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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Greenopia USA recently released green rankings for universities, and Georgetown didn’t come out looking so great. The rankings are given out on a scale of four leaves, and Georgetown received just one lone leaf.

That means we met less than 50 percent of their criteria for environmental reporting, green building design, waste programs, renewable energy, green food options, alternative fuel vehicles and water conservation.

Greenopia did give us points for requiring LEED Silver designation for all new construction, exceeding the average for waste diversion, and using a large amount of solar energy.

Out big black mark? Environmental reporting and transparency:

Georgetown could certainly benefit from some additional reporting. Simply put, Georgetown had some of the worst reporting we came across and this is unacceptable …

Georgetown has some environmental reporting (although not much), but has yet to take part in the ACUPPCC’s challenge for reporting/transparency.

As unsettling as our evaluation is, other local schools didn’t do much better.  American also came away with one leaf, getting knocked for poor reporting, as well.  Howard didn’t get any stars, just a scathing indictment of their lack of environmental action.  George Washington, Catholic and Gallaudet weren’t included in the rankings.

Via Renewable Energy Turns Me On.