Not in my backyard

This semester, Georgetown students and residents alike complained loudly about rats and mice invading the neighborhood.

In the Georgetown University Student Association Senate, Arman Ismail (COL ‘11—Reynolds) led efforts to mollify what he called “a growing problem” that have culminated in a $200 allocation for waste disposal awareness and improvement.

On the georgetownforum listserv, a neighborhood complained that the problem had gotten out of hand using some vivid imagery:

“We have a never ending supply of monster sized ravenous rats boring through the walls of my house. [T]he whole neighborhood is over run with rats,” the resident wrote, adding that introducing snakes to Georgetown was a possible solution.

But when asked if Facilities had been receiving more work orders regarding vermin recently, Director of Facilities Karen Frank wrote in an e-mail that her office “[has] in fact noticed a sharp drop off of calls about vermin.”

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GUSA will not stand for these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane campus

GUSA FUND: The big news from this week’s meeting was that the Senate passed the long-debated GUSA Fund, which will allow them to fund clubs directly. For more information, check out Vox‘s post from earlier this morning.

HATE CRIMES: GUSA passed a revised version of Senator Josh Mogil‘s (SFS ’11—Off Campus) changes to the Student Code of Conduct regarding hate crimes on a vote of 16 to two, with one abstention.

The new version of the resolution adds Hate-Crimes as a Category C violation, but keeps bias as a “parameter” for other violations that are not “criminal acts of hate,” but are motivated by the aggravating factor of bias.

Mogil said he decided to leave in the section on “bias-related incidents” after speaking with Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson about the resolution.

Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A, A-D) still had doubts about the necessity of the resolution.

“There’s no practical difference between someone who’s adjudicated based on a criminal act that would otherwise fall under Category C violations and those that would now fall under the sub-category,” Troiano said.

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Tracy Flick for GUSA Senate!

SPECIAL ELECTION RESULTS: The election commission ran a successful special election that culminated in the election of the following senators:

• Townhouses: Matthew Ginsberg with 35 votes
• Harbin 6-9: Clara Gustafson with 46 votes
• Copley: Shaalin Parekh with 52 votes
• Village A E-H: Nolan Johnson with 15 votes

The only apparent glitch was that students in the districts received “about three emails or so” for ballots because of a problem with Hoyamail, according to the election commissioners. Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A A-D) thanked the election commissioners for running such an impressive election, compared to last year’s chaotic special elections.

The election commissioners noted there were far more candidates per capita for the special election than the actual election. The Harbin seat had nine candidates, the Copley seat had seven candidates, the Townhouses seat had five candidates, and the Village A seat had three candidates. They said in the normal election, there were 35 candidates running for 34 seats, whereas in this election, there were 24 candidates running for four seats.

GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) attributed the peak in interest to run for GUSA Senate to the timing of the elections.

“You have to have the Senate in place at a certain time, and I think students don’t have their lives together until a certain time,” Angert said. “I think this was a very good indicator of why there wasn’t a good turnout [of candidates] at the start and why there was a good turnout now. There wasn’t any additional advertisement.”

The new senators agreed with Angert’s reasoning and added that the seats seemed more accessible because no one had the elections “wrapped up.”

GEORGETOWN FUND PLANS: Angert told the Senate there was “nothing super new to report on,” but the senators wanted to hear more about the executive’s plans for the proposed GUSA Georgetown Fund. Angert said the current plans are only a rough outline that have not yet been sent to the Finances and Appropriations Committee, but the Senate discussed several aspects of the potential Georgetown Fund.

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GUSA Senators aren’t the only ones concerned about rats—members of the Georgetown Forum listserv are being plagued by rodents as well.

One Georgetown resident sent out a message to the listserv informing them of his significant rat problems:

It seems to me that somehow there needs to be a community wide rat eradication program.

We have a never ending supply of monster sized ravenous rats boring through the walls of my house. I have already spent a considerable amount of money on this problem, but as long as the whole neighborhood is over run with rats, I think problems will continue to arise.

In addition to being disgusting and repulsive, this can’t be very sanitary.

And this neighbor has a novel possible solution:

Incidentally in Florida we don’t see many rats because the snakes eat them. Snakes are clean and solitary creatures but arouse strong passions. But the easiest way to control the rats would be to repopulate Georgetown with some appropriate snake species.

Don’t know what could be done, but it seems to me an important problem to deal with.

GUSA, protecting students from tyranical landlords

RATE MY LANDLORD?: During the Executive Briefing, GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) announced that  the executive wants to tackle the “lack of readily available information” about off-campus student housing. He said there is no official name yet, but the executive wants to create a “Rate my Landlord”-type website to help students with housing.

“It’s miserable, and it’s hard to get a house, and you always feel like you’re getting gypped, and you always feel like there’s so much pressure … Georgetown students are going to get screwed,” Kluger said. “So it’s just another initiative to get more information on it… for kids to know their options so they don’t have to pay as much as they think they might.”

In the rest of his briefing, Kluger mentioned that the executive should be part of an upcoming discussion with the administration about the main campus plan. He also updated the Senate on the free newspaper program.

HATE CRIMES AND THE STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT: Senator Josh Mogil (SFS ‘11—Off Campus) introduced a resolution to start a discussion about updating the Student Code of Conduct.

Mogil wants to make hate crimes—“crimes motivated by race, disability, gender, gender identified, ethnicity, and/or sexual orientation”—a separate offense under category C.

Currently, bias-related incidents are only treated as parameters of other category C violations, but Mogil seeks to make them their own category of offense, and include in the definition of “bias-related incidents” those that are motivated by disability or physical handicap.

“It sends a message because I was a victim [of a hate crime,] and I couldn’t do certain things within the School Code of Conduct,” Mogil said. “I couldn’t face my attacker because it wasn’t its own thing. It was only a parameter. So it still isn’t treated as seriously. I was a victim of assault.”

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GUSA debates rats and the perennial publicity problem

STUDENT ACTIVITIES FEES: The Senate waded further into the morass of club funding, passing a bill about the Student Activities Fee. Students currently pay a $100 Student Activities Fee, half of which goes into the student activities budget, and the other half of which goes into a student activities portion of the endowment.

Students cannot use the student activities portion of the endowment until the total sum reaches $10 million, and the interest accrued on the account is rolled over into the university endowment.

Many Senators weren’t too happy about that arrangement.

“They’ve been robbing us,” Josh Mogil (SFS ’11—Off Campus) said.  “It’s completely unacceptable.”

GUSA wants the interest to be put into the student activity fee account, and they want to consider a way to recoup the interest that has already been rolled over into the University’s endowment. Some Senators voiced concern that it would be difficult to get the administration to implement such a policy, though.

RATS: Senator Arman Ismail (COL ’11—Reynolds) has found his issue: Rats.  He wants GUSA to step in and address the rodent menace plaguing campus.

However, Mogil voiced concerns that such a project would harm “the spirit of the new GUSA.”

“I’d like to remind everyone that if we tackle a problem we can’t solve, it’s not going to help our image,” Mogil noted.  He said GUSA is not the right body to eradicate the rats, and expressed concern that “The Hoya will cover it in their front article: ‘GUSA tries to kill rats, complete failure.’ Everyone will be laughing at us, it will be embarrassing.”

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Sam Ungar was unconvinced by the MSB building’s new name.

Kristen Janiszewski overheard high schoolers hitting on a profound truth about Georgetown.

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The Georgetown and Dupont Circle Five Guys locations have been closed after being caught with rodent problems by Inside Edition‘s Rat Patrol. The show visited fast food locations in the D.C. area that the Obama’s have frequented (Michelle took her staff to the Dupont location in February) and found a pack of rats near the back door of the Dupont location and mice scurrying through the sacks of potatoes lining the windows at the Wisconsin Ave. Five Guys.

According to DCist, a Five Guys spokesperson said the chain closed the restaurants preemptively and are having pest control companies address the situation.

“We will not reopen until the health department and our independent pest control companies provide us with clean inspection reports,” [Five Guys Spokesperson Molly] Catalano said. Five Guys hopes to have the two stores reopened within a day or two.

Photo from Flickr user M.V. Jantzen, used under a Creative Commons license.

Last night, I dreamt that I encountered a fat, human-sized rat in Village A, where I live. I don’t remember the details of the dream, but I do know that rats scare the shit out of me. Every time I pass one, I halt, cringe, scream and then warn those behind me. They then look at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I’ve got rataphobia, the real scientific term for which I am too lazy to google.

Still, after dusk, squirrel territory turns into a rat’s haven. There are 2 rat hot spots: the pathway along Copley Hall (between Red Square and Healy) and the heart of Village A. At night, I avoid these hot spots. The rats are most active in the middle of Village A. If you walk near New South, the library, or on Prospect street, you’re probably OK. However, be careful on Prospect street, as I recently spotted a fox (yes, a fox, in a major city) roaming the street at 3 am.

Dude, why can’t we just have pigeons.

Posted by Keenan Steiner, Contributing Editor