The GW
HATCHET
February 10, 2025 Vol. 121 Iss. 19
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904 • ONLINE AT GWHATCHET.COM
GW’s endowment recovers to $2.7 billion after drop last spring, trustees report HANNAH MARR NEWS EDITOR
The University’s endowment is rebounding after a $200 million decline last spring, trustees said at a meeting Friday. Board of Trustees Secretary Ave Tucker said that as of Dec. 31, GW’s endowment — a pool of funds and investments gifted to the University, including allocated funds for scholarships and individual schools — had risen to $2.7 billion. Tucker said there has been “uncertainty” in the markets, but GW’s endowment, which is managed by Strategic Investment Group, continued to “outperform” the University’s benchmarks over the last year. Officials reported in October the University’s endowment had dropped from $2.8 billion in December 2023 to $2.6 billion June 2024, which they said at the time was “entirely due” to a depreciation of the District’s real estate market and previous increases in interest rates by the Federal Reserve. Tucker said the Board’s Finance and Investments Committee received an update on GW’s fiscal year 2025 budget and its spending projections for the rest of the year in January. He thanked Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes and his team for keeping the University in “good financial health.” University President Ellen Granberg said officials are “very close” to naming a dean for the School of Business after former Dean Anuj Mehrotra left GW in December 2023 to serve as the dean of Georgia Tech’s business school. Since Mehrotra’s departure, Vice Dean for Strategy Vanessa Perry has served as interim dean. Granberg said she met with GWSB faculty members last week and could feel their “excitement and anticipation” about the pending announcement.
GW Law students lose job offers, internships to federal hiring freeze SACHINI ADIKARI
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
ARWEN CLEMANS | ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Board of Trustees Secretary Ave Tucker delivered remarks about GW’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget at Friday’s meeting.
“I will tell you that no one is more excited than interim Dean Vanessa Perry, who has done a fantastic job of helping us navigate this leadership transition,” Granberg said. University spokesperson Shannon Mitchell said last month that officials hosted “several” dean candidates on campus to meet with “various groups of stakeholders” at the end of the fall semester. She said officials “look forward” to sharing an update on the national search with the community when they make the decision. “In the meantime, interim Dean Vanessa Perry will continue to provide support and resources for GWSB’s students, programs, partners and alumni,” Mitchell said in an email. Granberg also said Provost Chris Bracey charted the search committee for a new dean of the Milken Institute School of Public
Health, adding that the search began last week. The University announced in October that Dean Lynn Goldman was stepping down on June 30, 2025, but Granberg said Friday that Goldman had agreed to stay at GW until officials select a new dean. Granberg also said during her presidential report that officials are continuing to track President Donald Trump’s “historic number” of executive actions and that the University is assessing the “potential consequences” as officials plan responses. She said officials will keep the GW community informed as they move forward. Friday’s meeting marked one of Board Chair Grace Speights’ final meetings as the leader of the Board. Speights assumed the role in June 2019 and will pass the torch to the incoming chair this June given that a chair cannot serve more than six years in
the role. Tucker, who assumed the role of Board secretary in June 2019, will also step down after serving six years in the position. Officials have yet to announce who will assume Speights’ or Tucker’s positions and whether they will remain on the Board in a different capacity. Student Government Association President Ethan Fitzgerald said during his report that he met with Goldman for a walkthrough of the Milken building and was “grateful” to learn that officials are reopening study spaces in Milken to the entire student body but didn’t say when. Officials stripped non-public health students of their access to the building last semester, which students said eliminated a popular campus study space.
Third-year GW Law student Andrew Nettels felt relieved when he secured a job through the Department of Justice honors program ahead of graduation — until President Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze late last month caused his offer to be revoked. The Justice Department and other federal agencies rescinded job offers and canceled summer internship programs on Jan. 20 after Trump enacted a 90-day federal hiring freeze, a move that resulted in around 20 law students losing job offers and internships, according to law school officials. Law students said peers, practitioners and the broader national law community have come together to support impacted students by launching support groups and expanding job offerings. Nettels, who was slated to start the program at the Justice Department in September, said when he heard the news about Trump’s hiring freeze he hoped his position fell within an exception outlined in the joint U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management memorandum. But because his start date did not fall within the parameters of the hiring freeze, the department rescinded his job offer, Nettels said. Federal agencies revoked offers made and accepted before Jan. 20 with a start date after Feb. 8, according to the memorandum. More than 2,000 federal jobs and summer internships are either canceled or on hold, Reuters reported.
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District grant to boost Foggy Bottom businesses struggling post-pandemic
LGBTQ+ students fear suppression under Trump administration
CRISTINA STASSIS
ADELAIDE PETRAS
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
REPORTER
A Foggy Bottom community group will soon receive $175,000 from the District to revitalize neighborhood corridors that have struggled to attract business following the city’s pandemicera shift to virtual work, pending final paperwork approvals from the city. The grant will fund the Foggy Bottom-West End Main Streets program, a project that the Foggy Bottom Association will launch before October 2025 to support local retail by recruiting businesses to come to the area and infusing cash into existing businesses that haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. FBA board members said the District approved the FBA’s November grant application in December 2024 and that members filed all necessary paperwork last month, but the group is still waiting to receive the city’s disbursements. The grant program comes more than a year after a Foggy BottomWest End Main Street study recommended implementing the program in the neighborhood, citing struggling businesses and high numbers of storefront vacancies. “It really stems from the lack or the loss of local businesses and the increase of vacancies in just the whole neighborhood,” FBA Vice President Will Crane said. “We used to have a bike shop. We used to have a hardware store. There
JENNIFER IGBONOBA
WHAT’S
INSIDE
NEWS EDITOR
JERRY LAI | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Empty shops line the bottom level of the Watergate Complex.
was a Safeway in the Watergate. And it’s just really sad to see the amount of businesses that are struggling.” An online tracker of commercial office building occupancy shows that virtual work lingers in Foggy Bottom, as about half of people who worked in person in the area have returned as of 2024. The neighborhood reported a 63 percent vacancy rate in 2023 — higher than other areas, like the Golden Triangle — and shops in the Watergate complex bear the brunt of the neighborhood’s vacancies, with a 60 percent vacancy rate. The FBA will use the grant to revamp vacant storefronts and streetscapes, boost the area’s image and foot traffic through events and marketing and grant businesses money for renovations and upgrades, FBA board members said at a meeting last month. Members said the FBA will oversee the efforts and team up with the inaugural ex-
NEWS Graduate School of Political Management community members share hopes for the school’s interim director. Page 2
ecutive director for the Foggy Bottom-West End Main Street program to allocate the funds. Grant recipients must use at least $40,000 of the grant for local business support, fewer than $20,000 for events and less than 50 percent of the total fund for administrative expenses, according to the Main Street Application Presentation. The FBA must match at least $15,000 of the funds, per the presentation. Crane said he hopes that the grant will prioritize local businesses that operate on the ground level and serve residents for renovations or cash infusions from the grant, including dry cleaners, auto shops and bike stores. “I would hope that the Main Streets is about lifting all businesses that are here, that are actually here, serving the local community versus a business that is strictly office,” Crane said. See BUSINESS Page 5
Students in the LGBTQ+ community said they fear President Donald Trump’s attacks on transgender and nonbinary people and rollback of federal sexual orientation and gender protections will threaten their identities. Trump has signed or repealed about half a dozen executive orders in his first month in office targeting the LGBTQ+ community, including restricting gender-affirming care for people under 19, prohibiting transgender women from competing in women’s sports, declaring male and female as the only genders and stripping away Bidenera laws. LGBTQ+ students and organization leaders said they’re concerned the administration’s plans will repress the expression of their gender and sexual identities but that they will continue to carve out space on campus for the LGBTQ+ community to feel safe and represented. “Even though things will get hard, use this as a chance to learn more about our history and as a way of finding deeper connection with the community to stand up against the Trump administration, and as always, commuting with our roots of resistance as a queer community,” said David Teittinen, a junior from the San Francisco Bay Area, who identifies as nonbinary. Late last month, the State Department stopped processing passport appli-
OPINIONS The editorial board advises students, faculty and officials to promote ways to reduce textbook prices. Page 6
COLIN WAGNER | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Thomas Morningstar poses for a portrait in Kogan Plaza.
cations for people seeking an ‘X’ gender marker and began issuing passports to only male- or femaleidentifying applicants. Teittinen said leading up to the general election, they were “racing” to change their gender and legal name on government documents from those assigned at birth because they knew there was a “very high risk” they would no longer be able to change it once Trump re-
“We still must first be sad, scared, angry, but then we need to move into action” THOMAS MORNINGSTAR turned to office. “I got mine just in time, but also now I’m worried that with a new executive order, does that mean that my X gender passport that I legally got last year, is that now going to be invalid?” Teittinen said. Teittinen said they are “pretty confident” California will continue to protect
CULTURE Meet the GW couples who popped the question and got hitched before graduation. Page 7
transgender and nonbinary rights because its voters traditionally support progressive policies, but they are unsure of whether their birth state of Maryland will revert their birth certificate back to their gender assigned at birth. Teittinen, who is currently studying abroad in the Netherlands, said they try to stay informed on the Trump administration’s actions while also preserving their mental health. They said they are in a “limbo state” because they worry about returning to the United States next spring if national anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments lead to the community’s further marginalization. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back to the U.S., but the Netherlands also isn’t my home,” Teittinen said. “My housing here has an expiration date, and this country is foreign to me, but America isn’t the country that I knew before last November, so it feels like I’ve also been betrayed by my country.” See STUDENTS Page 5
SPORTS GW Athletics is working alongside student spirit organization George’s Army to improve turnout. Page 8