On Wednesday, University President John DeGioia held a sit-down with student reporters, who questioned him about campus news and issues. Below are excerpts from their conversation.
A hundred and twenty-three presidents from different universities have signed onto a movement to move the drinking age to 18. Why haven’t you signed on to that?
Frankly because I think there are just more important issues of the day for me to be weighing in on… We have some real difficulties with our economy; there are some concerns we have about the ability of our nation to continue to provide access and affordability to the poor to higher education. I just feel that right now my priorities have to be placed elsewhere.
In the past year, Georgetown’s changed its position on the alcohol policy… Why have we changed our position on this?
One of the more significant challenges that any university community addresses is how best to ensure responsibility with alcohol. Sometimes you need to do certain things because your judgment is, the only way we’re gonna be able to meet the goal of responsibility in the community is to act in this way. If Dr. Olson took very strong steps in one moment, I believe it’s truly because it’s in his judgement, and remember he never did it unilaterally.
So last week there was another bias-related incident. Do you think Georgetown is doing enough to support LGBTQ students?
Yes, I believe that the steps we’ve taken over the course of the last year have demonstrated a depth of commitment of this university to the community, to our LGBTQ community… The response of my colleagues to that incident I think has been exceptional, I think has been well received by the members of this University community, and I think the resource center and the hiring of a full time director are just two examples of that commitment.
There are often conflicting interests between Catholic ideals and secular university life… How do you make the decision and kind of work those two different ideals here?
As you can imagine we do not satisfy lots and lots of people by how we’ve struck that balance. Last fall we were confronted with the questions of that balance with questions that emerged with the LGBTQ community last fall. I think we responded in a way that is absolutely consistent with our Catholic identity… And not everybody agrees with me about that.
