Earlier today, we ran a post about the general sentiment that the Citizens Association of Georgetown and residents feel toward the 2010 Campus Plan draft that the University presented in November, as shown in the first public meeting about the plan ever to discuss a coherent strategy to combat it.

For the sake of brevity—and it was still kind of a monster post—we isolated a presentation that CAG Vice President Gianluca Pivato, of “fuck off” fame, gave about the information CAG compiled when it researched the impact of students on the neighborhood.

It’s town-gown tensions by the numbers.

Pivato demonstrated the impact students living in Georgetown and Burleith have had on the neighborhood in terms of the space they take up, the trash they generate, and the 911 calls and arrests they invite. Pivato was clearly going for shock factor, and he got it, most of all with a Google Map which boasted a red marker for every undergraduate household in Burleith and Georgetown, and a blue one for every graduate student household. With more than 400 markers total appearing on the screen, the map elicited a gasp from the audience.

According to Pivato, who based his numbers on what seemed like thorough research through neighborhood listservs and city-reported statistics, the neighborhoods around the University could be described in terms of …

… the number of students currently living in Burleith and West and East Georgetown, and the number of houses they occupy. Currently, 1,109 graduate students live in the area, and Pivato and his team were able to confirm that they live in at least 79 houses, which they except to rise to at least 124 houses when their enrollment numbers increase. “[This] will considerable displace undergraduates” further into the community, he said. Undergraduates living in Georgetown and Burleith number 1,305 and occupy over 350 houses.

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Hope for single beer sales springs eternal

Everyone’s favorite Advisory Neighborhood Commission returned this summer after their summer recess. Like any good Georgetown reunion, the most exciting parts involved alcohol.

Last year, the D.C. Council approved a ban on the sale of single beers and small bottles of liquor in certain areas of the city, including Georgetown. The law gives ANCs the power to decide on exemptions to the ban, and Georgetown’s ANC is currently in the process of picking a plan of action.

Commissioners Bill Starrels and Tom Birch have been looking into the issue and at the meeting Starrels seemed poised to issue a resolution saying the ANC wouldn’t entertain any exemptions. Starrels said he hasn’t heard many complaints about the ban, and that the number of “homelessly challenged individuals” in Key Park has dwindled.

However, Commissioner Charles Eason said he’d personally heard three complaints, and the owners of Dixie Liquor piped up to protest, saying the ban costs them $40,000 a year. In the end, ANC decided to deliberate on the issue further, and the hope for the grand return of single beers lives on.

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The West Village People: like this, but more concerned about trash and student noise

With the battle over Georgetown’s 2010 campus plan starting to heat up, a couple of new neighborhood groups have been formed to defend the interests of permanent residents, according to an article in the most recent edition of the Georgetown Current [PDF].

About three months ago, the “West Village People” group was formed as a way for permanent residents living close to the University to communicate their grievances.

Members send comments and complaints about the University and its students to gtown411@ymail.com. The anonymous person behind the email account then removes all personal information from the complaint and sends it out to Georgetown’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission, the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown and sometimes the University.

More recently, CAG has formed a committee to deal specifically with “longstanding differences” between neighbors and GU, mostly “quality of life” issues like alcohol, noise and trash, as well as the 2010 campus plan.

More about the new committee’s plans after the jump!

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A few months after neighbors got so fed up with off-campus students’ trash that they started clandestinely taking photos of violations and submitting them to D.C. trash inspectors (and after the issue was raised in meetings about Georgetown’s ten-year plan), the University has announced new, stricter policies for trash and recycling for students living in Georgetown-owned townhouses.

In an email sent out last night to students who will be living in townhouses this year, Patrick Lukingbeal, the Hall Director for Village B and the townhouses, wrote that residents will be required to abide by D.C. trash and recycling ordinances, as well as the University’s requirements.

Students living on the 1400 block of 36th Street and the north side of the 3600 block of Prospect Street have been given two new dumpsters and thus are “not permitted to place trash and recycling on the street.” Students living in other townhouses were informed of the trash collection schedule and how long they are allowed to leave their cans out before and after trash pick-up.

While asking students to abide by D.C. law isn’t anything revolutionary, the email makes it seem that Georgetown will be upping its efforts to sanction violators. In addition to occasional visits from D.C. trash inspectors (prompted by neighbors’ complaints), students living off-campus will also be subject to fines and punishment from University officials who will be doing “on-going walkthroughs”:

As a service to the residential community, University staff does on-going walkthroughs outside of student houses to ensure that the residents are in compliance with the City and University regulations. If University staff deems the trash situation at a house unsatisfactory, all residents of the house may be found responsible for a Category A violation of the University’s Code of Student Conduct …

First Violation: $50 fine per resident+ 5 work sanction hours per resident
Second Violation: $100 fine per resident+ 10 work sanction hours per resident + Housing Probation
Third Violation: $150 fine per resident + Apartment Living Suspension

Read the full email after the jump!

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Over on the greener side of the Georgetown blogosphere, EcoAction’s Renewable Energy Turns Me On just conducted an informal survey of recycling bins on campus, and the findings aren’t pretty.

Renewable Energy Turns Me On visited Walsh, Healy, the ICC, Reiss and Leavey and found some serious problems with their recycling bin set-ups.  According to the post, Georgetown’s recycling bin failures are four-fold:

1. Every facility should have bins for as many different types of recycling as possible and trash cans.
2. Paper—which is sometimes divided into mixed paper, white paper and newspaper—should either be consolidated into one category or all three bins should be paired together.
3. The appearance and placement of recycling and trash bins should be standardized.
4. Recycling bins should be available in locations where they’re most needed (i.e. you should have paper recycling near copying machines, plastic and aluminum recycling near vending machines and Hoya Court).

Does this look like something you could talk about for 6+ hours? Totally!

For those of you still in D.C., there are a few upcoming community meetings you should know about. Hot topics include the University’s 2010 Campus Plan, student garbage and same-sex marriage in D.C.

• The biggie is an all-day community meeting on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts (3500 R Street) about the 2010 Campus Plan. The University is in the process of developing its new 10-year plan which will determine what can be done over the next 10 years in terms of important issues like the expansion of the library, construction of new facilities, expansion of student housing, et cetra.

  If you’ve got free time on Saturday, try to stop by and make sure a student perspective is taken into account. If you can’t make it, though, expect full coverage of the meeting right here at Vox.

• There will be a meeting tonight between Georgetown community members and the University’s Office of Student Conduct at 6:30 p.m. at the Alumni House. The meeting will address “student conduct in the community” and our “excessive garbage” (a long-standing issue with the neighbors) according to a message sent out on the GeorgetownForum listserv. The agenda includes Magis Row and the trash situation on the 35oo block of O Street.

  We got a stern talking-to for publishing an article about a similar meeting in February, and we’ve since been told that reporters will not be allowed to cover these meetings because “there is the sense that [community members] can’t speak as freely as they might want” if reporters are present, according to Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Jeanne Lord. However, students who live off-campus can attend and, if they feel so inclined, leave their impressions of the meeting in the comments.

• If that’s not enough neighborhood politics for you, there will also be the monthly Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting this Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Georgetown Visitation School. The agenda for this month’s meeting isn’t too thrilling, but it does include a “resolution on legalization of same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia.” Once again, you can expect full coverage of the meeting from Vox.

He reaps what you sow

Students had better start doing an improved job of bagging their trash, if a community email chain is any indication.

Early last week, the overflowing trash cans on the 1300 block of 35th Street—the student side—offended one neighbor to the point that she took photographs and sent them, along with a complaint, to Charlene Barber, D.C.’s Trash Inspector:

I request that you send an investigator to investigate and fine these homes (1320, 1322 35th Street, NW) for these violations. Additionally I request that an Investigator monitor the West Village of Georgetown to fine the increasing number of solid waste storage violations.

The result, according to an ensuing email, is that Barber will (or—eek!—already has) sent inspectors to West Georgetown to ticket the owners of the offending properties. Naturally, the email which contained that message exudes mild disappointment that the students who live in the properties are not the ones who the City will actually fine:

She said she will be patrolling our neighborhood and looking for violations and writing tickets if she finds any (including us). The tickets written to the property owner, not particular the student living in it …. She also said if you have photos to please send and she will follow-up with a visit to that site.

While our mess sounds pretty gross, it concerns me that nowhere in the email chain do annoyed neighbors indicate they brought their trash grievances up with the offending residents (and can we really be blamed for the vagrant student’s choice to put his greasy Philly P plate in our recycling bin?).

However, the first email (containing the complaint) does cc: the entire ANC 2E (Georgetown ANC) membership. Aaron Golds, why didn’t you tell us we were such slobs (or warn us that trash inspectors were coming to West Georgetown)?!

Full text of both emails, including a bonus opinion from the President of the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown, Denise Cunningham, after the jump.

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