Encore, Olson, Encore!

At yesterday’s meeting with the advisory neighborhood commission, Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson listed all the University’s plans to reduce off-campus partying in West Georgetown, Burleith, and Foxhall. According to the Georgetown Dish (Vox was not able to attend the meeting), upon hearing Olson’s promises of on-campus social life, the crowd broke out into an impromptu applause in enthusiastic support of the University’s new efforts. Olson also introduced the new Lauralyn Lee, associate vice president for community engagement.

As we know from the past few weeks, the changes include new food trucks available around campus from Thursday to Saturday as well as the abolishment of tight on-campus party registration rules. Now, students will be able to host on-campus parties without advance registration. Olson also mentioned the New South Student Center as a method to refocus student life on campus, and reiterated the University’s plan to house 90 percent of undergraduates on campus by 2025.

“I don’t believe there are any questions to Todd about moving forward. The ANC was supportive, and we’re supportive of the Georgetown Community Partnership,” Commissioner Ed Solomon said to Vox. “We all agree that the program is a result-oriented partnership…when the programs are all implemented. I think we’re all speaking the same thing. There wasn’t really any controversy.”

Please, no goose lighting

In other news, the ANC also discussed two new restaurant additions to the Georgetown area: Good Stuff Eatery and ShopHouse. Good Stuff plans to open in December at 3291 M Street, and the ANC approved the awning, doors, and signs. According to the Patch, the ANC did request a change from the restaurant’s proposed goose lights to a slightly less bright choice.

The opening date for ShopHouse remains unclear, but will open either at the end of this year or the beginning of next.

First off, we’d like to give an official Vox Populi welcome to the Class of 2016, for officially graduating from “pre-frosh” to bona fide freshmen. As you begin your career on the Hilltop, you’re going to notice that, although your fellow classmates may have different interests and hail from different corners of the Garden State, there is one habit that unifies the student body like no other: Complaining about the University. Here, Vox has compiled a rundown of Hoyas’s most common topics of complaint, why they do so, and how to deal with them a little more effectively.

Facilities

• Why we complain: Blame it on Target catalogues that show college dorms with enough room for home theaters and popcorn machines, but most kids go to college under the delusion that their dorms will be big, perfectly furnished, and spotless. So it’s easy to forget before moving in that your room has been lived in by an unfathomable number of people, many with doubtlessly questionable hygiene and destructive living habits, before you. So your blinds might fall off (Editor’s Note: Mine did), your toilet might overflow, your lights will burn out, and you’ll have to wait some undesirably long amount of time before Maintenance comes around to fix them.

• What to do instead: Make sure you report everything, and we do mean everything, in the Room Condition Report you fill out in the beginning of the year—it’ll keep you from being charged for the mess that the inhabitants of yesteryear left in their wake. If you have any problems with your room’s facilities that you really can’t deal with on your own (burnt-out light bulbs, broken drawers, even low water pressure in your shower), put in a work request immediately: Sure, it will still take a couple of days, but the worst thing you can do is wait.
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The 2010-2011 Georgetown University Student Association Senators were sworn in on Sunday, officially beginning the year’s agenda. While the meeting was heavy on ideas and questions from the senators and light on formal votes, the discussions suggest that many of last year’s issues will rear their heads soon.

Chris Pigott (COL’12), last year’s Senate Vice-Speaker, moderated the meeting.

Student Activities Fee and Endowment Reform (SAFE Reform)

In 2001, a system was set up to allocate half of the Student Activities fee to student organizations, club sports, and the media board. The other half went to an endowment, which, according to the plan, would eventually become self-sustaining and eliminate the need to collect a student activities fee from each student on a semester basis.

At the current interest rates, however, GUSA representatives are concerned that students wouldn’t see the effect of the endowment plan until at least 2025. Let’s hope that the Finance and Appropriation Committee looks into the endowment money and creates a plan to speed up the process.

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