Officials in talks with UHS, attempting to disentangle GW from debt-ridden MFA
GW is negotiating with Universal Health Services in an attempt to end its financial support for the Medical Faculty Associates, a spokesperson confirmed after University President Ellen Granberg teased the arrangements at a Faculty Senate meeting Friday. Granberg said negotiations with UHS — GW Hospital’s owner and operator — are “progress-
ing in earnest,” marking the first time officials have publicly revealed talks between the two parties over the MFA and detailed efforts to cut financial ties from the medical enterprise, which has racked up more than $400 million in debt to GW and other entities. Officials have pledged for years that they are making progress to bring the MFA back to profitability, but the medical enterprise has continued to incur tens of millions of dollars per year in additional debt since fiscal year 2020. Granberg said officials anticipate providing a “substantive” update on the negotiations at October’s Faculty Senate meeting.
She did not specify that the negotiations with UHS related to the MFA until Faculty Senator Phil Wirtz asked if she had an update on the medical enterprise’s persistent financial losses, to which she responded that the reference she made to negotiations with UHS during her presidential report were about the MFA.
University spokesperson Julia Garbitt said officials, UHS and the MFA are working to chart a “sustainable path forward” for all parties to eliminate the University’s financial support for the medical enterprise.
Garbitt’s comments indicate GW is planning to restructure
GW Hospital sues HHS over decadeslong Medicare dispute
AIDAN FARRELL ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
GW Hospital joined a lawsuit against U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last Monday, alleging the Department of Health and Human Services unlawfully cut Medicare payment rates to hospitals since 1986.
The 48-page lawsuit filed in the D.C. District Court on Sept. 8 by 198 hospitals, including GW Hospital — argues HHS denied hospitals billions of dollars over decades in payments for their services and requests that HHS adjust its payment rates in future fiscal years. This marks the latest litigation against HHS’ 1986 decision to maintain budget neutrality for Medicare payments after fiscal year 1985, which the lawsuit
argues has erroneously reduced reimbursement since.
GW Hospital spokesperson Susan LaRosa and Kennedy’s office did not return a request to comment on the lawsuit. Congress revised Medicare payments in 1985 to shift the model to an inpatient prospective payment system, where hospitals receive a set amount of Medicare for each patient’s hospital stay based on the diagnosis and needed procedures. The shift deviates from the 1965 statute creating the program that reimbursed hospitals for “reasonable costs” — the actual costs incurred by hospitals when providing care. To mitigate “disruptive payment swings,” Congress required that the transition to this new model be budget neutral,
ensuring that payments in fiscal years 1984 and 1985 would remain the same as under the previous system. In those fiscal years, HHS determined that payments would have been higher under the new system, so they reduced hospital payments to maintain budget neutrality.
The complaint argues that HHS has incorrectly applied the budget neutrality provision to maintain the same payment rates since fiscal year 1986, despite the statute limiting this requirement to 1984 and 1985. From 1986 onward, payments should be made without regard to the old system’s rates. “While HHS has withheld these resources for the better part of forty years, HHS must at least correct its error going forward,” the lawsuit states.
its relationship with the MFA for the third time over the last thirty years. Most recently, GW under then-President Thomas LeBlanc in 2018 brought the MFA — which previously operated as an independent entity — under its governance, giving the University control over its budget and leadership. LeBlanc justified the restructuring as an attempt to strengthen the School of Medicine & Health Sciences’ national ranking, as the MFA’s physicians now teach its students, residents and researchers.
GW to boost security for speaker events after Kirk killing: students
Political student organization leaders said officials vowed to bolster security measures at future speaker events in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Members of GW College Democrats and GW College Republicans said the University pledged to implement metal detectors and bag searches at their future speaker events during meetings with the student organizations, which took place hours after Kirk’s assassination at an outdoor debate on Utah Valley University’s campus Wednesday. Student leaders said the conservative activist’s shooting made them fearful to host speaker events, and they are continuing discussions with officials about increasing security to ensure both speakers and guests feel safe.
University spokesperson Julia Garbitt said the Division for Student Affairs met with several organizations after Kirk’s assassination but did not specify which groups or what they discussed. She declined to comment on the safety measures officials pledged to implement at future College Democrats and College Republicans speaker events.
Garbitt said GW is working with “external partners” to evaluate and make any necessary changes to security measures. She said officials will continue to meet with political student organizations on both sides of the aisle to “assess existing and arising needs.”
Kieran Laffey, the chairman of GW College Republicans, said the organization’s members are frightened to host and attend large events on campus, both with and without speakers, in light of Kirk’s assassination. He said he’s seen members of the GW community, primarily on Fizz and other social media platforms, supporting Kirk’s killing, which left members fearful that people could target their future events.
Officials up Vern security after staff post calling Kirk murder ‘fair’ prompts threats
GW increased security on the Mount Vernon Campus on Saturday morning after Fox News reported that a staff member called Charlie Kirk’s assassination “fair” in a social media post, which officials said prompted threats against some community members and led the staff member to leave campus.
Officials told community members Saturday morning they were placing all Vern buildings on GWorld Safety Mode, restricting access to most campus entrances and boosting campus and Metropolitan Police Department police on both the Vern and Foggy Bottom campuses through the weekend after community members received “threatening communications” related to Vern Assistant Director of Academic Initiatives Anthony Pohorilak’s social media post. The advisory came the morning after Fox News reported on Pohorilak’s Facebook post, where he said he has “no thoughts, and no prayers” after Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
University spokesperson Skylar Sales said Pohorilak is “no longer on campus” due to the impact his social media post had on his ability to fulfill his professional responsibilities, adding that he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the University.
She declined to comment on whether Pohorilak is still employed at the University or if officials fired him. His staff profile is no longer listed on GW’s website, and his LinkedIn has been disabled
as of Saturday, but he is still listed on the GW directory.
Pohorilak did not immediately return a request for comment.
At least a dozen faculty and staff across the country have been terminated by their schools or are facing potential disciplinary action after they shared their opinions about Kirk’s assassination on social media. East Tennessee State University placed two faculty members on administrative leave after one faculty member allegedly commented on Facebook, “you reap what you sow,” and another one wrote, “This isn’t a tragedy. It’s a victory.”
“If nothing else, it is fair, in a nation where children get massacred by gun violence on the regular, the people who advocate for continued gun ownership at the expense of those children are not immune from the consequences of their advocacy. No thoughts, and no prayers,” Pohorilak wrote in the Facebook post screenshotted by Fox News.
Sales said GW “unequivocally condemns”
all forms of violence, and the University believes everyone is entitled to their beliefs without being subject to violence for expressing their views.
She declined to comment on what specific community members received threats, when and what the threats entailed.
Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Colette Coleman and Assistant Dean of the Vern Betsy Shimberg said in an email to Vern residents Saturday Pohorilak is “no longer on campus” but did not specify if he is still an employee of the University.
Sales said GW’s safety teams are monitoring the situation and officials will provide community members updates on how long buildings will remain in GWorld Safety Mode when they have more information. GWorld Safety Mode restricts GWorld readers and only provides access to buildings for GWorld cardholders who normally have tap access, according to the GW advisory.
LARKIN FERMIN | PHOTOGRAPHER
A GW Police Department officer sits outside the main entrance to the Mount Vernon Campus Saturday.
MATHYLDA DULIAN | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
University President Ellen Granberg at a Faculty Senate meeting Friday.
RYAN SAENZ ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
DANIEL HEUER | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The GW Hospital on 23rd Street.
SEH flood damage could total tens of thousands of dollars: biology department
DYLAN EBS ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Biology department staff and faculty said a flood in the Science and Engineering Hall earlier this month could cost tens of thousands of dollars in damages and was caused by a lack of drainage in the building’s greenhouse workspace — a concern a staff member said she raised during the building’s construction in 2016.
A burst valve in SEH last weekend caused “significant flooding” in parts of the building, resulting in damage to elevators, broken ceiling tiles and harm to some microscopes, which biology department staff and faculty said could cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace. Rachel Canalichio, SEH’s greenhouse manager, told the biology department in a statement obtained by The Hatchet that she raised concerns about the drainage system during the building’s construction in 2016, and GW plans to build a trench drain system in the greenhouse to prevent similar flooding in the future.
“A lot of this could have been avoided, but I really put that on the contractors and just kind of shake my head at them and not on GW or facilities who are the ones that ultimately have to deal with the fallout from all of this,” she said in an interview.
Officials anticipate reopening damaged faculty offices by Sept. 26 and are assessing damage to research equipment, including expensive microscopes, Canalichio said in her statement to the biology depart-
ment.
The flooding began around 5 a.m. on Sept. 6 on the eighth floor of SEH from a broken valve in the greenhouse’s main water line, which also runs through the greenhouse’s workspace. The water flowed under the workspace’s door and into two classroom spaces and then moved out into the main hallway on the eighth floor and into the elevator shafts, Canalichio said in the statement.
Water permeated overnight all the way to the basement of the building and caused “catastrophic” damage to many spaces, Canalichio said.
“The lack of drains in our workspace and the poor grading of the floors, which essentially ushers water directly into the classroom, has been something that we have been bringing up since
the initial buildout of the greenhouse,” she wrote in the statement.
Guillermo Orti, a professor of biology, said the flooding damaged biology labs on the sixth floor, including microscopes, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace if experts can’t repair them.
Orti said two biology faculty were at the building in their lab on the sixth floor the morning of the flood and began to cover up sensitive items with plastic and move things around where water was dripping.
Canalichio said the greenhouse itself was unaffected because of its drainage system, but Hatchet reporters noticed the classroom and workspace had plastic covering equipment and furniture on Friday, which was mostly gone on Sunday.
The biology department is in the process of finding a new contractor to address the main water line which caused the flooding, Canalichio said. Facilities inspected the valve and could not determine the cause of the break, but Canalichio said the valve may have degraded internally or a sudden shift in water pressure may have caused the break.
Officials had to close some classrooms and labs in SEH to complete repairs through Wednesday, but Orti said most of them are operational again.
Canalichio said crews were prioritizing instructional spaces so classes could continue to meet in the same room.
“We’re moving a lot faster than I initially anticipated when everything came to light about how bad it was,” she said.
District House, USC dining vendors axe weekend hours
GW closed District House and University Student Center dining venues on weekends this semester, which students say leaves those on meal plans with limited dining options, odd eating hours and added costs.
Halal Shack, District Market, True Burger, D.C. Taco, Absurd Bird and Chaat House are now closed on weekends, which University spokesperson Claire Sabin said officials implemented because the dining vendors faced lower foot traffic — a pattern that coincides with the addition of new on-campus dining options, like Panda Express and Chick-fil-A. More than a dozen students said they’re frustrated with District House’s limited weekend hours, saying dining halls have limited access to food options, especially for healthier options or meal deals, which makes it difficult for those with limited dining dollars.
GW Dining serves between 10,000 and 11,000 meals per day Monday through Thursday, com-
pared to 3,000 to 4,000 meals from Friday through Sunday, Sabin said.
She declined to comment on the number of meals GW Dining serves at each dining location.
“These adjustments to hours help us balance operations while continuing to serve the community effectively during peak demand times,” Sabin said in an email.
Ellie Allen, a sophomore on the Revolutionary 85 meal plan, said she frequents District House because each venue offers a set menu, which she prefers over dining halls where offerings change daily.
She said Thurston and Shenkman’s limited weekend hours, combined with the cut weekend hours at District and the USC, have led her to use dining dollars to order GrubHub from off-campus dining locations more frequently.
Thurston and Shenkman halls are open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., according to the University dining website. Comparatively, District House vendors like True Burger and Halal
Shack operated every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
“A lot of people only eat here or in USC, they don’t eat in the dining halls, because it’s so unreliable,” Allen said. “But this is reliable. You know what you’re going to get every day. Nothing’s changing.”
For students looking to use a meal swipe outside of the dining hall, Sushi Do and Panda Express are open both Saturday and Sunday, Chick-fil-A is open on Saturday and Zingers is open on Sunday. With the changes, students on block meal plans cannot use swipes at any location after 8 p.m. on Saturdays and after 9 p.m. on Sundays. Students on All Access and Revolutionary 85 meal plans have the option to use one flex meal swipe per week at Panda Express on weekends or Chick-fil-A only on Saturday. District House and University Student Center vendors accept unlimited swipes for certain meal deal combinations, as denoted on the eateries’ menus.
Allen said the addition of Chickfil-A and Panda Express to the weekend dining option lineup is
CRIME LOG
THREATS TO DO BODILY
HARM
Thurston Hall
9/9/2025 – Unknown
Open Case Case open.
WEAPONS VIOLATIONS
Academic Center
Reported – 9/10/2025
Closed Case Case closed. Subject barred from campus.
PUBLIC DRUNKENNESS
2300 Block of H Street NW
9/10/2025 – 10:57 a.m.
Closed Case Case closed. Subject barred from campus.
LIQUOR LAW VIOLATION
Thurston Hall
9/5/2025 – 11:30 p.m.
Closed Case Case closed. Referred to CESA.
LIQUOR LAW VIOLATION
University Student Center
9/5/2025 – 11:35 p.m.
Closed Case Case closed. Referred to CESA.
LIQUOR LAW VIOLATION
JBKO Hall
9/4/2025 – 11:57 p.m.
Closed Case Case closed. Referred to CESA.
THEFT II/FROM BUILDING
Elliott School of International Affairs
9/3/2025 – 9:15 p.m.
Open Case Case open.
—Compiled by Bryson Kloesel
not a fair trade for District House because students are limited to one flex swipe per week, meaning they must use dining dollars if they want to eat at the fast food chains more than once every seven days. With only one flex swipe, Allen said she’s forced to save all of her dining dollars for the weekends. Officials’ move to terminate District and USC weekend dining options comes after officials reduced hours at various locations last academic year. In Fall 2024, all District House vendors operated from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and all USC vendors operated from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. In January, officials closed Baba’s Pizza in District on the weekends and changed D.C. Taco and Absurd Bird’s hours to close at 6 p.m. on the weekends. Officials also added some hours at Absurd Bird, Sushi Do and Zingers at the start of the semester. Sushi Do is now open on weekends, and Zingers is open on Sunday. Absurd Bird is now closed on weekends but open until 1 a.m. on Thursday and Friday.
Sabin said students pushed for a late-night option on campus, which led officials to expand Thursday and Friday hours for Absurd Bird. She said officials made changes to the dining schedule with help from GW Dining’s Student Advisory Panel.
Student Advisory Panel executive board members did not return a request for comment.
Student Government Association leaders have long called on officials to expand food options, and students in October 2023 said they
prefer District House vendors over other dining options, an option they will now only have access to on weekdays. In February 2024, students also reported stomach illnesses, which they said were connected to eating at Thurston and Shenkman halls.
Noah Burnside, a sophomore living in District House, said he misses sitting in District House on the weekends to eat, study or chat with friends — an experience he said he can’t replicate at Panda Express or Chick-fil-A. He added that students need a wider variety of options beyond the two national fast food chains, which he said are not healthy options.
Burnside said that although Thurston and Shenkman halls remain open on weekends, he has encountered issues with these dining halls running out of food near closing.
“If the administration is going to restrict the kind of the dining options here in District, they should then supplement that by having either more food or expanding the tables or something in Shenkman,” Burnside said. Olivia Andrade, a first-year on the All Access meal plan that allows unlimited swiping once per hour and over $200 dining dollars for the semester, said she pays too much for her meal plan — $3,150 per semester. She said she’s now forced to go to Thurston or Shenkman halls on the weekends, which are often crowded.
“I’m not getting my bang for my buck,” she said. “When I signed up for
open.”
KYRA WOOD | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR True Burger and Halal Shack in the District House basement Sunday.
COURTESY OF BIOLOGY FACULTY
Damage in the Science and Engineering Hall after flooding earlier this month.
Student organization leaders left confused after last-minute SGA funding reforms
Student organization leaders said Student Government Association financial leadership did not properly communicate new funding policies instituted over the summer, causing confusion over financial allocations and how to request funds at the start of the academic year. Leaders from five student organizations said the SGA Senate’s July funding reforms only partly fixed issues with the event-focused allocation model the senate passed last spring, adding that the new model instead caused confusion and extra work for organization leaders. Student organization leaders said they would prefer the SGA to return to the original funding model from before last spring’s changes, rather than the current reforms, which only restore the old system’s terminology, not its full functionality.
Although SGA senators renamed “eventbased funding” — funding requested for individual events – back to “cosponsorships” and
tweaked application rules in the reforms, the changes effectively keep the old system in place, Andrés Orjuela, deputy director of the SGA Legislative Budget Office said.
During spring 2024, the SGA passed the Financial Transparency Act to restructure its budget, shifting funds from the semiannual general allocations system to a weekly event-based funding model in an attempt to stop student organizations from being forced to guess how much funding they would need for the duration of the semester. But after hearing complaints from dozens of student organizations that the proposed events-based funding process made it more difficult to obtain funding and plan events because of the weekslong process to have individual allocations approved by the Finance Committee, the SGA Senate passed the Finance Bylaw Reform Act at a July emergency meeting.
Under the newest model, student organizations still receive smaller pots of funds at the beginning of each semester for administrative costs that last the entire year and need to apply for addition-
al funding through the cosponsorship process.
Legislative Budget Office Director Connor Linggi said in an email the SGA informed organizations when they were providing feedback over the summer that the new changes would keep the reduced general allocations and a larger cosponsorships fund, as the allocation process did under the events-based system.
Orjuela said SGA senators and financial leaders decided to reform the events-based model over the summer after student organizations warned it would require groups to submit many more funding requests each year, placing additional strain on the Finance Committee, which reviews and approves them.
“We kind of realized that it was going to be a mess,” Orjuela said. “That it was going to create a bottleneck that was going to delay people from getting their funding and that it was also going to just create so many more frictions within the system that we also had to deal with.”
Under the reforms passed in July, organizations can group funding requests together but only
if the events are recurring, Orjuela said. Leaders of student organizations said they were not informed the SGA passed new reforms to the financial process over the summer or what the details of the reforms were, causing confusion when they arrived back to campus with a new funding system to navigate.
Charlie Basa, president of the Philippine Culture Society, said his organization has been confused about what the July reforms change for student organizations, since his organization still received less general allocations funding at the beginning of the semester compared to the original model. He said because the changes were made right before the start of the school year, organization leaders were not properly trained by SGA financial leadership on how to navigate the newest system.
“You spend the summer before planning out a lot of events for fall semester, working on budgeting, figuring out scheduling and whatnot, and when changes to the budget and how we access our funds are made right before the school year, it can be frustrating,” Basa said.
RHA candicacy plateaus, open positions dwindle
attended in-person orientation in small groups throughout June, retiring a model that officials introduced in 2019 that brought the entire class to campus in mid-August.
A total of 160 students ran for 96 positions in last week’s Residence Hall Association election, maintaining the same level of candidate interest as last year despite a continued decline in available roles. The number of open positions has dropped over the past four years due in part to Mitchell Hall being closed for construction and the RHA’s 2023 removal of the vice president position, which was eliminated to reduce redundancy and give hall council members greater responsibility. RHA President Urja Mehta said the organization began outreach during the summer and opened candidacy forms on the first day of classes — a week earlier than the year before — which she said helped the organization maintain interest.
“It’s just cool that people want to show up, and they care enough to want to make changes in their hall,” Mehta said.
Ballots opened from Tuesday at noon until Thursday at noon, and candidates vied for openings to be leaders of the body representing each of the 24 residence halls in RHA’s annual election. Students ran for roles as president, communications chair, programming chair and finance chair in their respective residence halls.
During last year’s election cycle, 160 candidates vied for 100 open spots, marking a 27 percent increase in candidates from 2023. The 2025 election marks at least the fourth consecutive year of decreased open spots in the RHA, with 130 open spots in 2022 and 104 in 2023.
Across the 96 spots, there are 11 vacancies, Mehta said. The Dakota saw no candidates run for any position, while the other 23 residence halls have at least one representative.
Mehta said she will work with RHA leaders to fill any vacancies through appointments. Each student when they filled out candidacy paperwork indicated what other roles, if any, they would be willing to accept, so Mehta said she plans to pull from that pool of applications to fill remaining positions.
Mehta said since she spent the summer in the District, it was easy to share RHA’s mission with the cohort of students on campus throughout June for first-year orientation. Incoming first-year and transfer students
“With the new, changed orientation this year, I think having a spot for RHA to advertise who they are earlier was really good,” she said. To campaign, students tacked up posters approved in designated spaces in their halls and utilized social media, all in alignment with RHA’s election guidelines. Some students, like the roughly 100 students who gathered in the Thurston Hall penthouse on Wednesday, held makeshift debates in community spaces, which Mehta noted was not an RHA-sponsored event.
Each of the up to four elected leaders in each hall will play a role in advocating for the needs of their respective residence halls and planning programming, Mehta said.
“I think RHA is very known for putting on our programming, but I want to remind people that we also, in conjunction with that, one of our pillars is advocacy,” Mehta said.
Esther Espinosa Dilone, a sophomore majoring in political science, said she ran for District House president — a race she won — to get to know more people in her residence hall. She said her goals are to improve hygiene in common areas and plan activities that appeal to residents of the various affinities in the hall.
As president, Espinosa Dilone said she will be open to suggestions about what to prioritize and coordinate activities that a variety of students in her residence hall will want to participate in.
“I want to make sure that everyone feels included and that we kind of have programming that caters to everyone and be very open to suggestions,” Espinosa Dilone said.
Sophomore music major Zach Gindi-Chiafullo said he ran for JBKO programming chair, a race he won, because he enjoyed serving in that role for Merriweather Hall last year. He said he hopes to use his experience to grow the community through events that give students a chance to relax and “have a break” from the stress of classes and living in a city.
“I think having those types of events will allow people to just, like, have a low pressure time to just hang out,” GindiChiafullo said. “And I feel like that’s a great thing to do.”
Months after WMATA bus system overhaul, riders split on route changes
KLOESEL
Over two months after the city overhauled the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority’s bus network, most Foggy Bottom riders said the new routes are a worthwhile learning curve, while others said they are a disruption to a struggling system.
The Better Bus Network, which officials implemented June 29, was the culmination of outreach to riders by WMATA beginning in 2022 that revealed a need for more direct connections to essential services, like stores and community hubs, and to reconfigure commuter lines to assist their recovery from pandemic-era low ridership. Over a dozen riders told The Hatchet their differing views on the new system, with some residents resenting the loss of historic routes they relied on and saying WMATA did not consistently implement changes, while others said the route changes reduced the length of their commutes.
The overhaul connected more riders by structuring the system around popular locations like hospitals, schools and grocery stores, giving riders more direct routes to these services, WMATA said in a March release.
WMATA said it would remove 527 bus stops as part of the overhaul, about 5 percent of all stops on the regional network. The authority said it removed stops to increase spacing between them and place them near businesses and landmarks while trying to avoid increasing the length riders walk to the stop. The list of stops to eliminate included three in Foggy Bottom, all along Pennsylvania Avenue between Georgetown and the White House.
WMATA data shows that the new D74, D10, D70 and D96 serving areas in and around Foggy Bottom saw a combined 372,861 average weekday boardings in July, tripling ridership from the defunct 42 and 43’s combined weekday ridership
of 101,616 from the same period last year.
State Department electrical engineer Scott Eddington said he didn’t understand why the authority made significant changes to the network. He said the new routes aren’t convenient for him, requiring a long walk to access them, and buses are still delayed.
“It’s completely out of the way,” he said.
Eddington begins his journey home on the 2100 Block of Virginia Avenue Northwest on the D74 or D82 — either route will take him five blocks north to Foggy Bottom Metro. He said he will then ride to the Metro Center station before transferring to the Red line and arriving at his destination, Farragut North. His trip used to be covered by a single bus ride on either route 42 or 43, he said.
WMATA split the 42 and 43 route pair, which wound from the Kennedy Center to the State Department to Farragut Square before heading north up Connecticut Avenue to Mount Pleasant, into four routes — D10, D70, D74 and D80 — as part of the overhaul. None of the four routes travel directly between Foggy Bottom and Farragut North like Eddington’s old route,
meaning his trip to and from work requires at least one additional transfer to either the Metrorail or a different bus.
Eddington said he has not experienced the improvements WMATA promised would come with the overhaul — like increased reliability and connections to new areas — and questioned why WMATA changed the routes in the first place.
“They’re not on time,” Eddington said. “Sometimes two of them leave together, and they’re not supposed to. They’re supposed to be spaced out.”
He said he knew WMATA was planning to overhaul the system, but he thought the changes would spare his route. Eddington said when he heads home from work at 5 p.m., he sometimes waits up to 27 minutes for the bus. The best change WMATA could make now, he said, is to restore the old routes.
“Change it back,” Eddington said. “Why are you gonna fix something that’s not broken?”
He also said some decommissioned stops lack visible warnings that they are out of service, which has caused him to wait for buses that never arrive.
WMATA Chief Executive Officer Randy Clarke said at a Board
of Directors meeting about a week and a half after the network launched, the rollout had gone better than expected. Some bus stop signs, he said, were incorrect, and WMATA is working to replace them.
He also said many complaints riders connected to the Better Bus Network predated it and are inherent to running a bus network, like weather delays. According to WMATA’s annual Service Excellence report released this month, bus prediction accuracy — how close actual arrival time for buses is to the predicted time — initially dropped about 5 percent when the new network went into effect but increased back to only 0.2 percent — on par with the levels before the change — by late July.
Law student Anna Nugent, who was waiting for a D74 bus across from Shenkman Hall, said the new routes move faster. She said buses that used to pick her up infrequently or not at all— despite WMATA’s tracking system saying the bus would arrive within minutes — now arrive on time.
“The buses just wouldn’t show up on multiple occasions,” Nugent said of the old system. “I would just be waiting for like, half an hour,
and I went on the WMATA website it was like, ‘Oh, like, it’s coming in two minutes.’ It never did.” Nugent said her friends have experienced similar increases in accuracy and reliability under the new system.
“This is a huge improvement,” Nugent said. “Obviously, there’s still delays and stuff, but I like the new routes.”
Julie Tippin, who works for the federal government and takes the bus to travel between her home in Dupont Circle and her job in Foggy Bottom, said WMATA bus operators helped riders learn the new routes by reminding people to get off at the correct stop.
Tippin said she didn’t expect the network overhaul, but it made the service more convenient for her.
Benjamin Lynn, a spokesperson for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, a labor union representing Metro workers, said bus operators also experienced confusion when the network was first implemented and sometimes lacked immediate answers to rider inquiries. He said time confusion among Metro workers has abated, but returning tourists who have not visited the District since the update still ask for assistance.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KYRA WOOD
Pages from the Student Government Association Finance Bylaw Reform and Financial Transparency acts.
JOSH STEINBERG | PHOTOGRAPHER A message about route changes displayed at a Metrobus stop.
JOSH STEINBERG | PHOTOGRAPHER People board a Metrobus near Washington Circle.
Students ring in Ethiopian, Eritrean new year with celebration in USC
Over 70 students joined together in the University Student Center on Friday for a celebration of Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year, Enkutatash, hosted by the Ethiopian-Eritrean Students Association.
EESA celebrated the start of 2018, as designated by the Ethiopian calendar, in the USC with over 70 students in attendance to enjoy games and traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean food. EESA members and students attending said the celebration unites the Ethiopian and Eritrean student community for the holiday right after they return to GW for the start of the year, providing them a safe space to celebrate the new year since they don’t get to spend time with their families for the holiday.
Enkutatash, meaning “gift of jewels” in Amharic, Ethiopia’s main language, falls on the first day of Meskerem, the first month in the Ethiopian calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, the holiday falls on Sept. 11 or Sept. 12 during a leap year. According to the Ethiopian calendar, or Ge’ez calendar, it is 2018. The seven-year difference between the Ethiopian and Gregorian calendars is the result of differing calculations determining the year of the annunciation and birth of Jesus Christ.
Efrata Tesfaye, the co-president of EESA, said the organization expected and received about 70 students in attendance, which traditionally marks the group’s first general body meeting of the year. Tesfaye said the holiday centers around family as the new year begins, featuring a large dinner with traditional Ethiopian foods, like a soft flatbread — injera — and a chicken stew — doro wat, which
Trump’s
were both served at the event. She said a yellow flower prominent in Ethiopia, adey abeba, is associated with the holiday because it blooms during this time of year and represents the new year in Ethiopian and Eritrean culture.
“And you have flowers laid out, you dance, you eat,” Tesfaye said. “It’s just a really good time just to be with family and celebrate with family.”
EESA’s celebration also included games — like one where attendees had to guess Ethiopian and Eritrean celebrities and another where a few attendees blindly tested and named spices.
Tesfaye said the organization hopes to be a safe space for Ethiopian and Eritrean students, including international students who are from the two African nations. She said community is a big part of EESA’s mission on campus, in order to allow students to feel connected to home even when they are at college and away from family.
“So having food prepared and having music playing that a lot of Ethiopian, Eritrean or Habesha are familiar with creates that community and creates that safe space that they can come back to,” Tesfaye said.
Nabek Ababiya, a first-year student majoring in mechanical engineering, said he attended the event to find and stay involved with a community of Ethiopian students on campus, after his high school lacked a strong Ethiopian community. Ababiya said EESA’s celebration helped him connect with and celebrate his culture during the holiday since he wasn’t able to be with his family back home.
“It’s like a home away from home,” Ababiya said.
Ababiya said events like EESA’s Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year celebration help build up the community of Ethiopian and Eritrean
students on campus. He said these events can also educate students who aren’t Ethiopian or Eritrean about the two nations’ shared culture.
“These events build communities,” Ababiya said. “People who may not know Ethiopians from their area when they come to GW, really gives them the chance to connect with their people and have fun.”
Eyoel Makonnen, a senior majoring in information systems, said he’s been attending EESA events since his first year at GW, and views the new year celebration as an opportunity to spend quality time with people who share the same culture. He said the celebration is a learning experience about his culture and its traditions as he meets Ethiopians and Eritreans from all around the world, including from the two nations themselves, adding to his understanding of his culture.
“I think it’s important to mix in with people from your culture and just to have a tight-knit community,” Makonnen said.
Blain Sirak, a sophomore majoring in international affairs, said she attended the event with her friend who is also Ethiopian because they appreciate the opportunity to stay in touch with their culture while at college, as their family celebrates the holiday back home.
“I feel like this is a good way to meet with people that have a similar background to us,” Sirak said.
Sirak said while she was born and raised in the United States, both of her parents are Ethiopian, and she’s been able to remain in touch with Ethiopian culture through them and the predominantly Ethiopian neighborhood she lives in.
“I’ve always been super close to the culture, in a way,” Sirak said.
Sirak said the evening’s celebrations are a strong way to bring the Ethiopian and Eritrean community
data collection efforts could target enrollment strategies: experts
GIANNA JAKUBOWSKI ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
After President Donald Trump signed a presidential memoranda last month to revamp and expand the Department of Education’s data collection system, higher education experts said the new data could be “weaponized” to punish GW for pursuing diversity goals this academic year.
Trump issued an executive action on Aug. 7 directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “revise” the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — a Department of Education data collection system — by expanding the requirements universities are mandated to report. Experts in higher education said the executive action could lead to the Trump administration threatening to withhold federal funding from schools the administration deems are still encouraging the consideration of students’ race in college admissions after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
University spokesperson Julia Garbitt said the University is evaluating the executive action to understand its potential implications on students and higher education. She said officials remain committed to supporting prospective students and providing them with equal opportunities to succeed at the University while also complying with all federal regulations.
McMahon has until Dec. 5 to coordinate with the National Center for Education Statistics to expand the scope of required reporting, which the memo said will be initiated this academic year. McMahon in a memo on Aug. 7 — the same day of Trump’s memo — said the Department of Education will collect data “disaggregated” by race and sex from applicants, admitted students and enrolled students at the undergraduate level and for specific graduate and professional programs.
IPEDS currently collects data annually on GW’s general institutional history, admission and test scores, cost of attendance, student financial aid and average net price. It also collects data on GW’s enrollment, degrees and certificate completion rates, retention and graduation rates, award and enrollment rates, revenue, number of staff and graduate assistants and the materials in the library’s collection and
at GW together, especially for those who are international students and can not easily go home to celebrate the holiday with their families. She said she planned on returning home for the weekend to celebrate with her family.
“With everything, it’s really nice to have that support system around you or that people can understand
its expenses. McMahon said in the memo the data collection will be expanded for enrolled students to include data from each “race-andsex pair’s” graduation rates, final GPAs, financial aid offered and financial aid provided.
The memo also directs McMahon to take “remedial action” if institutions fail to submit data timely or submit incomplete or inaccurate data — though the exact date they will have to submit the new data by is unclear.
At least four experts said they worry that universities aren’t going to be able to compile the data the federal government will require because the Department of Education is requesting data from five years ago that universities might not have collected. They also said the timeline of the revision of IPEDS is “extraordinarily quick,” leading them to question if the data collection is feasible because of the lack of staff in the Department of Education.
Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said the Trump administration could threaten to withhold federal financial aid from universities or try to remove college presidents if they feel a school’s data shows they are encouraging affirmative action practices.
Kelchen said the timeline for the data collection this academic year — including a 60-day public comment period within Trump’s 120-day data expansion timeline — is quick for the size of the data collection the Trump administration is requiring from universities. He said this also comes as the Department of Education’s staff got “pretty well torched” by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, and the NCES has approxi-
mately three employees due to layoffs.
“I think that the big takeaway is just nobody knows quite what to do about this because it is politically fraught,” Kelchen said. “But just from a data perspective, it’s going to be almost impossible to produce highquality data on a short timeframe that also protects the privacy of students.”
Jeremy Young — the senior adviser of strategic initiatives for the American Association of Colleges & Universities — said Trump has scrutinized institutions who have used their recruitment strategies to focus on bringing in minority students in a post-affirmative action world, which could result in GW changing the ways in which it recruits students or the populations of students they are trying to appeal to.
“There’s a lot of scrutiny on the question of whether selective institutions are using their recruitment strategies to sort of try to focus on bringing in minority students or students from certain areas,” Young said.
Young said the Trump administration has interpreted the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling as it illegal for universities to not completely ignore race or identity in college admissions under the Civil Rights Act.
“The people who are criticizing colleges’ admissions practices are now going to be essentially demanding the colleges admit the exact percentage of each minority group that they think they should admit,” Young said.
McMahon in a memorandum to NCES’s Acting Commissioner Matthew Soldner on Aug. 7 said the new admissions data collected should capture information that could indicate whether or not universities are using “race-based preferencing” in their admissions process.
you in a way,” Sirak said.
Christian Maboko, a sophomore majoring in international affairs, said his roommate, who is not Ethiopian nor Eritrean, encouraged him to attend the new year celebration.
“It was like, I just want to have a good time with neighbors here,” Maboko said.
Black student research organization launches despite unofficial status
RYAN SAENZ ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Students formed an organization over the summer to bring together Black students interested in research, which is launching operations on campus this fall as an unofficial organization after the group was unable to apply to become a new student organization.
Black Students in Research began hosting events on campus this Wednesday, with around 30 students attending their first general body meeting of the year in Duques Hall, as they look to promote black student opportunities in research through their planned resume and LinkedIn workshops and connecting members with professors actively engaged in research. Members of BSIR’s executive board said they were encouraged by the turnout at Wednesday’s meeting and hope to create a space for Black students on campus who are looking to engage in academia in their undergraduate years and explore research across disciplines.
Siyan Tekle-Habtegabir, the organization’s founder and copresident, said she created the organization over the summer because she felt there was a lack of preprofessional organizations on campus for Black students. She said many Black students on campus are academic high achievers, so the lack of preprofessional organizations dedicated to them created a gap in student organization offerings.
“I wanted to close that gap by creating an organization that worked through professional development, disseminating opportunities
and demystifying research in general,” Tekle-Habtegabir said.
Other preprofessional organizations for Black students on campus include groups like the GW Association of Black Journalists and the Black Public Health Student Network.
Tekle-Habtegabir said the organization will look to host specific events, like LinkedIn-building workshops, events on how to be a better public speaker and sessions on how to “cold email” professors — something she and other leadership members said they learned is crucial to obtaining research opportunities when they were first exploring research opportunities as undergraduate students. She said BSIR plans on hosting these events with other official organizations like GW’s American Medical Women’s Association and Black Girl Pre-Health Collective.
Tekle-Habtegabir said BSIR formed at the end of last semester as officials paused applications for new student organizations, finding out about the pause when they tried to formally establish themselves with the University right before the start of the fall semester. She said the freeze did not deter them from starting because she believes the organization is needed on campus.
Tekle-Habtegabir said the organization’s leadership team has had to adapt to the lack of official status with the University by changing some leadership roles for members of their executive board.
She said one executive board member has shifted their role from collecting
research resources and opportunities to focus on grant applications for BSIR to have funding, sending cold emails and beginning to collect funds from organizations geared towards advancing Black involvement in research, like the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, so BSIR can sustain itself without a Universityprovided budget.
“Unfortunately, without a budget, it becomes really, really difficult to provide the necessary support, supplies and resources that we would need to do that,” Tekle-Habtegabir said. BSIR’s other co-president, Kayla McQuiller, said the “lively” atmosphere at BSIR’s first GBM, where students were talkative with each other, shows that even amidst a lack of official organization status, students have heard about and are interested in BSIR.
“We’ve had to work extra hard and make sure we’re known on campus,” McQuiller said. “We didn’t want their roadblock to stop us, so we’ve been working really hard on that.”
McQuiller said the organization hopes to work with professors to share their research opportunities with club members, along with bringing faculty to their events throughout the year to talk directly with students about research and getting involved.
“Mainly, it’s going to be to give our students and our attendees opportunities to talk to these professors, to meet one on one with these professors,” McQuiller said. “Primarily, we’re going to be looking at Black professors as well, just to keep our connections strong.”
JORDAN YEE | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Admissions and Alumni Welcome Center.
ADDISON OSBORN | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Black Students in Research executive board members pose for a portrait.
KAIDEN J. YU | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Students celebrate Ethiopian New Year at the Enkutatash gathering Friday.
KAIDEN J. YU | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Sunflowers, samosas and injera on tables at the Enkutatash celebration Friday.
Business school dean strives to engage alumni, encourage hands-on learning
School of Business Dean Sevin Yeltekin, who assumed the role on Aug. 1, said she plans to extend the school’s experiential learning, strengthen alumni engagement and collaborate across schools in a conversation with University President Ellen Granberg in Jack Morton Auditorium on Wednesday.
Yeltekin said she hopes to collaborate with other schools and connect with alumni to give students a multidisciplinary education. She also said she plans to bolster experiential learning and faculty recruitment as key aspects of the GWSB curriculum at the George Talks Business event, part of a series of 30-minute interviews with thinkers and leaders in the business sector.
Yeltekin, the former dean of the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, said the school’s “main job” is to transform students who have spent their whole lives as learners into leaders who can make confident decisions in the business world. She said she wants to teach students foundational knowledge through well thought out and tested academic frameworks.
“Always learning to learn is a very important thing,” Yeltekin said. “That is an ability and a skill that will carry them throughout their careers.”
Yeltekin said while questions remain among educators about how artificial intelligence will affect pro-
ductivity and whether students will have to use it in business, she sees “policy changes” as the biggest disruptor, adding that students must learn to lead in a “very complex environment.”
Yeltekin said while sometimes business schools like to “package” problems with predetermined answers to train students, she thinks students also need experience with unstructured, “messy” and sometimes ill-defined problems. She said opportunities like projects, internships and case competitions can help them apply classroom learning in real-world contexts and build confidence in problem-solving.
“It’s very important to get students to become very fluent in or at least comfortable with making decisions in unstructured environments with a lot of uncertainty because that’s exactly what they’re going to face outside of our classrooms,” Yeltekin said.
She said alongside students learning “fundamental” business skills like accounting, finance and marketing, students also need to understand the political and regulatory environment in which they will have to make decisions. She also said students develop skills better through experiential learning because they can truly relate to and practice the material that they learned in the classroom.
“Our role is to be both a deep thinker but at the same time bring it back to some of the fundamentals and make everybody comfortable with a little bit of uncertainty,”
Yeltekin said.
Yeltekin said she hopes to collaborate with other schools, like the School of Engineering & Applied Science, GW Law and the Milken Institute School of Public Health, so students can diversify their skillset and learn different industries and academic fields. She said although GWSB is not a “big business school,” she believes collaborating with other schools will set students up for success.
“We have expertise in certain areas, but we cannot be everything to everyone,” Yeltekin said. “And what better way to really add more to our intellectual footprint and to our set of expertise by collaborating from those from the engineering school, law school, public health school.”
Yeltekin said she wants to explore what makes alumni engage with the University so she can learn what the school should keep in its “DNA” and continue to invest in. She added she wants to learn potential best practices for the school’s curriculum moving forward based on alumni experiences.
“For our alumni to come back and engage with us, I want it to be something of value to them as well,” Yeltekin said. “So I’m willing to listen and learn and collaborate with them.”
Officials to provide metal detectors, bag checks at future events: students
“Who knows what can happen, but they see people supporting the violence, and they don’t want to have events for a little bit,” Laffey said.
Laffey said the organization paused hosting any major events — both with and without speakers — for the time being as they assess safety concerns. He confirmed that he met with University President Ellen Granberg and Dean of Students Colette Coleman after the shooting to discuss his safety concerns, and will meet with Granberg again next week. He said at the upcoming meeting he’ll bring up specific safety measures he’d like to see at future events, like heightened law enforcement presence, metal detectors and bag and ID checks.
He said when news of the shooting broke, the organization was setting up for their event with Texan
Congressman Brandon Gil scheduled for Wednesday night, which the organization then canceled in tandem with Gil’s office. He said he met with Coleman within a half hour of the shooting, who promised increased security if they went through with Gil’s event.
“They promised that they’ll do everything to keep us safe, especially if we were having that event later, they said they’d have police there and everything,” Laffey said.
Laffey said as chairman of College Republicans, he feels he has a responsibility to keep the organization’s members safe, especially in light of specific comments and posts on Fizz, like a poll gauging how many people supported Kirk’s death. The poll, as of Sunday, has over 3,200 votes, with more than 1,100 voters saying Kirk deserved to be shot.
“Our members shouldn’t be put in a situation that they feel threatened in,” Laffey said. “I can speak for myself
and a large population of our club, they just don’t feel safe.”
Emily-Anne Santiago, the president of College Democrats, said the minute news of the shooting broke, she contacted Coleman to discuss her concerns about hosting events on campus that bring in high-profile speakers.
“Before we even asked for it, they promised us metal detectors, that they’ll wand people down, that we’ll have security,” Santiago said.
Santiago said Coleman and other University officials have taken her security concerns into consideration and plan on providing these heightened security resources at no cost to the organization, starting with their event featuring Aaron Parnas, a political content creator, on Sept. 30.
She said these security promises guarantee that she and the speakers will feel safe hosting events with speakers, adding that if there was any semblance of dan-
ger or if security wasn’t up to par she would cancel an event immediately.
“I’m very confident the University is handling this properly, and I don’t think that the University has an active threat against them,” Santiago said.
Chloe Schaefer, the deputy chief of staff for GW College Democrats, said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting both her organization and GW College Republicans started “freaking out” because the assassination took place on a college campus at an event for students.
“For the GW perspective, how can we feel safe doing these things when this is happening on both sides of the aisle?” Schaefer said.
Schaefer said the organization has presented Parnas, who is scheduled to speak on Sept. 30, with the details of the updated security measures GW pledged to implement, and he is debating whether he should still attend. She said as of Friday
the group has not heard whether Parnas will still come to campus.
Schaefer said the University’s security guarantees have comforted her and the rest of the College Democrats’ leadership, but they haven’t talked with officials since Wednesday’s meeting. She said she hopes the security measures make future guest speakers feel safe as the organization works to book more events for the remainder of the semester, adding that they don’t anticipate struggling to secure guests.
Schaefer said the heightened security measures might look different than what officials initially outlined as they continue to update protocols in the wake of Kirk’s assassination. She said recent incidents at other institutions, like the Navy Academy going into lockdown for several hours Thursday because of unfounded reports that there was an active shooter on
Faculty senators condemn lack of communication during
“Our goal is to ultimately eliminate GW’s financial support of the MFA to cover its operating losses while preserving high quality medical education and health care for the communities we serve,” Garbitt said in an email.
Garbitt declined to comment on when negotiations between the parties began and when the University plans to conclude talks.
The negotiations with UHS further entangle the University with the healthcare management company, which became the sole owner of GW Hospital in May 2022 after the University sold its remaining 20-percent stake. As of early July, UHS and the MFA were continuing negotiations around an agreement regarding the MFA’s staffing of Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health, which opened in April and is also operated by UHS.
UHS and the MFA also settled a lawsuit in July that the medical enterprise filed last year over allegations that UHS “properly withheld” Medicare reimbursements from the MFA.
Officials have remained guarded this year about the steps they were taking to manage the MFA’s financial losses, often citing that officials were making progress that they could not talk about it publicly. Officials offered glimpses into their ongoing efforts to combat the MFA’s financial losses with their decision to hire MFA CEO Bill Elliott in May 2024 and his subsequent efforts to increase patient access, lower wait times and renegotiate cleaning and real estate contracts.
Granberg said at a May Faculty Senate meeting that officials have discussed “real decisions” regarding the MFA but said they could not talk about what the solution was.
During a report to the Faculty Senate in March, GW Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes and MFA CEO Bill Elliott said they were working to fix the group’s operational issues through renegotiated contracts and methods to grow revenue but declined to specify a timeline for a solution, despite pressure from senators.
Granberg also said during her presidential report officials are waiting to hear back from the Justice Department after they reached out by the Aug. 22 deadline the department gave them to indicate interest in conversing about entering a voluntary resolution agreement over its antisemitism findings. The DOJ on Aug. 12 determined that GW failed to adequately combat campus antisemitism, and officials late last month confirmed they
were “in contact” with the DOJ. Granberg said officials developed a three-part plan to engage faculty in conversations about the DOJ, including creating a faculty work group on “federal matters,” a workshop for Faculty Senate subcommittees on DOJ-related issues and a special meeting with Board of Trustees Chair Grace Speights and FSEC.
Faculty senators spent a significant portion of the meeting voicing concerns regarding officials’ plans to begin “right-sizing” the Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Officials announced in June that in order to combat declining enrollment at GSEHD, they would be considering layoffs for staff and contract faculty, cutting programs and consolidating classes in a move faculty
said lacked community input.
Faculty Senator and GSEHD Representative Maria Cseh said she was “flabbergasted” that about 25 percent of GSEHD’s faculty received letters of possible termination from the administration without consulting experts or faculty. She also criticized the announcement for coming a week before then-Dean Michael Feuer and Bracey stepped down from their roles.
At least 15 faculty members received an email from officials notifying them that they could see “changes to their employment status,” Dwayne Kwaysee Wright, a professor of higher education administration, told The Hatchet in July. Granberg said officials considered layoffs because of the
campus, might add to the complexity of the situation and fuel broader fears about heightened political violence.
Schaefer said the organization has focused primarily on guaranteeing their guest speakers feel safe and comfortable enough to come to campus as they plan future events. She said once they know their speakers are comfortable attending, College Democrats will turn to ensuring the guests feel safe as well.
Schaefer said attendees should expect a security system similar to what exists at major sporting events, like Washington Nationals games, as the organization expects to have metal detectors, extra security guards and bag searches.
“We have a lot of members, and we want them to feel safe, and we want them to feel like they can go to these large events that we host and have the privilege of hosting,” Schaefer said.
“urgency” of GSEHD’s situation, where enrollments suddenly plummeted following a long, slow period of decline. GSEHD’s enrollment decreased from 1,479 in 2014 to 958 in 2024, a more-than500-student decrease. Enrollment has also dropped 29 percent since 2020, when the school had 1,341 students, according to enrollment data.
Faculty Senator Jennifer Brinkerhoff, a professor of international affairs, said what happened to GSEHD was “heartbreaking” and urged officials to have more “systems in place” to prevent considering layoffs in the future.
Lach said officials are also working on increasing transparency with faculty on where money is going as they work on the new budget model. He said officials are moving towards making multiyear budget models to plan further ahead in order to prevent scenarios like GSEHD’s downsizing.
Lach also said he hosted a town hall with GSEHD community members a few weeks ago, where he had “productive” conversations about how to best support the school’s students and faculty due to the enrollment changes making it “very difficult” to support existing faculty.
He said aside from specific budget parameters, he wants to give GSEHD autonomy in deciding how programs are staffed to ensure the school is positioned more “strongly” in the future.
“My consistent message to Dean Howard is that GSEHD knows what’s best for the future of GSEHD,” Lach said.
Lach also provided an update on the University’s partnership with Gallup, which officials hired to survey faculty and staff in 2020, asking for recommendations on how to improve GW’s culture. He said officials worked with Gallup from 2020 through 2024, and the contract was paid off in 2024.
LARKIN FERMIN | PHOTOGRAPHER
Business School Dean Sevin Yeltekin at a conversation moderated by University President Ellen Granberg on Wednesday.
MATHYLDA DULIAN | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
Graduate School of Education and Human Development Faculty Senator Maria Cseh at a meeting Friday.
From Page 1
From Page 1
OPINIONS
Trustees
operate in the shadows. It’s time they deepen community ties.
The Board of Trustees is GW’s highest governing body, responsible for guiding the University’s financial stability, academic direction and long-term strategy. They oversaw the hiring of University President Ellen Granberg and former interim University President Mark Wrighton. They voted to arm GW Police Department officers. Despite their sweeping influence, the trustees remain largely unknown to the GW community. Public engagement with students, faculty and staff is infrequent, and when the community talks about the Board, it’s typically in protest of controversial decisions.
It’s common for university boards to work behind the scenes, but at GW, the privacy surrounding the Board’s structure and decisionmaking has created a gap between trustees and the community they serve.
Over the last decade, trustees have also downsized the Board — reducing its membership from 43 to 21 between 2013 and 2018 — in an effort to improve productivity and streamline communication. It currently comprises 20 members, whose names and bios are public on the website. But aside from what’s available through an online search, few members of the GW community have likely interacted with the Board at all. It’s a powerful body that operates at a distance, making decisions for the University with little public engagement from the students, faculty and staff who are directly affected.
The Board holds three public meetings during the academic year, during which trustees — many of whom don’t live in D.C. — come to campus for the weekend. While they’re here, we imagine they Ultimately, the people making some of the University’s most consequential decisions aren’t embedded in dayto-day campus life.
STAFF EDITORIAL
We’re not arguing that trustees are incapable of making informed decisions without being on campus. But it’s not surprising that frustration grows when decisions are made by people who aren’t a direct part of the campus community. We understand that the Board has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the University as an institution. Trustees’ responsibility is to ensure GW’s long-term financial stability, uphold its academic mission and protect its reputation, which can mean making decisions that prioritize GW’s stability over individual concerns. But fulfilling this duty doesn’t absolve the Board from the need to engage transparently with the community or consider the perspectives of students,
faculty and staff who are directly impacted by their decisions.
At a time when higher education is under intense scrutiny, we urge GW’s top governing body to be as visible and open as it can be. In the years ahead, the Board and other top officials will face difficult decisions amid budget cuts and President Donald Trump’s policies restricting research, international travel and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. It’s imperative that trustees make a clear effort to show students, faculty and staff that they are engaged, integrated into campus life and understand the people that make up the community. If they don’t, they risk fueling ongoing resentment within the community.
The US has criminalized empathy in immigration debates
For most of my life, I have heard multiple arguments for and against immigration and deportations, especially because I grew up in Calexico, California, situated right next to the Mexican border. I’ve heard them back home and some on campus. I understand that for many people, the subject carries a lot of nuance and doesn’t feel as simple for them as it does for me. This past year, I am surprised by how people are using the argument of legality to justify the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants by Trump’.
have been criminalized to the level where people in the U.S. feel immigrants are undeserving of empathy. For anyone who crosses into the U.S. without a visa for the first time, their actions are considered a misdemeanor and while it might result in going to jail, it doesn’t result in detention centers that have had up to 510 reports of human rights abuses.
People often argue that there is nothing wrong with wanting to come to the U.S. but that immigrants should do it the “legal way”, but no human being, regardless of their visa status or where they’re from, deserves to be dehumanized.
Two months ago, I had a discussion with a family member from California about the ongoing deportations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country. They quickly defended Trump’s actions, arguing he was within his executive authority to take whatever actions were needed. At the crux of this argument was the idea that the immigrants who had crossed the border without the proper documentation were knowingly breaking the law and therefore deserved it. I was a little speechless at the immediate lack of empathy from my family member. Immigration seems to
There is no excuse for pregnant women not receiving medical care or treatment to the point of miscarrying. There is no excuse to deport people to countries that are not their home nation. Thinking that someone crossing a border without a visa warrants their degradation is anti-humanitarian.
Martin Luther King Jr. put it best when he said, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
The entire country is witnessing, almost every day, a group of people being put in inhumane detention centers where their food has worms and floors are flooded with fecal waste.
After arguing with my family member about their defense of Trump’s deportations, they agreed that many
immigrants were being mistreated. But by focusing on the fact that undocumented immigrants broke the rules by crossing the border over the dehumanizing treatment they’re receiving is, in effect, saying that crossing the border is more heinous than being treated without dignity. Trump is saying he is exploring deporting U.S. citizens to El Salvador and has already taken birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court. Will people still preach about legality? What excuse will there be left to be used if that starts happening?
Crossing the border was not always criminalized. The United States began criminalizing it in the 1920s. But I don’t think we are criminalizing the right thing — it’s those in our federal government who perpetuate this dehumanization, as well as those who comply with it, who should be criminalized. It reminds me of what author Colson Whitehead said in his book, “The Underground Railroad,” when talking about slave patrollers: “In another country, they would have been criminals, but this is America.” As I see and hear people from my life and even online claiming a person’s immigration status is more crucial than their very humanity, I fear we are losing our own humanity. —Andrea MendozaMelchor, a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication, is the opinions editor.
TResentment grew with the Board’s April 2023 decision to arm GWPD officers, which triggered swift backlash from students, faculty, staff and other stakeholders. Students repeatedly protested the decision, faculty circulated a letter and some faculty senators called the decision “tone-deaf” and a divergence from shared governance. Faculty argued that the Board failed to consult the very community most affected by the decision. We understand that the Board has a fiduciary duty to act in the University’s long-term interest and that not every decision can go through a public approval process. But the frustration is compounded when the trustees are seen as inaccessible and disconnected from the rest of
the community. It’s not just the decisions they make that cause tension — it’s also their perceived silence and inaction on issues that matter to the community. Last fall pro-Palestinian protesters spray-painted in front of several Board members’ homes and sent letters about the University’s alleged role in the war in Gaza to their neighbors. The move came after months of proPalestinian protests demanding that GW divest from companies tied to Israel. Trustees responded by moving their upcoming meeting to an undisclosed location, and Speights condemned the incident, arguing “this type of behavior undercuts meaningful and productive dialog.” We don’t know what conversations the Board has had about divestment since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. But it’s not surprising that students are frustrated. Trustees are the ones ultimately responsible for any decision on divestment, but they were absent from campus while students protested, organized and advocated.
Heading into the academic year, we urge the Board to implement policies that ensure trustees engage meaningfully and publicly with the GW community. That could look like setting a minimum number of hours or events trustees are expected to attend. Regular, direct interaction would make trustees more informed about campus and also help rebuild trust and strengthen their public image among students, faculty and staff. It’s in the best interest of the Board to foster open dialogue and build trust with the community so that when they make controversial decisions, there is clarity about who is making them. Without that transparency, decisions risk appearing detached from the community they impact.
Political violence starts with polarized rhetoric
aking up a weapon and ending a life is never that simple. It requires logistical intricacies, moral complacency and institutional inefficacies. As you read this, your mind might have gone to the gruesome assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday in Utah at a public university. This political violence is not unprecedented. For millennia, from the Roman Republic to the Civil Rights Movement political violence has plagued civilizations. But in the digital age, it has taken on a new and deadly dimension that many are complicit in.
James Pomian Opinions Writer
Instead of running to social media to contribute to the polarizing conversation, we should consider whether our points could advance productive discourse and efforts to find solutions. Rhetoric that generalizes an entire political party or uses tragedy as an immediate and unfounded justification for aggressive legislation — like potentially unconstitutional gun control laws — only furthers polarization.
The collapse of our democracy is not a distant or abstract possibility. Our self-destruction is tangible, and many of us toy with it on a daily basis on social media and
through daily conversations that normalize polarizing sentiments and exacerbate these tragedies of political violence. History offers multiple warnings of the dangerous potential of such political violence.
The Roman Republic was consumed by internal violence, which featured the rise of street gangs, civil wars and assassinations of political figures. We face both these aspects in the United States as assassinations and polarization continue to draw us apart.
Looking at American history, political violence is nothing new. The 1960s featured the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the counterculture movement. This era witnessed a surge of political violence with the assassinations of key figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and former President John F. Kennedy. The 1980s featured political The solutions included legislative and judicial action, like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, political discourse by leaders on both sides and media coverage by traditional media outlets, which presented a unified narrative condemning the violence.
Scrolling through Instagram and X, you can see people reposting “They couldn’t beat him in debate, so they shot him,” or “gun violence spares no one,” People celebrating the
death of Charlie Kirk as a deserved one, vilifying the entirety of the Democratic Party for killing this figure or vilifying the Republican Party for promoting laws, which allow such events to occur are flooding social media. You are likely falling for it by engaging with politically provocative content frantically spurred out by influencers who align with your beliefs. Still, the emotional adrenaline surrounding the situation creates a false urgency, pressuring you to contribute to the circulation. So what is the solution to such a tragic pattern in which we are all exposed to and even unconsciously contribute to? Looking to our past, legislative and judicial decisions must be made. Lastly, it is necessary that we all take moments after these tragedies and ruminate on the multifaceted and extensive nature of these events, especially before taking your voice or someone else’s to social media. Doing so not only matures the moral consciousness of our nations but prevents tragedy from striking again out of virality. In a prior piece, I wrote, “Your opinion matters. It just doesn’t need to be constantly heard,” which is most important in such consequential moments where we selfishly see tragedy as opportunity.
—James Pomian, a senior majoring in history and political science, is an opinions writer.
CAROLINE MORRELLI | STAFF CARTOONIST
Andrea Mendoza-
CULTURE
Georgetown comes alive with art, music, movement during art festival
Georgetown pulsed with creativity Friday night as the neighborhood transformed into an open-air gallery, with more than 15 venues keeping their lights on late for the neighborhood’s annual Art All Night festival.
For one night only, Georgetown traded its usual shopping and sumptuous dinners for something far more raw and electric, with Art All Night transforming the historic neighborhood into a sprawling, after-hours art crawl. Art lovers from across the DMV flocked to the historic neighborhood to experience an evening of multimedia installations, live performances and interactive exhibits, watch dancers and musical artists, all for free.
As attendees bustled about the streets, artists and gallery owners alike said they were enthused to show off the town’s art scene and welcome people of all ages to experience the talent Georgetown had to offer. And not only did attendees have the opportunity to view the art, they participated in it themselves, with one DMV-based Latin dance instructor and performer teaching eager audience members how to take on the salsa themselves with stepby-step instruction in the middle of a closed street.
mons showcased his first major exhibition, “Marble Perches.” The San Antonio native said he found his spark through street photography and from there developed a passion for storytelling through the lens of photography.
After recently completing a two-year project at the National Gallery of Art, Fitzsimmons said he found himself inspired by the overlooked moments and people at the gallery, like security guards or visitors observing paintings. Photos focused on the marble features of the museum, from the swirling grey ground to the grand staircases. He said he was looking for a venue to display his collection, and Fathom Gallery offered him the space during the Art All Night event free of charge as they needed more art to fill the empty walls.
Nanami Miyazaki, a medical student at GW, said she visited Fitzsimmons’ exhibition after seeing some of his photography online and found herself interested in exploring the rest of his collection. Interested in photography herself, she said she found admiration for his work beyond the artistic composition and merit of his images.
vintage clothing business in the United States.
Scotlan said she felt that girls in D.C. needed a location that was unique and sustainable while simultaneously fun and wearable. She said her brand started off targeting college students as its customer demographic but has since evolved to selling more luxury designer items, noting her customer base is growing up with her.
Showing her art for the first time at Gallery 16TEN, Lisa Jones Gentry said she has participated in Art All Night the past three years. She said she finds the event to be a space to expose the smaller art institutions across D.C. and to show people that artists are “alive and thriving” in Georgetown.
Down a steep set of stairs on Wisconsin Avenue is Fathom Gallery, where photographer Patrick Fitzsim-
On Dumbarton Street, GW alum Emma Scotlan kept her pop-up, Sourced by Scottie, open late and showcasing art differently through carefully curating a thrifted collection of clothing. After studying abroad in Milan, Italy, Scotlan said she “fell in love with the vintage scene” and was inspired to launch her own
As a contemporary afrofuturist, the pieces on display were part of Gentry’s collections entitled “Journeys of the Diaspora,” where she said she examines the inner light within, through vivid colors, something she believes was critical for survival during that horrific time and journey when enslaved people were brought to North America. Gentry’s art features abstract figures, large strokes and a variety of colors to communicate emotions through her pieces.
“I want people to look at my art and I want them to feel happy,” Gentry said. “I want them to find a joy and connection to that inner joy that we all have, but more often than not, aren’t able to access so I want my art to be a passkey to something that is within all of us.” NICOLA
Professor blends convention, ingenuity in latest guitar piece
to mouth the words and not actually sing when performing.
On Friday night, echoes of applause filled an open, intimate and high-ceilinged room as a guitarist prepared to debut the new arrangement of an innovative composer who also doubles as a GW professor.
In an event in the Flagg Building at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design’s hemicycle room, guitarist Tom Clippinger performed “Partita No. 4, The Duchess,” a classical guitar piece composed by Professor of Music Douglas Boyce, the fourth and final partita of his series. Boyce said the concert was a way to blend his dual careers as a composer and educator, with his students and fellow faculty having the opportunity to witness classroom lessons play out in a live capacity.
Dozens of community members sat scattered across the venue, eager to hear the compositions — some against the walls, others in chairs and the rest on a row of pillows at the front, while younger listeners sat cross-legged on the floor. Clippinger began the twopart performance with “Ochras” by José Sánchez-Verdú, a piece inspired by the composer’s synesthesia, a neurological condition where individuals see colors when they hear sounds and listen to music.
Before the performance, Boyce reflected on how far he had come in his own musical journey. He said he was previously unsure about his talent and future in music when his sixth-grade choral teacher told him
“It was terrible, it was a terrible experience, and coming out of that I — it’s not like before, I had this thought that I was going to be this excellent musician — but it became this, there was this line, like, ‘Obviously I can’t be a musician,’” Boyce said.
Still, Boyce said that experience failed to shake his interest in music. He said after seeing the Talking Heads live concert film “Stop Making Sense” in his sophomore year of high school, he was “bowled over” and “intrigued” by the organization and layers of the performance. He said he then got involved in a variety of genres — learning classical piano, playing trombone in a band and joining a punk band in high school that played around New Jersey, New York and Japan — although he remained unsure about whether he’d be able to have a successful career in music.
“When I went to college I was a physics major,” Boyce said. “I felt, and I had been told, I should be a physics major.”
Boyce said he had students attending the concert, and Clippinger is coming to speak to a few of his classes soon about his experiences as a young professional guitarist. He said this performance demonstrates the intersection between his teaching and composing, a line that is often blurred by doing performances such as this in University spaces.
Boyce said there’s another program in November that will be a larger-scale festival of contemporary music that will feature a few of his melodies, as well as a piece by Heather Stebbins, a professor of music.
Ditch the chains, embrace bold fall brews at DC’s under-the-radar cafes
GW HATCHET STAFF
As Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Pumpkin Cream Cold Brews blanket the counter of Gelman Library’s Starbucks, it can only mean one thing: Fall is on its way. To avoid the dullness of chain-store menus and faketasting syrups, we set out across D.C. in search of small businesses putting their own spin on autumn flavors. Here are our top picks for where to sip seasonal drinks that truly capture the spirit of fall.
Childhood Cafe’s Pumpkin Pie Latte (5/5)
Raina Pawloski | Reporter Right off of 17th Street in a residential area between Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan, Childhood Cafe is quaint local spot ideal for latte and pastry enjoyers looking for seasonal specials. Childhood Cafe is known for their housemade seasonal syrups, like apple butter and berry cobbler. The iced Pumpkin Pie Latte ($6.20) tastes like fall in a cupNot too sweet, but not bitter, The Pumpkin Pie Latte packs a pumpkin punch that doesn’t overpower you or taste synthetic. The drink comes iced or hot in a cup stamped with the cafe’s logo. As an active latte drinker, I give this drink my stamp of approval for all fall lovers and coffeeholics.
Elle’s Gourd Spice Latte (4/5)
Diana Anos | Culture Editor Winner of the 2024 Best Baguette title is Elle, a cafe during the day and a restaurant at night. After a 40-minute Metro commute to Mount Pleasant, I walked into the cafe and was met with a hefty line, even though I arrived six minutes after their 8
a.m. opening. Sourdough bread and challah lined the walls, and pastries filled the cases as customers picked up their morning treats. Needing a morning caffeine kick and searching for a taste for fall, I went for the iced Gourd Spice Latte ($6.50), intrigued by the pumpkin, baking spices and “autumnal joy” the menu advertised. A honey apple muffin ($4.25) also caught my eye, and the choice was worth it as it tasted exactly like apple pie. The latte’s 16-ounce size was quite hefty for its price compared to other cafes I frequent in the District. The drink had a strong espresso flavor and perfectly executed the touch of the “autumnal joy” I was looking for with its subtle nutty and cinnamon flavors. As I continued to enjoy my drink, I noticed that all of the syrup had pooled to the bottom, making the second half much too sweet for my liking, but alas, I continued to drink the latte just before I reached the bottom of the cup to avoid the mass of syrup. Once the air has more crisp in it, I plan to try the hot version to see if the sweetness levels are more to my liking.
Dolphin Cafe’s Baklava Latte (3.5/5)
Carly Cavanaugh | Contributing Culture Editor
Dolphin Cafe provides a beachy respite within the H Street Corridor neighborhood with its neon wave sign and outdoor adirondack chairs. A four-minute walk from the McPherson Square Metro station, the Turkish coffee shop, which opened last October, offers an extensive fall menu, with items like Banana Bread Iced Lattes and Gingerbread Chai Iced Lattes making a feature for the season. At 10 a.m. on a Friday, with only one person ahead of me on line, I decided to try the speciality Iced Baklava Latte ($10.29) — unaware of its steep price tag, which
includes an around $1 almond milk upcharge — to deviate from the pumpkin spice beverages saturating autumnal cafe menus. The latte itself wasn’t overly flavorful but had a subtly sweet, nutty taste from honey and pistachio syrup that complimented the very smooth, not-at-all-bitter espresso and almond milk. as the accompanying pastry, the over-$10 total and fairly simple latte makes it difficult for me to say it was totally worth it. But for a onetime treat, the specialty concoction is a satisfying, nutty taste of fall, enjoyed inside a quiet, coastal cafe.
Colada Shop’s Maduro Foam Cold Brew (3/5)
Brooke Shapiro | Sta Writer
Bamboo furniture and a vibrant blue accent wall painted with flowers greet customers upon entering Clarendon’s Colada Shop. The 80-de- gree weather did not dissuade me, as I still took a trip this week down the orange line eager to immerse myself into fall with the seasonal Maduro Foam Cold Brew ($6.15).
After placing my order with the friendly staff — which also had to include their signature chicken empanadas ($8.98) — they quickly handed me my coffee: a classic cold brew with sweet plantain foam. The drink is advertised with a cinnamon topping, but, to my disappointment, it was missing. The cold brew itself was deliciously strong, which was to be expected with a bold Cuban dark roast. On its own, the white plantain cold foam was light and airy, its subtle sweetness taking up about a fifth of the cup. Once the foam mixed into the drink, however, its flavor quickly got lost under the strength of the cold brew. I can’t help but think that dash of cinnamon missing would’ve been the hint of saccharin my tastebuds were craving.
MATHYLDA DULIAN | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
People walk through tents during D.C. Art All Night, which hosts local artists across the city.
MATHYLDA DULIAN | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
Teresa Oaxaca paints live at L’Enfant Gallery during D.C. Art All Night.
SPORTS
Swimming and diving plunges into season aiming to uphold A-10 dynasty
BEN SPITALNY SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR
Beneath banners celebrating five consecutive men’s and four straight women’s Atlantic 10 swimming and diving titles, the Smith Center pool buzzed with activity early Wednesday morning.
As part one of one of their six days of practice in the week, swimmers powered through their laps, locked into the rhythm of an intense training session as 2010 pop hits blast from the speaker system. With sights set on another conference title, the team splits its training between pool sessions and lifting workouts at the Mount Vernon Campus gym, a routine designed to build endurance, strength and speed.
The teams are four months out from the 2026 A-10 Championships, set to be held in Hampton, Virginia in mid-February. Head Coach Chico Rego said he’s focused on making sure the swimmers are properly conditioned for the whole season, staying near peak times while managing rest, aerobic development and race strategies.
“This is purely conditional,” Rego said. “You train in a way that you want to peak at A-10s, but we try to not stay too far out of what a best performance would be. ”
Swimming and diving will open their season on Sept. 27 with an intrasquad meet at the Smith Center before facing off against Virginia Tech in D.C. on Oct. 4. Last year, both the men’s and the women’s teams fell to Virginia Tech, whose women’s squad ended the year with a No. 15 national ranking.
Including the intrasquad meet, the team has five meets scheduled at home, which Rego said not only allows opportunities for students and fans to attend but helps the team manage its budget and gives them a home-pool advantage.
“It’s very difficult to replicate because we have a home advantage, being a loud, closed-in spot,”
Rego said. With an almost halfdecade championship streak on the line, Rego said he’d be lying if he said he doesn’t feel the pressure of keeping them going but echoed tennis legend Billie Jean King in
saying “pressure is a privilege.”
“I feel privileged to be in a position where I’m fighting for championships and not to be at the bottom of the conference,” Rego said. During last year’s champion-
ships, the women’s team outscored second-place Richmond 598.5-571, while the men’s team blew past Saint Bonaventure 883.5-517.5. Rego won A-10’s Men’s Coach of the Year in his first season at GW.
Men’s sophomore swimmer Gage Boushee said that not only are they “pretty confident” they can win the conference once again, but the men’s team has set their sights on scoring 1,000 points, an achievement yet to be accomplished by any team in the conference. It would require outscoring last year’s record-breaking effort by over 100, a feat of dominance that would raise GW to an ever higher echelon over A-10 foes.
“At this point, I feel like winning A-10s is kind of the standard for us instead of the goal,” Boushee said.
In his second year at the helm of the program, Rego said that winning this year would be even more meaningful than last year’s championship because after he “inherited” an already-championship quality team in 2024, his main goal was to “not screw up.” This year, after a full offseason under his belt, he’s recruited over a dozen student-athletes — by signing 14 freshmen and adding five through the transfer portal — and tweaked the weekly practice schedule to move one of their double days from Tuesday to Wednesday to more evenly space out their weeks.
The new roster additions include 2024 Paris Olympian graduate student Joselle Mensah, who represented Ghana in the Women’s 50M Freestyle. Mensah is one of six new swimmers who have represented their respective countries on an international level, including at the European Aquatics Championship and the World Junior Open Water Championship.
Boushee said each class spends a lot of time together, with him and his fellow sophomores frequenting local Chinese restaurant One Fish, Two Fish.
For the teams, the work inside and out of the pool is comprehensive as they remain clear-eyed on where they’re headed. For Rego, his goals for the team are simple.
“Win A-10s again,” Rego said. “This is the standard for us.”
Breakout sophomores lead cross country as veterans prepare for A-10 push
ETHAN TSAI STAFF WRITER
Fueled by breakout underclassmen and awaiting the return of veteran talent, men’s and women’s cross country opened their seasons with middle-of-thepack team performances as they hope to compete for an Atlantic 10 title.
Sophomores Hadley Mahoney and Charles Mwangi have led their respective teams so far, with Mwangi notching a new personal best 18:22.7, good for a fourth-place individual finish in the Trials of Miles Opening Night in Leesburg,
Virginia, last month. The men’s team placed second just behind Georgetown in the opening meet, and both teams secured fifth-place finishes — a solid introduction — in the Virginia Invitational on Friday in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Entering his 15th year as head coach of both the men’s and women’s cross country teams, Terry Weir said he hopes to see the team finish near the top of the A-10 this season.
During this year’s A-10 preseason poll, the conference projected GW’s men’s team would notch fourth place, while women’s would claim fifth place. Last year,
the women’s team finished sixth in the A-10, while the men came in fourth.
“I think we can finish right at or above where we’re ranked this year, and I’m really excited for both teams,” he said.
Seniors Sarah Mitchell and Michael Bohlke, stars on their respective teams, have yet to race this season, opting to rest instead, but Weir said he will “open them up” in October.
“It’s important for Mike and Sarah to do really well, as they have, and so the rest of the team can see that,” Weir said.
Bohlke finished eighth in the A-10 Championships
last year and beat his personal record in the NCAA Regionals last November. He was also the only Rev to advance to the NCAA Quarterfinals in last year’s track season, breaking the school 1500m record with a time of 3:41.92. Without their senior leaders in the lineup at the in the first meet of the season, both the men’s and women’s teams had three runners into the top 10, half of whom were newly arrived freshmen. Freshmen Otto Erhart and Joe Fahrney finished their kickoff races in seventh and eighth with times of 18:38.4 and 18:39.0 respectively, less than a sec-
ond apart. On the women’s side, Mahoney also finished fourth in the kickoff, crossing the line in a personalbest 17:56.6 in the 5K behind Charlotte Bell of Georgetown University. Mahoney once again led the Revolutionaries at the Virginia Invitational in the 5K with a time of 17:46.6, while sophomore Austin Brotemarkle and Mwangi led the men’s team in the 8K with times of 25:02.2 and 25:10.2, placing 12th and 18th respectively. From here on out, the team will shift to running longer, collegiate-standard level distances — 6K for the women’s team and 8K for
Men’s soccer identical twins shine on field in early-season play
KRISTI WIDJAJA STAFF WRITER
SOPHIA CAPUTO REPORTER
If you’re watching men’s soccer this season and think you’re seeing double, it’s because you are.
New on the roster this year are freshman forward Joel Russ and freshman defender Connor Russ — identical twins from Charlotte, North Carolina. The duo has already made an impact on the team with a game-winning goal and strong defense, which they attribute to the strong synergy they’ve developed in their years of playing together.
During men’s soccer’s 1-0 win against the United States Naval Academy on Wednesday, it was Joel who knocked in the team’s only goal to hand the Revolutionaries their second victory of the young season, the first freshman to score this year. On the defensive end, Connor has started in every game, the only freshman on the team to do so, including playing the full 90 minutes in the team’s shutout draw against the University of New Haven on Saturday, a testament to his skill.
This type of success on the field is not new for Connor and Joel. Growing up between Edinburgh, Scotland, and Charlotte, North Carolina, the two excelled at soccer from a young age on teams togeth-
er, which they say helped them grow closer.
“It’s helped us a lot to be able to trust each other,” Joel said.
Joel said the two are “as close as you could get” and spend almost all of their non-class time together, rooming together and sharing the same team schedule. He said because they’re so tight knit, they know each other’s playing style, which helps them work seamlessly on the field.
Coming back to North Carolina after their dad completed his PhD at the University of Aberdeen, they opted to play for Queen City Mutiny, Charlotte’s MLS NEXT squad. They said their team improved each year they were playing, culminating in a Southeast region championship in their senior seasons, when they served as cocaptains.
When the Russes first toured at GW, they said they hadn’t heard much of the school, but after being shown around by Assistant Coach Iain Langstone, Connor said they loved the school, its location and the opportunities and ended up picking the school over other Division I offers, all of which had been given to both of them.
“When we got the offer, we were both super excited,” Connor said. “We had two weeks to respond. I think we responded within four or five days.”
While they said their teammates don’t get them confused,
the men’s to prepare them for the championship season, where the women run 6K and the men 10k in the NCAA regional.
“I was new to it last year, so I think I raced the 6K about four times, which is fun,” Mahoney said. “ After their three-week break, the Revs will have just two more regular season meets: the Paul Short Run — held at the site of the Revs’ NCAA regional in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania — on Oct. 3 and the Princeton Invitational on Oct. 17. The A-10 Championships are on Nov. 1 followed by the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional on Nov. 14.
having spent a lot of time together, the same can’t be said about classmates.
“It’s funny when someone from one of my classes sees him and is like, ‘Oh, hey, how are you doing?’” Joel said. “But they think it’s me.”
As for their head coach, Joel said Jones can “generally” tell the
two apart, but a friendly reminder is sometimes needed.
“Sometimes he’ll get us confused,” Connor said. “Like ‘Coach, I’m Connor.’” Both Russ twins have the same goal: making it to the College Cup, the NCAA’s soccer championship. “I’d like to make it to the Col-
lege Cup and do well in that
vidually,” Connor said. “I’d like to definitely make an impact, a
LEXI CRITCHETT | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
Swimming and diving Head Coach Chico Rego leads a morning practice.
ADDISON OSBORN | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Freshmen twins Joel and Connor Russ pose for a portrait on the Mount Vernon soccer field.
LEXI CRITCHETT | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR A member of the swim team completes freestyle stroke drills.
LEXI CRITCHETT | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Rego watches as members of the team conduct drills.
