The Hoya: October 8, 2021

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Georgetown University • Washington, D.C. Vol. 103, No. 4, © 2021

Unhoused People Face Anti-Homeless Design In Georgetown Area

PAIGE KUPAS/THE HOYA

People experiencing homelessness in the Georgetown neighborhood encounter hostile architecture that prevents them from sleeping and accessing amenities.

Paige Kupas Hoya Staff Writer

This article is part of our 2021 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works were published throughout Thursday at DCHomelessCrisis.press.

Hostile architecture blocks unhoused people from sleeping and using bathrooms, among other necessities, throughout the Georgetown neighborhood.

Examples of hostile architecture include park benches with partitions that make it impossible for someone to lie down and sleep or metal spikes on a heating grate that prevent people from sitting or lying on it to warm themselves. In an effort to contribute to existing documentation of hostile architecture throughout Washington, D.C.,

The Hoya identified multiple instances of anti-homeless design in the Georgetown neighborhood.

In 2018, students at American University debuted a project called Hidden Hostility DC, which documents over 70 instances of hostile architecture throughout Washington, D.C. on an interactive map. However, student contributors did not have the capacity to track all the hostile architecture in the District, including the Georgetown neighborhood, according to Asia Cutforth, an undergraduate contributor to the project. The Hoya located slanted heating grates, benches not designed for sleeping and a lack of public amenities — such as public restrooms — in the Georgetown neighborhood, specifically along Wisconsin See UNHOUSED, A6

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The university relocated the Georgetown Scholars Program from its former office in Healy Hall, pictured above, to the fourth floor of the Leavey Center, sparking outrage among students and graduates of the program.

GSP To Protest Office Relocation Caitlin McLean Hoya Staff Writer

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he Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP) plans to hold protests next week to demonstrate its continued outrage over the program office’s relocation from Healy Hall.

Students leaders from GSP, which provides support for first-generation and low income undergraduates, will hold a teach-in with the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) on Oct. 13 regarding the importance of GSP’s office location in Healy. Following

Farmers’ Market Packs Red Square After Hiatus

the teach-in, GSP and GUSA plan to hold a sit-in to advocate for GSP’s return to Healy Hall, according to a statement from the GSP Student Board to The Hoya.

Both protests will help inform the student body about GSP’s eviction, according to the GSP Student Board.

“We hope these efforts will gain traction with the larger student body,” the statement said.

GUSA values GSP’s work and is dedicated to supporting the program’s welfare on campus, according to Speaker of the GUSA Senate Leo Rassieur (COL ’22).

Hoya Staff Writer

@GUFARMERSMARKET/INSTAGRAM

The Georgetown University Farmers’ Market returned to campus Oct. 6 featuring vendors Timber Pizza Co., Yoga in a Bowl, Borek-G and Maracas Ice Pops.

Special to The Hoya

After nearly two years, flocks of students returned to Red Square to buy artisan food and support local vendors as part of the Georgetown University Farmers’ Market (GUFM).

GUFM, a student-run notfor-profit organization that pro-

FEATURED

motes sustainable agriculture and supports local businesses, returned to Red Square on Oct. 6 at limited operational status.

Local vendors included Timber Pizza Co., a mobile wood oven pizza truck; Yoga in a Bowl, an Indian restaurant; Borek-G, a Turkish restaurant; and Maracas Ice Pops, an ice pops vendor. The Farmers’ Market did

as part of a university initiative to consolidate into one space organizations under the Office of Student Equity and Inclusion (OSEI), including GSP, the Women’s Center, the LGBTQ Resource Center, the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access and the Community Scholars Program.

The OSEI consolidation was delayed, however, after a structural engineer found structural concerns in the New South basement offices.

As a result, university administrators temporarily See GSP, A6

CSE Leadership Transition Frustrates Student Groups Samuel Yoo

Eli Blumenfeld

“GSP is a community that is near and dear to our hearts,” Rassieur said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “GUSA’s very passionate about advocating for marginalized communities, and first generation low income students are some who need the most institutional support and who we believe the university should be taking steps to provide more resources to.”

GSP leaders were first informed in January 2021 that the university planned to move the GSP office to basement office spaces in New South Hall. The move comes

not operate last year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The market’s revival signals the comeback of a beloved campus tradition, according to Irmak Şensöz (SFS ’23).

“I think the Farmers’ Market was something that most students looked forward to a lot See MARKET, A6

dent organizations.

Christopher Boose, chair of Georgetown University College Democrats (GUCD) said GUCD has struggled to receive information regarding public health rules, CSE financial processes and travel requirements and restrictions after the departure of Dos and Brown despite multiple efforts to contact the CSE. “The unfortunate truth is that communication has

been low this semester. As the University has worked to just bring students back to campus, it sometimes feels as though little thought was given to how student organizations would operate,” Boose wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Their departure means we’re left with a void.

Even when their positions are filled, it will likely be

Some student organizations have reported a lack of communication from the Center for Student Engagement (CSE) after the director and associate director both left their positions in mid-September.

Before their departure, Aysha Dos, former director of the CSE, and Jaime See CSE, A6 Brown, former associate director of the CSE, served as the two highest-ranking professional staff members in CSE. Until the university hires replacements for Dos and Brown, Kris Nessler, who currently works as the CSE’s director of outdoor education, will serve as the interim director, according to a university spokesperson.

Dos said she has been lucky to have worked with her CSE colleagues.

“Over the past 3 years here on the Hilltop, I have been incredibly lucky to be surrounded by amazing and talented colleagues,” Dos wrote in an email to The Hoya.

Brown did not respond to The Hoya’s request for comment.

The CSE works collaboratively with student organizations around co-curricular activities on campus. One of the CSE’s main responsibilities is overseeing the distribution of student activity GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY fees, which provide over $1 Some student clubs have raised transparency and million to various studentrun clubs, as well as offering communications concerns after two staff members of guidance to clubs and stu- the Center for Student Engagement left last month.

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Splash Zone Darnall residents experienced toilet water flooding into their bedrooms Sept. 30.

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Heating Up

Bet On Yourself

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Council Redistricts

Senior Day Draw

The D.C. Council will begin a process to redistrict the city’s eight wards using census data.

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Georgetown field hockey defeated La Salle, 3-1, for the Hoyas’ third consecutive victory.

No. 23 women’s soccer ended its Senior Day match in a draw against Providence.

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Even students late to discovering their passions should pursue them with enthusiasm.

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Survival Skills

The Georgetown experience may prepare students to thrive in the wild.

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OPINION EDITORIAL

IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE

Offer Virtual Learning Options After more than a year of online classes, much of the Georgetown University community was excited to return to in-person learning and the immersive opportunities it provides. Students interested in science can once again work in labs, and discussion sections can occur without interruptions from unstable WiFi connections. While many students benefit from being back in the physical classroom, others, particularly those with health concerns, need virtual options to attend class or make up their schoolwork.

In an email sent to students Sept. 30, Vice Provost of Education Rohan Williamson stated that students should not expect to be able to virtually attend classes designated as in-person without an approved reason for doing so. Williamson added that faculty teaching in-person have been asked to accommodate COVID-19 related absences, but they are not required to provide students virtual attendance options.

Considering the on-campus presence of contagious disease outbreaks including norovirus and the flu, Georgetown must make its education accessible to all students by requiring faculty to offer online learning opportunities to all students who request to attend class virtually.

The COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing, and administrators cannot ignore its influence on physical and mental health. Students and faculty who are immunocompromised already face higher risks of illness, and attending class in person may create serious health ramifications for those individuals.

Students who do not feel comfortable returning to fully in-person instruction should not be forced to attend class at the risk of their health, according to Andrew Bialek (COL ’22), the Georgetown Disability Alliance advocacy co-chair.

“While the university maintains that illness may be an appropriate reason to seek an excused absence, it does not secure the right to not be present for those who, should they be present, would be putting themselves in a potentially dangerous situation,” Bialek said in an interview with The Hoya.

Williamson’s email addresses the fact that many students have been concerned with the transition to in-person learning amid ongoing disease outbreaks.

“You should not expect that you will be able to participate synchronously (i.e., Zoom) in a class designated as in-person, nor should you assume that you may miss class and make up the material asynchronously without an approved reason for doing so,” Williamson wrote in the email.

While the Editorial Board understands the administration wants students to be as engaged with in-person learning as possible, Williamson’s announcement causes uncertainty among students with health concerns and compels students who did not test positive for COVID-19 but feel ill to attend class. Failing to recognize that students may

prefer online learning as a safety measure is disrespectful, and students deserve an accessible educational model that trusts their best judgment.

The university might argue that requiring all professors to have online learning options would strain the university’s resources, but Georgetown has already prepared to make in-person classes accessible online to students who cannot be in the classroom. Provost Robert Groves announced that the university implemented technology in each classroom to accommodate hybrid learning in a Nov. 16, 2020 email to undergraduate students.

This technology included upgraded cameras and audio as well as microphones for professors. Further, professors have taught online classes for over a year and though teaching a hybrid class is no doubt different from teaching an online one, faculty are familiar with the technology that allows students to engage in class virtually.

Much of the work to make classes accessible online has already been done. The university simply needs to make a final commitment to offering online engagement. Despite its progress, Georgetown is still committed to operating classes the way it did before the pandemic.

“Georgetown remains committed to in-person engagement this semester and asks that all students attend class in person,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We recognize that the return to the classroom has been an adjustment for everyone; we will continue to work to make students’ experiences in class as rich as ever.”

The goal of creating a rich educational experience for students is noble, but the university must recognize that for some students, this experience must include online learning options.

Although approximately 98% of students, faculty and staff are vaccinated against COVID-19, barring students from virtually attending classes designated as in-person ignores the very real mental health effects of the pandemic, including increased stress and anxiety, that may make students want to attend class over Zoom.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth profound grief and loss, but we must learn from the tragedy. Returning to a business-as-usual model ignores all the progress made in the area of educational accessibility, and Georgetown should commit to upholding this progress.

The university must allow students to join and participate in class on Zoom to allow students the flexibility to decide which educational model works best for them.

“

Giving up was not an option, and I would encourage any students wondering, as I once was, if it’s worth the risk to pursue their calling to trust themselves and work for what they believe in.”

Hannah Spengler (GRD ’21)

“Pursue Passions in Public Service” thehoya.com

DEEP DIVE

An Education for Everyone This week, we’re diving into Meg Kurosawa’s (SFS ’23) viewpoint on the need for Georgetown University to strengthen its efforts against racism in classroom environments. Continuing the discussion of the disparities in positive experiences between students of color and white students is critical, particularly because of the significant differences in retention rates between white and Black students at predominantly white institutions. For private, four-year universities like Georgetown, the overall retention rate for white students is 75.1%, while the retention rate for Black students is just 63.3%. This gap in the rate in which students stay at the institution they originally chose to attend is concerning and clear evidence that Black students do not feel welcome at institutions of higher education.

Improving BIPOC students’ experiences requires us to call out biases in education, which includes implementing inclusive, student-

centered curricula. Faculty must include an accurate portrayal of the history and experiences of marginalized communities in their teaching, and university programming must celebrate students of color. All students should feel they have faculty members they identify with and can lean on. We can begin to make change in the Georgetown community by reaching out to class senators and pushing for change, holding racist faculty and staff accountable, and spreading awareness to other students.

Creating an environment that uplifts BIPOC students is crucial for maintaining a healthy campus environment. As Kurosawa emphasizes, measures to promote diversity training and understanding can begin to make this environment a reality. If Georgetown is to put into practice the values they claim to uphold, they can begin by seriously considering the changes Kurosawa suggests.

EDITORIAL CARTOON by Natasha Leong

The Hoya’s Editorial Board is composed of six students and is chaired by the Opinion editors.

Editorials reflect only the beliefs of a majority of the board and are not representative of The Hoya or any individual member of the board.

HOYA HISTORY

Georgetown’s Financial Aid Crunch Oct. 8, 1982 Some members of the Georgetown University community have looked at our growing financial aid expenditures and asked, “Should Georgetown be in the business of redistributing income?”

That question lies at the heart of the current debate over how much should be spent on the university’s aid budget. Five years ago, Georgetown made a decision to guarantee “full-need” financial aid for its needy students — only to back away from this policy as the Reagan Administration cut its support. It has been a temptation, as a result of immediate budget constraints, to look only at the dollars and cents involved in our financial aid policy. I want to take this opportunity, first, to re-examine the goals of our aid policy; and second, to look at the current budget battle in this context.

Initially, by way of background, it should be explained that since the time of the “full-need guaranteed” decision five years ago, the university has changed its pledge to read, in effect, “the University will meet need to the best of its ability.” This wording change has enabled the university to escape from an obligation to meet the needs of the current and future freshman classes.

The university has continued, however, to supply full-need packages to all but waiting list students. The current debate focuses on whether the university

can afford to continue the policy, if not the guarantee.

The university’s goal, I hope everyone will agree, is educational. It was established to offer a quality education to the youth of America. That mission was not limited to “the youth of America with incomes of $50,000 or more.” I would argue, therefore, that it is part of the educational mission of the university to educate youth of all economic backgrounds.

Secondly, part of a “complete education” — which I am sure Georgetown would purport to offer — is an education in social interaction, how to get along in this world. Such an education is impossible in a school populated only by, as Main Campus Finance Committee (MCFC) member Ron Klain put it, “middle-class white kids from New Jersey.” The diversity fostered by a full-need financial aid program is an important part of every student’s education.

Georgetown must consider whether it can maintain its academic standards while effectively limiting itself to students from upper income brackets. Smart kids from lower-income families either will stop applying, will not be accepted (due to university policy to favor those who are able to pay), or will be accepted only to choose another school for economic reasons. Georgetown will be left with smart rich kids, and, if there aren’t enough, almost-smart rich kids.

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The problem is compounded by the impending reduction in the applicant pool resulting from the graduation of the Baby Boom generation. Georgetown and other universities will be competing for a declining number of bright students. It is imperative, under these circumstances, to enter this competition with a competitive financial aid policy.

Finally, I resort to the argument of image — something about which this university is obsessively concerned. Georgetown, with its roots in Jesuit tradition, cannot forget it’s egalitarian and compassionate history. To give up on fullneed financial aid and to become an elitist institution would be to ignore this background. Similarly, the university must realize that without a competitive financial aid policy, Georgetown can never be a “top-notch” (yes, Ivy-class) institution. We’ll never advance in Barron’s without full-need.

We must stop and measure the worth of an 18% (or a 25%) increase in the financial aid budget in this context. This week, the MCFC decided on recommended levels of financial aid, tuition and faculty salaries. The administration and the Board of Directors will be considering this issue in the weeks prior to the Oct. 22 meeting of the Board of Directors.

Len Schoppa

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OPINION VIEWPOINT • KUROSAWA

Require Faculty Diversity Training

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rom being asked about their immigration status to experiencing racist and stereotypical jokes in classrooms, BIPOC students at Georgetown University face discrimination in spaces in which they’re supposed to feel safe. Instagram accounts like @deargeorgetown document the pervasiveness of racism on campus, making it evident Georgetown professors have failed to create secure and inclusive learning environments for BIPOC students. The university must protect its BIPOC students by strengthening faculty diversity training requirements and listing their diversity training credentials during course registration.

Although some instances of racial aggression against BIPOC students at Georgetown have been captured on video and featured on national news, many other incidents go unnoticed or unacknowledged by the university, its faculty and most students.

Many students have called for the university to conduct mandatory faculty training on race.

However, a significant number of professors have not undergone or refuse to undergo the existing diversity and sensitivity training programs currently available to them, according to Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the School of Foreign Service Scott Taylor, who commented on the matter at an informal meeting with Asian American and Pacific Islander students I attended Sept. 24.

In addition, the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action recently emphasized the importance of the 2020 Cultural Climate Survey results, which were released in April 2021.

The survey included questions on students’ sense of belonging, experiences involving bias and campus accessibility.

In an update to students on the survey results, the university shared that the survey “revealed trends that require serious engagement—particularly concerns expressed by our Black students—and the data will help inform how we can enhance and build meaningful programs and support systems to ensure a more inclusive campus community for all,” Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Rosemary Kilkenny and former Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Todd Olson wrote in the email.

White students consistently reported more positive experiences and perceptions of the campus environment compared

to students of color, according to the findings. While almost 80% of white undergraduate students agreed or strongly agreed that instructors were effective at creating environments where they felt welcomed, only 37.4% of Black or African American students shared this agreement. These statistics, as well as others in the climate survey results, reveal a serious and urgent concern over inclusive pedagogy.

Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) currently collaborates with many university divisions to encourage faculty to critically review and update instructional practices. CNDLS’ consultation services for faculty looking to update their curriculum to maintain up-to-date pedagogy can be a promising solution for implementing more inclusive, student-centered teaching. Such resources, in addition to diversity and sensitivity trainings, are readily available to Georgetown faculty, who should take advantage of them.

Furthermore, there is no university-mandated source for students that states whether professors have completed diversity and sensitivity trainings that could be useful during course registration. Students rely on word of mouth and review websites like Rate My Professors to avoid professors with past incidents of racial aggressions.

However, unofficial sources that are not institutionally organized are not enough. During course registration, Georgetown should include a listing under each professor’s name of diversity and sensitivity trainings they have completed and when, in addition to their academic credentials.

This feature would not only provide BIPOC students with useful information during course registration, but it would also create transparency and accountability between the university administration, faculty and students.

Georgetown lists “continued training opportunities for staff and faculty on the role of managing implicit bias in our community” as one of its “Commitments to Improving Equity and Access” on the school’s main website. The administration should uphold this commitment and follow through with decisive, deliberate accountability and transparency.

Meg R. Kurosawa is a junior in the School of Foreign Service.

ILLUSTRATION BY: SOPHIE LIU/THE HOYA

VIEWPOINT • BRYANT

Maintain Consistent Civic Engagement

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misconception I hear frequently as a director of GU Votes is that when there are no midterm or presidential elections coming up, no heated prime-time debates or splashy front-page headlines, there is no need to worry about casting a ballot.

It’s common for students to assume there’s nothing they can or should be doing when it comes to voting.

Yet voting is not something we should only think about every two years. Voting, coupled with other forms of civic engagement, is a habit and a discipline that forms the bedrock of a democratic society when exercised on a regular basis. In a year without national elections, students should still engage in the democratic process by recognizing the importance of state and local elections, performing other civic actions to hold elected leaders accountable and resisting cynicism about the impact of individual political participation.

First, it’s important for students to stay informed about upcoming state and local elections for the region in which they’re registered to vote. This November, there are gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey as well as special elections for Congress in two Ohio

districts, not to mention local and municipal elections across the country. These state and local elections matter just as much, if not more, than national elections because of their direct impact on local policy implementation. For instance, municipal governments are responsible for measures such as police department budgeting, infrastructure development and education reform.

Students’ participation in local elections is often hampered by a lack of awareness of the deadlines or structural barriers to accessing the ballot box. GU Votes has sought to address these challenges by working with Georgetown’s Office of Federal Relations and the Andrew Goodman Foundation to share state-specific information on voter registration and absentee ballots with students, as well as by providing pre-stamped envelopes in the GU Politics office for mailing forms and ballots.

Take advantage of campus resources to register to vote, request an absentee ballot and confirm when elections are approaching. Students can also take steps individually to stay informed of upcoming elections by following local news sources and candidates on social media.

Voter engagement also goes beyond casting votes in each election. When elections aren’t occurring in your locality, consider ways you can hold your elected officials accountable for the issues you care about. This might include calling your representatives, signing a petition or taking part in marches or letter-writing campaigns led by activist organizations. Though some may doubt the efficacy of these actions, a study by the OpenGov Foundation has found that consistent communication and personal stories can actually have a significant impact on members of Congress. While constituents may be less likely to change a representative’s mind on highly politicized issues such as gun control or abortion, voicing concern on less hot-button topics has a considerable chance of success. In the time leading up to elections, you can also educate yourself about specific candidates and the policy issues they stand for to make an informed decision when the election arrives. When you engage in these efforts, you contribute to a culture of democratic participation and public accountability, both critical aspects of a healthy democracy.

Finally, as engaged citizens, we must resist the cynicism of thinking our votes don’t matter. Young voters too often stay home because they think that the system is rigged, that all politicians are corrupt or that they lack the power to actually change anything. We can combat this mindset by thinking of voting as one of many instruments in our toolbox for change and recognizing that voting is a right and a privilege that many are systematically denied. Exercising our right to vote and holding our officials accountable are important ways to recognize the contributions of those who fought for this right.

The path to sustainable change starts with small steps: a vote, a phone call, a signature. Framing these actions as building blocks for larger change can be a powerful motivator for democratic engagement.

Keep voting in local elections, keep calling your representatives, keep advocating for the policies you care about — this year and every year — to use your toolbox and to honor the privilege you’ve been given.

Sarah Bryant is a senior in the School of Foreign Service.

NEWFOUND NORMS

VIEWPOINT • SPENGLER

Pursue Passions in Public Service Expand Your Comfort Zone

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fter graduation, I joined Teach For America to teach high school math to the greatest students in Oklahoma. After three wonderful, impossibly hard years, I realized the majority of challenges my students encountered could not be addressed in a classroom but through systemic change.

So I moved back to Washington, D.C., but I was admittedly a little lost. I started working in a long-term care facility during the day and bartending at night to make ends meet.

I did not realize then how deeply I had been impacted by what I saw my students go through in their everyday lives or how I still hadn’t processed one of my students being killed just a few months prior, but with time I realized I needed to take on the challenges my students faced.

As a 30-year-old, attending graduate school after working for almost a decade was tremendously daunting, but I knew I was letting my students down by ignoring my promise to fight for systemic change. Giving up was not an option, and I would encourage any students wondering, as I once was, if it’s worth the risk to pursue their calling to trust themselves and work for what they believe in.

I arrived at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy with an air of trepidation and inner turmoil, but my uncertainty dissipated on the first day of orientation. Mo Elleithee (SFS ’94), the executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, came and spoke to new students about the GU

Politics program, which I thought sounded too good to be true. I slowly began to get involved with GU Politics by attending the sessions of fellows like Joe Crowley, who was incredibly personable, vulnerable and honest about his political career. He and other fellows inspired me to get even more involved and take a leap of faith by joining a Student Strategy Team.

Within five seconds of meeting then-GU Politics Fellow Julie Pace, now the executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press, I knew I had to work with her. I got the gig and found a mentor and friend in Julie Pace. Our discussion group became the best part of my weekly routine, and I will cherish it always as a bright spot in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With these weekly discussion groups, hearing Julie’s insight and meeting personal heros from Errin Haines to Jen Psaki, I finally allowed myself to consider the possibility that maybe there was a place for me in the world of politics. Politics had always been a passion of mine, but I had never entertained it as my professional path. When inspiring women lead by example and reassure you that anything is possible, you start to believe it.

With no previous experience in the political world to claim, I was ready to try. I joined the John King for Governor campaign and started working for one of the most notable figures in the field of education.

King’s accolades span

from serving as a teacher and principal in Maryland schools to serving as the secretary of education under President Barack Obama. In just three generations, his family has gone from being enslaved in Gaithersburg, Md., to being appointed to the cabinet of the first Black president of the United States.

As undeniably impressive as his accomplishments are, what really hooked me was King’s personal story. In June, I lost my stepfather unexpectedly to the cruel disease of Alzheimer’s.

In an excruciating time of personal grief, I learned King had lost both his parents at a young age and his father specifically to undiagnosed Alzheimer’s. I have never been one to subscribe to the idyllic “everything happens for a reason” notion, but I somehow knew I was in the right place.

Work never feels like work when your boss exudes an unparalleled dedication to public service. I am now working full time as a political associate for King’s campaign, and like a glove, my role just seems to fit. I am grateful to be a small part of ensuring that the best candidate for governor of Maryland is elected, and I know he will institute statewide, systemic change for students.

So to anyone reading this who thinks it’s too late to start over or is told they aren’t qualified to pursue their passion: bet on yourself. I promise it will be worth it.

Hannah Spengler is a graduate of the McCourt School of Public Policy.

Liam McGraw

Columnist

T

he phrase “opposites attract” is a maxim of relationships, a principle of electromagnetics and a mainstay on Paula Abdul greatest hits compilations. Nevertheless, it doesn’t actually bear out when tested. People are drawn to those like them. Researchers debate the reason for this behavior; they’ve proposed everything from the comfort of familiar interactions to the certainty of acceptance. But the veracity is wellestablished: We like those like us.

For many of us, coming to college was a breath of fresh air.

I know it was for me. After going to school in New York City for four years, I thought — with the classic New York arrogance — I’d already seen all the world had to offer. But now here I am, surrounded by people who call everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe home; and now here we are, united on onwe campus and exposed to new people and perspectives. Yet as eye-opening as this experience can be, it can also breed insecurities and ultimately encourage us to shrink back into our comfortable, natural bubbles so that we never see much of the world beyond what we already know. But if we make a concentrated effort to reach beyond these bubbles and dare to be discomfited, there will be so many people to meet and so much potential to grow.

Homogeneity is safe and conformity comfortable. Whether it’s

a group of five walking through Yates with the ambiguous, omega-sign-esque squiggle indicating Lululemon’s handiwork embossed on each of their identical leggings or a group of seven in pastel-colored polos and baseball caps with appropriately anodyne designs emblazoned above the brims, we have a tendency to find others who don’t feel like others.

We’re drawn irresistibly to them, like a moth to a flame.

And that’s not just a simile for attraction. The dangers of only associating with those we’re immediately comfortable with are just as harmful as a flame engulfing a moth’s wing. When we continually fail to put ourselves in unknown situations and interactions, it’s a profound form of psychological limitation. We become inescapably ensconced in a morass of unexamined ideas and unyielding notions, entirely incapable of growing as thinkers or community members, and we never encounter the greatest joy of a vibrant college campus and student body: new, uncomfortable experiences.

Now, there is a distinct difference between celebrating and embracing your identity and closing yourself off to others who haven’t lived like you. Whether through cultural societies or club sports, spending time with those who have similar backgrounds and interests can be an incredibly enriching experience. It only becomes harmful when flocking to people like you becomes a coping mechanism for dealing with the discomfort of the unfamiliar and when we attach ourselves so strongly to our flocks that we never venture beyond.

It’s easy, when faced with uncertain situations, to search for those who can set you at ease.

Change is difficult and uncertain; it’s natural to push back. And there are few changes bigger than going off to college. But there are also few places where embracing change wholeheartedly is more important. In college, the guardrails are down and the future is wide open.

Yet we’re not taking advantage of this opportunity if we’re cocooning ourselves from the unknown with familiar people and straightforward situations.

Consider your friends. Do most of them look like you? Act like you?

Think like you? I know most of mine do. And I love them dearly.

That doesn’t need to stop. What should change, though, is our perception of what a friend can be.

Friends needn’t always be similar to us; they needn’t always — or even usually — agree with us; all they should do is make us better, and we should do the same for them. Aristotle saw friendships as “good” when friends “become better … by their activities and by improving each other.” So find those who can improve you and who you improve, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Despite that clear exhortation, though, this article is less a call to action than a call to attention.

Once we’re aware of the myopia that so often surrounds our conception of “friend” and the comfortable bubbles we’re inevitably drawn to, the necessary escape from these bounds can begin. We can start to, ever so slowly, truly explore everything our campus and our world have to offer and have new and different conversations, ideas and experiences. And we’ll all be better off for it.

Liam McGraw is a first-year in the College. Newfound Norms is published every other week.

A4 | THE HOYA

THEHOYA.COM | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

FEATURES

Institute of Turkish Studies Caught in Turkey’s Crackdown on Academic Freedom Amid the autocratic rise of Turkey’s President Erdoğan, Ankara defunded the Institute of Turkish Studies, leading to its ultimate demise in 2020.

Liam Scott

Hoya Staff Writer

F

or over 30 years, the Turkish government-funded Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) was the only U.S.based nonprofit that supported the development of Turkish studies in U.S. higher education. Widely recognized as one of the most prestigious centers for Turkish studies, the ITS awarded research grants to more than 400 scholars in the field throughout its history.

The ITS aimed to advance the field of Turkish studies and improve the American public’s understanding of Turkey by awarding grants to scholars, hosting lectures and conferences, helping U.S. universities develop Turkish studies programs and supporting the publication of books and journals, according to the ITS mission statement.

Despite its academic reputation and historic support of scholars, when the Turkish government decided to stop funding the ITS in 2015, Jenny White, who served on the ITS board for nearly 20 years until its closure, was hardly shocked.

“We were all horrified, but not particularly surprised,” White said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya. “These are the sorts of people they do not want to be supporting because they are the ones who will have a critical mind.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had begun consolidating power four years earlier and White, now a Stockholm University professor, said the fate of the ITS paralleled political trends in Turkey.

In defunding the ITS in 2015, the Turkish government condemned the Georgetown University-affiliated organization to close. The institute maintained operations through its own fundraising efforts, but it ultimately shut down in September 2020.

Several years earlier, Turkey experienced the unprecedented prodemocracy Gezi Protests in 2013 and a failed coup in 2016. Since that time, the Turkish government has repressed the press and academia and has closed thousands of private schools, foundations and associations.

According to former ITS Executive Director Sinan Ciddi and former ITS board members Walter Denny and Steven Cook, Turkey’s decision to defund the ITS came amid rising government pressure to blindly support and loyally promote Erdoğan. The ITS was caught in the line of fire of government repression that has characterized Erdoğan’s increasingly autocratic Turkey, they said.

rector of the ITS, for denying the Armenian genocide.

In 1995, UCLA students protested the establishment of an ITS-endowed Ottoman studies chair in the UCLA history department because of the ITS’ perceived historic views on the Armenian genocide.

In 2006, after insisting on the importance of researching the Armenian genocide, former Binghamton University professor Donald Quataert resigned as chairman of the ITS board of governors.

Two years later, in an open letter to Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, the nonprofit Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom wrote that Quataert resigned because of pressure from the Turkish government. Several oth-

website said in 2013.

But Ciddi said the apolitical nature of the ITS likely contributed to its defunding. As Erdoğan began to consolidate power — starting in 2010 during his tenure as prime minister, lasting through his election to the presidency in 2014 and continuing today — the government sought to increasingly control civil society groups, according to Denny and Ciddi. The ITS was one among many.

The Turkish government’s efforts to censor the press and academia escalated in 2014, one year before it decided to defund the ITS, according to former ITS board member Steven Cook, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ciddi believed the Turkish gov-

But the May 2015 dinner — the first one with Kılıç as ambassador — played out differently, according to Ciddi.

“Something was awry, and he wanted something else,” Ciddi said.

At that dinner, Kılıç had a private conversation with career U.S. diplomat Ambassador Ross Wilson, who was the chairman of the ITS board of governors at the time and recently served as Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, according to Wilson and Ciddi.

Wilson alleged that Kılıç was concerned that some recent work from the ITS was negative toward the Turkish government and expressed interest in redirecting the work of ITS to politically benefit the government.

to Kılıç in an effort to reverse the funding decision.

“Whatever may be the intention now in considering an end to the trust arrangement, it will almost certainly be interpreted widely in ways unhelpful to Turkey, injurious to the personal and other relationships that you and I have cared about, and detrimental to the kind of support and sympathy your country and government get here,” Wilson wrote in the Sept. 27, 2015 letter obtained

by The Hoya.

In the letter, Wilson also said Turkey had accomplished its goals with the ITS of increasing U.S. appreciation of Turkey.

“ITS beneficiaries have touched thousands of others, making friends for your country across a

The Final Moments

Illustration by: Jason Omori/The Hoya

The Institute of Turkish Studies shut down five years after the Turkish government cut its funding, despite the institute’s best efforts to stay afloat. Former institute board members believe the defunding was politically motivated.

A History of the Institute er ITS board members resigned in ernment did not see the point in “Kılıç expressed concerns broad front, and they have helped of Turkish Studies support of Quataert. Turkey’s am- researching subject areas like re- about what he felt were negative, to foster and then further the treThe Turkish government founded the ITS in 1982 with a grant of $3 million, which was placed in a trust. Initially completely independent from Georgetown University, the institute established an official relationship with the university in the late 1990s, according to Georgetown professor of Turkish studies Sinan Ciddi. Ciddi served as executive director of the ITS from 2011 until its closing in 2020.

Georgetown provided the ITS with office space and administrative assistance, but the university did not have a say in the institute’s operations. Georgetown also supplemented the salary of the institute’s executive director after the ITS lost funding from the Turkish government, according to Ciddi and ITS meeting minutes obtained by The Hoya.

Ciddi said the ITS’ annual operating budget mainly came from the interest earned off of the grant money, as well as other donations.

A board of governors whose members included top scholars in Ottoman and modern Turkish studies led the ITS. Board members were mainly tasked with reviewing research grant applications from scholars in the field, according to White.

White suspected the ITS was a component of Ankara’s strategy to improve the public image of Turkey in the eyes of the United States.

This tactic was effective because the ITS was not an inherently political organization, she said.

“In terms of bang for your buck, this is the best advertisement that there could have been for Turkey,” White said.

Over the years, scholars criticized the ITS for allegedly advancing Ankara’s political agenda regarding sensitive topics like the Armenian genocide. For instance, scholars and members of the Armenian diaspora criticized Heath Lowry, the founding executive di-

According to Denny, the ITS fell because it refused to be actively pro-Erdoğan.

“This is just a reflection of the larger problem of Erdoğan’s way of operating in Turkish society: that if you are not vocally for him, he does not want anything to do with you,” Denny said. “This business of loyalty became so important.”

After Turkey cut the organization’s funding, the School of Foreign Service (SFS) provided the ITS with additional financial and administrative support, but it never considered replacing the funding the institute lost, largely because the SFS does not have any centers that focus exclusively on one country, and the SFS does not fully fund any of its centers, according to SFS Dean Joel Hellman.

Following the defunding of the ITS, the organization had enough funds to continue operations for three years, so the organization remained open in a scaled-back capacity as it launched a fundraising campaign, according to May 2016 board meeting minutes obtained by The Hoya.

The organization’s fundraising efforts were ultimately not enough, according to White.

“We tried to do individual fundraising,” White said. “But it did not work because I think people were scared of the government.”

In November 2018, the board of governors discussed suspicions that Turkish politics led to the decline in donations to the ITS, according to a copy of board meeting minutes obtained by The Hoya.

In a June 2019 letter signed by the ITS board of governors, the ITS announced that despite receiving funding from individual donors and groups like the Turkish industrial conglomerate Koç Holding and Turkish holding company FİBA Group, the institute could not financially sustain itself and would close its doors Sept. 30, 2020.

bassador at the time, Nabi Sensoy, denied that he played any role in Quataert’s resignation.

In its final years, the ITS was emerging from the long shadow historically cast by its relationship with the Turkish state, according to Nicholas Danforth, a fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy who received an ITS grant while pursuing his Ph.D. at Georgetown during the 2012-13 academic year.

“It was supporting serious, cutting edge research on all aspects of Turkish history, including issues that had often been too sensitive for scholars to touch,” Danforth wrote in an email to The Hoya.

Through its support of scholars and academic programs in the field of Turkish studies, the contributions of the ITS to the field are undeniable, according to White.

“The ITS has supported almost every single major scholar of Turkish studies in any field in the United States,” White said.

The ITS never sought to involve itself in the politics of Turkey or any other country, according to several former board members, including White and Denny.

The ITS was an impartial supporter of Turkish studies that valued academic freedom, according to Denny, who served on the ITS board for over two decades and is now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“We made every effort to be as unpolitical as possible,” Denny said. “Never in my term on the board did I ever see any political decision made on the basis of Turkish domestic politics.”

The ITS mission statement also confirmed the organization’s efforts to remain apolitical.

“The Institute is an independent, tax exempt organization and does not seek to influence legislation nor advocate particular policies or agendas,” the institute’s

gional art or ancient civilizations, which did not have an obvious political agenda, and so the government did not think the ITS benefited Turkey.

“For the most part, they were displeased with the kind of research we funded. For them, it seemed like esoteric, academic mumbo-jumbo,” Ciddi said.

“There was always a discord between the academic research and how that helps Turkey.”

Former ITS board member and current Binghamton University professor Kent Schull agreed that the defunding of the ITS underscored political trends in Turkey.

“They started to pull back soft power where they felt they could not control,” Schull said.

“Erdoğan felt very threatened and started to lash out on other things. He started to increase powers in his own hands, and when Gezi pushed away on these developments, he couldn’t take it.

He cracked down hard.”

Unceremoniously Cut Off

Between 1982 and 2014, six Turkish diplomats served as ambassadors to the United States, and the ITS maintained cordial relationships with all of them, according to Ciddi.

Ciddi alleged that the dynamic changed with the seventh ambassador, Serdar Kılıç. Kılıç began serving as Turkey’s ambassador to the United States in April 2014 as political tumult rose in Turkey. He left the post in February 2021.

Historically, the institute had dinners in the fall and spring at the Turkish ambassador’s residence. They were always cordial, and board members looked forward to attending, Ciddi said.

“Wonderful affairs — great dinner and great conversation,” Ciddi said. “Nothing political and no asks. It was very, very respectful.”

politically-oriented programming and statements by the ITS director and expressed interest in reorienting the work of ITS in ways that would have greater political impact for the Turkish government,” Wilson wrote in an email to The Hoya.

“I responded that I would discuss his concern with the board and that ITS as an organization did not aim to be political, but that the organization had been set up to provide for independent, academic management to support academic ends,” Wilson wrote.

Kılıç did not respond to The Hoya’s two requests for an interview.

Ciddi viewed Kılıç’s alleged request as an effort to pressure the ITS to celebrate the Erdoğan government’s socalled accomplishments.

“They want your active participation in clapping for what they are trying to achieve politically at home and abroad,” Ciddi said. “If you’re not celebrating what they’re doing, then you’re just as culpable as the guy who crosses the red line.”

After that meeting, the ITS operated business as usual, Ciddi said.

But when the time came for the fall dinner at the ambassador’s residence, the embassy told the ITS that the ambassador had a prior engagement, according to Ciddi.

In early September 2015, Saltzman and Evinch, a Washington, D.C. law firm representing Turkey’s U.S. embassy, called the ITS to notify the institute that it was losing its trust funding, according to Ciddi.

David Saltzman of Saltzman and Evinch declined to provide comment to The Hoya, saying the Turkish embassy did not clear him to respond. The Turkish embassy also did not respond to The Hoya’s multiple requests for comment.

The ITS protested the decision, with Wilson writing a letter

mendous increase in American public interest in Turkey that has developed over the last 10-20 years — exactly the purpose for which ITS was created,” Wilson wrote in the letter. “Turkey has received a huge return on its investment.”

But the Turkish government maintained its decision. Kılıç sent a letter the same day to the ITS about defunding the organization in which he confirmed the government would provide the ITS with enough funds to meet its outstanding financial obligations.

In that letter, Kılıç wrote that Turkey cut the ITS funding because the original trust agreement had expired in 1988.

“Since that time, Turkey nonetheless continued to support ITS,” Kılıç wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Hoya. “It has been established that treating an invalid Trust Agreement as valid may cause problems in Turkey in light of Turkish domestic law.

Therefore, the Government of Turkey has determined to retrieve the funds in the corpus of the Trust.”

Although Kılıç was correct that the trust agreement had expired, Ciddi questioned what prompted Turkey to act over 20 years after it had expired.

“They had a point, but the problem with that was the terms expired in 1988 — and since then, no one has been asking questions,” Ciddi said.

Ciddi interpreted the decision to defund the ITS as an indication of the government’s lack of understanding about how U.S. nonprofits operate.

“They want organizations to sell an unsellable message that the Erdoğan government is a good government that is a responsible international actor, that he’s a world leader,” Ciddi said. “If you don’t do that, then they say, ‘We will take away our money and give it to someone who is willing to do it.’”

The Erdoğan government continues to hinder academic freedom, including recently with the 2021 political appointment of a rector to Boğaziçi University, one of Turkey’s most prestigious academic institutions, according to White.

The very structure of the ITS set it up for trouble from the start, according to Hellman, who added that the defunding and closure of the ITS is an example of how international affairs can directly impact the university.

“An institute funded to study a single country, funded by the government, is highly unusual,” Hellman said in an interview with The Hoya. “The problem with such an arrangement is that it becomes very, very susceptible to government interference in their work.”

The closure of the ITS was a loss for the Georgetown community and the field of Turkish studies, according to Hellman.

“It was a unique and important body,” Hellman said. “And anything that limited its ability to do its mandate is harmful to the cause of our understanding of Turkey.”

Despite the closure of the ITS, several former board members, including Denny, reflect on their time with the ITS with pride.

“We all felt that it was one of the great privileges we had in our lives to serve on this board. We really believed and continue to believe in ITS and its mission,” Denny said. “If I have even the remotest chance of getting into heaven on judgment day, my best bet — my best ace in the hole — is going to be that I worked for ITS all those years, and we did so much good.”

The ITS held its final board meeting on the morning of Nov. 7, 2020, about six weeks after the organization formally ceased to exist, according to meeting minutes obtained by The Hoya.

At the last meeting, the board discussed how to disperse the remainder of the ITS funds, which amounted to around $60,000, to continue supporting Turkish studies in the organization’s final moments. The board had previously agreed to disperse the funds equally between the American Research Institute of Turkey and the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages.

At the last minute, Schull suggested the ITS also donate $8,000 to the Journal of Turkish Studies, which was struggling financially at the time. The board unanimously agreed.

Ciddi said that while the field of Turkish studies owed much to the ITS, the field was no longer dependent on the organization, according to the minutes.

“Turkish Studies in the United States is now self-sufficient and growing on its own, which effectively means that the original mission of the institution has been accomplished,” the minutes read.

“The final board meeting of the ITS concluded with expressions of both regret and satisfaction.”

A Hoya staff writer contributed writing and reporting to this article.

They requested anonymity due to safety concerns in Turkey.

THE HOYA | A5

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021 | THEHOYA.COM

NEWS IN FOCUS

PAGE FIVE

Inside Look at MSB Sustainability

Your news — from every corner of The Hoya

VERBATIM

INSIDE THE ISSUE

The road was completely packed with activists.”

HANNAH LAIBINIS/THE HOYA

The Georgetown University MSB launched a sustainability initiative across undergraduate and graduate programs that will explore the intersection of business and environmentalism.

Soraya Bata (SFS ’24) on the Oct. 2 Women’s March.

Story on A8.

Washington Capitals welcome 10-week-old puppy Biscuit to the team.

Story on A8.

Casa Ruby Shelter Cuts Services Lack of Virtual Class Options After DC Withdraws Funding Prompts Accessibility Concerns Paige Kupas Hoya Staff Writer

This article is part of our 2021 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works were published throughout Thursday at DCHomelessCrisis.press.

Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ social services and programs center, has been forced to shut down important services after the District pulled funding for the shelter.

Casa Ruby is being forced to slash key services, including its low-barrier shelter, after the Washington, D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) pulled an $850,000 funding grant that sustained its operations.

Because the DHS canceled funding, Casa Ruby can no longer offer overnight stays at the Georgia Avenue shelter nor maintain 24-hour dropin services for those seeking services. Following the Sept.

24 DHS announcement, Ruby Corado, the shelter’s founder, resigned from her role as executive director.

According to Alexis Blackmon (GRD ’21), interim executive director of Casa Ruby, staff first learned the grant was being pulled when the DHS sent the shelter a letter notifying them that they were defunding the shelter, offering no explanation.

“The letter that we received basically stated that it was in the city’s discretion to remove grants as they see fit,” Blackmon said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “They didn’t give us a specific reason.”

The DHS did not respond to The Hoya’s request for comment.

Corado launched a GoFundMe page Sept. 25 in an effort to

raise funds to keep remaining beds in other Casa Ruby shelters — such as its transitional living program for LGBTQ youth — for individuals in need across the District.

The page has received over $100,000 in donations as of Oct. 6, which will go toward preventing other services and resources at Casa Ruby from shutting down in the future, according to Blackmon.

“That money is for us to focus on how to be self solvent,” Blackmon said. “We can build something so that this won’t happen to us in the future.”

Casa Ruby is the only LG-

“The letter that we received basically stated that it was in the city’s discretion to remove grants as they see fit.”

ALEXIS BLACKMON CASA RUBY INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

BTQ, bilingual and multicultural organization in Washington, D.C., according to its website. Founded in June 2012 by Corado and a small group of volunteers, Casa Ruby now has approximately 50 employees and provides assistance to an estimated 6,000 people annually.

The same week the DHS discontinued Casa Ruby’s funding, the agency awarded Covenant House Greater Washington, a nonprofit that provides housing and resources to youth experiencing homelessness, a

$648,000 grant to fund its program SHINE, which provides short-term housing for LGBTQ youth.

SHINE opened Oct. 1 in Northeast Washington. The location has 24 residential beds and residents can stay for up to 90 days. SHINE offers services tailored specifically to be helpful for LGBTQ youth, such as workforce development curricula, according to Angela Jones Hackley, chief executive officer at Covenant House Greater Washington.

SHINE aims to help LGBTQ youth ages 18 to 24 in the District who are experiencing homelessness find opportunities and independence, according to Hackley.

“Our goal is to work with these youth, their passion and promise, such that are able to move out of the homelessness and sustain themselves after they leave us,” Hackley wrote in an email to The Hoya.

According to Hackley, SHINE will ensure that individuals are treated with the love and respect they deserve while they are residents in the housing program.

“We don’t tolerate our young people; we celebrate them, all of them, including youth who identify as LGBTQ,” Hackley wrote.

According to Blackmon, the agency’s decision to defund Casa Ruby will take away a key resource for LGBTQ individuals experiencing homelessness in the District.

“This is a program that has been around in the city for a long time, and it’s one of the first trans-run and led operations in the District,” Blackmon said. “It’s very sad that the city, instead of trying to help this specific population keep the things that they have, that they are just willing to dismantle it and tear it apart.”

Nicolas Bocock and Samantha Sinutko

Special to The Hoya and Hoya Staff Writer

Students are voicing accessibility concerns following an email to community members stating that professors will not be required to provide virtual attendance options for class.

Rohan Williamson, vice provost for education, sent an email to Georgetown University students Sept. 30 outlining the university’s commitment to an in-person semester, emphasizing that students should not expect professors to provide opportunities for asynchronous or synchronous virtual participation. As COVID-19 and other viral illnesses spread through campus, students have posed concerns about health and safety, especially for immunocompromised people.

According to Andrew Bialek (COL ’22), president of the Georgetown Disability Alliance (GDA), not all students who feel uncomfortable attending classes in person have a registered disability status with the university — which would provide them with alternative attendance accomodations — and the process to gain such recognition can be lengthy.

Before this email, students may have felt more comfortable requesting virtual options without formal accommodations from the university, but now may experience difficulty accessing alternatives to attending class in person, according to Bialek.

“Previously, people had the opportunity through speaking to their professors to be able to attend class either virtually or for whatever reason. And the onus now is on the individual student to attend class,” Bialek said in a

Zoom interview with The Hoya.

In order to receive an accommodation for any disability, students must submit documentation of their disability written by a qualified professional to the Academic Resource Center. After reviewing the documentation, the Academic Resource Center decides upon the appropriate accommodation.

Students who are concerned about risks to their health but don’t have formally approved reasons to miss class are now forced to weigh their wellbeing against the consequences of not attending in person, according to Dominic DeRamo (COL ’23).

“As an immunocompromised student, there have been numerous unapproved situations in which I would have been more comfortable attending class virtually,” DeRamo wrote in an email to The Hoya. “In light of the Provost’s email on September 30th, I am even more hesitant to have these conversations with my professors because I know that I would be asking for something that the university has explicitly discouraged.”

In addition to continued COVID-19 concerns, Georgetown has recently faced a norovirus outbreak, with over 145 community members reporting symptoms consistent with the highly contagious gastrointestinal illness.

The main campus also experienced an outbreak of Influenza A in mid-September, with 65 confirmed cases as of Sept. 16.

DeRamo says because in-person attendance policies are up to professors’ discretion, he is grateful for professors who are taking steps to make their classrooms more flexible.

“In my experience, most professors are offering a Zoom option for students that test posi-

tive for COVID,” DeRamo wrote.

“Besides that, there has been a lot of variety in professors’ approaches to flexible attendance policies.”

As was the typical policy before the COVID-19 pandemic, students now are expected to contact their deans and professors if feeling ill, according to a university spokesperson.

“To this end, faculty members have been encouraged to accommodate students by making course materials available to students missing classes due to COVID-19-related isolation or quarantine, or other symptoms and illnesses, based upon course content and pedagogy,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Faculty are also encouraged to use lecture capture software if appropriate for their courses.”

The disability accommodations process is very individualistic and requires students to work with outside organizations to receive this approval, according to Bialek.

“It’s not automatically granted in most situations, meaning it would both take time but it would also take some additional resource beyond the university itself to to receive said accommodation,” Bialek said.

According to DeRamo, students and faculty should facilitate open conversations about accessibility following the provost’s email.

“I know that professors and administrators are willing to listen to students’ concerns, but we need to have conversations about how we can act upon them,” DeRamo wrote. “The Provost’s email on September 30th seemingly discourages conversations about flexibility and accessibility in a time when students most need them.”

Darnall 1st-Floor Rooms Flooded, Residents’ Items Damaged Minoli Ediriweera Special to The Hoya

At approximately 10:45 a.m.

Sept. 30, Darnall Hall firstfloor resident Joe Massaua (SFS ’25) was shocked to witness a flood in progress outside his dorm room.

“I was doing homework in another room and then I come back and I hear this whooshing noise. I’m on the other side of the dorm, in the other hallway, and I see water rushing out of the bathroom,” Massaua said in an interview with The Hoya.

On Sept. 30, water began to rush out of the first-floor men’s bathroom in Darnall while university maintenance staff worked to fix several broken toilets. The water then flowed out into the hall and into several of the surrounding rooms, causing flooding in residents’ personal spaces, according to a university spokesperson.

While university staff attempted to fix a toilet that appeared to have been tampered with, clean water began pouring out of the toilet, which built up and spread into the hall and several student rooms, according to a university spokesperson.

University maintenance staff have removed damaged furniture and items from the student rooms and will continue to deal with the damaged rugs, according to the spokesperson.

“Custodial staff removed the water and then removed rugs and other damaged items; they also mopped and sanitized student rooms,” the university spokesperson wrote in an email sent to The Hoya. “We continue to clean and replace the damaged rugs.”

According to Michael Oddo (SFS ’25), maintenance staff cleaned his room and removed his damaged items after the flooding occurred.

“The maintenance staff, when I was gone, ended up going into my room and poured soapy water on the floor and then vacuumed it all up,” Oddo said in an interview with The Hoya. “They also put all of the containers that were under my bed, dripping with toilet water, on the top of my bed. They also took all of our rugs and put them in one of the showers. Currently there are like eight wet rugs left in one of the showers that they haven’t dealt with.”

Oddo came back after the

damaged items were removed from his room to find his personal belongings drenched in water, with no explanation or guidance from university officials.

“The toilet water seeped into a bunch of the containers and I had to throw away a bunch of food. I had to put everything away when I got back and replace my bedding since it was drenched with toilet water,” Oddo said.

This incident is one of the many issues with facilities that Darnall residents have encountered since the beginning of the fall semester, according to Massaua.

“We’ve had other issues with our toilets as well. The girls’ toilet overflowed and it was all over the floor,” Massaua said. “I think we had maybe two toilets, when you would flush them, they would just squirt out water, so that’s what they were coming to fix.”

University facilities staff previously responded to a separate incident in the Darnall first-floor women’s bathroom Tuesday, Sept. 28, where two toilets were clogged and overflowed, according to the university spokesperson, who said the water did not flow beyond the women’s bathroom.

University staff are doing what they can to resolve the issue and prevent similar occurrences in the future, according to a university spokesperson.

“University officials are investigating whether this incident was intentionally caused,” the university spokesperson wrote. “If so, any community members found to be involved will incur disciplinary action via the student conduct process.”

However, students still remain frustrated with the lack of communication between university officials and Darnall residents.

“I didn’t get any emails or any info about what to do if anything was destroyed,” Oddo said. “I was just left with the torn-up room when I got back. For the next day or so, maintenance people walked around and surveyed the floor, but since then, that is it.”

Oddo said he was grateful the situation did not result in any permanent or complete damage.

“I’m glad nothing was completely destroyed, besides the rug, I guess, but it definitely GRACE KIEFT/THE HOYA was not the best thing to come Student rooms on Darnall Hall’ s first floor were flooded back to after a ‘Problem of God’ Sept. 30 after toilet problems in the men’s restroom. midterm,” Oddo said.

A6 | THE HOYA

THEHOYA.COM | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

NEWS

Unhoused Community Encounters GSP To Hold Demonstrations Hostile Architecture in Georgetown Protesting Removal From Healy GSP, from A1 relocated GSP to a space on the fourth floor of the Leavey Center. The office has not yet opened to students, however, as GSP administrators and student leaders continue to unpack and prepare the office. GSP leaders plan to open the office to students in mid-October, according to the GSP Student Board.

GSP Students first learned of GSP’s move from Healy in August 2021, sparking outrage and concern among both students and graduates, who argued the move would decrease GSP’s visibility and accessibility on campus.

In response to the move, students began circulating a petition on Change.org calling on the university to return GSP to Healy. As of Oct. 6, nearly 1,300 people have signed the petition.

Prior to the planning of the teach-in and subsequent sit-in, GUSA circulated a separate petition calling on the university to move GSP back to its original location in Healy. As of Oct. 6, the petition had received signatures from over 375 students and 43 organizations.

“A space for GSP isn’t just a

physical location, but an embodiment of the University’s commitment to ensuring FGLI students feel welcome and supported throughout their time at Georgetown,” the petition reads. “Healy is a Georgetown landmark, and therefore a symbol that FGLI students

“I am confident we can put a stop to this decision, given just how many students feel so strongly.”

LEO RASSIEUR (COL ‘22) GUSA SENATOR

not only belong at Georgetown but that they are central to the University’s mission.”

Georgetown is committed to providing GSP a dedicated space on campus, according to a university spokesperson.

“Our priority is to ensure that all of our student support programs, including GSP, have a strong foundation for continued success,” a university spokesperson

wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We hear the concerns being raised as we work to bring together the student resource centers affiliated with the Office of Student Equity and Inclusion and are committed to ensuring that centers serving students have distinct spaces that celebrate independent identities, while also coordinating staff resources to best serve students.”

The university plans to begin renovations in the original GSP office now that the program has moved out of Healy. While there are no definite plans for what will replace GSP in the space, the university will engage students in the decision-making process, according to a university spokesperson.

Regardless of administrators’ plans for the space, to Rassieur, upcoming demonstrations like the teach-in and sit-in are an important effort in helping GSP return to Healy.

“I feel like we’re coming together as a community, and I’m confident that we can put a stop to this decision, given just how many students feel so strongly about keeping GSP in their rightful home,” Rassieur said.

PAIGE KUPAS/THE HOYA

Unhoused people in the Georgetown neighborhood encounter hostile architecture that prevents them from sleeping and accessing necessary amenities.

UNHOUSED, from A1 Avenue and near the Georgetown Waterfront.

Dana Stevenson, an undergraduate student contributor for Hidden Hostility DC, said some developers make hostile architecture blend into the city to obscure prejudices against unhoused people.

“When you google the companies that are marketing these benches, sometimes they’re marketed as antivagrant benches,” Stevenson said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “Then it becomes very clear what the intent is.”

The Hoya also located a heating grate at a 45-degree angle near the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, which prevents people from sitting or lying on the grates. In cold weather, heating grates can provide lifesaving warmth for those at risk for hypothermia.

Throughout the Georgetown neighborhood, and particularly between O Street and Glover Park, The Hoya also identified that WMATA Metrobus stops along Wisconsin Avenue as well on 35th Street that have slanted metal benches preventing people from lying down unsupported.

WMATA did not respond to The Hoya’s request for comment.

According to Ward 2 Council of the District of Columbia Councilmember Brooke Pinto (LAW ’17), resources for unhoused people throughout the District are lacking.

“The challenge of homeless-

ness in DC is not new and the causes are myriad — lack of affordable housing, mental health challenges, and domestic violence among others,” Pinto wrote in an email to The Hoya.

“The need for increased and stronger homelessness supports were made even more clear to us during the pandemic.”

According to Julie Turner, senior outreach worker for the Downtown Cluster of Congregations Homeless Services Unit, hostile architecture is inhumane and takes away both dignity and comfort from people experiencing homelessness who already face daily hardships.

“People who sleep outdoors or in shelters or even couchsurf have so many obstacles,” Turner said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “They’re at the mercy of the system, and they’re at the mercy of neighborhoods. Now they can’t even take a nap.”

Hostile architecture is typically noticeable in public, highly populated areas, according to Uwe Brandes, faculty director of the urban and regional planning master’s program at the Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies.

“These conditions are generally seen in areas that receive heavy foot traffic and typically are in places where there are pedestrian plazas and parks,” Brandes said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya.

According to Turner, when urban planners and architects implement hostile architecture,

food from local D.C. vendors such as Timber Pizza Co. and Maracas Ice Pops.

CSE Staff Departs, Student Clubs Experience Lack of Communication CSE, from A1 hard to fill in those shoes in the middle of such an uncertain period.”

Chair of the International Relations Club (IRC) Emily Hardy (SFS ’23) said the IRC has not received a replacement adviser yet and has struggled to figure out how to process receipts and rent vans from the Center for Social Justice, Research, Teaching & Service, despite multiple attempts to contact CSE staff.

“I still don’t know who our next advisor is. There is a lot of uncertainty even on an operational level,” Hardy said in an interview with The Hoya.

“Whose name do we put on forms? I have no idea, and if I have no idea, then all the people who are trying to work within club spaces who don’t have much experience also have no idea.”

While the CSE transitions its leadership, the university has taken steps to meet clubs’ needs, according to a university spokesperson.

“CSE is committed to continuing to provide quality advising to our student organizations and to re-establishing official advising roles in the immediate future,” a univer-

Students Flock to Red Square For GU Farmers’ Market Return

they are focusing on preserving the aesthetic, affluence and appeal of a neighborhood at the expense of unhoused individuals’ humanity and dignity.

“I am convinced this is not a result of a broken system; quite the contrary,” Turner wrote in an email to The Hoya. “This is a carefully crafted system that keeps the rich, rich, neighbors white and affluent, and offers them an aesthetic they can feel comfortable living with.”

A subset of hostile architecture are ghost amenities, or the absence of resources in a public space. Examples include a lack of benches, tables and restrooms in public areas, many of which are services that people experiencing homelessness rely on for comfort and survival.

Although the District has public spaces that could house public amenities, ghost amenities are rampant, with the exception of the National Mall, according to Cutforth.

Ghost amenities in Georgetown include the area’s lack of public restrooms in parks and other gathering spaces.

There is only one public park restroom in all of Georgetown, located in Montrose Park, according to Google Maps.

According to Turner, hostile architecture accomplishes no goal other than preventing people experiencing homelessness from sleeping and resting.

“Everyone in the District of Columbia who’s homeless MOLLY ROPELEWSKI/THE HOYA should have a place to sleep,” Turner said.

The Georgetown University Farmers’ Market returned to campus Oct. 6, offering

sity spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We have responded to multiple requests for advising assistance from organizations that had traditionally worked with either the director or associate director; we will continue to work hard to provide this support while we fill those roles.”

Nessler did not respond to The Hoya’s request for comment.

While some clubs are upset about the short-term impacts of the leadership transition, others are less concerned about the long-term consequences.

Both Dos’ and Brown’s departures and the subsequent leadership transition will not drastically affect CSE relationships with student organizations, according to Matthew Failor (SFS ’23), chairperson of the Student Activities Commission, an advisory board for most student clubs on campus.

“Obviously, there have been some issues with the CSE on communication and stuff like that in the past, and that’s not going to go away,” Failor said in an interview with The Hoya.

“Nothing’s going to get better because of this, but I don’t necessarily think anything’s going to get worse either. Use the resources that are there, use the

staff that are left, and I think clubs will be fine.”

A university spokesperson said Georgetown is working to hire replacements for Dos and Brown and planning to engage students in the hiring process.

The university has hired three new coordinators within the CSE, though the new staff members are still being trained, which may cause advising delays, according to a university spokesperson.

The university must hire people who will communicate with students to help ease clubs’ anxiety, according to Hardy.

“They need to learn how to navigate different club cultures, understand the needs and demands of different organizations and be fluid with what groups need,” Hardy said.

“Being available, being there to help students and being willing to sit down with them and talk about how to make things work is important.”

Still, to Boose, the university must do more to help student organizations on campus.

“The University has failed to prioritize student organizations in preparing for this semester as shown by the difficulties faced by student organizations during this staff transition,” Boose wrote.

MARKET, from A1 every Wednesday, and so just being able to go again — even if the options are pretty limited — is a sign of returning to normal and what Georgetown was once like pre-pandemic,” Şensöz said in an interview with The Hoya.

In the past, the Farmers’ Market featured 16 vendors from the Washington, D.C.Maryland-Virginia area, as well as two vendors run by graduates of the Georgetown community. The Farmers’ Market also included 11 pop-up vendors who appeared once during the Farmers’ Market season, which runs during the early fall and late spring.

In past years, the Farmers’ Market has offered a wider range of food options from local vendors, including Ashton Farms, a fruit orchard; Craft Kombucha, a kombucha brewery; Panorama Bakery, an artisan bakery; and DMV Empanadas, a restaurant serving homemade empanadas.

Tents and limited space in Red Square forced GUFM to scale back the size of the Farmers’ Market, according to GUFM co-director Madeleine O’Hara (SFS ’22).

The Farmers’ Market is enforcing COVID-19 safety measures, including requiring all individuals to be masked while in line, despite university policy allowing fully vaccinated students to not wear masks while outdoors. Vendors are required

to be vaccinated against COVID-19, according to O’Hara.

While the Farmers’ Market is currently offering limited space for vendors, the organization plans to increase its operating status throughout the fall and spring, according to O’Hara.

“We really just had to kind of give them pretty last-minute notice, so it was whoever wanted to come,” O’Hara said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “We’re also kind of starting with a scaled-back amount of vendors to hopefully ramp it up for the regular market season.”

Although some students noted high costs and long lines, the Farmers’ Market was a welcome alternative to Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall, according to Ella Braunfeld (SFS ’25), who visited the market for the first time Wednesday.

“I had the Indian chicken rice bowl. It was probably the best $15 I’ve ever spent here at Georgetown,” Braunfeld said in an interview with The Hoya. “It was a bit expensive, but that’s what you get for living in D.C.” For Katherine Taulane (COL ’24), despite the long lines, the ability to support local businesses and enjoy the market made it a worthy experience.

“I thought it was really cool,” Taulane said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “I liked the different foods they had, and it’s just nice seeing a lot of students gather together to support these different businesses.”

The return of the Farmers’

Market signals Georgetown’s openness to giving back to the community, according to O’Hara.

“Ultimately, it’s just an investment in community, and the university having it back I feel like is a sign that they’re willing to invest in community because they know that it’s important to students,” O’Hara said.

GUFM also collaborates with other university and student organizations. The Georgetown Renewable Energy Environmental Network helps lead composting services at the event, and GUFM donates to the Georgetown Scholars Program’s grocery stipends program.

The Farmers’ Market is an important way for the Georgetown community to come together and enjoy a break in the week, according to O’Hara.

“It’s a pause where students can get together with their friends and really enjoy each other’s company, and I think it’s such an important communitybuilding part of Georgetown,” O’Hara said. “Georgetown is a very fast-paced school, and this is a chance for students to slow down and enjoy life and being outside and being with friends and fresh food.”

Braunfeld plans to return to the Farmers’ Market soon.

“I would go back next Wednesday and try another stand,” Braunfeld said. “All those stands looked amazing, and I want to try all of them. So that’s my goal for the semester: try all the stands there.”

THE HOYA | A7

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021 | THEHOYA.COM

NEWS

The Corp Mandates Weekly COVID-19 Testing for All Staff Ingrid Matteini

Special to The Hoya

The Corp is now requiring all employees to complete weekly COVID-19 tests and symptom surveys.

Before clocking into their shifts and attending large Corp events, employees must submit a symptom screening and personal protective equipment (PPE) survey that The Corp administers through its employee time management system. The Corp’s upper management team announced the policy change Sept. 27, after welcoming approximately 110 new employees, according to Matt Davis (SFS ’22), CEO and president of The Corp. Management finalized the decision after debating whether the company should go beyond Georgetown University’s health and safety guidelines, according to Davis.

As the largest student-run business on campus, The Corp has a responsibility to enforce higher safety standards for its employees than the university’s general guidelines for on-campus community mem-

bers, according to Davis.

“We have two halves: as a student but also as a service worker,” Davis said in an interview with The Hoya. “You have an added responsibility as a service industry to make sure you are safe but also that the customer, the community you’re serving, is safe.

So that’s what led us to have more stringent health and safety guidelines as opposed to Georgetown.”

Georgetown’s current COVID-19 health policy requires fully vaccinated students, faculty and staff to complete a COVID-19 test if randomly selected to or if they have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for the virus.

Unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people are required to get tested twice per week.

Leadership of The Corp began implementing these stricter health and safety guidelines during the last weeks of September as they welcomed their new hiring class, according to Davis.

The Corp was also prompted to enforce new guidelines because of a rise in COVID-19

cases within the organization and in the Georgetown community, according to Davis.

The week of Sept. 26, 37 people at the main campus, Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University Law Center tested positive for COVID-19. The positivity rate increased .39% from the week of Sept. 19.

The Corp’s new policy is a necessary response to the rise in COVID-19 cases at Georgetown, according to Mallory Kirk (COL ’23), an employee at The Hilltoss, a Corp location in the Healey Family Student Center.

“I think it’s a really smart policy that Georgetown should implement,” Kirk wrote in a message to The Hoya. “It gives me peace of mind and I think it’s necessary considering the recently increasing cases.”

Implementing these new protocols will hopefully prompt a drop in COVID-19 cases among Corp employees, providing a safer experience for both employees and customers and allowing the group to hold large meetings and social gatherings, according to Davis.

JESSICA LIN/THE HOYA

All employees of The Corp will be required to test weekly for COVID-19 in an effort to ensure the health and safety of both staff and customers.

Christina Oelhafen (COL ’25), a new hire for Hoya Snaxa, welcomes the weekly testing initiative.

“The weekly COVID tests are definitely necessary considering we interact with so many people inside and outside of our service,” Oelhafen wrote in an email to The Hoya.

The process of adjusting Corp health guidelines began in January 2021, when the group first reopened two locations on campus, The Corp

Cafe at Grounded and Vital Vittles, after closing all locations in March 2020. Upon the reopening, The Corp implemented new safety measures, requiring employees to take a health survey before shifts and sanitize locations throughout the day.

The new COVID-19 protocols will likely be a longterm change to The Corp’s procedures, according to Davis, who said the organization wants to maintain the

new testing policy to ensure healthy interactions between employees and customers.

“Speaking for The Corp specifically, we are prepared to keep these added safety measures for as long as necessary,” Davis said. “Definitely through the semester, probably through the end of the year, and potentially even into next year. We recognize that we aren’t perfect, and we’re trying to do the best we can, and that takes time to learn and grow.”

NATO Secretary General: GERMS Expands Use Technology To Fight Operating Hours Modern Security Threats To Cover Weekends Chris Robinson

Special to The Hoya

Technological innovations are key elements of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) plan to combat emerging threats, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at an Oct. 5 event.

The event, titled “NATO in a Competitive World,” was hosted by the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. Stoltenberg, who served two terms as prime minister of Norway, spoke about NATO’s emerging technological programs to combat burgeoning security threats. The conversation was moderated

by Dr. Michael O’Hanlon, the Brookings Institution’s director of research in foreign policy and adjunct professor at Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies.

NATO is at a critical point where it is facing new security threats, according to Stoltenberg.

“We are at a pivotal moment for our shared security where we face a more dangerous and more competitive world. Russia is more aggressive abroad and more oppressive at home.

“We do not know what the next crisis will be.

But we do know that whatever happens we are safer when we stand together.”

JENS STOLTENBERG NATO Secretary General

China is using its economic and military might to control its own people, coerce other countries, and assert control over global supply chains, critical infrastructure and other assets,” Stoltenberg said in the event. “We also face more frequent and sophisticated cyber-attacks, persistent terrorist threats and the security impacts of climate change.”

NATO was formed in 1949 as a military alliance between 12 North American and Western European countries to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Since then, it has expanded to include 30 member states and aims to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means, according to its website.

In order to adapt to 21st century challenges, NATO’s members are increasing military spending and developing technological solutions through civil-military partnerships, according to Stoltenberg.NATO created the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA),

a proposal for the NATO 2030 agenda that is a roadmap for the coming decade that will prepare the organization to combat predicted threats. DIANA provides a space for civilian and military organizations to work together in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology and space to secure NATO’s technological advantage against security threats.

In addition to the cyber program portion of DIANA, NATO has also developed offensive cyber technologies to combat cyber threats from non-state actors like the terrorist organization ISIS, also known as DAESH, according to Stoltenberg.

“We have also developed what is referred to as ‘national cyber effects,’ which is actually offensive cyber. NATO allies have used them against ISIS, or DAESH, to take down their cyber networks as part of the fight against ISIS. So we exercise, we train, we share best practices. We need to maintain our edge in the cyber domain to remain the most successful and strongest alliance in history,” Stoltenberg said.

NATO has also prioritized increasing cooperation with nonAtlantic allies to address future needs, according to Stoltenberg.

“We are stepping up to defend the rules-based international order by deepening our cooperation with like-minded countries and organizations, including in the Asia-Pacific,” Stoltenberg said. ”For the first time in our history, we are putting climate change and security at the core of NATO’s agenda.”

NATO’s allies in the Asia-Pacific region include Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand. The four Pacific countries joined a NATO Foreign Ministerial Meeting for the first time in December 2020. At the meeting, the countries discussed the rise of China, a persistent concern during Stoltenberg’s tenure leading the organization.

Multilateral alliances like NATO enable their member countries to effectively confront obstacles, according to Stoltenberg.

“None of us can face these challenges alone. No country, however big, and no continent, however rich. Neither the U.S. nor Europe alone. But in NATO we are not alone. Together we represent 30 different nations, 1 billion people, half of the world’s economic and military might, and together we are adapting to a more uncertain world,” Stoltenberg said.

The future of global security is unpredictable, but a multilateral approach strengthens the ability to continue to respond to emergent threats, according to Stoltenberg.

“We do not know what the next crisis will be. But we do know that whatever happens we are safer when we stand together,” Stoltenberg said.

Liana Hardy

Hoya Staff Writer

The Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service (GERMS) will now operate during all hours of the weekend after previously cutting operating hours to only weekend nights.

The student-run, volunteer emergency medical services (EMS) organization announced Sept. 24 that it will expand its operating hours to run from Thursdays at 8 p.m. to Mondays at 8 a.m. starting Sept. 30. GERMS had previously been operating only from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays because of staffing shortages in leadership positions.

During the month of September, GERMS leadership trained several members to promote them to crew leader and driver positions, roles that are vital to the operation of the group’s ambulances. The organization now has five members who are qualified to serve as crew leaders and five members who are qualified to serve as drivers, according to Ashley Rensted (COL ’22), GERMS vice president of staff.

This training was crucial to upholding the quality of service the group provides, according to Rensted.

“We worked throughout September to promote several members,” Rensted wrote in an email to The Hoya. “This has been something we have been working to do for a very long time, but the process of promoting current members to crew leaders and

driver positions takes a significant amount of time as we are not willing to compromise the quality of care that we provide.”

GERMS responds to students suffering from various illnesses, injuries and high intoxication on campus and in the off-campus neighborhoods of West Georgetown, Burleith and Foxhall. The organization also treats medical issues for any resident of these neighborhoods.

In addition to cutting operating hours, GERMS also announced Aug. 24 that it would not be taking any new members for the fall semester in order to focus on promoting current members to crew leader and driver positions, as well as training new members hired during the COVID-19 pandemic.

GERMS did not operate between March 2020 and June 2021, meaning the organization had to train those members once they arrived on campus in September, according to Rensted.

Students should call GERMS if they have a medical emergency, according to a university spokesperson.

“This action moves GERMS one step closer to resuming its normal operating hours,” the university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “GERMS is working to train and certify additional students and will be increasing staff in the coming months.”

GERMS plans to continuously expand operating hours during the semester as more members are promoted to leadership positions, aiming to reach its previous

JESSICA LIN/THE HOYA

GERMS announced it will expand its operating hours after the organization trained new staff members.

24-hour coverage, according to Rensted. All 50 students who currently make up GERMS have to balance college and work schedules, which the organization must keep in mind when setting operating hours. Rensted said consultation with GERMS volunteers was essential in the decision to expand service hours.

Students who call GERMS outside of its operating hours will automatically be forwarded to the Georgetown University Police Department, who will immediately dispatch D.C. Fire and EMS (FEMS) services.

Both GERMS and FEMS abide by the medical amnesty policy for students, ensuring that after receiving treatment, they will face no disciplinary consequences for underage drinking or drug use.

Despite this policy, some students have raised concerns over the convenience of medical services.

However, while GERMS ambulance transportation is free for students, FEMS charges between $428 and $735 for its services. In addition, while GERMS typi-

cally receives two or three calls per weekday and four to five calls on weekend nights, FEMS usually receives over 400 calls a day.

According to Finn Thompson (COL ’22), GERMS’ new operating hours will benefit student safety on campus.

“They are a crucial aspect of our campus, run by student volunteers who deserve all the credit in the world for training enough members after COVID to reach this kind of coverage,” Thompson wrote in an email to The Hoya.

“Without GERMS, students would have to pay exorbitant fees for EMS services and trips to the hospital.”

GERMS’ new expansion of operating hours will hopefully reduce the financial and logistical barriers for students in need of medical treatment, making it easier for students to get immediate, less costly medical help, according to Rensted.

“Our hope is that expanding our hours will make students more willing to call for medical help when they need it,” Rensted

GUSA Calls on University To Improve Food Safety Samuel Yoo

Hoya Staff Writer

The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Senate unanimously passed a resolution Oct. 3 urging the university to strengthen food safety and sanitation protocols at on-campus dining locations.

The resolution specifically calls on Georgetown University to work with Aramark, Georgetown’s food service distributor, and other food providers on campus to bolster food safety and cleanliness training, establish a food delivery system for students and work to address food insecurity on Georgetown’s campus.

The university must do more to ensure the safety and cleanliness of food provided by campus dining options, according to the resolution.

“The University has not provided effective training to new hires at the dining hall, leading to lack of basic cleanliness, cross-contamination, and undercooked food,” the resolution reads. “This poses a significant risk to students who eat food from the Dining hall.”

The resolution comes after Georgetown Vice President and Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Ra-

nit Mishori (MED ’02) announced Sept. 24 that more than 90 students had reported symptoms of norovirus, a highly contagious gastrointestinal virus that spreads through direct contact or contaminated food and water. Several students also reported experiencing food poisoning after eating food from campus dining locations in a GUSA survey sent out Sept. 22.

Precautions taken by the university against food contamination were not communicated to the student body, according to GUSA Senator Kathryn Yang (SFS ’23), one of the authors of the Oct. 3 resolution.

“I’ve definitely seen changes in the dining hall itself. You now can’t get drinks from the station directly and someone has to hand it to you, and it seems like there are measures to stop cross-contamination,” Yang said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya. “However, they haven’t communicated that through email or any other written form.”

The university did not adequately communicate with students about the norovirus outbreak and possible food contamination, according to GUSA Senator Dominic Gordon (SFS ’24), who co-sponsored the resolution.

“You can’t stop a virus from

entering things,” Gordon said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya.

“It gets on my nerves that we have to constantly deal with this crisis and it’s the student government that sends out information before the administration.”

The norovirus outbreak has not been linked to any campus dining locations, according to a university spokesperson.

“While it is reassuring to know the likely pathogen responsible for this outbreak, we still do not know the source. At this time, we have found no link to a food source or any of the dining venues on campus,” the university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Following a visit from DC Health, we have determined that campus dining locations, including Leo O’Donovan Hall, can safely remain open.”

The university took immediate action to avoid contamination, including deep cleaning dining spaces, residence halls, academic buildings and other facilities, according to the university spokesperson.

Since the norovirus outbreak has prompted students to start avoiding food from the dining hall, instances of food insecurity have increased on campus, according to Yang.

“When they released the announcement that norovirus was going on, we were already subjected to this inflexible meal plan, as well as the fact that Leo’s is one of the only places that provides meal swipe options,” Yang said. “A lot of underclassmen students, as well as myself, rely on that to get food every day.”

In addition to the calls for increased food safety, the resolution calls on the university to provide delivery services to students who are ill or self-quarantining and to address food insecurity on campus beyond mandating meal plans for all on-campus students.

The GUSA Senate previously urged the university to provide cheaper meal plans for on-campus students and meal plan exemptions for upperclassmen in a resolution passed Aug. 29, following long lines, overcrowding and few meal choices at Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall.

Students must continue to advocate for the university to enforce more food safety measures, according to Yang.

“We’re in this situation, and the only thing we can do is keep pressuring the administration and keep contacting and communicating with them,” Yang said.

A8 | THE HOYA

THEHOYA.COM | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

NEWS

GU Votes Targets First-Years and Washington Capitals Welcome Sophomores in Voting Drive Puppy as Their Newest Member Julia Staley

Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown University Votes (GU Votes) hosted its fifth annual drive for National Voter Registration Day on Sep. 28, registering an estimated over 100 students to vote.

Voter registration tables were set up at multiple locations on campus including the Leavey Center and Red Square, as well as first-year dorms New South Hall, Harbin Hall and Copley Hall. GU Votes’ registration drive was run by approximately roughly 50 student volunteers, according to GU Votes Director of Operations Shelby Benz (SFS ’23). GU Votes is a non-partisan, student-led organization that aims to educate students about the importance of voting and increasing student voter turnout rates.

While GU Votes typically targets first-year students during these annual registration drives, the organization also sought to register sophomores who did not get a chance to participate in an event last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Benz.

“There was ample opportunity to reach a lot of students who might not have thought about registering to vote yet.

Freshmen are traditionally less likely to be registered coming into college because they’ve just reached that benchmark of being 18,” Benz said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya. “But also we’ve missed our opportunity to work with the current sophomores, the former freshmen, last year because we all

were in this nebulous online school situation.”

Nationwide, younger people are less likely to vote than older people, with fewer than half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voting in the 2016 presidential election, 13 points less than the overall voter turnout of the cycle.

During the 2018 midterm elections, Georgetown students exceeded the national voting rate of students who live on college campuses, with 49% of students voting.

Although they were not involved in organizing the event, the Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition (GBC) supported GU Votes’ efforts by posting about the drive on social media, according to Matteo Caulfield (COL ’23), president of GBC. “As an organization dedicated to expanding civic participation and bipartisan cooperation, Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition promotes and encourages the undertakings of GU Votes’ voter registration drive campaigns,” Caulfield wrote in a statement to The Hoya.

The opportunity to table inside first-year dorms, which is usually not allowed for student organizations, helped to encourage first years to register to vote, according to Natalie Long (COL ’22), director of communications for GU Votes.

“No other student organizations are ever allowed to table in the dorms, but they make an exception for us on National Voter Registration Day,” Long said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya. “It’s kind of our idea of getting in the freshman dorms right

when everyone is walking to class, coming back, so they just see us and it’s something they can stop by really quickly and register.”

The organization is housed under the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service and partners with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, which encourages youth leadership development and voting accessibility on college campuses.

The positive relationship between GU Votes and Residential Living contributed to the success of the drive, according to Benz.

“It’s really special that residential living actually lets us table in these dorms because normally tabling is off-limits, but it’s such an important cause and it’s non-partisan and it really makes a difference what we’re doing so the fact that we have that exception is pretty incredible,” Benz said.

In addition to their annual voter registration drive, GU Votes has online resources to help students register to vote and request absentee ballots.

Benz said that voting is key in perpetuating social change.

“Voting is an act of selflove,” Benz said. “It’s an act of caring for yourself and for your family and for your community and for your nation.

Change is a slow and gradual process, but positive change is able to be made when everyone has a stake in our democracy and uses their voice and mobilizes and activates to make change happen, to demand change, to build a better, more resilient, more equitable society.”

Students Fight for Reproductive Rights at 5th Women’s March

COURTESY SUDEEKSHA YADAV

@CAPSPUP/TWITTER

Biscuit, a 10-week-old chocolate Labrador retriever, will work with the Washington Capitals until his second birthday, when he will transition to being a service dog.

Noelle Cook

Special to The Hoya

A new team member has joined the Washington Capitals: Biscuit, a ten-week-old chocolate Labrador retriever.

Biscuit, who will participate in media and team events with the Capitals, became the Capitals’ team dog Sept. 22 as part of a partnership between the Capitals and America’s VetDogs, a nonprofit organization that trains service dogs for veterans and first responders with disabilities, according to a Sept. 27 press release from the Capitals. Under the partnership, Biscuit will simultaneously undergo basic service dog training and be socialized.

Biscuit will meet and play with teammates and fans during his time with the Capitals, which will prepare him to be a service dog, according to the press release.

“The Capitals will host Biscuit in the front office, at community events, practices and select home games to assist in raising Biscuit to be a confident and calm future service dog,” the press release reads.

Partnerships, like that with the Washington Capitals, provide a special opportunity for future service dogs because they learn to be comfortable around loud noises, groups of people and unfamiliar environments, making them better service dogs in the long run, according to Allison Storck, associate director of public relations at America’s VetDogs.

“It’s really important to expose our dogs to these types of experiences so that when they do come across these things in the future with their handlers, they’re already prepared and exposed to them so they won’t have a reaction,” Storck said in a phone in-

Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown University students rallied for reproductive rights during the fifth Women’s March last Saturday.

The 2021 Women’s March advocated for reproductive rights after legislators passed a new abortion law in Texas, which made abortions after six weeks of pregnancy illegal.

Protestors participated in the Women’s March on Oct. 2 in all 50 states, garnering 70,000 participants, 10,000 of which marched in Washington, D.C. H*yas for Choice (HFC), a proabortion rights student group, held an event to make signs for the march and organized a group of students to attend the march together. 134 students signed up to attend the Women’s March with HFC, according to Lauryn Ping (COL ’23), organizing director for HFC. “There’s a lot going on around abortion right now, and reproductive rights and justice are really in jeopardy, so I think there’s a lot of student concern around abortion rights and abortion justice,” Ping said. “I’m really encouraged by the turnout.”

For students like Soraya Bata (SFS ’24), who is from Florida, attending the Women’s March was an opportunity to become involved in a large-scale event in Washington, D.C. “I had always really wanted to participate in some form of activism, especially for feminist causes, but I haven’t really had the opportunity,” Bata said in a phone interview with The

Hoya. “When I heard that there was going to be a Women’s March specifically for reproductive justice, I knew that I had to attend and be part of that movement.”

The first Women’s March took place the day after President Trump’s inauguration in 2017 with participants rallying to protect reproductive rights.

The event took place during a time of high popularity for the #MeToo movement, founded

by Tarana Burke in 2006 to advocate for justice for survivors of sexual violence. Nadia Sandanandan (NHS ’24) was motivated to attend the Women’s March after learning about the new Texas abortion law.

“I actually went to the Women’s March in 2017 after Trump got elected,” Sandanandan said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “I wanted to go to this one was because after the Texas law, I was very frustrated.”

The event began with the “Rally for Abortion Justice” at Freedom Plaza, where protestors gathered to listen to speeches from prominent activists, including Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood, and Marsha Jones, executive director of the Afiya Center, a Texas-based abortion rights organization.

According to Bata, the speakers delivered empowering, inspiring speeches to the crowd in Freedom Plaza.

“I think that the diversity of the participants in the event was what inspired me most because I noticed that there were people of all ages, all genders and all races participating

and marching,” Bata said. “I had anticipated that to a certain extent, but I just didn’t realize the gravity of how diverse the movement really was.”

After the “Rally for Abortion Justice,” protestors formed a large crowd that marched toward the steps of the Supreme Court, according to Bata.

“As we were walking toward the Supreme Court and toward Capitol Hill, we turned around and saw the crowd behind us, and it just didn’t end,” Bata said. “As far as we could see, the road was completely packed with activists, and that made us really emotional because we felt like we were part of a really strong community there.”

While the march was a positive experience, Sadanandan said the event also evoked feelings of discouragement after years of protesting for reproductive rights.

“I definitely think it made me feel more hopeful, but it’s also frustrating that we keep having to fight for the same things for a really long time,” Sadanandan said.

Ping said the participants at the Women’s March conveyed a message to representatives across the country that reproductive justice is a right that should be protected.

“It’s a really awesome opportunity to come together in solidarity around reproductive justice,” Ping said. “It’s also a way to tell our representatives in Congress and the president that reproductive justice is something that students and the general American population wants and is super important.”

essential for America’s VetDogs’ mission, which relies on press and social media coverage of their service dogs to gain support, Storck said.

“Having a platform and the notoriety behind partnering with the Washington Capitals and having an Instagram account and social presence has really boosted our ways to research new folks, new clients, new supporters, prospective donors, sponsors and volunteers,” Storck said.

As part of the partnership, the Capitals maintain an Instagram account for their service dogs, which has nearly 100 thousand followers. Posts feature Biscuit on the hockey rink and posing with Capitals players.

Biscuit’s social media presence further helps to educate the public about service dogs and the work of America’s VetDogs, according to Storck.

“They really have embraced the mission, and it shows throughout his social accounts,” Storck said. “They really have brought some educational awareness to what we do and the importance that service dogs have for our veterans and first-responders with disabilities.”

Biscuit will work with the Capitals for 14 to 16 months before returning to America’s VetDogs campus for further training with certified service-dog instructors at the organization.

According to Storck, Biscuit will be an extremely helpful service dog thanks to the experience he will get with the Washington Capitals.

“When you have partners like the Washington Capitals, who are willing to open their doors and their support to allow these dogs to come in, the experiences they get is second to none,” Storck said.

McCourt Professor Awarded Grant To Investigate Healthcare Wages

Georgetown University students joined the crowd of 10,000 demonstrators in the Jacob Imber District last Saturday at the fifth Women’s March to demand reproductive justice. Special to The Hoya Paige Kupas

terview with The Hoya. This is the second time that the Washington Capitals have partnered with America’s VetDogs. In 2019, the team partnered with the organization to welcome Captain, a yellow Labrador retriever, to the Capitals. Captain’s tenure ended in June 2021 when he finished training as a service dog and was placed with U.S. Marine Corps Master Sgt. Mark Gwathmey.

Service dogs help people with disabilities by assisting with balance and mobility and retrieving items, among other tasks. Before being placed with their owner, service dogs must be trained by a certified service dog instructor to recognize health issues, such as seizures, and to develop basic obedience skills.

As the first partnership between the Capitals and America’s VetDogs was successful, the Capitals are looking forward to seeing the impact Biscuit ultimately makes as a service dog, according to Amanda Tischler, vice president of marketing for the Washington Capitals.

“Following Captain’s successful journey and placement with retired Marine Corps veteran Mark Gwathmey, the Capitals organization is excited to once again partner with America’s VetDogs to begin Biscuit’s journey as an integral part of Capitals Canine programming,” Tischler said in the Sept. 27 press statement. “America’s VetDogs has an incredible impact in the military and first responder community, and we look forward to being a part of Biscuit’s formal training over the next season as he begins to learn how to best serve his future partner.”

Partnerships with well known organizations, such as the Washington Capitals, are

A Georgetown University professor received a $64,000 grant to complete a study investigating the effects of an increased minimum wage on healthcare workers.

McCourt School of Public Policy professor Krista Ruffini, who received the grant, is an economist whose research focuses on the effect of public policy on labor, education and health in disadvantaged populations. Ruffini will use the grant to examine how raising the minimum wage influences nursing home employees in collaboration with Asvhin Gandhi, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Nursing homes are significant employers of minimumwage workers, many of whom remain in the long-term care industry throughout their careers, making the nursing home industry an ideal case study. Thanks to the grant, Ruffini and Gandhi will have the resources to gather empirical evidence — or on-theground observations — on how minimum wage reforms change the hourly distribution of labor and organizational composition of nursing homes.

The grant came from Equitable Growth, a non-profit organization dedicated to research and grantmaking related to promoting economic growth.

The majority of nursing home employees are non-white people and women, demographics that are crucial to the study of the minimum wage, according to Ruffini.

“Women and Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to

earn low wages than are men and non-Hispanic white workers,” Ruffini wrote in an email to The Hoya. “So changes in the minimum wage raise interesting questions around pay gaps by gender, race, and ethnicity.”

Inequitable wage earnings are pervasive across demographic groups. As of 2020, women in the United States were paid 82 cents for every dollar their male counterparts made in wages, according to a 2020 report from the National Women’s Law Center. The pay gap between white women and women of color is even greater; compared to white women, Black women make $24,110 less annually and Latina women make $29,098 less annually.

The research team hypothesizes that with a higher minimum wage, workers will remain in their current positions for longer, leading to more experience throughout the field, according to Ruffini.

“We expect that higher minimum wages might reduce the share of workers who leave their employers — in economic jargon, their opportunity cost,” Ruffini wrote. “If we do see fewer workers leaving their employers, we might expect that the firm’s overall workforce becomes more experienced over time.”

The project aims to collect micro-data, or statistics grounded in the individual experiences of employees in the nursing home industry, according to Gandhi.

“We hope to use the individual-level nature of the data to understand whether minimum wage affects who firms hire and fire,” Gandhi wrote in an email to The Hoya.

The micro-data will offer a variety of measures to observe the effect of wage changes, according to Ruffini.

“Our data provide us with a daily measure of hours worked for each worker, so we can track things like how many hours an employee works; whether that worker’s schedule becomes more or less stable (e.g.: whether the worker works the same weekly schedule); whether the worker is working parttime or overtime hours; and whether the worker is newly hired or leaves his/her position,” Ruffini wrote.

Collecting empirical evidence on the distribution of hours among workers and scheduling practices is critical to understanding how minimum wage increases affect employees’ working lives, according to Korin Davis, the academic program director at Equitable Growth.

“There is a large literature exploring the tension between increasing minimum wages in order to raise the hourly wages of workers, and having these increases off-set by reductions in overall employment or hours worked by low-wage employees,” Davis wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Therefore, understanding the distributional impacts of minimum wage increases is essential.”

McCourt School Dean Maria Cancian said the study may result in key findings for agencies to inform their decisions about minimum wage.

“I look forward to the results, and how they may inform proposals around minimum wage at the federal and local levels,” Cancian wrote in an email to The Hoya.

THE HOYA | A9

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021 | THEHOYA.COM

NEWS

MSB Reports Increased Racial, Gender Diversity in Class of 2025 Samantha Sinutko Hoya Staff Writer

The Georgetown University McDonough School of Business (MSB) announced that the MSB Class of 2025 featured increased gender and racial diversity compared to previous years in both graduate and undergraduate programs.

The Executive MBA, Master of Science in Business Analytics and Master of Science in Management programs all had incoming classes this fall that saw increases in female and U.S. minority student enrollment. The undergraduate Class of 2025 is one of the most diverse classes in MSB history, according to a university announcement.

According to the MBA class profiles, African American, Hispanic American, Native American and Asian American students are designated as U.S. minority students.

The increased diversity of gender and racial identities will encourage the MSB to cultivate richer academic and social programming, according to Patricia Grant, senior associate dean for undergraduate programs

at the MSB and co-chair of the standing committee on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We are encouraged by our gains in gender and racial diversity in the undergraduate program,” Grant wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Our current demographics in relation to age, geography, and faith traditions will also add to conversations and innovations in our program academically and socially.”

The incoming class for the undergraduate business program is 37% female-identifying, which increased from 36% from the Class of 2024, and 38% U.S. minority-identifying students, which increased from 37% from the Class of 2024. The incoming class for the full-time MBA program is 32% female-identifying and 40% U.S. minority-identifying; the MBA class profile did not provide comparisons to previous classes.

According to Elie Farhat, chief admissions officer for MSB graduate admissions, the gender and racial diversity of the incoming class is a significant milestone for the MSB. “I am proud of our admissions teams for their strategic effort to

be inclusive of women and underrepresented minority populations in their recruitment efforts,” Farhat wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We have made great strides in these areas and will continue to reach underserved groups to bring a diversity of perspectives and experiences to our programs.”

Last summer, the MSB established a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative supported by the Baker Trust for Transformational Learning, a Georgetown investment organization that supports educational innovation, according to Grant.

The DEI initiative began to analyze the MSB undergraduate core curriculum with a group of faculty, student and staff fellows with the goal of adding evaluations of the curriculum to a compiled course resource department, according to Grant.

As part of the initiative, the MSB administration appointed George Comer as the school’s first director of underrepresented minority student support. The role was created after the DEI standing committee recommended the MSB form a position to better support underrepresented minority students navigating Georgetown.

HANNAH LAIBINIS/THE HOYA

The MSB recently announced that the Class of 2025 has increased gender and racial diversity in both undergraduate and graduate programs.

MBA faculty and staff also host a “Prospective Women’s Day,” another program intended to expand the MBA program’s efforts to recruit students from around the world, according to Farhat.

“Even though our focus has always been on recruiting for diversity in our programs, we are constantly revisiting and adapting our events to make them more visible with relevant content,” Farhat wrote.

For the full-time and Flex MBA programs, the school runs an annual event titled “Focus

on Diversity,” which is a career development opportunity for women, underrepresented minority and LGBTQ students.

Other cross-program efforts to support diversity at the school include the pre-orientation BUILD program, Smart Start, Pivot program and GU Reach Programs. The Georgetown MBA program also offers scholarships, events and resources to support underrepresented groups of students and their families, including women, underrepresented U.S. minori-

ties, veterans and international students.

The DEI committee, which will be publishing a website related to its efforts and initiatives later this fall, will continue to track milestones and communicate transparently with the MSB community about its progress, according to Grant.

“We are constantly changing as the world changes around us,” Grant wrote. “Our focus on DEI is long standing as a school that prepares business leaders for a complex and global world.”

GU Hotel Fire Drills Prompt Student Petition Geogetown Partners With Amazon To Study Civil Justice Equity Grace Rivers

Special to The Hoya

After multiple fire drill evacuations in the Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center, students have drafted a petition calling for more information on why alarms sounded.

On Sept. 21, students reported a fire alarm went off around 9:30 p.m., only to be shut off 30 minutes later. Nearly seven hours later, students reported that the fire alarms went off again for nearly 30 minutes, starting at 4:10 a.m. Neither incident stemmed from an actual fire, but was instead caused by a damaged fire alarm in the Leavey Center, according to a letter to hotel residents from Joel Weiss, general manager of the Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center.

After the incident, Akil Cole (COL ’24), a resident of the hotel, wrote a petition addressed to the Office of Residential Living, the Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center and the Georgetown University Police Department about repeated unannounced fire drills and a perceived lack of communication from the university. As of Sept. 30, the petition had been signed by 25 students.

“The frequency and seeming randomness of these fire alarm events decreases the likelihood of taking a real fire alarm seriously,” the petition reads. “Fire alarms should not be mundane, routine, or normalized. If these events continue to occur as frequently as they do, students, staff, and GUPD alike risk collective desensitization, reducing our community’s capacity to respond appropriately to fire

in the future.”

While the disruptions may be frustrating to students, the Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center urges students to follow necessary fire safety precautions, according to Weiss’ letter to residents.

“I apologize for the inconvenience and can understand the aggravation of a false alarm during a school night,” the letter reads. “I would strongly recommend however that for any reason the Fire Alarm goes off again during your stay here that you adhere to the Fire Safety Information you were provided when you arrived and go to your designated area on the Esplanade.”

The hotel houses approximately 80 undergraduate students in permanent dorm capacity. However, students quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19 are also placed in the hotel.

To Naomi Eluojierior (NHS ’23), a hotel resident who signed the petition, evacuating into the same space as students who had tested positive for COVID-19 presents a significant risk of infection.

“It makes me feel unsafe and unprotected because the last time I had to evacuate the residence, I forgot to put on my mask. It is very possible that I would have caught something assuming a COVID patient sneezed during the evacuation,” Eluojierior wrote in an email to The Hoya.

The petition calls on the Office of Residential Living to release a report on past and future fire alarm drills and the hotel to establish new protocols for communication with students. The petition additionally

Lea George

Special to The Hoya

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY HOTEL AND CONFERENCE CENTER

Following multiple fire drills the night of Sept. 21, students are calling on the university for an explanation. calls on GUPD to investigate the cause of all fire alarms.

While the university understands the students’ frustrations, proper fire response protocols are crucial to ensure campus safety, according to a university spokesperson.

“While we have not received a petition, we understand that repeated alarms may cause wariness,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We remind all campus residents that fire response is a

critical safety issue where every second counts. Information on evacuation procedures is made available to students and we encourage them to review the instructions for their residence.”

Cole says the university still must do more to respond to student concerns and meet the needs of students.

“While I recognize the complexity of our return to campus, I don’t accept Georgetown’s lack of substantive response to these incidents,” Cole wrote.

DC Council Launches Ward Redistricting Process Ella Davie

Special to The Hoya

The Council of the District of Columbia officially began its redistricting process Sept. 29 after a five-month delay because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the redistricting process, government officials will use population data from the 2020 census to redraw boundaries to balance population numbers in each of Washington, D.C.’s eight wards. Originally scheduled to begin in April 2021, the process was postponed after the United States Census Bureau delayed the release of the official 2020 census from March 31 to Sept. 16.

Now that the official census data has been released, the D.C. Council subcommittee on redistricting, made up of the atlarge councilmembers who do not represent a specific ward, will have 90 days to finalize new maps. As part of the process, the committee will hold public hearings and analyze constituent suggestions for new maps submitted through an online redistricting tool before presenting a final planto the D.C. Council for a vote.

Engaging the public in the redistricting process will help inform citizens about the politi-

cal landscape in D.C., according to Amanda Farnan, communications director for the office of Councilmember Christina Henderson (I-At-Large).

“There is a tool online where residents can go and redraw the lines with what they think may be fair or just and then submit those maps to the Council,” Farnan said in a phone interview with The Hoya. “The Council, of course, is looking forward to reviewing those maps and will take those recommendations into account when deciding on the lines.”

Currently, the councilmembers expect that the boundaries for Wards 6, 7 and 8 will have to be redrawn because their population sizes shifted drastically in the past 10 years, according to Samuel Rosen-Amy, chief of staff for the office of Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At-Large).

“Three wards are either too big or too small and they do have to change, their boundaries must change,” Rosen-Amy said in a phone interview with The Hoya.

“That’s Ward 6, which is too big by almost 18,000 people, which is really big, and then Wards 7 and 8 are both too small, by about 5,000 for Ward 7 and about 3,000 for Ward 8.”

The purpose of balancing the population sizes of the

various wards is to ensure that every vote in the District has the same weight, according to Rosen-Amy. “This is an important part of democracy, we want to ensure the principle of one person, one vote,” Rosen-Amy said. “Redistricting is an important part of that because if one or certain wards get much bigger than others it really waters down their ability to elect a representative.”

After the new ward lines are drawn and the D.C. Council votes on the new maps, Ward Task Forces will work to determine new boundaries for the Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC), which are the neighborhood bodies within the wards. The members of the Ward Task Forces will be appointed by the councilmember of each specific ward and will begin work to redraw ANC lines Jan. 2022, according to Farnan.

Still, the redistricting process in the District looks different compared to other places in the United States. The District is not a state, which means that the nearly 700,000 people who live in the District do not have a voting representative in the House or the Senate. The District still completes the census for U.S. population metrics.

Multiple states, like Florida, Texas and Arizona, saw lower than anticipated population counts in the 2020 census, and the District did not surpass a population of 700,000 as anticipated.

According to Farnan, this year’s census, and thus the redistricting process, may have been impacted by undercounting after there were questions over whether the census would contain questions about citizenship status.

“We do believe that there was an undercount,” Farnan said.

“However, of course, the Office of Planning in D.C. will conduct their own analysis to make sure that when we redraw the lines it’s as accurate as possible.”

Still, as the redistricting process begins, it is unlikely that any resident of the District will be severely impacted by the new ward lines, because more will stay the same than will change, according to Rosen-Amy. “At the end of the day, you haven’t actually moved where you’re living, your neighbors are still your neighbors, your services should still be provided as usual, and it doesn’t affect school boundaries,” Rosen-Amy said. “If all goes well, no one should see a significant change in their day-to-day lives.”

Georgetown University initiated a data collective in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to improve equity in the civil justice system, especially in light of the expired national moratorium on eviction.

Georgetown has partnered with AWS and is using their strategy of “Working Backwards,” or working from a customer perspective in order to understand an issue and develop a solution, to create a “Civil Justice Data Commons,” a collection of quantitative demographic and financial data from civil courts across the country.

While experts have completed extensive data analysis on various aspects of criminal justice proceedings, such as demographic trends, there is a severe lack of data on civil cases, according to Amy O’Hara, a research professor in Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, who pioneered the data collective.

“There is a movement trying to improve access to judgements,” O’Hara said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya. “You don’t see enough articles in the newspaper about consumer debt or evictions because there’s just not data like there is on the criminal side, and we should try to tackle that.”

The goal of the data commons is to allow local governments across the nation to use data from civil cases to improve transparency and accountability as it relates to civil justice proceedings across the country, according to O’Hara.

“Our hope is that you would be able to look at multiple jurisdictions to see where other interventions have succeeded or failed, and to be able to translate that into your area,” O’Hara said.

Moving forward, the project team hopes to focus on eviction as it relates to civil cases, especially as the national eviction moratorium comes to an end, according to Eva Rosen, assistant professor at the McCourt School.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act first created a national eviction moratorium in March 2020. After the original moratorium expired July 31, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attempted to reestablish the eviction pause with an Aug. 3 order. The renewal was subsequently blocked by the Supreme Court on Aug. 26, leaving an estimated 3.5 million people at risk of eviction.

In October 2020, Rosen and Brian McCabe, an associate professor of sociology in the College at Georgetown, compiled data from the Washington, D.C. court system to track eviction filings and formal evictions from 2014 to 2018 as part of a separate project.

The report of their findings revealed that one out of nine

D.C. renters are impacted by the eviction process, and a high concentration of evictions occur in Wards 7 and 8, where many Black and low-income residents live.

“With housing instability and eviction concentrated in majority-Black neighborhoods located in Ward 7 and Ward 8, addressing housing inequality is an issue central to racial justice in Washington, DC,” the report reads.

Wards 7 and 8 only account for a quarter of rentals throughout D.C., but they account for almost 57% of evictions, according to the report.

The team is working to collect data available under public record laws; however, data collections tend to be disaggregated and difficult to sift through,

“Our hope is that you would be able to look at multiple jurisdictions to see where other interventions have succeeded or failed, and translate that into your area.”

Amy O’Hara McCourt Professor

according to O’Hara.

“We’re trying to facilitate access to the data so that you can do quantitative research and access more from multiple courts and multiple years,” O’Hara said.

The project began several years ago, when McCourt conducted interviews with people in the legal field to see where there was a need for a public data commons. However, the team initially lacked a clear goal to inform their vision for accessible data, O’Hara said.

However, now that they have implemented the “Working Backwards” strategy, the team can think critically about what data would be most valuable and how to present it, according to O’Hara.

“Working Backwards helps you think about how you would then approach the problem in order to build the right solution,” O’Hara said. “So they prodded us along and had us ask lots of questions and then come up with the answers to those questions which was really useful when you’re considering product design.”

Georgetown’s data commons will allow policymakers to easily gather data about issues like eviction, and eventually to enact change, according O’Hara.

“Whether you are a nonprofit or a policymaker, being able to see what’s happening across sights and being able to draw inferences that might inform what you’re going to do on the ground is vital,” O’Hara said.

A10 | THE HOYA

THEHOYA.COM | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

SPORTS

FOOTBALL

MEN’S SOCCER

Georgetown Suffers Close 28-21 GU Triumphs Over DePaul 3-1, Defeat in 1st Conference Game Continuing Winning Streak Maahira Jalan Wadhwa Hoya Staff Writer

HANNAH LAIBINIS/THE HOYA

Georgetown football continued a three-game losing streak with its loss against Colgate. The Hoyas’ all-time record against the Raiders fell to 1-16 with the defeat.

Ritika Mandavilli Special to The Hoya

Georgetown football returned to Cooper Field on Saturday, Oct. 2 to play its first conference matchup in nearly two years, facing off against the Colgate Raiders. After a tough loss to Columbia on Sept.

25, the Hoyas looked to notch their first Patriot League win and snap an eight-game losing streak against the Raiders.

The Hoyas (1-3, 0-1 Patriot League) mounted a 14-point comeback to keep the game tight against the Raiders (2-3, 2-0 Patriot League), but ultimately fell, 2821. An early fourth-quarter Colgate touchdown propelled the Raiders to victory and handed the Hoyas their third straight loss after starting the season 1-0.

Colgate opened the score quickly, with the Hoyas conceding a touchdown to the Raiders in the first drive of the game.

The Georgetown defense tried to resist Colgate’s offense in a dragged out, 10-play drive, but Raider quarterback Grant Breneman connected with wide receiver Garrett Oakey from the Georgetown 20-yard line to take an early 7-0 lead.

Georgetown’s offense started shakily as well. With fifth-year quarterback Joseph Brunell still out due to injury, junior quarterback Pierce Holley returned to the field. Unfortunately, the Hoyas failed to enter Colgate territory and were forced to punt the ball on their first drive, unable to match the Raiders’ offensive success.

The Raiders capitalized on their winning momentum and pushed the Hoyas further down their deficit. Running back John

Cox rushed for another Colgate touchdown with a five-yard run, making it a 14-0 game late in the first quarter.

The Hoyas were determined not to let the game slip away.

During their last possession of the first quarter, senior wide receiver Joshua Tomas’ back-toback catches from Holley for a total of 25 yards and senior running back Herman Moultrie’s yardage gains advanced Georgetown to the Colgate 35-yard line. After earning another first down, a pass interference by the Raider defense led to a 15-yard penalty, moving the Hoyas up to the Colgate 10-yard line.

After failing to punch the ball in, on fourth-and-goal, Moultrie ran the ball in for a two-yard touchdown. The Hoyas’ score seemed in flux as referees reevaluated the touchdown, but it was soon deemed fair. Moultrie’s touchdown, along with the extra point conversion by sophomore kicker Conor Hunt, put the Hoyas on the board for a score of 14-7.

Breneman utilized his offensive weapons well and played a team game, and Colgate immediately responded with a touchdown of its own. Quarterback Michael Brescia entered the game during this drive, running for a one-yard touchdown.

Following a series of backand-forth drives between Georgetown and the Raiders, the Hoyas found their tempo by the end of the second quarter.

After being forced to punt it to the Raiders, Colgate’s receiving team fumbled the ball, which was recovered by Hoya senior linebacker Justin Fonteneaux.

Founteneaux’s recovery was a turning point for the Hoyas, and

Georgetown used this chance to close the score gap. Holley spread the ball well, hitting a different option for almost every play of this drive that ended with fifthyear running back Jackson Saffold’s rushing touchdown.

When Georgetown regained possession in the third quarter, the Hoyas did not waste their opportunity to tie the game. In a 14-play drive, the Hoyas endured pressure from the Raiders’ defense and fought their way to the endzone. Along with Tomas’ vital receptions, junior running back Joshua Stakely made several small, steady advances and completed a one-yard rushing touchdown to tie the game 21-21.

Even with committed performances from Holley, Stakely and Moultrie to mount a valiant comeback, Georgetown’s attempts were not enough.

Although the Raiders later missed a crucial 31-yard field goal attempt, they redeemed themselves on their next drive going into the fourth quarter.

With yet another quarterback change in Colgate’s lineup, Oakey scored his second touchdown, allowing for a final score of 28-21.

Both teams continued their battle on the field, but neither racked up any more points, securing the Raiders’ win. Georgetown evenly matched Colgate’s passing game, but ultimately could not contest the Raiders’ strong rushing advances and defensive efforts.

The Hoyas will enjoy a bye week, and then look to improve their record and secure a win on the road against the Holy Cross Crusaders (3-2) in another conference bout Saturday, Oct. 16 at 1:30 p.m.

No. 1 Georgetown men’s soccer defeated DePaul University 3-1 on Oct. 2, securing their eighth consecutive win.

Junior forward Stefan Stojanovic scored twice in the first half for Georgetown (8-00, 2-0-0 Big East), and DePaul (5-4-0, 1-1-0 Big East) was unable to mount a sufficient comeback. With the victory, the Hoyas remain one of just four Division I teams that has yet to lose or draw a match this season, alongside No. 2 Washington, No. 6 New Hampshire and No. 7 Tulsa.

In the early minutes of the game, the Hoyas managed to keep possession and forced DePaul to play more defensively. In the fifth minute, it looked as though the Hoyas would open the score early as sophomore midfielder Kyle Linhares shot the ball towards the top half of the goal, but Blue Demon goalkeeper Gandhi Cruz made a clutch save.

Stojanovic continued to put pressure on DePaul. In the seventh minute, he took a shot that flew over the crossbar. He followed up with three more shots in the 19th, 23rd and 25th minutes, but failed to find the target.

In the 28th minute, Stojanovic was finally rewarded for his efforts. Senior midfielder Zach Riviere dribbled the ball into the penalty box and passed a through ball to Stojanovic, now clear on goal with only the goalkeeper to beat. He shot

the ball grounded towards the far post, earning a 1-0 lead for Georgetown.

The Hoyas’ second goal came only a minute after their first. Sophomore forward Marlon Tabora dribbled the ball down the right flank and gave a grounded pass to sophomore midfielder John Franks, but the ball fell for Stojanovic. Stojanovic found the back of the net once again from within the penalty box, making the score 2-0.

The Blue Demons started to get back into the game, earning their first shot of the game in the 37th minute, courtesy of forward Santiago Rodriguez.

This was followed with another shot by midfielder Kristian Malinich, but senior goalkeeper Giannis Nikopolidis swiftly secured the save.

In the 41st minute, DePaul midfielder Jake Fuderer passed the ball to forward Omar Thompson Jr. who buried it past the Georgetown goalkeeper. This goal, just the third allowed by the Hoyas all season, cut the lead to 2-1 and gave the Blue Demons more confidence as they dominated possession.

The score remained 2-1 at halftime. The Hoyas outshot the Blue Demons 10-3, and committed five fouls to DePaul’s four.

The second half was looking better for the Blue Demons as they did not let the Hoyas dominate possession. Still, the Hoyas managed to get a couple of shots away in the early stages of the second half. In the 70th minute, Georgetown first-year

midfielder Blaine Mabie took a powerful strike towards the bottom center of the goal, but Cruz did not let the ball go in. This attempt was followed by a shot from Georgetown senior midfielder Sean Zawadzki, but his shot missed the target.

Then, in the 72nd minute, Fuderer committed a foul inside the Blue Demons’ penalty box.

The referee blew the whistle for a penalty. Georgetown junior midfielder Dante Polvara stood up to take the penalty kick. He took a grounded shot towards the left corner of the goal. Cruz dove the correct way, but the ball had enough speed and force, and just skidded past his gloves. Polvara’s goal changed the score to 3-1.

By the end of the second half, the Hoyas had outshot the Blue Demons 17-4, a large difference that points to Georgetown’s dominance in the match despite a tighter score. For the remainder of the game, both teams committed several fouls and the Hoyas had a shot on target but the score remained unchanged. The game ended with a 3-1 scoreline in favor of Georgetown.

The Hoyas will play Seton Hall (4-3-2, 0-2-0 Big East) on Wednesday, Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. on the road in South Orange, N.J. The matchup is the first between the two squads since the Pirates defeated the Hoyas in the Big East Tournament championship in April, denying Georgetown’s attempt at an undefeated season and marking the first time since 2016 that the Hoyas did not win the conference tournament.

VOLLEYBALL

Hoyas Fall to Butler in Thrilling 4-Set Conference Game Finish

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY

After Years of Hype, It’s Finally The Dallas Cowboys’ Year Tim Brennan Columnist

For what seems like my entire life, I’ve heard the same phrase tirelessly repeated about the Dallas Cowboys: “The Cowboys are back.” Before every season, pundits and Cowboys fans alike declare “America’s Team” is finally ready to return to its glory days. Oddly enough, it hasn’t happened.

Dallas has not returned to the NFC championship game since 1996 — five years before I was born. In the interim, the Cowboys have had some success. But also in the interim, mediocre teams like the New York Jets, Jacksonville Jaguars, Carolina Panthers and Minnesota Vikings have played in their conferences’ title games. For such a prideful franchise, it is a tough look. Thankfully for Cowboys fans, I think the streak ends this season. Finally — and I hope this is the last time anyone has to say it — it’s the Cowboys’ year.

The Dallas offense began last season on a tear, averaging 31.5 points per game during its opening four games of the 2020 season. Despite this, the Cowboys started the season 1-3, thanks to their defense, which was among the worst in the NFL. Then, in Week 5, the unthinkable happened: Dallas’s star quarterback Dak Prescott went down with a gruesome ankle injury. The Cowboys lost

their leader, as well as their season, finishing a disappointing 6-10.

But with almost a full year off to rehab, Prescott was ready for Week 1 of the 2021 season, and the Cowboys had reloaded around him. They invested heavily in their defense, most importantly signing new defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, who is known for getting the most out of defenses without a ton of top-end talent. While he had a lot of success as a head coach with the Atlanta Falcons, he is best suited focusing on the defensive side of the ball.

The Cowboys also tried to add some talent, using their first-round pick on versatile Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons, who has looked like one of the best rookies in the league thus far. Dallas also signed converted linebacker Keanu Neal and defensive back Damontae Kazee from Quinn’s former team, the Falcons, to shore up some holes. Kazee has already made an impact, coming up with an interception in Week 2 and playing almost 90% of snaps on defense.

With the new additions and strengthened returning players, the Cowboys’ defense has improved this season. Dallas has been successfully forcing turnovers after struggling with them for years, and this Cowboys defense looks to have some real playmakers. Last year’s second-round cornerback pick Trevon Diggs already has five interceptions, and the Cowboys as a whole have forced

10 turnovers,second most in the NFL. The defense is no longer holding this team back, as Dallas has started this season 3-1, with just one heartbreaking loss to defending champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Cowboys offense is largely the same, except this time, it is healthy. Prescott is back to looking like his Pro Bowl self, the offensive line is in sync again, wide receiver Amari Cooper and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb are still lethal, and the reports of running back Ezekiel Elliot’s demise were premature.

Dallas has come out on fire offensively, averaging 31.5 points through the first four games.

And the defense has not let the team down, at least not yet. This Dallas team has the look of a real contender.

With a redoubled defense and offense, plus an easier schedule than other Super Bowl contenders like the Buccaneers or the Los Angeles Rams, the Cowboys have a good shot at a first-round bye. More than that, I think it is likely that for the first time since I’ve been alive, the Cowboys will be playing in the NFC championship game. And they will be hosting it. Then, we will never have to hear “the Cowboys are back” again — and all of our lives will be better for it.

Tim Brennan is a sophomore in the McDonough School of Business. Any Given Sunday appears in print and online every other week.

GUHOYAS

Georgetown volleyball recorded its ninth straight loss in its matchup against Butler, despite a fourth set that saw the Bulldogs fight off five match points.

Julia Cannamela Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown women’s volleyball lost a tight match to the Butler University Bulldogs at home in McDonough Arena on Friday, Oct. 1. The Hoyas fell 3-1 to the Bulldogs in four sets (19-25, 2523, 25-23, 30-28), with the teams battling back and forth until the very end of each set.

Georgetown (4-11-0, 0-4-0 Big East), coming off of 3-0 losses in the first two conference games against DePaul University and Marquette University, had a strong start against Butler (8-9-0, 2-2-0 Big East), going up 8-4. The Bulldogs fought back to tie the set at 11-11, but the Hoyas held strong and continued to dominate. With help from six kills by first-year outside hitter Giselle Williams, Georgetown finished out the set over Butler 25-19.

The rest of the match saw much more even play between the teams, with the final score of the second set leaving the Hoyas and Bulldogs within two points of each other. Junior right side hitter Peyton Wilhite helped Georgetown hang in at the close of the back and forth set, softly tapping the ball over the net for a kill to make the score 23-24. Butler matched Georgetown’s energy, however, claiming the second set 25-23 after the ball fell between Georgetown’s attempted block, tying the match with one set each.

Georgetown continued to

battle in the third set, another hard-fought contest that played out until the final points. The Hoyas started the set strong with two aces in a row from senior libero Jessica Cusi and took a 4-2 lead, but could not slow the Bulldogs down. After earning two back-to-back points to tie at 23 points with the help of another two kills from Williams, the set went to the Bulldogs, who finished with two kills of their own.

Going into the fourth set, Georgetown showed great resilience. The set, the most competitive play of the match, had 13 tie scores and five lead changes as the Hoyas fought to push the match to a fifth set.

First-year outside hitter Mary Grace Goyena rose to the occasion to supply the team with several clutch kills, helping keep Georgetown in line with Butler throughout the set.

Goyena’s kill to tie the score at 24-24 was the start of an intense finale to the match. The teams went back and forth to stop each other from gaining the final point necessary to win. Georgetown’s defense fought hard but could not compete, as Butler’s offense ultimately beat out the Hoyas after fighting off five match points, taking the set 30-28 and winning the match 3-1.

Head Coach David Heller said that the Hoya defense showed initiative and decisive strength in the match.

“It was great to see some of the defense step up –– Jess

Cusi finishing with 26 digs in four sets was pretty huge, and I think she really anchors us in a lot of areas,” Heller said in a postgame interview with The Hoya. “In the last set, we ran out of substitutions so some people had to play in areas where they don’t normally play, and that was something that speaks to the depth, heart and talent that this team has that they didn’t fold and stepped into the roles we needed them to.”

Despite the loss, Georgetown came away from the game with impressive statistics. Williams had a total of 18 kills throughout the game, while Goyena had 14 of her own; first-year setter Lilly Costigan aided the offense with 52 assists. Cusi anchored the team on defense with 26 digs, while Goyena and junior middle blocker Makayla Serrett contributed five blocks apiece.

Heller has a positive outlook for the rest of the season.

“I think there were some bright spots on the court where things we have been practicing for the last two weeks have paid off and it has been really fun to watch this team learn and grow together,” Heller said. “We’re an underdog, but as tonight showed, we are not just a team that rolls over.”

The Hoyas will return to McDonough Arena once again to take on the University of Connecticut Huskies (11-5-0, 3-1-0 Big East) on Saturday, Oct. 9. The game is set to begin at 5 p.m.

THE HOYA | A11

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021 | THEHOYA.COM

SPORTS BEWARE THE HYPE

CROSS-COUNTRY

76ers Can’t Win Simmons Trade Debacle BALDARI, from A12

GUHOYAS

Georgetown women’s cross-country dominated with a fourth-place finish at the Paul Short Run.

Cross-Country Earns Mixed Results Over Weekend Georgetown’s top four runners finished in a tight heat.

Donahue led the charge with a time of 20:14.1 and earned an eighth place finish overall. Close behind was senior middle-distance runner Sami Corman, who finished 10th with a time of 20:20.8.

Graduate student distance runners Kiera Bothwell and Baylee Jones followed in 11th and 12th places at 20:22.5 and 20:22.5 respectively. Senior middle distance runner Katie Dammer anchored the squad, coming in 62nd overall with a time of 21:16.7.

Strong performances from the Hoyas’ top four runners point toward the strength of this year’s team and impressive coaching from the women’s cross-country Head Coach Mitchell Baker. A late finish from Dammer pushed the Hoyas to fourth place, an impressive yet still improvable performance.

Baker spoke highly of his team, yet still set his sights on what is to come later in the season.

“Those front four worked so well together and leaned into the task as a unit,” Baker said in an interview with The Hoya.

“But seeing progress across the board today was definitely what we needed as we push to the second half of the season.”

The Georgetown cross-country teams will race Oct. 15 at the Pre-National Meet hosted

by Florida State University.

The women will look to build on their successful showings, while the men’s squad has the chance to prove their resiliency and overcome their previous slow performance.

CROSS-COUNTRY, from A12

Bonsey (COL ’09) voiced his approval of Young’s performance after the race.

“Matt Young had an outstanding Hoya debut,” Bonsey said in an interview with The Hoya. “I’m really proud of the way he led us.”

Following Young’s top performance for the Hoyas, junior distance runner Parker Stokes secured 37th place with a time of 24:15.7 in his first race of the season. No other Hoya runner was able to crack the top 50, with the team’s next finish coming from junior middle-distance runner Sean Laidlaw clocking in at 24:39.5 in 61st place.

Anchoring the squad was senior middle-distance runner Quinn Nicholson, who placed 73rd with a time of 24:46.5, and junior middle-distance runner Mathew Payamps, who came in 96th with a time of 25:00.6.

Bonsey acknowledged the team’s disappointing showing but will shift the team’s focus to rallying at Pre-Nationals in two weeks.

“Today certainly wasn’t what we were looking for,” Bonsey said. “I’m confident everyone will see a very different Hoya team in two weeks at Pre-Nationals.”

Concurrently, the No. 15 Georgetown women’s crosscountry team notched another solid showing following a dominant first place finish in the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational three weeks ago.

Led by junior distance runner Maggie Donahue, the Hoyas came in fourth place with 101 points in the 6k event.

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Simmons is a menace in transition and an exceptional defender, selected to the All-Defensive First Team in each of the past two seasons. In half-court offensive schemes, though, the complete absence of a jumper from his toolbox severely restricts his offensive options, making him a risky trade acquisition.

Simmons’ wish to leave the city of brotherly love is confounding, too; a trade out of the Sixers — who considered him a franchise centerpiece and whose fans in Philadelphia supported him until his performance in the 2021 playoffs — does little to improve his chances at a championship or growth as a player.

If Simmons believes he cannot win a championship with the Sixers, he will be disappointed that the top-three betting favorites to land him — the Portland Trail Blazers, Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves — are even less equipped to compete for the title.

If he believes his partnership with Joel Embiid, a paint-dominant center who clogs the driving lanes Simmons needs to generate offense in the half court, has been unsuccessful in the expectations of competing for a championship, he is right.

But any team that lands Simmons will be wary to build its team around him: He has yet

@FORTHEWIN/TWITTER

Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons’ poor play throughout the 2021 NBA Playoffs means the former star’s and the 76ers’ prospects for next season look grim. to prove that he can be the best player — or even the second-best player — on a championship contender.

Had the Sixers prioritized Embiid as their centerpiece and traded Simmons last summer — in hindsight, they should have — they would have received valuable assets in return. Now that Simmons’ offensive ceiling has been exposed for all NBA teams

to see, it is unlikely that any of the pieces that the 76ers receive in a trade would enable them to compete for the title.

Simmons should have made a serious effort to develop a jump shot and forge a workable duo with Embiid — one that could have been the top tandem in the NBA. But he squandered his opportunity, and his next team will most likely be a downgrade.

Fans inevitably are posing the question: Who will win the Simmons-76ers trade stalemate? The answer is that neither team is bound to emerge victorious: Both Simmons and Philadelphia will find themselves worse off.

Christian Baldari is a sophomore in the College. Beware The Hype appears in print and online every other week.

WOMEN’S SOCCER

Fox Scores, Hoyas Settle for 1-1 Draw PROVIDENCE, from A12

midfield, with the first major scoring opportunity in the 27th minute. Providence shot the ball toward the middle of the goal, where it was deflected by the stomach of a Georgetown defender. The ball ricocheted toward the bottom corner but barely missed, saving the Hoyas from committing an own goal. The ensuing corner kick proved harmless, and Georgetown soon regained possession of the ball.

The Hoyas quickly responded with a scoring opportunity of their own. At the 34:52 mark, junior forward Sofie Fox drove the ball toward the bottom right corner of the goal, but a welltimed dive by Friar goalkeeper Emma Bodmer kept the ball from finding the net.

The last major goal-scoring opportunity of the half came from a missed call. Despite the sideline referee raising the flag for offsides, the head referee allowed play to continue, and Providence was gifted a golden chance to score. With only the goalkeeper to beat, Friar midfielder Ava Brandt drove the ball toward the middle of the goal, but Hoya junior goalkeeper Allie Augur maintained perfect position for the save.

Georgetown opened the second half full of energy and began a relentless attack against Providence. One minute in, the Hoyas already created an excellent opportunity, but the shot went high of the goal.

The pressure continued, and, only a few minutes later at 55:11, the Hoyas missed a perfect moment to score. As the ball crossed the field, graduate defender Sydney Cummings positioned herself for the shot on goal.

Striking the ball hard, Cummings drove it toward the top of the goal, but it was

ANNA YUAN/THE HOYA

Georgetown women’s soccer needed overtime for the seventh time this season, eventually settling for a 1-1 draw against the Providence Friars at Shaw Field. just inches too high. The ball struck the crossbar and for the moment the score remained tied at 0-0.

Five minutes later, Georgetown finally got on the board. After two perfectly placed passes by first-year defender Cyanne Doyle and senior defender Jenna Royson, junior midfielder Julia Leas found herself with only the goalkeeper to beat. Leas drove the ball past the goalkeeper into the net, giving the Hoyas a 1-0 lead.

Georgetown’s lead did not last long. At the 69:17 mark, Providence went on the counter-attack. Forward Meg Hughes drove a high-flying

cross into the middle of the box, where the ball struck the head of midfielder Gillian Kenney. Despite a strong save attempt, the ball snuck past Augur and the Friars tied the game, 1-1.

The score remained tied 1-1 for the remainder of the second half, sending Georgetown to the all-too-familiar overtime period. The Hoyas had already tied five games this season.

The first overtime period saw each team attempt two shots. The Hoyas came close to victory after a shifty move made by junior forward Gia Vicari. After attacking down the left sideline, Vicari

quickly changed directions, creating separation between her and the Friar defender.

Sadly for Georgetown, Vicari’s shot attempt was well defended by Bodmer.

In the second overtime period, the closest either side came to scoring occurred when Hughes attempted a shot at the 102:27 mark, but the ball was successfully stopped by Augur.

Next up for the Hoyas is a Big East showdown against the Butler Bulldogs (10-1-1, 3-0-1 Big East) on Thursday at Shaw Field. Georgetown will look to slow down the hot Butler team, which has won 10 of its last 11 games.

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a goal. She made space in the middle and dished the ball into the center of the goal circle for a teammate to run onto. Though no one was able to capitalize, Trumpbour continued sending the ball into the middle.

In the third quarter, the Explorers sought to respond and knot up the score. La Salle’s offense powered the ball downfield and tried to slam it in, but Georgetown’s senior goalkeeper

FIELD HOCKEY

Ciara Weets blocked the ball.

But, as the offense and defense started to pile in for the rebound, La Salle forward Hannah Yanovich found the back of the cage in a scrap battle at the foot of the goal.

With the score now 1-1, the Hoyas’ defense led a field transfer, bringing the ball from the right side of the field to the left. This created space for the offense to run onto the ball.

Trumpbour brought her defender out wide and went inside to send one of her famous

passes to the center of the circle. Towne tipped the ball high into the top left corner away from the goalie and scored to regain the lead for the Hoyas.

With six minutes left, Trumpbour broke away from her defender and sprinted down the right side of the field. She found Van Der Veen in the middle and sent a sweep to the top of the circle. Van Der Veen wound up and sent the ball slamming past Curley into the back of the cage for her second score of the after-

noon, which would prove to ice the 3-1 victory for Georgetown.

The Hoyas, fresh off their third consecutive victory, will have a short break before heading to Norfolk, Va. to face No. 19 Old Dominion (8-2, 2-1 Big East) on Friday, Oct. 8 as a part of a two-game Virginia road trip. Georgetown will then play Virginia Commonwealth University (7-3, 3-1 Atlantic 10) on Sunday, Oct. 10, hoping to return home with their win streak extended to five.

Sports

VOLLEYBALL Georgetown (4-12) vs.

UConn (11-5) Saturday, 5 p.m.

McDonough Arena

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021 TALKING POINTS

MEN’S SOCCER

NUMBERS GAME

No. 1 Georgetown won its eighth-

We’re an underdog, but as

straight game, powered by junior

tonight showed, we are not just

forward Stefan Stojanovic.

a team that rolls over.”

See A10

Volleyball Head Coach David Heller

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Georgetown women’s soccer has now gone 27 consecutive games without suffering a loss.

WOMEN’S SOCCER

Hoyas Tie Providence Friars, Stay Undefeated Aiden Penry Hoya Staff Writer

The No. 23 Georgetown women’s soccer team was unable to pull off a win on its Senior Day, but the team remains without a loss so far this season following a 1-1 draw against Providence College on Sunday, Oct. 3 at Shaw Field.

The Hoyas (6-0-6, 2-0-2 Big East) entered the match against the Friars (6-3-2, 1-1-1 Big East) on a two-game win streak, following Big East wins over Xavier University and DePaul University. The Friars themselves were coming off an exciting overtime win against Creighton University.

Much of Georgetown’s success this year is due to its stellar defense. Entering the match, the Hoyas ranked 18th in the country in goals allowed per game, conceding just more than half a goal per game.

However, the Hoyas’ offense has been lacking at times. Georgetown entered the match ranked 92nd in the country in goals per game, scoring an average of 1.75. The Hoyas have scored more than two goals in a game only once the entire season, when they demolished the College of William and Mary, 6-0.

This is the fourth time this season that Georgetown finished a game tied with a score of 1-1.

The first half began with both teams fighting for possession of the ball in the See PROVIDENCE, A11

BRIDGET SIPPEL/THE HOYA

Georgetown field hockey extended its three-game win streak with a dominant 3-1 win over the La Salle Explorers at Cooper Field.

FIELD HOCKEY

Van Der Veen Powers GU to 3rd Straight Win Peter Dicioccio Special to The Hoya

Georgetown women’s field hockey continued its rebound from a slow start to the season and notched their third consecutive victory as they gained a 3-1 win over the La Salle University Explorers on Sunday, Oct. 3.

The Hoyas (6-5, 1-2 Big East) have outscored opponents 6-2 during their winning streak. Sunday’s matchup displayed Georgetown’s offensive prowess, as the Hoyas scored three times for the first time since

its matchup against Appalachian State University on Aug. 28. Two goals from firstyear attacker Emma Van Der Veen, aided by a tally from fellow first-year attacker Sophie Towne, powered Georgetown’s victory over La Salle (5-7, 1-2 Atlantic 10).

In a scoreless first quarter, fifth-year midfielder Ali Cronin took five penalty corners for the Hoyas. Cronin brought the ball to the top of the circle where a forward was ready to drive it in. Late in the first quarter, the Hoyas shot a corner that went just shy of the left cor-

ner of the cage. The rebound caused La Salle to gain control and carry the ball up the field, crossing the ball into the middle of the circle, but the Georgetown defense stayed united to protect its goalkeeper and sweep the ball out of the middle.

Georgetown came out strong in the second quarter. The ball was quickly carried up the field and dished off to sophomore midfielder Vivienne Trumpbour, who tried for a one-on-one opportunity with the goalie and two defenders on her back. She was unable to get

CROSS-COUNTRY

the shot off, but first-year attacker Emma Van Der Veen broke away from her defender and gained control of the rebound ball. Van Der Veen drove the ball past La Salle goalkeeper Ryan Curley into the right corner of the cage.

The Hoyas celebrated the first goal of the day and Van Der Veen’s second goal of the season.

Riding off the first goal, the Hoyas moved the ball with swift, crisp passes. They kept the energy up as they tried to knock in another goal before the first half ended, but they were unable to convert.

The Hoyas started with control of the ball to start the second half. They were persistent to get another goal off with the five penalty corners. Georgetown tried out a new corner to shake things up. They faked a drive at the top, passed right and backed down to Cronin, who tried to lift the ball into the cage. The play was executed beautifully, but the shot went slightly left of the net.

Trumpbour, on the left forward line, was determined to set her teammates up for See LA SALLE, A11

BEWARE THE HYPE

Women’s Squad Impresses at Latest Meet 76ers, Ben Simmons Will Suffer in Trade John Whelan Hoya Staff Writer

On Friday, Oct. 1, Georgetown’s men’s and women’s cross-country programs competed in South Bend, Ind. and Bethlehem, Pa. The men’s team disappointed against arduous competition in Notre Dame’s Joe Piane Invitational, while the women’s team had an impressive showing in the Paul Short Run Gold 6K Race.

The men’s team placed 12th in a competitive field that included 10 ranked teams out of 23 total, following a third place finish in the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational at Pennsylvania State University three weeks prior.

The Hoyas partook in the Blue 5 Mile Race and totalled 289 points, only beating Purdue University, Indiana University and University of Kentucky.

A bright spot of the overall poor Georgetown showing, however, was the debut of graduate student middle distance runner Matthew Young. With a time of 23:59.3, Young turned in the best time of the squad and came in 22nd place overall.

GUHOYAS Georgetown men’s crosscountry Head Coach Brandon With Georgetown cross-country split up over the weekend, the men’s crossSee CROSS-COUNTRY, A11 country team settled for a 12th-place finish at the Joe Piane Invitational.

Visit us online at thehoya.com/sports

Christian Baldari Columnist

Ever since Ben Simmons announced he wanted to leave the Philadelphia 76ers, the team and the Australian guard have dug in their heels — a standoff that will leave both parties worse off.

Simmons’ refusal to attend training camp is reminiscent of Anthony Davis’ and James Harden’s strategies, which earned them trades out of New Orleans and Houston in 2019 and 2021, respectively.

However, Davis and Harden were motivated by the belief that they did all they could to help their teams and that the front office had failed to surround them with an adequate supporting cast. The case with Simmons is the opposite.

In the past few seasons, Philadelphia shook up both its front office and its roster in the hopes of building a championship team, hiring Daryl Morey as head of basketball operations, Doc Rivers as head coach and trading for 3-point shooter Seth Curry to free up Simmons’ driving lanes. Simmons, in turn, responded by playing some of

his worst-ever basketball in the 2021 NBA playoffs.

Simmons’ leaked frustration puts the 76ers in an uncomfortable position. When a franchise star goes public with their desire to be traded, their wish tends to be granted eventually.

Yet the Sixers have little leverage in trade negotiations with other teams who know that Simmons wants out.

Simmons’ trade value has plummeted since the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks.

Throughout the series, Simmons was basically a nonfactor for the Sixers on offense, averaging only 9.9 points per game.

His shambolic performance was best illustrated by his decision to turn down a wide-open layup late in Game 7 out of fear of being fouled and shooting free throws — Simmons shot a dismal 32.7% from the line throughout the series.

Long gone are the days after Simmons’ rookie year, when fans and pundits prophesied he could become the next LeBron James if he added a jump shot to his arsenal. Simmons’ performance in the playoffs proved that he lacks both the desire to develop a jump shot from outside of six feet and, crucially, the confidence needed to shoot one.

See BALDARI, A11