The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) executive is focused on crisis management and implementing long-term positive change for vulnerable communities on campus, according to the Blass-Sanchez administration. 

GUSA President Nile Blass (COL ’22) and Vice President Nicole Sanchez (SFS ’22) were first elected during the 2021 GUSA executive elections. Since assuming office in May 2021, the pair has overseen advocacy efforts as the larger Georgetown student body has returned to campus for the first time in two years.

Blass and Sanchez joined The Hoya in an Oct. 25 Q&A to discuss their administration’s successes over halfway through their term, the ongoing projects they are leading, as well as their goals for the remainder of their time as GUSA executives. Below is an excerpt from the interview. For a more complete overview of the interview, please refer to The Hoya’s podcast recap of the Q&A.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

What has been your administration’s biggest accomplishment? What was the biggest challenge you faced in accomplishing this, and how did you overcome it? 

Blass: A lot of this semester has been emergency needs, things that weren’t predicted. So I’m proud of everything that we’ve done, but it’s very important for me to be doing tangible and deliberate work, and I think that a lot of times GUSA can be doing things behind the scenes having a lot of dialogues, but what the student body is actually able to receive and meaningfully engage in is limited. I think that the work that we did from February when we first took office into now is the CARES Act one, two and then the ARP Act. I think that financial restitution for students who are struggling not just as it relates to the pandemic and those circumstances, but as it relates to just different experiences and perspectives with which people have to come into Georgetown and have to try and engage in this educational environment. 

Sanchez: One of the biggest challenges about being in GUSA in general is that you’re always constantly responding to crisis and a lot of times the infrastructure of how the school works, and then also just the club that we are in really prevents us sometimes from pushing a lot of work that’s not crisis work aside. I would say that one of our biggest achievements, at least for me, is the financial assistance that just came out for meal plans. I say it is a big achievement for us because we worked on it for months. 

How has working with the university administration been?

Sanchez: We do surveys, we collect information and we share those testimonies with students allowing us to, to say hey, ‘This is what students are telling us,’ and administrators tell us straight to our face to stop exaggerating, using hyperboles, basically calling us liars during meetings. They have downplayed student feelings and emotions. There’s a really big thing in regards to liability with administrators where any negative thing that happens to any student on campus, the school can be held liable for, so they’re very specific on how they take accountability, which is something we’ve really had issues with: accountability and communication.

What have you yet to accomplish that you hope to do before the end of your term? 

Sanchez: Two of the things that I’m extremely passionate about and we’re kind of already working on are one, mental health and leave of absence. I know there’s a lot of controversy about how that gets done in relation to CAPS and GUPD and Georgetown’s Hospital and their mental health ward, because a lot of students have had negative experiences, including me, and that can be very traumatizing and negatively affecting the academic record. The system that’s in place creates that really toxic and negative experience for students is institutionalized and in the system that exists. A big part of what I want to do is work on fixing that and addressing leave of absence and forced leave of absence, and how students are kind of coerced into it. I’m standing by this because I’ve experienced this and I’ve heard many other students with the same experience.
Blass: Georgetown banks on the idea that we leave in four years. So, even if we give them the worst four years of their lives, John DeGoia, Joseph Ferrara, all the other individuals, regardless of our personal relationships with them or whether they’re amicable and supportive of the work that we’re doing, we leave. So they can stay, they can write us out and even with the GU272 and are doing so much more work on that. One of my biggest priorities is the change that withstands after we’re gone because a lot of other things rely on the people who are coming after us not being focused and engaged and following up on everything else that we’re doing.