Vol-121-Iss-10

The GW

HATCHET

October 21, 2024 Vol. 121 Iss. 10

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904 • ONLINE AT GWHATCHET.COM

Faculty leaders call for heightened GWPD oversight after reports of safety violations HANNAH MARR NEWS EDITOR

RORY QUEALY NEWS EDITOR

Faculty leaders are urging officials to reassess oversight measures meant to safeguard the GW Police Department’s arming process after former officers’s reports of departmental gun safety hazards appeared to spark the chief’s resignation. In the months following the Board of Trustees’ April 2023 decision to arm about 20 supervisory GWPD officers, officials unveiled two committees to bolster community engagement and oversight to the department and the arming rollout as students, faculty and staff opposed the decision through protests, letters and resolutions. But faculty in the groups said they have doubts about the scrupulousness of GWPD’s efforts to boost oversight and accountability related to arming as former officers’ concerns about the process went undisclosed to them and other members for almost a year. Former GWPD officers told The Hatchet late last month that the department failed to register guns that the force’s top two officers carried on campus from Aug. 30, 2023, to Sept. 27, 2023, and lacked rigorous firearm training to prepare officers to respond to emergencies like an active shooter. Trustees cited growing national gun violence and shootings on college campuses as their primary rationale for arming officers. The Hatchet’s reporting sparked the University to open an internal investigation into the allegations earlier this month, with GWPD Chief James Tate going on leave and

Staff needs unrecognized in strategic plan framework: Staff Council BARRY YAO STAFF WRITER

LOUISA HANNOUCENE REPORTER

ARWEN CLEMANS | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Guillermo Orti, right, and Patricia Hernandez, left, react to discussion about former GW Police Department officers’ reports of departmental disarray at a Faculty Senate meeting this month.

officials retaining a thirdparty firm to examine GWPD’s existing training protocols and safety measures during the arming process. Four days after the announcement, officials announced Tuesday that Tate had resigned from his role effective immediately. Months before the allegations surfaced, officials formed the Independent Review Committee in August 2023 to review incidents where a GWPD officer used their gun on duty to assess if the dispatch was consistent with GW’s Use of Force Policy and produce an annual public report recommending any departmental policy or procedural changes. The seven members of the committee — composed of two staff, three faculty and two students — did not return multiple requests for comment on

if they or the committee were aware of former officers’s reports. It is unclear how many times the committee has met since its formation. The University also formed the Campus Safety Advisory Committee in April 2024 to increase the GW community’s awareness of and engagement on campus safety. Officials established the committee — composed of five students, five staff members, five faculty, one community member and six officials, including Vice President for Safety and Operations Baxter Goodly, who oversees GWPD, and interim GWPD Chief Ian Greenlee — after they collected community feedback about concerns surrounding the arming implementation via an online form. But the CSAC didn’t meet until July, almost 11 months after GWPD com-

menced its first arming phase in late August 2023, and will meet for the second time Thursday. The committee’s first meeting was originally slated for April 25, coinciding with the first day of the proPalestinian encampment in University Yard. The committee did not discuss arming in its first and only meeting so far, according to the July meeting minutes obtained by The Hatchet, despite officials announcing that the committee would review community members’s safety concerns as part of the University’s arming plan. The minutes state that members instead discussed their goals, including producing an annual CSAC report and possibly launching a community safety survey. Goodly and Tate also both sat as nonvoting members on the Faculty Senate Standing Com-

mittee on Physical Facilities and Campus Safety, which is responsible for being available to the administration to “provide advice and counsel” on any matters surrounding physical facilities and campus safety, according to its website. In August 2023, as GW planned to roll out the first phase of the arming process, officials also said GWPD would make “additional efforts” to maintain campus relationships by “engaging” the Faculty Senate and Staff Council. Goodly said officials are committed to “providing updates” and “engaging in dialogue” with the CSAC and the senate’s physical facilities committee but declined to comment on how officials have previously engaged the committees in discussions about arming. See FACULTY Page 2

Staff members said Friday that officials aren’t prioritizing staff concerns about low compensation and limited opportunities for career advancement as they work to develop GW’s next strategic plan. Officials in September announced the University’s strategic framework — which will guide officials in shaping their new strategic plan — and outlined the four pillars GW will focus on when building the plan, including advancing interdisciplinary research, bolstering students’ global perspectives, teaching skills for global excellence and prioritizing professional and skill development. Nicole Mintz, the chair of the Staff Council Staff Experience Committee, said at a meeting Friday that the committee reviewed the framework and concluded that officials didn’t recognize or incorporate staff perspectives into its outline. Mintz said the lack of recognition is evident in the section of the plan that outlines skills development, which she said focuses solely on students and faculty. The section states that students choose GW for its “world-class faculty” and that the pillar hopes to explore how the University can teach students skills, like critical thinking, data literacy and problem-solving. She said staff’s concerns about compensation, their career paths and a lack of inclusion in University initiatives aren’t being included the way officials are including student and faculty concerns. “Our voice is not being recognized in a formidable way as others on this campus and University,” Mintz said. Mintz said is “very hopeful” that officials can incorporate staff perspectives in the plan because it wouldn’t require officials to largely adjust the framework. She said staff members are in the process of drafting a letter about these concerns.

Inside a formerly unhoused advocate’s work to uplift DC’s homeless JACKSON RICKERT STAFF WRITER

MAGGIE RHOADS STAFF WRITER

Wesley Thomas said every morning he serves as an ambassador for people experiencing homelessness who are seeking connection to housing and disability support services. Thomas is an advocate and outreach worker for people with lived experience of homelessness and a guest advisory board member at Miriam’s Kitchen, the nonprofit organization that served him his first meal of two hard-boiled eggs and Kool Aid on his second day of homelessness in 1988. Thomas, who lived on the streets of D.C. for 29 years before moving to an apartment in Woodley Park, said he’s connected 43 people to District housing and support resources since he moved off of the street. “The first day I moved in, I said because of the blessing and the opportunity I was given, I was going to pay it forward and get back help those sleeping on the street,” Thomas said. There are currently about 5,600 unhoused people in D.C., according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ 2024 Point-In-Time homelessness tracker. Thomas said he recognizes about half of all the unhoused people in the District and distributes resources to as many people as he can. Miriam’s outreach team distributes essential supplies — like blankets, hats, socks, gloves and water — to nearly half of D.C., according to the organization’s website. Thomas said he uses his lived experience of homelessness to direct the people he serves to resources he used, like a program that offers unhoused people discounted glasses and phones. He added that he also uses his experiences with anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder to inform his advocacy with unhoused

populations and mental health. More than 30 percent of single adults experiencing homelessness in the District suffer from a mental illness, according to a 2018 Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless report. “Misfortunes in life, and I survived,” Thomas said. “So I got something to tell somebody.” Thomas said his volunteer work and early mornings can be difficult to manage, but his daily routine provides him with the structure he needs. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, you did 29 years, that’s hard,’” Thomas said. “No, the seven years that I’m doing now is a lot harder than that 29 years. I have to stay focused, I have to stay out of trouble and I have to have something to do, so that’s why I do what I do.” He said he grew up in a middle class family in Northeast D.C. and fell into the “wrong crowd,” using drugs and alcohol before losing “everything.” He first slept across the street from the White House in Lafayette Square and relocated to Foggy Bottom in 1994. “I was frightened, homeless, penniless, only clothing on my back,” Thomas said. “Didn’t know where I was going to sleep or eat.” Thomas said a few other people experiencing homelessness at the time showed him where to eat, locations to sleep and how to survive the cold winters, he said. He said he had an “epiphany” in 2016 after multiple of his friends died while living on the streets and decided to “take his life back” and connect with housing support resources. Thomas called his present-day appearances at Miriam’s Kitchen a “full circle” moment. The organization’s offerings are much different than the hard-boiled eggs and Kool Aid he once received — the cafeterias now have coffee machines, large containers of juice and breakfast foods ranging from quiche and pancakes to French toast, Thomas said. “It’s like a relaxed atmosphere, you know,” Thomas said. “It’s a safe haven.”

KAIDEN J. YU | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Wesley Thomas, a guest advisory board member for Miriam’s Kitchen, poses for a photo in Foggy Bottom.

At Miriam’s Kitchen, Thomas discusses his personal experience at conferences and to news outlets like the Washington Post and CNN’s “Homelessness in America” segment, led by Jake Tapper. The Hatchet profiled Thomas in 2010 when he was still experiencing homelessness. Thomas also speaks on behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen at GW’s Acapella Palooza event during Alumni and Family Weekend each year. He said advocates’s work to combat homelessness isn’t finished when people get into housing if formerly unhoused people can’t adapt from living on the street to the structure of supportive housing. “You have to have someone to show them how to change their life,” Thomas said. Thomas said he joined Miriam’s Speaker’s Bureau in 2023, a panel of seven people with lived experience of homelessness. He

said the group worked on Miriam’s Kitchen strategic plan for the next five years — which outlines initiatives and values of the organization — and discusses topics like health, mental health and voter registration monthly. Thomas said he also uses his experience of living on the street, surviving winters and navigating D.C.’s shelter system to offer feedback to the Community Advisory Team, which is a local group that oversees the conversion of The Aston, a former GW residence hall, to an unhoused shelter. The shelter was originally slated to open more than 10 months ago, but most recently, a failed building inspection indefinitely delayed the building’s opening. At the team’s October meeting, members voiced concerns about the approaching hypothermia season — which runs Nov. 1 to March 31, depending on the severity of the weather — amid de-

lays moving in the first 50 tenants, who were supposed to move in the week of Oct. 1. Thomas said he is frustrated by the delays in the shelter’s opening, adding that moving into The Aston while final building construction is being completed is better than people sleeping on benches or on the street. “They shouldn’t have to wait and die when they have an opportunity coming their way,” Thomas said. He said he plans to voice his concerns about the impending hypothermia season and The Aston’s delays at the team’s next meeting on Nov. 4. “Y’all holding it up,” Thomas said of District officials. “You got the money. You got everything else. Okay, you got people waiting to move in. Let’s just move the first 50 in. You know, you can work on the building while people in there.”