The pleas are the same from year to year, from campus group to campus group. The common refrain?
“More space!”
And of those many organizations, few have been pleading longer and harder than Georgetown’s many performing arts groups. Mask & Bauble, Nomadic Theatre and Black Theater Ensemble, not to mention many dance and music groups, have found suitable performance and practice space exceedingly scarce for decades. Finally after all those decades, their ears perhaps opened by a hefty donation from credit-card megalith MBNA, the University listened and included a new performing arts facility at the location of the Ryan Administration Building in the 10-Year Plan submitted in 2000 to the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment.
Unfortunately, the politicized process of campus development quickly proved to be another obstacle to Georgetown students and faculty hungry for more arts space. After an arduous two-year approval process, the BZA finally approved the 10-Year Plan last year, but not before attaching a laundry list of restrictions. Now, before the University can embark on any of its projects-new science building, new business facility or new performing arts center-it has to prove its compliance with the BZA’s restrictions.
These include a requirement for the University to maintain a registry of students’ cars, presumably for identification by residents whose spaces they might occupy. In addition, the University must move unruly off-campus students back on campus. Most crucially, the University must keep its enrollment under 5,627. One more, and permits will be revoked.
For residents, it was a coup. They managed to tie a largely uncontroversial project to controversies including bad student behavior off-campus and increasing student enrollment. In the past, the University may have pooh-poohed residents’ concerns-maybe forming an ad-hoc working group or sending the Dean of Students to a Citizens’ Association of Georgetown meeting now and again. But when those efforts fizzled once again, the University paid no consequences.
Now, residents upset about the campus’ behavior can take a campus project hostage on the demand that the BZA’s conditions be met. The MBNA Performing Arts Center was only the first hostage-it was finally released last week, when the D.C. Zoning Commission judged the University in substantial compliance of the BZA’s orders. Yet it was a mixed outcome-the DCZC only found the University in compliance because the BZA’s conditions were invariably vague and unclear.
One condition only required the University to consult with D.C. authorities regarding parking registration; there was no requirement for an actual list. To arrive at an enrollment figure, the University averaged a fall number above the cap with a spring number well below the cap to arrive at a satisfactory number.
When referring to the University’s efforts toward compliance, Barbara Zartman, a longtime critic of the University, made the distinction between “motion” and “progress.” Georgetown University has made plenty of motion, she said, but little progress. Whether or not the BZA conditions are proper, the University largely escaped on a technicality this time. Zartman is right-it seems the University violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
The Performing Arts Center is finally free from captivity and student performers can thankfully rejoice. The next hostage, however, is waiting.
