Monday, March 27, 2023 I Vol. 119 Iss. 23
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INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904
What’s inside Opinions
The editorial board urges GW to focus on the local community when making plans for a new Campus Store. Page 6
Culture
Take a look at old ads that ran in The Hatchet to get a sense of past student experiences. Page 7
Zidouemba to launch reelection run amid alleged bylaw breach ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
FAITH WARDWELL
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
NIKKI GHAEMI
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
FILE PHOTO BY MAYA NAIR | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER If elected, SA President Christian Zidouemba said he will finish the final year of his master’s degree while serving as president.
a full term since 1987, per Hatchet archives. Zidouemba, who has served for nearly a full term in office, said his proudest accomplishments feature the installation of a contraceptive vending machine in the University Student Center in January and his role on the Presidential Search
Committee, which helped select incoming University President Ellen Granberg. “I believe that a president is not someone who just sits in the office,” he said in an interview. “A president is someone who goes there trying to hear student concerns and trying to advocate for
them.” Zidouemba’s campaign announcement breaks from a statement he made at an SA Senate meeting earlier this month when he said he would not run for reelection. See CAMPAIGN Page 2
Elections committee investigator recommends Zidouemba’s disqualification from SA presidential race ERIKA FILTER
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
ZACH BLACKBURN SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
Incumbent Student Association President Christian Zidouemba is facing disqualification from his bid for reelection as he denies charges of an election bylaw violation. In a recommendation filed with the Joint Elections Commission Wednesday that The
Hatchet obtained Sunday, JEC Chief Investigator Tyla Evans writes that Zidouemba should be disqualified from the election for “wrongfully collecting signatures” in violation of election bylaws. The JEC charged Zidouemba with six counts of impersonation violations under the SA’s election bylaws, alleging he collected signatures for SA Executive Chief of Staff Keanu Rowe and GW Entrepreneurship Club leader Mohamed Redzuan Bin Mohamed Raffe, who
Women’s basketball announces return of four starting seniors BEN SPITALNY STAFF WRITER
Four senior players will be back on the women’s basketball squad next year for a final season, opting into their extra year of eligibility granted to athletes after the COVID-19 pandemic cut the 2020 season short. The women’s basketball team announced Thursday that forward Faith Blethen, guard Nya Lok, guard Essence Brown and forward Mayowa Taiwo are all returning to the program next season, solidifying the team’s core identity save for guard Mia Lakstigala, who played her lone graduate season with the Colonials. The returns are pivotal for a team coming off its most successful season since 2018, finishing with an 18-13 record in Head Coach Caroline McCombs’ second year while going 9-7 in conference play. All players were crucial starters down the stretch with a collective 25.8 average points per game. Taiwo especially made an impact on both sides of the floor, shooting an impressive 49.1 percent, good for eighth in the A-10, while on her way to making the conference All-Defensive Team. She led the conference with 142 offensive rebounds, fourth in all Division I basketball. Teammates and coaches have praised Taiwo throughout the season for being a stellar
Check out our coverage of the end of gymnastics’ season for an interview with All-EAGL team selection Deja Chambliss. Page 8
Campus grapples with antisemitism definition
ERIKA FILTER
Embarking on his fourth-consecutive run for Student Association President, Christian Zidouemba is the first sitting SA president in decades to run for a second full term with his entry onto the body’s election ballot Friday – but not without immediate controversy. Zidouemba said he will launch his campaign Wednesday anchored on his plans to expand mental health resources for students and acquire federal, state and nonprofit funding to increase the size of the SA’s budget. But two days before the Joint Elections Commission released the SA’s election ballot, revealing that Zidouemba had filed for presidency, the JEC’s Chief Investigator Tyla Evans filed a recommendation Wednesday that he be disqualified from the election. The recommendation states the JEC received allegations that Zidouemba claimed to gather signatures for rival presidential candidates Keanu Rowe, his current chief of staff, Redzuan Bin Mohamed Raffe, a leader of GW Entrepreneurship Club, and senate candidate Aidan Spencer when he was getting signatures for himself. The hearing for the complaint is scheduled for Monday, according to the document. Zidouemba is the first to announce a reelection campaign after
Sports
teammate and leader. “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be Mayowa,” McCombs said in a January interview. Lok was a key player late in the season, starting the squad’s last seven games in the team’s playoff push, including matchups in the A-10 Championship. She scored a season-high 21 points in the team’s A-10 tournament quarterfinal game, where they lost to Rhode Island. Over the season, she averaged 9.4 points per game, a marked improvement from her 5.8 average the year before. Blethen also made her mark as the season went on, earning a starting role midway through the year and playing a seasonhigh 36 minutes in the team’s final regular season game. She was able to contribute from behind the arc, shooting at a respectable .312 clip. Brown was also a crucial member of the squad, starting 23 out of her 25 games played this year and averaging 6.1 points per game. Continuity and experience will be vital for a team that prides itself on smart play, finishing tied for third in the A-10 in lowest turnovers per game and fifth in fewest average points allowed. With all these returns, GW enters the offseason with high expectations for next year as McCombs and her squad will look to continue their upward trajectory in the A-10.
are both also running for the SA’s top job. The charges call the validity of Zidouemba’s candidate signatures into question because students might have intended to support another candidate when signing his petition to make the ballot as a presidential candidate. SA presidential candidates must earn 385 petition signatures, 1.5 percent of student constituents, from students to be eligible for the ballot, per the SA bylaws.
In a statement sent to the JEC, Zidouemba said he “always” clarifies the “purpose” of his petition when he’s collecting candidate signatures around campus, rejecting allegations that he collected any signatures for other candidates. “I take great pride in the integrity of my signature-gathering efforts, and I would never falsely claim to have collected signatures for anyone else,” Zidouemba said in the statement.
An email The Hatchet obtained from a JEC commissioner Sunday states the commission will hold a trial Monday to determine whether Zidouemba violated the election bylaws, which stipulate that a conviction for impersonation leads to automatic disqualification from the election. The candidate can appeal a conviction to the Student Court within 48 hours of the decision, according to the bylaws.
Foggy Bottom has become the local arena of an international debate over the definition of antisemitism – or whether a specific definition should exist at all. Dozens of universities, including three of GW’s peer schools, have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which refers to antisemitism as a perception of or expressed hatred toward “Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” The definition is a framework for political, professional and higher education institutions to determine whether discriminatory incidents are antisemitic with a standardized definition and 11 examples of antisemitic acts. While the reach of the definition is expanding, the spread isn’t without controversy. Supporters of the definition laud it as an approach to standardize a method of identifying discrimination, but critics said they’re concerned the definition could be used to improperly prohibit rhetoric critical of the state of Israel by characterizing critiques of the Israeli government as antisemitic, and note no other form of discrimination has a universal definition. The definition isn’t just reaching college campuses. Former President Donald Trump signed a 2019 executive order asking government agencies to consider implementing IHRA’s definition and Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a letter saying President Joe Biden’s administration “enthusiastically embraces” the definition.
See JEC Page 2
See ADVOCATES Page 4
GW received at least $4.4 million for research from fossil fuel industry in last decade: report SOPHIA GOEDERT
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Organizations with ties to the fossil fuel industry, like the Charles Koch Foundation and ExxonMobil, have donated more than $4.4 million to GW for research since 2010, according to a report from a pair of progressive research organizations earlier this month. The report, co-authored by Data for Progress and Fossil Fuel Research, compiled public tax forms revealing fossil fuel companies’ donations to 27 higher education institutions across the country from 2010 to 2020. GW received more than $3.1 million from the Charles Koch Foundation, $1.3 million from ExxonMobil and $4,900 from Shell Oil Company during that span of time, according to the report. The $4.4 million over the course of a decade accounts for a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding that GW receives for research each year. Federal research expenditures on GW research have exceeded $150 million each year from fiscal years 2018 to 2022, according to a report at a Faculty Senate meeting in February. The National Institute of Health granted GW researchers about $80 million in FY 2022, according to their website. Experts said funding sources should not affect research because of conflictof-interest standards and methodology disclosures, which University policy requires. GW landed in the report’s No. 20 spot out of the 27 selected institutions in
NICHOLAS ANASTACIO | GRAPHICS EDITOR
terms of total research donations. None of GW’s peer schools were listed in the report. The report authors tracked donation numbers from organizations like BP, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil, the Koch Foundations and ConocoPhillips. The University of California, Berkeley received the most funding out of the 27 universities in the report with more than $154 million from BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon, ConocoPhillips and the Koch Foundations. GW’s pool of research funds from the fossil fuel industry falls between Brown University, which received more than $4.2 million and the Colorado School of Mines, which received more than $4.6 million. “Climate activists, allies, academics and universities can cut the dangerous tie between academia and the fossil fuel industry via policies that crack down on fossil fuel funding,” the report’s
website states. University spokesperson Julia Metjian said GW’s research enterprise receives “hundreds of millions” of dollars each year from foundations, federal agencies and industries annually to support “high-quality” research projects. She said the University has “high standards,” policies and practices when accepting funding and conducting research. Metjian said the University regularly reviews its policies and practices to support transparency during research. She declined to say if GW is still receiving money from ExxonMobil or the Koch Foundations. “Many GW scholars are addressing the climate crisis through teaching, research and institute work,” Metjian said in an email. “All GW scholars have academic freedom in conducting their research.” Sophomore Bella Kumar,
an affiliate researcher on the report for Data for Progress and a member of Sunrise GW, said two other students in Sunrise, and four student researchers from other institutions collected fossil fuel-related data from annual Form 990s from 2010 through 2020, which the federal government requires all tax-exempt organizations, like nonprofits, to make public. She said the report’s findings give credibility to the No Fossil Fuel Money Movement, which Sunrise GW launched in November 2021, calling on the University to stop accepting research funding from fossil fuel companies. “We’ve been fighting this fight for a year and a half now and to very little response on behalf of the University,” Kumar said. “And so, if this report does anything, I would love it to incite a response from the University.”