It’s no secret that Georgetown students like to stay informed about events occurring both on and off campus, constantly checking social media and news websites. Still,Dalvin Butler (COL ’13) thought Georgetown needed something more to help students deal with campus-related issues. Partnering with GUTV, Dalvin created “The Hoya Experience with Dalvin Butler,” a talk show filmed with a live audience and featuring interviews with important members of the student body. Dalvin’s first episode, featuring the Georgetown University Student Association President Clara Gustafson (SFS ’13) and Vice President Vail Kohnert-Yount (SFS ’13), was highly entertaining and shows that the program has enormous potential. We sat down with this vibrant campus personality to see what inspired him to talk about the Hoya experience.

How did you get involved with GUTV?

I became involved with GUTV over the summer. I happened to be going up to the fourth floor where the GUTV office is located. I talked to a lady, and I told her I was very interested in having a … show at the time. And I [told her that] I think GUTV needs to do a bit more in terms of talk shows, so I just pitched my talk show idea to her. She seemed [to think] it was a fantastic idea. We contacted the managing director at GUTV, and everything just kind of took on a life of its own after that.

What made you think there was a need for a talk show at Georgetown? 

As you know, “The Hoya Experience with Dalvin Butler” is the only talk show on campus. I thought we needed to be more innovative, and I thought a talk show with an audience particularly would give some life to this campus to talk about some issues. I see “The Hoya Experience” as being a huge party, [but also] as being a provocative talk show that focuses on campus life.  As a senior, I [thought], “Well, everyone’s doing a radio show, or they’re a columnist for The Hoya,” and I wanted to think of something innovative that we don’t have.

Do you draw any inspiration from popular talk show hosts? 

One of my guilty pleasures is watching the “The Wendy Williams Show” as well as “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

How do you choose your guests? 

I select my guests based on the climate, by which I mean the level of interest on issues or initiatives that are going on at the time.  Our next guest potentially will be Julian De La Paz (SFS ’15) during our November shoot.  However, we’re also going to be having [Georgetown] Improv Association on. They just had their first show [this past weekend].  I want to be very diverse in terms of the people who I select to come on my show.  That means people from study body government, people from performing arts, people from athletics — to give it a wide range because people’s interests vary.  Although the show appears to be probably more of a student body government show right now, it’s going to transition.

What can we expect for the future of “The Hoya Experience?” 

I see it having a better format, possibly another person acting or maybe a live band.  Those are all things we’re talking about now with some of the producers — how we are going to format it differently for the spring semester [and] what things that we look and see that were flawed in the first season to make it a more lively show for the next semester.

Note (March 16, 2015): The image associated with this article has been removed for the protection of the subject.