The new Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) administration was sworn in on Jan. 11. In a post-transition exit interview with the Voice, former GUSA President Ethan Henshaw (CAS ’26) and former Vice President and current President Darius Wagner (CAS ’27) reflected on their administration. They discussed administration accomplishments, the challenges of working within university structures, and the projects still in progress that the new executive team will inherit.
This conversation was transcribed and edited by the Voice for clarity.
The Voice: What do you see as the most concrete accomplishment of your term, and how can students feel that impact this semester?
Henshaw: I would say in terms of concreteness, it would probably be a lot of the physical things that got installed because those aren’t going to be going away for a while. That policy can’t be reversed. The fact that [Georgetown] changed the landscape of Southwest Quad and installed the hammock posts, they’ve got the swing now on Harbin Patio, the foosball tables in the dorms. I’m very happy that those got done and will help students for a long time.
But there are a lot of other things I was very happy about. They credit us as being part of the reason [Georgetown] joined the Common App. There were big things that happened, like the Georgetown Day policies got relaxed. Students are perhaps going to be more involved in the way that the advancement team makes their decisions moving forward. You’ve got more furniture in the Healy Family Student Center (HFSC), you’ve got more GUTS buses running downtown, you’ve got less 8 a.m. classes, all those sorts of things. I’m proud of a lot of those things and I think a lot of those accomplishments came from different people, whether that be me or Darius, or all these different cabinet directors.
The Voice: How would you describe the state of the student government you’re handing off or inheriting?
Henshaw: I think it’s necessary to kind of personalize [the cabinet] to the needs of what’s going on in the way that you see it best. I think we had a good time over the last year kind of creating that infrastructure and also building relationships with a lot of new administrators, whether that be student affairs, the facilities team, advancement team, or even the Chief Operation Officer’s (COO) office and the new vice president of security. I would say that things got better over the last year and I’m sure that Darius will improve them, but I’m really proud of the way that we kind of built up the executive and all that we were able to accomplish.
Wagner: When Ethan and I started, we hadn’t received any transition documents, any budget documents. We sort of rebuilt the exec in a way we thought would work. It proved that we were able to get significantly more policy output from the way we redesigned the exec than when we first came in. So now as I look at this transition, I think it’s been incredibly smooth in having people stay on, but also in the preparation of transition documents. I also want to add that through the year as vice president I began to sort of get a feel of what we could do better and where we could do better. I think through having that experience as vice president, we’re only able to build on the great progress that we’ve made. I think we’re noticing that we have been very attentive and ensuring that we have good organizational systems for policy tracking, but also for communication, both within the exec and the Senate, to ensure that we’re turning out policy as much as we can.
The Voice: Are there any projects or issues from the prior administration that will be continued as we enter a new one?
Wagner: I know there are many projects our cabinet directors have been working on that will continue into this year. As we work alongside the university, a lot of the university’s projects aren’t based on a year, but often times, two, three, four, or five years. And so I think during our time, especially around dining negotiations, capital projects, and also continuing to ensure that we have transparency between admin and the student body—there will be a continuation on those fronts. There are many policies that we’ve started in the fall that are going to continue into the spring because our cabinet directors have already been so involved and because we already have had the connection with admin.
The Voice: Were there moments when student input or desires conflicted with administrative realities? How did you resolve that?
Henshaw: It’s very tough. You have to acknowledge that GUSA has no real concrete power and no matter how much we want something, how much the students want something, it doesn’t guarantee it in any way. I think we saw that no matter what the student body wants, perhaps in terms of the divestment referendum that happened last spring, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to get enacted. The thing with GUSA is that you need to have a very robust team working on lots of different projects and you need to be willing to be consistent in those projects over a very long period of time, because you never know what the administration is going to accept. It’s not just one meeting with one administrator. It’s often several meetings with several different administrators. Take the swings, for example. It was something that we really pushed in our first campaign. We had multiple meetings with facilities. Meetings with the architect team. Meetings with the landscaping team. So you need a large group of people who are willing to do this work consistently or else it’s going to burn out one person or it’s simply not going to get done. Even when the administration’s not willing to do something in totality—I think the first thought that obviously comes is the divestment referendum. It’s something that you still have to keep discussing with administrators—how can you compromise?
The Voice: What is one lesson or memory you’re leaving your term with?
Henshaw: I think that two big things are patience and consistency on these sorts of policy asks. You can’t just ask once and you can’t just ask one person. You kind of have to keep hammering the point. You’ve got to keep doing something a lot different ways, whether that be with bills coming to the Senate, proposals formatted by the executive, petitions done by students, or even referendums voted on by the whole student body. You have to keep being creative in the ways that you’re expressing these needs, expressing solutions. The other thing that I would say is that it’s important to be ambitious and bold in a lot of what you’re asking for and in the ways that you’re doing it. Because you never really know what [the administration] is going to be willing to get and what they’re not going to be willing to get.
The Voice: In a year from now or a few years from now, what do you want students to remember about your term?
Wagner: After we’re gone, there will be many more movements on campus and changes that students want to see. I hope that students look at our term—if they ever read The Hoya or the Voice 5 years from now—I hope they are able to read and see that they too have the potential to take initiative. I hope they look back at our term and see that these are just a group of students that deeply care about Georgetown and want Georgetown to be better. Aren’t in it for the fanfare, but are in it because helping even just one student goes a long way in their college experience. We wanted to use our term, and I want to use my term to ensure that we’re doing what we can do to make everyday student life better. I hope when they look back, they see a bunch of people that got together and did some fun things for Georgetown. I hope they’re still swinging on that bench and I hope they’re still using those hammocks.
