Major players in the debate surrounding Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan are gearing up to make final arguments before the D.C. Zoning Commission at its fifth and final hearing on the plan Thursday night.

The plan, which outlines the university’s goals for expansion over the next 10 years, has been the focal point of Georgetown’s relationship with its neighbors since it was filed last December.

After the District Department of Transportation gives its testimony at this week’s hearing, the commission will take several months to make its final ruling.

Georgetown University Student Association Vice President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) said the organization aims to send a contingent of 40 students to the hearing to back the plan.

“Students are excited to go down there and show D.C. officials and neighbors that we’re standing with the university and we don’t appreciate not being treated like full citizens of D.C.,” he said.

The students’ testimony will supplement an online petition emailed to students, faculty, staff and alumni by University President John J. DeGioia Nov. 3, urging them to sign their names in support of the university.

The petition outlines the positive impact that the school has on the District, citing students’ volunteer efforts in the community and the university’s ment of more than 3,200 D.C. residents.

According to university spokesperson Stacy Kerr, about 4,100 people have signed the online petition so far. More than 3,000 signatures were received within the first 24 hours of its distribution.

“We’re very pleased by the overwhelming response we’ve received in such a short time,” she said.

Kerr added that the university also distributed a pamphlet to households in the 20007 zip code Monday, outlining its commitment to quality of life in the community.

Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E Chairman Ron Lewis declined to comment on neighbors’ plans for Thursday, adding that he will reserve all comments for the hearing.

The websites of both the Citizens Association of Georgetown and the Burleith Citizens Association prominently display information about the next hearing and how to give testimony against the Campus Plan.

In an ANC report released last week, neighbors expressed lingering concerns about the university’s impact on the community.

“The overwhelming objectionable impact … is that it would keep in place a very large number of off-campus transient student group houses and all the problems they bring,” the report reads.

Authors of the report also wrote that Georgetown’s off-campus disciplinary policies are more lax than on-campus policies, contributing to noise and student trash in the neighborhood.

“On the subject of university codes of conduct and disciplinary practices, we the community and the Zoning Commission are essentially stuck with what GU offers us,” they wrote.

Neighbors first began formally expressing their opposition on Jan. 20, when the ANC held a public meeting regarding the plan.

“[Students] cannot follow basic rules of living,” ANC Commissioner Tom Birch said at the hearing.

Since the plan was submitted it has been modified several times in response to neighborhood concerns. Major changes include the addition of 250 on-campus beds, a freeze on undergraduate enrollment and a modified transportation plan that would run Georgetown University Transportation Shuttles past Harbin Hall instead of installing a loop road behind Yates Field House and McDonough Arena.

The enrollment freeze and the 250 additional on-campus beds were added to the plan at the end of March, as the university prepared for the first Zoning Commission hearing April 14.

“The goal [of the plan] is to reaffirm Georgetown’s commitment to partnership,” DeGioia said in his testimony at that hearing. “[The] Campus Plan is a modest and responsible plan for the university’s future with substantial commitments that respond to community and city concerns.”

The issues first brought up at the ANC meeting have continued to monopolize debate at more recent hearings.

“As long as the number of students being housed on campus is less than 100 percent, it frees far too many undergraduates to live off campus in the surrounding community,” Lewis said at the commission’s third hearing May 19. “The zoning rules provide the tools to repair this situation, and the time to do this is now.”

Though the commission had planned to make its decision after the May 19 hearing, it was forced to schedule two additional hearings to accommodate the large number of students and neighbors who wanted to give testimony and to allow DDOT extra time to review the transportation components of the plan.

This semester, Georgetown has rolled out several policies aimed at improving neighbors’ opinions of the plan.

The measures include a university-funded neighborhood trashcollection program, the implementation of the M Street shuttle on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and the installation of additional Metropolitan Police Department officers around campus.

Opponents of the plan remain skeptical about the initiatives.

“The university is obviously doing what it is doing now with an eye on its proposed 10-year campus plan. It is implementing a few measures that do not work … and also strongly initiating PR efforts,” ANC Commissioner Jeffrey Jones wrote in last week’s report. “In an area with a high concentration of both live-in and transient students, late-night student activities and alcohol-fueled student behavior, the university’s ‘see-nothing-hear-nothing-deny-everything’ posture is increasingly unhelpful and objectionable.”

According to Kerr, the measures are not temporary posturing and reflect a long-term commitment to quality of life in and around Georgetown.

“Thursday is the next step in this process, and we’ve certainly been preparing for Thursday’s hearing, but we’re also … planning to continue the dialogue with our neighbors and continue our work on the quality of life initiatives that we feel are making a real difference in the neighborhood,” she said.

The majority of Thursday’s hearing — the last before the Zoning Comission begins deliberations — will be dedicated to discussion of DDOT’s analysis of the plan.

DDOT released a report Nov. 8 declaring that it has no objections to the university’s most recent transportation impact study, which proposed that GUTS buses exclusively use the Canal Road entrance in order to avoid disturbing the surrounding community.

Laverriere was hopeful that the hearing would go well for the university and stressed the importance of students’ support for the plan.

“While [students] may not always agree with everything that the university has done and the initiatives they have put into place, these are drops in the bucket compared to what will happen to this university if we can’t get the Campus Plan approved,” he said.