Justin Peligri, a junior majoring in political communication, is The Hatchet’s opinions columnist.
We’re in the thick of midterms season at GW. Here’s what you missed this week while you’ve been burying yourself in textbooks and reviewing notecards.
Thumbs Up: Student leaders fight to add sexual assault information to course syllabi
Disability Support Services. Plagiarism. Emergency Evacuation Procedures. If you’re a GW student, you’ll see information about these important topics on every single course syllabus.
What you won’t see, however, is information about who to contact and how to respond in the event of a sexual assault. That’s something that student advocates want to change.
The University has hired administrators and instituted support services for sexual assault survivors. Last semester, former Title IX Director Tara Pereira launched Haven, a centralized online resource for survivors to report their assault and seek help. But the problem is that not enough students are aware that these resources exist.
“So having that information in a really public place would hopefully encourage more people to reach out,” Ariella Neckritz, who is involved with both the Feminist Student Union and Student Against Sexual Assault, told The Hatchet Monday.
This is a logical move that the University should quickly rally behind. But in the meantime, we should applaud these students for lending their voices to this laudable cause.
Thumbs Down: Financial setbacks grip the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Professors in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences are being asked to scale down their travel budgets and refrain from hiring as many teaching assistants and adjuncts this semester.
That’s because GW’s largest college is suffering from its first financial decline in years after 4 percent less students enrolled this year.
In the grand scheme of things, one slow year is not something to get terribly worried about. But it comes on the backs of other colleges, like the GW Law School and GW School of Business, facing financial constraints. Provost Steven Lerman said he plans to work to keep the school in steady financial footing by fighting to grow enrollment of graduate students, but that may be easier said than done.
Financial woes like this one is a reminder that relying heavily on tuition to drive financial stability has plenty of downsides. It’s the worst news this week, but hopefully these negative effects won’t last longterm.
