The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Senate approved eight bills, including multiple aimed at dining improvements and oversight of GUSA’s executive branch, at a June 14 meeting.
The legislation, which also addressed the university’s grading and artificial intelligence (AI) policies, intends to improve the senate’s function and Georgetown student life. All eight bills were passed unanimously.
One bill instructs the senate’s dining subcommittee to publish a semesterly report card on Georgetown’s dining offerings and student experience. Another proposal encourages administrators to reduce the number of visiting grade-school children in Georgetown’s dining hall, who commonly participate in trips to Washington, D.C.
Speaker Cameran Lane (CAS ’28), who sponsored the report card legislation, said regularly publishing a report will bolster student engagement with the dining subcommittee.
“I think it gives the student body a lot of leverage when it comes to certain dining issues,” Lane said at the meeting. “I also think it’s very productive that the student body is aware, because we try to advertise student dining committee meetings — they can reflect on those efforts — but this would allow us to be upfront and personal with the student body every semester.”
The first oversight bill aims to streamline communication between the Senate, executive branch and upper-level university administrators by requiring the president’s chief of staff to notify senate leadership of the meetings and provide summaries.
Vice Speaker Roan Bedoian (CAS ’28) said the communication bill will help Senate leadership enact legislation more efficiently.
“I think you all deserve to know that there’s a communication breakdown between senate and exec,” Bedoian said at the meeting. “And, that we’re reaching out and doing the best we can to have them work with us, in part, so we can get all of your wonderful work implemented.”
GUSA President Darius Wagner (CAS ’27) notified the senate June 14 he intends to veto the communication bill, saying the bill would create an administrative burden for the executive branch.
The other oversight bill enables the Federal and D.C. Relations Committee (FedRel), a lobbying arm of the executive branch, to become an independent club, without access to GUSA branding and privileges. Previously, the senate passed legislation requiring FedRel to consolidate with the external affairs department, but FedRel was instead interested in becoming a separate club.
Lane said the bill updates the senate’s stance on the committee and will support FedRel in becoming independent.
“FedRel was very interested in entering new club development and becoming their own thing, completely independent of GUSA,” Lane said. “This is just an update to that, saying that the Senate, we allow that to happen, because the executive cannot. Let me make that clear: The executive cannot unilaterally alter implementation of standing legislation without reconsulting the Senate, and so this is us being reconsulted and making sure that the understanding is that if they do become fully independent, they won’t have access to our branding, our resources or any of the legitimacy that is tied to the student body’s elected leaders.”
The remaining four bills urged the university to revisit its policy on final paper due dates, requested student input on AI policy, affirmed support for LGBTQ+ Pride Month and recommended students be allowed to retroactively place a pass/fail designation on a course.
Senator Zadie Weaver (CAS ’28), who authored the pass/fail bill, said the legislation encourages students to take classes outside of their comfort zone and gives them reprieve in their exploration.
“You can have an A in the class and then a week before final exams, your professor gives you something that’s worth 50 percent of your grade, and it completely changes the course of your grade, which undermines the entire idea of pass/fail,” Weaver said at the meeting. “So, this would allow you to, if you had one bad experience with a professor, that you weren’t able to foresee your final grade — your professor, they switched up in the last few weeks — this gives you one grace period.”
Bedoian, who wrote the bill criticizing the university’s policy that allows final papers during the last week of instruction if a class also has a final exam, said banning paper deadlines during that week would better support students.
“People I knew were both stressed and actively telling me that they felt like they weren’t doing their best work because they had all of it piled up on top of each other and there was just no way for them to perform well on both of them,” Bedoian said. “So ideally, this would also lead to better learning outcomes as well.”
