Volume 116 Issue 17

Monday, November 25, 2019 I Vol. 116 Iss. 17

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

WWW.GWHATCHET.COM

What’s inside Opinions

The Hatchet’s editorial board discusses cancel culture Page 6

Culture

Read The Hatchet’s 2019-20 annual holiday guide Pages 9-12

Sports

Men’s water polo drops its first championship in three years Page 8

Student leaders express mixed reactions to bill tackling anti-Semitism LIZZIE MINTZ ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

SOPHIA YOUNG | PHOTOGRAPHER André Gonzales, the SA’s director of legacy review, said the conversation about building naming comes at a “pivotal point” in the University’s history.

Building name task force members eager to address issue in ‘systematic’ way ZACH SCHONFELD ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

Members of the Board of Trustees’ new task force on building naming policies say they will spend the year developing recommendations to guide name change procedures moving forward. The Task Force on Naming, which officials announced Thursday, includes 17 members who will deliver recommendations to the board about principles to guide naming, name change procedures and circumstances that merit consideration of name change requests by the end of the academic year. Taskforce members include students and faculty who have previously voiced support for changing the Colonials moniker or some campus building names with “problematic” pasts. Board Chair Grace Speights, an ex-officio member of the group, said discussions surrounding the task force’s creation took place “over many months.” She said officials launched the group following years of national debate around “acknowledging and confronting history” at universities across the

country. “Institutions of higher education have led the charge in these areas as they have considered renaming buildings, facilities and other public spaces,” she said in an email. “GW has its own history that we must explore, and we need a framework in place to be able to advance these discussions.” The members of the commission include four officials like Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement Caroline Laguerre-Brown and Vice President for External Relations Lorraine Voles, four trustees, an emeritus trustee, three students, three faculty and two alumni. Speights said task force membership was intentionally selected to include a “diverse” selection of members of the GW community. She said community members will receive more information about how to give feedback to members of the group after the task force has convened. She said the group will spend the year drafting recommendations and will submit their findings to the board for review by the end of the year.

JACK FONSECA | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR The recommendations will be issued before GW celebrates its bicentennial in 2021.

“Over the coming months, the task force will meet regularly and provide opportunities for community input,” she said in an email. Trustee Mark Chichester, the chair of the task force, did not return multiple requests for comment. The task force’s creation comes after Student Association leaders proposed a set of guidelines for administrators to adopt regarding building names. The proposed rules state that officials should revoke building names if the individual for whom the building was named has engaged in behavior “inconsistent” with GW’s values that “jeopardizes the University’s reputation and public

trust.” Denver Brunsman, an associate professor of history who serves on the task force, said administrators invited him to participate, and the group is in the process of scheduling their first meetings. Brunsman has previously expressed his support for changing the Colonials moniker, but officials have been cautious to take a public stance on that movement. “By setting up this task force and setting up guidelines, it will ultimately help with any future name change that will be seen as credible and something that people can have trust and that it went through a fair process,” Brunsman said. See TASK FORCE Page 4

Some Jewish student leaders said they weren’t adequately included in conversations about a Student Association resolution last week that urged the University to fight anti-Semitism. The SA senate overwhelmingly green-lighted a resolution demanding that officials add faithbased discrimination workshops to required first-year diversity trainings and codify an SA task force to address anti-Semitism on campus. SA leaders said they consulted Jewish student leaders before voting on the resolution, but some students said they didn’t have enough time to offer feedback about the legislation and that SA members didn’t fully address their concerns about the resolution’s language. Louie Kahn, CCAS-U and a sponsor of the legislation, said that in the aftermath of an anti-Semitic video that circulated earlier this month, officials’ investigation into the incident alongside student efforts will help prevent future incidents. “If GW just addresses some of these things from the onset, you’ll be able to avoid things like what happened in that video,” he said. Student organizations and the SA held forums in the days following the Snapchat incident to address student concerns that anti-Semitism on campus is not isolated to the recent video. SA President SJ Matthews filed an executive order Nov. 17 to create a “Task Force on Combating Anti-Semitism,” which will be comprised of SA members, student leaders and student body members who will propose “institutional changes” to address the issue. Zachary Nosanchuk – the SA’s vice president for undergraduate policy, an endorser of the resolution and a former Hatchet opinions writer – said he is currently working with Matthews and Julia Kerrigan, the SA’s director of interfaith engagement and task force chair, to decide which three student body

members will serve in the group. Nosanchuk said the leaders might create a public application for students to apply to serve on the task force, and the Jewish Student Association will select some representatives for the group. “We want to have a pluralistic first view of the Jewish community here because we can’t just appoint someone from GW for Israel,” he said. “It’s very difficult because we want to get diversity. We know that in three seats, we’re not going to get every Jew at GW.” Kahn, CCAS-U and a legislation sponsor, said the task force will “formalize” a group within the SA to address anti-Semitism to ensure the task force will not dissolve over time. “I do not think it should be a topic that goes ignored,” he said. “Any form of hate needs to be addressed on this campus and I would say anti-Semitism is no exception.” Kahn said legislation sponsors met with Jewish students, like JVP members and other students earlier this month to discuss the legislation that passed last week. He said an “overwhelming majority” of Jewish students he met with said they would be upset if the legislation did not include that the state of Israel has a right to exist – a clause that was removed before the resolution passed after students pushed back. “I would just say from a personal perspective, I think that many Jewish students on this campus associate their identity with Israel, and that if we didn’t include that, I think would be a disservice to those students,” he said. Some Jewish students said they were not given “adequate time” to review the resolution and that the SA did not take their concerns about the proposed language into consideration before the vote. Gabriela Rossner, a coordinating committee member of Jewish Voice for Peace, said none of the resolution’s sponsors reached out to JVP about the legislation’s content. She said JVP members had to obtain contact information for the sponsors from other SA members. See CLAUSE Page 3

Panhel leaders silent about sorority diversity trainings LIZZIE MINTZ CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR

A semester after Panhellenic Association social events were put on hold for mandated diversity and inclusion programming, leaders and officials will not discuss details of the sessions. After a racist Snapchat post from a then-sorority president’s account surfaced in September, officials suspended Panhel sororities from participating in informal fall recruitment and social events and required chapters to attend diversity discussion sessions. But after a semester’s worth of trainings, Panhel leaders have remained tight-lipped about the content of the sessions, and officials will not disclose who was involved with program planning. Colette Coleman, the associate dean of students, said Fraternity and Sorority Life officials worked with University “partners” from late September to early November to hold community cultural trainings for Panhel members. She did not specify who the University partners are. Coleman said sorority members spent time “reflecting on both their positive and negative histories” in the sessions. She said the programming included but was not limited to 13 sessions on

subjects like restorative justice and understanding microaggressions. Members also participated in a day of service and attended the University’s annual diversity summit, she said. “They also engaged in meaningful discussions about how to address the experiences of their members and the larger GW community,” she said in an email. She said Panhel brought experts in to facilitate conversations among sorority members about diversity problems that are pervasive on a “broader level” than oncampus issues. “We feel that members of the community met and exceeded the requirements asked of them, and engaged in meaningful dialogue,” she said. Coleman declined to say the minimum number of educational sessions sorority members were required to attend this semester or how many members from each chapter needed to attend sessions. She also declined to say what repercussions a sorority would face if the chapter did not meet the minimum requirements for how many women attended sessions or the number of sessions members attended. She declined to say what, if any, requirements for diversity trainings chapters will have to complete next semes-

LILLIAN BAUTISTA | CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITOR Panhellenic Association leaders declined to talk about conversation surrounding diversity and inclusion sessions mandated by the University earlier this semester.

ter.

In an email sent to sorority members earlier this semester, officials said chapters must participate in diversity and inclusion events, like a presentation and conference on “what is and is not appropriate to wear and say in preparation for Halloween” during Greek Week last month. “We are very excited for all four councils to come together to celebrate diversity, scholarship, service and fun!”

the email states. Eight Panhel chapter presidents did not return multiple requests for comment. Kerri Corcoran, the president of Chi Omega and a former Hatchet editor, and Alexa Saberito, the president of Sigma Delta Tau, declined to comment. Panhel President Sarah Sem, who stepped into her role last month after the former president resigned to take a leave of absence, did not return multiple requests for comment. Nine executive

board members listed on the Fraternity and Sorority Life website did not return requests for comment, and one delegate listed on the website said she graduated in May. Of the 11 Panhel delegates listed on the website, 10 did not return requests for comment, and one said she left her post to study abroad this semester. The National Panhellenic Conference did not return a request for comment. Peter Lake, the chair and

director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University, said requiring student groups to hold mandatory trainings about “equal opportunity issues” is becoming common among student organizations. He said schools generally offer new trainings during the semester, rather than before the semester begins, as a response to a specific incident. Lake said a national growing focus on diversity trainings could be a result of growing Title IX policies, which “paved the way” for largescale trainings and a more indepth approach to addressing diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism on campuses. He said diversity trainings have also increased conversations around topics like bias response teams, which document bias incidents. Officials implemented a University bias incident reporting system in February 2019, almost a year after a racist Snapchat featuring two members of Alpha Phi spread across campus. “The feeling is that you want to get as in front of this as you can to avoid things blowing up into major issues,” he said. “Social justice is driving the conversation on campus this year in a way that I haven’t seen probably since the 1960s.”