Campus Plan
Maiga Dorval
Mike DiSabatino
Abby Kruchten
I. Introduction
The George Washington University is located in the historic Foggy Bottom district in Washington, DC. Since its inception in 1821, the university has grown exponentially. As the university grew, it began to buy up more of the land in the area, thus causing concerns among residents of Foggy Bottom. Currently, there are approximately 17,000 students enrolled in the university, 7,200 of which are undergraduates.
Every ten years the universities in and around Washington D.C. propose a 10 year campus plan. GW’s 10-year plan is submitted to the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA), who will review the plan and then make a final vote on December 12, 2000. The George Washington University has proposed numerous changes and expansions to the already existing campus. These changes, especially expansions, have made many Foggy Bottom residents upset, because they feel that GW is infringing upon their community. GW’s campus plan consists of many new additions to the campus, especially residence hall space. They would like to make it mandatory for all freshmen and sophomores to live on campus in the coming years, but in order to make this mandatory GW needs more land. In the campus plan, GW does not intend to extend beyond its already set boundaries. However, GW already owns 85% of the land in the Foggy Bottom, which is the most upsetting to residents.
The George Washington University’s campus plan has many goals for the future. The University intends to “create a planning process and planning document that satisfies the needs of University constituents, while respectfully considering, honoring, and addressing municipal agencies and the local community”(Campus Plan, ii). This statement brings conflict to the ten-year plan because it depends upon whose definition of “respectfully considering” is used. GW’s plan for the community differs greatly from that of the Foggy Bottom residents. As a result, many issues such as housing, community outreach, and economic impact have arisen. The ten-year plan addresses ethical concerns dealing with GW’s partnership in the community, its community outreach, and self-interests.
Included in the Campus Plan are many important issues concerning both the University and the Foggy Bottom community. One of the main goals of the 2000 Campus Plan is to stop expanding GW into the community and to focus more on defining the actual campus boundaries. The university will try to portray the Foggy Bottom campus as a community that is within its borders instead of spreading the property out more.
Generally, the university can be described as being a six square block radius stretching between 19th and 24th streets and Pennsylvania and F Streets. Recently though, the university has begun to move beyond these boundaries, with increasing housing and academic needs. The acquisition of the Hall on Virginia Avenue, formerly the Howard Johnson Hotel, the Aston, and the Dakota, all give examples of GW buying up property in the area to house its students. GW also recently put in a bid to buy One Washington Circle Hotel. According to the 2000 Campus Plan, GW has made no mention of buying up any more land in the next ten years. In order to address housing issues, GW will create two on-campus housing sites to provide 425 additional beds. By phasing out its graduate housing for undergraduate use, GW will also convert existing space to facilitate 302 new beds on-campus. In addition, the university is striving to house 80% of its undergraduates on-campus by requiring all freshmen and sophomores to live on-campus, beginning in fall 2002.
GW faces other challenges, being a large part of the Foggy Bottom area. The significant amount of GW students living off-campus in the residential areas is a cause for concern to the community. Student rowdiness, parties, drinking, and just overall messiness troubles the Foggy Bottom neighbors. Since on-campus housing currently holds a little under 60% of the students, approximately 3,000 undergraduates live off-campus. GW addressed concerns about student behavior by offering to set up a hotline for neighbors to call, thus helping to pinpoint specific problem areas in neighborhoods, specific houses, and students. In addition, GW proposed an orientation program for students to help address being part of the community and living in this area peacefully. The recent creation of the Neighborhood Advisory Committee at GW helps the university to concentrate on specific issues in the community about GW.
A third major issue is on-campus parking. The university currently has 2,700 parking spots available for faculty, staff, and students. With the addition to the University Parking Garage on the corner of 22nd and H Street, this has increased to approximately 3,000 parking spots. In order to cut down on employees having cars on-campus, GW will institute the Metro Area Transit Authority’s Metrocheck program, which allows employees to purchase public transportation passes on a pre-tax basis. This will hopefully cut down on the traffic congestion on-campus by offering employees a cheaper alternative to paying for parking.
GW also tries to implement community outreach and service as much as possible. They have implemented many educational programs that are open to the community, such as a computer certificate program for youth, lectures and debates for elderly residents, the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Institute, and partnerships with many DC public schools. In addition to these programs, GW also gives scholarships to many local DC students, offering them a chance at a superior university education.
GW also sponsors many projects to aid in neighborhood rejuvenation, such as the Foggy Bottom Cleanup and Community Building Community programs. By having students clean and beautify the area, the University is indirectly giving back to the community and doing its part to keep it clean. GW also aids in the beautification of the neighborhood by renovating and constructing modern buildings. By removing eyesore buildings and fixing them up, GW helps Foggy Bottom look like an attractive place to live. GW has made many parks and green spaces in the area to provide a community feel both on and off-campus. The University Yard, the Mid Campus Quad, Millennium Park, and Anniversary Park are all projects the university undertook in order to beautify the area. Through community service oriented programs such as the Neighbors Project and Americorp, GW students can give back to the community by sharing their resources with youth, elderly, and the homeless. The Neighbors Project, an umbrella organization with almost 16 groups performing service in many DC neighborhoods, contributed 31,000 hours to the D.C Reads program, tutoring five hundred elementary school children. The Ten-year proposal also reports that the GW Office of Community Service, along with the non-profit Manna Community Development Corporation, hosted the first Annual Shaw Spring Jam in Kennedy Playground, stressing the importance of youth activism in building strong neighborhoods. The Ten Year plan estimated that the GW community of faculty, staff, and students contributes over 75,000 volunteer hours in the community per year (Campus Plan, 11).
In addition, the university has many economic impacts on the community, such as providing jobs, buying from multiple area vendors, and pouring money into Foggy Bottom. In 1997 alone, the university bought more than $240 million in goods and services from local vendors, ranging from construction to food service (Campus Plan website). In addition, GW paid almost $360 million in salaries and benefits to the university community including the food servers up to high university officials (Campus Plan website). The money that students and employees put back into the community at restaurants, stores, and even in housing helps to aid the DC economy. Therefore, GW has a large impact on the DC and the Foggy Bottom market.
The ANC has brought many of the residents’ concerns about GW to light. These elected officials act as liaisons between the residents of Foggy Bottom and the area universities. Since GW is the second largest landholder in DC, the ANC voices concerns about GW’s area acquisitions. In addition to acquiring undergraduate housing spaces, GW also owns many of the office buildings in the area including 2000 and 2100 Pennsylvania Ave, and the World Bank building. All these land acquisitions make many in the community think GW is slowly taking over the area. The ANC and other neighborhood groups try to curb GW’s growth through the Campus Plan. These groups help to keep the university’s community focus. The gentrification of university properties such as Columbia Plaza, the Dakota, and office spaces is also a cause for concern. The neighborhood groups want the Foggy Bottom Historical District to be preserved and not solely a subset of GW.
III. Statement of Ethical Issues Presented by
Relevant Facts:
The ethical issues regarding The George Washington University’s ten-year campus plan considers whether GW overshadows the Foggy Bottom community or whether it integrates and strengthens the neighborhood. Another area in question begins with a section of the University’s mission statement that reads, “ The George Washington University draws upon the rich array of resources from the National Capital Area to enhance its educational endeavors. In return, the University, through its students, faculty, staff, and alumni, contribute talent and knowledge to improve the quality of life in metropolitan Washington, D.C”(Campus Plan, 2). The ethical conflict that arises from this statement deals with the University’s involvement in the community. Is their involvement through their students enough, or should they directly give back to the community through monetary gifts? The final ethical conflict deals with whether The George Washington University’s self-interest takes precedence over the concerns of the community.
The Foggy Bottom community has a right to preserve its history, but as GW continues its expansion, the residential area diminishes. This is caused by rising enrollment at GW which forces students to move off campus, or the University to purchase more property for housing. GW not only is buying property for academic purposes, but also for investment. As a result, the identity of the community becomes dwarfed by The University, bringing up an important ethical issue: Is GW’s role in the community to remain small or to slowly become the dominant force?
When the partnership between the university and the community is considered, we must question if GW will continue to provide the city’s residents with certain resources (i.e. community service, outreach, medical, and legal services) even if the ten-year campus plan is rejected. GW uses these community service hours as representative of the university’s community outreach. However, as it is the students who are doing the service hours, the university is not directly helping the community. This service is the students’ contribution to the community. Therefore this service is double counted, once as the students’ service and once as the university’s. This begs the question as to whether or not GW is in essence inflating the amount of community outreach they perform. This in itself is an ethical issue; should GW focus solely on its giving as a university and not use the service personally performed by its students as part of its community contribution?
In terms of the university’s perspective, we analyze whether GW should increase its enrollment rates in an effort to generate increased revenues and maintain its prestige as a distinguished institution of higher learning. GW is technically a not for profit entity and as such it should be focused more on its students and its role in the community. However, as witnessed by many in the Foggy Bottom community, GW seems to focus on the joys of buying up property for investment. This calls GW’s motives into question. GW wants to house as many of its students on-campus as possible, but this would be to the detriment of the neighborhood because of increased GW buildings and presence. Does GW have an ethical responsibility to the neighborhood or solely to furthering itself?
IV. Introduction and Explanation of Applicable
Ethical Theories
There are many ethical theories that one can use when dealing with the issue of GW’s Ten Year Campus Plan. We chose three that we felt best suited our stance on the issues: libertarianism, the particularist view of distributive justice, and Kant’s theory.
The libertarian view postulates that every individual is autonomous and responsible for his/her own life. Justice consists in permitting each person to live as he/she pleases without any outside influences or disruptions, as long as he/she is not interfering with anyone’s exercise of liberty. The libertarian view does not factor in the results, and it rejects concern for total social well-being. This view is not interested in maximizing social happiness. The primary concern for libertarians is that people can live freely and according to their choices and not be manipulated or coerced by others. For libertarians, liberty takes precedence over other moral concerns. In sum, justice consists of respect for others’ individual liberty.
The particularist view of distributive justice as outlined by Walzer states that one cannot achieve social justice until one understands the social development that enabled one to get to that point. Every society has its own history and is at different levels of development. We need to make provisions for different practices, customs, and the like. His main argument states that,
“different norms and principles govern different distributive spheres, and these norms and principles are shaped by the implicit social meanings of the goods in question. As Walzer sees it, distributive criteria are determined by the particular, historically shaped social meanings of the goods in question. The philosophical task is to tease out the inner logic of each type of each type of good, thus revealing the tacit, socially shared values that govern (or should govern) its distribution” (Barry, 105).
Kant’s theory states that we should act out of a sense of duty, and that we should not focus on results. Moral worth comes from when we are motivated by duty, neither by desires nor by doing something in accordance with duty. The test for moral duty is done through the categorical imperative, which states that an act is right if and only if we can simultaneously will that it becomes a universal law. The human element of Kant’s theory states that we should never treat people as a means only. For Kant, “moral reasoning is not based on factual knowledge and that reason by itself can reveal the basic principles of morality” (Shaw, 65).
V. Analysis of Issues in Light of Applicable
Theories
With the libertarian view, the University is encroaching on the rights of the Foggy Bottom residents to live how they would like in their own neighborhood. The University is duping the community through covert tactics. One of the community’s main complaints is that the University is taking over the area and is not telling the truth about its dealings. GW is steadily buying property, as evidenced by it being the second largest landholder in DC, and changing the dynamics of the Foggy Bottom community. The University is purchasing property outside of its campus boundaries and to avoid detection, does not declare the property as academic space. The underhanded tactics of the University are unethical and invading on the rights of the Foggy Bottom residents to live free from the interference of others. In addition, by being forced to live close to the grossly different student lifestyle, residents are also having their liberty violated. According to the libertarian view, no one has to be subjected to the ideas, views, or people with which one does not want to be associated. According to Rawl’s theory, there needs to exist a “cooperative venture among its members”(Barry, 115). The forced interaction that University is imposing between the community and the University goes against this theory.
The particularist view calls for the University to realize the history that surrounds the Foggy Bottom community and why preserving it is necessary. GW cannot generalize their role as a university. It is a university in the middle of an historical residential community. Therefore, the university has an ethical duty to look at the needs of the community and how it can alleviate those needs as a major portion of this community. If the university continues to drive away the long-term residents of the community, it changes the whole structure of the neighborhood and something is lost along the way.
Kant’s theory calls for the University to stop focusing on the bottom line and to act out of a sense of duty. GW itself should provide community outreach, not hiding behind the volunteerism of its students. As a duty, the university should independently stay active and on top of the community’s needs. Since it is obviously a major portion of Foggy Bottom, GW must give back directly. This would increase monetary contributions to helping the neighborhood and the overall betterment of Foggy Bottom. Instead of the University treating both the community and its students as a means to an end, they should value them as moral agents and accept their input in the planning.
After considering all the ethical implications of the campus plan, we have concluded that GW is acting in an unethical way by trying to take over the community. Therefore, we have come up with three recommendations. These recommendations will benefit both GW and the Foggy Bottom community. First, we recommend that GW stop expansion and use the land that they already own for all of its needs. This will help keep the GW campus at a reasonable size and allow other residents to come back into the neighborhood without fear of being bought out by GW. This fear has been brought about by years of gentrification and haggling by the university. Secondly, GW should redevelop the space they already have in offices or other commercial property. These properties could be converted into student residential space or academic space. This would best utilize the land that GW already owns and use it for the education of its students. Then the university could re-focus on its primary goal of educating students and make real estate investments a minor priority. Finally, we believe GW should give even more back to the community through more scholarships, money, and resources. The university currently provides many services, but without counting its students’ community service, GW involvement becomes diminished. Since many of the GW students are not DC residents, they do not pay taxes on their paychecks; therefore, we propose that GW give this equivalent money back to the community for enrichment programs or citywide development. Also, by giving scholarships to a wider variety of inner city DC schools, they would help give underprivileged young adults a chance at a more productive future. Currently GW gives scholarships at only a select number of schools, such as Grant High School, known as the High School Without Walls. This would not only provide additional inner-city students with a chance at a university education but also add to the diversity on GW’s campus.
We believe that by implementing these three recommendations, GW would better serve the community and alleviate the unethical practices presented in the 2000 Campus Plan. This would improve the relationship between GW and the surrounding community. Students would benefit from this improvement through increased internships, less hostility with residents, and a more amiable learning environment. Therefore, the ethical implementation of the campus plan would benefit all involved.
Bibliography
Barry, Vincent, Shaw William H., Moral Issues in Business. United States:
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Jhaveri, Reshma (November 13, 2000). “SA supports GW campus plan.” GW Hatchet:
www.gwhatchet.com (November 27, 2000)
Marootian, Jeff. Personal Interview. November 20, 2000.
“The George Washington University Campus Plan 2000.” George Washington
University Website: www.gwu.edu/~campspln/ (November 1, 2000)