Georgetown University Student Association President Pat Dowd, elected just last spring, has already made a difference in the lives of Georgetown students—five students, to be exact. In spite of receiving a quarter of the SAC funding he requested and working within a limited timeline, Dowd managed to get the GUSA Summer Fellows program up and running by the start of the summer, giving five students with unpaid internships free Georgetown housing for the summer. It’s an encouraging sign from the usually ineffective GUSA. Hopefully, Dowd will have as much success as he expands the program this year, improving the application process and more significantly, securing a permanent source of funding.
Dowd wisely made use of Georgetown’s administrators in the selection process this past summer. To determine financial need, he checked with the Office of Student Financial Services to confirm that the applicants were eligible for University need-based financial aid. Next summer, GUSA should take students’ amount of need into account, so that a student receiving $1,000 of financial aid isn’t considered the same as a student receiving $40,000.
Dowd also assembled a committee of Georgetown administrators including Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson and Vice President of Public Affairs Daniel Porterfield to make the final selection of the Summer Fellows, a step which ensures fairness in the selection process.
The larger issue, though, is money. Dowd has recognized that SAC can’t be expected to foot the bill of $40,000 or so each year. Though his plan to raise money from alumni is ambitious, it seems unlikely that, at a university with a chronic fundraising problem, this will be the answer either. There’s no easy solution here, but Dowd should work with Georgetown administrators to further pressure Housing for a discount, which they refused to give last summer. Their refusal to support a deserving program is puzzling, to say the least.
While the Summer Fellows program’s goal of leveling the summer internship field for all Hoyas, regardless of their financial background, is a worthy one, its scope, several dozen students at the most, is unfortunately limited. Dowd’s success so far bodes well for the upcoming year, but hopefully he’ll also direct his energies towards other initiatives which benefit more than just a handful of students.
