| Full-time undergraduate program |
On national rankings, GW consistently places very highly in such
categories as "dorms like palaces," and in my experience I have no
reason to dispute this. "Dorms" at GW are admirable from freshman year
up: I lived in a six-person room freshman year that consisted of an
enormous common room, a second smaller bedroom, a small office-type
room and our own bathroom. Sophomore year I lived in a huge double
connected to a second double by a massive central bathroom, and last
year lived in a two-bedroom two-bath apartment with a full kitchen and
living room, where by a stroke of sheer luck and administrative
oversight I had my own bedroom and bathroom spring semester. Dorms at
GW are phenomenal, but keep in mind that you will be paying for what
you get: on-campus housing costs are as astronomical as the rooms are
beautiful. This is one of two reasons that most upperclass students
choose to move off campus.
The second reason is that GW has a severe (aforementioned) problem with
accepting too many students. This year, a record-breaking freshman
class enrolled at GW and consequentially, many rising seniors and
juniors found that halls traditionally reserved for upperclass were
getting bumped down to be freshman or sophomore halls, leaving us out
on the streets in many cases. Dorm overcrowding is also a huge problem:
rooms that are cramped as doubles and triples are being used
respectively as triples and quads, and it is not at all uncommon for
incoming freshmen to find that they are being housed in area hotels
while GW scrambles to find a place to put them.
Because of this mostly (though other reasons compound the issue), GW
has what may be described at best as a contentious relationship with
the local community. Currently the school is laboring under a court-
imposed requirement to house 70% of students, including ALL freshmen
and sophomores, on-campus--this year the school realized that until new
dorms are completed, it would be impossible to fulfill this requirement
and consciously decided not to comply with the court order, causing it
to now face fines and further penalties if not in compliance by next
year.
GW also has a staggering debt--approximately $600 million at last
estimate, compared to a shockingly small endowment of approximately
$700 million, according to the campus newsletter and the
administration's own figures. Consequently, the school (as stated
before) tries to cut faculty salaries, faculty positions, classroom
requirements, academic schedules, and unaffiliated study abroad
programs while over-accepting students beyond the university's capacity
in order to compensate financially. The campus is under constant
construction, which can prove tedious when you're awakened at 8am by
the sound of a chorus of jackhammers firing up across the street. These
ambiguous costs (last year a multi-million dollar project was finished
at the Marvin Student Center, an addition that added...yet another
ballroom, an unecessary staircase, and a much-joked-about gold column)
add up in both the University's debt, and student unhappiness. Such a
load of debt and skyrocketing tuition costs (total cost of attendance
this year at GW is a hair below $40,000) are especially hard to swallow
in light of the fact that the President of the university, the almost
universally disliked (by students, parents, faculty and community
members) Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, makes well over $400k alone, and
the salaries of just SIX of the top administrative officials total
$1.59 million annually.
Due to its phenomenal location, GW is remarkably safe for such a
true "city" school, and safety is one of the top priorities for the
administration. The school falls within the boundaries of no fewer than
five legal jurisdictions: DC Metro Police Department, Capitol Security,
Secret Service (due to its proximity to the White House), US Park
Police (due to its proximity to many national monuments), and the GW
University Police Department. Additionally, as the District of Columbia
is federal territory, the FBI often has oversight capacity in many
criminal investigations. Additionally, the campus is in a very
beautiful and historic part of the city, and is almost always teeming
with life: throngs of students are coming and going at all hours of the
night.
Facilities at GW tend to be nice on the outside but sketchy on the
inside. Cost overruns on construction projects mean that GW often cuts
corners in construction: for example, the brand new Health and Wellness
Center, the new gym facility less than two years old, flooded on two
floors due to a faulty pipe last week and those floors are closed
indefinitely. My own dorm last year flooded on the bottom floor twice
and had the automatic doors break down countless times, once so badly
that they wouldn't shut, leaving one wondering how secure the dorm was
no matter HOW safe the area may be. Student access to facilities is
also often compromised in the interests of neighborhood relations and
the whims of the administration. The aforementioned Health and Wellness
Center, for example, has almost 30,000 square feet of floor space
dedicated to a sort of "gold-level" "Presidents Club" area, with access
reserved only for members who pay some exorbitant amount of money to
join. "Presidents Club" members (whose ranks are not open to students)
also have priority reservation of racquetball courts and other rooms in
the facility, often bumping student groups out entirely, and have
priority access to equipment check-out. Addditionally, the Health and
Wellness Center is forced to operate minimal hours due to regulations
imposed by local residential groups who have it in for the school due
to the sour relations between administration and community. And these
are just a few of countless examples.
The campus itself is as beautiful as can be expected, though one
shudders to think of what GW pays in mulch costs and upkeep alone for
the patches of perfectly manicured flower gardens. The school
sacrifices much in the way of a truly defined "campus" in exchange for
its prime real estate (four blocks from the White House, six from the
National Mall, and about a mile from the U.S. Capitol and Supreme
Court). Most of the buildings are plain greyish yellow concrete, but
tend to look nicer on the inside.
Dining options at the University are an area of particular strength due
to an innovative new program the school launched this year. Previously,
the GW meal system was divided into two separate programs: "dining
points" and "debit dollars." "Dining points" referred to the declining-
balance dollar-value system that could be used at any on-campus dining
location. These locations are catered by Aramark, whose standards of
quality are at best unreliable. Points were tax-free and could ONLY be
used at campus dining facilities. "Debits dollars" on the other hand
were the sort of school-managed debit program that many universities
offer. You add as much or as little as you like to the balance, and
then the DD's could be used to pay for anything from the laundry
machines in the dorms to take-out from local restaurants that accepted
them. This year, however, in an effort to raise the quality of
Aramark's on-campus fare by means of direct competition, the University
combined the points and debit system into one centralized "Colonial
Cash" program, which consequently opened up literally hundreds of
dollars a semester for student use at participating off-campus
locations. As a result, students now have options ranging from the
Aramark dining rooms and Aramark-managed Starbucks, Burger King and
Taco Bell on-campus to everything from Thai to Chinese to Pizza to
Burgers to TGI Fridays to Bertucci's and Au Bon Pain off campus.
Overall I would say that the administrative attitude of subjecting the
school to the demands of the bottom line rather than in the interest of
being the best educational institution possible make student life a
mixed bag.
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