On Sept. 30, administrators and students gathered for a dialogue on campus planning with regard to student housing as part of the university’s Hoya Roundtables series in the Healey Family Student Center.
Wednesday’s roundtable centered on questions of campus renovation and addressed issues like updating old residential buildings versus building new ones as well as campus maintenance and student safety.
“Rather than building new things, I’d consider rebuilding Henle,” said Curtis Crooke (COL ’17). He was expressing, as many others did, the sentiment that many of the older buildings on campus lack important necessities. Henle as well as Village A and Village B were brought up frequently, and Crooke suggested prioritizing these renovations to existing buildings over constructing new ones.
As for new construction, students offered possible solutions for controlling the projects so that the construction would not affect day-to-day life on campus.
“Something they did in the last few years was they regulated the hours of construction,” said former GUSA Secretary of Transfer Affairs Sara Margolis (COL ’16), in an effort to suggest a compromise with students who profess to have frequent, loud construction early in the morning outside their window. “If you’re going to do a lot of construction at once centralize it [in one section of campus],” she said.
Margolis, who also served as a tour guide, went on to enumerate certain safety issues that had resulted from insufficient maintenance of Georgetown property and that had become legitimate hazards during her tours.
“The number of times I’ve almost fallen over uneven tiles – those are security and safety issues,” Margolis said. “There are basic security and safety revisions that wouldn’t cost the university that much, but it would improve the campus aesthetically as well as in terms of safety and security.”
The Hoya Roundtables series focuses on improving communication between the student body and administrators on issues such as facilities management, residential living, or student employment. Reed Howard (SFS ’17), one of two campus representatives to the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, works to follow up with the administration after the Roundtables to ensure that student demands and preferences are indeed worked into master planning.
“I think the students who did show up had a meaningful experience. They got to look at maps of where projected residence halls and new buildings [would be] put up,” Howard said.
However, Howard did acknowledge that the culture of the school has not yet adjusted to these roundtables in terms of student turnout.
“I think students don’t feel like they have a meaningful voice in the master planning process because of [the administration’s] history,” he said. “Now, there are more opportunities for students to get involved … I think over time that perception will change.”
