Learn about standing

I’m just a first year law student but after reading the Student Court’s ruling throwing out 150 law school votes, I feel that the petty politicos in the student government need to learn about “standing.”

Basically, if you are hurt but decide not to sue, some random stranger cannot sue for you. The stranger would need your permission. That way, your fate cannot be decided without your taking part in the process.

I read the Student Court’s decision, and they gloss over the whole concept. Plaintiff Audai Shakour is not a law student. He has not spoken to nor received the permission of law students to sue on our behalf. Indeed, we at the law school are participating at unprecedented levels in this year’s election without his interference.

Fed up with getting back barely half the money we pay in and with an often petty, squabbling student government, law students are working for change. Hundreds of us turned out last week in the first round of voting, and elected four new senators, including myself. Turnout was up 300 percent from last year, and was higher than the campus at large.

But now, without anyone even consulting us, our votes are void. The Student Court, in its contradictory effort to enfranchise us by disenfranchising us, heard a case that no real court would hear. Mr. Shakour had no standing to bring it.

The Court’s decision should be thrown out. Law students, busy as we are, have already voted twice. We’ll vote a third time, but it’s time we have leaders who talk to law students before they claim to represent us.

-Joe Henchman, Law School senator-elect

Move seniors off campus

I think that Residence Hall Association President Daniel Miller’s statement about housing at GW was telling as to the attitude of the RHA and CLLC: “Sometimes you have to have a poor living situation in order to have something significantly better the next year.” Both of these organizations, in addition to Ambling Management and GW’s Facilities Management, realize the dearth of adequate housing on the Foggy Bottom campus and the state of disrepair much of the older buildings are in. What Miller fails to comprehend is that this is not ‘trial by fire.’ We did not come here to ‘earn our stripes’ and work our way toward better housing options in the future. We want and deserve those housing options each and every year. However, he and Seth Weinshel of CLLC both seem to believe that we need to reward seniors and “maximize their amenities.”

This is exactly the opposite of what any sane university does – try to move seniors off campus. Moving seniors off campus would not only lessen the problem of overcrowding, but as even the ANC would agree, upperclassmen tend to be more mature and would function better in an independent living situation. It is deplorable that 150 sophomores – who are, by contract with the University and under city ordinance, required to live on campus – were put on a “non-guaranteed” wait list. It is also deplorable that a university that is the landlord of property from 16th to 26th and from E to M streets has both a classroom crunch and a housing shortage in Foggy Bottom. 2020 K and 1776 G are both evidence that GW is not unwilling to expand classrooms from its ten-block bubble it shows on the map in its viewbook, and into its commercial space. There’s no reason a similar solution cannot be found for this housing debacle.

-Eric Soucie, freshman