The new Southwest Quadrangle means many different things to many different people. Students see a brand-new dormitory and cafeteria; the Jesuit community sees a new home; and the University’s neighbors see 780 fewer students off campus.
Now guess which one of those was the reason the Southwest Quad was built. Here’s a hint: there’s a reason the cafeteria didn’t turn out so great after all; students’ need come awfully low on the list of the University’s planning priorities. Instead, among the most important forces behind the residence were the neighbors-neighbors sick and tired of students’ trash and noise.
An article in last week’s Georgetowner, written by a Georgetown community activist, suggests how the university’s neighbors view the Quad. Entitled “A Promise Kept,” former Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Grace Bateman gave the University a rare congratulations: “The completion of Georgetown University’s Southwest Quadrangle project is cause for praise and celebration,” she wrote, “GU has proven that it is financially feasible to address the concerns of its neighbors while enhancing the college experience of its students.”
It may be easy to question whether the Quad enhances the college experience of Georgetown students, but the more important question is whether or not it will work to address neighbors’ concerns. Today, 900 more students live on campus than a year ago (the additional 120 students were forced in after a University guarantee of on-campus housing met an unprecedented response).
Fewer students are living off campus this year, said Charles VanSant, Interim Director of Off-Campus Student Life, though the exact numbers will not be in until information collected at the University’s off-campus orientation sessions is tabulated.
More important than the actual numbers, however, is the more subjective judgment of whether neighbors’ trash and noise concerns are being assuaged. VanSant, who serves on the University’s Student-Neighborhood Assistance Program, and deals directly with concerned neighbors, says that over the past two weekends, he’s seen just as much trash and rowdy behavior.
VanSant said the number of complaints filed by neighbors is roughly on par with last year. From looking out from my Burleith deck over the weekend at the throngs of students venturing noisily up 38th Street and back, I can hardly disagree. Though fewer students may be in the neighborhood, plenty of on-campus students know where they live.
That may be the crux of the University’s future town-gown conflicts: the concerns will shift away from trash and shabbily maintained houses, and more toward the noisy late-night foot traffic common to Burleith and West Georgetown. No number of Southwest Quads will eliminate that.
The University may have kept their promise to neighbors, housing hundreds more students in the face of financial trouble, but that promise may not have the magical effect some neighbors may expect.
