Next semester, the University will begin to phase in the new GOCard, which will replace the 27 other cards students currently need to access University services and facilities. If they are brave enough, students can get their GOCard right now by venturing to a room buried deep under Leavey clock tower.
This development threatens the very fabric of student political life at Georgetown. Any hopes of stirring up vital interest in student government will be dashed in the wake of the GOCard coup. The Georgetown University Student Association may not realize it, but this is the beginning of the end. Their end.
Issues dealing with relatively benign bureaucratic hang-ups such as a proliferation of incompatible card systems are the meat and potatoes of student politics. Without them, campus political life would shrivel and die like a woefully neglected houseplant.
Granted, the traditional purpose of selecting an issue on which to campaign is eventually to repair whatever injustice or inefficiency one sees. However, we need to consider the larger picture. The act of debating, of campaigning, of fighting for what we think is right is the true grist of the University experience. The value of actually attaining those goals is debatable at best. Reflect for a moment. What is life for a Captain Ahab with no whale to hunt? For a Don Quixote with no windmills against which to tilt? Empty. A campus blessed by the admittedly life-affirming GOCard system is a campus lacking the heightened senses of a world in conflict.
Solving these problems will leave us idle. The devil’s work soon follows. We must demand the protection of our tenuously GOCard-less world.
Naturally, GUSA will no doubt fabricate further political “issues” to hold student interest. But unless you want to see their shoddy mock-up windmill, their plastic inflatable whale, that road is a dark one indeed. The tensions of unrest are the source of our sanguineness. Preserve them at all costs.
