Student Association 2.0
When The Colonialist was started last fall, the complete lack of credible counterparts was surprising. GW is a pretty vocal university, yet most people seemed content to only learn about GW from the Hatchet. The Daily Colonial was there but hardly read. It felt like students didn’t want any people-powered sources for information.
Things seem to have changed.
As we approach The Colonialist’s first birthday, the amount of new GW blogs has skyrocketed. The GW Patriot has surprisingly gained a readership from all ends of the political spectrum. GWBlogspot has condescendingly conquered the incoming freshman class. Georgetown has even caught the bug.
And with in our niche-blog network, a micro-niche-blog battle has broken out. Logan Dobson was elected to the SA in the Spring and started a blog with this mission statement:
Inside The SA: The blog of self-admitted tool and Senator Logan Dobson, CCAS-U, as I try to navigate my fellow tools, wastefulness, and all-around bullshittery of the George Washington University’s Student Association.
While most of the content over the summer has been in preparation for his future reign as the Ron Paul of the SA, he has garnered attention from a lot of people. Loads of complaints have been raised about his open source governing which led to a closed door meeting with current EVP Kyle Boyer about the blog. While most blogs have found themselves in a relative lull over our summer vacation, his comment section has been both active and terrible.
(Photo of Sen. Dobson, creator of Inside the SA)
It seems like any post Dobson makes leads to a comment from GW and SA alumni Elliot Bell-Krasner, which then leads to someone awkwardly insulting EBK, which then leads to 35 more comments about EBK’s personality and status as GW mover/shaker. The resulting comment cluster-fucks led former Senator Bell-Krasner to start his own pro-SA blog called “Where No Senator Emeritus Has Gone Before.“ While the comments on EBK’s blog are mostly nonexistent, it seems to act as a place of constant rebuttal to anything Dobson or the GW Patriot have to say. One blog was created with the hope of changing the system, and another was created to try to defend it.
(Photo of Bell-Krasner, creator of WNSEHGB)
The question remains: What real impact will either of these sites have? There could be positive results. It could allow the student body to better understand the Student Association and foster a campus-wide debate about how the SA should improve. Or it could have the complete opposite effect. It could lead to petty SA infighting on a public forum. It could lead to bitter divisiveness and personal grudges over publicly displayed content deemed embarrassing to Senators. They are walking a fine line.
I would urge both sides to actually examine why they wanted to start a blog in the first place. If it was to present your very important opinion, maybe you should think again. If it was to try to help the GW community fix the seemingly broken and out-of-touch SA, then I’m interested to see where it goes. (If you don’t think the SA is conceived by most people as broken and out of touch, I’d advise you to talk to people outside of the SA).
The question I pose is this: Will these blogs change anything? How? Could they make the SA an actually respected and open organization? Will they fuck it up for the rest of the blogs by turning us all into a big troll-fest/flame-war?
What do the common-folk of GW think?
And please, please, please try everything in your power to not turn this into an comment battle over EBK. There have been enough of those.
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Comments
The SA tries to be a legitimate government, but the problem remains:
It doesn’t have a legitimate government.
While I’m the first to admit that before relatively recently we were a small-time affair, I’m also proud to point out that the GW Patriot is (to my knowledge) the oldest extant blog at GW. Our present incarnation (the second, after an abortive first attempt in the Fall of 2006) was founded on Valentine’s Day, 2007.
GW ANIME BLOG IS MAD OLD SON: http://gwanime.blogspot.com/
I had a “GW” blog in 2005.
I hosted and designed it myself, didn’t tell anyone about it, and have since taken it off the internet.
The point I’m trying to make here is: Bill F, I beat you.
Oh, Bill F.
I’m not conceited enough to think my crappy little SA blog will have any impact on anything.
For one thing, I’m only going to be read by people who already have their own defined positions on the SA. I won’t be changing anyones minds.
I just blog it for poops and giggles. As much as all the people hate the SA, they really don’t know a whole lot about what it actually does. The great thing is, once they find out, they can hate even more.
I dunno where the blog will end up. Parts news/opinion/bullshit equally. But you’ll have to read along. I’ll offer up the best and worst the SA has to offer and leave it up to y’all to judge. I’m not unbiased, but I’ll tell you the whole story.
I should note that the Patriot and the Colonialist are far better blogs, however.
To yoohoo: Y’oops!
Bill, I actually meant to write a comment twice as long where I redeemed myself by mentioning the various GW sports blogs that have been around for a million years, but I had no idea whether gwhoops.com — or any of the other blogs I found — was run by students or not.
Hoops was founded in the early 90s (93?) by students in Madison (Crawford?) Hall, I believe.
Then again, I may be completely wrong.
“the Ron Paul of the SA”
Ha! When are we going to start hearing Logan’s call for commodity-backed Colonial Cash? Can’t wait…
The purpose of my blog is much the same as Logan’s except from my perspective as an alumni, former Senator and former SA insider. I didn’t start it because people were insulting me and I could care less if they do because anyone that insults anyone else’s character without good reason is simply trying to cover up for any moral failings they have and they are probably insecure as well.
I started my blog because I was encouraged to do so by several of Logan’s commenter and because I think the alumni voice needs to be heard. In response to “While the comments on EBK’s blog are mostly nonexistent, it seems to act as a place of constant rebuttal to anything Dobson or the GW Patriot have to say”
I would have to say that my blog is only a few weeks old and I expect fewer people to comment because it isn’t as well advertised yet, however its not a rebuttal but an exchange of ideas and a way to share my own views.
In any case, I would encourage everyone to go comment on my thoughts and share their own
Good post. I think you’re being a bit too tough on Logan. His blog was founded on the idea that there would be some transparency between the small albeit-growing online GW community and the SA.
At any rate, the GW blogosphere is one of the shining achievements at this school that the average student will never hear about. It’s pretty unfortunate.
Well, Kirk, regardless of who’s oldest or who has the most comments or whatever, I think the important thing is that the past couple of years have seen GW students starting to use the internet for some constructive purpose other than class registration, Facebook, or porn. Can’t complain about that.
I would even say that the time is fast approaching when Pat’s “average student” will be well aware of the vibrant GW blogosphere. (I’m getting really sick of that word, by the way.)
Vibrant? I don’t know, I think it’s pretty okay.
Also, yes. The Gwinternet (say that aloud, it feels nice) is improving and it’s great.
In regards to “I would even say that the time is fast approaching when Pat’s “average student” will be well aware of the vibrant GW blogosphere.”
I only have to say: “Shit, man. Are y’all going to be giving out temporary tattoos as well?”
Everyone must have been pretty disappointed when they read the word “gwinternet” and realized there was no longer any reason to read words. I’m the concept of writing was really a front for our society to search for the word “gwinternet.” We found it. Thanks Kirk. Pencils down, world.
Brown folk, represent!
Some of the people marginally responsible for rolling MAD deep to J street and stealing all the good seats have started a cool blog.
Also, we love reading Colonialist, and it was our inspiration. No Jokes.
End Shameless plug.
Interesting True Story - One of our contributors’ wall in Ivory has a hole in it made by none other than, yes, you guessed it, EBK.
I never made a hole anywhere in Ivory tower. I wouldn’t do that knowingly and am not dumb enough to do it by accident
If only The Daily Sheabird were still around — the best SA commentary ever.