Posts about Students

These arguments bolster the credentials of long-term residents and question the legitimacy of newcomers' opinions. That's a problem considering how many people move to the District each year.

Between April 2010 and July 2012, DC added over 30,000 residents. Last year, 63% of all households who moved somewhere in the District involved people coming here from somewhere else.

After decades of population loss, the District is adding new residents again. Today, it has about 630,000 people. It's foreseeable that it could go back to its 1950's-era peak of 800,000 residents as more people move here. It's essential that these new Washingtonians are encouraged to get involved in local politics.

The city benefits when relatively transient residents are involved in local politics. As a student organizer, I found time and time again that politicians ignored students' concerns. They didn't know what students wanted because my peers weren't engaged, so they couldn't help them. Moreover, residents from other places can make DC even more dynamic by helping to infuse the city with new and cutting-edge ideas.

Some residents don't have plans to stay here for a long time, like students or young professionals. We shouldn't hold it against them; rather, we should also encourage them to get involved while they're in town. I only got to live here for four years, but during that time I took part in my community through everything from DC Students Speak to tutoring in Petworth.

The only way that DC can truly become a great city is through engaging all members of the community, so they're interested and willing to care about where they live and give back to them in return. In the end, it's in the best interests of all District of Columbia residents to have a more involved citizenry.

We need to move beyond the tired rhetoric of who is or is not a "real Washingtonian." The way to build an even more dynamic District of Columbia by embracing everyone and encouraging them to join our community. After all, if they feel welcome, they might stick around.

This "soft bigotry of low expectations" often deters so many of my peers to become involved in civic affairs. The reality is that not only is a more aware college student population better for students, it is also in the best interest of the District.

There are almost 85,000 college students in the District of Columbia, who make up a substantial portion of the overall population. The District does itself a disservice by not engaging this large chunk of the populace. Having college students being more civically aware means more college students volunteering for non-profits, and pushing for reforms necessary to the District's vitality.

A major element of increasing the level of civic engagement is having college students run for local office. It demonstrates that students have a stake in local affairs, and are an actual political constituency. Washingtonians have to move beyond debates about who is a "native," and recognize that regardless of whether one is here for 4 years, or has been here for 40 years, everyone should be welcome in civic life.

Thankfully, after years of hard work, the interests of college students are gaining more recognition. For instance, when Councilmember Jack Evans (ward 2) came to campus at Georgetown recently, he told a meeting of DC Students Speak that college students completely have the right to live off campus, and that they should be encouraged to run for office. This is definitely a change in tone in Evans' rhetoric from only a few years ago.

3 students are running at George Washington University: Peter Sacco, Jackson Carnes, and Patrick Kennedy. Sacco and Carnes are running uncontested, with Carnes on the ballot in 2A07 and Sacco as a write-in for 2A08, while the race between Kennedy and long-term incumbent David Lehrman has turned out to be a very competitive race in a district, 2A01, that contains many students and non-students.

Peter Prindiville is running unopposed for a seat in Georgetown's 2E08, and Craig Cassey is running as a write-in with no opposition in 2E04, where there are no candidates on the ballot.

At American, two students are running in the area. Joe Wisniewski is running against Silvio Lucero in a competitive election in 3D10, while Rory Slatko is running unopposed as a write-in in 3D07.

Nicole Goines, who is also an American University student, is running for ANC in Brentwood's ANC 5C05. Connell Wise, a student at Marymount University, is running in 6E07, in the Mount Vernon Triangle.

Having so many students run for office represents major progress, but there is still much work yet to be done. What is at stake is more than just 9 college students running for local office, but how to get all groups of residents to participate in the civic life of this great city.

As part of a larger strategy for growth and consolidation of its school, American will replace a parking lot with six buildings of two to six stories, including 590 beds, a bookstore, admissions offices, classrooms, administrative spaces, as well as some retail. The benefits for AU have been argued over many times; I'll let AU speak for itself. But the benefits of the expansion to the neighborhood and the city are public business.

The new facilities will bring students out of neighborhoods. Currently, AU undergrads are spread out, with roughly 2,000 of 6,000 living off-campus. Some of those students do so by choice, but AU only has room to house 67% of its students. Many juniors and seniors have to look to the neighborhood for a place to live.

The East Campus would pull students from the neighborhood and the Tenley Campus. Better residential facilities would mean fewer students spread out in the neighborhood, fewer noise disruptions, and less of a demand for vehicular commuting.

That reduction in traffic is no small thing. The new facilities adjacent to the central campus mean fewer trips for students and faculty alike. AU is also reducing the total number of parking spaces on campus, and has promised to expand its existing transportation demand management program. Even so, AU's transportation study found that its users never contributed more than 12% of all traffic during rush hour.

The rest of the vehicles are commuters passing through the Ward Circle area. The three avenues in the area, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Massachusetts currently serve primarily as automobile routes. The new buildings offer the potential to reorient the circle for those who live and work in the area.

Rather than gnarling traffic, as opponents have insisted, the slight uptick in pedestrian activity caused by the new buildings will force drivers to pay better attention to their presence on this urban street. The potential for more stoplights and a redesigned circle opens the opportunity to reduce speeds and dangerous behavior, likewise making the area safer for residents of all ages.

Through commercial frontage and foot traffic, Nebraska Avenue would become a pleasant place for locals to enjoy. Leaving the interior of the campus for students, a commercial perimeter would become another node in the geography of Upper Northwest. It would never become as dense and vibrant as Bethesda, let alone Tenleytown, but as a tertiary urban center, it can merge into the neighborhood.

Finally, the scheme laid out in the university's plan continues to facilitate the economic activity of American and its affiliates, estimated at $415 million. Although academic institutions do not pay taxes for noncommercial properties, the Examiner reported last week that students and faculty bring money and talent to the area when they come to the region's universities. By building on its land efficiently, AU will be making an optimal contribution to the city and enlivening the streetscape through the benefits of density.

There are potential negatives, which AU needs to mitigate. However, in its effort to compromise on objections, AU has layered the new buildings in greenery and minimized certain urban features, compromising potential, while still not satisfying opponents' demands.

For example, a 40' buffer of greenery adjacent to Westover Place feathers the campus into the neighborhood, but it's not good on all four sides. Adding a similar barrier of impenetrable greenery along Nebraska Avenue will separate the campus and retail from the sidewalk. It requires creating a second, separated walkway that will reduce the very urban characteristic of unplanned interactions. It is no small leap to see this buffer as segregating the school from the city.

Worsening the Nebraska Avenue elevation, the most recent plans call for a roadway to be punched through building #1 to the interior campus. A roadway in that place would disrupt the crucial urban space at the sidewalk. Instead, the plans should return to the right-in, right-out entrance on Massachusetts Avenue presented in the March 18th Final Plan. This is similar to the one at Westover Place, the Berkshire, and other nearby driveways.

At the least, the university could build on their plans for the Mary Graydon Tunnel and design the proposed road as a woonerf, prioritizing pedestrians in a roadway that runs through what is the students' front yard.

Likewise, AU should not be advocating for a new actuated signal on Nebraska Avenue. Instead, it should build timed signals that guarantee AU students the opportunity to cross as frequently and in rhythm with the city's traffic.

A new stoplight, combined with the recommended changes to Ward Circle, would make the area safer than any phystical barrier by limiting the incentive to jaywalk. If a physical deterrent is necessary, planters between the street and the sidewalk should be sufficient, as at Bethesda Row.

Finally, the project should serve as a catalyst for alternative transportation in the area. Bike lanes on New Mexico Avenue would mean better safety and better quality of life for students and neighbors alike. On campus, the administration already promotes a progressive Transport Demand Management plan, with dedicated ZipCar spaces, Capitol Bikeshare, carpooling assistance, shuttles, and SmartBenefits. But without adequate facilities, the full benefits of cycling and bus transit will not be realized.

Smart Growth refers to planning that is appropriate not only at the local level, but across multiple scales: architectural, local, metropolitan, and regional. AU's expansion plan, which would consolidate students, tame traffic, and create a new node of community, works at the larger three scales. Where it fails is in the way that it addresses the street and human scale, compromising enormous potential for solutions that will please no one and will require remediation in the future.

The Zoning commission should endorse AU's 2011 Campus Plan with alterations at the architectural scale.

Freshmen should not be forced to live in 170-square-feet triples while paying for some of the most expensive University housing in the country. Reducing enrollment by nearly 25 percent would represent a huge blow to the University's already constrained financial resources. These losses could lead to layoffs at the District's largest private employer.

Additionally, requiring all students to live on-campus would reduce the vibrancy and diversity of the already fairly staid surrounding community. Students live off-campus so that they can assert their independence and learn what it is like to live on their own. This arrangement, which furthers student ties to their community, should be encouraged, especially by a city hoping to expand its tax base.

Fortunately, the OP seems to recognize that their recommendations are not the only way forward. At the May 12 Zoning Commission hearing, OP representative Jennifer Steingasser repeatedly said that she was open to other solutions, so long as they brought students back on-campus and mitigated objectionable impacts in the community.

These solutions are possible. Today, Georgetown students spend time off-campus because they are frustrated by a lack of on-campus space that meets their needs. There's no real reason to live close to the center of student life, because there isn't one.

As long that is true, students will continue to socialize in the community and frequent bars on M Street, even if they are barred from living off-campus. A more holistic plan to remedying the objectionable impacts that OP sees is needed. Such a plan, which both recognizes the need to draw students back on-campus and their right to live off-campus, is laid out below.

Increase student space

For years, students have been advocating for more student space on campus. In 1999, a group of student leaders compiled the Report on Student Life, which recommended that the University reorganize Leavey Center and invest in a real student union. Plans for a New South Student Center were included in the 2000 Campus Plan but never came to fruition, and the proposal is again part of the 2010 Campus Plan.

Last year, the Student Space Working Group released a report that found that the same problems still exist a decade later. When surveyed, 64 percent of students said they desired more study space, 56 percent desired more social space, 49 percent desired more space for eating, 41 percent desired more meeting space, and 32 percent desired more student club space. The longer the students had been at Georgetown, and the more involved they were in extracurricular activities, the more frustrated they were with the space available.

What's more, when asked to identify the center of student life on campus, a plurality of students (33 percent) said it was Lauinger Library. This perception demonstrates a core problem. The spaces available do not meet the full variety of student needs, which means students need to use space in a way that conflicts with its intended purpose—for example, we socialize in an area where other people are trying to study—which renders the space ineffective.

As a result, a full 17 percent of those surveyed answered that there was no center of student life at all.

The closest thing we have to a student union—Sellinger Lounge in the Leavey Center—has not become the student-centered space it was envisioned as because of the presence of hotel guests and Georgetown Hospital staff.

If the campus were the real center of student life, more students would choose to live on-campus. The University can and should create spaces and opportunities for a healthy social scene to thrive.

Bring back Healy Pub

Many alumni still wistfully remember Healy Pub, the bar located in the basement of Georgetown's signature building. In 1987, responding to the higher drinking age, the University ordered the pub to shut down. Town-gown struggles began in full-force in the early 1990s, as student social life began to shift to private parties in Burleith and West Georgetown.

Now, a group of students are trying to bring the pub back. Since 2001, the student body has been paying into a Georgetown University Student Association Endowment Fund. The interest from the fund was supposed to finance student activities once the fund reached $10 million by 2011, but the University reneged on its promised $3 million contribution, so the fund has only reached $3.4 million. The student association leaders now consider the endowment a failure and plan to re-appropriate the money. We have $3.4 million to spend, and the Endowment Commission, identifying the same lack of student space we have, voted last month to put $3.23 million towards the pub.

The proposal is to model the pub after Queen's Head Pub at Harvard. On weekend nights, the area would function as a bar. Those under 21 would be allowed to enter, but they would not be allowed to drink. The rest of the time, the space would function as a lounge, where students could meet, socialize, work, eat snacks and reserve private rooms for meetings.

There are obvious obstacles. Once running, the pub will need an alcohol license, which obviously requires support from the Georgetown Advisory Neighborhood Commission.

Also, the Financial Aid Office and other administrators currently occupy Healy basement, so students need the University's assistance—and blessing—in relocating the people already there to space that will be opened up with the completion of the new science center.

Although the New South Student Center is a necessity and a part of the plan that students welcome, it is not enough. A student-designed, student-run, student-financed space in the heart of Georgetown's historic campus would go a very long way to creating a stronger sense of on-campus community and toward bringing socialization back on-campus.

Reduce on-campus party restrictions

During finals week in 2007, Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson surprised students with the announcement of a new alcohol policy. Administrators had decided to institute a one-keg limit, require host training for parties, require students to register parties by Thursday morning, limit the number of students, and increase sanctions for violations, with a third violation leading to suspension. At the time, the Georgetown Voice termed the changes "draconian."

The following September, the student association president led administrators on a tour through campus on a Saturday night. To their surprise, "There were about eight people standing around [on the rooftops] … and when they moved on to Henle, they could hear crickets in the courtyards." Before, it had been one of the biggest party weekends of the year.

Neighbors complained that they noticed an increase in off-campus parties and student noise. Students expressed fear of throwing parties on-campus, citing the new increased sanctions and party registration requirements.

Now, the dynamic has shifted somewhat. Many students express similar fears of 61-Ds for noise violations or Office of Off-Campus Student Life sanctions for off-campus parties.

Students know that despite their best efforts, parties often take on a life of their own, especially at the beginning of the year when groups of freshmen search high and low for a party to crash. Therefore, students decide to throw their parties on- or off- campus depending on where they perceive they'll attract the least trouble.

If we want students to socialize on-campus, we should consider this constant calculus. To an extent, we can shift the party culture by simply shifting the incentives. As we have seen in the last few years, it's not enough to increase the punishments for out-of-control off-campus parties. We need to also loosen the restrictions on on-campus parties.

Meet all undergrad demand for on-campus housing, starting with hotel and 1789 Block

The University maintains that it has provided housing for all undergraduates who have requested it. However, should the above measures be implemented, more upperclassmen will want to live on-campus so that they can be closer to the center to student activity. This is especially true if the expansion locations are well-integrated with existing student patterns.

Considering the existing campus, the two sites for additional housing that seem most sensible are the Leavey Center hotel and the block bounded by Prospect, N, 36^th, and 37^th, known informally as the "1789 block."

Although the Leavey Center has many flaws as a student center and should ultimately be replaced, it has recently become more student-friendly with the opening of the Hariri Business Building, which connects to Leavey. This trend will continue when the new science center opens in fall 2012 (plans call for the science center to connect to Leavey via open lounge spaces). The addition of student housing to Leavey will help ensure that foot traffic in the building returns to being predominantly student-driven, as opposed to hotel guest- or hospital staff-driven.

The "1789 block" which was once a part of the 2010 Campus Plan, would add up to 250 beds and 8,500 square feet of neighborhood servicing retail in the middle of a university-owned block right outside the university's gates. This project would be within a block of three other university dormitories and two university academic buildings. The "1789 block" would be closer to the front gates than the preexisting Nevils apartment complex and LXR dorm. This space is already a center of student activity, and additional commercial areas so close to campus would entice more students to the area.

The University estimates that these two projects could house approximately 500 undergraduates. This would bring the total number housed on-campus to 5,553, which represents about 92 percent of Georgetown's traditional undergraduate enrollment. This figure compares favorably to every university in Washington and is in line with schools like Harvard, Princeton and MIT, which OP praises in their report as models.

Rate My Landlord

Even if these measures are successful, approximately 8 percent of undergraduates will still have the ability to live off-campus.

However, those students who choose to move out of University housing often pay high rents for low-quality neighborhood housing. Slum landlords regularly fail to maintain their property or respect tenant rights. Students are blamed for the unsightly rental houses, when it is the landlord's responsibility to pay for upkeep.

Theoretically, the Georgetown Office of Off-Campus Life is there to "address the needs and concerns of off campus students." In practice, the office spends as least as much time serving its secondary function: acting "as a liaison between the university and our neighbors, encouraging dialogue about issues of mutual concern."

Lost in the shuffle are the students, who need a stronger advocate in their negotiations with landlords.

One service that would make a big impact would be a "rate my landlord"-type website, where students and other subletters could share information about rental rates, housing quality, upkeep and landlord responsiveness.

Students don't want to live under poor conditions. With more transparent information, students can demand better treatment and drive the slumlords out of business.

The takeaway

In the long run, holistic solutions that aim to improve campus and community life will be far more effective than draconian mandates, which will mire us in legal battles for years to come. We ask that the Zoning Commission, University, and community rethink their approach. The only solutions that can truly address persistent town-gown tensions will be the ones that also take student interests into account.

The university previously agreed to build an additional 250 beds on campus by the fall of 2014. On top of that, by the fall of 2015, OP calls for GU to house 90% of its undergrads in GU housing. By the fall of 2016, the requirement is 100%.

If GU doesn't meet that requirement, OP wants GU's undergrad cap to be cut annually by 25% of the difference between the cap and the number of beds until it meets the 100% mark.

That additional GU housing also can't be built east of 37th Street. That's where the campus gate lies, though the campus boundary is farther east. No housing can be in the 20007 zip code, other than on the campus and behind the gates.

I believe there are about 1,500 GU undergraduates not living in GU housing. That means that after GU adds the 250 that it has already agreed to, it would need to build roughly an additional 1,250 beds by 2016.

GU would have a couple options to satisfy this. First, it could find space for more beds behind the gates. One idea I've heard was to build a dorm on top of Leo dining hall, but I don't know if that is feasible. Second, GU could buy housing for its students outside the 20007 zip code: in other words, in Rosslyn.

All in all, this is a pretty devastating report for GU and I am simply floored by it. But there are still a lot of "ifs." Most critically, while the Zoning Commission is often deferential to the Office of Planning, there's no guarantee they'd go along with this severe a proposal. One factor that is definitely not an "if" is the question of what happens if the Zoning Commission adopts OP's report: years of litigation.

GU appealed the last campus plan decision, and ultimately won. Further, while the courts have rejected various universities' claims that student caps violate the DC Human Rights Act, the court hemmed and hawed a bit before reaching that conclusion. The court might reach a different conclusion if presented with these more severe conditions.

Either way, this is a huge bombshell in this battle, and it fell squarely on GU.

Read the complete report.

The most ridiculous claim is that the very sight of student dorm windows is itself a grave offense that requires action from the zoning code:

Student residences should be built with windows that do not open to limit noise impacts on neighboring residents and with tinted windows that shield from residents' views the type of window hangings that are characteristically found in the windows of AU's student dorms.

At the University of Maryland, I found that the window hangings "characteristically found in the windows" of dorms are in fact window blinds. Does the ANC object to window blinds? Do they demand Roman shades, valances, velvet curtains or simply taupe window treatments?

Another controversy surrounds the treatment of AU's East Campus site directly south of Ward Circle NW. This site is currently a parking lot and report reasonably requests the university construct a "signature building" on the site.

However, the report contains a series of demands of what should not go on that site, namely students, conferences and retail space.

In fact the report laments "the loss of commercial space and neighborhood-serving retail stemming from AU's need to find more space to meet its needs." Then just 7 pages later, the ANC chastises the university for proposing to add retail space on Nebraska Avenue, noting, "This would be the only block with any retail on Nebraska Avenue throughout its length in Washington, DC."

Which is it? Here the ANC clearly shows a preference for complaining about change over maintaining any intellectual consistency in its review.

Addtionally, while the report rightly agrees that bikesharing will reduce vehicle use, it also resents the incorporation of "the Capital Bike Share [sic] Program—for 10,000 mostly non-taxpaying residents—many of them temporary—living on premium-value residentially zoned property that is producing no property tax revenue".

Though the ANC wants the university to pay the capital cost of each new campus station, which is a reasonable request, it relays the request in a classist, prejudicial way.

Student residents, who often have little or no income, tend to pay little in taxes, but that does not diminish their rights as residents. Furthermore, it's troubling that the ANC resents any class of people "living on premium-value residentially zoned property".

That's what residents do: they reside on residentially-zoned property. The ANC suggests it's upset that a certain kind of people are taking up space on this "premium" property.

Certainly the ANC has a legitimate interest in ameliorating legitimate nuisances, but regulating window dressing should not be the matter of the ANC or the zoning code. Furthermore, the ANC obliterates it own credibility offering contradictory sentiments on the reduction and proposed addition of retail space.

Worst of all, the ANC report relegates AU's students to second-class citizenship, treating them not as fellow residents, but as a nuisance class of people who must be segregated and concentrated into the center of the campus, far from "real" residents.

The ANC should eliminate its thinly veiled opposition to students as a class of people, remove trivial complaints about window dressings, and focus on more important matters: How a university, its students, and long-term residents can exist in harmony and mutual respect.

On-campus housing is better than off-campus housing for many reasons. It puts students closer to everything that happens on campus, from speakers to classes, and almost always means a better relationship between students and landlords.

But on-campus housing can't be built with paper-thin walls and stack students up like sardines. Meeting the housing needs of students means building exactly the kind of living that the east campus offers.

New dorms

The plan details a new dorm on South Side to hold about 200 students, an addition to Nebraska to hold around 125, and a series of dorms on East Campus meant for just under 800 residents. The increase in housing is meant to guarantee housing for both freshman and sophomores (currently, AU can only guarantee 85% of sophomores housing) and to reduce the number of triples, or the practice of cramming three freshmen in rooms meant for two residents.

Currently a large parking lot, Nebraska Lot lies east of AU, separated from the campus proper by Nebraska Avenue, a fairly busy road. The plan calls for that space to be replaced by six buildings, four of which would be dorms (the other being used for the alumni center, the new campus center, and office space). Underneath the new campus would be an underground parking garage.

To ensure that students could only cross Nebraska at the signaled crosswalk, the entire campus would be fenced, with the only entrance/exit by foot being a gap in that fence near New Mexico Avenue (at its intersection with Nebraska). Two roads also enter the campus, but both lead to the underground garage.

Residents are concerned that this campus will be relatively close to their homes. The back of the furthest buildings rest 40 to 80 feet or more from the backs of the adjoined houses at Westover Place, and residents there are worried about how these new buildings will affect their lives.

With no real buffer between the homes and the lot currently, the height of the buildings (54 feet for the dorms and slightly lower for the others) have the potential to dominate their sights out of their back windows.

Residents also complain that noise from the dorms will disturb them. Many at recent ANC meetings have complained of potential and raucous partying (an unneeded anxiety, given campus policies) and the potential for vandalism, which is also unlikely.

Pedestrians at Nebraska Avenue

Neighbors also complained that the increase in number of pedestrians crossing Nebraska would both disrupt the flow of traffic on that road and be dangerous for both students and drivers. Both claims require study, but cannot be determined at this time with the certitude residents put forward).

Regardless, the issue of East Campus remains the flash point of this campus plan, and the University doesn't seem to be willing to budge. While this draft (the third of this campus plan) showed a reduction of 800 housed students from the previous one, the number of students being housed on East Campus has been held more-or-less constant throughout the whole process.

The University insists that an East Campus remains the best place to house that volume of additional students, and that it will not negatively affect traffic flow. However, it could have done a far better job of explaining these claims at meetings with local stakeholders.

Retail and urban design

Retail would be part of the proposed east campus. Having more that students can reach by walking is good for the students, the environment, and the city's revenues.

Students should hope, though, that the University avoids the mistakes from past construction on the campus. It's hard for a business to survive on students and employees alone. Witness the failure of the McDonald's hidden away in a tunnel in the middle of campus, and the pizzeria before it.

Bringing the buildings with retail closer to the street could expand the buffer offered to our neighbors in Westover, help the businesses attract outside customers, and provide a visual cue to passing drivers to slow down.

The plan also shows the Washington College of Law moving to the Tenley campus, and calls for the construction of an Alumni Center, a new Campus Visiting Center, and several other new buildings.

Another facet of the plan is growing the number of enrolled students from 10,297 to 13,600. However, grad and law students dominate this increase in population; the number of undergraduates will be modestly raised from 6,300 to 6,400.

Several other issues have been raised by the community as well. Some say that the increased traffic from graduate students and new university employees will make the horrid traffic problems around Ward Circle even worse. Others raise the concern that dangerous chemicals from Army Corps of Engineers operations during World War I still remain around the Nebraska lot, and could prove hazardous to students living in dorms there. However, it's unclear what evidence there is to support this claim.

Parking

Finally, residents complain that the reduction in surface parking on campus will adversely affect the current problem of students parking in neighborhoods and walking to campus. Students do this often to avoid the high costs of parking on campus, which in themselves are meant to encourage students to carpool or walk.

The American University campus plan has attracted a lot of attention—most of it angry and resentful. At the special meeting ANC 3D recently held on the campus plan, most of the normal complaints about students and universities were trotted out: students are all raging drunkards, the school is a neighborhood bully, further development will destroy property values, and did you hear about that time that one kid did that one ridiculous thing?

We agree more with some of the things we've heard our neighbors say than others. What we didn't hear was a lot about what the new plan means for students and what they need.

Student needs matter

What American University students want from our plan is simple: building for our needs. We aren't the only stakeholders in the process: professors and departments need be wooed and supported, and neighbors have legitimate concerns.

But at the end of the day, we are the university's customers, products, and inhabitants. We come to the school at what are often some of the most vulnerable, confusing, and thrilling times of our lives, and we rely on the campus, the community, and the neighborhood to help us make something of ourselves.

The campus plan is a part of that, and it's important that we make our voices heard in its crafting and implementation. Even if each of us is only here for a few years, together there are thousands of us here for decades. We want both the next few years and those future decades to be good ones.

Cross-posted from two posts at DC Students Speak.

The university included this construction initiative in the Campus Plan. But the ANC's draft proposal asks that the university begin making changes immediately, while also limiting student parking in off-campus neighborhoods. These demands are excessive, and even previous compromises seem to have been made without student and staff transportation needs in mind.

Canal Road entrance

Routing the Dupont GUTS bus out of Canal Road makes it far more difficult to get to Dupont in a reasonable time. When the University Office of Transportation Management devised new routes in 2009, it tested routes down the Whitehurst Freeway.

This route is not only longer than the current rush-hour route on Q Street, but it also traverses some high-traffic areas. Of course, the current compromise route, which sends buses up Wisconsin Ave during non-rush hour traffic, is also circuitous and inconvenient. But routing the buses down Whitehurst would be even worse.

Much larger Metrobuses also run on Reservoir Road and Q Street, and neighbors tolerate those buses on their streets. But as ANC Chair Ron Lewis told the Voice on Thursday, "The only reason the Metrobuses are on [residential] streets is that they serve stops along those roads, which are very valuable to the community."

GUTS buses are valuable for other reasons. GUTS buses are an extensive enough fleet with a short enough route that they're remarkably punctual. They run every 20 minutes during calm times and every five minutes during rush hour.

Also, they're free. Taking a D6 to and from the Dupont Metro stop every day of the workweek is $60 a month—which is what many people would pay if the Dupont route became too inconvenient. That's because only 32 percent of GUTS bus riders are students, according to a survey administered by the Georgetown University Student Association in 2008.

The rest are MedStar Employees (32 percent), staff (29 percent), faculty (10 percent) or other (2 percent). Of the respondents, 53 percent rode the GUTS bus five times a week.

I ask Mr. Lewis to expand his definition of "community" to include the people who staff his hospital, the people who work at his neighborhood's largest employer, and the 6,000 students that make up about 40 percent of his constituency.

The inconvenience of GUTS buses on residential streets pales in comparison to the inconvenience that the ANC's demands cause for students, staff, hospital workers, and community members who benefit from the shorter Dupont route.

Another possible compromise would be to combine the Dupont GUTS route and the D bus, if WMATA could work out a way for Georgetown to pay for its students and employees to get a free ride and add more frequency on the D. This would make the current shuttles also serve the community, and thereby become valuable in Mr. Lewis's eyes.

However, the GUTS buses are more on-time than the D, and run every 5 minutes during rush hour. Merging the Dupont shuttle with the D bus could be better than rerouting the Dupont shuttle down Whitehurst, but still worse than the current buses running down Q Street.

Additional demands

Unfortunately, the university conceded the arguments about Canal Road early in the negotiations. The Campus Plan already does exactly what the ANC is proposing—just not fast enough. The commissioners demand that the north-south roadway necessary to route the buses out of Canal Road be completed within "the first year of the campus plan."

However, there are some complications. For example, the ANC is unhappy with the actual blueprint of the western portion of the north-south roadway, fearing "environmental concerns and a lengthy and uncertain National Park Service approval process." The commissioners ask the university to consider another location for the loop road or a north-south road with a turnaround at the northern end.

Also, a year is still too long to wait. In the meantime, the ANC asks the university to find ways to route buses out of the Canal Road entrance using existing space. They suggest, "If necessary, buses with a relatively short turning radius could be obtained; or turntable technology is available to turn buses around in a space not much larger than the length of a bus. See, for example, http://www.carousel-usa.com/large-turntable.php."

The suggestion speaks for itself. It makes little sense for the university to invest in such extensive infrastructure when it already plans to undergo construction to implement long-term changes.

The GUTS buses also have five different routes, two of which (Rosslyn and Dupont) run every 5 minutes during rush hour. To route everything out of Canal Road, any north-south road or carousel would need to handle heavy shuttle traffic and turn buses around very quickly, or else the University would need to significantly cut service.

Students have expressed frustration that the university seems to concede on almost every argument, often to the detriment of students, and yet the ANC continues to fight the Campus Plan tooth and nail. This is exactly what we're talking about.

Student parking

The ANC adds insult to injury with its next recommendation: prevent students from parking anywhere in 20007. The commissioners write, "GU should provide students who live on campus or in the surrounding community—both undergraduates and graduate students—with a combination of incentives, better transportation arrangements, and satellite parking to assure that GU students will not have cars in zip code 20007."

First, making GUTS bus routes more inconvenient gives students far less of an incentive to use University transportation. To suggest that the University both reroute the GUTS buses and encourage students to use them more is disingenuous.

Second, students are highly discouraged from bringing cars to school in the status quo. The University already refuses daily or monthly parking to students who live on-campus. City law creates additional difficulties for off-campus students.

In 1996, the DC Council passed a law preventing only students in certain ANCs—those districts encompassing Georgetown, George Washington, and American University—from obtaining reciprocal parking permits available to other students throughout the city.

Georgetown students must get a DC driver's license and register their vehicles in the DC to park within the ANC 2E boundaries. (Frustration about this law, which is still in effect, was one major impetus for Campaign Georgetown, the mass student voter registration drive that got two students elected to the ANC in 1996.)

As a result, I don't personally know any undergraduates who have a car in DC. Regardless, once students move off-campus and pay rent to a landlord, the University should not interfere to further prevent them from parking their own vehicles.

It's good policy to encourage everyone to use smart transit in order to reduce the number of cars on the road. But if the ANC were actually concerned about parking congestion, we could have a productive discussion about how to improve public transportation options. (The Campus Plan brags that GUTS buses keep 7,750 cars off residential streets every day.) Instead, the ANC only wants to discourage students from living in the neighborhood, by any means possible.

The big picture

The Campus Plan transportation proposals should give people real incentives to use public transit that is safe, convenient and environmentally friendly. The ANC's suggestions go to great lengths to prevent the GUTS buses from operating in an efficient way—while simultaneously limiting other options. If Mr. Lewis really had the whole community in mind, he would reconsider some of the ANC's demands.