Boathouse should not be a priority

Last week, the Voice reported that Georgetown has spent nearly $1 million out of its operating budget since 2005 to lobby for the rights to build a boathouse on the banks of the Potomac River. They paid $370,000 of that sum in the last year alone. This financial decision is distressing because it lavishes undue attention on an issue that effects only a small fraction of the student body and an even smaller number of prospective crew recruits. While Georgetown is home to a rowing program that deserves the University’s support, and while a boathouse would be a positive addition to the campus facilities, the price tag is far too high, especially considering that Georgetown is severely lacking in critical areas, such as financial aid. Even more shocking is that the University would choose to spend so much to please so few while the recession drains the University’s operating budget.

In January, President John DeGioia announced that given the market, Georgetown’s operating budget was not sufficient to raise professor salaries at a rate higher than inflation, as he had previously planned. In November, the state of the credit market put a halt on a capital project that is far more important to the student body, the planned Science Center.

Times are hard for students and their families, too, and the University could have put the $990,000 it spent trying to beef up its appeal for prospective rowers toward making Georgetown more affordable for students who can’t pay its prohibitively high tuition. If administrators decide that, due to the economic downturn, the University cannot invest in its professors and the educational experience of its students the way it would like to, that’s fine. But it shouldn’t pour money into a profligate project like the boathouse at the expense of initiatives that benefit the student body as a whole. At best, the completion of this project will only marginally improve the University’s overall reputation. At worst, the University will have made the embarrassing mistake of squandering money by putting the desires of a small group of students and alumni before the needs of the entire University community.