This week Vox figured we’d give you some sense of institutional history by presenting a primer of the ten most widely-discussed campus news stories from the past couple years.
10. GUSA election debacles

GUSA Candidates, pre-squabbling

Georgetown’s student government, GUSA, doesn’t have a great record as far as presidential elections are concerned. In 2008, they experimented with instant run-off voting. They failed to conduct the election properly, though, and had to have a re-vote with the top four candidates.

This past year wasn’t much better. GUSA ditched IRV, but the election still devolved into chaos when the Election Commission disqualified two candidates hours before voting started. GUSA largely objected to the Election Commission’s decision, the election was suspended, complaints were filed, Election Commissioners resigned, and the disqualified candidates were ultimately reinstated.

9. Hoya independence and insensitivity

Students hold a sit-in after the Hoya‘s April Fools’ issue

The Hoya, Georgetown’s self-proclaimed “newspaper of record,” has been trying to go independent from the University for a quite a while. Indications were that they were set to go independent this coming year.

They ran into trouble this spring when they published a racially insensitive April Fool’s issue. The issue led to protests from students and promises from the Hoya to reform.

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We last left our friends at Catholic by the toilet, but according to the Washington Post, the last reported case of norovirus was Wednesday. The D.C. Health Department has confirmed that norovirus is indeed the culprit.

Yesterday, The Tower recalled the norovirus outbreak that hit CUA in 2006:

“An investigation by the DOH followed the outbreak in 2006. They found several food-related violations, including the presence of fruit flies and unclean equipment. The University has since done a campus-wide cleaning and installed hand sanitizers in the Pryzbyla Center.”

That’s more than they ever found at Georgetown. As for the hand sanitizers in the Pryzbyla Center, there’s no indication of what type of sanitizer they’re filled with, but as we all learned over Christmas break, what Georgetown gave out didn’t do squat.

You might remember norovirus from when it plagued and plagued and plagued Georgetown University back in early October. Well it’s back, this time striking 23 of our student neighbors to the Northeast, Catholic University.

And when I say ‘back,’ I mean it. In December 2006, about 60 Catholic students fell prey to the norovirus, prompting a Department of Health investigation. Just as in 2006, Aramark is CUA’s food provider. As with Georgetown’s outbreak, D.C.’s Department of Health never identified the source of CUA’s 2006 outbreak—although Georgetown did drop Organic to Go in the aftermath, a company that does not provide for CUA.

Student journalists at CUA should prepare to hear the words “projectile vomit” a lot. I also suggest our Catholic brethren read up on our Norovirus FAQ—although to be fair, they’re the real experts.

Image taken from Flickr user Jeff Youngstrom using a Creative Commons license.

Noro-what?

We all have our qualms about Georgetown, but few of us has ever aired our grievances with such reply-all audacity as Ivan Batishchev did yesterday afternoon.

In response to an email from Todd Olson’s office which announced that the Fall 2008 Student Affairs newsletter (whose homepage is graced by the Todd himself) was now available, Batishchev, who identified himself as a “HOYA parent,” sent an irate reply–to everyone who had received the original mailing.

In it, he bemoaned the University’s lackluster responses to diversity and safety issues and its Noro-horrific experiences at the beginning of the semester.

And nothing, it seems, was out of bounds for Batishchev: “Oh yeah,  remember that poor girl who killed herself? Yeah, a girl killed herself, ” he wrote in reference to the fact that the University did not publicly acknowledge the suicide of a grad student in October until after someone else broke the story first.

That’s not worth $50,000 to Batishchev. The full text of the email is after the jump.

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Was it you, meatballs?

I know the norovirus is old news, but the whole Passion of the Organic to Go was just so weird. The University canceled its contract with the reportedly delicious Grab and Go folks even though there no real hard evidence Grab and Go was responsible. The Department of Health final report nudged us that way, though.

We got all the Department of Health e-mails on norovirus, and they had some interesting stuff. Join me as we investigate a weird meatball cover-up, an attempt to block a Leo’s employee from returning to work, and a lawsuit threat.

Probably the best part of the e-mails is the appearance of a new suspect food in the investigation, meatballs provided by Sysco. When asked where the meatballs were, Leo’s told DOH they were all gone, but apparently that wasn’t true. To the best of my knowledge the meatballs were never mentioned to students by DOH or the University. From an e-mail about food inspections from DOH’s Robert Sudler to DOH’s Feseha Woldu (emphasis his):
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Maybe the norovirus really is carried by the wind! Hope College, a Christian liberal arts college in Michigan with 3,200 students, has fallen prey to a “norovirus-like” outbreak.

Hope College officials say since Friday, more than 400 staff and students have come down with symptoms of the nasty flu that has been knocking down people like bowling pins.

Campus buildings are being sanitized, the dining hall is serving take-out in disposable containers, and victims of the virus are complaining together in a Facebook group. Sound familiar? Worse, the school has only 3,200 students–that’s about 1/8th of their student body!

DC’s Department of Health has released its report (PDF) on the norovirus, and they think it was Grab n Go, but they aren’t sure:

In other words, we can state with 95% certainty that those students who purchased food from the Grab and Go station on were 2.9 times more likely to become ill than those who did not purchase food from the Grab and Go station.

But if the Organic To Go people are telling the truth and they prepare all their food for several universities in the same kitchen, there should have been a larger norovirus outbreak, not just one at Georgetown.

Via The Hoya

For some reason, norovirus outbreaks both here and at USC have scared Boston University’s BU Today into publishing its own norovirus prevention FAQ. But not only is it not as good as Vox Populi’s norovirus FAQ, the premise of the article is pretty ridiculous. Unlike pollen or nuclear fallout, norovirus isn’t carried on the wind, and so BU students can rest assured that our scary norovirus isn’t going to reach them anytime soon.

My guess? Today only ran this so they could print a picture of an earnest man in a bowtie.

The University just sent out an email saying we beat the Dread Pirate Norovirus. Hurray! The cheering will be loudest at Aramark because the email says Leo’s isn’t at fault:

The Department of Health continues their investigation into the exact source of the recent norovirus on campus but has ruled out any in house food service and in fact permitted the full restoration of dining services at O’Donovan Hall (Leo’s), which has taken place this week.

“Huh?”, you might say, and rightly so. Where else on campus do students shovel food into their mouths, and where else on campus has a history of bad handwashing? Fair point, but “in house food service” doesn’t rule out Grab N Go. I’m looking into it and will report back.

Tonight, though, we celebrate.  Actually, make that Wednesday, we celebrate:

Recognizing the inconvenience that many of you have experienced over the past week, dining services has graciously agreed to students’ suggestions to cater a GUSA Election Panel and Debate Watch party planned in Leo’s on Wednesday, October 15.

Thanks for catering one event, Aramark. Maybe instead you could refund the meals from the Center Grill.

So it looks like the University won’t be helping students who were infected with the norovirus pay their medical bills. On Monday, VP of Student Affairs Todd Olson also told reporters that the university was unlikely even to reimburse students for their meal plan, which is so not cool.

But as the D.C. Department of Health has said that the source of the norovirus outbreak is yet unknown, this kind of talk out of the University is completely inappropriate. In effect, Georgetown is declaring itself free of blame before the real experts determine if that’s the case.

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