This Friday, November 11, the Central Atlantic Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls (CAACURH) Conference will be taking place at Baltimore’s Towson University. Representatives from the Georgetown Residence Hall Association will be attending the conference, and, according to Interhall Vice President of External Affairs Dalvin Butler (COL ’13), “attain RHA strategies and mechanisms that can be implemented at Georgetown to strengthen our muscle as a voice for the residence halls on campus.”
Georgetown’s presence at the conference also includes a video representing the school, which Butler says is meant to convey the conference’s theme of “Back to Basics.” Although it’s not as long or elaborate as the last video Butler gave us (where’s Bruce?), it’s still worth your attention for its 30-second duration. Editor’s note: The video was made by Darnall Residence Hall Director Brian Mathis.
ResLife, Southwest Quad Community Council, and InterHall are sponsoring a free barbecue in the Southwest Quad tomorrow from 4:00 p.m. to 6 p.m. The “Bar-B-Quad” will feature free food, music, and door prizes. There will also be a petting zoo with a llama, donkey, goats, sheep, and ducks.
“The Bar-B-Quad is a community development endeavor for residents campus-wide to unite and celebrate the end of the year with ResLife,” Dalvin Butler (COL ’13), vice president of external affairs for Interhall, wrote in an e-mail. “The petting zoo is the icing on the cake”
Unfortunately, Dino-Jack will probably not be available for residents to pet.
Next Tuesday and Wednesday evening, the Southwest Quad Community Council will present two crime-prevention summits, conceived of by the council as “unconventional forums [...] to share the vision and experience of safety precaution practices.”
In an effort spearheaded by Interhall Vice President of External Affairs Dalvin Butler (COL ’13), the council invited the Department of Public Safety’s new crime prevention coordinator, Talib Abdur-Rahim, to help organize and run the summits.
The summits will take place on April 5th from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. in the lobby of McCarthy Hall and April 6th from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. in Reynolds Hall.
They will be open to all students and will offer free laptop and bike registration to the first 10 participants. Each service normally costs $10 and $15, respectively.
Abdur-Rahim and the council will also disseminate safety tips and best practices to help students avoid being a victim of crime.
No other residence halls have made plans as of yet for similar summits, but Butler hopes the idea will spread.
“We must be proactive in providing the safety tips to residents,” he says. “We cannot prevent or solve crime in a vacuum by passing resolutions or amendments.”
After the demise of the free newspaper program early this year, student leaders have been pushing to bring the Washington Post back to campus, according to Will Cousino (SFS ’12) of Interhall. Cousino, GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) and Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ’10), are still deciding between a new offer from the Washington Post,and older offers from USA Today‘s Collegiate Readership program and the New York Times.
The details of the Washington Post deal may change, according to Cousino, but as of earlier this week the Post was willing to provide 200 papers a day for a cost of $1200.
As Cousino said, it’s “pretty much the same offer as the Times. Difference being that the Washington Post can also deliver the New York Times (albeit at a high cost… more than $1 a copy).”
According to Kluger, the number of copies of the Post the Times that this deal would include has not yet been nailed down.
In addition to which papers to include, Kluger emphasized that distribution methods are a critical factor in the decision. The Post delivers their own papers, whereas USA Today hires a Georgetown student to put out the papers every morning.
“Also, there’s the question of physically what to put the papers in,” Kluger said. “The [containers] we had before, [which] you had to use your GOCard to get into, were part of the Collegiate Readership program. We have to see if we can still use them.”
The next step for the free newspaper movement is narrowing the three offers down to one, definitive deal. Kluger is eager to incorporate student input in the ultimate decision.
“Whatever our final choice comes down to, unless student feedback comes down really hard on one side or the other, we have a survey set up to get out in an email to the student body,” Kluger said.
The e-mail will be sent as soon as Cousino, Kluger, and Goodman narrow down their options, a process which could still take a few weeks.
Promising news for print journalism fans: although the Collegiate Readership Program, which provided free newspapers on campus, was suspended this year due to lack of funding, there are two replacement offers on the table.
Members of GUSA, the Corp, and Interhall have been working to restore free papers to campus. According to Will Cousino (SFS ’12) of Interhall, both options would provide roughly half as many papers as last year at about half the cost.
The first offer came from the New York Times and would include 200 copies of the Times and no other papers. USA Today, which sponsored last year’s program, also made an offer late last week that would include USA Today, the Washington Post and the Times.
Cousino and GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) will sit down next Monday to discuss which plan they, along with Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ’10) and GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11), would like to pursue.
Both offers are currently at $12,000, according to Angert and Kluger. But they’re hoping to haggle them down.
“We’d love to start a bidding war. That would be ideal,” Angert said.
“As for distribution locations, last year we had four and this year they would probably be reduced to three or two,” Cousino said. “The one we’re pretty sure we’d cut would be the site at Uncommon Grounds.”
USA Today collected data about how many papers were picked up at what location, according to Cousino. On average, 134 papers a day were picked up in Leo’s, 133 in Red Square, 105 in Alumni Square, and 88 at Uncommon Grounds, he said.
“Once we pick a program, all the focus will be on raising the funds to get it and keep it sustainable,” Kluger said.
Last year, the Collegiate Readership Program was sponsored by five organizations, donating $5,000 each. Those organizations were GUSA, the Corp, Interhall, the Senior Vice President’s Office, and the Provost’s Office.
The Corp and GUSA are the only confirmed sponsors of the free newspaper program so far, according to Angert. The students are also hoping to get funding from the Dean of the MSB, among other sources.
The program was started at Georgetown in 2008 with $5,000 contributions from GUSA, Interhall, The Corp, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Senior Vice President to cover the $25,000 a year cost.
This February, then-president of Interhall Paul Biedlingmaier (COL ’11) told the Voice that “despite the recent economic events that have taken place, all five organization have continued their support of the program.”
Looks like that support wasn’t quite so solid, though. Current Interhall vice president for student advocacy Will Cousino (COL ’12) now tells the Hoya that the Provost, the Senior Vice President and Interhall all cut back on their contributions, leaving the program underfunded.
GUSA is still committed to the program, though, and is looking for ways to decrease costs and find other funding sources.
Georgetown, no longer content with the traditional housing lottery, has decided to kick things up a notch this year with a real lottery. For just two dollars, students can buy a raffle ticket that gives them a chance to win some quality housing like a Henle apartment, a Village A apartment and an LXR single. Each student is limited to six tickets, so a group of five potential roommates could potentially drop $60—not an insignificant sum.
This raffle, however, is not just another petty fund raising opportunity. Rather, it makes an already screwed-up housing selection process even more unfair. Georgetown should stay as close to a simple housing lottery as possible and avoid exploiting the freshman lust for a sweet party pad. Worse, the proceeds are benefiting Interhall, a student organization. Why, then, can’t the Voice raffle off some choice housing too?
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
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