Posts Tagged “Redistricting”
 In this week’s edition of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate, the senators had some fun with democracy, and came dangerously close to acting like ANC2E.
Equal representation, schmequal schmepresentation
Last night, the ad hoc committee in charge of redistricting presented their plans to reduce the discrepancies among GUSA Senate districts sizes. The gist is that smaller districts are being consolidated but the representation per district is increasing. For instance, Harbin and Darnall, previously three districts, are now one district with three senators.
This way, the population of each district is consistent within 10% to ensure a constitutionally mandated equal representation–with one exception: Copley Hall. Copley exceeds the limits to “preserve the system in general,” according to Vice Speaker Nathaniel Tisa (SFS ’14).
That’s right: GUSA exceeded their 10% deviation using the “neighborhood cohesiveness” argument. To boot, one senator suggested scrapping this plan in favor of one that would give freshman more representation because they vote in higher numbers (and no one off-campus votes). Since [EDIT] this plan increases the number of off-campus seats to five but only four people ran in the last election the senate now has three seats empty (constitutional violation in itself!), it would be easier to reallocate the seats to freshmen who actually, y’know, run. Anyway, the Senate might be misinterpreting that whole “equal representation” clause.
At this point, Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) went there and compared these suggestions to the ongoing vaguely illegal ANC redistricting process. “The concern of whether or not we can find people to run is an institutional concern and not a representational concern,” said Talbot.
One issue brought up by Senator Laura Kresse (SFS ’12) was that, assuming that the larger districts will increase competition for Senate seats and that competitive races have tended to see less female participation, won’t this plan make GUSA even more bro-y? Maybe Kresse didn’t say it exactly like that, but this is a valid concern. But it was determined that it would be better to address GUSA’s gender disparity in other ways.
Ultimately, the redistricting bill passed as proposed.
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 Last night, the Burleith Citizens Association held their annual meeting. Although the meeting was lightly attended, all the notable Burleithers, including outgoing president Lenore Rubino and new president Christopher Clements, were there.
And no meeting of the BCA would be complete without a guest appearance by Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans. Evans started by thanking Rubino for her service, then moved on to an indirect campaign plug about everything the council has done over the past decade. Although the city has improved its bond rating more than a letter grade in ten years, Evans said the city is still in financial trouble. Currently, because of budget difficulties, the city is at its minimum number of police officers, but CMs Evans and Phil Mendelson have found the funding to increase the police presence.
For public safety, Evans commented that, if it weren’t for last month, this year could have had the lowest homicide rate in 42 years. In addition to Halloween, three weeks ago saw nine homicides.
And of course he touched on redistricting. Evans appointed Lenore Rubino, Ron Lewis, and Jennifer Altemus as co-chairs of the redistricting working-group for ANC2E. They worked out a plan, which Evans called “somewhat controversial because of the student input.” Their proposal will be submitted to the council, and a hearing will happen sometime in the future.
On the Campus Plan, Evans said that he supports the residents 100%; although the council does not have a role in the process other than to advocate for the neighbors. Additionally, he said that one of the most pressing issues of the community is to limit the number of students in each house. Evans said he has tried to institute a zoning overlay or to limit the number of unrelated renters that can occupy a house (currently 6), but these plans have received pushback from other parts of the city.
“But they don’t have the problems we have,” Evans said. “It’s not students.”
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Yesterday, Tom Birch, the ANC2E commissioner in charge of the Ward 2 redistricting task force, submitted his own plan for the redistricting of ANC2E to the Council Subcommittee. This proposal, which still establishes two student SMDs, carves out sections of the university campus to place in surrounding SMDs and leaving the populations of each district more in line with the redistricting statute’s goal of 2000±100 people.
The ANC2E redistricting working-group, co-chaired Ron Lewis, Jennifer Altemus, and Lenore Rubino, adopted the co-chairs’s proposal in September, and the proposal has been since called “grossly discriminatory” by CM Phil Mendelson. As a compromise between the co-chairs proposal and the Planagan, ANC Commissioner and working-group member Jake Sticka (COL ’13) submitted a compromise proposal, which was not considered by the co-chairs before the final submission to Birch.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the three proposals.
| |
Co-chairs |
Sticka |
Birch |
| SMD01 |
2,409 |
2,409 |
2,264 |
| SMD02 |
1,660 |
1,971 |
1,917 |
| SMD03 |
1,705 |
2,272 |
2,010 |
| SMD04 |
2,581 |
1,889 |
2,096 |
| SMD05 |
1,710 |
2,107 |
2,315 |
| SMD06 |
1,836 |
1,836 |
1,973 |
| SMD07 |
1,983 |
1,983 |
1,836 |
| SMD08 |
2,581 |
2,013 |
2,061 |
Birch recommendation
Co-chairs proposal
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 Friday, At large Council-member Phil Mendelson (yes the same one who says the current redistricting plan is discriminatory) filed a letter to the Zoning Commission opposing the 2010 campus plan. He further writes that he is in agreement with ANC2E and the Office of Planning in that Georgetown should house 100% of students on campus.
By filing this letter, CM Mendelson joins Councilmembers Jack Evans, Mary Cheh, and Vincent Orange in opposing the Campus Plan.
Mendelson, besides opposing the co-chair’s redistricting proposal, also drafted the 2010 revision to the Nighttime Noise law that offers stronger enforcements for noise violations between 10pm and 7am.
But this letter won’t affect redistricting, at least according to Jake Sticka (COL ’13), the student/ANC Commissioner/redistricting working-group member who is leading the effort against the co-chairs’ proposal.
“I don’t see Mendelson’s opinion on the campus plan at all effecting the prospect of bringing about a fair and equitable redistricting plan in Georgetown,” Sticka wrote in an interview. “As far as I know, Councilmember Mendelson stands by his belief that the currently proposed redistricting plan is illegal and discriminatory.”
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 Last Thursday, the working group for the redistricting of ANC2E voted to not reconsider their recommendation, which has been accused of gerrymandering students into illegally large districts.
The vote for reconsideration followed the same lines as the original vote for the co-chair’s proposal, with all 5 students on the working group along with ANC Commissioner Charlie Eason voting for reconsideration and the other 10 members voting against.
The working group’s recommendation will be presented to Tom Birch (a Commissioner on ANC2E who is the appointed chair for Ward 2′s redistricting), who will make a recommendation to Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans. It will eventually go to the redistricting committee.
Last week, Jake Sticka (COL ’13), with the input of an unofficial “student working-group,” presented a new alternative to the working-group for consideration. The alternative would have been a compromise between the co-chairs’ proposal and the Planagan, whereby some districts would deviate from the prescribed size by 24% (instead of 40%). According to Sticka’s post on DC Student Speak, his proposal was only acknowledged after the deadline for voting to reconsider.
Charlie Eason, ANC2E Commissioner and member of the working group, has also been vocal in his opposition to the co-chair’s proposal, and he sees the problem as going past ANC2E.
“From the beginning, I believe the Council failed in setting forth a fair and clear process for redistricting ANC SMDs,” Eason wrote in an email.
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Representation, Shmepresentation
The biggest issue at last night’s relatively brief Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting was the presentation of the redistricting plan for open comment.
Commissioner Ron Lewis introduced the issue and the two proposals. He said that, although the working group voted 10-6 in favor of the co-chairs’s proposal, which places all students on campus in two over-populated districts, the decision is subject to possible reconsideration after last night’s discussion.
The co-chairs’s proposal, according to Lewis, has “respect for the political geography” of the area; whereas, the Flanagan Planagan (drafted by Vox editor John Flanagan), which creates two student districts and one mixed, leaves “hundreds of permanent residents to be abandoned, to not be represented by who they want.” Also to be noted, he underwent a series of verbal gymnastics to avoid calling LXR “on campus.” (Unfortunately he botched the landing, earning a modest score of 6.5.)
Although (or possibly because) numerous students attended the meeting to voice their opposition to the co-chairs’s proposal, Lewis restricted that “discussion” to a series of five minute speeches by representatives of each organization at the meeting. Three additional speakers from each side would have two minutes each to speak. Most students were aghast at not being allowed to voice their opinions (it even drove Commissioner Jake Sticka (COL ’13) to actually speak). But given the topic of discussion, is anyone?
Here are the highlights, starting with the most interesting comments:
- Ed Russel, a resident in support of the co-chairs’s proposal, said that because the students do not pay property taxes, they should not have “the ultimate right.”
- Karen Cruise of the Citizens Association of Georgetown asserted that the logic that students are 45% of the population and therefore should have 45% of the representation is faulty.
- Paul Musgrave, a PhD student living in Burleith, took the bully pulpit. Graduate students, who cannot live on campus, are fated to be represented by who oppose them, Musgrave argued, so what was that about residents being abandoned? Also, since the vote for the the plan was 10-6 with five students on the commission, any pretense of collaboration is, well, pretense. In closing, Musgrave brought up that, while everyone is on the topic of representation, a commission of white men fails to represent a more diverse community.
- GUSA executive Mike Meaney (SFS ’12) cited the ANC’s 2002 Student Bill of Rights, the D.C. Human Rights Act, and other points from his Dish post. Specifically in response to Lewis’s claim that the Planagan breaks up the cohesiveness of the neighborhood, Meaney posited, “If [students] are 45% of the ANC population, then with whom is the other 55% being cohesive?” Meaney also told the commission that students would fight this proposal at the Council at-large hearing on the matter.
More after the jump!
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 Yesterday, Georgetown’s Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) held a meeting at the John A. Wilson Building to kick off the Advisory Neighborhood Commission redistricting process.
Mayor Vincent Gray signed the bill redrawing the city’s eight electoral wards last week. Ward 2 will lose Shaw and gain the area containing the Convention Center.
Now the effort turns to redrawing the single-member districts and boundaries of the ANC’s, local councils that provide official community input on everything from liquor licenses to campus plans.
ANC single-member districts are supposed to represent about 2,000 people. The ANC containing most of Georgetown University has over 3,000 people, and the rest of the dorms are split into two three different single-member districts.
Evans has appointed Georgetown ANC 2E Commissioner Tom Birch to chair the effort in Ward 2. Anyone that expresses interest in serving on the redistricting task force will be allowed to join the task force.
Unlike most wards, the task force will not decide the ANC and single-member district boundaries in plenary, but will divide up into subcommittees based on ANC. Chairs of the respective ANC’s will lead each subcommittee, and the citizen association leaders will serve as co-chairs.
In Georgetown, Commissioner Ron Lewis of ANC 2E will chair the subcommittee, and Jennifer Altemus of the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown and Lenore Rubino of the Burleith Citizen’s Association will co-chair. All three have serious misgivings about the University’s 2010 Campus Plan.
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In this week’s edition of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate, the senators had some fun with democracy, and came dangerously close to acting like ANC2E.
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