Georgetown’s Licensing and Oversight Committee recommended Friday that the University terminate its sportswear contract with Adidas no later than December 15, due to the company’s mistreatment of workers at an Indonesian factory.

The LOC is a board of students and administrators who make recommendations to the president president “regarding the University’s relationships with the collegiate products and apparel industry stakeholders.” The group gave the recommendation three weeks after members of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee delivered a letter and petition to President John J. DeGioia asking the University to put pressure on Adidas by ending the contract.

172 students signed the second petition. This is not the first time GSC delivered a letter and petition to President DeGioia, and the second action was part of an effort to remind the University that students are not stepping down from the issue.

“This is an important step in a campaign that has been going on for over a year in response to Adidas’ mistreatment of workers at a factory in Indonesia,” GSC announced in a press release. “Adidas violated Georgetown’s Code of Conduct for Licensees, as well as Indonesian labor law by failing to pay $1.8 million in legally owed severance to the factory workers of PT Kizone.”

Cornell University decided not to renew its contract with Adidas as well in mid-September. The university’s president David Skorton released a letter stating, “We believe that severance is a basic worker’s right as are a living wage, freedom of association and safe working conditions,” according to the Cornell Sun. Last week, Oberlin College also agreed not to renew its contract. Oberlin and Cornell are the only universities as of yet in the country to sever their ties with Adidas.

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On July 14, the U.S. embassy in Mexico announced the award of 63 technical school scholarships for students, teachers, and technicians from rural Mexico. Georgetown will administer the program under its Scholarships for Economic Education and Development.

The first set of scholarships will allow 20 young indigenous Mexicans to study quality control, agribusiness, and small business management at community colleges across the U.S. The scholarship began as a private initiative, conceived by the late Fr. Harold Bradley, S.J. as the Central American Peace Scholarship program.

After being taken over by the United States Agency for International Development, Georgetown stepped in to help administer the scholarships, which target underserved populations and aim to develop a region’s local capacity.

Since its inception, over 400 students and teachers from the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua have received an award.

SEED also allows the University to make vital connections in the foreign aid community. “[I has created] opportunities for students interested in community service, such as the work of the Water Justice Alliance organized by current student, Mark Svensson, which is now operating in two communities in the Dominican Republic and Haiti as a result of connections with SEED alumni who have returned home,” said Scott Fleming, associate vice president for federal relations.

Georgetown University is lobbying Congress to extend the Scholarships for Education and Economic Development program into the Andes region of South America, according to publicly disclosed federal documents.

The SEED program, which currently includes the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua, is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development and administered by the University’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development. The program offers scholarships to students in support of technical training, leadership skills enhancement, and English as a second language studies.

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Georgetown must really want a boathouse on the Potomac. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the school spent at least $5,000 on lobbying efforts (PDF) ultimately aimed at getting the National Park Service to approve the proposed boathouse on the Potomac. That brings the total lobbying fees spent on the boathouse to at least $1,060,000, by Vox‘s count.

Unfortunately for Georgetown’s lobbyists in the Carmen Group, these are no longer boom times for boathouse lobbyists. In the first quarter of 2009, the group was pulling in $40,000 for talking with National Park Service officials about the boathouse. By the fourth quarter, though, the Group was only making $5,000 for helping Georgetown with “environmental documentation.”

According to Scott Fleming, Georgetown’s Associate Vice President for Federal Relations, boathouse lobbying now is focused around matching construction plans to existing sewage pipes that run along the river (although not into the river, Planeteers).

As usual, it’s impossible to know how much Georgetown spends exactly because of Fleming’s own lobbying report (PDF). The report says Fleming spent $20,000 on various lobbying efforts, including the boathouse and a potential West Bank hospital.

Pretty soon, the School of Foreign Service in Qatar might not be the only Georgetown outpost in the Middle East. According to lobbying disclosure reports filed by Georgetown, in the fourth quarter of 2009, a Georgetown employee met with officials in the State Department to talk about opening a teaching hospital in the West Bank portion of Palestine.

According to the report, Associate Vice President for Federal Relations Scott Fleming met with officials in the State Department to discuss “potential for establishing West Bank Teaching Hospital.”

Fleming told Vox that the idea to start the teaching hospital in the West Bank came from faculty at the Medical Center. He met with the officials to determine how diplomatic concerns or the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would affect the hospital. He stressed, though, that the project is only in the first stages of consideration.

“To call this preliminary—that may be a little far fetched,” Fleming said.

A computer-generated image of the boathouse (on the left)

Georgetown just wants to row, row, row its boats, spending as much as $5,000 from July to September lobbying for the right to build a boathouse on the Potomac, according to disclosure forms. That brings the amount of money spent lobbying for the boathouse to a few thousand dollars over $1.2 million.

The exact amount Georgetown paid its lobbyists, the Carmen Group, is unclear because lobbying rules only require that amounts over $5,000 be disclosed. The less than $5,000 tab is a big drop for the Carmen Group, which was paid $20,000 last quarter for boathouse lobbying.

Judging by the disclosure forms, it looks like the Group didn’t contact anyone in the National Park Service, its usual lobbying target when working on Georgetown’s behalf.  The Carmen Group might be off talking to the agency because Scott Fleming, Georgetown’s in-house lobbyist, has been working with the Park Service instead.

This quarter, Fleming received $20,000 for lobbying for Georgetown on various issues, including working with the Park Service on the boathouse. Alas, because Fleming lobbies for Georgetown on other issues, it’s impossible to know how much of the 20 grand is for boathouse work.