Unity Commission Cuts Ties With Student Association
The Student Commission for Unity announced a decision to break away from GUSA Sunday night, following a Feb. 8 vote on the issue by the SCU’s executive board.
While SCU was originally created as a commission of the student association Senate and obtained funding from GUSA, conflict between the groups arose on Feb. 4 when the GUSA Senate altered and rejected some recommendations made in the SCU’s final report.
Brian Kesten (COL ’10), principal investigator and commission chairman, said that independence from GUSA will provide greater stability for SCU and will allow the organization to more easily connect with the campus community and fulfill its mission.
“The board believes that the students who invested thousands of hours conducting the research are the most qualified students to determine the direction of the organization, its research, and its recommendations,” he said in an e-mail.
The commission was first organized last April in response to what was widely considered to be the Hoya’s minimal coverage of a rally and vigil for the Jena Six, six black students from Jena, La. who were initially charged with attempted murder after attacking a white classmate, as well as two alleged hate crimes against Georgetown students.
Over the last 10 months, it conducted a survey of 1,339 Georgetown students about their perceptions of bias on campus. The SCU released its findings, as well as a series of recommendations to the university in a ceremony Jan. 27. SCU’s charter requires that the GUSA Senate approve its recommendations before they are officially presented to the university, and the senate voted to amend and eliminate certain recommendations — while approving many others.
GUSA President Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) said in a viewpoint (“Kesten Taking SCU Down Wrong Path,” thehoya.com, Feb. 17, 2009) that he was disappointed by SCU’s decision to cut ties with GUSA and is not sure what success that will bring the commission in the future.
“Affirming my worst suspicions, the SCU has decided to cut ties with GUSA in order to unilaterally petition administrators for a number of controversial diversity-related policy changes,” Dowd said. “This development raises serious concerns about what is being advocated on the behalf of students without their informed consent.”
According to university spokesperson Julie Bataille, the administration does not plan to get involved in the conflict between SCU and GUSA.
“This issue is really one for SCU and GUSA to work out. What is most important is that university administrators be able to take the thoughtful research and work related to SCU’s recent study on diversity and tolerance and incorporate it appropriately into existing mechanisms so that our ongoing efforts can be enhanced,” she said in an e-mail.
Dowd said he gave SCU the opportunity to become an independent organization last September. Dowd and Kesten reached the mutual decision that SCU should operate within GUSA, maintaining GUSA funding and advertisement.
According to Dowd, GUSA appropriated “thousands of dollars” for the SCU. Kesten said that GUSA contributed about 30 percent of the SCU’s total funding, with the rest coming from a variety of other sources, including private donors.
While Kesten was addressing the GUSA Senate on Wednesday night, Senator Tim Swenson (COL ’10) asked Kesten when he was going to submit a payment plan for returning the 30 percent of the SCU’s funding, which was supplied by GUSA. GUSA Senator and Finance and Appropriations Committee Chair Matt Wagner (SFS ’11), said that he is not sure whether the SCU will have to pay back GUSA.
“The research was not done by SCU at the request of GUSA. The research was done by GUSA. It just so happens that the way that GUSA did the research was to create a commission to do that. The SCU is and was GUSA,” Wagner said. “The SCU was a mechanism through with GUSA was collecting research … never intended to do advocacy. Are they going to have to pay the senate back? I don’t know.”
Kesten is also unsure whether or not repayment will be required, as there are conditions that complicate the situation.
“This senate and this president didn’t allocate those funds to us, it was the senate under Eden Schiffmann (COL ’08) and the executive under Ben Shaw (COL ’08),” he said. “I don’t know if there’s any precedent for asking a club to pay back funds used for events or anything … I don’t know.”
Senate Speaker Reggie Greer (COL ’09) said that he was not surprised by the move and expressed his support for both the SCU and its decision to become independent. He added that official decisions still have to be made in order for the SCU to become an independent club, which includes changing the name of the organization. In order to become a new club, the SCU must submit an official application, according to the Georgetown University Web site.
“I hope people realize it’s never been about slighting one group of people. … I’m very proud of what [the SCU] has done,” Greer said.
According to an SCU press release, the relationship with GUSA has not been a positive one.
“The Student Commission for Unity Executive Board has seen a once productive relationship with the student association turn into an inhibiting one,” the press release stated. “As we move forward, we are confident that our move away from GUSA will in no way inhibit our ability to advocate on behalf of the student body for positive change.”
Andrea Bischoff (SFS ’11), a board member for the Academic Initiatives of the SCU, was disappointed that the two groups could no longer work together.
“The bylaws of the student senate state the purpose of improving the quality of life at Georgetown for its students. It is unfortunate that, since SCU strives toward the same mission, the two seem to not be able to work in-tandem toward accomplishing this goal,” she said in an e-mail.
Wagner stated that the main problem with the commission’s becoming an independent club is that they will not be able to legitimately speak on behalf of student body.
“Although they can cite the research as fact, they can’t claim to be speaking on behalf [of] the student body [as an independent organization]. They can only legitimately claim to speak on behalf of themselves,” he said.
Katie Noble (MSB ’09), an SCU executive board member, however, said in e-mail that the SCU’s goals have changed and therefore the commission itself needs to alter its identity.
“As we move forward with the advocacy mission of Student Commission for Unity, there has been a fundamental shift in the type of work we are doing … the shift in the type of work also resulted in a shift from demographic-based research teams to action teams based on the part of life at Georgetown that the recommendations seek to change,” Noble said.
Feb 17 2009 at 2:23 p.m.
As far as I am concerned, all that occurred on Sunday evening was the resignation of Kesten and his fellow researchers/supporters from SCU. The commission still exists until GUSA dissolves it, along with its research and recommendations. GUSA, as the elected body of students representatives, ought to still advocate for the recommendations it approved, and advocate against the things it did not. Kesten and friends are free to do as they wish outside of GUSA, but not under the guise of having a mandate from the student body.
Feb 17 2009 at 4:56 p.m.
The only thing "inhibiting" cooperation between GUSA and SCU is Kesten's arrogance.
Feb 17 2009 at 6:04 p.m.
Good for SCU! I'm glad they have finally recognized that GUSA is not an effective means to create change on campus. There is no reason why you should be affiliated with them at all. If you recognize a problem on campus, and you have developed solutions, GUSA is in no position to tell you what to do.
Throughout my time at Georgetown, none of the changes that came to campus that I found to be important happened as a result of GUSA's involvement. Stand up for yourselves! Do you what you believe is right.
and GOOD LUCK!
Feb 17 2009 at 11:23 p.m.
Coming soon to a table in Red Square..
T-shirts that show exactly what the majority of students think of our wonderful student government
GUCK
FUSA
Feb 18 2009 at 2:42 a.m.
Here's my problem with the situation: Kesten used his association with GUSA for funding and for access to administrators (not that he wouldn't have gotten access to them after time). He and the rest of the team produced an extraordinary document with some interesting recommendations and findings.
Nick's right - SCUnity is perfectly free to go and form its own organization and pursue its goals, but it should not presume to speak on behalf of the entirety of the student body. What I see here, and from that press release they issued, is that Kesten was angry that a few recommendations were not issued and that he is not fully free to do what he wants through the GUSA system (despite its funding). So, is he angry that a few (quite controversial) recommendations were not accepted? Or is it something more? I do not understand their reasoning for breaking away, to be honest. I'm not in GUSA so I don't presume to know all of the backroom dealings that may gone on, but still...this is stupid politics. And I have a probably false but still worrisome impression that Kesten was happy getting his funding easily, and now that the main job is done and he doesn't need GUSA's overt support, he feels he can do what he wants with it. That's a problem, given the magnitude of the research and its topic.
And do I dare imply that since SCUnity was part of GUSA, then GUSA has the rights to the research they did? ;)
Feb 18 2009 at 2:59 a.m.
EXCUSE ME...I realize that what I am about to say could come off as scandalous -- but I think that a lot of students actually respect GUSA now more than than they have in the past. I for one have been impressed by the leadership that the Dowd/ Kelly administration has shown throughout its term. This whole debacle with Kesten and the SCU is a perfect case in point. While perennial GUSA haters are sneering "GUCK FUSA!" from behind the veil of annonymity, President Dowd is taking a bold public stand in the name of transparancy and accountability. I respect that.
I do also think that Brian Kesten should have the opportunity to advocate for what he believes in. It sounds like he's done a very professional job with the SCU research project and that he deserves a shot to share his findings with administrators.
The bottom line, however, (and I think this is the main point of Dowd's op-ed) is that now that the SCU has withdrawn from GUSA, it can no longer claim to represent the student body.
Feb 18 2009 at 5:35 a.m.
"While perennial GUSA haters are sneering "GUCK FUSA!" from behind the veil of annonymity, President Dowd is taking a bold public stand in the name of transparancy and accountability. I respect that."
So you applaud the campus president by comparing him to a random poster in the comments section of a website?
Good one.
In a leadership role, transparency and authority go hand in hand. Dowd had no choice but to throw one last jab at SCU.
Feb 19 2009 at 3:51 a.m.
So by staying in GUSA what was to happen of all the research that the students, not their student representatives in GUSA, did?!?!? It is obvious that there are major problems on campus and GUSA has done little to solve them. GUSA or no GUSA the work that the students put into the research and the result of the research cannot be denied and if GUSA doesn't want advance the student's recommendations, on how to combat some of the serious issues on campus, then it would seem to me that they are against the student's interest. SCU should have no ties with an institution that wants to discredit their work while not providing another 300+ page document stating othewise.
Feb 19 2009 at 6:43 a.m.
The person above me ("KAW") clearly has no conception of what the problem was...
GUSA approved 6 out of the original 9 (or 8, depending on how you count) proposals made by its Commission for unity. From all I know, it still plans to carry out the advocacy it pledged for those six initiatives.
But how does their research correlate at all to the recommendations that Kesten's commission made?
Sure, they had a survey that said the students feel a certain way about diversity on campus. But nowhere on the survey did the students express any feelings at all about whether there should be more course requirements. Nowhere did it ask students whether they think more NSO programming should focus on diversity, nowhere did they survey RA's as to whether diversity training and screening for RA's is sufficient. Nowhere did they ask about the appeal of a mandatory 1:4 ration on freshman floors of Nonwhite to White students.
Those were the recommendations of the so-called SCU. They never had student support for those recommendations, and anybody who thinks that they did clearly misses the logical disconnect between survey results which say one thing and policy proposals which say another thing entirely. Not to mention arbitrarily and without any direct causation leading from the survey results themselves.
Feb 19 2009 at 3:51 p.m.
Great point about the disconnect between the findings and the recommendations. Hadn't thought of that. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the concerns I've expressed about the validity of the survey findings in the first place. Indeed, if students were as uproarious about the lack of diversity/sensitivity/awareness/phrase-of-the-day on campus, why are they generally opposed to so many of Kesten's recommendations? Either the recommendations don't reflect the data yielded by the survey, or the data yielded by the survey doesn't reflect the true sentiment of the Georgetown community.
Feb 20 2009 at 2:47 a.m.
the whole point of the commission is that they make RECCOMENDATIONS to GUSA, which then implements them. isn't this changing the rules after you've already started the game? GUSA approved most of their ideas, i dont see what the issue is. sore losers???
Feb 20 2009 at 6:18 a.m.
In response to "gu student" above me,
No on the "sore losers" comment, but a resounding yes on everything else.
-Matt Wagner
Feb 20 2009 at 6:24 a.m.
Grove East, you make some really truly insightful points about this research. Would you mind if I ask who you are, to possibly speak with you more about this? If you do not feel comfortable posting in this forum, please do e-mail me at mjwagner@gmail.com - I look forward to hearing from you. Your willingness to look in to this is very, very impressive and GUSA could really use some smart and objective people like yourself.
Best,
Matt Wagner
GUSA Senator, McCarthy 2-6
Chair, GUSA Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee
Feb 20 2009 at 1:28 p.m.
Since I was one of the faculty that was asked to examine the findings, I'll express some of my concerns, pro and con.
The survey reveals concerns that do need to be addressed. All students should be able to experience Georgetown free of incidents of bias and prejudice. The fact that some don't, should be a matter of concern for all of us.
That said, the survey had its limitations. As I told Brian Kesten when he first approached me, the survey seemed oriented to finding the bad, and not toward seeing if there was any good. More importantly, however, is the fact that we don't know what exactly students are describing when they speak about incidents of bias or prejudice (verbal abuse? feeling excluded from group dynamics? perceived slights? graffiti on dorm door?). To address the concerns, we need, I think, more information about what exactly it is that students are experiencing.
I've posted below the longer feedback I gave to the Unity rep.
Best, Fr. Steck
The survey seems to reflect a certain ideological view -- not a bad one, but it still reflects biases of that view, and in that sense is limited. Two thoughts here. First, the questions seek out problems more than they seek out the good -- that's not necessarily flawed, but it means we don't have a counter-picture to help us interpret the results. Second, a choice was made by the creators of the survey to focus on the kinds of concerns, generally, associated with one end of the ideological spectrum. Again, that doesn't mean it's flawed, but it does make it hard to interpret the results. For example, I've heard other groups complain about feeling marginalized in certain campus settings: athletes (because everybody thinks they're dumb), conservative Christians (because most faculty are liberal and thus scorn their views), white heterosexuals (because they're blamed for everything), poor white people (because they face a lot of real problems but no one cares about them), etc. Since these are not voices generally recognized as having legitimate and noteworthy complaints (by everyone? by liberals? by Georgetown?), we don't explore their concerns. However, if this survey HAD included these concerns, then it might have helped us better understand the distinctive severity of issues like racism and homophobia.
Second, the survey provides us with student perceptions and not, necessarily, reality. That is, the survey doesn't tell us concretely what is happening around campus, just that a certain percentage of people experience what they perceive to be "x" (e.g., sexism, racism, prejudice, bias, etc.). The problem, however, is that we're never told how people define "x". That's a big limit nowadays since defining prejudice is where much of the disagreement lies, and, as a result, it has become a key problem confronting us: we have different perceptions about what is or is not racism, sexism, prejudice, etc. Of course, we agree on the worst offenses -- e.g., that giving someone an "F" because he or she is black is a vile instance of racism, but it's in the subtle areas where some of the greatest problems remain, and yet these areas are ones that we disagree about how to interpret and judge. Some claim that it is racist to oppose affirmative action; some claim that it is a white racism to support it. Is being critical of gay marriage an example of homophobia? Can someone criticize conservative Islam's treatment of women without being judged as intolerant or unfairly making Muslim students uncomfortable in class. There are, clearly some incidents that we can all agree on as wrong: e.g., screaming "fag" hatefully at another person. But those agreements, I think, hide the fact that there are some significant differences among us about how to characterize the more subtle forms of prejudice and hate. The survey didn't seem to offer any concrete guides to the participants about what exactly constitutes racism, sexism, prejudice, etc..
Maybe in the next go around, the survey could describe certain borderline scenarios and then ask the participants: do you think this is an example of racism? And, have you ever experienced it?
Feb 20 2009 at 2:41 p.m.
Hoya alum,
Which changes that came to campus during the last few years are you referring to, that "weren't because of GUSA"?
Were you here the last few years, when GUSA defeated a keg ban, created Grab-n-Go, added Saturday GUTS bus service, returned accountability to student financing (finding a million bucks in wasted student fees in the process), changed major elements of the Code of Conduct, opened up Riggs Library to students, created and endowed the Lecture Fund, and brought the name-brand restaurants to Hoya Court to replace the shitty generic food sold there that nobody ate?
Or were you here a few years earlier, when GUSA created the Student Activities Fee to address the stagnant student budget and the huge proliferation of student groups? Or when they ended the post-9/11 24/7 university lockdown policy? Or when they came up with the idea and pushed for years to implement the GOCard, replacing the five cards students previously had to carry around?
Or were you here even earlier, when GUSA created the Corp and ran it for the first 20 years (until it went independent in the mid-90s)?
Mistaking your ignorance for GUSA's incompetence just compounds your ignorance.
Feb 20 2009 at 10:19 p.m.
Between this article and a series of articles about SAC and GUSA, it's become pretty unbelievable that you can find a place with this many college-aged students who genuinely enjoy bloviating, full-of-hot-air bureaucratic BS like this. I swear these clubs spend more time talking about themselves and their fancy titles and hierarchies and business meetings than they do in actually getting anything done. Georgetown students need to get over themselves and realize we're all just piddly college students... a little perspective never hurt anyone.
Feb 23 2009 at 5:41 p.m.
CorpieCutie said above: "a lot of students actually respect GUSA now more than than they have in the past. I for one have been impressed by the leadership that the Dowd / Kelly administration has shown throughout its term. This whole debacle with Kesten and the SCU is a perfect case in point. While perennial GUSA haters are sneering "GUCK FUSA!" from behind the veil of annonymity, President Dowd is taking a bold public stand in the name of transparancy and accountability. I respect that."
I'm sorry, but it's hard not to laugh when someone refers to "President Dowd" and his "administration" of the student body. Come on! Let's let a little bit of air out of that ego before it pops!
Feb 23 2009 at 7:04 p.m.
Dear "anonymous" (two above me),
It's not members of GUSA who spend their time bloviating and talking about hierarchies. If you've ever been to any GUSA meetings you'd know that in those meetings things like title and org structure don't matter. People are focused on issues and results, even though they're very hard to accomplish. And yes, sometimes they have debates about topics like what the university's investment priorities should be or the changing nature of the Jesuit/Catholic identities at the school, but those aren't exactly trivial issues that students themselves don't care about.
It's the press which is too lazy to write real coverage and focuses on process stories that makes this ridiculous. The Hoya would much rather cover this than do a deep dive into student funding, the Code of Conduct or the Summer Fellows Program. The Voice recently actually attempted in their cover story to look at the culture of GUSA and presented it fairly. I wish they'd continue that and add on some deeper dives of policy issues.