Living Wage Opens Campaign

Honoring a decision negotiated by the Advisory Committee on Business Practices the previous spring, the university agreed to raise the wages of all contracted workers on campus to a minimum of $8.50 per hour and offer those same employees healthcare benefits.

The Oct. 7 announcement came, in part, as a response to a weeklong campaign by the Georgetown Solidarity Committee. Although pleased with the announcement, Solidarity members said that the raise still fell short of a Living Wage, according to their calculations.

“We can only call the campaign a success once Georgetown commits to a clear living wage policy,” GSC member Ginny Leavell (COL ’05) said. “As far as the financial situation goes – Georgetown has the funding for this, but it refuses to prioritize it.”

MSB Junior Drowns in Potomac

Georgetown grieved following the drowning of junior Robert “Bobby” Tremain in a boating accident on the Potomac in the early morning hours of Oct. 8.

Tremain, a former goalie on Georgetown’s nationally ranked lacrosse team, was remembered at a memorial service at St. William’s Chapel on Oct. 21.

“It saddens me to comprehend that now that I no longer see Bobby, I see him more clearly,” Tremain’s friend Brian Branand (MSB ’06) said at the ceremony. “Bobby was himself always and to all people. He loved people, and he loved their company.”

MSB Senior Dies in Prospect Street Fire

Just over a week after Tremain’s drowning, the Georgetown community was again stunned by the death of senior Daniel Rigby in a townhouse fire.

The Oct. 17 fire engulfed the basement apartment where Rigby lived, and approximately half of the 3300 block of Prospect Street was blocked off for six hours following the incident. Area residents and Georgetown students sat in stunned silence on sidewalks or milled around the area crying and hugging each other.

Friends remembered Rigby, a native of River Edge, N.J., as loyal and sincere. He played rugby, was a member of the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity and remained involved in Mother Teresa’s Hoyas, an organization dedicated to community service.

Although a December investigation by the D.C. Fire Department traced the cause of the fire to a fallen candle or cigarettes, original reports that the fire was caused by an electrical short prompted concern over the safety of off-campus student housing.

Evictions Follow Fatal Fire

In the week following the fatal Prospect Street fire, District building inspectors evicted 43 students from 10 neighborhood townhouses.

The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and the D.C. Fire Department focused its inspections on the 3200 through 3400 blocks of Prospect Street, as well as houses on 35th Street.

Officials identified unsafe sleeping areas, faulty wiring, illegal construction, lack of fire graded ceilings and walls and missing smoke detectors for the closures.

Although two of the evacuated houses were reopened the next week and 21 students were allowed to return to their homes, other evicted students were housed by the university in residence halls or the Marriott Conference Center. Yet more stayed with friends or found other housing.

By the end of the fall inspections, 139 area homes had been inspected and nine were declared uninhabitable.

Gore Lambastes President

Former Vice President Al Gore attacked the Bush presidency in a speech in Gaston Hall on Oct. 19.

“I’m convinced that most of the president’s departure from fact-based analysis has much more to do with right-wing ideology than the Bible,” Gore said. “It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency.”

Gore described Bush’s supporters as “economic royalists” who want tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and “social conservatives” who are trying to reverse the progressive reforms of the 20th century.

Gore also said that he felt the unilateralist foreign policy of the Bush administration has worked to destroy the reputation of the United States abroad.

“America’s moral authority in the world has been severely challenged, and our ability to lead others is disappearing,” he said.

Tenet Joins SFS Faculty

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet (SFS ’76) returned to his alma mater to begin serving a three-year term as distinguished professor in the practice of diplomacy in the School of Foreign Service.

The appointment came just over four months after Tenet’s June resignation as director of the CIA, a position he held since 1997, following a long career in the intelligence and security fields under presidents Bill Clinton (SFS ’68) and George W. Bush.

Tenet is scheduled to begin teaching a course on security studies in the School of Foreign Service in fall 2005. While at Georgetown, he will also lead and speak at lectures, seminars and meetings with students and faculty, administrators said.

“I love it. I think it’s a great opportunity to be back on campus,” Tenet said following a speech to Parents’ Weekend attendees in Gaston Hall.

In the speech, Tenet reflected on his career in the intelligence community. He called today’s world “fundamentally different” than the world of 20 years ago and addressed the challenges of terrorism, global economic disparities and weapons of mass destruction faced by the United States and the world.