Here’s a note for the planners of next month’s Georgetown Traditions Day: Chances are you forgot one of the University’s more recent, but distinguished traditions-protracted conflicts with the District’s zoning boards.
Yes, the eternal dance continues. This past Monday, the D.C. Zoning Commission voted to reopen the persistently festering wounds left by the battle to approve the University’s 10-year campus plan. How? By determining once and for all how the University counts how many students it has.
In April, the Commission granted the University approval to begin construction on the Performing Arts Center. Though virtually no one spoke against the need for new arts facilities, community activists opposed the center because they claim the University doesn’t comply with conditions that accompanied the approval of the 10-year plan in 2001.
Specifically, the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown claims that the University’s method for determining whether it is underneath a 5,627-student cap that the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment imposed is faulty. Currently, the University averages its fall and spring enrollment numbers to arrive at a complying figure. The Citizens’ Association argues that the University must remain under the cap at all times.
The problem is connected with the hundreds of Georgetown juniors who choose to spend at least part of their academic year abroad. Students who choose to graduate a semester early further compound the problem. These situations leave the University with dozens of fewer students enrolled for spring semester than for fall semester. Dozens of fewer tuition payers, that is.
Georgetown’s relatively tiny endowment and depressed alumni-giving rates tie the University’s financial health closely to the number of tuition-paying students it enrolls. It is no secret that the University wants to expand its student population: When the University submitted the first draft of the most recent 10-year plan, it wanted to add 500 students. Later, Georgetown reduced the proposed increase to 389 additional students. In its final order, the BZA nixed any expansion at all.
The averaging technique helps make up for those smaller spring enrollment figures (and smaller tuition revenues) by maximizing fall enrollment figures. Meanwhile, in the spring, the University tries to keep tuition money flowing in however it can. To give one example, the School for Summer and Continuing Education runs its “Washington Semester” program in the spring. Under that program, undergrads from other universities come to Georgetown to do internships, take a couple Georgetown classes, and pay a semester’s tuition, room and board for the privilege. Even so, there are many dozens fewer undergraduates enrolled in the spring.
At Monday’s meeting, the Zoning Commission voted to reopen its consideration of the Performing Arts Case to determine, for once and for all, which method should be used to count Georgetown’s students. While Zoning Commission chair Carol Mitten expressed clear reservations about averaging Monday, other members reserved judgment. The Commission will likely take up the issue early next year, and in the meantime, it issued a stay of the BZA’s enrollment cap, allowing the center’s construction to go forward.
Jeanne Lord, interim associate vice president for student affairs, called the Commission’s decision “qualified good news” for the University in an e-mail.
“We have to remember that this is, in a sense, an ongoing assessment,” Lord wrote. “The [Zoning Commission] will look at our compliance again, underscoring the importance of student efforts in continuing the good work that’s been done so far.”
