Heckler Editor Jack Stuef (COL ‘10) speaking at a forum in December
In an e-mail to the Georgetown community that reflected on Martin Luther King Day, University President John DeGioia made his first remarks in response to the December Georgetown Heckler issue, which many students thought inappropriately satirized race. He also said that he and Provost James O’Donnell have also approved the suggestions of the Admissions and Recruitment Working Group, and that they will take the steps necessary to implement the suggestions.
“Mocking the history of oppression of others is not funny, does not build community, and does not reflect well on those who engage in it,” he wrote in response to the one of the Heckler’sarticles. “We often cannot know how our words or deeds can hurt one another – how such an act can bring back into another’s consciousness an experience of a previous injustice or indignity.”
DeGioia also called the response to the Heckler incident ” responsible, respectful, and fitting for an academic community that is committed to the free exchange of ideas.”
The Admissions and Recruitment Working Group presented a draft of their proposals in late November, which it is not necessarily identical to the suggestions that DeGioia and O’Donnell have approved. That draft included suggestions to build a more diverse student body, such as:
Prominently advertising the 1,789 new scholarships that Georgetown will be adding to encourage need-blind admissions over the next five years to potential students.
Looking into strategies that will increase the likelihood that an accepted student from an underrepresented group will attend Georgetown
Increasing the diversity of Blue and Gray tour guides and their knowledge of diversity issues and clubs on campus.
Including imagery on Georgetown’s redesigned website that highlights campus diversity.
Including a required essay prompt that invites students to discuss how their background or life experience would enrich Georgetown on applications.
The full text of DeGioia’s e-mail, after the jump.
Just ten people attended, most of whom were already involved in the working group’s endeavors, but a few outsiders provided helpful critiques of the working group’s draft of recommendations to the University. (The draft includes suggestions such as adding a diversity-oriented option to the Georgetown application’s essay question and diversifying campus groups like Blue and Gray and GAAP).
Katerina Kulagina (GRD ‘09), for example, the Associate Director of Admissions for the MSB’s Executive Degree Programs, asked about diversity of Georgetown’s own undergraduate admissions staff. Senior Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions Jaime Briseno replied that of the 15 or so people working in admissions, he and Assistant Director Kamilah Holder (SFS ‘02) were the only two non-white staff members.
The working group hopes to include diversity discussion in NSO
In a campuswide e-mail yesterday evening, the Office of the Provost announced that the Admissions and Recruitment Working Group has put together a draft proposal for changes to Georgetown’s recruitment process.
The changes, which are meant to encourage a more diverse student body, are not official, and the “plan for implementation” of any changes will not arrive until January 2010, after community comment. However, the e-mail, signed by Provost James O’Donnell and Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Equity Rosemary Kilkenny, did indicate that the suggestions would be “immensely helpful” to the University’s ongoing recruitment of the Class of 2014.
Suggestions for altering the admissions and recruitment process, according to the nineteen-page working group report (PDF) provided by link in the e-mail, include, among other things:
Prominently advertising the 1,789 new scholarships that Georgetown will be adding to encourage need-blind admissions over the next five years to potential students.
Looking into strategies that will increase the likelihood that an accepted student from an underrepresented group will attend Georgetown
Increasing the diversity of Blue and Gray tour guides and their knowledge of diversity issues and clubs on campus.
Including imagery on Georgetown’s redesigned website that highlights campus diversity.
Including a required essay prompt that invites students to discuss how their background or life experience would enrich Georgetown on applications.
These proposed changes are aimed at increasing campus diversity and cross-cultural engagement. The report notes that relative to peer universities, Georgetown has a very low attendance yield among its accepted minority applicants.
When it was announced that the new Gmail-run Hoyamail system wouldn’t include any of Google’s bells and whistles like GChat, Google Calendar and Google Docs, UIS Director Beth Ann Bergsmark said that a working group would be formed in late September or early October to look at possible additions. But as of now, Bergsmark says, the working group has not yet been convened.
UIS has made some progress, though, by approaching Google to discuss its service capabilities and identifying certain organizations they want involved in the working group. Bergsmark says UIS definitely wants representatives from GUSA, Interhall, the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of Communications to be involved.
Although these groups have been identified and contacted, the organizations haven’t yet identified who members to serve on the working group, according to Bergsmark. She is hopeful that the working group can start meeting in the last week of classes, which is the first week of December.
“If we can get people during the first week of December that would be great, but it is the last week of classes and everybody will be busy. If not, we will try for the beginning of January when everybody gets back,” said Bergsmark.
UIS has not approached faculty members to serve on the working group. Bergsmark said UIS has been focusing primarily on student input rather than faculty. feedback because the first application the working group will focus on is Google Calendar.
The discussion of Google Docs, which would be used more for academics, will come later and will involve faculty. For Bergsmark, with Google Docs there are some concerns about privacy and overlap with Blackboard, meaning longer deliberation would be needed.
The Student Space Working Group—an organization founded in the fall of 2008 to address the lack of study space, social areas, offices for student organizations, and a centralized student center—recently got the chance to discuss their objectives with top University administrators at a summit organized by Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson.
SSWG Chair Max Glassie (COL ‘10) and Communications Director Fitz Lufkin (COL ‘11) both said they thought the administration was responsive at the summit. Plans are still in the talking stage, though, at least until the group finishes the “White Paper”—a student space proposal plan with information from surveys and interviews with students—that they are currently working on. SSWG hopes to finalize the paper by the end of the semester.
“Space is something that moves very slowly,” Glassie said “A lot of it is talk, and at this point we have to realize that talk is a really good thing and it means a lot of progress.”
Among the long-term proposals is a plan for creating a Student Center with a restaurant or café in the New South basement.
“There’s approximately 30,000 square feet of space under New South, which is largely unused,” Max Glassie, Chair of the SSWG said. “The plans include a conference center—one of the big problems students face now is the lack of adequate space for programming.”
Last week, the Diversity Working Groups formed in response to the Hoya’s offensive April Fools’ Day issue held a town hall meeting to discuss their progress. Unfortunately, the meeting was pretty sparsely attended, so Vox decided to go out on campus and find out what students are thinking about Georgetown’s diversity issues.
On Thursday night, students from the Diversity working groups commissioned by President John DeGioia’s office gathered for a town hall meeting in Copley Formal Lounge. Although the meeting was sparsely attended, a number of prominent administrators were present, and a wide range of ideas on diversity were presented.
For a more thorough examination of the working group’s progress, see Lily Kaiser’s article in the print edition of the Voice.
Vice President for Strategic Development Dan Porterfield explained that the groups had been working hard over the summer to draft concrete recommendations for Provost James O’Donnell and DeGioia.
“[The working groups examined] how can we increase the number of underrepresented groups in the undergraduate population … [and] how can we ensure that all students who are applying to Georgetown hear a clear and compelling message about the standards of citizenship, civic engagement, and respect present,” Porterfield said.
When the meeting was opened up to members of the audience, the discussion became more heated with one individual shouting loudly at the assembled members of the working groups. A faculty member (who did not give her name) also supported the statements of the irate audience member and argued passionately that Georgetown needed to pursue greater recruitment of minority Professors.
“We’re weaving and creating stronger connections among students … that, as much as possible, breaks down some of the walls and divisions that we experience at our life together at Georgetown,” Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson said.
Although the specific recommendations generated by the working groups remain to be seen, panelists spoke out strongly for programs geared toward recruiting minority students, the creation of minority studies programs, and stronger financial aid programs.
In the wake of the Hoya’s April Fools’ Issue last spring, President DeGioia held a town hall meeting and announced the creation of three working groups to address diversity issues in terms of admissions, academics and student life at Georgetown. DeGioia promised that these groups—comprised of administrators, faculty and students—would be doing work over the summer and issuing a report this semester.
So what were they up to exactly this summer? We checked in with Rosemary Kilkenny, Georgetown’s Vice President of Institutional Diversity and Equity to see how their summer assignments went.
The academics working group outlined a document that compares Georgetown’s curriculum to that of “similar” schools. The purpose of this document was to examine whether or not Georgetown’s curriculum placed enough importance on cultural diversity. Factors mentioned in the outline include whether the curriculum requires the study of various cultures, what percent of students are ethnic studies majors, and an analysis of minority enrollment in relation to these factors.
The admissions working group addressed the huge discrepancy between the percent of admitted black students and admitted white students who end up attending Georgetown. According to Kilkenny, approximately 25 percent of admitted African American students attend Georgetown, as opposed to between 70 and 80 percent og admitted white students. This finding led the admissions group to think about how Georgetown packages itself as a community in terms of cultural diversity.
In terms of student life, Kilkenny brought up the apparent social segregation that takes place on campus, citing Leo’s specifically as a particularly flagrant example. The participants of the student life working group have been studying and analyzing integration within several student groups and activities on campus this summer.
Sound like exciting stuff to you? If you’re interested in joining one of the working groups you should contact Rosemary Kilkenny at kilkennr@georgetown.edu.
Because Georgetown shouldn’t make you feel like this.
Earlier this year, the Voice’s Kate Mays wrote about one student—Jared Pilosio’s (COL SFS ‘09)—campaign to increase and improve student space on campus. Since October, the group Pilosio formed, “The Student Space Working Group” has been laying the groundwork for the movement—talking to administrators, visiting other schools to compare campus layouts—and they’re now going public with their project.
Some of the major issues they’ve been looking at are how Leavey’s function might change with the completion of the new MSB building, how New South/Riverside lounge could be used, and how to maximize the utility of student club rooms on the 4th floor of Leavey, but they haven’t come to any definite conclusions yet.
“We’re open to a large number of possibilities for spaces,” Pilosio said. “We wouldn’t want to jump the gun on what’s feasible.”
That’s where you come in: the working group is currently soliciting student feedback, through their newly created a Facebook group, weekly townhall meetings in the ICC on Thursdays and an online survey.
According to Pilosio, the survey will be part of a “White Paper” which will try to summarize the past, present and future state of student space on campus and will contain recommendations for the administration. Pilosio said the group hopes to have a draft of the White Paper at the beginning of next fall.
So, if you’ve ever complained about how the best half of Lau is apportioned off for grad students or what a sorry excuse for a student center Leavey is, this is your chance to actually do something about it.
Photo from Flickr user DigitalParadox, under a Creative Commons license.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, a weekly newsmagazine at Georgetown University. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
Heckler Editor Jack Stuef (COL ‘10) speaking at a forum in December
The working group hopes to include diversity discussion in NSO
Someday…
Because Sellinger just isn’t quite sufficient…
Because Georgetown shouldn’t make you feel like this.
Entries (RSS)