Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This wisdom has fortunately not been lost on the Georgetown University Student Association.
The body released a comprehensive campus plan report last Wednesday bearing the frank title “Let’s Not Get Screwed Again,” which provides a detailed account of the ramifications of the 2010 Campus Plan agreement produced by the Georgetown Community Partnership and urges students to act while the specifics of the next plan remain relatively less finalized.

While life on the Hilltop has remained the same in many respects, the 2010 Campus Plan has had negative consequences for the student body as a whole.

From the implementation of a three-year housing requirement to the creation of new dorms that promise to further clutter an already-crowded campus, the 2010 plan has precipitated a number of unpopular policies that stand to radically change campus life, if they have not done so already.

As members of the Georgetown community, students must heed the lessons of our last experience and take an active role in crafting a campus plan that better reflects our wishes this time around.

GUSA’s report is a critical first step toward achieving that goal, but in order to argue for a more representative campus plan, students need first to have an understanding of the stakes involved and how the last campus plan has affected us.

By arming the student body with information about how the previous campus plan has undermined our interests, “Let’s Not Get Screwed Again” should become the foundation upon which a much stronger effort to fight for student goals in negotiations can and should be built.

The student body needs to take it upon itself to exhibit an active role in the 2018 plan negotiations. Only by maintaining our voice and standing together as students of Georgetown can our interests actually be heard and taken seriously by administrators and neighborhood officials.

We encourage every student to read “Let’s Not Get Screwed Again,” but we also encourage students not to let simply reading the pamphlet be the end of their involvement.

The most important action students can take is to be outspoken proponents of their interests as the negotiations grow nearer, as such vociferous support will put pressure on the Community Partnership to take our needs into consideration.

Such action will also provide the members of GUSA who will be speaking on our behalf with a crucial mandate for their positions, something that we can say was undoubtedly lacking during the 2010 negotiations given the amount of enormously unpopular initiatives that came as a surprise to many. We advise GUSA to do its part as well and provide opportunities to become involved as negotiations proceed.

GUSA has written a petition that advocates modifying the on-campus housing requirement, calls for renovations of existing buildings over the construction of new buildings and demands greater student representation on the campus plan’s Steering Committee, a board of administrators that will oversee negotiations over the plan that currently only allows one student representative. The petition itself has amassed 800 signatures to date, and will keep growing as long as we act together.
We urge students to sign it, and give voice to a cause that will affect us for the rest of our time on this campus.