The University’s top two student leaders intend to spend the spring semester focusing on improving Gelman Library and other areas of mass student concern, after spending a majority of the fall semester working on internal reforms.
The SA plans to lay the groundwork for reforming Gelman Library, on-campus dining and the 4-RIDE service, SA Executive Vice President Rob Maxim said – goals many SA leaders have promised to deliver on in the past, to no avail.
“From the beginning, [SA President] Jason [Lifton] and I have said we wanted to tackle the big problems that students face annually,” Maxim said. “The administrators have actively listened to [our] advocacy this year and are now working to fulfill our recommendations, more than in any year in recent memory.”
With Gelman, the SA will be recruiting students to form an advisory board by the end of January to narrow and emphasize what needs to be done to the building.
“We hope to fill the board with a variety of students, people [we] may not necessarily know or come across on a daily basis,” Lifton said. “We will be advertising and creating an application, while also hand-picking some of the members.”
Lifton and Maxim said Gelman reforms will not be completed in just one year. Taking into account funding, planning and physical construction, Maxim estimated that substantial improvements to Gelman are likely to be a multi-year process.
Lifton said he hopes certain aesthetic improvements will at least be noticeable by May.
“The carpeting will hopefully be changed and Gelman will look like a nicer place to study by then,” Lifton said. “We’ve spent a lot of time advocating for renovations. By the time I leave in May, I cannot promise that it will be fixed, but the ball will be moving.”
The SA is starting to place more of an emphasis on dining issues, which University administrators have been receptive to, Maxim said.
“We are looking into what would be the ideal plan, especially from the student perspective, regardless of any existing contracts or service providers,” Maxim said.
The University has an exclusive catering contract with Sodexo, one of the largest food service providers in the world. The contract limits the selection of the food served in the Marvin Center and makes large-scale changes difficult. To make the wide-spread changes Lifton and Maxim seek, GW would have to break its contract with Sodexo.
Lifton and Maxim said they will be seeking student feedback this semester on ideal dining situations, ignoring any current contract restrictions for the time being.
Throughout the year, the SA has also been actively working with Senior Associate Vice President for Safety and Security Darrell Darnell to make the 4-RIDE system more efficient.
Maxim said Darnell now has plans to possibly institute an online and smartphone application-based reservation system.
“It all comes down to finding and implementing a system that will be able to handle a population the size of GW,” Maxim said.
While Darnell is spearheading the initiative, Lifton said the SA will be consistently providing him with student thoughts and feedback.
Unlike past administrations, Lifton and Maxim said they are taking on several large tasks that realistically cannot all be completed by May.
