For the 2005 Georgetown University Student Association executive board election, the Editorial Board of the Georgetown Voice endorses the ticket of Nilou Huff (SFS ‘06) and Anders Fremstad (CAS ‘06).
The Huff/Fremstad ticket represents more than the usual pandering to student interest groups and mere promises of better housing and dining services-promises rarely fulfilled. Instead, this ticket offers an agenda of conscience that transcends our own needs: Demanding that a living wage be paid to sub-contracted workers on campus.
We chose this ticket for its clear and focused purpose. The Huff/Fremstad ticket promises to be single-minded in its dedication to the living wage, easily the most important moral issue facing the University today.
Our decision, however, was not made without extensive debate. This field of nine tickets provided more than one viable choice for competent GUSA administrators, but our priorities call for an endorsement that represents a rejection of GUSA in its current form.
Huff/Fremstad’s single-issue campaign is unique among the executive candidates, most of whom have positions and promises for every issue. Unfortunately, most of these policies are the same and can be carried out by the Assembly and Committees in GUSA.
In its present iteration, the student body elects an executive that promises to pander to our varying needs and complaints, acting as a liaison to the administration and pushing for our voice to be heard. These goals are rarely achieved, and that voice is rarely heard. GUSA spends its time holding fruitless meetings, sending out press releases and, to be fair, providing an occasional convenience, such as Grab and Go lunches. Much of the time, GUSA merely supports or formalizes initiatives begun by other students.
Most of the real policy reform on campus comes from independent issue-oriented groups like the FRIENDS Initiative, responsible for the alcohol policy, or individual students like Adam Giblin (SFS ‘06), whose housing petition seized the attention of the University Administration. The very necessity of that independent action shows that GUSA is bogged down and outmoded.
If Huff/Fremstad are elected, we hope that they will inject the enthusiasm and ethic of these independent groups into the stagnant GUSA organization. If that zeitgeist were to take hold in an organization as large as GUSA, unlikely as it may seem, then we would truly see some accomplishment.
Choosing Huff and Fremstad will send a signal to the University community and to GUSA. Hopefully, GUSA will realize that the student body is tired of business as usual. The community will understand how serious students are about fair treatment for the workers who clean up for us, often immigrants who do not speak English and work more than one job.
Most candidates’ platforms were merely echoes of one another, long on generalities and short on specifics. However, some candidates, notably Happy Johnson (CAS ‘07) and Vikram Agrawal (SFS ‘07), put forward ideas worth implementing. Among them is eliminating the spoils system, where the executive appoints certain representatives and committee heads. Nate Wright (CAS ‘06) and Pravin Rajan (SFS ‘07) suggested that GUSA ensure that student “experts,” familiar with issues like housing or security, serve as contacts to specific academic departments.
Many candidates had ideas to make GUSA more transparent, accountable or otherwise popular among students. Anyone elected to GUSA needs to realize that Georgetown students, for good or ill, are apathetic and unimpressed by any institution that controls a tiny budget, organizes few activities and carries little clout. Any GUSA leader without this understanding-an understanding clearly lacking in those supporting the proposed constitutional change that would require a 1,600 student meeting-is delusional.
We should note here that, recognizing the nature of GUSA, our second choice for endorsement was the ticket of Paul Diver (CAS ‘06) and Aditya Sankaranarayan (SFS ‘06). As outsiders to the GUSA system, they supported a reasonable platform and promised a sincere willingness to accept student ideas. Despite this, we feel it is more important to endorse a reform of GUSA and an important cause than to endorse a ticket that represented the best of what GUSA is now.
Voting for Nilou/Fremstad may be a futile act, considering the groundswell of support behind other candidates who are better known. Nonetheless, we urge students to vote their conscience. GUSA’s importance is measured only by the respect it receives among the student body, and students should respect an organization that is controlled by student principle more than one guided by student comfort.
The GUSA constitution says that students have the right to a “clearly defined and significant role” in University policy making. As it currently exists, GUSA is not supporting that right. Next Wednesday, students must usher in a new era in GUSA, an era where students reclaim a vibrant role in making this University great.
