Earlier this month, a sign displaying “Read Orwell” adorned the Virginia approach to the Key Bridge. Clearly Georgetown University’s neighbors have taken the graffiti artist’s advice: They’ve been reading their Orwell, and they like what they read.
Recently, members of the Alliance for Local Living proposed that neighborhood residents take personal initiative and videotape what they deem to be inappropriate student behavior off campus.
Consider this the first strike in the new town-gown order. For over a decade now, community activists have relied heavily on a single strategy to keep the University under control: Make approval of University plans dependent on conditions that they name. If Georgetown breaks an arbitrarily determined enrollment cap, sorry-no new performing arts center. If the University fails to collect students’ license-plate information, sorry-no new science building.
But, last month, the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out the bulk of that strategy, leaving neighbors to wonder how best to keep the University reined to their liking. Anti-GU residents represented by organizations such as the Citizens Association of Georgetown and the Burleith Citizens Association had a choice to make: Work with the University or find another divisive, controversial strategy. Though the University has gone to great pains to work with local residents, non-students and students alike, over the past few years, they have now clearly chosen the latter.
If the goal is to ultimately improve student-neighborhood relations, antagonizing students with personal videocameras will only make interaction more tenuous, and will likely incite more trouble. Instead, neighborhood residents should leave documentation to the professionals: Metropolitan Police, the Department of Public Safety and the University administrators that have made a serious effort to respond to local concerns (through such groups as ALL).
Why not encourage residents to meet their student neighbors, talk to them, and work with them, rather than film them surreptitiously? Because it’s an easy answer to a complex problem Georgetown’s neighbors have been consistently unwilling to face. And avoiding constructive confrontation is avoiding the issue.
If residents want footage of college students misbehaving, they should stick to those tapes advertised on late-night TV. Act now, and they’ll throw in a free bonus tape: “Orwellian Surveillance Measures Gone Wild.”
