Georgetown University announced in an April 23 email that the administration will loosen some restrictions on campus gatherings for Georgetown Day after the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) launched a petition calling on the administration to reconsider their policies.
In 2024, the administration implemented a series of restrictions aimed at improving safety, including limiting access to Village A and Alumni Square to residents and their guests only, requiring wristbands for entry to Vil A and Alumni Square, banning outside DJs and live music and banning tents on Vil A rooftops and in the Alumni Square courtyard. The petition, which collected 295 student signatures in two days, argued these campus-wide rules introduced in 2024 negatively impacted student safety and the overall accessibility of Georgetown Day.
Felix Rice (CAS ’26), GUSA chief of staff, said student concerns after the 2024 restrictions inspired GUSA to look into the policies and propose reforms.
“Ever since the campaign, we’ve been hearing concerns from students about Georgetown Day last year,” Rice wrote to The Hoya. “We took what we heard from students and submitted a comprehensive proposal to the administration that we believed would address both student experience and safety.”
GUSA announced April 17 that university administration agreed to loosen some policies for Georgetown Day 2025, including decreasing wristband restrictions, scrapping additional rules for alcohol and open containers, and allowing bands and DJs to perform in the Southwest Quadrangle.
GUSA Vice President Darius Wagner (CAS ’27) said he sees the administration’s decision to loosen some Georgetown Day policies as a success.
“I would say from the perspective of other measures that the university wanted to take, this was a huge win,” Wagner told The Hoya. “Obviously we did not secure Vil A in the way we wanted to, where we preferred a clicker system, but we were able to break down a lot of wrongs in communication last year that sent Georgetown Day into a spiral.”
Rice said GUSA launched the petition to show the administration that the student body widely supported less strict policies.
“We do our best to amplify what we’re hearing from students in all the ways we can, but sometimes we need help from the student body to do that, and that’s why we launched the petition,” Rice wrote. “We wanted to make it as easy as possible for students to demonstrate to the administration how upset they were.”
Wagner said GUSA believed stricter policies in 2024 came from a lack of collaboration between GUSA, the administration and other student groups.
“During last year’s negotiations, we had seen that there was not a lot of working together between the Center for Student Engagement, between the Program Board and GUSA’s involvement in negotiations and so we had seen that lack of our presence there,” Wagner said. “That lack of collaboration led to what we saw out of Georgetown Day last year and I think it was a key goal of ours not to repeat the same Georgetown Day.”
Rishu Nevatia (CAS ’27) said university administration’s stricter policies are frustrating and do not help safety efforts for students.
“I think it’s frustrating more than anything else, because yes safety is important but they have to know people will be celebrating anyway,” Nevatia wrote to The Hoya. “Having stricter policies on campus is just shifting the problem further away and actually potentially making it more dangerous elsewhere or for students who will find creative and potentially unsafe ways to circumvent the policies.”
Wagner said GUSA aimed to promote student safety while maintaining an environment where students could celebrate Georgetown Day on campus.
“It was imperative that we grounded our focus in safety, while also ensuring that students are able to celebrate Georgetown Day here on campus, where they can be safer and where the tradition can live on and not be diluted,” Wagner said.
Rice said the policy changes in 2024 led to many students leaving not just campus but also the safety resources available on campus.
“Policies like limited access to Vil A and Vil B, the wristband policy and suddenly stricter enforcement of noise and open container policies made some students organize events off campus,” Rice said. “We know that students are less protected off campus both legally and medically in case of an emergency.”
Wagner said GUSA’s priorities remain promoting a balanced approach to Georgetown Day by emphasizing student safety and traditions.
“We want to celebrate Georgetown Day here safely and allow students to have the opportunity to celebrate the way that they see fit that is in correspondence with safety and our school’s policies and regulations,” Wagner said.