The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Senate passed seven resolutions calling on the university to increase resource accessibility for students, including bills that would schedule earlier Georgetown University Transportation System (GUTS) buses on weekends and expand access to food by accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and electronic benefit transfer (EBT) payments at specific Corp locations on campus, at its Sept. 8 meeting.
The Senate passed five other resolutions, including a bill that urges the university to leave the Intercultural Center cemetery door unlocked on weekends and two bills that call for regular communications on the Henle Village construction and the Yates Field House basketball court refurbishment. In the two other resolutions, the Senate released a statement sending well wishes to President John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95) as he recovers from a stroke, and created a GUSA Diversity Fund committee.
Speaker of the Senate Meriam Ahmad (SFS ’26) also announced that GUSA’s fall elections will be held during the week of the United States presidential election in November.
Senator Olivia Mason (CAS ’26) sponsored a bill that asks the university to require GUTS buses to begin commuting between the Hilltop and downtown locations at 9:30 a.m. on weekends.
Mason said the current GUTS schedule prevents students like herself, who live in the downtown residence at 55 H St., from remaining fully engaged in on-campus activities.
“I’ve been living at 55 H, I moved there last fall and I’m living there this whole year, but I’m taking four out of my five classes on campus, and also coming on weekends to do things like this,” Mason said at the meeting. “So it’s kind of difficult when the GUTS buses don’t start at DuPont and Rosslyn until noon.”
Mason also said greater connectivity between campuses is necessary now that the McCourt School of Public Policy has opened their downtown campus, where undergraduate public policy classes will be offered beginning in the Fall 2025 semester.
“It’s like trying to get ahead of these problems that people are already kind of thinking about on the Capitol Campus, that way when they go there next year, they’re not the ones that are suffering,” Mason said.
Senators also passed a bill that would direct the university administration to allow benefits from SNAP and EBT, two food assistance programs, to be used in Corp locations Vital Vittles and Hoya Snaxa.
Senator Sam Lovell (CAS ’25), who cosponsored the legislation, said GUSA has a responsibility to broach the issue of food insecurity.
“I definitely think that when we as a body have the opportunity to address food insecurity where it exists, we have to take that opportunity,” Lovell said at the meeting. “And so, I think this is a good bill as it stands, to explore the issue further.”
The senate also passed a bill calling on Georgetown to establish regular communications on the construction of Henle Village, a dormitory that will be located next to Darnall Hall.
Senator Evan Cornell (CAS ’27) said the bill will create more transparency around the building of the dorm, which is valuable for students who will be living there once construction is finished.
“We don’t really know what the timeline is on when it’s supposed to be conducted. They may have put that in the email when they first started, but those of us in our sophomore and junior year will most likely be relying on that construction to be finished at the start of the 2025 school year,” Cornell said at the meeting.
Additionally, the senate established a committee to manage the GUSA Diversity Fund, which will sponsor organizations and events that promote diversity and inclusion at Georgetown.
Senator Tina Solki (MSB, SFS ’26) said student clubs will be able to apply for the Diversity Funds to supplement the annual funds they receive as part of regular university benefits.
“The point of the diversity fund is to ensure that cultural clubs on campus have access to host events that they might otherwise not have access to through their usual advisory boards,” Solki said at the meeting.
Ahmad also said the fall GUSA elections, in which students will select seven first-year class senators and four at-large senators representing the sophomore, junior and senior classes, will occur from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5, coinciding with the U.S. general election, to increase voter turnout.
“Elections will be held the same week as the actual U.S. elections to encourage get-out-the-vote efforts,” Ahmad said at the meeting. “It will actually be Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, with everybody who’s voting in the November elections for the U.S. voting the same day as the GUSA elections.”
This article was updated Sept. 12, 2024, to provide clarity on a quote and on the scope of GUSA’s resolutions.
