GUSA Reform Is the Bane of My Existence

By Nicholas Johnston A Famous Hoya Columnist

As a junior filled with buoyant optimism, I looked to Student Government as a way to effect positive change for my friends and fellow students. However, after my triumphant election, I have been mired in an organization that refuses to do anything but debate its own legitimacy. In light of such ludicrous behavior by my fellow Honorable GUSA Representatives, I am left with little avenue of recourse but to depart. My energies will be better spent serving Georgetown outside of GUSA than by debating my political existence within it.

“Therefore, I regretfully submit my resignation as an Honorable Senior Representative and wish the best of luck to all of you and the horse you rode in on.

“Regretfully submitted; Representative Nicholas Johnston.”

On Tuesday night, I was ready to walk. My official resignation (see above) sat in front of me on my official desk, my official pen at the ready for an official signature. I was this close to becoming an official Former Honorable GUSA Representative. There is only so much I can take.

Again, last Tuesday, as it has been nearly every week since the dawn of the school year, this university’s student government was debating itself. We weren’t talking about the needs of students or how to make Georgetown better. We were talking about us – the ultimate masturbatory activity of an organization supposedly filled with nothing but resume-padding, self-aggrandizing egomaniacs.

This time, the well-intentioned reformists had marshaled nearly 200 believing underclassmen and marched them straight down the golden road to hell and right into a GUSA meeting. They had all just come from a circus of a rally – a man was there juggling torches – to voice their support for a resolution calling for the creation of the Student Leadership Reform Group. In true noble activist fashion, they proposed to cure GUSA of its inability to effect positive change by condemning GUSA to yet another semester of debating itself.

These reform movements are completely useless. The bright-eyed revolutionaries that stormed GUSA on Tuesday came with a disruptive fervor that will not last (I have seen this before) and a naïvete born from simple misinformation. The students of this University will never `reform’ GUSA into supposed legitimacy. They cannot legislate themselves into a position `superior’ to the administration. One misguided young boy, whose name escapes me because I’m famous and he’s not, declared at an earlier reform meeting (and there have been so many) that GUSA needs a constitution that will subordinate the administration to student government.

That is ridiculous. That boy is a fool.

This new S.L.R.G. – as us student politicos now call it – can pass as many resolutions as it wants and issue as many edicts as Rip Andrews (SFS ’01) and Jasper Ward’s (COL ’01) minions can photocopy and distribute to every freshman on campus, but the fact of the matter is that the administration will not, and need not, pay attention to any of them. GUSA will only receive the true power it wants, not by wresting it from the administration through misguided reform initiatives or time wasting constitutional referendums, but by being given the power as a popular mandate by you, the students. Vote in elections. Come to meetings.

It was refreshing, then, on Tuesday night, to see students taking an interest in their Student Government. I, for one, was flattered by all the attention, and I’m sure nearly all of us on the assembly were ecstatic that nearly 200 people came to one of our meetings. But for nearly all of them it was their first meeting. And probably also their last.

It is convenient for these hordes of reformists to march into Leavey Program room and demand change on just one Tuesday night. That’s not too much of a time commitment on their part. But where, then, were these same students, who appear to care so much about Georgetown students, when GUSA was fighting for Georgetown students? Where were they when John Glennon (COL ’99) and Austin Martin (COL ’99) stood up for tailgating? Where were they when Jon Yeatman (MSB ’00) secured student parking? Where were they when Jack Gearan (COL ’00) was meeting with Deans about tuition hikes and club funding? Where were they when Joe Morrow (SFS ’01) was planning diversity forums and student dialogues? Where were they when we were helping Georgetown students? They were printing pamphlets, attacking what GUSA has tried to accomplish. For their fickle whims it is easier to storm the castle gates and decry their student government than it is for them to pick up a phone or come to a meeting and do something constructive for Georgetown.

I told them all of this on Tuesday night. I asked them why, if they cared so much, that they had never bothered to come to a GUSA meeting. I asked them how they expect student government to be effective if all student government talks about is student government. They leered at me, a senior with such gall to dare oppose their glorious intentions, and whispered to their roommates about how much of a jerk I was. Why, they shouted “Hoya Saxa” as they marched across campus. That has to be convincing proof of their merits. They rallied in Dahlgren Quad with 200 supporters. That has to mean that they’re good.

No it does not. I am not easily fooled.

After my remarks, as I sauntered out of the Leavey Program room for a drink of water, a young girl, as I passed her, called me an “arrogant bastard.” In four months, when GUSA continues to waste its time debating nothing but its own purpose and sense of legitimacy, that little girl will realize that I am not arrogant. I am right. And I was only a bastard because she was in my way.

For thanks to students like her, the political culture on this campus will spend the next six months (and an election cycle) debating student government and nothing but student government, instead of fighting for student issues. I am proud, as the lone dissenting voice on the assembly, to have fought against this needless and time consuming reform proposition. I did not cower before the political egos of some or the misguided activism of others. I am proud that I voted with the best interests of Georgetown students and saddened, as GUSA plans to spend a semester focusing only on itself, that I was the lone voice of reason in a room full of noise.

I still have my resignation letter. It remains unsigned at home in my official GUSA File Folder. I did not resign because I still believe in a GUSA that helps students and I still believe in my role as an Assembly Representative to not constantly debate my political existence but work on behalf of all of you. Unfortunately, as GUSA begins the long and arduous task of once again redefining itself, the students it was created to serve will suffer, and the goals many of us in student government hoped to accomplish will fall by the wayside, forgotten.

A Famous Hoya Columnist appears Fridays in The Hoya.