Monday, October 17, 2022 I Vol. 119 Iss. 10
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INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904
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Halloween Guide 2022 Pages 7-8
How the landscape of GW and Foggy Bottom evolved over the last five years HENRY HUVOS
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
AUDEN YURMAN | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Faculty senators said schools like the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences have “inadequate” financial support because the University has directed funding to the medical enterprise instead of its other schools.
Officials pledge MFA will break even by June, stirring skepticism from faculty senators IANNE SALVOSA
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
SOPHIA GOEDERT
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Faculty senators are doubtful officials will follow through on their plans for the Medical Faculty Associates to break even by next June with $200 million of debt mounting on the health care provider network. Officials restructured the MFA in August to improve its financial standing through yearly payments from Universal Health Services to GW, “trademark royalties” and a “fair market rent repayment” on GW property, according to a report on the MFA delivered at last Friday’s Faculty Senate meeting. MFA CEO Barbara Bass said at the meeting that the sale of GW’s 20 percent minority stake in the GW Hospital will help redirect clinical revenue to the MFA, which partially staffed the hospital. She said the MFA’s “hands were bound” by the District Hospital Partners, the agreement between the University and UHS to operate the GW Hospital, which made it “impossible” for the MFA to become a profitable institution. The former financial relationship between the MFA, UHS and the GW Hospital was unclear from Bass’ statements at the meeting. Bass said the drop in MFA revenue, which she attributed to the pandemic, pushed officials to restructure the MFA’s relationship with DHP. She said GW’s sale of the minority stake in the hospital will make the MFA profitable, claiming it created a “modern funds flow arrangement,” but
she did not explain how it would do so. “There was no forward position for the MFA as a clinical enterprise without a reset of the relationship with Universal Health Services,” Bass said. The report did not detail how the MFA would execute the terms of its new agreements, which, in combination with the MFA’s dramatic financial losses, stirred frustration among faculty senators at the meeting. The MFA lost nearly $80 million in fiscal year 2021 – which spans from July 2020 through June 2021 – plummeting 200 percent from its FY 2016 levels. The report states the MFA’s net profits have fallen each fiscal year since 2019, with $43 and $48.1 million in losses in FY 2020 and FY 2021, respectively. Officials plan to increase the MFA’s revenue by more than $60 million and decrease its expenses by $2 million to break even in FY
2023 – which ends June 30, according to the report. Bass’ appearance at last week’s meeting marks the first time she has publicly taken questions about the MFA and its finances since the MFA became a topic of discussion at any Faculty Senate meeting in recent memory. Faculty senators said schools like the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, which they said has “inadequate” financial support, would be better suited to serve its students and support its faculty if the University directed the funds they are currently loaning to the MFA to the academic schools instead. They said they don’t believe the MFA will break even next year because, without clear communication, officials’ financial projections don’t “make sense.” Sarah Wagner, a professor of anthropology and a faculty senator, said officials’ efforts to direct funds to the medical enterprise
“stings” because CCAS faculty have struggled to hire student researchers and conduct research projects. “When will we see equal prioritization of the fundamental services and support systems for the units in this university that are currently carrying the MFA on their backs?” she said at the meeting. Susan Kulp, a faculty senator and co-chair of the senate’s fiscal planning and budgeting committee, said quarterly check-ins about the MFA’s financial statements to the senate would allow senators to gauge how the MFA is moving forward. She said she “scratched [her] head” to the MFA’s financial plan to break even for FY 2023 because she didn’t see a strategic or quarterly plan for how the MFA will reach its goal. “It’s just about having access to transparent information and answers, and not an opinion of what we should do,” Kulp said.
NICHOLAS ANASTACIO I GRAPHICS EDITOR
Through remodeled dining venues and demolished buildings, the structural landscape of Foggy Bottom has transformed during the last five years, a sign of the neighborhood’s synchronous relationship with GW. Since 2017, GW’s property investments have ranged from total demolition to dramatic renovations through multi-million dollar building sales, remodeled dining venues and legal agreements with the surrounding neighborhood and D.C. government. Local residents have reacted to the neighborhood’s evolution with mixed feelings, welcoming GW’s communication about the physical developments but resisting change that fails to include them in the decisionmaking process. The changes have delivered Foggy Bottom new restaurants, office spaces and hotel deals likely to bring revenue to the area. But local critics of the changes have disagreed with GW’s demolition of campus buildings they associate with the neighborhood’s history and closures that have stripped dining options from the area. “GW has a long history of working alongside our local partners and elected in seeking solutions to improve and enhance our city,” University spokesperson Daniel Parra said in an email. “These include contributions to educational, physical and environmental facilities and programs.” Occupying Foggy Bottom since 1912, GW has long been near-synonymous with the surrounding neighborhood, playing a direct role in many of its changes over the century. Here are some of the most major shifts the two have undergone over the past few years:
GW to reel in millions from hotel sales
GW has initiated the sales of two of its West End properties in the last year, as University planning has shifted toward a more centralized Foggy Bottom approach. GW has owned One Washington Circle Hotel as an investment property since 2001, but opened the building for residential housing, taking in 282 students to compensate for lost capacity during Thurston Hall’s renovation. GW announced plans to sell the property months later, while officials stressed it was not central to the University’s future real estate plans. GW sold the property to real estate firm Electra America for about $12 million in May of 2022. That same month, GW announced plans to sell The
Aston, which mainly housed upperclassmen and is valued at $38 million, according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue.
Food halls reconfigure dining landscape
Four dining venues have hung in the balance of Foggy Bottom’s remodeled dining scene in the past two years. Ten private dining vendors have opened since last fall in Western Market – a food hall housed inside the GWowned complex at 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue. At a Foggy Bottom and West End Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting last month, Commissioner Yannik Omictin said Western Market has become increasingly popular among residents, tourists and students amid a “massive” expansion in vendors and employees. GW closed public access to the food court in District House’s basement earlier this year because of safety concerns while converting the site into an all-you-caneat dining hall as part of a revamped, unlimited dining system.
Facility transformations split between demolition, renovation
GW has demolished a pair of aged buildings on campus, each torn down less than a year apart in 2021 and 2022. The University razed the Waggaman House, which formerly housed the Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, in October of last year, replacing the structure with a spread of green space at the corner of I and 22nd streets. Eight months later, GW also tore down Staughton Hall, a building that the University used as a women’s residence hall and a naval research center on 22nd Street for more than 100 years. As of October, officials have said GW does not have any plans for a new building to go in the place of Staughton, but officials said in January that the space is “well-occupied” for green space until any possible redevelopment takes place. “There are currently no plans to redevelop the site formerly occupied by Staughton Hall,” a University spokesperson said in an email. GW’s ongoing 2007 Foggy Bottom Campus Plan, which the University has used as a “framework for development” over the last 15 years, marks the lots that held Staughton Hall and the Waggaman House as potential sites for academic development.
Venezuelan student organization to distribute aid, support migrants in D.C. FAITH WARDWELL
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
HANNAH MARR REPORTER
A student organization that will fundraise for Venezuelan migrants in D.C. and lead discussions on issues impacting Venezuela relaunched its chapter on campus this semester after a two-year hiatus. Venezuelan Perspectives will advocate and collect emergency aid for migrants attempting to flee Venezuela’s political and economic crises, including those sent in buses to Union Station from the Texas border during this academic year. Student leaders said members, many of whom are first-generation immigrants, will pull from personal experiences with violence and poverty in Venezuela to inspire their activism and support migrants recovering from the hyperinflation and resource shortages in the country. A 2022 United Nations Refugee Agency report estimated more than
seven million Venezuelan migrants are seeking asylum worldwide, and about half of Venezuela’s citizens are currently living below the poverty line. Venezuelan migrants continue to arrive in D.C.’s Union Station this fall after Gov. Greg Abbott, R-TX, started transporting asylum-seekers in buses to the District from Texas in late August to protest President Joe Biden’s move to prohibit the expulsion of migrants from the U.S. Senior Francisco Lara – the president of Venezuelan Perspectives, which was founded in 2016 and was reapproved as a student organization this fall – said he lived in Venezuela until he was 15 before moving to the U.S. with his parents during the peak of Venezuela’s economic crisis when basic necessities were “scarce” and violence was “rampant.” “It was out of my control, and that really frustrated me,” Lara said. “The reason why I decided to study what I study and come to D.C. was because of that. That’s what’s motivating me to do what I do.”
Venezuela began experiencing an economic collapse in 2014 when the country’s gross domestic product dropped by 3.9 percent, causing 9.3 million Venezuelans to descend into food insecurity. He said members of the organization plan to meet migrants at Union Station in November to provide food and medical supplies through a volunteer event hosted by the Embassy of Venezuela. Senior Natalie Chevrel, the vice president of Venezuelan Perspectives, said the organization aims to unite Venezuelan students on a campus where connecting with other Venezuelan students can be challenging among a predominantly white student body. “We also obviously wanted to help our country in some way,” Chevrel said. “Just because everyone who leaves Venezuela is always thinking of ways to try to help from afar because we love our country, and it’s just really horrible – everything that’s happening.” Chevrel said the organization plans to host student events this
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AUDEN YURMAN | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR The organization’s leaders said members will pull from personal experiences with violence and poverty in Venezuela to inspire their activism.
semester, including a screening of a documentary about the current state of the Amazon Rainforest and a speaker panel of Venezuelan immigrants who will discuss their adjustment to life in the United States. She said this programming
will aim to spread awareness to the GW community about the return of the organization and recruit new members. “We are the Venezuelan people, and so we want to help in any way we can,” Chevrel said.