A6
NEWS
THE HOYA
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019
GUSA Senators Propose Abolishing Auxiliary Club Funding GUSA FUND, from A1 diversity-related events, civic engagement and the arts. However, the majority of the fund is unassigned, allowing for discretion by the committee throughout the year, according to the GUSA website. GUSA President Norman Francis Jr. (COL ’20) and Vice President Aleida Olvera (COL ’20) oppose abolishing the GUSA Fund because the majority of organizations served by the fund last year catered to women and minority student organizations, according to Olvera. “Norman and I believe that abolishing GUSA Fund is a direct attack on student groups who serve underrepresented populations, since they make up the majority of GUSA Fund’s recipients,” Olvera wrote in an email to The Hoya. “GUSA is meant to serve all students, and it disappoints us that they would want to take this opportunity away from communities that are already lacking in proper resources.” But the fund has failed to provide all student groups the support they need and
should reallocate the resources to clubs directly, rather than through GUSA Fund, according to Nugent. “I believe that it is our duty as senators to represent student interests above our own, and the money that will be saved by abolishing GUSA Fund will ultimately be reallocated to the student clubs we know and love,” Nugent wrote. Former Transition FinApp Chair Matthew Buckwald (COL ’20), whose resignation from his position in the senate was announced Aug. 30, formally introduced legislation to amend the GUSA bylaws to abolish the GUSA Fund on Aug. 29. “The GUSA Finance & Appropriations committee is tasked with ensuring that student funds are responsibly appropriated to enhance student activities,” the act said. “The GUSA Fund has not sufficiently provided responsible monetary support to student activities.” The conversation around the GUSA Fund’s abolition has been ongoing for years but has been especially prominent in recent months, according to
Senator Samuel Dubke (SFS ’21), who ran against Nugent for transition FinApp chair. While the fund’s many flaws should be addressed, its principles should be preserved and reformed, according to Dubke. “In the past, this fund has been misused, by providing money to groups that did not need it, and by lacking clear regulations or oversight,” Dubke wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Nevertheless, the core value behind GUSA Fund - that we should be able to help those organizations that slip through the cracks of advisory boards’ stringent regulations - remains relevant.” Though the GUSA Fund members are officially approved by the executive branch, the senate should increase their attention to the fund, according to Dubke. “The Senate, which has allocated millions of dollars for years through the Finance and Appropriations Committee, should have much greater oversight over GUSA Fund,” Dubke wrote. “The fund’s charter should be rewritten, and new, reformed-minded leadership should take over.”
SUBUL MALIK/THE HOYA
Newly elected GUSA senate finance and appropriations committee Chair Harrison Nugent (SFS ’20), left, endorsed a proposal to abolish the GUSA Fund, which provides clubs with supplemental funding. The GUSA senate intends to vote on the GUSA Fund’s proposed abolition in upcoming meetings, according to Nugent. If the senate does pass a proposal to abolish the fund in coming weeks,
the executive will challenge the legislation, according to Olvera. “I’m not sure why this is a controversial/divisive issue within GUSA, but if the Senate were to advocate for
the abolishment of this fund Norman and I are prepared to fight against it,” Olvera wrote. Hoya Staff Writer Riley Rogerson contributed reporting.
Fall Fellows Discuss Polarized Political Climate Parents Pressure City To Reconsider Field Privileges GUPOLITICS, from A1
town. I think you need to know how to navigate it, though. One of the things we can do here is help students tap into that. COLYER: Yeah, and so there’s some really unique paths that kids can put together here at Georgetown. When I was here, I was economics and pre-med, which is something nobody would have let you do, but at Georgetown, talking about service, I really think that the students that I’m meeting, they’re different. They really do want to serve, they’re thinking about it and they won’t take no for an answer.
FIELD, from A1
What are your discussion groups about? Why did you choose that topic?
BURKS: So I’m going to be talking about politics meets policy and really exploring how political decisions or political electoral outcomes are affected by policy debates and how policy debates are driven by electoral decisions and sort of that interplay. And I think for me the reason it’s important to think about these issues and really work through them is that I think there’s a lot of disaffection generally in today’s body politic, and a lot of that is because of a disconnect between our politics and our policies. And so, trying to think through that. COLYER: So in my session we’re going to look at strategy and we’re going to look at service. And that you’re here to serve, to make a difference and what are some of the strategies and then how do you apply them to different things, how do you apply them to your career, how do you apply them to healthcare and health policy and how does that system really work on a really personal level. TRAVERS: I’m going to be looking at how you cover the White House in this era of Trump and what rules he has changed, maybe permanently, and how this could be the new norm for covering an administration … The question I get asked all the time when people hear what I do is ‘What’s it really like?’ It’s exactly like you think, but a thousand times more crazy. Everything you see is exactly what it is, and then just assume way worse. So pulling back the curtain on what that’s like, and then how this toxic climate of president hates the media but he also relies so heavily on the media and there is truth to what he says about the media needing him because people are tuning into us because he drives so much coverage, but how that has spilled over into people’s cynicisms about the entire process.
Students interested in your respective fields may already be interested in talking with you, but why might other students who don’t share those interests benefit from talking with you? DALTON: What I hope students will come talk to me about is if they have an interest in politics but aren’t sure if it’s a career for them, if they’re a really strong writer, you know, I was also a history minor. If you have these kinds of
FILE PHOTO: KIRK ZEISER/THE HOYA
The fall 2019 cohort of Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service fellows shared their hopes for mutually constructive interactions with students this semester in a Sept. 6 interview with interests, come talk to us and explore what kind of career opportunities are out there. When I was an undergrad, I thought of political communications as C.J. Cregg on the West Wing, and that’s about it. There’s such a wider world of opportunity out there, speechwriters, researchers, digital communications today. And to understand what kind of roles and opportunities there are out there in the world for your specific talents I think is something that all of can offer in our respective fields but hopefully one that students will really take advantage of.
ery part of our life, whether we believe it or not or want it to or not. And so I think that whether you’re a physics major or pre-med track or interested in a very specific path in politics, I think you will get something out of any number of our discussions. Either just to see a different perspective on the world and expand your worldview or to see how your particular issue gets affected by policy and politics.
“I’m really excited to learn from students and have a refeshment of the cynicism of Washington.”
BURKS: I think one of the big misconceptions out there is the intensity of the disagreements on substance mean that you’re that intensely disagreeable with each other. I have a ton of friends who are on the left side of the political spectrum, and always have and hope I always will, and so I think one of the benefits of coming to campuses, hopefully showing students that in the real world you don’t have to be at each other’s throats just because you disagree with each other. TRAVERS: I think what we see of the disagreements, we’re seeing it through Twitter, and we’re seeing it through one minute of a video where people are just shouting at each other and the rhetoric is just so nasty in those spaces but that doesn’t necessarily reflect what happens in meetings or what happens on the hill. People are passionate of course and are going to fight for their side, but I think we’re unfortunately boiling everything
KAREN TRAVERS White House Correspondent, ABC News
COYLER: Students looking forward, I think you can have multiple careers and you can even have dual careers. I still do surgery and was involved in politics. You can go and create some interesting things, and this group of people has a really diverse experience in that. And you can still participate in all of these there, and so we want people to visit whether your a physics student or whatever. We want to visit with you, we want to see what your thinking about. VALENCIA: Policy and politics impacts everything, ev-
GUPolitics tries to bring together a diverse group from different backgrounds and ideologies. How might you model discourse even through disagreement at a time when polarization is a real issue?
in policy and politics down to those fights right now and there’s so much more happening in this town. I think especially with the advocacy work, it’s not the fight of the mechanics of legislation but it’s doing very important, significant communications to get a message out there and I don’t think people realize that that type of stuff is happening in this town. Everyone just thinks it’s gridlock on the hill and the president can’t get anything done and that’s it. There’s a lot happening in this town that should give reason for optimism but all we see — because of my industry — is focusing on the cynicism and negativity. VALENCIA: And I think also just the kind of group we have here, you know the bipartisan design of the program. I mean here you have somebody, I mean I worked for Barack Obama for 10 years of my life almost and he worked for Paul Ryan, where can we model really good behavior to students in having conversation about where we can find common ground and how we can work on issues like immigration, we were starting to talk about that last night, so I think we will be able to create a sense and space among ourselves that can be modeled to the broader community that I hope we will take away from this also. DALTON: And be a rejection of some of the toxic politics that I think we all abhor out there right now. Despite the bipartisan nature of the table, I think there are things, I won’t speak for others, but I think that we all see and abhor in the sort of politics of today and Washington.
that, though the agreement requires Maret to maintain and update the field, the school has not upheld its end of the deal. Martin Welles (LAW ’09), vice president of Hardy’s Parent Teacher Organization and father of three Hardy students, provided The Hoya with a June 2019 report from Leading Design & Development Sports, which tests sports fields for safety standards. The report shows Jelleff Field is out of compliance for shock absorption regulations in the field, important for contact sports. The report demonstrates that Maret neglected to maintain safety standards for the field; this shortcoming stands as a reason not to extend the agreement, according to Welles. “Maret was responsible for the upkeep of the field and they let it deteriorate,” Welles wrote in an email to The Hoya. Parent-teacher organizations at Hardy and other public schools in the area, along with ANC Commissioners from Wards 2 and 3, wrote a letter to D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine asking his office to investigate the now 19-year no-bid contract between Maret and DPR, according to an email obtained by The Hoya. When the contract was originally negotiated, the city did not have enough funds to renovate Jelleff on its own, leading to the agreement with Maret, according to an email D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) sent to residents of Burleith, which borders Glover Park, on Wednesday. “DC’s DPR entered into a public-private partnership with Maret that would preserve the field,” Evans wrote in the email. “I approached other schools and entities to partner on the renovations;
no one else was interested.” Maret originally wanted a 20-year contract deal but reached a compromise with DPR, receiving preferred permitting for 10 years first and then an additional 10 if they followed through on improvements to the field. This year, Maret renewed its contract before it was set to expire in June 2020, creating a 19-year agreement. Maret has invested enough money to earn the second decade, according to Evans. “A compromise was reached where the city agreed to extend the relationship for an additional 10 years, if Maret delivered on the terms of the contract in the first 10 years,” he wrote. “Maret has lived up to their end of the agreement. When Maret approached DPR to extend the agreement, per the original terms, they offered to invest an additional $1 million in the field, and in improvements to the clubhouse.” DPR had purchased Jelleff for $20 million from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington in 2010 after the organization fell into financial trouble during the 2008 recession. However, this purchase left no money for renovation, and the city needed an outside contractor to renovate Jelleff on behalf of DPR, according to Evans’ email. D.C. Councilmembers Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) and Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) expressed support for making Jelleff fully public. The council may hold a hearing on the issue soon, according to Putta. But the children currently prohibited from using the field after school bear the real cost, Putta said. “For one school to get all of those hours for 10 years was bad enough,” Putta said. “And for them to extend it for another decade is really a slap in the face.”
@GERMANYINUSA/TWITTER
Ward 2 and 3 public school parents challenged a contract that gives private school students preferential access to a public field.