The Importance of the Goal
“There was a sense of chaos all throughout campus.”
Jon Reynolds, a Georgetown University archivist, recalled firsthand the events of May Day in 1971, as they transpired on Georgetown’s campus. Simply put, it was mayhem.
On the morning of May 3, 1971, thousands of Georgetown students were gearing up and preparing to take their final exams later in the day. As 9:15 a.m. came around, the 9:30 a.m. classes were officially cancelled. By 12:20 p.m., all student exams were cancelled for the rest of the day. Two thousand, five hundred demonstrators, who had been attempting to block traffic, had been driven onto campus by police resistance and were putting the safety of the entire campus at risk.
An area for washing off pepper and tear gas was set up in the main university center and student marshals worked, at great personal risk, to try and keep police and demonstrators apart. Throughout the entire front lawn, you could see hastily pitched tents spanning the entirety of campus. Trashcans were overturned, and picket signs were clenched in the air as demonstrators screamed and ran from the containers coming down on them from above.
Without written consent from the university, the Metropolitan Police Department stormed campus, arresting some protesters and unleashing tear gas on many more. Rev. Robert J. Henle, S.J., the president of Georgetown University at the time, sanctioned the police department’s use of tear gas to dispel the protesters, but many students and faculty were caught in the crossfire and injured as a result.
“Authorities were storming the university and lobbing tear gas onto campus,” Reynolds recalled. “It was either the police or the National Guard, but they were sent to quell the crowds protesting the war and they inadvertently hit others. A group of professors on their way to teach their classes were hit outside of the library.”
Roger Cochetti and Nancy Kent, both Class of 1972, the student body president and vice president at the time, were horrified at these events. Due to the MPD decision to release tear gas on campus and make arrests, along with the university allowing such actions, the pair decided to take action. They created a nonprofit organization to, in their words, “assert and protect the inherent rights of its members and community.” This nonprofit would later be referred to as Students of Georgetown Inc. and would later incorporate “students serving students” as its mission statement.
Fast forward to 2017, and Students of Georgetown Inc., also known as The Corp, has become one of the largest completely student-run businesses in the entire United States. Throughout its history, The Corp has striven to give back to the Georgetown community by employing undergraduate students and providing affordable goods and services to all. With seven locations and over 400 employees, The Corp has changed dramatically since its inception.
Throughout my own tenure sitting on The Corporate Upper Management for The Corp, our board implemented several initiatives, which overhauled our company. We made several budget cuts, such as reducing employee benefits and cutting overhead wage hours, and we opened up a brand-new coffee storefront, among other projects.
Throughout our endless discussions at meetings or leadership retreats, we vigorously and passionately discussed with one another many contrasting ideas. We talked for so long on our first leadership retreat that it seemed as if we all wanted to duct tape each other’s mouths shut. After 25 hours of presentations over three days, we were finally able to decide on tangible goals and outcomes that we would take into our coming fiscal year — and we could not be happier to finally be done.
I remember being amazed at the insights and arguments that every single member contributed to our discussions. We each had vastly different roles. While I served as the director of the on-campus grocery store, there were also directors from our coffee divisions, our director of people operations, our chief financial officer, and so on. All of us had unique backgrounds and experience within the company, and thus we brought our own ideas to the table.
With so many voices in one room, it could have been easy to become overwhelmed with the vast array of options we could possibly take. However, we were able to ground our conversations by converging back onto one simple theme — students serving students. Whatever plan we took, whatever initiative we developed, we knew our ultimate goal was to serve the student and general community of Georgetown University.
Now this didn’t mean there weren’t times we felt a bit hopeless. I can’t begin to count how many times we felt completely lost on our plan. However, having a clear goal in mind helps to frame the conversation and guide discussion to help achieve a desired route.
For instance, one of our main topics of conversations was our hiring practices. We were contemplating changing the structure of our hiring room and reducing the number of upper management members present for interviews. There were two sides of the argument, one of which was to keep the same number of personnel to provide a wide array of perspectives, while the other side argued that the current number of managers in the hiring room intimidated interviewees, added group think to deliberations, and cost the company more money.
There were strong advocates for both sides of the issue, and eventually we came to a final conclusion. It was difficult to gauge the objective value that the additional personnel brought to the interview room, as it varied dramatically from each person and role. Most importantly, though, we wanted applicants to be as comfortable as possible in the interview environment, and cutting unnecessary costs would enable us to reinvest funds in other projects or increase our philanthropy budget.
In essence, we thought back to our mantra of students serving students and asked ourselves what the best possible option for the community would be. Some management members may not have been thrilled about this decision, but ultimately, we agreed that we were still striving to do our best to serve the students of Georgetown.
The Corp has implemented several important initiatives that have shaped the trajectory of the company. In the ’70s the company decided to sue the university over alleged discriminatory actions toward students. In the ’80s The Corp attempted to sell condoms at its storefronts and was rebuffed by university efforts. In the ’90s The Corp opened up its first coffee shop on campus, which would eventually lead to the creation of two other coffee storefronts.
At every single one of these events, the student managers at the time went through the exact same thought process that our management team went through. They attached the mission of “students serving students” to every possible project and constantly questioned whether they were working toward accomplishing that goal.
Throughout the past 45 years of its existence, The Corp has made several bad decisions, and yet it has also succeeded for the most part. The company has employed thousands of student employees and fundamentally changed the college experience of even more Georgetown students and community members.
