As his parting gift, former GUSA President Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) made it his personal mission to revive Georgetown’s Hindi language department, which was discontinued in 2008 due to budgetary constraints.

Towards the end of his term, Dowd formed fundraising committee with SFS Senior Development Director Tom Esch and Georgetown Law professor Michael Gadbaw, Dowd formed a committee to solicit funds for the program. Dowd estimated that it would cost $80,000 to pay one professor for one year and $2 million to endow a chair for the program.

Unfortunately, it looks like that money hasn’t been raised yet—or at least not in time for the upcoming school year.

In an e-mail, Georgetown’s Director of Media Relations Andy Pino writes:

The College has prioritized funding for those languages in which we offer majors and minors, especially those that have seen an increasing demand in recent years. My understanding is that there are no plans to offer courses in Hindi this coming semester, either through SFS or the College.

Dowd and Gadbaw did not respond to requests for comment; Esch referred us back to the Office of Communication.

Pursuant to a negotiation with Sweden, the embassy doubles as an IKEA show room

What could be better than Pat Dowd’s (SFS `09) bizarre trip to Finland which gave us Friedman-like access to the nude image of our former student body President? Why, his Finnish embassy blowout!

Yes, Dowd was pleased to announce on Facebook that on May 6, the Finnish embassy would open its doors to a limited number of students for the MyHelsinki party:

The Finnish Ambassador, Mr. Pekka Lintu, has graciously offered to open up the strikingly modern Finnish Embassy to a select number of Georgetown students for a laid-back reception on the evening of May 6th.

This event is meant to serve as an opportunity for students to experience Finnish culture and get a sense of all that beautiful Helsinki has to offer.

And, Dowd promised, it’s “a party that’s gonna be hotter than a Finnish sauna and cooler than a Finnish winter”!

A message sent out to event members tonight said that space was filling up fast. “Georgetown’s very own underground DJ sensation, PVA, will be manning the wheels of steel,” the message added “so come prepared to shake a leg.” Indeed!

Photo from Flickr user Jeff Tabaco under a Creative Commons license..

Time for the last reading of the Dowdometer, the machine that measures now-former GUSA President Pat Dowd’s success at living up to low expectations. The red bar is my expectations.

Pat grew his mustache today because he’s looking to live the life only available to Thomas Friedman. Describing his trip to Finland, Pat said (emphasis added):

“I got a Thomas Friedman level of access when I was there to ask questions. The trip was really cool, because I got a chance to take all the theory and conceptual stuff I learned at Georgetown and apply it to a real issue,” Dowd said.

I don’t know about that, but if “Thomas Friedman level of access” means stripping down to your birthday suit, here is Pat Dowd naked. The Dowdometer was very pleased when I fed that JPEG into its disk drive, so that may account for the sky-high rating today.

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Based on availability, the Fellows will probably be housed in the Shire

When he was just a baby GUSA President, Pat Dowd (SFS `09) told Georgetown that with the help of the funding boards’ giant surplus, he was going to set up a summer housing program for students with unpaid internships in the District or surrounding area. He called it GUSA Summer Fellows. At the Voice, we collectively tittered at the program’s name (think Lord of the Rings jokes) and absolutely lambasted Dowd’s ambitious plan:

Dowd and Kelly have approached the idea with a startling naiveté of the complexities involved in enacting such a bold proposal. Putting their energy towards an unreachable goal of trying to institute it this summer diminishes GUSA’s credibility and detracts from the program’s chances for next year.

Trying anyway is a waste of GUSA’s time because some aspects of the program, like applications, will not carry over to an attempt next summer. … Dowd thinks he can set up a pilot program this year for five to ten students, but given his scant experience with Georgetown administration and the little time remaining in the semester, this goal is wildly unrealistic.

Boy, did we eat them words. Dowd and Kelly quickly got their act together, got $10,500 from the surplus (only a quarter of what they asked for, however), and ended up providing free summer housing for a handful of students in Village B. Even though they only housed five students, we later admitted that that’s no small feat for the typically ineffective GUSA exec branch.

This summer, GUSA Summer Fellows can accommodate ten students instead of five. That’s thanks exclusively to $26,000 in donations from one alumn and a member of Georgetown’s Board of Directors, according to Walid Khalifeh (SFS `09), who was Dowd’s Chief of Staff until October when he created and headed the GUSA Summer Fellows Steering Committee with Dowd’s VP, James Kelly (COL`09). The future of the Fellowship of Pat Dowd looks secure, too:

“We’re working on an endowment that would fund the program through perpetuity for future generations,” Khalifeh said.

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Bald is beautiful

D.C. Councilmember David Catania (SFS ’90, LAW ’94) spoke to students today (as part of the Michael Jurist (SFS ’07) Distinguished Alumni Roundtable series), and man, is he awesome.

Catania (Ind. – At Large) waxed philosophical on a number of subjects, blending serious information, like the roots of the D.C. HIV/AIDS epidemic, with jokes and anecdotes, like “Raise your hand if you think sex doesn’t happen in jail.” He also talked about whatever happened to the gay marriage rights bill he had planned to introduce in January.

The conversation started focused on how Catania’s SFS education got him started on the path he’s on today. While he was here, Catania was a research assistant for Madeline Albright (jealous?). He became an energy lawyer after he graduated from law school, albeit not a very enthusiastic one, and ran for public office on a whim. Not his own whim, but his neighbor’s. He explained:

“I was first elected to the DC City Council in ’96 because neighbor of mine had talked me into running. Jean would have been about 86 years old… She took me up on the roof of my building and fed me gin and tonics until I agreed to run. And let me tell you, the best way to run is unopposed” He’s served on the Council ever since.

The gay marriage bill and a Catania-Pat Dowd heart-to-heart after the jump.

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Last night, the Election Commission, which will run the primary for GUSA Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates has decided to disqualify two tickets, Voice- and College Dems-endorsed Jeff Lamb and Molly Breen, and Peter Dagher and Elias Ibrahim.

Update 1:34: The College Democrats are encouraging a write-in campaign on behalf of Lamb-Breen. Look to our Twitter for further updates. Update 8:54: Student efforts (especially by Pa Dowd and those behind Twitter’s openGUSA—Troiano, I presume?) have failed to reinstate either party on the ballots the Election Commission mailed out at about 4:00 a.m. Are you planning to write in either ticket?

According to emails exchanged between GUSA President Pat Dowd and Election Commission member Frederick Moore, campaign posters for the two tickets appeared in illegal places. The Hoya confirms:

Lamb and Breen posters were found in the Intercultural Center and Darnall Hall, which violates resident hall posting policies. Dagher and Ibrahim posters were found in O’Donovan Hall and Village B.

Dowd expressed vehement opposition to the decision. But even his insistence that the violations were minor, that the two tickets had worked hard on sincere campaigns, that GUSA’s legitimacy was at stake, and his quoting of Pearl S. Buck  to the Election Commission (“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied”) couldn’t save the candidates. At 7:30, Moore wrote,

“Thank you for voicing your concerns.  Please know that the Election Commission read your email and took it into account when re-evaluating our decision to disqualify the two tickets.  We also greatly appreciate your service to the Georgetown community and hold your advice in high regard.  Unfortunately, after discussing the issue with the other two members of the Election Commission, we have decided to uphold the disqualification.  As such, neither ticket will be on the ballot that will be sent out later tonight.” [Emphasis his]

Dowd responded, “With all due respect, I have to say that this is the most insensitive, asinine decision that I have witnessed during my entire year in office.”

I’m inclined to agree. The full text of Dowd’s plea appears after the jump. What do you think?

Update 1:26: Peter Dagher to Election Commission before his disqualification (partial email), and it’s not without some j’accuse of its own:

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…Using the best breakup song ever

Last week, the board of the Student Commission for Unity voted to break away from GUSA. Their decision went into effect Sunday, and Brian Kesten (COL `10) promptly emailed SCUnity’s listserv with SCUnity’s press release, which read in part:

In order to effectively advocate for these recommendations, the Student Commission for Unity will cease to operate under GUSA, effective immediately. This decision was ultimately made to increase the durability … This model will also better serve the advocacy process, as working with various offices on campus will be necessary in order to realize the full potential of all recommendations. The Student Commission for Unity executive board has seen a once productive relationship with the Student Association turn into an inhibiting one.

So what do they mean by “inhibiting relationship”? In the Fall, GUSA and Kesten sparred over SCUnity’s leadership when they became incorporated with GUSA. Recently, GUSA accepted only 6 out of SCUnity’s 8 proposals based on their findings, which irked Kesten.

“GUSA voted down two of our proposals, which were formed by 15 months of research for the exec board, as well as a semester of research done by around 40 students,” he said yesterday. “We intend to fully pursue our recommendations as the result of our extensive research, meaning that we believe all of our recommendations are reasonable.”

SCUnity’s choice is already receiving criticism. Today, The Hoya published an op-ed by GUSA President Pat Dowd, who worried that now that it has lost GUSA’s involvement, SCUnity will not reflect student desires:

“Affirming my worst suspicions, the SCU has decided to cut ties with GUSA in order to unilaterally petition administrators for a number of controversial diversity-related policy changes. This development raises serious concerns about what is being advocated on the behalf of students without their informed consent.

“It is absolutely imperative that students and their elected representatives be given the opportunity to scrutinize, evaluate and ultimately choose to accept or reject the initiatives that Kesten hopes to implement.”

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Buried in last week’s GUSA coverage was a bit about GUSA President Pat Dowd’s (SFS `09) latest, and perhaps last crusade: raising funds for a Hindi language program here at Georgetown.

Dowd and a fundraising team intend to solicit funds for the program from the tech community in Silicon Valley, he said. He estimated that it would take $80,000 to provide for one professor for one year of the program, but with $2 million, “we can endow a chair for the Hindi language program.”

Showing student initiative comparable on some levels to Brian Kesten’s (COL `10), when the University shuffled its feet over the Hindi program, (“It’s been really hard to get the departments to cooperate to share the cost,” Dowd said), Dowd decided to look beyond the University for the money to fund the program.

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Editor’s note: below is the first edition of Vox Populi’s weekly GUSA roundups, a sass-meets-C-SPAN summary of Georgetown student government’s goings-on. In sum, we’ll go to GUSA meetings so you won’t have to. We think Tipp O’Neill would be proud.

The big issue at this week’s GUSA meeting was the Metropolitan Police Department’s new noise policy. Several strategies to combat the measure were suggested, including a town hall meeting, an editorial in The Hoya (for the record, the Voice’s has done its part) and banding together with members of the District of Columbia Metropolitan University Student Alliance (they of the erstwhile Student Metro Discount crusade).

Pat Salvo (SFS ’09—Off Campus) kicked off the meeting with an executive briefing, mentioning that the search committee for the new Dean of the College has narrowed down the candidates from twelve to five. The next step in the selection process is a round of meetings between the candidates and members of the administration.

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It’s Christmas-time at Georgetown, a time when all hearts on campus turn to one man who promised us salvation: Student Association president Pat Dowd. That makes for a perfect time to evaluate Pat’s term thus far using the Dowdometer, which judges Pat’s performance against my low expectations (the red bar).

The last time the Dowdometer was turned on, Pat was floundering after the collapse of his pumpkin giveaway. How do things look now?

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