Amidst the intense partisan rancor in Washington during the debt-ceiling debate in late July, Student Assembly President Kaveh Sadeghian ’12 joined more than 120 student body presidents to ask lawmakers, “Do we have a deal yet?”

A nonpartisan initiative that began on the campus of Georgetown University, “Do We Have a Deal Yet?” was intended to urge leaders in Washington to compromise on a deal to raise the debt ceiling and reduce long-term deficits.

The student body presidents, collectively representing more than two million college students from 40 states, signed and sent a letter to President Barack Obama and each member of Congress serving the districts and states represented among the signatories.

“While you may disagree over which party shoulders more blame for our current situation, one thing is certain: Young people will shoulder the consequences of gridlock during a time that requires bold action,” the letter read.

In addition to sending the letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and at the White House, Sadeghian appeared on “CNN Newsroom” and spoke at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington July 21 on behalf of the initiative.

“Our leaders are used to kicking the can down the road. Well, we’re that can, and we’re here to kick back,” Sadeghian said at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

“Do We Have a Deal Yet?” received responses from the White House as well as from multiple Democratic members of Congress, including the Office of the House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). President Obama held a conference call with the student body presidents July 26 to thank them for their message and to address their concerns. The president also read the letter at a town hall event at the University of Maryland-College Park the next day.

The student body presidents did not receive responses from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however.

“We were waiting to hear from Speaker Boehner, but we never ended up hearing from him. I don’t know specifically why,” Sadeghian said.

After receiving an email from the founders of “Do We Have a Deal Yet?,” Sadeghian was at first reluctant to sign on to the initiative because he did not want the Student Assembly to become involved with anything “political.” But when his colleagues at the National Conference on Citizenship in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit that measures civic engagement, began Tweeting about it, he realized that the nonpartisan initiative was gaining momentum.

Sadeghian thought the message of solidarity and bipartisanship amongst the student body presidents made it worthy of his signature.

“I thought the message was very powerful, because we were literally demonstrating what we were advocating,” he said.

But because the College of William and Mary is a state-funded school, Sadeghian worried at first about becoming embroiled in regional politics by signing the letter.

“When I did it, I have to be honest, I was a little bit nervous signing it,” he said. “I had really thought about it, which is the reason I waited so long to sign it. We took a risk by signing that letter. We did. It is a nonpartisan message and one that’s rooted in compromise, but it is still risky. But then I realized that’s exactly what we’re asking our legislators to do to: take a risk, the same way we did.”

Sadeghian said that while the initiative was student-oriented, it did not take stances on any issues because of its non-partisan origins — including Pell Grant funding. Late in the debt-ceiling negotiations, Pell Grant funding took center stage when some Republican House freshmen were angered by a proposal to increase spending for the grants while slashing spending for other government programs. Others, such as Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), compared it to “welfare.”

The point of the initiative, Sadeghian said, was to urge everyone to engage in shared sacrifice.
“It would hypocritical for us to say, ‘Everything but Pell Grants,’ and that’s kind of exactly what everyone else is doing, saying: ‘Everything but this.’” Sadeghian said. “What we’re saying is, you have to put everything on the table, and only when you do that can you actually have this bold, balanced and bipartisan deal.”

Sadeghian said that the support he received from the College community subsequent to his involvement affirmed to him that he had made the right decision in signing the letter.

“It’s not even that people said ‘thank you’ to me,” Sadeghian said. “It was like this collective pride — not in what I did, but in what we were all involved in. So it wasn’t about me, which is what I liked about it. It was about us.”

Vice President of Student Affairs Ginger Ambler ’88, Ph.D. ’06 expressed support for Sadeghian’s actions.
“I was proud to see Kaveh on CNN speaking with such passion on behalf of the coalition and framing the debt-ceiling debate as an issue of critical importance to this current generation of college students,” she said in an email.

Whether Sadeghian’s involvement with the initiative will encourage College students to engage with lawmakers when deficit-reduction talks resume after the recess remains to be seen.

“I’m really curious to see how this generation reacts to this,” Student Assembly Vice President Molly Bulman ’12 said. “I worry that students will disengage and give up on Washington and give up on policy. But I think it’s important that we stay informed and engaged.”

Out of the many dramatic narratives in Washington during the debt-ceiling debate, Sadeghian thought that “Do We Have a Deal Yet?” demonstrated that it was possible for a diverse group of people – students in this case – to come together.

“It set the tone that our generation is one that is rooted in compromise and one that’s rooted in rationality more than anything else,” Sadeghian said. “It was reaffirming to see that everybody could at least agree to this collective message and that this partisan battle and Washington gridlock didn’t apply to our generation, at least in this case.”

Historians are hoping that the hidden remains of a brick foundation found near the Sir Christopher Wren Building can provide information about the College of William and Mary’s colonial past.

Experts believe slave quarters may have once stood on the site.

“We are always interested in understanding more about the College’s relationship with black people and red people,” said College President Taylor Reveley. “We already know a lot about the College’s relationship with white people. We’ve had black people and red people here since the beginning, so now we are trying to better understand that history, and one way of doing that is through archeological discovery.”

Anthropology Department Faculty Fellow Neil Norman agreed.

“Thomas Jefferson is ever-present here, but we don’t really know about the lives of the people … who, during Jefferson’s time, cooked, cleaned and made academic life possible,” Norman said in a press release. “This site has the potential to allow us to interpret the conditions of their lives and add them to the emerging narrative of the College.”

The unidentified brick structure dating back to the early 18th century was discovered nearly a year and a half ago two feet below the ground of the Wren Courtyard.

This past summer archeologists at the College excavated the site, and their discoveries received national media attention.

“This is a big discovery, and it’s always nice to get attention from the national media,” Reveley said.

Although the exact function of the building is unknown, artifacts such as nails, glass shards and pieces of ceramic led archeologists to believe that the building was used either as a kitchen, slave living quarters, laundry facility or a combination of those three.

“The social role of slaves on campus is basically an untold story at this point. There isn’t a lot of documented history about these people, so that’s why the archeological evidence is so important,” said Joe Jones, Director of the Center of Archeological Research.

Jones said he would like to further investigate the site, as well as comb through old documents and records relating to that period of the College’s history.

In order to continue research on the site, the archeologists need more funding.

“There is never any money for anything, but it will work out. It’s a very important site to explore, and we are very interested in exploring it,” Reveley said.

One of the main problems facing archeologists is the care that must be taken in handling the grounds.

Before any construction takes place on the grounds of the College, an archeological investigation is required to ensure there will be no tampering with historical evidence. After 317 years of continual campus activity, archeologists must be very careful as they uncover remains.

“This site is like a little island of preservation,” Jones said in a press release. “In every direction, if you go more than three, four or five feet out, we know from other projects you get into areas of massive ground disturbance. You can take five steps and it’s a jumble.”

The College hopes to complete an archeological excavation on the site while preserving the foundation. Archeologists have already recorded the precise location of the foundation and filled in the areas that were exposed for excavation so as to better preserve the area.

“The discovery of these foundations is too important to rush the process,” said Louis Kale, director of the College’s Historic Campus, in a press release. “We need some time to put together a partnership of all the necessary scholars to interpret this site. When we do this project, it’s important that we do it thoughtfully and that we do it right.”

Administrators at the College of William and Mary were pleasantly surprised when the damage dealt by Hurricane Irene, a Doppler radar red hurricane, was less severe than expected.

The hurricane, which made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 3 storm, is the first to hit Williamsburg since Hurricane Isabel in 2003, yet Irene’s 120 miles per hour wind gusts and 10 inches of rainfall offered little competition to her predecessor.

“My sense is that the damage from Saturday’s excitement was pretty much par for the course for recent hurricanes and ice storms,” said College President Taylor Reveley in an email. “The damage from Irene certainly could have been worse. Hurricanes are powerful engines of destruction, and you never know whether the campus is going to take a real hit. In this instance, it didn’t.”

Dave Shepard, the associate vice president of facilities management, joined the chorus of College administrators who said the damage was less than expected. He considers a small hole in the roof of the Commons Dining Hall the worst damage sustained by the College. Other building damage was inflicted on the Harrison Dormitory stairwell.

“I don’t think there was any major damage to buildings or other facilities campus,” Reveley said in an email. “The main harm was to our wonderful old trees — 40 killed or severely hurt. Otherwise, the problems centered on some roof leaks and water in basements.”

Facilities staff performed major tree cleanup on the day following the hurricane, while Bartlett Tree Service continues to work on the heavier stumps and foliage littering campus.

The projected cost of damage to the College remains uncertain, but administrators doubt it will put a dent in the College’s wallet.

“Assuming the damage isn’t material, we’ll very likely cover it with the funds normally budgeted for repairs and tree maintenance during the course of a year,” Reveley said in an email.

The archeological site at the recently discovered slave quarters did not experience damage beyond the muddying of the ground.

While Shepard said more trees came down than when Hurricane Isabel struck, both Shepard and Vice President for Student Affairs Virginia Ambler ’88 PhD ‘06 noted the College was more prepared this time to deal with cleanup and power outages.

“The College, with the blessing of the state as far as funding for an emergency generator upgrade project, has made significant improvements in its ability to maintain power to critical facilities,” Shepard said in a press release. “The College was very lucky this time. The power on the main campus stayed up almost throughout the whole evacuation, which was much different than Isabel, when we were out completely for almost a week. In this case, we were almost completely restored to power on Sunday night.”

Beyond campus, Hurricane Irene’s path of destruction was more pronounced. As of Wednesday, Irene claimed 43 James City County homes, a figure six times that of previous assessments, according to The Virginia Gazette. Fifty-eight additional residential homes were damaged and Williamsburg property damage estimates are $3.8 million. Power outages remain the most pressing issue for Williamsburg residents.

“Across the board, we conveyed clearly and loudly, we were not very happy with the response,” said County Administrator Robert Middaugh in a Virginia Gazette article.

Dominion Virginia Power predicts that all power will be restored by Friday, but many Williamsburg residents are upset with the company. While close to 3,000 Williamsburg residents remained without power as of Wednesday, College officials were complimentary of the response rate.

“Dominion Power was very responsive to the needs of the campus after the hurricane,” Reveley said in an email. “Its crews managed to get all of our dorms up and running in time for students to return on Tuesday.”
Although power has yet to be restored to her home, Ambler did not attribute her power outage to a lack of efficiency on Dominion Virginia Power’s part.

“I’m sure they have a lot of power outages that they are dealing with, so I think they are handling it the best they can,” she said. “They performed very well in restoring power to campus throughout the storm.”
Reveley weathered Irene on campus.

“I was on campus throughout Irene’s visit to W&M, working in the Brafferton until the hurricane really began to roar,” Reveley said in an email. “Then I moved to the President’s House. The PH [President’s house] lost power for a while, but got it back after some hours.”

Hurricane Irene cannot claim any change to the fall semester class schedule, to the dismay of some professors, although Ambler said students seem relieved.

“I simply think that we should have continued the semester for a week to make up for lost classes,” said English Professor Deborah Morse.