These are the candidates for Village C West and New South. The two dorms will share three senators. There are fourteen candidates.

Anebi Adoga (COL ’16)

Anebi Adoga (COL ’16) is running for GUSA because he is extremely happy to be at Georgetown and wants to give back to the students who have been so welcoming to him.

“Georgetown is great because we the students are great,” he said.

Adoga is confident that his diverse background qualifies him to relate to people on many different levels. According to Adoga, the biggest issue on campus is communication. “Very few people know who their senators are”.

Adoga wants to broaden GUSA’s involvement with the student body and to combine the ideas of each party to make Georgetown a better place. Other issues that he wants address include the too few water stations at Leo’s, dirty dorm showers, and the inefficiency of the health center. Adoga proposes that Georgetown shares its files of copies of students’ insurance cards with the health center so that students who do not have their cards can still gain access to the health center.

“Part of my chief goal is to make students fully aware of all of the resources at their disposal.” An example Anebi gives is concerning floor funds; he wants students to have more of a say about how they want their funds to be spent. Anebi promises: “If people give me their vote, I’ll take care of the rest. If people give me their vote, I’ll give them my best.”

-Sarah Konig

Seamus Guerin (COL ’16)

Seamus Guerin is a freshman in the College, and is studying political economy. He lives in VCW, where he is the president of its inter-hall council. Guerin is running for GUSA because he believes that his position as inter-hall council president of VCW, along with a GUSA seat, would allow him to connect New South and VCW both to each other and to GUSA. Guerin was quick to add that New South will definitely not be forgotten. “If elected, I definitely plan to be having meetings then to welcome in people from both New South and VCW. So, as their representative, I can be getting the pulse on issues.”

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Update, 1:20 p.m., February 4: According to the Department of Public Safety daily crime log for Wednesday, DPS officers “responded to a verbal altercation which escalated into physical contact between an affiliate and his spouse” at New South at approximately 11:17 p.m. The report classifies the incident as “domestic violence.”

Original post, 1:54 a.m., February 3: After an incident on Wednesday night that involved Emmanuel Kornyo and his wife and provoked a 911 call, Kornyo is no longer the Chaplain-in-Residence on the third floor of New South Hall and his biography has been removed from the University’s website. According to a resident of the floor, Kornyo left the building at approximately 6 p.m. Thursday night and his name has been removed from the door of his former apartment.

Shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday, residents of the third floor received an email (excerpted here) from hall director James Lorello, informing them that they would not have a Chaplain-in-Residence for the time being:

As you may know an incident did occur last night on your floor related to our chaplain in residence.

I wanted to reach out to inform everyone that the situation has been taken care of and that everything is fine. For the time being there will be no Chaplain on the third floor. I apologize that I can not give more details about this incident but you can trust that everything has been dealt with.

Lorello’s email concluded by providing the contact information of Assistant Director of Residence Life Katie Heather and Director of the GU Women’s Center Laura Kovach.

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At approximately 9:25 a.m. Thursday morning, a student’s laptop was stolen from her New South dorm room, according to a DPS public safety alert. At 9:15 a.m. the student’s roommate left the room. Roughly ten minutes later, the student heard someone enter the room while she was sleeping and assumed it was her roommate. At 9:30 a.m., when her roommate actually returned, the student awoke to discover that her laptop was missing.

According to the public safety alert, entry was made through an unlocked door. At 1:00 p.m. the student reported that the laptop was missing to DPS.

DPS requests that anyone who has information regarding this incident, or who noticed any suspects before or after the incident, to contact them immediately at (202) 687-4343.

Back in March, college-geared website Campus Splash released rankings of various college dorms across the country, grouping them into categories like “best,” “worst,” and “best-looking.” And in this set of rankings—for which we’re sure the methodology was careful and highly scientific—Georgetown came out with the honor of two “dormies”: Darnall as third on the “worst” list, and the Village A apartment complex as number six on “Best Party Dorm.”

Well, even though that only happened six months ago, Campus Splash has inexplicably released their next round of rankings, and would you look at that, we’re on there again! This time, though, they apparently realized that Village A can’t really be considered a “dorm,” so our party ranking went down a tad—our sole representative is now New South at a modest #10.

The website’s little blurb about the freshman party spot refers to it as “Zoo South,” a nickname we’re pretty sure the website made up itself. The grammatically frustrating descriptions also adds that the residence hall is “not so clean (but what can we expect from a party dorm?)”

Unfortunately, Campus Splash didn’t put up another “worst” list, so we can’t tell if Darnall is still making the cut. But it appears that having a freshman hall with rooms big enough for beer pong wasn’t enough to land us the accolade of their top list—Georgetown is nowhere to be found on their “Best 15 Dorms” list.

10 a.m. update:

As of this morning the majority of the problems have been fixed, according to the following email from the University.

Dear Residents,

Pressure has been restored to residential facilities and Main Campus buildings.  There are still some Medical Center buildings being affected that are being addressed.  University Facilities staff will be on campus today to address clean up and follow up concerns.

If you encounters any water issues, please call Work Management at (202) 687-3432.  The Work Management Center will be open 10am – 6:00pm but Public Safety will be able to dispatch maintenance staff to respond until the office opens.

Thank you,

The Office of Studen Housing

The Office of Residence Life

Original post:

Earlier this evening a water main broke on campus causing water pressure problems in a number of residence halls.

Residents of New South reported to Vox that starting from around 7 p.m. onward the restrooms and sinks in the building have had minimal water pressure.

University Facilities is currently responding to the incident and the Office of Student Housing sent an email to all residents to encourage them to use the restrooms on the lowest level of their buildings. Residents of New South are encouraged to use the restrooms in Lauinger Library, McShain Lounge, or in the classrooms located in Reynolds.

The University has not given an estimated time for when the problem will be fixed.

Read the full email sent from the Office of Student Housing:

Dear Residents,

Earlier this evening, a water main break occurred on the north end of the campus.  Water pressure is significantly reduced in a number of buildings.  University Facilities is working to repair the damage and resolve as quickly as possible.  Please use restrooms on the lowest levels of your buildings if there are problems in your building.

New South residents are encouraged to use Lauinger which is open 24 hours or the restrooms near McShain Lounge and the Reynolds classrooms.

We apologize for the inconvenience.  We will update you with more information if the problem continues.

Thank you,

Office of Student Housing
Office of Residence Life

Last Friday, the D.C. Regional Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League commended Georgetown for its quick response to recent bias-related incidents.

In a press release, ADL Regional Director David Friedman highlighted the Department of Public Safety’s “rigorous investigation and swift apprehension of a suspect in the recent bias related graffiti incidents on campus.”

“The University’s response sent a clear and unequivocal message that Georgetown will not tolerate hate crimes and expressions of bigotry,” Friedman added.

Last week, DPS apprehended a freshman student allegedly responsible for the bias-related incidents, which happened in New South and Darnall Halls on September 6 and 11. The suspect is accused of drawing swastikas and writing the word “Hitler” on whiteboards in the two dormitories.

Photo: ADL

On Tuesday morning, a room on the first floor of New South was burglarized after a resident left her door unlocked, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. When the student returned to her room, she realized that her laptop, jewelry, and some cash were stolen.

“The complainant stated that she had [lost] the key to her dorm room and left her room door ajar so that she could re-enter without a key,” MPD Lieutenant Antonio Charland wrote in an e-mail.

In an e-mail to Vox, DPS Director Joseph Smith confirmed that the burglary occurred in New South.

The theft calls to mind the flurry of burglaries that plagued the Southwest Quad last July, as the campus typically experiences a lull of crime during the summer.

The suspect is still at large.

Because Sellinger just isn’t quite sufficient…

The Student Space Working Group—an organization founded in the fall of 2008 to address the lack of study space, social areas, offices for student organizations, and a centralized student center—recently got the chance to discuss their objectives with top University administrators at a summit organized by Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson.

SSWG Chair Max Glassie (COL ’10) and Communications Director Fitz Lufkin (COL ’11) both said they thought the administration was responsive at the summit. Plans are still in the talking stage, though, at least until the group finishes the “White Paper”—a student space proposal plan with information from surveys and interviews with students—that they are currently working on.  SSWG hopes to finalize the paper by the end of the semester.

“Space is something that moves very slowly,” Glassie said “A lot of it is talk, and at this point we have to realize that talk is a really good thing and it means a lot of progress.”

Among the long-term proposals is a plan for creating a Student Center with a restaurant or café in the New South basement.

“There’s approximately 30,000 square feet of space under New South, which is largely unused,” Max Glassie, Chair of the SSWG said. “The plans include a conference center—one of the big problems students face now is the lack of adequate space for programming.”

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The University is formulating its 2010 Campus Plan, which, once it passes ANC and D.C. Zoning Commission muster, will dictate how the University can expand over the next decade. Previous Campus Plans excluded neighborhood input in their planning stages, much to the neighbors’ dismay. So this summer, University officials will hold a series of meetings to gather community input. For those of you who aren’t here, Vox will be attending all meetings and recapping them here on the blog. Keep in mind that the proposals under discussion are only tentative. At the same time, they do comprise, as University architect Alan Brangman told Vox, Georgetown University’s “wishlist.”

This Saturday, some Georgetown administrators, including Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson, Vice President for External Relations Linda Greenan, and University Architect Alan Brangman, were lucky enough to spend nearly five hours in the cafeteria of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts’ cafeteria presenting the skeleton of Georgetown’s 10 Year Campus Plan to a group of about twenty neighborhood residents and their Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners. It was the second of such meetings, the first having taken place in November, that will occur before the University must present a plan for review near the end of the calendar year.

Aside from a handful of miscellaneous issues, the bulk of the meeting was spent on often heated discussions about student housing and the effect the University’s plan would have on traffic and human congestion (two posts, one about the University’s housing proposals and one about transportation, including GUTS buses, will follow this week).

For their part, the neighbors were present to insist that the Campus Plan address the perennial issues that they feel plague the neighborhood, such as trash and the number of students living off campus. And the ANC commissioners who were present, Bill Skelsey, Bill Starrels, and Ron Lewis were clearly advocates of all the neighbors’ proposals (Georgetown University’s student ANC commissioner, Aaron Golds, attended a wedding yesterday but wrote in an email that he plans to attend subsequent meetings).

Among these is the demand that the University cap its undergraduate enrollment at its present maximum number, 6,016. University administrators plan to do so, they said, largely because they anticipate the expansion of their graduate programs instead.

The incomplete state of the University’s 10 Year Plan—it is currently more a collection of suggestions than an actionable plan and lacks some of the studies that will be critical to it finalization—visibly upset the neighbors in attendance.  They were dismayed, for example, to hear that the University would like to build a “whole new hospital facility more internal to the campus” but could not specify the location or coordinate its affect with other aspects of the plan, like traffic, until negotiations with MedStar, the company that owns the existing hospital buildings, had concluded (The preferred location for the new hospital is on what is currently the hospital parking lot).

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