In any healthy relationship, there must be give-and-take, yielding and proceeding. In its March 29 decision not to raise Georgetown’s enrollment above the 1990 cap of 5,627 undergraduate students, the Board of Zoning Adjustment revealed its unwillingness to yield and, consequently, its refusal to enter into a partnership with an institution that has an essential place in its community.
On November 8 of last year, the BZA voted in favor of Georgetown’s 10-Year Plan. The plan included provisions for a new science building and a graduate business school facility and renovations to Lauinger Library, Walsh, St. Mary’s and the Ryan Administration Building. While Georgetown intends to pay for the construction of the facilities with capital raised through the Third Century Campaign, the 10-Year Plan’s viability depends on a 389 student enrollment increase. Georgetown planned on using the money garnered from the additional students’ tuition dollars to finance the operating costs of the new facilities. The caveat the BZA included in its favorable vote was that it planned to review a list of conditions that could be added to the plan at a later date. Unfortunately, the loophole that the BZA created developed into a black hole for the 10-Year Plan, as the BZA obliterated one of the most essential components of the proposal.
Whether or not the BZA realizes it, by attempting to curtail Georgetown’s development, it is antagonizing its own goal of encouraging the University to pull students back on campus. The BZA should not attempt to collect punitive damages for past grievances. Instead, it needs to look for methods of improving future student-neighbor relations. Georgetown’s 10-Year Plan includes many measures that would ultimately benefit neighbors who complain of student disruption.
Renovating New South for a student union, creating a performing arts center and building three new residence halls are all actions that would facilitate campus-centered student life. This refocusing of student activity would produce an effect that would likely outweigh the additional bodies phased in to help fund these projects.
More important than the specific avenues of growth that the BZA has closed down is the atmosphere of distrust that the recent decision establishes. Georgetown proceeded with the 10-Year Plan as though the enrollment cap increase was a future reality. The BZA’s decision to disallow such an essential step of the plan over four months after the overall plan was approved destroys the sense of communal respect to a far greater extent than noisy students on a Friday night are said to do. The additional measures that the BZA calls for?including having student conduct violations made public, parents informed of conduct violations and student license plate numbers listed and made public?all indicate that the BZA is unwilling to work side-by-side with the University to achieve a greater community good.
In order for the University to progress with its much-needed improvements, University officials must not fall into a pit of acquiescence. Not only does this stifle current progress, but it sets up a precedent of the University accepting whatever crumbs the BZA drops from its table. University officials must fully investigate the legality of the BZA’s decision and remain committed to its original 10-Year Plan. The BZA must relinquish a modicum of its control over Georgetown and be willing to yield in favor of an equitable partnership with Georgetown.
