On Wednesday, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2a held a special meeting to discuss the District’s plan to acquire Aston Hall from George Washington University. DHS would convert the building on New Hampshire Avenue into a non-congregate shelter for the medically vulnerable and those who can’t stay in other shelters.

The D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) said it would be the only shelter in Ward 2, and the first of its kind in the District. The building is in an area of Foggy Bottom-West End that’s home to at least four upscale hotels.

“This is an opportunity to serve folks that we have not been able to serve previously in our system, adult families. I have a 20-year-old daughter, but if I had a 20-year-old son and we experienced homelessness, there currently would not be an opportunity for us to come into a shelter together. We would have to be separated, and right now, this is really an opportunity to fill that gap,” DHS Interim Director Rachel Pierre said.

Residents had differing opinions.

“Are we going to be part of the problem, or are we going to be part of the solution?” one asked. “And this is one of the best solutions I have heard in decades.”

Others brought up safety concerns.

“Prostitutes or drug addicts or drug dealers around there, you have to call the police. So if that starts happening, it’s going to start looking like the Chinatown Metro station,” a member of the public said.

ANC Commissioner Joel Causey said he “seriously [questioned] the choosing of this location, based on the fact that it sits across the street from Michelin star restaurant. It’s got another Michelin star restaurant around the corner, and another around the corner from that.”

A resident retorted: “Eating at a Michelin star restaurant is not a human right. Housing, on the other hand, is.”

District Hospital CEO Nayan Patel asked “what safeguards is the shelter proposing in terms of making sure that those restaurants and hotels nearby are protected?”

“I’ve had a hotel where we had mentally ill people come in and set fire in the women’s bathroom and defecate in the lobby furniture,” he continued.

DHS said it would take about eight weeks to convert Aston Hall once the sale goes through. The shelter would have a capacity for 190 residents and officials said medical services and meals would be available to those who need it.

Under the agreement, the city would buy the building for $27.5 million, with $19 million coming from the Department of Housing and Urban Development under the American Rescue Plan.

“There is a process that will take place where people will be admitted to this facility that largely revolves around medical need,” DHS Chief of Staff David Ross said.

If everything goes as planned, DHS would like to have people move in by October or November of this year.

Interim President Mark Wrighton announced in a letter to students Thursday that the university’s Board of Trustees directed the administration to develop a plan to arm specially trained GW Police Department officers.

“While we are not aware of any heightened threat to our university, in recent years there have been too many tragic instances of mass gun violence in communities and on college campuses,” Wrighton said in the letter, citing mass shootings at Michigan State University, the University of Virginia and an elementary school in Nashville.

But some students who marched to the president’s campus home on Monday argued that arming officers will make them feel less safe.

“I think arming them will only escalate situations, create tension between students, even though they want to emphasize community engagement, communication. This decision was not made by all students,” student organizer Jovanna Walker said.

Wrighton said that the board’s decision to equip some officers with firearms comes after a year of consideration, reviewing safety data and gettin input from experts.

He said unarmed officers are unable to respond to incidents that involve weapons.

“Our supervisory officers, who are stationed on campus and know its geography best, are a very important part of emergency response,” Wrighton said. “When weapons are involved, minutes matter.”

In an interview with the student newspaper The GW Hatchet, Wrighton said about 20 officers would be armed with 9 mm handguns.

“It can be done safely and with the rising of gun violence in America, a lot of the times if a person has a weapon, you’re not really going to be able to charge in unless you have a weapon yourself,” one student told News4.

Wrighton said in his letter the school would get community input before moving forward with an “arming implementation plan.”

Catholic University told News4 its special police force is armed and some of Howard University’s police officers are armed, according to the school’s website.

American University’s officers are armed with less than lethal force, the school said. Gallaudet University said it has no armed officers.

The shooting happened at around 3 p.m. at the Columbia Plaza Apartments in the 2400 block of Virginia Avenue NW in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, a few blocks from George Washington University.

Minutes later, an alert was sent out to residents of the apartment complex, warning them about the gunfire and asking them to stay indoors.

“I have friends in this building, friends down the road. They’re a little shooken up. Some of them were locking doors in the campus itself,” resident Mitchell Lewis said. 

The victim was taken to the hospital and is conscious and breathing.

D.C. police blocked off the entrance to the fitness center. They are still looking for the man who opened fire and took off. It is unknown what led to the shooting. 

Though the apartment building is not on-campus housing, many residents, like Lewis, are students.

“Right when I was walking up down the street here, I saw all the police, the fire trucks and ambulances. They all just kind of converged right when I was walking up. [I] was sort of confused [about] what to do. And pretty much within a minute, I saw them take the guy out on a stretcher into the ambulance, and they took him right away,” he said. 

Anyone with information is asked to call 911.

Ten sheep were brought in by LambMowers.com from Fairfax. The sheep ate the weeds and fertilized the student-run garden to prepare for the spring planting season.

“The sheep have the dual purpose of removing the crops by eating them, and then fertilizing the soil with their droppings,” garden manager Nicholas Smaldone said.

The students use the community garden to grow produce and herbs. All the produce that is grown is donated to Miriam’s Kitchen, a non-profit focused on ending homelessness, and people in need.

Although the sheep do not always do a perfect job of mowing lawns, they are a great way to support sustainability and are great for small yards and grassy areas, said Cory Suter, owner of LambMowers.com.

“When cute sheep show up, and lambs, it really attracts a crowd and gets people excited about more sustainable ways to care for land,” Suter said.

In addition to trimming the lawn, the sheep also experience benefits from the variety of grass and flowers they eat. The sheep only eat untreated lawns and get full after about two hours of eating.

“As they’re going around, they eat a little of this, a little of that, and after two hours they’ve done a lot and a lot of things are gone,” Suter said.

This is the first time animals have been brought in to help out with the garden. Around 200 students and volunteers help plant and harvest produce during the school year.

The garden began in 2009.

Student leaders Neharika Rao and Aiza Saeed worked for months to get the machine installed at GW after Roe V. Wade was overturned. They said they followed the lead of other U.S. schools that installed similar machines to ensure reproductive rights.

“After Roe v. Wade was overturned, we felt a lot of passion in making sure that people felt supported on this campus,” Rao said.

Rao and Saeed surveyed 1,500 students about the machines and received overwhelmingly positive responses.

“Not a lot of pushback; the only concern was about discreetness and how we could make sure that students felt that it wasn’t a very public way to go and get some type of contraceptive,” Rao said.  

That is why they put the vending machines in the basement of the student center, Rao said.  

“Getting something accomplished like this is kind of like a legacy for me, because I’m a senior, so I’m graduating, so now people will know, like, ‘Oh, those girls did that,”’ Saeed said.  

Besides emergency contraception pills, the machine also dispenses wellness products such as Tylenol and tampons.

GW Student Association President Christian Zidouemba told News4 that machine likely wouldn’t have been possible in his home country of Burkina Faso.

“In west Africa, oftentimes it’s taboo to be able to possess those contraceptive products overall, such as Plan B,” Zidouemba said.

He said coming to the U.S. showed him a different perspective and that he’s passionate about reproductive rights.

“I believe that anyone who wants to be able to have contraceptive products should be able to do so on their own,” Zidouemba said.

The pills currently cost $25, but Zidouemba said they are exploring options to reduce that cost in the future.

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A complaint was filed by StandWithUs, an Israel education organization, which claims a professor in the psychology program targeted Jewish and Israeli students in the program’s diversity course. The Title VI complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Thursday.

The group also claims the professor retaliated against students who were outspoken about their alleged treatment.

Carly Gammill, a StandWithUs director, said the following statement in a release:

“The hostile environment at the George Washington Professional Psychology Program and the failure of the administration to act to correct it are unacceptable. Too often, when Jewish students raise concerns about antisemitism, they are subjected to gaslighting or false claims meant to cause self-doubt and deflect the bigotry at play.”

In a letter to the community, university president Mark S. Wrighton said a third party will conduct an investigation.

“As such, it is not prudent at this time to comment on specific allegations. However, I want to be clear that we reaffirm that the George Washington University strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred, discrimination, and bias in all forms. We remain committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment where all feel safe and free of harassment, hostility or marginalization,” the statement reads.

The students involved in the claim were not named.

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The study examined how much water 92 families in the D.C. area drank. Participants told researchers they were turned off by the taste of tap water, and they would only drink bottled water, if they could afford it. But many in the study said they opted for cheap, sugary drinks instead of water.

“From the beginning, nobody drank tap water. It was, basically, zero consumption on average,” said Dr. Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, the lead researcher of the study.

Colón-Ramos and her team surveyed predominantly Hispanic families in Langley Park and Gaithersburg in Maryland and in D.C.

They gave each of the families a simple water filter pitcher that they could use to purify their tap water.

Colón-Ramos said they were surprised by the impact the filter had on the families in just three months.

“Something that’s super low-cost gave them more confidence in the tap water just to be able to drink it,” Colón-Ramos said.

The study separated the families into two groups. Both groups received water filters, but one group was specifically educated on the health risks of consuming sugary drinks.

Researchers found that the filter still made a difference for the group that only received the water filter. Parents in that group reduced their consumption of sugary drinks by 8 ounces per day, on average, and increased their consumption of water by 5.6 ounces, according to the study. For the children, their consumption of sugary drinks decreased by 1.6 ounces and their water consumption increased by 2.2 ounces each day.

“What was surprising to us was that they both, both groups significantly decreased the sugary-drink consumption,” Colón-Ramos said.

Colón-Ramos said she hopes the findings can be used to shape future public health policies, and increase access to clean water for low-income families.

“It wasn’t so much a problem about education, but more about motivation and supporting them to make that decision,” she said.

D.C. health officials said they are working on a new strategy to prevent the spread of the monkeypox virus at colleges.

“We are trying to make sure that some of these universities also have doses of vaccine available so if there is a case, we can identify those contexts really immediately,” DC Health epidemiologist Dr. Anil Mangla said.

Students who are at least 18, go to college in the District and meet additional criteria are eligible to receive the monkeypox vaccine in D.C.

George Washington University confirmed it has had two cases of monkeypox. The university said both individuals who had the virus are out of isolation and doing well.

The University of Maryland said it is closely monitoring monkeypox after a presumptive positive case popped up at the College Park campus.

Maryland’s College Park campus will continue to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all students, faculty and staff. The college is still deciding whether to require masks in classrooms.

Some other schools in the University System of Maryland, like UMBC and Bowie State, are only requiring COVID-19 shots for residential students.

Georgetown University had a presumptive positive monkeypox case in June and said it is monitoring the monkeypox situation.

The university’s COVID-19 policy will require masks on the main and Medical Center campuses. The policy will require all students to submit a COVID-19 test before returning to campus. Students are also required to get the COVID vaccine unless they have a medical or religious exemption.

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The D.C. school’s board of trustees and a special committee created in 2019 to study use of the name concluded that “given the division among the community about the moniker, it can no longer serve its purpose as a name that unifies,” they said in a statement. 

“A moniker must unify our community, draw people together and serve as a source of pride. We look forward to the next steps in an inclusive process to identify a moniker that fulfills this aspiration,” Board Chair Grace Speights said in the statement.

The committee that studied the name found that supporters said it referred to “those who lived in the American colonies, especially those who fought for independence and democracy.” For opponents, it referred to “colonizers who stole land and resources from indigenous groups, killed or exiled Native peoples and introduced slavery into the colonies.” 

The school has used “Colonials” since 1926.

The name will be used until a new name is introduced, which is expected by the 2023-2024 academic year, officials said. Students, faculty and family members were urged to get involved in the process.

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When Sidney Chu was growing up in Hong Kong, he tried out hockey, but that didn’t go so well.

“I got a lot of concussions; I got a lot of injuries. So that was not fun,” he said. “But, no, I really loved that feeling of chasing a puck, I really loved the feeling of going fast on the ice.”

That exhilarating feeling he felt on the ice led him to speed skating. Chu later found himself on the campus of George Washington University, waking up at 3:30 a.m. every day for training.

“Every time I woke up, I’m like ‘Oh, God,’ but then I’m, like, really thinking about why I’m doing it,” Chu said.

Chu will skate the 500-meter race at the Olympics.

“Really excited to be able to have the opportunity. It’s my first Olympics, so I’m pretty happy,” Chu said.

He’s also in the process of applying to medical school.

“It is tough to sort of balance that time out, but, I mean, you got 24 hours in a day,” Chu said. “You cut some of the sleep out and it all fits in.”