No one can say that GUSA President Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) and Vice President James Kelly (COL ’09) lack ambition. Their GUSA Summer Fellows initiative has the laudable aim of providing free summer housing at Georgetown to undergraduates with unpaid internships they couldn’t otherwise afford to take, starting this summer. But Dowd and Kelly have approached the idea with a startling naiveté of the complexities involved in enacting such a bold proposal. Putting their energy towards an unreachable goal of trying to institute it this summer diminishes GUSA’s credibility and detracts from the program’s chances for next year.
The program’s merits are indisputable. Only students who have the resources to pay for their own room and board over the summer—over $2,100 for on-campus housing—are able to take unpaid internships. The GUSA Summer Fellows program would begin to close this opportunity gap.
The details of the program—how many students it will accept, how much it will cost, where any of the funding will come from, what the criteria for admission will be, who will be in charge of selecting the students—are still unknown, even to Dowd and Kelly. These questions require consideration and work with Georgetown’s intractable bureaucracy like Student Affairs and Housing. These tasks cannot be competently addressed in the time left before this summer. Trying anyway is a waste of GUSA’s time because some aspects of the program, like applications, will not carry over to an attempt next summer.
Dowd said he would continue working on the program next year, an encouraging sign. If realized, the program will surpass any of former GUSA president Ben Shaw’s individual accomplishments. Dowd thinks he can set up a pilot program this year for five to ten students, but given his scant experience with Georgetown administration and the little time remaining in the semester, this goal is wildly unrealistic. He’s also neglecting other issues more important to students in favor of his pet project—Dowd said he expects wireless internet access to happen on its own.
“It’s very late in the game,” Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson said of the proposal. With five weeks left in the school year, most Georgetown students have planned out their summers. Dowd and Kelly should focus instead on setting up the program for next year. That should be more than enough of a challenge.
