The Georgetown University Student Association released an extensive campus plan report yesterday along with a call to action for students to voice their concerns on the 2018-38 Campus Plan before the Georgetown Community Partnership develops a conceptual plan by the end of this summer. The report covers the financial and community consequences of the 2010 Campus Plan, which has forced the university to enact a student vehicle ban, embark on two housing projects, and enact a third-year housing requirement, among other unpopular policy changes.
The report is a valuable resource. While the university regularly hosts evening town halls and master planning presentations, too often only those in student government or campus media attend the events, meet administrators, or understand neighborhood sentiments. New and prospective students, for example, probably don’t know that the university is beginning construction on a GUTS bus turnaround at the McDonough parking lot next semester.
An uninformed student body has no leverage to push back against Campus Plan requirements that unilaterally favor neighbors. The university, not GUSA, should be the one taking the initiative to inform and involve the Georgetown community on its construction and planning activities in an accessible manner.
Fortunately, the vicious history of the 2010 Campus Plan does not have to repeat itself. The 2010 Plan suffered from a gross lack of representation and insight on the part of the student body at each phase of the planning process. Through the Georgetown Community Partnership’s working groups and elected representatives on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, students enjoy institutionalized methods through which they can express their interests in the 2018 Plan’s negotiations and establish rapport with Georgetown’s neighborhood representatives.
However, students need a unified voice on their vision for the campus’ future. After all, despite what the university might want everyone to believe, many student interests are irreconcilable with those of the neighbors. In 2010, neighborhood leaders wanted the university to, in the long-term, place 100 percent of undergraduates on campus. This goal will likely become a point of contention as the 2018 Plan develops. This time around, students must take action to ensure that neighbors don’t simply get their way in imposing tighter university housing requirements that completely ignore the interests of students and the campus’ infrastructural capacity.
This is why the Editorial Board strongly encourages every student to visit ourgeorgetown.com to learn more about what’s at stake and to sign the site’s petition, “Let’s Not Get Screwed Again,” which urges the university to not require any more students to live on-campus after it completes the Northeast Triangle and the Old Jesuit Residence. It also asks that the university prioritize the renovations of existing buildings.
After all, the first step in maintaining the current town-gown goodwill is for every student to educate him or herself about the future of this university.
