Most of these are eminently reasonable except I don't like the fact that the school can decide whether you choose to live off campus or not (or having any say in the decision at all). If someone is a bad tenant/neighbor/breaking the law and they're not on school property then that's between the neighbor, the person and the police if necessary.

We see the same thing in high schools and middle schools where kids are punished at school for something outside of it. And with Georgetown everyone is an adult to boot.

by drumz on Jun 7, 2012 4:54 pm • link • report

Based on re-reading I need to clarify, are we talking about GU owned housing not on the campus proper? If that's the case then I can understand somewhat.

by drumz on Jun 7, 2012 4:58 pm • link • report

@drumz

No, it's with regard to all off-campus housing.

by Dizzy on Jun 7, 2012 5:01 pm • link • report

@drumz

Here's the text from the filing to the Zoning Commission:

Adopt a policy that states that living off-campus is a privilege, not a right, taking into account conduct and seniority; students who have engaged in serious or repeated misconduct will not be permitted to live off-campus.

by Ken Archer on Jun 7, 2012 5:05 pm • link • report

Here's the clauses related to improvements in on-campus social life:

15. c. Change student conduct policies to assure that the environment for students to host social gatherings (including parties where alcohol is served) is at least as welcoming on campus as off campus in order to encourage students to initiate socializing on campus and/or to return to campus for late night socializing. Specific policy and practice changes will include:
i. Permit students of legal age living in apartments, townhouses, and other living spaces on campus to host parties in impromptu ways, eliminating the need to register parties well in advance.
ii. Train Residence Life staff and Department of Public Safety staff to manage student parties on campus in ways that allow those parties to continue whenever it is reasonable to do so (acknowledging that safety is still a primary concern), making it significantly more likely that on campus parties will be allowed to continue.
...
19. By Fall 2014, the University shall complete the New South Student Center, which will include an on-campus student pub and provide an appealing on-campus venue for late-night socializing.

20. By Fall 2012, the University shall bring food trucks to campus during late night hours, and, through the GCP, work with students and the community on other short-term measures to increase the attractiveness of on campus socializing.

21. Over the term of the Campus Plan, the University shall explore the feasibility of improvements to other on-campus facilities to promote student life on campus (i.e., green space for outdoor campus socializing, academic spaces such as libraries and study rooms, recreational and athletic facilities, student activity spaces, and other social gathering spaces).

by Ken Archer on Jun 7, 2012 5:10 pm • link • report

drumz said,
> And with Georgetown everyone is an adult to boot.

If they act like adults, they won't have a problem.

Getting a degree from Georgetown is a privilege extended to very few fortunate people. The school has a right to place whatever restrictions they want on on student behavior -- on and off-campus. Most other exclusive schools have "off-campus permission" policies, where dormitory housing is required except for seniors and a few juniors who get special permission, all contingent on good grades and behavior.

For students who don't like living by those rules, there's plenty of public commuter schools to choose from.

by Novanglus on Jun 7, 2012 5:13 pm • link • report

My most significant objection here is similar to the one that drumz is advancing. Many of the proposed conditions are fair compromises that students can stomach.

This language about living off-campus not being a right is troubling, though. Policy wise, I think many of us (Ken included) have agreed that the better way to draw students into on-campus housing is by making on-campus a more appealing place to be. Built [that environment], and they will come. Requirements that make students sound like less than equal members of society aren't the way to go, especially given DC Human Rights.

by Jake Sticka on Jun 7, 2012 5:22 pm • link • report

Vanderbilt is deploying a residential college system. It's an impressive long-term committment. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/collegehalls/about.php

But it's frightfully expensive to re-engineer a campus to the residential college model. Unfortunately, Georgetown is lightyears away from having the finacial capacity to turn this plan into action.

by gordo on Jun 7, 2012 5:27 pm • link • report

Thanks for the update. Seems like some reasonable compromises are shaping up.

However, I think the neighborhood is too quick to blame all its traffic/noise problems on Georgetown students. The last time I checked, most of the people leaving gtown bars at 2 am on Saturday are not students at GU. Even if we tucked in all the students at 10 pm on the weekends, there's still going to be noise and disturbances. Just sayin'

Honestly, all this makes me think about is going to the Tombs and having way too much to drink!

by MJ on Jun 7, 2012 5:28 pm • link • report

It's a private university. Of course they can mandate whether (undergrad) students live on-campus or off. Don't like it? You're free to take your dollars elsewhere. Many other schools have the same rules.

As for the transportation plan, what are the current routes for the GUTS buses? Still circuitous?

by MLD on Jun 7, 2012 5:30 pm • link • report

Policy wise, I think many of us (Ken included) have agreed that the better way to draw students into on-campus housing is by making on-campus a more appealing place to be.

I agree with Jake completely here. The social life measures GU commits to take to make on-campus housing more appealing will, I hope and expect, make it easy to fill the 450 additional on-campus beds. If GU ends up having to restrict mature, responsible upperclassmen from living off-campus in order to fill those 450 beds, then I think that's a sign that they didn't execute well on their stated intention to improve on-campus social life.

by Ken Archer on Jun 7, 2012 5:30 pm • link • report

Good writeup, Ken -- I am impressed with the ability by all parties to reach agreement on this, and I think that there are many positive developments in the agreement (along with a few thing I find detrimental, but that's what compromises are for, right?)

I will be curious to see the implementation of the parking, and the off-campus housing "privilege" aspects. I think the parking issue in particular strikes me as discriminatory, but I am glad to see that in addition to aiming to constrict supply of cars, there are efforts to add alternatives (e.g., expanded bikeshare and carsharing).

I do see some "be careful what you ask for" possibilities in the reduction of undergrads off-campus. While I don't know the actual magnitude, the Rocky's Reports over the past semester have shown that a significant number of complaint calls to MPD and to the SNAP hotline have actually turned out to be group houses with no Georgetown students in them (and thus no avenue for mitigation).

Dumping 100 group houses onto the market over the next 5 years is unlikely to cause a conversion of them all to single family homes, as much as some of the real estate agents in the neighborhood might wish. Instead, with the <5% rental vacancy rates in DC, those houses are most likely to become group houses of 23-year olds (varying in rowdiness just as the existing student group homes do).

by Jacques on Jun 7, 2012 5:30 pm • link • report

@Ken, @gordo -- I think there may be a disconnect in how we're talking about "residential college." The documents talk about building a more residential on-campus undergraduate environment," which I think is a positive and noble development, and primarily involves aiming to center both academic and social life on campus.

A "residential college system," such as those at Yale, Franklin & Marshall, and under development at Vanderbilt, is a very specific model based on the House system at British universities such Oxford (or Hogwarts) requires a massive overhaul of academic, residential, and student services facilities. I think the agreement may move the University toward this latter model, but that would be beyond the scope of this campus plan or its agreements.

@Novanglus - Most other exclusive schools have "off-campus permission" policies, where dormitory housing is required except for seniors and a few juniors who get special permission, all contingent on good grades and behavior.

Pardon my disbelief, but I would love to see a source for this statement. I'm aware of a handful of schools that have a similar set of policies, but to say "most other exclusive schools" seems like you're defining the exclusivity based on whether they have your preferred policy in place. (Or you're saying, "Duke and Harvard have similar programs, so most exclusive schools must.")

by Jacques on Jun 7, 2012 5:40 pm • link • report

I have to applaud the Georgetown residents for their cunning in finding ways to impose regulations on other Americans' lives. Were students represented in these negotiations, or was it all done behind closed doors? I can't believe anyone would pay $45K a year fees and then have to 'ask permission' to live off-campus!

How about this: law-abiding Americans have the right to live wherever they like and own a car if they like, and no asking anyone for permission!

by renegade09 on Jun 7, 2012 6:16 pm • link • report

Ken, you've overlooked the obvious point that the plan essentially mandates that all graduate students vacate the Georgetown-Burleith-Foxhall areas. Graduate students will be housed "elsewhere," in "University-sponsored" housing, or perhaps given "incentives" to vacate the premises.

This is pretty dismal stuff. GU graduate students are hardly rabble-rousers or even particularly bad neighbors, and singling them out from living near campus (since GU has NO on-campus graduate student housing) is petty NIMBYism at its best.

by PM on Jun 7, 2012 6:49 pm • link • report

Well, I don't like it, but I can live with it.

There's plenty of wording I find objectionable, such as the "New emphasis on a living and learning campus that centralizes student social life on campus" (because obviously we want students to stay in their campus bubble and not venture out into the city!); the implication that it is students and University people that are responsible for congestion and parking woes in the neighborhood, rather than the fact that Georgetown is a giant traffic sink because it sits atop Key Bridge (don't believe me? Check out the area on Veterans Day, which is a federal holiday but not a University one - traffic and parking conditions are wildly different); or the unnecessary and bad precedent setting stipulation that undergrads "shall be prohibited from bringing cars to campus or parking their cars on the street in Georgetown, Burleith, and Foxhall" (they already can't RPPs or park on campus, so it's basically a non-issue, but it does codify a restriction on students' use of public space. Why not just ban students from walking through most neighborhood streets? Same concept).

Personally, I find the push toward satellite campuses to be troubling and a dilution of the University's character and heritage, but I realize that this is an item in the DC Comprehensive Plan and is probably inescapable.

There is one item, however, that is absolutely wrongheaded and counterproductive, and that is the insistence that the University route all GUTS buses (other than the limited Wisconsin Ave. route, which uses small vehicles) through Canal Road.

It is absolutely galling to see language that calls on the University to strongly insist on GUTS use and requires installation of GPS trackers in every bus, yet simultaneously requires that one of the routes become much less convenient. The last set of route changes, adopted in response to neighborhood group demands, made the Dupont Circle off-peak route circuitous and much lengthier. Requiring these buses to go via Canal Road would make it even worse - and this would not just be off-peak, as is the case now, but at all times.

The sense of entitlement required to declare that your street is too good to have buses going down it is absolutely mindboggling.

by Dizzy on Jun 7, 2012 6:54 pm • link • report

To touch on a few points made in comments above:

- As Jacques said, there are no plans for Georgetown to move to a residential college system of the sort found at schools like the one he named. In some ways, such a system would be antithetical to Georgetown's philosophy, which seeks to limit and break down artificially imposed divisions (e.g. no official Greek life) and treat the student body as one. No honors college, no eating clubs, none of that. And that's the way it should be, imho.

The language used is underlining the idea that it's a residential campus, e.g. students live on campus, rather than commute in. Now, given that GU already houses a higher percentage of students than any other college (aside from the special-needs Gallaudet population), I would strongly argue that it is already a "integrated living and learning campus" with a "residential undergraduate on-campus environment."

- MLD: the issue isn't whether Georgetown CAN mandate such a thing; it can. A aniversity can mandate a hell of a lot of things for its students - just look at the rule book for students at VMI or MMI or Bob Jones U. (it of the famous 'no interracial dating' rule). To me, anyway, the question is more about the propriety of the city and neighborhood associations browbeating a school into imposing such restrictions against it's will.

- The bias against graduate students sickens me and really makes it absolutely clear that the objection is not to immature 18-22 year old Georgetown undergrads, but to anyone who does not fit the preferred demographic type of residents in these elite neighborhoods. If the house is not occupied by a sole, affluent family of 2 spouses and 2.5 children (or moving in that direction), it is a blight upon the neighborhood that necessitates "a major, permanent reduction" in quantity.

As Jacques alluded to, both the Guardians of Neighborhood Character and the Lenore Rubino/Georgetown Fine Properties/Realtor set is going to be in for a rude awakening when they discover just how many of the non-owner-occupied houses in these neighborhoods are not actually filled up with GU students, grad or undergrad. I suppose they will need to come up with another tactic for discriminating against them.

by Dizzy on Jun 7, 2012 7:13 pm • link • report

GU made big concessions because it knows it can't win against these guys right now. The Georgetown residents held all the cards going into the negotiations after the Office of Planning's extraordinary recommendation for 100% on-campus accommodation. I guess the university is trying to show that they have taken all reasonable steps to placate the neighbors, with the goal of being in a stronger position in 7 years time.

by renegade09 on Jun 7, 2012 7:28 pm • link • report

In the 60s, priests walked the streets of Georgetown enforcing a curfew for students living off-campus.

-More priests, that's what we need to take care of those pesky students.

by rengade09 on Jun 7, 2012 7:32 pm • link • report

I am disgusted to see that Georgetown University once again completely rolled over to the unreasonable, seperationist demands from the neighborhood, who treat students not like adult residents but like lepers that need to be kept behind fences.

It is time for the Washingtonian universities to ban together and eradicate the senseless discrimination of ANCs by going over their heads to the City Council, and if necessary straight to Congress.

There are some Washingtonian university alumni in very high places in the US Congress on both sides of the isle. For instance, there currently are 5 senators and 9 house members that are GW alumni, including the senate and house majority leaders. Time to start calling in some non-financial alumni favors.

by Jasper on Jun 7, 2012 8:29 pm • link • report

Having enrollment caps and student residential restrictions for DC universities is un-American and unfair. GW, GU, American and all the DC universities should sue the District over this! Washington needs vibrant, growing colleges. DC should stop micro-managing higher education!

by GWalum on Jun 7, 2012 10:07 pm • link • report

Apart from the collaborative-negotiation component, will have to agree with other commenters that the agreement seems very one-sided.

What does the university gain from all these concessions?

by xmal on Jun 7, 2012 10:14 pm • link • report

I can't help thinking that the use of a private university as a cat's paw to effect various policies that, if imposed directly by the District, would be unconstitutional is deeply troubling and a misuse of the planning process. I also wonder if the right to free speech and free association shouldn't protect the university's right to develop it's academic policies (including those concerning student's residency as a part of their "intellectual formation") from intrusion by government actors.

by Steve S. on Jun 7, 2012 10:33 pm • link • report

As for some of the assertions made by Ken in the actual post...

Leading universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton have adopted a similar residential college model, which integrates students' intellectual and residential life while creating fewer impacts on neighboring communities.

In the 1990 Campus Plan, the University committed "to create a residential college environment". I advocated a return to that vision last year, and am thrilled that Georgetown and its neighbors have reached accord on this vision.

As I explained above, "residential college environment" does not mean what you think it means in this case. No one at Georgetown wants students to be forced to join Brasenose College or the Quadrangle Club or House Harkonnen or whatever residential college system might be fabricated. Where such things evolved organically, that's fine. But there's no benefit to trying to artificially construct such an arrangement for the sole purpose of keeping students on campus and out of neighbors' sight.

Also, I thoroughly debunked your claims about "student ghettos" and "single-use dorms" in the comments to that original post of yours. I can provide a list of mixed-use features in every single dorm on campus. Georgetown is already a thoroughly residential campus, and you continue to completely miss the ways in which it functions as an organic whole, rather than a simple collection of discrete and unconnected buildings.

Only 3-4 decades ago, the University and the neighbors formed a single community with extensive interactions and relationships. Just watch the film The Exorcist to get an idea of what Georgetown was like in the early 70s - neighbors, priests, faculty and students interacted often.

There is significant desire among Georgetowners to return to this period of community and shared purpose.

You're really citing The Exorcist as an accurate depiction of what things were like back then?? Regardless, please provide even a single piece of evidence that 'Georgetowners' would like to interact with students often. Every single measure put forward by the neighborhood organizations would have the effect of decreasing student-neighbor interaction. Indeed, that's quite obviously the entire point - to get students out of neighbors' hair as much as possible. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.

Most neighbors actually care deeply about the intellectual and character formation of Georgetown students, and most students and professors care deeply about the families outside the university gates.

No they don't. There's no need for embellishment or false niceties. We're all adults here.

In the 60s, priests walked the streets of Georgetown enforcing a curfew for students living off-campus.

In the 60s, women were not allowed into Georgetown College because their intellect, disposition, and mien were not considered appropriate to a study of the liberal arts and sciences. It's a good thing it's not the 60s anymore. We have a rather bit more respect for people as individuals, rather than as merely members of some defined class, these days.

The University will propose significantly improved measures for relieving parking and traffic congestion in Georgetown. Their first proposal is to not allow off-campus undergraduates to bring cars into Georgetown.

There are almost no undergrads who bring cars "into Georgetown" aside from move-in and move-out. Some (a rather small number, in my experience) have cars that they keep parked in driveways, garages, or alleys in Burleith. As a rule, they do not park them on the streets of 20007, which is what the measure covers. Students are already prohibited from parking on campus or obtaining a RPP. Any other use surely falls within the "reasonable, very limited exceptions" allowed by the terms of the agreement/Plan. And thanks to the inclusion of those unstated and indeterminate exceptions, this whole provision becomes completely unenforceable and useless.

So really, this will not change conditions in any tangible way. All it does is offer another middle finger to undergraduates. Moreover, it sets a precedent that a University may be coerced into including an acquiescence to discrimination as a condition of enrollment. If you can be required to sign away your right to park on a city street - in any car, for any length of time - when you become a student, what else can you be made to sign away? The right to vote in DC elections? The right to use public parks? Why not? After all, Tom Smith and ANC3D tried to force American to keep its students away from using the Horace Mann public recreational space.

by Dizzy on Jun 7, 2012 10:41 pm • link • report

Their first proposal is to not allow off-campus undergraduates to bring cars into Georgetown.

How can this be enforced?

Suppose an off-campus undergraduate registers a car in DC, and obtains a RPP. How will GU know about it? Certainly the DC department of motor vehicles has no power to enforce an agreement between a university and its students. Moreover, the DC department of motor vehicles would not even know if a person registering a car is also a GU student, so that it may inform the university of the breach of its rules.

So then this part of the deal is toothless. More to the point, college students are pretty resourceful and can think through these things. The situation I described is bound to occur, and once the word gets out, often.

by goldfish on Jun 8, 2012 8:36 am • link • report

I wonder how difficult it would be for NOVA or Montgomery to lure GU out with some nice construction subsidies, maybe some state or county owned land?

I'd love to see this extreme NIMBYism - and I find this to be worse NIMBYism than anything involving infrastructure debates - blow up in the faces of those in the DC government that would acquiesce to any demand the Georgetowners voice.

I feel that at some point, if GU keeps getting pushed so hard, they may decide to up and sell their extremely valuable land and opt for greener pastures.

by Matthew B on Jun 8, 2012 10:17 am • link • report

@ Matthew B:I wonder how difficult it would be for NOVA or Montgomery to lure GU out with some nice construction subsidies, maybe some state or county owned land?

Not gonna happen. It's not like GMU and UMD don't have similar problems with their neighbors. Not as extreme, but that's because they're state unis, so they have more help from the state to start with.

I feel that at some point, if GU keeps getting pushed so hard, they may decide to up and sell their extremely valuable land and opt for greener pastures.

GU will never leave DC. Remember, DC came to GU. Look in the logo of GU, it says in Latin: "Georgetown College, on the banks of the Potomac in *Maryland*". Same thing for GW, and I guess AU and CUA. They were there before ANCs and will be there after ANCs. It's just a nuisance of a couple of decades to them.

Problem is, ANCs know and abuse this.

by Jasper on Jun 8, 2012 10:36 am • link • report

Our "foot in mouth" award of the day goes to Jennifer Altemus, who tells the Post that "It’s now going to be more of a privilege than a right" to live in her neighborhood.

Young men of Georgetown, please avert your eyes when passing by Ms. Altemus and the neighborhood gentry. Young women of Georgetown, a simple curtsy will suffice.

by Dane on Jun 8, 2012 11:28 am • link • report

That award is funny! Town gown issues have been going on for millenia. The University always wins, because its existence is perpetual. It can appease some neighbors, score some points, and move on. In the long run, we are all dead. Can't blame the neighbors for trying to change their neighborhood though but students will be students. Georgetown University will always get what it wants, eventually...

by semyon on Jun 8, 2012 4:04 pm • link • report

As a Vanderbilt graduate, I can tell you, Vanderbilt's LONG TIME policy is that students are required to live on campus - ALL STUDENTS, unless you are from Nashville or a specific radius that includes local suburbs. Students are also not allowed to live in Fraternity/Sorority houses except the top 6 officers. The school has an undergrad population of about 6500 and that has also stayed steady for the last 25 or so years. Vanderbilt students are also not allowed to have cars.

Vanderbilt is Nashville's largest employer. The area around the school isn't residential except near the Peabody campus (which now houses all the freshman dorms - previously it was sophomore housing) and north of the Medical Center. The majority of the school is surrounded by commercial development.

So, beyond being private institutions located in cities, Vanderbilt and Georgetown really have nothing else in common. If anything, Nashville would probably prefer that more Vanderbilt student money made its way out into the community, because as a student, there is not much reason to leave the immediate area, and most don't.

by GNR on Jun 10, 2012 1:52 pm • link • report

I think the neighbors should be informed that access to the GU campus is not a right, but an "earned privilege." Of course, it would be hard to keep most of them from setting foot on the campus, but unless a non-student resident has proven his or her goodwill towards GU students, they should be barred from benefits such as membership at Yates, use of other facilities such as libraries, and using the Village A rooftop to watch fireworks. Known anti-student activists, such as Stephen Brown, should be barred from campus (perhaps someone could have their photos posted in DOPS offices so they can be identified if seen trespassing.)

by dtrab on Jun 11, 2012 11:49 am • link • report