Although they still don’t have exact data illustrating the effect of D.C. bag tax on Georgetown students’ use of disposable bags, students in charge of The Corp’s services say their employees are seeing a noticeable decrease.

“[We] don’t have data on the exact number of bags that we were going through before to compare,” senior Dave Shevlin, the director of Vital Vittles, wrote in an e-mail. But every employee in the store, he said, “agreed that customers are using far fewer bags than in the past.”

He added that while many customers initially complained about the tax, “a lot of people seem to like its implications and that a portion of the money goes toward cleaning up the Anacostia,” the highly-polluted D.C. river which tax revenues will go toward improving.

Shevlin’s observations aren’t surprising—stores across D.C. have reported a drop in disposable bag use and a few weeks back, The Hoya quoted one Vitals employee as saying that in her experience, students were refusing bags when they heard about the tax.

Brad Glasser (COL ‘11), the CEO of The Corp, wrote in an e-mail that at Mug, where he works, students have been opting for plates over bags when they order food.

“Across all of our services, our bag consumption seems to be decreasing steadily, but we anticipate that the trend will level off as customers become more familiar with the tax,” he wrote.

At the same time, students don’t seem to have started toting reusable bags around campus.

“Customers often leave with purses or backpacks full of groceries, but reusable bags are not regularly used yet.  We have been selling more of our canvas Corp bags lately, and we are looking into other possibilities for cheaper reusable bags,” Shevlin wrote. Corp disposable reusable bags currently cost $10.

As one its many philanthropy initiatives, the Corp annually doles out Reimagine Georgetown grants to programs that “seek to improve our undergraduate experience at Georgetown in creative ways.”  In recent years, grants—which are co-sponsored by GUASFCU and The Hoya—have gone to now-well-known initiatives like Run for Rigby and 25 Days of Service.

According to Chairman of the Reimagine Georgetown Board J. Ryan Zambon (MSB ‘10), the program received more than 20 grant applications this year.  Yesterday, the Board announced that it had narrowed the proposals down to four winners:

• Georgetown Alternative Music Series: $5,000 will go towards Daniel Alexander’s (MSB ‘11) idea of creating a series of on-campus concerts featuring student and local bands.
• D.C. Students Speak: Michael Trummel (COL ‘10) will be getting $3,000 to establish an annual conference between student leaders at all of the major D.C.-area universities to coordinate student response to issues like 61-D citations.
• Saxa Service Feast: $2,000 will go to Joel Ziebell (COL ‘10) to host a wing-eating contest for students and faculty.  The event will raise money that will be donated to the winning team’s charity of choice.
• Diversability: Tiffany Yu (MSB ‘10) is starting a club to promote “disability pride.” The group is in the process of getting SAC approval, and will be receiving $500 to get off the ground.

You can check out the full descriptions for the winning programs after the jump!

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After the demise of the free newspaper program early this year, student leaders have been pushing to bring the Washington Post back to campus, according to Will Cousino (SFS ‘12) of Interhall. Cousino, GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11) and Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ‘10), are still deciding between a new offer from the Washington Post, and older offers from USA Today’s Collegiate Readership program and the New York Times.

The details of the Washington Post deal may change, according to Cousino, but as of earlier this week the Post was willing to provide 200 papers a day for a cost of $1200.

As Cousino said, it’s “pretty much the same offer as the Times. Difference being that the Washington Post can also deliver the New York Times (albeit at a high cost… more than $1 a copy).”

According to Kluger, the number of copies of the Post the Times that this deal would include has not yet been nailed down.

In addition to which papers to include, Kluger emphasized that distribution methods are a critical factor in the decision. The Post delivers their own papers, whereas USA Today hires a Georgetown student to put out the papers every morning.

“Also, there’s the question of physically what to put the papers in,” Kluger said. “The [containers] we had before, [which] you had to use your GOCard to get into, were part of the Collegiate Readership program. We have to see if we can still use them.”

The next step for the free newspaper movement is narrowing the three offers down to one, definitive deal. Kluger is eager to incorporate student input in the ultimate decision.

“Whatever our final choice comes down to, unless student feedback comes down really hard on one side or the other, we have a survey set up to get out in an email to the student body,” Kluger said.

The e-mail will be sent as soon as Cousino, Kluger, and Goodman narrow down their options, a process which could still take a few weeks.

Promising news for print journalism fans: although the Collegiate Readership Program, which provided free newspapers on campus, was suspended this year due to lack of funding, there are two replacement offers on the table.

Members of GUSA, the Corp, and Interhall have been working to restore free papers to campus. According to Will Cousino (SFS ‘12) of Interhall, both options would provide roughly half as many papers as last year at about half the cost.

The first offer came from the New York Times and would include 200 copies of the Times and no other papers. USA Today, which sponsored last year’s program, also made an offer late last week that would include USA Today, the Washington Post and the Times.

Cousino and GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11) will sit down next Monday to discuss which plan they, along with Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ‘10) and GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11), would like to pursue.

Both offers are currently at $12,000, according to Angert and Kluger. But they’re hoping to haggle them down.

“We’d love to start a bidding war. That would be ideal,” Angert said.

“As for distribution locations, last year we had four and this year they would probably be reduced to three or two,” Cousino said. “The one we’re pretty sure we’d cut would be the site at Uncommon Grounds.”

USA Today collected data about how many papers were picked up at what location, according to Cousino. On average, 134 papers a day were picked up in Leo’s, 133 in Red Square, 105 in Alumni Square, and 88 at Uncommon Grounds, he said.

“Once we pick a program, all the focus will be on raising the funds to get it and keep it sustainable,” Kluger said.

Last year, the Collegiate Readership Program was sponsored by five organizations, donating $5,000 each. Those organizations were GUSA, the Corp, Interhall, the Senior Vice President’s Office, and the Provost’s Office.

The Corp and GUSA are the only confirmed sponsors of the free newspaper program so far, according to Angert. The students are also hoping to get funding from the Dean of the MSB, among other sources.

Photo by Sam Sweeney.

SAC solicited help for SAC Fair, but the College Dems were having none of it.

After failing to find volunteers, SAC announced that we’d underestimated their popularity. Shruti Dusaj and Robert Biemesderfer weren’t so sure, though.

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While we were busy covering start-ups like the Hoya Insider and the Georgetown University Examiner, we missed some great blogging action that’s been going on from a major Georgetown institution: the Corp.

You won’t find it under the blog section of their newly redesigned website, but Ryan Callahan (SFS ‘10) has quietly been chronicling his adventures as Corp CEO at The Back Hallway since February.  Posts are fairly infrequent, but when he writes them, they tend to be pretty insightful.

According to its inaugural post, Callahan started the blog with the hopes of giving Corpies insight into what it’s like to have a leadership position and making the Corp more accountable to the wider Georgetown community.

In the past few months he’s written about how the Board of Directors works, the challenges posed by the introduction of on campus competitors like Starbucks and Cosi, the great bagel switch, the future of the DPAC cafe and more.

Speaking of intenet increasing transparency of campus organizations: oh my, what hath yesterday’s Tweetacular wrought?

Malin Hu admitted that Georgetown actually gives her the warm fuzzies.

Erica Slates thought GUSA could really use some proofreading lessons.

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The Corp has recently received project approvals to move forward on their newest venture, a café in the Davis Performing Arts Center, according to Corp CEO Ryan Callahan (SFS ‘10). Callahan predicts that the new venue will be open by late October or early November.

The new café will serve full meals and is being worked on in cooperation with the Davis Center in attempt to make the building more of a “cultural hub” on campus (the Davis Center and the Corp are splitting the costs upfront). According to Callahan, the menu for the café is not yet set, but will probably include sandwiches, breakfast foods and possibly Sweetgreen-style frozen yogurt.

The Corp hopes that the new café will have strong cultural programming, with a performance area that could be used for open-mic nights, a cappella groups, or staging promotional scenes for campus productions (if the café takes Uncommon Grounds’ mantle as the “artsy” Corp venue, UG might work on being more oriented towards the new business school, Callahan said).

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Want a shot at your own 15 seconds of internet micro-micro-fame? Start following us on Twitter (GtownVoxPop) and, if you’re connected to Georgetown, we’ll return the favor and you’ll automatically be in the running!

Former Voicer Phil Perry was impressed by JT Jr.’s patriotic lunch choice.

Mara Hollander was unimpressed by the little store’s meat options.

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Add another 300+ employees and then we’ll have ourselves a real competition….

The Corp likes to boast that it is “The Largest Student-Run Corporation in the World!” It’s a pretty impressive superlative. Unfortunately, it’s one that the Harvard equivalent of the Corp, Harvard Student Agencies (HSA), also claims, verbatim.

So who earns the title? Let’s see how the Corp and HSA stack up:

• Number of Employees: Point to HSA
  The Corp: “nearly 200 students” according to their website.
  HSA: “more [than] 500 students” according to their website.
• Number of Services: Point to HSA
  The Corp runs seven services: one grocery store, three coffee shops, one snack shop, a catering service and a storage service
  HSA runs nine “agencies”: a laundry service, an advertising agency, a book publishing agency, a student employment agency, a rental equipment service, a center that supports undergraduate business initiatives, Let’s Go Publications and a separate agency that handles Let’s Go’s advertising.
• Total Revenue (2008): Point to HSA
  The Corp: $1,515,277 according to 990 disclosure forms
  HSA: $1,899,915 according to 990 disclosure forms
• Net Assets on hand at the end of the 2008 Fiscal Year: Point to HSA
  The Corp: $1,341,380 according to 990 disclosure forms
  HSA: $5,840,702 according to 990 disclosure forms

On sheer scale, it’s something of a blowout. With HSA dominating all four categories, it looks like the Corp is not actually “The Largest Student-Run Corporation in the World”—not even the largest on the East Coast. Don’t worry, though, it’s not like Harvard outranking us is anything new…

Update: But! Looking at HSA’s Board of Directors and Management Team, it’s clear that while HSA may claim that it’s “student run,” they definitely get support from adult staff members and alumni. Ultimately it comes down to what your definition of “student run” is: if we’re interpreting it as entirely student-run and -operated companies, the Corp still takes the cake.