Amid all the campaign posters and candidate Web sites, the handshaking and dorm-room drop-ins, the high hopes and grandiose promises, the thing that truly stands out about this GUSA campaign is what the candidates aren’t saying.

We spoke with seven of the eight pairs who have filed with the Election Commission to run in the Student Association’s executive elections next Thursday (the campaign of Tom Karwacki (MSB ’09) and William Farrar (COL ’09) did not respond to our request for an interview). They touched upon a litany of issues familiar to anyone who has paid even minimal attention to GUSA in the past year: the alcohol policy, the lack of uninterrupted wireless Internet access on campus, the need for student unity, and so on, and so on and so on.

But nobody talked about self-segregation on campus, the tendency for Hoyas of similar racial backgrounds to sometimes break off into different groups with suspicious attitudes toward one another. It’s a serious problem at Georgetown that was made all too evident in the wake of this newspaper’s coverage of the Jena Six incident last semester. Few talked about Georgetown’s homophobia, a viral impulse among some that lurks below the surface on campus but cropped up last semester in shameful hate-motivated crimes.

Nobody talked about how Georgetown’s financial constraints have affected the way financial aid is allocated, forcing the Office of Admissions to offer alumni-funded grants to as many underprivileged students as it can, in sharp contrast to schools with higher endowments that can offer much broader assistance.

Nobody talked about how Georgetown’s Jesuit motto of “men and women for others” calls students to service in the community around them, and the need for Hoyas to reconnect with the legacy of transformative public servants like former university president Rev. Timothy Healy, S.J., who understood the role Georgetown must play in improving its neighborhood and Washington, D.C.

This election season, as we think about what is most important about the choice we make in our next student leaders, let’s borrow a phrase from a candidate running in another presidential election and have a little “Straight Talk”:

GUSA is a joke. A tragically, hilariously, hyperbolically, theatrically side-splitting joke. A joke whose punch line we will never fully understand.

For as long as any of us can remember, GUSA always seems to set its aspirations in the gutter. None of its recent leaders have envisioned a role for the Student Association beyond a mouthpiece for perennial student complaints. Rather than rise to the challenge of all governments and turn its focus on Georgetown’s most enduring, intractable problems, GUSA simply serves as a repository for whatever quotidian, low-brow, what’s-in-it-for-me concerns that students bring up.

In doing so, GUSA confines itself to near-perpetual failure. Its goals are undefined, its accomplishments in tackling serious issues are few. Its legislative arm, as both the former Assembly and the current Senate, is run by a few walking, talking, résumé-building egos who know Robert’s Rules of Order by heart but are clueless as to how to build an effective student government. Its presidents and vice presidents act like glorified hotel concierges, trying to ensure Georgetown students the most comfortable stay possible, with punctual GUTS buses, plentiful kegs and visiting hours in glitzy Riggs Library.

None of the tickets we interviewed gave us any reason to believe that GUSA’s legacy of mediocrity will change anytime soon.

Three tickets, however, gave us reasons for hope.

ore than any of their competitors, Schuyler Hawkins (MSB ’10) and Anna Schubert (COL ’09) are genuinely dissatisfied with GUSA’s legacy of inaction on the most important student concerns. They specifically cited GUSA’s absence from the activism campaign that led to the formation of the three LGBTQ working groups last October as a reason for their frustration. Their message of change and range of experience outside of GUSA are compelling arguments in support of their candidacy. Unfortunately, they are not backed up by specific proposals through which they might implement that change.

Kyle Williams (COL ’09) and Brian Kesten (COL ’10) are far and away the most knowledgeable candidates on the issues that have dominated this campaign. We were impressed by their emphasis on campus security and ending bias-related incidents at Georgetown.

But their pitch to students is based mostly on the experience they’ve accrued in institutions like the GUSA Senate and a seemingly endless list of committees and advisory groups, and the connections they’ve formed with different administrators. Their plan for solving Georgetown’s most difficult problems is low on specifics and seems limited to just getting students to talk about them more.

This is exactly the wrong medicine for GUSA right now. It’s hard to believe that Williams and Kesten will really redirect GUSA’s essential mission when their campaign is rooted so deeply in the Student Association’s flawed status quo.

At the end of it all, there are Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) and James Kelly (COL ’09). We’ll admit, we were initially suspicious of candidates who look completely like the kind of people who always get elected: affable, mainstream, endlessly political. The only thing that would make their Joe Hoya candidacies perfect would be if they were named Pat Lauinger and James McDonough.

Beyond the façade, however, we were surprised to find some genuine rays of hope emanating from their platform. They expressed the same kind of over-the-top indignation about the alcohol policy changes as most candidates, but also talked about how those changes related to the forthcoming Intellectual Life Report and finding a way for students to strike the right balance between work and recreation.

ost importantly, their campaign was the only one to present some original, off-the-beaten path ideas to pursue in office, like subsidized summer housing for students with unpaid internships who can’t afford to pay rent. They are realistic about how much they expect to accomplish in one year, but they still have a more thoughtfully considered plan of action than any of their competitors.

aybe GUSA is meant to forever be the misbegotten stepchild of student organizations on campus. Maybe it will never rise to the level of a forward-thinking, far-reaching force for empowering students and improving Georgetown. With Dowd and Kelly, we hope it might at least come close.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this editorial that briefly appeared online early on the morning of Friday, Feb. 15 inaccurately stated that Kyle Williams (COL ’09) and Brian Kesten (COL ’10) did not respond to THE HOYA’s request for an interview. Williams and Kesten never received THE HOYA’s invitation. The editorial was modified following a formal interview with Williams and Kesten.

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