WHITE-GRAVENOR — In the latest effort by administrators to promote the university’s digital strategy, Georgetown today released a new campaign for its GoCard Mobile app, touting it as a GoCard that “can fit in your pocket!”
A series of posters around the campus highlight the various benefits of the app for students, which include “the ability to pay without cash,” “the convenience of an ID right in your pocket,” and “the power to check out books at Lauinger Library limited only by your phone’s battery life and cellular reception!”
UIS has promised to make the physical GOCard a “thing of the past.”
“We think this is really going to transform the undergraduate experience,” said Roman Fahrmann, Director of the GoCard Office.
“Previously students had to use their Flex Dollars by laboriously retrieving a card from their wallet and handing it to the cashier. Now, students can simply pull out their phone, navigate to the GoCard app, wait for the app to establish a connection with our servers, and simply explain to the cashier how the new system works. It really is so much more seamless.”
According to Fahrmann, the app is currently only available to select freshmen who he described as, “Great test subjects, since they don’t know… I mean not attached to the current way of doing things. Can you not print the first part of that sentence?”
Though merchants accepting the new app are currently limited to the bookstore and Leo’s, Fahrmann has plans to expand support to many of the most popular businesses listed on the GoCard’s website, including “Chemistry Stockroom A” and “Qdoba Mexican Grill.”
Student reaction has generally been ambivalent. Jerry Colliar (COL ’17) said, “There’s a GoCard app now?” while Stephanie Lemark (COL ’16), said, “With Georgetown’s excellent track record of mobile development, this sounds great. I only hope it’s as reliable as the NextGuts app and as useful as the laundry app.”
Jose Sol (SFS ’18), who has tried the app, was also positive. “The old plastic GoCard was really weighing me down before. But now Ican go to Yates without that bulky thing in my pocket.” Sol admitted, however, that there were some downsides. “There are still no mobile GoCard readers in any of the dorms, so I have to sneak past the guardsevery time I want to get back in to New South. So there’s that.”
At press time, Chief Information Officer Lisa Davis had just sentout an email to the student body with the app’s new requirements for passwords, whose length must now be a prime number and must be changed daily.