georgetown students, but it looks like the real winner of day was … Love.

In his recap of the fight for the Washington City Paper, the Voice’s Will Sommer shared this missed connection spot from Craigslist:

“Georgetown guy at snowball fight – w4m – 20 (Rose Park)

“I’m a GW student and you are a Georgetown student. In the midst of our epic battle I looked at you and said “you’re too cute to be a George Washington student,” and then I threw a snowball at you. Well, you really are too cute to be a GW guy. I’d love to meet up and debate GW-GU some more.”

We’re particularly flattered that she recognized that Georgetown guys are cuter.

How about it, Georgetown guys? Did one of you fall for the enemy at the Snowdome of Doom?

Editor’s note: Embedded reporter Eric Pilch took the two videos in this post of Wednesday night’s massacre at Rose Park. The first is of GWU’s hordes advancing on the intrepid band of Hoyas, the second is of some of the action on the battlefield. If you got sick watching Cloverfield, you probably shouldn’t watch them.

Wednesday night’s snowball fight between Georgetown and George Washington University may have been a lot of fun, but in terms of winners and losers, Georgetown was clearly the latter.

Starting around 6 p.m., the Georgetown contingent of roughly 50 students began to assemble on the north side of Rose Park at 26th and O Streets, gathering on top of a hill that strategically overlooked the park.  It was difficult to tell how many people from GWU had shown up when they advanced en masse from the other side of the park a few minutes later, but the ratio was at least 4:1 in GW’s favor.

To emphasize their prowess, they even brought a flag. Later reports of the battle also state that their university president, Steven Knapp, was present at the fight and announced that school would be canceled the next day right there at the site of GWU’s victory.

Once GWU began to flood the hill Georgetown students were standing on, the snowball fight digressed rapidly for the Hoyas.

Read more and watch Georgetown get crushed after the jump!

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Because the weather is totally awful out right now, Kyle Boyer, the George Washington University student who’s organized the Georgetown vs. George Washington University snowball fight, has wisely postponed the inter-school snowball fight we’re having today to 6:00 p.m.

The location is the same, Rose Park at 26th and O Streets.

Not sure you want to go? Well, the Washington Post has already told all of D.C. that Georgetown is going to be there. So has NBC Washington, which has termed the event “Snowdome of Doom.” If you don’t go, you’re going to make the Hoyas look bad.

So join the Facebook group and invite all of Georgetown! We can take ‘em. One of their mascots is a hippo.

P.S.: MPD, if you come to our snowball fight, please don’t bring guns.

In other snow news, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack “Of course I shoveled it myself!” Evans is a model citizen when it comes to keeping his sidewalk clear. American University students are lamer than GWU and GU students. The proof is in what they did with their snowdays so far.

Graduates from colleges in the District of Columbia have the highest level of debt in the nation, according to a report released Tuesday by The Project on Student Debt. Students in the District’s class of 2008 averaged $29,793 in debt, placing them ahead of students in Iowa, Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire, some of the states with the highest levels of debt in the country.

The District was represented in the survey by data collected from three area private institutions: Georgetown University, George Washington University, and American University. At the same time, a (relatively) small proportion of D.C. students—49 percent—reported having debt, making them 40th in the country in this statistic.

Although Georgetown and George Washington appear annually on lists of the most expensive schools in the country, American University students reported having both the region’s highest average debt ($34,213) and the highest proportion of students with debt (56 percent). Debt for Georgetown University and George Washington graduates averaged $23,333 and $30,817 respectively.

Adding to the financial hardship for recent graduates, unemployment among college graduates rose to 10.6 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2008, the highest percentage on record.

Makin’ bank

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released its database of executive compensation at colleges and universities for the 2007-08 school year and Georgetown’s own John DeGioia isn’t doing too poorly for himself.

With a total compensation of $642,582 (that’s $607,939 in pay and 34,643 in benefits), DeGioia was the 63rd highest paid private university president in the country in 2007-08, according to the Chronicle’s data.  That salary was a $50,965 upgrade from what he received during the 2006-07 school year.

But DeGioia was outdone in the District by the president of American University, Cornelius Kerwin, who was the fifth highest paid private university president with $1,419,339 in total compensation.  The real record-holder, though, was George Washington University’s former president, Stephen J. Trachtenberg.  With a total compensation of $3.7 million, Trachtenberg was the high paid current or former university president by a margin of $2 million.

Photo by Lexie Herman.

While our friends in Foggy Bottom may be outdoing us in terms of programming  boards and on-campus comedians, there’s one thing they’re still envious of us about: GERMS.

The GW equivalent of GERMS is a “the Emergency Medical Response Group,” or EMeRG.  Apparently EMeRG doesn’t have the same warm relations with the student body it serves that GERMS has.

Because of GW’s medical amnesty policies, EMeRG is required to transport anyone who is assessed for alcohol consumption to the GW Hospital.  According to the GW Hatchet, which is doing a three part series on their school’s medical amnesty policies, the rule discourages people from calling EMeRG and creates hostility towards the program because of the medical bills that accompany the mandatory hospital visit.

The Hatchet highlights GERMS as an example of what EMeRG could be with a few policy tweaks:

The Georgetown student’s relationship with the volunteer GERMS group is worlds apart from the GW student’s relationship with EMeRG. Most importantly, GERMS is not required to transport all students that are assessed to the hospital. The amnesty policy of Georgetown is such that students don’t fear calling GERMS.

Enough to give you Foggy Bottom envy?

It looks like once again, we’ll have to wait until the spring for GPB to scrape together an on-campus concert.

While WGTB has already put on their fall show, hosting Titus Andronicus and Free Energy this Friday, GPB seems to be sticking to the recent trend of reserving concerts for the end of the year.

According to GPB Concert Chair Danny Fortin, with only two months left in the semester, GPB has not yet begun the concert planning process.  For comparison, GPB started planning in January for T-Pain’s late April concert last spring.

After Coolio’s fall 2007 concert and the Fountains of Wayne’s underwhelming, under-attended fall 2006 performance, GPB decided not to throw a fall show last year when their 2008 Concert Chair stepped down.

Luckily not all D.C. area colleges’ programming boards are so blasé about concert planning.

George Washington University’s programing board is hosting Maroon 5 on Friday, November 13—and they’ve kindly opened the ticket sales up to students at other local universities.  Tickets are on sale now and cost $30 (what can you do, everything’s more expensive at GW).

Reporting by Sean Quigley.

Georgetown is the seventh most expensive school in the country for the 2009-10 school year, according to a list just compiled by Campus Grotto.  With a total average cost of $51,122 per year, we’re more comparatively economical than we were last year, when we came in third.

The curious thing about Georgetown’s showing is that although we’re the seventh most expensive school overall, we only have the 41st highest tuition ($38,616 per year), meaning we’re making up the difference with much higher room and board fees.

Luckily, we can still boast about being (slightly) less expensive than our cross-town peers at George Washington.  With a total average cost of $51,730, they claim the title of the third most expensive school in the nation.