SCU Update: 3.14.2008

SCU continues to make excellent progress in many areas. We have received IRB approval for our research project with no revisions. We are very proud that all of our hard work was so well received by research professionals at our University. We plan to administer the Survey on-line from April 4th-25th. We will spend April and May picking out the data. We are faced with the hard reality that a quality research report can not be published in the next five weeks, so we are going to focus on unifying student groups on campus for the remainder of the semester and we will form research teams in September. We plan to publish the report by late November. We plan to work very hard until that moment, and I am sure that things will turn out in the best interest of Georgetown. The following is what we have done the past month, and what we plan to do before the year is out:

We have:

* Received IRB approval without revisions
* Helped organize and facilitate the recent "Inclusion Forum" this
past Wednesday
* Organized a "Social Justice Unity" event, where we had 30 student
representatives from various social justice groups on campus. We
came up with the following recommendations to unify social justice
efforts in DC:
o Social Justice Fair (Like SAC Fair, but both semesters for
people who's schedules change)
o Update and Refresh the CSJ website, making it more
descriptive and user friendly
o Organize Mentoring and Tutoring Training sessions which
would be open to all of the social justice groups
o A comprehensive weekly schedule so that prospective mentors
or tutors would know what the time commitment is for each
group. (SCU should have this ready by next week!)
o $ for Co-Sponsorships between groups
o CSJ List server
o More Full-Time positions are needed in CSJ
o Presentations in Freshman classes about social justice
opportunities
o Put an electronic screen in Red Square to update student on
current events
* We are planning a follow up to this event and arranging meetings
with administrators.
* We are planning a large social/recruiting event on April 24th with
many cosponsors on Copley Lawn.

We have also created this blog!

Thank you again for all of your support, I hope to meet with you again before the semester is out. Have a great Easter Break if I do not see you before then!

Thanks,
Brian Kesten

Student Commission for Unity

The Georgetown University Student Association’s Student Commission for Unity is an innovative student-led, survey-based research project aimed at proposing and enacting a series of fact-based recommendations to unite Georgetown’s many diverse student communities. The Commission will study answers to questions about University resources and discussions, discrimination and self segregation based upon six criteria: gender, school, education background, LGBTQ identity, race and religion.

Each of these six criteria will have a Research Team of students assigned to studying and analyzing the results of the survey, as well as interviewing students, faculty, staff and administrators concerning the results of the survey. The Research Teams will write a critical summary of each of their assigned demographic studies. Finally, the Commission will develop an unlimited series of recommendations, centered around the democratically determined primary recommendations to be specifically pursued by Commission members who will become Action Teams from Research Teams.

The Commission aims to administer the survey to between 1,300 and 2,000 undergraduate students on-line to students from all four schools. The Commission plans to unveil its findings, interviews, critical summaries and recommendations by December 2008.