Monday, April 22, 2024 I Vol. 120 Iss. 26
INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904
WWW.GWHATCHET.COM
What’s inside Opinions
The editorial board argues facilities issues are holding GW back from consistent accessibility. Page 6
Sports
Culture
A student organization drove its custom racecar during an F1 showcase. Page 7
Night at the Sexsonian: GW’s first sex museum. Page 8
Officials ditch plan to fill Smith Center pool for basketball court BEN SPITALNY
CONTRIBUTING SPORTS EDITOR
SANDRA KORETZ SPORTS EDITOR
Associate Provost for Diversity, Equality and Community Engagement Helen Cannaday listens at the Interfaith Dinner.
by the ODECE and GW Dining on Tuesday that offered powdered, glazed and plain doughnuts and displayed posters about the baked goods’ symbolism of “completion,” “connection” and “abundance.” Speakers from GW Falun Dafa — a student group that practices a meditative religious movement founded in China — and the executive director of the InterFaith Council of Metropolitan Washington spoke about their spiritual journeys at an Interfaith Dinner on Thursday on the first floor of the student center in the Great Hall.
University officials halted plans to transform the Charles E. Smith Center pool into a basketball practice facility due to structural limitations, according to an email to some members of the athletics community from the men’s and women’s basketball head coaches and Athletics Director Tanya Vogel. The University announced plans in September to demolish the pool to build a new basketball court and exercise facilities, an effort to improve resources for the basketball teams. The decision drew criticism from some members of the school’s swim and dive teams, leading one swimmer to start a petition to halt the demolition on March 27. Saturday’s email said that after proceeding with a D.C. Zoning application to begin construction, architects and designers determined the extent of the project would be more invasive than originally predicted. “These plans indicated that we would need to undertake extensive, unanticipated additional work within the existing building that would significantly increase the scope and cost of the project while also requiring a more than yearlong closure of our building,” the email said. The pool, used by club and varsity swim and dive teams and the water polo team, was scheduled to be demolished around Labor Day. Members of the swim and dive team gathered at University President Ellen Granberg’s home on Saturday morning for a brunch to celebrate their Atlantic 10 victory when Granberg announced the basketball facility’s construction would be indefinitely paused, swimmers said. “There was that gasp,” junior swimmer Taylor Bernosky said. “Everyone was like ‘huh?’ And then, most of the team just starts giggling. People just start laughing. At this point, it’s like, so now we’ve done a lot of damage to the culture and to each other, and a lot of tension, a lot of stress, heartache, whatever. And as a matter of fact, there’s nothing happening.”
See WEEK Page 5
See SWIMMERS Page 7
DANIEL HEUER | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Officials host Interfaith Week after January cancellation, seek to promote religious inclusivity DIANA ANOS STAFF WRITER
The Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement hosted a series of events to foster religious diversity and spirituality among students last week. Interfaith Week intended to explore and celebrate the “many” spiritual and religious groups on campus through tabling events and dinner discussions hosted by the ODECE, GW Catholics and GW Hillel, according to the ODECE’s Instagram. The week was originally scheduled to take place from Jan. 29 to Feb. 5 and was set to be hosted by the Multicultural
Student Services Center, according to an initial programming schedule obtained by The Hatchet. Student organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and the Muslim Students’ Association, which were slotted to host an event on the original schedule, were not listed as hosts on the schedule for any of last week’s events. Vice Provost for the ODECE Caroline LaguerreBrown said the office was “thrilled” to host Interfaith Week and partner with the MSSC — who hosted Interfaith Week in recent previous years — and explore the different faith and religious communities on campus. She
said the ODECE reached out to everyone who was on the “previous schedule” like the Religion Department, the Institute for Middle East Studies and every religious student organization when planning the week. “All members of the community were invited to participate in the week’s programming, aimed at understanding different perspectives and encouraging positive interactions and learning experiences regarding our faith, religious, and spiritual communities,” Brown said in an email. The week included tabling events like the “Spiritual Meaning of Donuts” hosted
Staff Council asks GW to raise staff wages to account for inflation HANNAH MARR
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Staff councilmembers voted to approve a resolution with minimal discussion that requests the University increase staff wages beginning in fiscal year 2025. Emily Lewis, the head of the Compensation Subcommittee of the Staff Experience Committee, presented the resolution that requests all staff receive a one-time salary increase of 5 percent in FY 2025 and then annual wage increases between 3 and 5 percent that are not associated with performance ratings. Lewis said the resolution was spurred by a discussion on GW’s merit pay compensation model, which annually awards bonuses to staff who go beyond the duties outlined in their job descriptions. GW pays staff both salary and hourly wages, depending on the position.
The University compensates full-time service and support positions hourly, and positions in the manager stream are compensated on a salary basis. Lewis said the merit pay model does not account for rising inflation rates and is not a fair analysis of staff performance because it doesn’t allow for an “honest review” of the employee’s competency. The resolution states that GW staff salaries and wages have failed to rise with the increasing cost of living in the D.C. area, with low budgets in several departments preventing the hiring of new staff or retention of current staff at a competitive rate. Staff said in January that the merit pay system limits staff recognition due to small funds for performance-based bonuses and the subjectivity of the merit pay model. “This came about from a big discussion of why we
do the merit increases, the fact that the merit increases aren’t even keeping up with inflation, and also that the merit increases as they were set up don’t allow for an honest review of someone’s performance,” Lewis said. Lewis said the subcommittee used data from more than 300 responses to Staff Council surveys to inform the resolution’s requests. The resolution states that more than 60 percent of staff who responded to a recent survey on merit and compensation practices at the University have reported taking on second jobs to “break even” because GW’s wages are too low to keep up with the District’s high cost of living. Tricia Greenstein, the Libraries and Academic Innovation and GW Museums representative, said GW Libraries are seeing “immense” turnover in staff, which burdens current staff as they are expected to fill in for the vacant positions.
RACHEL SCHWARTZ | SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Former Migos star Quavo performs for a crowd of Spring Fling attendees.
Quavo headlines Spring Fling; students dissatisfied with ticket prices JENNA BAER
CONTRIBUTING CULTURE EDITOR
JENNIFER IGBONOBA
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
NICK PERKINS CULTURE EDITOR
SCREENSHOT BY HANNAH MARR Interim Vice President for Safety and Facilities Baxter Goodly (top row, second from left) updates staff councilmembers on the University’s closure policy.
Students crowded the perimeter of the Smith Center on Saturday as early 2010s star Jay Sean and former Migos rapper Quavo filled the stadium with booming music for GW’s annual Spring Fling. In the lead-up to Saturday’s show, students were also noisy about the details of the annual event. Program Board, the GW student organization that oversees Spring Fling operations, made a number of changes to the event for this year — after years of free entry, the organization opted to charge between $25 and $60 for tickets. Program Board also moved the
concert to the Smith Center for the first time since 2019, having held the event in University Yard in past years, and advertised the performance to all DMVarea students. Program Board chair Heather Motta and vice chair Alfredo Granados said past Spring Fling concerts with big-name artists were ticketed events, like the Maroon 5 show in 2009 which cost $30. But since years have passed since those performances, they recognized students’ shock to see the ticket prices. Motta and Granados said they decided to move the event to the Smith Center in part because of concerns about inclement weather and hopes to increase attendance capacity. During the performance, the stadium’s 5,000-person capacity was only half full, and the stands were mostly empty. After the organization announced Quavo as the
headliner on Instagram last month, students flooded the post’s comments section. Some expressed enthusiasm about GW landing a more popular artist than last year’s indie performer Maude Latour. But others left disgruntled comments about being charged for tickets, and some noted that Program Board appeared to delete critical comments. In a since-deleted comment, a Program Board member responded to a student upset about the changes to the event, asking if they would have “preferred a smaller artist such as Maude Latour that no one has heard of.” Sydney Hammer, a senior and the former director of marketing and creative services for Program Board in 2023, said due to minimal funding from the Student Government Association in previous years, she understood the need to charge for the concert to secure a larger artist.