The Voice sat down with GUSA executive candidates John Matthews (COL ’18) and Nick Matz (COL ’18) for a conversation about their candidacy and goals for a future administration. In the interview, Matthews and Matz, both of whom have never held a position in GUSA, discuss their plans to stabilize Georgetown’s rising tuition costs and bring a fresh perspective to GUSA’s top spots.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Voice: What does your running mate bring to the table?
Nick Matz: John really brings a lot to the table, but the number one thing is just work ethic. He’s a hard worker, he gets the job done and if he starts a project, he’s going to see it through to the end.
John Matthews: Well, I was going to say something similar. Nick Matz also has that drive and that work ethic. He’s a do-er. You know, Nick Matz makes plans and he follows through, he doesn’t slack. And he’s also very personable, which is nice, very easy to talk to. He has a lot of friends in a lot of different organizations.
TV: What is the most important point on your platform?
NM: Everything really relates to the main theme of lowering the cost of attendance, and I think the points that directly address that the most would be one, eliminating the mandatory Yates fee, SNAPS as well. Neighborhood-funded SNAPS would lower cost of attendance a lot, ending the mandatory Yates fee would lower the cost of tuition and attendance a lot.
TV: So going on to SNAPS and ending the 3-year housing requirement, what kind of leverage do you think you’re going to be able to use when discussing these kinds of things with the neighbors and the ANC and the administration overall?
NM: I think we can say that a lot the job is going to be talking to administrators in a room like this. John and I are both very good at doing that and if we have the students of Georgetown behind us and we have their support, then we have a lot of leverage.
TV: In your platform, you mention your smaller, more “nimble” GUSA, can you lay out your plan for that?
NM: I think really we’re looking to combine groups and committees that have a lot of overlap and doing that, that would make things smaller. A lot of times when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, things get overlooked, things don’t get done, so we’re really looking to make a small team of accountable people with an expectation that work gets done promptly and efficiently.
TV: A lot of Enushe and Chris’ administration has been focusing on making more policy teams for very specific issues– like Accessibility and Federal Relations– in their restructuring package. Is your guys’ plan to reverse parts of that? Will it affect just the executive branch? Will it affect the elected officials in the Senate as well?
JM: Well from my understanding of the structure of committees, we cannot disband committees. The Senate creates committees.
NM: What we can do is, kind of unify the oversight, create systems that make sense instead of having just a lot of, you know, a wide array of committees that do similar things, having more of a hierarchal structure of leadership where someone’s in charge and accountable to get things done and then that person can use the help of all of the great committees that already exist to do very specific projects.
TV: Moving down your platform, have you guys experienced, so far, any opposition to your idea of cutting the Student Activities Fee? How do you expect clubs to get behind you on that?
NM: This is something we’ve talked about, even just today. We’re currently working on revisions to our platform because that’s something, we’ve heard from a lot of different people.
I guess our goal with that point was not seen as a positive by the same groups we intended to benefit with that. So, we’re working with people from club sports, I’ve talked to someone from the Lecture Fund, and I think we have a great idea: instead of cutting the fee, doing more of an internal audit to make sure that the funds that are allocated are actually going to what they should be.
JM: There are plenty of small clubs that get budgets of a few thousand dollars, which probably isn’t necessarily needed. You could audit that as well as having where you get to chose some of where your activity fee is allocated. So maybe not the whole thing, but say you’re in juggling club and you want to give your portion of your student activity fee to juggling club and the other part of that [fee] could still go into the general fund.
TV: I want to ask you about a few things that are not on your platform. First, what role do you think the university should play in immigration policy and being a Sanctuary Campus?
NM: I definitely think that’s an issue that affects Georgetown–it affects any school, really–but especially Georgetown with our international community. I think the university should be nothing but supportive. One of my professors is actually stuck outside the country and I’ve had to have lectures through Zoom and conference calls this week, so that’s an issue that’s affecting tons of students.
From my background as a computer science major, I don’t have the expertise to advise on policy, but I know for a fact that there are tons of passionate people, even within GUSA already. This is a perfect example of a time when John and I would use our ability to delegate things and probably ask for a couple people to do some research, propose a policy, propose a plan of action for the university, and we’d mull it over and decide if it was right.
TV: We know right now that sexual assault is a pretty prevalent issue on campus, and there are some basic standards going in, like club leaders having to take the bystander intervention training. What do you see as GUSA’s role and the university’s role continuing forward to address this kind of issue?
JM: Through GUSA we have to advocate, I’m not sure what exactly is the most effective means to educate those who need to be educated. But I just keep exploring the idea, and the conduct survey was a great start, and just keep going from there and see where it takes us. From what I understand, they’re trying to expand the bystander training for all incoming freshmen. That’s a great way to go about doing that.
TV: You guys are [GUSA] outsiders–that’s how you define yourself– what kind of advantages and what kind of disadvantages do you see with that status?
JM: With any group, with any club on campus, there becomes the insular group thought, and everybody gets caught up within a certain idea and a certain realm of ideas. And with also any club, the club members become your close friends and you sometimes don’t venture out into other areas. You can see that a lot in some GUSA outsiders’ perspectives of GUSA, that they’re very insular, cold, not open and welcoming to other students. Even as outside candidates, we’ve gotten less-than-savory things by GUSA students to us about our running for the campaign, and that’s not the greatest thing to say. But as outsiders, we can represent the voice of students from a wide array of different clubs and think we can do that better than if we are insiders.
TV: How do you see yourselves bringing more voices into GUSA if you’re going to be working with the same people who have been inside of GUSA for so long?
NM: I think really we just want to make GUSA, in general, including the executives, the Senate, just more accessible to all students. I mean, it could look like holding office hours in Sellinger lounge for maybe an hour a week listening to what students have to say. Things like that, just really interacting with the students more directly so that if a student is passionate about an issue, or have a problem they feel comfortable going to GUSA to address that, ’cause at the end of the day, GUSA is supposed to represent the students, but if the students aren’t comfortable interacting with them, what’s the point?
TV: We’ve been talking a lot about GUSAs of the past, can you guys give a few critiques of the current administration?
JM: First off, like I said before, does the current student know a thing that this current administration has done? I don’t think if you asked a single person in Sellinger Lounge downstairs to name what this administration has done for them that they could name a single thing. And that’s what we want to change: we want to be open with people. We want to tell them what we’re doing, how we’re getting there, short-term, long-term goals and what we’re making to achieve that.
TV: What would you say have been some successes of the past administration?
NM: I know they work very hard, do a lot, but if you go up to a random person and say, “What have they done for you?” it’s hard to say what direct impact they’ve had.
TV: As you guys may or may not know, the GUSA Election Commission is graciously allowing you to bring a small snack to the debates, so our final question today is: what snack are you going to bring?
NM: I’ve already decided, I’m bringing almonds. Great nutritious snack, highly recommend them.
JM: Chocolate covered raisins. It’s almost healthy because raisins are almost healthy, but the chocolate, you know, you gotta have a little bit of sweet in there.
