Chiming in - The Georgetown Voice

Transcription

VOICE
the georgetown
0
BLIZZARD BURIES
CAMPUS
PAGE 5
THE WRIGHT MAN
FOR THE JOB
PAGE 6
TOSH.WHOA:
AN INTERVIEW
PAGE 10
Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w Februrary 11, 2010 w Volume 42, Issue 19 w georgetownvoice.com
Chiming in
2 the georgetown voice
february 11, 2010
comments of the week
“What a joke. How can he do that in good conscience to students who already bought train and plane tickets home? What
does he expect them to do? Oh, wait. We can spend our family
time sitting on Skype with our professors and classes instead.”
—L., “Provost announces liberal leave on Monday for Georgetown University”
“Someone who was threatened with expulsion from the GUSA Senate for failing to ever show up to meetings wants to be GUSA Vice
President? This sounds like a great plan to turn GUSA back into the
ineffective organization it was before Calen and Jason were elected..”
—Seriously?, “The list of GUSA presidential candidates as provided by the Election
Commission”
“I am not walking to 26th Street. If I am going to be doing anything at
6pm, it will be getting absolutely inebriated and not facilitating
the chance for some overzealous GW bums to
prove that they are indeed not up to Georgetown’s
standards.”
—typical, “Georgetown vs. GWU Snowball fight moved back to 6:00
p.m.”
“The part I want to reiterate most is simply that even if we can trust the
current senators on the FinApp committee to do this fairly and openly
and in a representative and responsible manner, we have DEFINITELY
seen over the past years that the senate is too unstable an organization
to trust with this kind of extreme authority in the long run.”
—Matt Wagner, “Don’t give GUSA power over your funds”
Talk Back
blog.georgetownvoice.com | georgetownvoice.com
Voice Crossword “Snowed In” by Mary Cass and Jaclyn Wright
ACROSS
1. 70s carpet
5. Star Wars or Twilight
9. Occasionally poisonous root
14. It may be minimum
15. Impetuous ardor
16. A composite glue
17. Undress with the eyes
18. Base of some ethanol
19. Roman goddess of cereal
20. French road
21. Canadian province with a
certain je ne sais quoi
23. Hatchling’s site
24. Long way to go?
26. Quirky
28. “La __ En Rose”
29. Baby’s bottle
31. Computer (abbr.)
34. News for gossip mags
37. Angels’ headgear
39. Has been “Kissed by a
Rose”
40. Payment for services
41. A great dog
42. Coke’s arch nemesis
44. Performing a moment
47. Inclined
48. Beyond racy
50. Mine treasure
51. Loose gown worn at mass
52. Battle injuries
56. Association (abbr.)
59. Suffering a loss
63. Affirmative at sea
64. Furlough
66. A Filipino machete
67. Closely related
68. She feels pretty, oh so
pretty
69. Norwegian treaty city
70. Eye part
71. Slanted
72. “__ a lift?”
73. Brink or verge
letter to the editor
On Monday night the
Georgetown
University
Student Association Senate
passed an important and
necessary by-laws change
giving it primary stewardship
over the Student Activities
Fee and dissolving the
Funding Board. The change
may not be noticeable to
most students at first, but will
prove to benefit student life
over the long-term.
The change also entrusts
greater responsibility with
GUSA,
something
many
don’t believe we deserve.
The burden is now on us to
prove that we do, and that the
disappointments of our past
will not be our future.
Last
Thursday
the
Georgetown Voice ran an
editorial about our reforms
that many, including myself,
believe was unfair, hyperbolic,
and inaccurate. But, in life there
will always be disagreements,
and sometimes they come to an
impasse. That’s OK.
For the past few months the
Voice has consistently written
tough stories and critical
editorials about our reform
efforts. That’s OK too. In fact,
it’s healthy to be questioned, to
be forced to reevaluate, and to
defend one’s position. The Voice
has done that successfully (at
times even to my annoyance).
They have made GUSA better
in the process by helping us
sharpen our arguments and
refine our goals.
The truth is that students
don’t care about sniping
between GUSA and SAC.
They don’t care about the
petty controversies that some
love to gin up. They don’t care
about who sent what e-mail
and to whom.
What students do care about
is that their clubs get the money
they need, that student groups
can function freely, and that
campus life is strong and vibrant.
Last semester during a
GUSA meeting on student
funding a club leader told
us that he has had to pay
out of his own pocket for
club activities. He explained
that funding is frequently
denied even for a dinner with
club members. This is not
uncommon.
Students should expect
better
from
Georgetown
University, and they deserve
better. I am confident our
new responsibility in funding
will help us get more money
to
student
groups
and
demonstrate that GUSA can be
a positive force on campus.
—Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13)
Malkerson is a GUSA senator.
answers at georgetownvoice.com
DOWN
1. Duel tool
2. ICC base
3. Metal tip on the end of a
lance
4. “Gosh golly __!”
5. Tied tightly
6. Botanical balm
7. Vestments
8. Green Gables dweller
9. Part of a min.
10. Overturn
11. Extra
12. Beserkers’ weapons
13. Abnormal growth
21. One of a fivesome, for
short
22. Corn on the __
25. Squashed circles
27. Russian yes
29. Mix together
30. On the ocean
31. Familial group
32. Ping __
33. Milk
34. Ooze
35. Team leader (abbr.)
36. “We’re looking for __ __
good men”
38. “Farewell, François!”
39. Place for a mudbath
43. Sick
45. Hay or corn
46. Horse’s brisk gait
49. Like a receding tide
51. Hammer’s partner
53. Undressed
54. Expiring
55. Haley Joel Osment had 6 of
these
56. __ mater
57. Chair
58. Bollywood wrap
60. Jet black
61. Glasses color
62. Women’s magazine
65. Consume
67. Tavern drink
Are you a logophile?
Share your love of words and help write crosswords.
E-mail [email protected].
editorial
georgetownvoice.com
VOICE
the georgetown
Volume 42.19
February 11, 2010
Editor-in-Chief: Jeff Reger
Managing Editor: Juliana Brint
Publisher: Emily Voigtlander
Editor-at-Large: Will Sommer
Director of Technology: Alexander Pon
Blog Editor: Molly Redden
News Editor: Kara Brandeisky
Sports Editor: Adam Rosenfeld
Feature Editor: Tim Shine
Cover Editor: Iris Kim
Leisure Editor: Chris Heller
Voices Editor: Emma Forster
Photo Editor: Hilary Nakasone
Design Editors: Richa Goyal, Ishita Kohli
Literary Editor: James McGrory
Crossword Editor: Cal Lee
Contributing Editor: Daniel Cook, Dan Newman
Assistant Blog Editors: Hunter Kaplan, Imani Tate
Assistant News Editors: J. Galen Weber, Cole Stangler
Assistant Sports Editors: Nick Berti, Rob Sapunor
Assistant Cover Editor: Jin-ah Yang
Assistant Leisure Editors: Brendan Baumgardner,
Leigh Finnegan
Assistant Photo Editors: Jackson Perry,
Shira Saperstein
Assistant Design Editors: Robert Duffley,
Megan Berard
Associate Editors: Matthew Collins, Lexie Herman
Staff Writers:
Jeff Bakkensen, Cyrus Bordbar, Tom Bosco, Sonnet Gaertner, Aleta
Greer, Victor Ho, Kate Imel, Satinder Kaur, Liz Kuebler, Walker
Loetscher, Kate Mays, Scott Munro, Katie Norton, Sean Quigley, Justin
Hunter Scott, Sam Sweeney, Keenan Timko, Tim Wagner
Staff Photographers:
Max Blodgett, Jue Chen, Matthew Funk
Staff Designers:
Marc Fichera, Dara Morano, Marc Patterson, Miykaelah Sinclair
Copy Chief: Geoffrey Bible
Copy editors: Aodhan Beirne, Keaton Hoffman,
Matt Kerwin, Molly Redden
Editorial Board Chair: Eric Pilch
Editorial Board:
George D’Angelo, Emma Forster, Molly Redden, Chris Heller,
Imani Tate, J. Galen Weber, Dan Newman,
Will Sommer, Brendan Baumgardner, Cole Stanger, Juliana Brint
Head of Business: George D’Angelo
Director of Marketing: Michael Byerly
The Georgetown Voice
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On this week’s cover ... A Cappella on Campus
Cover Photo: Iris Kim
q
the georgetown voice 3
TAKEN OUT BY THE BZA
No remorse in shutting down Philly P
What do you call a take-out pizza
place poorly masquerading as a sitdown restaurant? Closed.
In the aftermath of this week’s
snowstorms, Philly Pizza & Grill,
which was supposed to have its final
Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing this Tuesday, has been granted a
stay of execution until February 16.
When the BZA convenes next Tuesday, ending a months-long hearing
process, its members are expected
to—and should—hold the restaurant
accountable for the pattern of mismanagement and deception exhibited
by owner Mehmet Kocak. Kocak irresponsibly opened a restaurant on
a residential street without the appropriate zoning allowances. D.C.
zoning laws are clear: you break the
rules, you pay the price. Philly Pizza
should be closed.
The decision to reopen the restaurant on Potomac Street was Kocak’s first
mistake. The former Philly Pizza was
successful because it operated on a side
street with few neighbors, where it was
able to embrace its take-out identity.
Believing that the old business model
could succeed in the new location was
foolhardy.
Kocak, a manager at Philly Pizza’s
former location, skirted the zoning
laws by operating as a take-out restaurant despite being zoned as a sit-down
establishment. When neighbors, annoyed by the noise and mess created
by Philly Pizza’s often-inebriated latenight patrons, called Kocak out, he
made a half-hearted attempt to make
the restaurant comply with its zoning
regulations. The building may have
been renovated and the food may occasionally be served on non-disposable
plates with silverware, but Philly Pizza
has continued to be what it always has
been: a take-out restaurant—the late
night hours, low-quality and low-price
slices, and student customer base all
but guarantee that status.
If Philly Pizza closes, some may
claim it as a victory for Georgetown
residents, specifically Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners Ron Lewis
and Bill Starrels, who have campaigned
against the restaurant for months. But
the BZA decision will have little to do
with town-gown relations. Kocak explicitly violated zoning laws, invalidating Philly Pizza’s right to continue
operating.
It is frustrating to watch the muchloved restaurant disappear, but Kocak
had plenty of opportunities to meet
zoning requirements. Philly Pizza
could have remained on 34th Street
NW, or Kocak could have pursued
the appropriate zoning allowances after moving the restaurant to Potomac
Street. Instead, a weekend staple at
Georgetown has to come to an end.
At least we’ll always have Tuscany.
q CAN I SEE YOUR ID?
Guards should swipe for student safety
The Department of Public Safety
has started a well-intentioned “pilot”
security program in Copley Hall this
month, requiring student guards to
verify students’ GoCard photographs
and then swipe each card before allowing them access to the building.
The new procedure addresses some
of the biggest weaknesses of the student guard program, and should be
expanded to all residence halls.
In theory, student guards play an
important role in protecting the campus community. In practice, however,
they too frequently shirk this responsibility. Student guards, paid a starting wage of $8.25 per hour, have a
reputation for leniency, with many
allowing nearly anyone with a GoCard—theirs or not—access to campus buildings. This new policy forces
guards to fulfill their paid duties and
more closely monitor the people passing by their desks.
Guards received new instructions
regarding the access procedures at
Copley in a February 2 e-mail from
Luke Hillman, the Assistant Coordinator of the Student Guard Program. Hillman admitted that “this
message may not come as welcome
news,” foreshadowing grumblings
from guards and students alike who
feel that the new procedure is a waste
of time. But this change is a positive
step and constitutes an extremely
small inconvenience that would go a
long way toward improving general
safety on campus.
Since Georgetown pays students
to guard the entrances to residence
halls on campus, the University is obligated to enact adequate guidelines
that ensure students take the position seriously. DPS should be commended for proactively taking steps
to strengthen the student guard program, but increasing the security of
just one building isn’t enough. If DPS
wants student guards to start playing a real role in keeping the campus
safe, the pilot program should be expanded to the rest of campus as soon
as possible.
q WHEELS ON THE BUS
Circulating from Dupont to Rosslyn
Tired of waiting for those dinky
blue Metro Connection buses? You’re
in luck: Georgetown students and residents will soon have a new, affordable
way to get to the Rosslyn Metro Station. Last week, the D.C. City Council
approved preliminary plans for a Circulator route that will run from Dupont Circle to Rosslyn. This new route
will replace the blue Metro Connection
buses and will not cost the city any additional money, according to John Lisle,
a spokesman for the District’s Department of Transportation.
While this new route will not
make up for Georgetown’s lack of a
Metro stop, it does give students another way to explore the rest of the
District. The more mass transit acces-
sible to students, the more encouragement they have to go beyond the
front gates and explore beyond the
Georgetown bubble.
Since its introduction in 2005, the
D.C. Circulator has quickly become
one of the cheapest and most reliable
ways to get around the city. While the
Circulator cannot match the offerings
of Metrobus in terms of number of destinations, the sleek, modern buses are
certainly more inviting and easier to
navigate than their Metrobus siblings.
The Soviet-style design of the many
older Metrobuses still in service, combined with their complicated schedules,
can be daunting to the uninitiated. The
Circulator, by contrast, boasts a simple,
color-coded map and just 10 minute in-
tervals between buses.
The Circulator expansion provides
a marked improvement on the small
blue buses that currently run between
Dupont and Rosslyn. The current buses
have limited capacity to carry customers and a reputation for less than timely
service.
This new proposed Circulator
route connecting Dupont Circle and
the Rosslyn Metro will benefit Georgetown residents, students, and tourists,
supplementing the mass transit options
already available in Georgetown. The
cheap and efficient Circulator buses are
among the best of the District’s mass
transit offerings, and we can only hope
that more routes will be coming to the
rest of the city in the future.
news
february 11, 2010
GUSA presidential campaign kicks off
by J. Galen Weber
Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and
Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11)
After winning last year’s
Georgetown University Student
Association presidential election as
sophomores, Angert and Kluger
moved quickly on an ambitious—
but often controversial—agenda.
They are now running as incumbents
for the first time in recent memory.
In the summer, the newly elected
president and vice-president sent
out an Omnibus Student Survey,
with questions on issues ranging
from diversity to student safety, and
began creating a subsidized LSAT
preparation course for Georgetown
students.
When classes started up again in
the fall, Calen and Jason began work
on the most contentious piece of their
agenda: club funding reform. In
the first semester, the GUSA Senate
passed legislation outlining six
recommendations for the advisory
boards and creating the GUSA Fund,
meant to provide an alternative avenue
for event funding. This Monday,
GUSA passed legislation consolidating
its control over the Student Activities
Fee allocation process.
While the passage of the GUSA
Fund and funding reform legislation
fulfilled one of Angert’s major
campaign promises, the legislation
was opposed by the leadership of
several advisory boards, most notably
Student Activities Commission. Two
of the candidates running against
Angert for the presidency, Arman
Ismail (COL ‘11) and Matt Wagner
(SFS ‘11), have spoken out against the
legislation, turning the debate into an
election issue.
The pair has outlined an agenda
for their second term focused on
student life, space, conduct, and
safety. Their website lists over 20
specific goals that fall under those
three categories, including reforming
meal plans by increasing student’s
flex dollars and expanding Grab
and Go hours, creating a task force to
reform the Student Code of Conduct,
and opening up the GUSA office for
club meetings.
Hillary Dang (SFS ‘12) and
Katie Balloch (COL ‘12)
Of all the tickets in this year’s
GUSA presidential race, Dang and
Balloch are the most atypical. Dang
and Balloch are the only females in
the race, the only sophomore pair
in a pool of candidates dominated
by juniors, and the only candidates
who are not current or former
members of GUSA. But the two
see their lack of experience in
Georgetown’s student government
as an advantage that will allow
them to “bring a fresh outlook to the
executive branch.”
“We feel that we could better
represent the study body because
we have concerns that come from
an outsider’s perspective, and that’s
what most of the student body is,”
Dang said.
Dang and Balloch agree with
much of Angert and Kluger’s
agenda, praising the incumbents’
efforts on funding reform.
Dang said Monday’s legislation
giving GUSA control over the
allocation of the Student Activities
fee was “a huge step in the right
direction,” but added that the bill
could create unexpected difficulties.
“There are a lot of potential
challenges that could arise,” Dang said,
“especially tensions between GUSA
and SAC, and mistrust in GUSA.”
In addition to continuing funding
reform, Dang and Balloch said they
would seek ways to improve student
safety at Georgetown. One of their
proposals is the creation of a loop for
the SafeRides shuttles, which would
allow students to access the shuttles at
scheduled times and regular locations.
Arman Ismail (COL ‘11) and
Tucker Stafford (COL ‘12)
Ismail and Stafford don’t look
like your typical running mates.
Ismail is a junior and current
GUSA senator double majoring in
history and government. His vicepresidential running mate, Tucker
Stafford, is a sophomore who plays
varsity football and lacrosse and has
never been involved with GUSA.
Their differences are what sets
them apart from other candidates,
according to Ismail.
“Tucker and I have, I feel, the
right balance: that unique combined
experience we have understanding
how things work inside GUSA and
the fresh perspective from outside
GUSA,” Ismail said.
If elected, Ismail says the two will
we need to be consistent with that
spirit. A lot of things in our platform
will help us do that.”
Much of the ticket’s platform
focuses on issues that Ismail and
Stafford feel often go unaddressed,
including making the campus more
accessible for disabled students and
creating a liaison between the GUSA
executive and the LGBTQ community.
Some of Ismail and Stafford’s
goals are broad, like strengthening
the Latin American Studies Program.
Others are startlingly specific,
including one reform goal for Leo’s.
“We’ll make sure we have more
utensils available, especially forks,”
Ismail said.
Matt Wagner (SFS ‘11) and
Emmanuel Hampton (COL ‘11)
Both Wagner and Hampton
served in the GUSA Senate last year.
But after Hampton was pushed to
resign after missing three GUSA
meetings, and Wagner chose not to
seek reelection so that he could study
abroad in the fall, both candidates
found themselves outside the GUSA
loop. Discontented with Angert and
Kluger’s leadership, they are now
launching a campaign for the GUSA
presidency.
Wagner and Hampton have been
the most vocal critics of the Angert
and Kluger administration, especially
on the issue of funding reform.
The two believe that the reform
was motivated primarily by
discontent with the Student Activities
Commission, and that any legislation
should be directed primarily at SAC,
not the other advisory boards. The
candidates have proposed repealing
the legislation passed on Monday
and instead reforming the way SAC
commissioners are chosen.
“[Our solution] would just target
the problem and not scoop up a ton of
dolphins with the tuna,” Wagner said.
The candidates have also
outlined several reforms outside of
club funding, such as adding Grab
and Go to the block meal plan and
requiring a standard of “beyond
reasonable doubt” to convict a
student of breaking the Student
Code of Conduct.
Wagner
and
Hampton’s
campaign has come under fire
because of Hampton’s absences
as a GUSA senator. When asked
about his resignation from the
senate, Hampton says that financial
difficulties forced him to choose
between serving as a GUSA senator
and working a job, but that his
financial standing would not be
an issue should he become vicepresident.
“Since then I’ve been able to save
up money and put myself in a better
financial position,” Hampton said.
ing the funds from the fee at the annual spring Budget Summit. Under
the new bill, however, members of
the Finance and Appropriations
Committee will analyze the advisory boards’ positions and then
propose a budget, which must then
be approved by two-thirds of the
general Senate and by the GUSA
president.
Several amendments were
added to the bill on Monday night,
including requirements that the
process involve faculty oversight,
and that members of the Finance
and Appropriations Committee attend comprehensive information
sessions about the funding process.
One proposed amendment,
which would have created a formal
appeals process for advisory boards
that feel they have not been allocated adequate funds, was tabled
until the Senate’s next meeting.
Many Senators, including the bill’s
co-sponsor Colton Malkerson (COL
’13), argued that such an amendment was unnecessary and would
drag out the budgeting process.
“There’s already an inherent appeals process built into the system.
[Advisory boards] can talk to the
FinApp Committee, they can talk
to the Senate, they can talk to the
Executive,” Malkerson said. “[With
the proposed amendment] you’d
see appeals each year [which] could
tend to bog down the Senate.”
While the bill’s co-sponsors,
Malkerson and Finance and Appropriations Committee Chair Nick
Troiano (COL ’11), expressed enthusiasm about the bill’s passage,
advisory board leaders are worried
what the implications will be for
their future budgets.
Donna Harati, the chair of the
Center for Social Justice’s Advisory Board, said she is concerned
about the timing of the allocation
process. Under the new system, the
budgeting process will not begin
until after GUSA’s presidential elections are decided, leading Harati to
worry that her groups will not have
enough time to start planning largescale events for the upcoming year.
“Our biggest concern is how
this is going to affect our time line,”
Harati said. “It is really going to
throw our process into disarray.”
Malkerson said the Finance and
Appropriations Committee will
be spending the next few weeks
working on the logistics of the new
budgeting system. After the GUSA
presidential election is over, he
said, the committee will start looking at the next aspect of its funding
reform campaign, changing the
structure of the Student Activities
Fee Endowment.
work to return Georgetown to its
Jesuit roots.
“The idea of the Jesuit spirit
of service has been at the heart of
Georgetown since it was created,”
Ismail said. “A lot of people feel that
And they’re off! This year’s GUSA candidate pairs.
J. Galen Weber
Landmark vote: GUSA consolidates power over activity fee
by Juliana Brint
The Georgetown University
Student Association Senate passed a
bill to strip advisory boards of their
votes in the allocation of the Student Activities Fee by a vote of 19 to
four at their Monday night meeting.
The bill, which faced strong opposition from the advisory boards, gives
GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations Committee sole control over
the allocation process.
In the previous system, the seven members of the Finance and Appropriations Committee and one
representative from each of the six
advisory boards voted on allocat-
news
georgetownvoice.com
Campus copes with blizzard
by Molly Redden
Amid a series of massive snow
storms that have broken the 1899
record for seasonal snowfall in the
District, Georgetown University has
canceled classes at its campuses for
a fourth consecutive day. In addition
to preventing faculty and staff from
safely reaching campus, the most
recent blizzard has disrupted food
deliveries and frustrated professors’
lesson plans.
In an e-mail to the Voice, Provost
James O’Donnell explained the University has been discussing potential
closures with faculty every day, and
that every day there are a few faculty
who are in favor of keeping school
open. But the general consensus has
typically been in favor of closing the
University, especially at the beginning of the week.
“We’re all worried about keeping
up academically,” O’Donnell wrote
in an e-mail on Tuesday. “It’s faculty,
staff, and students (mainly graduate
students) who live away from campus and who both have to get out of
their neighborhoods (still impossible
for some) and then get here safely
and get home safely in the evening.”
Several professors have used the
technological resources provided by
Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning to stay connected
with their students, including video
conferencing. Daniel Sabet, a visiting assistant professor at the School
of Foreign Service, attached audio to
a PowerPoint presentation and sent
it to his class, and Professor Diana
Owen used a “real-time blog” to host
a discussion between her students in
lieu of her Tuesday morning Media
and Politics seminar.
In a Wednesday evening e-mail
to the student body, O’Donnell wrote
that the University will be open
and operating on liberal leave next
Monday, and that he has asked the
Council of Associate Deans to schedule another make-up day later in the
semester. Student response to his
announcement was immediate and
overwhelmingly negative. Within an
hour and a half of his announcement,
a Facebook group protesting the decision, “Protect Our National Holiday! Say No To Monday Classes!!!”
had over 1,100 student members.
“They can’t give us three days
notice for taking away a long weekend scheduled since the beginning
of the year! I and many other people have travel plans,” Constantine
Petallides (SFS ‘13) wrote on the
group’s wall.
According to University spokespersonAndy Pino, Leo J. O’Donovan’s
Dining Hall is well-stocked for the duration of the storm and was not having “any substantial issues with food
deliveries” as of Wednesday morning.
GU diversity
The Admissions and Recruitment Working Group, which was
formed last spring as part of the
University’s diversity initiative,
recently released a list of recommendations to increase diversity
in Georgetown’s admission’s and
recruitment process. As President DeGioia and Provost James
O’Donnell review the group’s recommendations, they should give
special consideration to the value
of socio-economic diversity, which
is often overlooked.
The value of diversity lies in
the educational benefits that come
from interactions between students of different backgrounds. In
past years, a great deal of attention
has been devoted to accomplishing racial and cultural diversity
at colleges, but less thought has
been given to creating a student
body drawn from a wide variety
of socio-economic backgrounds.
A student’s views and experiences
will vary widely depending on his
or her financial background, and a
student body that draws primarily
from the middle and upper-class
will only have superficial diversity.
Ryan Wilson, who worked
with the Admissions and Recruitment Working Group, said that
the University recognizes it needs
to do more to promote socio-economic diversity.
“Over half of Georgetown student’s families make well over the
median income in this country,”
Wilson wrote in an e-mail. “We
acknowledged early in the process
that this was the area that Georgetown was lacking the most.”
Georgetown will continue to
suffer from a lack of socio-economic because the current structure of
the admissions and recruiting process favors wealthier applicants.
The underlying problem is that
students from wealthy families
have numerous advantages in the
college application process, while
poorer students are less likely to
even think about attending college. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 51 percent
“A lot of people have volunteered their time to stay away from
their families,” Zemirah Benson, an
employee at Leo’s, said. Benson said
the dining hall has been heavily trafficked. “Students are pleasant, very
thankful, [and] very hungry.”
Across the University, however,
other food establishments are having trouble. Epicurean, the restaurant in the basement of Darnall,
has remained open, but Cosi in the
Leavey Center has been closed all
week. The neighboring Starbucks
has been operating on reduced
hours. With the exception of More
Uncommon Grounds, The Corp has
kept its stores on campus open, but
road conditions have blocked or delayed deliveries.
“We’re trying to keep the shelves
as full as possible, but obviously
we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature
on this one,” Brad Glasser (COL ‘11),
the chief executive officer of the Corp,
wrote in an e-mail on Wednesday.
According to Pino, the University is well stocked with salt to melt
the snow and Facilities workers are
opening storm drains in anticipation of flooding when the snow
melts. Emergency personnel staff,
including Georgetown University
Hospital workers, student guards,
and Department of Public Safety
officers have still been required to
come to campus.
of high school seniors from low
socio-economic backgrounds expect to attain a bachelor’s degree,
compared to 87 percent of seniors
from high socio-economic backgrounds.
Even if they earn admission to
Georgetown, poorer students are
often deterred by the costs of attending the University. According
to the Office of Admissions, this
past year, 49 percent of accepted
Saxa Politica
by J. Galen Weber
A bi-weekly column on
campus news and politics
students who did not apply for
financial aid matriculated, while
only 39 percent of those admitted
who did apply for financial aid
ended up attending. Even the students that do accept financial aid
from Georgetown could be considered wealthy: their median family
income is $90,000, which is $40,000
higher than the national average.
While Georgetown claims to meet
100 percent of demonstrated need,
Hilary Nakasone
No business like snow business: A dreary scene on Wisconsin.
With snow, businesses struggle
by Kara Brandeisky
Many Georgetown businesses have struggled to stay open
through the record-breaking
snowstorms of the past week.
Most businesses that have tried
to maintain normal operating
hours have had difficulty staying
stocked and fully staffed.
Many businesses—including
Sweetgreen, Fed Ex, AT & T, Subway, Kitchen #1, Wingo’s, and
Saxby’s—were closed Wednesday
afternoon. Of the stores that remained open, many are struggling
to get employees to work safely.
The Tombs’ employees have
reserved eight rooms at the
Georgetown Suites in order to
stay closer to the restaurant, according to Executive Manager Ken
Siegrist, The Tombs’ will work to
maintain normal operating hours,
he said, but may have to close the
kitchen early due to short staffing.
we’re clearly doing something
wrong. Students who really need
the aid are not getting as much as
they would like from Georgetown
and are deciding to attend other
institutions instead.
To begin bringing real socioeconomic diversity to Georgetown, administrators need to expand our financial aid program,
work on actively recruiting students from lower income families,
and begin giving preferences to
applicants from lower socio-economic backgrounds in admission.
With the launch of the 1789
Scholarship Initiative, Georgetown has already begun taking
the first step. The initiative is designed to increase the amount of
aid money for students that need
it. Georgetown has shown admirable devotion to socio-economic
diversity by maintaining its need
blind policy during the economic
crisis, even as other colleges have
ended or delayed putting theirs
into effect.
Georgetown currently has
several pipeline relationships
Chipotle manager Omar
Bravo said his restaurant’s operating status also depends on
whether employees can get to
work safely.
“If the weather continues
like that, there is nothing we can
do,” Bravo said.
As of Wednesday afternoon,
the CVS on Wisconsin Ave. NW
had run out of both milk and
orange juice. An employee who
wished not to be named said
CVS received its orange juice
and milk from outside vendors,
and it was unclear when they
would be back in stock. He said
other deliveries have also been
delayed due to weather.
Stores that have managed to
stay open and adequately staffed
have had difficulties staying
stocked. Wisey’s manager Jina
Bogel said the store has been relying on wholesale warehouses
to keep the shelves stocked.
with schools like the Cristo Rey
Jesuit High School in Chicago to
reach students that would generally not apply to Georgetown.
Administrators should follow
the suggestion of the Admissions and Recruitment working
group and increase the number
of pipeline relationships.
But the difference between
Georgetown’s current student
body and the socio-economically diverse ideal is so great that
it cannot be overcome through
conventional financial aid and
recruitment efforts. In the interest of closing the gap, Georgetown should give special consideration to students from poor
families, students whose socioeconomic statuses have denied
them the opportunities afforded
to wealthier applicants. This is
the only way Georgetown can
expect to achieve true diversity
quickly and effectively.
Have some money issues you want
to share? Shoot Galen an e-mail at
[email protected]
sports
february 11, 2010
Number four is the Wright man to lead Georgetown
by Tim Shine
After
Georgetown’s
resounding 103-90 victory over
Villanova, sophomore Greg
Monroe declared of this Hoyas
squad, “We’re as good as we
want to be.” Based on how the
season has gone so far, it might
have been more accurate to say
the Hoyas are as good as Chris
Wright wants to be.
Monroe is probably the
team’s most valuable player,
and Austin Freeman its go-to
scorer, but Wright is Georgetown’s bellwether, the player
whose individual performance
most closely correlates with the
team’s fortunes.
Often charged with running
the point for the Hoyas, Wright
has the responsibility of facilitating Coach John Thompson
III’s modified Princeton offense.
But the 6-foot-1-inch junior is
also a prolific scoring threat.
It’s an oft-quoted statistic but
it bears repeating: when Wright
scores in double figures Georgetown is 16-0, and just 2-5 when
he doesn’t.
The Hoyas’ win against Villanova, in which Wright scored just
seven points before fouling out,
raised questions about the validity of the double-figure rule. But
the fact remains that Wright must
find a balance between equitably
distributing the ball and looking
for his own shot.
“I think my role both in
terms of scoring and getting my
teammates the ball is very important,” Wright said. “My role
on this team is evident. I have to
be a leader.”
Wright is at his best when
he can lead by example, like
he did Tuesday night against
Providence.
The Hoyas trailed by as much
as eight in the second half, but
with 12 minutes to play, Wright
drove to the basket, drew a foul,
and converted the three-point
play, scoring his magic tenth
point and giving Georgetown
a one-point lead. That sparked
a Wright scoring break-out en
route to a 21 point game.
“Chris has always been very
skilled offensively and defensively,” sophomore backcourt
mate Jason Clark said. “I think
the thing that he’s really developed is his leadership. He has
been a leader to everybody on
the team. I think he could have
been that leader a while ago
but—I don’t know what pulled
it out of him, but he’s become
a very, very good leader and a
lot of people look up to him on
the team.”
The difference between this
season and last for Wright is the
way his teammates view him.
Last year Wright was a sophomore who had never played a
Big East regular season game
due to injury. This year, Wright
is one of the Hoyas’ most experienced players, and he has
embraced the responsibilities of
being a veteran.
Wright knows he has to hold
himself to a higher standard.
Providence marked a welcome
turnaround for Wright after
two lackluster performances.
And while his foul-limited performance against Villanova did
not prevent Georgetown from
HILARY NAKASONE
Chris Wright has played a pivotal role as a floor leader for the Hoyas.
winning, he said he was disappointed with his performance
in last week’s loss to South
Florida.
“I think [against USF] offensively I wasn’t there,” Wright
said. “And defensively I played
OK. It just wasn’t a game I
should have played.”
Wright’s teammates have
taken notice of the pressure he
puts on himself.
“He works really hard off
the court,” junior forward Julian Vaughn said. “Even when
he has a good game he’ll be in
the gym, getting extra shots and
stuff to stay hot, stay ready.”
Even with a trip to lowly
Rutgers coming up next, Wright
is surely hitting the gym just as
hard as he will be for a visit from
Syracuse next week. Losses like
the one to USF have reinforced
the fact that no team can be
overlooked, and Wright knows
his teammates are watching and
listening to him.
“He’s probably the most vocal leader we have at this point,”
Vaughn said. “I’m real proud of
him. He’s really stepped up his
game from last year to this point.”
As far as Wright has come,
there will still be moments
when his game is off, when
his shots aren’t falling. And
as we head through February
into March, every decision he
makes with the ball in hand becomes increasingly critical. But
with plenty of experience now,
Wright knows his task is simple.
“Just read the defense,”
Wright said. “I’ve done it before
and I’ll do it again. It’s not anything [where] I have to reinvent
the whole wheel.”
The Sports Sermon
“It’s the music and the costumes that turn most men off, [even though] they want to see
spandexed men hitting each other’s ass and throwing a ball” — U.S. Figure Skater Johnny Weir
ful football franchise, a place
where New Orleans residents
could come to cheer on their
It was a scene that tugged
Saints and escape the problems
on heartstrings: Drew Brees,
of their post-Katrina lives. On
with tears in his eyes, holding
Sundays, the Saints provided a
his young son on the podium
respite, and hope.
after the Super Bowl. The Saints
New Orleans is still recovhad just defeated the Colts in
ering from Katrina. But after
a convincing victory, bringing
watching the Super Bowl feshome the first championship
tivities, it’s clear that sports
in franchise history. This year’s
can be a true source of healing
Super Bowl and the circumfor those in need.
stances around it serves as an
The game didn’t solve any
inspiring reminder of the potenof the serious problems still contial of sports.
fronting New Orleans, but there
Sport can bring redemption
is no doubt that the
to those who seek
Pete Rose Central
success of a franchise
it. After the 2005
Da bettin’ line
can seriously alter
season, Brees found
the outlook and attihimself in the office
Dookies
Margin
Hoyas
tudes
of a city.
of James Andrews, a
(underdogs)
(duh!)
(favorites)
On Tuesday, tens
renowned sports surTorino repeat
of thousands of jugeon. The news was Bode Miller
Alcohol
bilant fans lined the
not good. He had 3 pt. Shootout Dunk Contest
No Lebron
streets as the Saints
dislocated his shoulWork Week
It’s D.C.
Snow
came
marching
der in the last game
into downtown New Orleans
needed escape during times of
of the year, and the extreme
on floats, throwing beads and
great struggle or crisis. No one
twist and pressure caused by
toasting the city. There was a
will soon forget the images of
the hit shredded his labrum and
palpable sense of happiness
New Orleans as Hurricane Kadamaged his rotator cuff. He
and relief as a city known for
trina ravaged the region. Devwas given a 25 percent chance of
the misfortune of Katrina beastation was everywhere, as
playing football again.
came the temporary capital of
homes, businesses, and lives
If the injury wasn’t bad
the sporting world. An event
were destroyed. The Superdoenough, he was no longer under
like this creates unbelievable
me, whose roof was torn apart,
an NFL contract. After months
amounts of pride, which makes
became the home for thousands
of strenuous rehabilitation, two
everything seem OK and easier
of New Orleans residents strugteams were willing to talk with
to face life’s challenges.
gling to pick up the pieces.
Brees and his agent. His former
Sure, in the end, this was
After the storm subsided,
team, the Chargers, was not
just another entertaining Super
the Superdome was repaired,
among them. Brees was ultiBowl. But talk to Drew Brees,
and the Saints came home.
mately picked up by New Orthe rest of the Saints, or a citiSlowly, the stadium stopped beleans, and the match was perzen of New Orleans, and they
ing just a symbol of the horrors
fect. He threw himself into his
will most definitely tell you
of Katrina. Instead, it became
life in New Orleans, choosing to
otherwise.
known as the home of a successlive in a part of New Orleans still
by Adam Rosenfeld
reeling from Katrina. He embraced the community, and the
community embraced him. New
Orleans and Brees grew with
each other, and over the next
few years both became stronger.
This year saw a fantastic season
capped by a Super Bowl win.
The quarterback shunned by
his old team, with a 25 percent
chance of ever throwing an NFL
pass again was given a chance,
in a city needing help, and he delivered a championship.
The win also showed that
sports can provide a much-
sports
Hoyas ready for Big East Championships
by Rob Sapunor
Coming off a sweep against
Howard last week in their final
home meet of the season, the men
and women’s swimming and diving teams looked to finish the
regular season with a trip to College Park to face the University
of Maryland. Both teams were
defeated by the Terps, but the
main goal of the meet—to have
as many swimmers and divers as
possible qualify for the upcoming
Big East Championships—was
accomplished, with six Hoyas
garnering berths.
On the women’s side, divers
Rebecca Jenkinson and Angela
Pontes qualified for the NCAA
Zone A Diving Championships,
each setting personal records in
the 3 meter dive at the meet. Jenkinson’s score of 281.93 also secured her a school record. Fresh-
man Laura Noisten also swam
1:11.53 in the women’s 100 breaststroke, qualifying her for the Big
East Championships.
The men’s team was able to
qualify five more Hoyas for the
Big East championships during
the meet against Maryland with
Brad Murray, Tom Cooke, Keenan
Timko, Robert Gokey, and Alexander Robinson all reaching the
required times by swimming to
new personal records.
Both squads are looking toward the Big East Championships, with the divers starting
competition on Friday and swimming starting next Wednesday.
“This is why we train for 26
weeks,” Head Coach Steven Cartwright said. “It’s the culmination
of everything we’ve worked for.”
Cartwright has high hopes for
his Hoyas, bringing Georgetown’s
largest ever Big East Champion-
ship team to Pittsburgh. He attributes much of the team’s success
this year to the team’s strong leadership, notably from the captains.
“They’ve been instrumental to
the direction of the team since we
started this journey back on September 1,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright anticipates the
Hoyas to show very well in
Pittsburgh.
“I expect everyone to go out
there and have a lifetime best
meet,” Cartwright said. “If we can
bring back lots of top-8 and top-16
finishers, while improving on our
point total from last year, then the
meet will be a success.”
Heading into the meet, the
men hope to make up for an underwhelming season—while the
women, bolstered by a particularly strong crop of freshmen, seek to
finish off their successful run with
a solid post-season.
Latia Magee
What Rocks
georgetownvoice.com
HILARY NAKASONE
currently has two basketball
teams ranked in the top 25
nationally. This is common
territory for the men’s team,
but not for the women’s
squad. A huge part of this
new success is sophomore
forward Latia Magee, who
has started every game this
year for the Hoyas.
Hailing from Tulsa, Okla.,
Magee came to Georgetown as
a highly touted forward with
lots of talent. Although she
had a very strong freshman
year, Magee has improved
immensely off the court since
her freshman year.
“Last year, it was all new,”
Magee said. “Now, I know
my role on the team, and I
come completely prepared to
play basketball when I get to
the gym.”
Magee is propelled more
by her determined work ethic than natural talent, which
is reflected in her style of
play—aggressive
defense
and unafraid to hit the floor
to win a scrap for the ball.
Magee had one of her best
games of the season against St.
John’s on February 2 when she
racked up twelve points, seven rebounds, and five assists.
“My teammates helped
me out a lot that game, they
really pumped me up,” Magee said. “I knew that my
team needed me to step up
that game, and I was able to
work hard and play well.”
—Adam Rosenfeld
shira saperstein
The final push: the Hoyas have worked all season to perform well at the Big East Championship meet.
Hoya bench keeps it cool
The Georgetown men’s basketball team bench has been
criticized all year. It contributes
less than 25 percent of minutes
played each game and only averages nine points per game.
Apart from Hollis Thompson,
our bench players are applauded
when they manage to give the
starters a rest without messing
things up. How can the seventh
best squad in the country have
a bench that seemingly contributes nothing?
First of all, the Hoyas have
an amazing starting five. Every
starter is capable of scoring 20
points on any given night, which
makes having a good bench less
important. But maybe the bench
isn’t as bad as we think it is.
It’s easy to look at box scores
and judge a team, but paper
only says so much. In any sport,
a team’s success isn’t solely
based on skill. The intangibles
are also important. Chemistry
and overall attitude play a huge
role in a team’s success. Georgetown students witnessed this
first-hand last year when a team
loaded with talent couldn’t put
it together, eventually crashing
because of bad chemistry. This
year, the chemistry is completely different and every player
brings a positive attitude to the
court and the locker room—the
bench is an integral part of that
change.
The prime example of how
the bench affects the team is Hen-
ry Sims. Sims averages eight minutes a game, but has seen those
numbers dwindle since Big East
play started, usually only coming
on to the court during garbage
time. Fortunately, he hasn’t let the
lack of playing time affect him.
Instead, he is embracing his role,
cheering his teammates on and
Backdoor Cuts
by Nick Berti
a rotating column on sports
getting the crowd pumped up.
Last week during warm-ups for
the Villanova game, Sims was so
thankful to all the students who
showed up for the game that he
ran into the student section and
danced with fans, inciting a frenzy that lasted for the whole game.
When Sims came into the game
in the last minute, fans showered
him with cheers, wanting to see
him succeed.
Sims’s playful attitude also
helps his teammates stay loose
during the brutal Big East season.
The social networking site Twitter has provided the 6-foot-10
center with plenty of ways to joke
around with his teammates. MajesticOne30, as he is known on the
website, loves making fun of his
teammates, saying Jason Clark
“lives heavily on his mood rings”
and “owns several pair of Victoria Secrets ‘PINK’ sweatpants.”
Sims’s attitude has seemed
to rub off on his younger teammates as well. The rest of the
bench has embraced their role,
cheering on the starters while
waiting for JTIII to call their
names. They too elicit cheers
from the fans when they step
onto the court.
This playful atmosphere was
something that the team really
missed last season.
Although it is easy for everyone to be happy when the
team is winning, the positive
chemistry has helped the most
after painful losses. Every loss
this season has been followed
by an emphatic win—a huge
improvement over last year’s
seemingly endless string of defeats. As the season goes on and
the bench continues to get criticized, remember that basketball is more than just a game of
numbers; the bench might just
be our secret weapon.
Keep Nick pumped up at
[email protected]
feature
february 11, 2010
When you’re a Chime, you’re a Chime all the way
by Tim Shine
Last Saturday night, the audience in Gaston Hall erupted in
laughter as a nearly unintelligible
cacophony rang out. On stage,
an unlikely cast of characters—a
bourbon-drinking Jesuit, Jersey
Shore’s the Situation, and Midnight Madness toilet-shooter Alex
Thiele, to name a few—sang out
simultaneously.
Despite their disparate identities, the characters’ connection
was apparent from their striped,
flat-bottomed neckties: they were
all Georgetown Chimes.
The characters, on the other
hand, were definitely not Chimes.
The men were performing “Occupations,” one of the a cappella
group’s classic routines, in which
each singer answers the question
of what he would be if he were
not a Georgetown Chime. The
group performed in front of a
crowd that had braved one of the
worst snowstorms Georgetown
had ever seen to witness the 37th
Annual Cherry Tree Massacre.
For the nine men on stage
and the 215 others who came before them, “Occupations” tries to
answer an almost unfathomable
question—who would they be
without the Chimes? The Chimes
are more than just an a cappella
group to them. It is a brotherhood
steeped in 64 years of tradition,
and the defining experience of
their time at Georgetown—and in
some ways, their time after too.
Cherry Tree Massacre, created
by the group almost four decades
ago, serves as a showcase of the
Chimes’ history as much as their
impressive vocal range. Needless
to say, a lot of work goes into preparing for the concert.
“It was a culmination of a
week and a month of always
thinking about it, always practicing,” Scott Moody (MSB ’10) said
of Cherry Tree. “We practice four
times a week. We’d practice Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday of every week … All the work
that we put in really showed and
really paid off in the end.”
As the Chimes’ current leader,
Moody would know. Called the
ephus, which means “leader among
equals,” Moody was the one responsible for leading the Chimes’
preparation and performance.
Moody said that about Cherry
Tree five hours before he would
be on stage acting out the role of a
jobless business school senior. He
was rehashing the inaugural show
of the night before, the first of five
Cherry Tree concerts this month.
Shortly removed from his first
performance and with just a few
hours until his next, Moody spent
his brief recovery time on his
laptop in the Chimes House, the
gray townhouse near the corner
of 36th and Prospect Streets NW
that serves as home base for all
things Chimes.
Fellow Chimes filed in and out
of the house. Some were returning
from the basketball game at the Verizon Center, where a week earlier
the group had sung the Star Span-
HILARY NAKASONE
Look at this photograph: The Chimes House holds photos of all past Actives.
gled Banner in front of President
Barack Obama (and over 20,000
others). Others could be heard in
the back of the house, singing.
The Chimes House serves alternately—and sometimes seemingly simultaneously—as practice
space, party space, and living space
for the group. Moody doesn’t live
there (“My parents did not want
me to live here, just because of the
state of the house,” he said). But
Arthur Woods (MSB ’10), a fellow
Chimes senior, wouldn’t want to
live anywhere else.
“It’s like kind of living in a
huge commune in some ways,”
Woods said. “Everyone’s using
the house, hanging out, drinking,
or studying, doing work, singing.
It’s a good experience.”
Of course, when you lose
count of how many people have
keys to your house and you are
hosting frequent parties, coming
home can be an adventure.
“Going upstairs after a party, I
never cease to be amazed at what
I find,” Woods said.
If the Chimes were a fraternity, then 3611 Prospect Street NW
would obviously be the frat house.
But that’s a comparison the group
members take issue with.
“It’s not a frat,” Matthew
Gorey (COL ’12) said. “A frat is
united by a common desire to
have friends in college and drink
a lot of alcohol. Whereas I would
say that if you are a part of this
group, it’s because you are very,
very close with the other people
in this group and you like to sing.
Ultimately that’s the reason people keep coming to reunions for
decades.”
The Chimes certainly have
a strong sense of tradition and
institutional memory. Each new
Chime is even numbered in succession, right down to #224,
Jimmy Dailey (COL ’11). Any
of the current members, known
in Chimes parlance as Actives,
can not only recall the names of
Chimes from years and decades
past, they have personal friendships with them.
The Actives meet and talk
with older Chimes throughout
the year, but Cherry Tree Massacre is an especially common time
for alumni to return to George-
HILARY NAKASONE
With arms wide open: For Cherry Tree, the Actives welcome back former Chimes.
town. On Saturday afternoon,
some of the Actives talked about
how the Chimes House can turn
into a boarding house for visiting
alumni.
Seemingly on cue, Rich Del Bello (MSB ’06) and Eddie Keels (COL
’06) enter the house, bags in tow.
“I love the fact that we can roll
in, in the snow, after hitching a
ride, and walk in and be home,”
Keels said. “When we’re in the
Georgetown area … we know that
our home is here. We walk in and
we weren’t like, ‘I wonder if anybody’s home?’ This is our house,
forever.”
That may seem a bit presumptuous of Keels, but that’s
really how the Chimes work.
Even though none of the current
Actives were at Georgetown with
Keels and Del Bello, they are welcomed with open arms. And not
just as a courtesy to alumni—the
two are greeted as close friends.
Part of the process of becoming a Chime involves getting
to know former Actives. That
doesn’t mean just making phone
calls or collecting signatures. It’s
about forming real relationships
with the men who sang the same
songs before you.
“You hear people talk about
frats,” Keels said. “It’s one thing
to be a frat, where the hazing is
in the forefront, and where all
that crap and drinking and all
that stuff is really what it’s all
about. Then you get a group like
this. And whereas we love our
drinks—believe me—it’s kind of
nice that the whole [idea of] ‘frat’
coming from the word brother is
really in the center.”
Still, the empty cans of Keystone and half-eaten Wisey’s
strewn around the Chimes House
on a Saturday afternoon can’t
help but call to mind the other
connotation of “frat.” It also
doesn’t help matters that the leftover debris from the post-concert
celebration was cleaned up by aspiring Actives.
They would be the Neophytes,
more commonly known as Neos,
the Chimes’ singers-in-training.
Once a student auditions and
demonstrates the requisite vocal
talent to be a Chime, then the hard
work of the Neo process begins.
On Saturday, Tyler Holl (COL
’13) was one of the Neos found tidying up the house. For him, a little bit of labor hardly seems like a
punishment or hazing. It’s just fair.
“That doesn’t really bother
me,” Holl said of the cleaning. “I
think it’s all just part of the process. We all live here. I mean, this
is my house too. Part of this mess
is mine. So it’s just kind of what
you have to do. You have to clean
your dorm room every once in
a while. You’ve got to clean the
house too.”
Cleaning is hardly the most
demanding part of the Neophyte
process. To earn their Chimes tie,
Neos must learn the Chimes’ vast
repertoire, requiring the memorization of upwards of 100 songs.
A deep knowledge of the group’s
history and traditions is needed
as well. Neos are supposed to
contact former Actives and get to
feature
georgetownvoice.com
know them—that’s how someone
like Del Bello or Keels can walk
back into the house years after
graduating and feel right at home.
“[For] the Neo process, these
guys need to know who we are,
they need to know all these guys
[in pictures] on the wall,” Del
Bello said. “They know all of us,
they’ve heard stories about us.”
With all the requirements, it’s
no surprise that the transition
from Neo to Active can take well
over a year. Holl, who auditioned
at the beginning of last semester,
estimated he spends one to two
hours a day working in some
way toward becoming a Chime.
Currently he has about 65 songs
memorized and is still scratching
the surface of the group’s history.
“It’s so rewarding that it
doesn’t really even matter how
much work you have to do, just
because it’s just such a great group
and you really want to be a part of
it,” Holl said. “I think that’s what
was really exciting for me, that it
wasn’t just you learn a couple of
songs and then you move on after
four years and that’s it, you never
talk to anyone again.”
However great the reward of
finally becoming an Active, the
extended Neophyte period unavoidably produces attrition. Of
the 15 or so new Neos who came
in with Holl in the fall, only about
half remain.
Those who do stick it out get
a crash course in what it means to
be a Chime. The wisdom and stories of alumni far removed from
their college experience can help
put the meaning of the Chimes in
perspective to the Neos, many of
whom are fresh out of high school
and simply looking for a group to
sing with.
One of the former Actives
that the current and aspiring
Chimes have learned the most
from is Tim Naughton (MSB ’77).
Naughton serves as Chimes President, an elected position that
handles long-term planning and
many of the non-singing func-
HILARY NAKASONE
Our house: The Chimes’ home base.
tions of the group.
“The first thing I try to do
[when talking to new Chimes]
is remind them they’re not at
Georgetown to be a Chime,
they’re there to be a student,”
Naughton said. “But the second
thing I tell them is that I’m still
learning how wonderful it is to
be in the Chimes. The experiences
for me just keep coming.”
Every Chime has countless stories to share about who they performed for, where they travelled,
and what they did with their fellow Chimes. Even though they see
each other nearly every day while
school is in session, many of their
favorite memories are of trips they
all took together—anticipation
for this year’s spring break trip to
Germany was palpable.
The more Chimes that get together, the more powerful the experiences, like at a small reunion
last year in New York.
“There were like 30 guys there,
and everyone’s just been drinking and singing all night,” Gorey
“I really like the sound of just
men’s voices, not men and women mixed,” Holl said. “I really
knew that I wanted to join an a
cappella group that was all men.”
Such gender division is not
unique to the Chimes. While there
are a number of co-ed a cappella
groups at Georgetown, the Captiol
G’s are also all-male, while groups
such as the GraceNotes and Harmony are exclusively female.
It is their shared love of song
that makes the Chimes’ fraternal
bonds so strong. A Chime from any
era can meet any other and, thanks
to the repertoire they learned as a
Neo, they can sing together.
“There’s a unique friendship
that can form from performing and singing with someone,”
Woods said. “You establish a
connection. The idea of a quartet—you have to form a cohesive
bond with the people you’re singing with, otherwise you get off
rhythm, you’re not singing the
right thing. In doing that there’s, I
think, actually more of a sublimi-
HILARY NAKASONE
History Boys: The walls of the Chimes House serve as the group’s archives.
said. “At like two in the morning there were like 15 of us up on
the rooftop, overlooking Central
Park smoking cigars, and it started snowing. And we were just
screaming music. And there were
people from across the street, 20
floors up, opening their window
while we were singing Christmas
music, and cheering, and singing
Christmas music. You get access
to ridiculous experiences.”
What’s striking about the stories the Chimes tell is how often
music and singing remain the core
of the experience. With all their
talk of fraternity and brotherhood,
the fact can almost get lost that the
Chimes are Georgetown’s most
accomplished a cappella group.
These men, as close as they have
become, came together ultimately
for one reason: to sing.
Their singing is inexorably
connected to their brotherhood.
And it is literally brotherhood—
women are not allowed into the
group. That feminine exclusion
is not just a result of the group’s
pseudo-fraternity nature; musical
considerations are also a concern.
nal connection you’re forming
with other people.”
While it can fade a little into the
background when hanging around
the Chimes House, the group’s
singing came back into the fore at
sound check Saturday night, when
they put the finishing touches on
their Cherry Tree Massacre performance. From that point on the
Chimes were all business, displaying the kind of precision and professionalism that has become their
hallmark—the reason they are chosen to sing for presidents.
Cherry Tree Massacre is their
chance to show off for the Georgetown community. Created back
in 1974, when Chimes President
Naughton was just a freshman, it
was designed as Georgetown’s answer to the a cappella experience
shared by New England colleges.
“The first year was only one
weekend and only one show,”
Naughton said. “And over time the
show was so popular that we started to do two shows, and then two
weekends, and then three weekends. I don’t what the limit is, but
I suspect we could do five shows
HILARY NAKASONE
Hold on! Arthur Woods is not ready to see his time as a Chime come to an end.
and still have people coming.”
While the first Cherry Tree
concert featured only a cappella
groups from other colleges alongside the Chimes, in the years since,
Georgetown has seen its own a
cappella scene explode. Now there
are at least seven other groups in
addition to the Chimes, enough
so that the past weekend’s performances were able to showcase
only Georgetown singers.
“The Chimes are obviously
the oldest group at Georgetown so
they have a lot of respect from the
a cappella community,” Diana Kolar (M+SB ’12), who sings with the
GraceNotes, said. “It’s great that
the first weekend of Cherry Tree every year they really kind of bring all
the Georgetown groups together.”
During
Saturday
night’s
show, each group sang its set and
then thanked the Chimes for making their performance possible. In
between sets, the Chimes-focus of
Cherry Tree became even more
apparent. A former Chime served
as MC, and during intermission
former Actives mingled in the
aisles, including Del Bello and
Keels. It was every bit as much a
celebration of the group as one of
their monthly Chimes Nights at
the Tombs.
Basically, it was another one of
those Chimes experiences, a story
that the current students could
one day tell when a Neo called
them up to learn about what being a Chime is all about. Cherry
Tree Massacre served as a reminder of just how important the
Chimes are to them.
“I’m realizing that this is probably going to be one of the most
defining things about my whole
Georgetown career,” the Neophyte
Holl said. “And that’s just really exciting for me, that I already
found something that is really going to be with me for the rest of my
life so early in my college career.”
For the senior members of the
Chimes, it offered both time to reflect and a reminder that their time
as an Active was nearing an end.
“It will be bittersweet,” Woods
said, looking ahead to his final
Cherry Tree show. “But the cool
thing about the Chimes is that
you never move on from being a
Chime. You’re always a Chime.”
That could not be clearer than
at the end of the concert Saturday,
when the Actives, as per Cherry Tree tradition, called all the
Chimes present, from Neophytes
to alumni, up on stage to sing the
fight song. The suddenly packed
stage was covered by a cast of
Chimes that spanned generations.
They all shared a common bond.
If they were not Georgetown
Chimes, how different their lives
would be.
HILARY NAKASONE
One more Chime: Neophyte Tyler Holl will clean your house if you let him sing.
leisure
february 11, 2010
Daniel Tosh on sex changes, dead parents
Daniel Tosh, comedian and host
of Comedy Central’s Tosh.0, talked
to the Voice’s Leigh Finnegan and
other college newspapers this week
about the new season of his show and
the response he gets for his scathing
brand of humor.
According to your Wikipedia
page, you were born in Germany.
Is that true?
I got in a lot of trouble by announcing on the show to encourage people to go to my Wikipedia page and change things,
‘cause I thought it was funny ...
[But] people have found every
aspect of my life! Like even if
you go to my high school Wikipedia page now they’ve written … that I used to go back to
Germany to get these hormone
treatments because I was trying
to have a sex change to compete
in female athletics … [But] yes, I
was born in Germany.
What are your favorite things to
do on Tosh.0?
Next Wednesday I do, I probably do the most unthinkable
thing in the world with a new
iPad, so … how that’s received
in the internet world … I think
the most memorable thing is
just how silly television is. Like
for our show … [we] think of an
idea, we grab a foot camera, we
run outside and do it, and like a
few days later it’s on television.
[Laughs] I laugh because it’s
so silly … I guess when I hear
James Cameron talk about the
process for Avatar I’m like, “Oh,
that seems a lot harder than what
we’re trying.”
How do you deal with the censoring on the show?
You never know what they’re
going to censor, it’s not just like
“oh you can’t say swear words”
… Like if I ever hint that John
Travolta may like the company
of men, holy cow that’d immediately get cut out of the show …
It’s basically everybody covering
their asses from being sued.
ately of what he was going to do
to me when he saw me … people
don’t like when jokes are directed
towards them.
offended by jokes that personally
impact them ... it makes me the
bad guy. It’s really not fair.
What do your parents think of
your sense of humor?
My parents turn a blind eye
to my behavior … But the day
that my parents are gone, not
that I’m looking forward to that
day, but there will be a great
standup album that comes out
immediately after.
Which celeb do you wish would
make a video for you to feature?
Maybe Rush Limbaugh, if I
could catch him in one of his horrible drunken or drug-induced
stupors that’d be cool. Jay Leno I
guess would be good now. Yeah,
let’s go Jay Leno.
THE TOSH COMPANY
Have you ever received any negative feedback?
Yeah, are you kidding me? ...
[Once] I made fun of some rapper
from the south in a video where
he was flaunting all of his money,
he put a video up almost immedi-
Has anyone ever come up to you
to complain?
Yes, all the time. If I hang out
after I perform a show, people always tell me what jokes they didn’t
like or the jokes they thought went
too far. The truth is people only get
Have any celebs contacted you
in response to seeing themselves
on your show?
I don’t hang out in any celeb circles, so there’s been zero
aftermath … I’m a little worried
about it to be honest, because
confrontation is certainly something that I don’t do well with,
onstage I’m comfortable but face
polar bear, who himself was tracking a female. It becomes a sort of
reverential love story, told in the
form of stunning photography.
In a series of photos taken underwater, Nicklen recalls an inci-
his element the photographer was
in the icy water, immediately swam
off, caught a penguin in its mouth,
and delivered it to him. When the
penguin escaped, the seal repeated
the gesture. It was, Nicklen sup-
his stories to life, fulfilling the
exhibit’s intention—to make this
unique, far-removed world real
for everyone else.
Before becoming a photographer, Nicklen was a researcher
“Check out my awesome backflip!”
to face it would be very awkward … I feel bad for making
fun of Kelly Clarkson’s ass … we
[also] made fun of somebody’s
busted face, and she did like
nothing wrong … that reminds
me, I should make fun of Maggie Gyllenhaal more.
If you had to pick any internet
star to be your roommate, which
one would it be?
Christian Bale. Because I like
my house very dark and he seems
to be very upset when lights are
turned on. And if I ever get kidnapped, who better than Batman
to find me?
Thirty years from now what do
you want your legacy to be?
I would like to be dead. And I
would like people to be like, ‘Oh
yeah that guy was really funny,’
… I’d hate being alive though …
Give me fifty, sixty years of life
and I think that’s plenty … Like,
do you really want Kurt Cobain to
still be alive? Not really, he’d be
making horrible music with some
super group with the remaining
members of Alice in Chains. It’s
better, go out sooner.
Nicklen’s picklens of arctic animals at Nat Geo museum
by Brendan Baumgardner
The Arctic is a place of contradictions. The tranquil beauty
of the white tundra and the cool
blue waters belies the harshness
of the conditions. The creatures
there seem simultaneously savage
and playful. The glaciers stand
enormous and powerful, and yet
climate change has put the entire
region in peril.
Polar Obsession, a free photography exhibit at the National
Geographic museum, explores
these contrasts through story
and image.
Polar Obsession showcases the
work of Paul Nicklen, a nature
photographer whose passion for
the arctic region stems from his upbringing in northern Canada. His
enthusiasm for the subject matter
adds a personal touch to the exhibit, taking it far beyond just pictures
of cute animals in the snow.
The photos are grouped into
short stories, accounts of Nicklen’s months spent in the arctic
developing personal connections
with the wildlife. One chronicles
Nicklen’s journey tracking a male
This penguin’s inner monologue sounds exactly like Morgan Freeman’s voice. Lucky bird.
dent that demonstrates nature’s
nearly-magical benevolence. Shortly after submerging himself, Nicklen was approached by a female
leopard seal. The seal, apparently
realizing how helpless and out of
posed, trying to feed him.
Some of the stories Nicklen tells of his arctic experiences
would be nothing short of unbelievable if not for their accompanying images. The pictures bring
national geographic society
aiding in the struggle to protect
the arctic. When he became frustrated with the abstract nature
of his work, he decided that he
could use photography to enlighten people about the impact
of climate change in the Arctic.
Nicklen’s feelings toward photojournalism and its power to
inspire action are carried subtly
but effectively throughout the
exhibit. The stories and descriptions never get overly sanctimonious though, and only occasionally mention the danger of climate
change in the arctic. The focus is
instead more positive, concentrating on the beauty, the mystery,
and the uniqueness of the arctic.
The images are allowed to speak
for themselves.
Polar Obsession is a modestlysized exhibit, consisting of about
40 photos and a handful of written accounts. Unfortunately, the
gallery itself detracts a bit from
the experience. The lighting is
sometimes sparse and the exhibit runs awkwardly into an
unrelated photo gallery. These
shortcomings are outweighed,
however, by the inspiring quality of the photography.
The exhibit’s title, Polar Obsession, is perfect. Paul Nicklen
clearly is obsessed, and he succeeds in inspiring that obsession in others.
georgetownvoice.com
“Feed me a stray cat.”—American Psycho
Pizza,“il”advised
by Shira Hecht
Upperclassmen will fondly
remember 1063 31st Street NW as
the location of The Alamo, a terrible Mexican-ish restaurant that
did not card, where freshmen
without fake IDs could order expensive margaritas and run into
hallmates from Darnall who were
drunk on Coronas and stuffed
with mediocre tortilla chips. But
we are seniors now, and it’s time
to grow up. Similarly, 1063 31st
Street NW has transformed itself
into an upscale Italian restaurant,
Il Canale.
Newly opened, Il Canale
seems uncertain about what it
wants to be. The restaurant is basically a pizza and pasta place with
a very expensive wine list and
$16 buffalo mozzarella appetizers. Walking in, you’re greeted by
a desperately friendly wait staff, a
big pizza oven with a roaring fire,
and a hideous interpretation of
“modern industrial design.” The
floor is corrugated metal, as is the
staircase that remains directly in
your line of sight, no matter where
you sit. The bar is lit by a glaring
blue light, which only adds to the
coldness of the place.
The food at Il Canale is hit or
miss, as well. The tomato stew was
delicious, but a fancy-named vegetable dish (Melanzane alla Par-
migiana) turned out to be a barely
passable eggplant parmesan. The
pizzas themselves had delicious,
entrancing crusts—soft but flaky,
salty, and just burnt enough—but
neither the white nor red pizzas
quite held together, with flavors
that didn’t quite blend. The endless table bread almost makes up
for the lackluster main courses—
warm, chewy, and thick, served
with olive oil suffused with roasted garlic and rosemary. My table
went through several servings,
and the friendly, if occasionally
slow, wait staff kept bringing us
more. The bread alone was almost
worth the whole trip.
Almost. With pizzas about
$14 each, pasta and meat dishes
significantly more than that, and
wine starting at $9 a glass, Il Canale is a little too grown-up for
most college kids. While the consistency of the food may firm up as
the restaurant gets its legs, there is
still nowhere for that awful staircase to go. Bread aside, Il Canale
doesn’t do enough to distinguish
itself from the plethora of highscale pizzerias in the area. It’s a
more expensive Pizzeria Paradiso,
a Paparazzi with worse lighting, a
2Amys that’s significantly closer
but significantly worse. It would
be nice if Il Canale would live up
to its prices, but, for now, all we
can do is remember the Alamo.
A rich man’s Olympic wear?
With the Winter Olympic
games just around the corner,
there’s quite a bit of talk on the
Internet about what the team
uniforms for the parade of athletes at opening ceremonies will
look like. Okay, well, not really.
As a matter of fact, nobody I
know is really twittering, blogging or status-updating about
the Winter Olympics at all. With
the exception of Stephen Colbert financing the speed skating teams and the perpetually
drunk and volatile skier Bode
Miller being his usual self, I
don’t see any legitimate reason
to get all that excited about the
winter games this year.
Perhaps I’m biased. I’ve
never been skiing myself, never
tried my hand at the oh-so-practical skeleton, never been in a
riveting curling competition. I’ll
admit the skiing and shooting
Biathalon is James Bond-caliber
cool, but the rest of it just seems
like powdery-snow pastimes for
the prep-school privileged.
I won’t go as far as agreeing
with the late Jim Murray’s comment that the Games are more
or less a playtime for the elite—
take the aforementioned Bode
Miller for example. Raised on a
farm in the middle of nowhere
in New Hampshire by solsticeworshiping parents, Bode isn’t
quite the archetype boardingschool-kid-turned-Olympian—
but the United States has done
little to challenge this perception
so common among those of us
who begrudgingly put up with
these ski-resort contests ruining
regularly scheduled programming every four years.
An obvious way to give the
games a new image may be as
simple as changing the way
Courtesy SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
“We’re off to mourn Franz Ferdinand, the (formerly) wonderful Archduke of Austria!”
No Haneke panky in The White Ribbon
by Chris Heller
Michael Haneke must hate
Sherlock Holmes. His newest
movie, The White Ribbon, is a whodunit without a who—there’s no
butler with a grudge, spurned
lover, or jealous colleague lurking in the shadows. Bad things
just happen.
The White Ribbon is narrated
by The School Teacher, an elderly
man who tells the story to “clarify
things that happened in our country.” In the waning months before
World War I erupts across Europe,
the fictitious German village of
Eichwald rots from within. A taut
wire trips a horse, badly injuring
its rider. A boy—the son of The
Baron (Ulrich Tukur), the head of
the manor which supports most
of the village—is kidnapped, tied
up, and beaten. Sigi, a mentally retarded boy, is nearly blinded. The
American athletes dress. Continuing to contract with American designer Ralph Lauren does
little to change my—or anybody
else’s—opinion that the winter
games are restricted to those
who can afford them.
From 2008’s Beijing games
through London in 2012, the
United States will continue to allow Ralph Lauren, well-known
Suffer for Fashion
by Keenan Timko
a bi-weekly column about fashion
for attiring the upper echelons,
to dress American athletes. For
the Beijing games, RL was criticized for its uniforms that made
track stars, swimmers, and everyone else look like members
of an old boys yachting club.
The designer was also disparaged for making his Polo logo
larger than that of the Olympic
rings on the jackets.
School Teacher observes it all, yet
he provides neither theories nor
opinions—only facts.
But The White Ribbon isn’t
about the gruesome crimes in
Eichwald. The acts point to general social decay within the village;
few are not at fault. The White
Ribbon isn’t about their collective
guilt, though. It’s about the children of Eichwald, the Germans
who grow up to become Nazis.
The Pastor (Burghart Klaußner),
the religious leader of the village,
punishes his children by forcing them to wear white ribbons.
Their punishment is a reminder
that they are no longer innocent
or pure but the audience has to
wonder, were they ever? The
School Teacher confronts a group
of children about the crimes, but
like the audience, he never finds
his answer. He is left with a question: If children are neither in-
nocent nor pure, can anyone be?
Haneke says no.
It’s rare to create a captivating movie, rarer still to create one
based on a turn-of-the-century
German village. The movie’s cinematography is superb—especially because the editors had the
unenviable task of stripping the
film to black and white coloring.
Audiences get to peek in at Eichwald without becoming voyeurs,
since most shots create distance
between the camera and the
characters. In The White Ribbon’s
final scene, as the townsfolk shuffle into mass after news about
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination reaches Eichwald, the
camera is at the foot of the altar,
symmetrically splitting the congregation. Men and women walk
in, heads bowed, ready to pray
for salvation. Their war had already started.
This year, Ralph Lauren has
stitched up an impressive looking line of garments to keep our
athletes warm in Vancouver over
the next few weeks of competition. But keeping athletes warm
isn’t enough to warm up the rest
of the nation to the idea of sitting
through two hours of bobsledding without funny Jamaican accents and John Candy.
The uniforms consist of dark
navy puffy jackets with red
trim, snow-white tapered pants,
wooly sweaters galore, and Fair
Isle knit hats. The look was supposedly inspired by the 1932
Lake Placid Games, but a quick
Google Images search reveals
that those athletes seemed to
have been given standard issue
white pea coats for warmth.
Regardless, the Polo logo
this year once again dwarfs
the Olympic rings, and the athletes will look more like oddly
shaped Ralph Lauren catalogue
models ready to flash a golden
smile than athletes ready to take
home gold. As a marketing major, I’m not one to outright criticize blatant brand placement in
the name of sports integrity, but
when Ralph Lauren announced
that the athletes’ clothes are for
sale on its website—with sweaters priced at a couple hundred
dollars each—it became clear
that this year’s games will not
be any more accessible to the
disillusioned masses.
For the time being, I’ll continue to be blissfully unaware
of the Winter Olympics. Unless
I get the opportunity to try out
the luge with dining hall trays
during all these snow days, I
probably won’t feel the need to
run out and blow my savings
on Ralph Lauren clothes to look
like an Olympian.
Peel off that Ralph Lauren jacket
and tell Keenan all about your favorite Olympic events at ktimko@
georgetownvoice.com.
leisure
february 11, 2010
Critical Voices
group’s 2007 debut All Hour Cymbals; while the instrumentation on
Yeasayer’s last album included
sitars and the like, the polyrhythmic soundscapes on Odd Blood are
built with Marotta’s collection of
vintage synthesizers and percussion instruments. Guitar lines are
few and far between, solidifying
the group’s status as an experimental rock band.
But there’s still plenty of
Yeasayer ’s mainstream pop
sensibility underneath all of the
busy noisemaking. Drum pads
and vocals on “Madder Red”
evoke 80s prog-rock, ditto for
a Justin Timberlake falsetto on
“O.N.E.” These tracks, along
with “Ambling Alp,” have great
moments, quirky and energetic
enough to distract from the dizzying beats and loops overflowing from every track.
As Odd Blood passes its halfway mark, the album drags. The
songs’ changing beats and synth
lines become more repetitive and
more irritating. More immediately noticeable and pervasive
is the group’s condemnable lack
of songwriting strength. Like All
Hour Cymbals, the lyrics on Odd
Blood are neither memorable nor
substantial. Yeasayer has a flare
for keeping the listener interested
during their verses, but beware:
if you listen too closely or for too
long, you may get a headache.
Proceed with caution.
Let’s talk about sex ... and music
Suppose, though, that you
need the music to cover up the
noise and you’re unprepared.
Is it better to go with an album
or a playlist?
“Once you’re in some sort
of defined relationship, I think
that playlists become [more]
acceptable,” another friend
said. “Otherwise it could come
Yeasayer, Odd Blood, Secretly
Canadian Records
Yeasayer’s Odd Blood cover
may be the most hideous thing
I’ve seen since Tubgirl, but there
couldn’t be a better visual complement to this group’s sound.
Yeasayer, a Brooklyn band with
a Baltimore sound, has toured
with MGMT and earned praise
from indie tastemakers like
Pitchfork. While Odd Blood’s
cover mashes together a statue,
a photograph, and what looks to
be a Windows 95 screen-saver,
the album is a hodgepodge of
Architecture in Helsinki, Animal
Collective, and M.I.A.
Odd Blood was recorded with
help from Peter Gabriel’s drummer, Jerry Marotta, and his influence on the album is pervasive.
The sound is a change from the
Feburary 14 is upon us, so it’s
time to set the mood. You know
what I’m saying—maybe it’s a
nice bouquet, a little bit of chocolate, or a thoughtful card that
will get the evening in motion.
Throw a few logs on the fire, dim
those lights, crack open a bottle, put on your favorite Kenny
Loggins record … or maybe we
could skip this altogether and
spoon ‘til dawn.
When it comes down to it,
the amount of preparation that
Hallmark and Co. expects everyone to put into Valentine’s Day
is absurd: If you were to seduce
someone like they do in the commercials, eight times out of ten
you’d be dumped by March for
being unimaginative. Music as
an element of V-Day activities
can be a difficult area to navigate. In order to shed some light
on this topic, I decided to poll
a few folks (who will remain
anonymous) about their musicduring-sex preferences.
More than anything, if you’d
like music to enhance your Valentine’s Day experience, you
should introduce it as an element of the ambiance early in
the evening, not when sex is
rapidly approaching. As one interviewee put it: “If you want to
have fun, spontaneous sex then
do you really wants to take a
pause to go set up speakers?”
Others argued that if you
have a strategically placed remote, the transition can be made
subtly and without repercussions, but the best policy seems
to be that “if it’s there, leave it
there”—don’t interrupt something great because you like to
literalize Marvin Gaye lyrics.
Voice’s Choices: “Madder
Red,” “O.N.E.,” “Ambling Alps”
—Nico Dodd
Hot Chip, One Life Stand, Sub
Pop Records
Hot Chip, a five-piece electronic outfit from London, has
put out three middling albums
with monster singles tucked neatly away inside each one. Those
singles—including 2006’s “Boy
From School” and 2008’s “Ready
for the Floor”—have made them
indie heroes for some listeners,
but even Hot Chip’s most diehard fans have been waiting pa-
Yr Blues
by Daniel Cook
a bi-weekly column about music
off as creepy if [someone] notices that you have a playlist on
your iPod called ‘baby-makin’
music.’”
On the other side of the
spectrum, some suggest that
the goal is to try and find something pleasant, but unimposing.
In other words, “never have sex
to your favorite records”—think
instead setting the right mood.
tiently for a consistently good album. One Life Stand, their fourth
effort, comes close, but it still suffers from too much filler and the
occasional bad idea.
One Life Stand’s best tracks
have already been released as
singles. The title track, released
in November, is icy and slowbuilding, with anachronistic
tropical synths that somehow
work even as they clash with the
song’s bleak aesthetic. “Take It
In” relies on the same detached,
cold sound, with a sinister, yet
devastatingly catchy, synth riff.
But then it shifts suddenly from
verse to chorus, letting its manufactured tension melt away as
vocalist Alexis Taylor opens his
heart. “Oh, my heart has flown
to you just like a dove,” he sings.
“It can fly, it can fly/And oh,
please take my heart and keep
it close to you/Take it in, take it
in.” It’s the album’s most beautiful moment, and it works great
as the closing track.
The only other great track
on the album, “I Feel Better,”
finds Taylor singing through
a vocoder over a pulsing beat
and cheesy, emotive orchestral
synths. Eventually the track
builds to a highly danceable climax, and it works even when
If you opt to go with a playlist, exercise caution, as quickly
throwing on “any old thing”
could lead to some uncouth reactions: “What if [you’re] in the
mood for slow sex and all of the
sudden AC/DC starts blaring?”
Choosing the wrong kind of
music can be a very real danger.
Personally, I would not be able
to continue the sexual act if you
throw on, say, “John Wayne
Gacy, Jr.” (the Sufjan track
about a serial killer), though
others insist that they “can’t
imagine music that’s so bad that
it would ruin good sex.” Most
interviewees claimed that they
could handle a decent variety
of background music, but no
one’s going to blame you if you
politely put your foot down (“If
you go through three picks that
the [other] person doesn’t like,
you should probably just get
down to business without it,”
one recommended).
the gimmicky vocoder effect
gets a little tiresome.
Much of what remains is middling. Opener “Thieves in the
Night” has fine melodies, but its
lyrics are so throwaway—and its
build-up so unsatisfying—that
it ultimately falls flat. “We Have
Love” is appealingly glitchy and
rhythmic, but it feels like a missed
opportunity—its chorus should
have been bigger. “Alley Cats”
has beautiful harmonies and a
great bass line, but it can’t figure
out if it’s a bumper or a ballad.
When Hot Chip decides for
sure it wants to write a ballad
though, it completely strikes out.
“Brothers” shoots for emotional
resonance, but comes off as insincere. “Slush” has a lazy swing
that kills the album’s momentum
near its halfway point. The fact
that the two tracks come back-toback might be enough to make
some listeners give up.
Anyone who already digs Hot
Chip will enjoy One Life Stand.
But without any trademark killer
single, it probably won’t win the
band any new fans.
Voice’s Choices: “One Life
Stand,” “I Feel Better,” “Take It In”
—Justin Hunter Scott
Ultimately, it’s best to be attentive to your partner’s predilections, because music during
sex isn’t for everyone. Bring the
topic up during a non-heated
juncture, when you have time
for a proper discussion. Otherwise, you’ll never know how
the other really feels about it.
For some couples, it’s too contrived—“If I put on something
‘appropriate’ we would just
lol,” a friend said—but others
had a different opinion.
“Having both [sex and music] at the same time, so that the
human passion/grunting is going on at the same time as the
music, and so it all kind of mixes
together—oh man, that’s what
makes life worth living.”
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.
Want to know what Dan listens
to when he’s making whoopie? Ask
at [email protected].
fiction
georgetownvoice.com
The sound of the chapel bells
ringing crisply across the snow
seemed to splinter the smooth
silence of the night that the cold
air had frozen. It would now be
one hour until check in and then
another 15 minutes until lights out
and sleep still further than that.
He closed his copy of The Aeneid
and thought about how Liz Smith
would say that Aeneas’ search
for Rome was a metaphor for his
search for his true self. “Aeneas
never speaks to his son Ascanius
and his search for Rome pretty
much precludes any real sense
of self,” Cameron would retort
with unveiled distain. He thought
about the burnt ruins of Troy with
no one there to see them and the
ghost of Creusa wandering around
the crumbling pillars that held up
nothing. The quad was filled with
the silver web of conversation and
the cold didn’t prevent circles of
people from congregating on the
frigid stone paths.
“
The Capital of
Sadness
Part Two
by Emma Forster
of when he had first visited Marie’s
house. Before dinner she had
thoroughly trounced him in pingpong, gracefully taking no mercy,
which somehow would not have
comported with this new radiant
Table Tennis Goddess appearing
before him.
Then she played her father.
Cameron sat and watched in one
of the arm chairs in her basement
her father overshoot the ball and
occasionally placing her shot on
the very edge of the table. She must
have learned to play like that from
years of facing the same stronger
opponent. She was good.
She won in a protracted and
technical overtime that Cameron
failed to understand. Her father
drew one small chalk line on a
wall covered in scores of 5, referred
to his gorgeous 17
year old daughter as
“sport” and, noticing
Cameron again with
slight embarrassment,
he wiped his brow and
asked if he was hungry.
They spoke about ambition,
abandonment, and something
about the sheer promise that
made up the night. He believed
everything she said in a way
that made the truth irrelevant.
He thought about all the hours
when the school
slept and there was
no one here and
wondered what the
coffin silence of that
time sounded like.
The wind swept in,
fluttering the tarps that kept leaves
off the rink and blowing Marie’s
hair in her face. A solitary strand
clung to her lips and tugged in the
cold breeze. He kissed her, opening
his eyes he saw her beautiful
Mist seethed up off the ice like incense
ascending before the altar of the world.
No one but Marie, he thought.
He met Marie, as agreed
upon, at the rink named after a
dead robber baron. The rink was
outdated and anomalous, an open
air structure vaulted high above
in rich wood beams that Cameron
thought looked like a Viking
mead hall. It had become a salient
article of the school’s creed and
identity. The rink hermit opened
the circuit box and pulled down
the lever that shut off the rows of
lights high above and went back
into the grumbling shed of greased
machinery that kept the rink going.
On the bench where Cameron
sat during hockey games, a limp
towel wrapped around his neck,
watching the starting goalie blank
yet another storied prep school
program, they laced their skates
with fingers already numb.
They were now alone on the
rink whose color palette was
reduced to an unfathomable black
and a stray deviant whiteness of
light that looked more like silver.
Mist seethed up off the ice like
incense ascending before the altar
of the world. No one but Marie, he
thought.
A security golf cart drove by the
hockey rink. Its head lights dragged
weakly through the boards flecked
with black puck marks, projecting
a dull light spotted with shadows
onto the icy white surface of
Marie’s face, making it seem the
very map of his desires. He thought
and made funny comments at
first, making inroads towards
ingratiating himself, narrating
the match like a sportscaster and
thinking about inserting grunts
like the ones he had heard from
a Russian tennis starlet, but
thinking the better of it, being in
her father’s presence. The two of
them forgot Cameron was there
and slipped into their archaic
dynamic. Their faces filled with
blank concentration and a strange
intimacy. Her father made aerobic
stabs to gently tap the ball over the
net and bent down to impossibly
undercut the ball and return it
spinning perfectly from nearly a
foot under the level of the table.
Marie played defensively, letting
”
“
eyes closed, placid with passion,
and the patchwork of suburban
stars behind her. He skated away
playfully, slowing down to taunt
her and turning fluidly to skate
backwards as she came closer and
closer, following as quickly as she
could and laughing. He stopped
quickly and changed directions.
She tried to do the same but
fell to the ice clumsily and began
to grasp her knee and whimper. He
skated over quickly and sat beside
her. The scarred ice felt like the
idea of hardness itself and gladly
imparted its coldness to his body.
He told her he loved her. He had
been waiting a long time for the
exact wrong time to tell her this.
He wanted to make the truth work.
Saying something about her prior
bruise in the same place and fluid
build up, she didn’t seem to hear
him. Marie hobbled over to the
bench holding onto his arm and
if he didn’t) and told him to enjoy
himself in a tone that bespoke her
genuine worry about this issue.
Through the thin aperture
created by the top of the grey
bench and the fluttering blue tarp,
he watched her walking away on
the stone path, carrying one skate
in each gloved hand; she left the
frame but he didn’t move his head,
refocusing his eyes on the stars
scattered sparingly like salt in the
black sky. He remembered what
his science teacher said, that if time
were a hand, the slightest graze of
a nail file would erase the period of
human existence.
He tried to imagine himself as a
tiny particle hurtling gently though
senseless space just after the big
bang. There it was: endless empty
time and ceaseless space with no
one there. He had been wrong
before. Very wrong. The Capital
of Sadness was everywhere,
everywhere except where he
was. Could you be somewhere
you weren’t? How do you get to
someplace where you don’t exist?
When his father first died he
had spent hours on end in the hall
closet among the smells of disuse
radiating from the empty coats. Not
to hide from anything, just because
no one was ever there and it was so
unlikely that he would be there that
it seemed almost like he wasn’t.
He exhaled a long sigh and
the cloud of breath hung before
him like a ghost. Pushing off the
boards, he skated away as fast as
Could you be somewhere you weren’t?
How do you get to someplace where
you don’t exist?
began to take her skates off. They
had half an hour left of the time
they almost always used to the
fullest. She said that she was going
back to her dorm (Did he feel like
walking her back? It’s really OK
KELSEY MCCULLOUGH
”
he could. He felt the oxygen flee
from his screaming muscles but
he only went faster. As he turned
the corner, hearing his skates
scrape through their angles as they
slipped out from under him, deftly
crossing his feet over to let them
begin their graded descent again,
inclining towards the ice with the
controlled danger and aplomb of a
tight rope walker, he began to pick
up speed, and the exhaust cloud
of his breath began to lag and trail
behind him like a jet-stream that
threatened to take off. He closed
his eyes and felt himself reeling
through space, lost and more
than alone in an endless darkness.
There was no one there to see him
smile. The two thin threads his
skates left in their wake chased
his fleeing body, dancing in
incising intermittent aureoles then
setting hard into the jumbled and
permanent memory of the ice.
voices
february 11, 2010
Rebuttal: A look at the pro-life perspective
by Caitlin Devine
Andrew Zipperer’s recent article, “Protesters’ pro-life arguments
prove ill-conceived,” (Georgetown
Voice, February 4, 2010) showed
a vast and astounding ignorance
about the pro-life movement it
attempted to analyze. While it’s
honorable that Zipperer made
some effort to understand the protesters he met at the January 22
March for Life, he failed to deliver
a balanced or holistic view of the
pro-life movement.
Zipperer argued that since
pro-life protesters disagreed about
other life issues such as the death
penalty, healthcare, and animal
rights, there isn’t any element of
authentic or moral truth in their
arguments against abortion. This
logic is fundamentally flawed. I
agree that the divisions within
the pro-life community are tragic,
but they have no bearing on the
legitimacy of the movement as a
whole. I personally follow a consistent life ethic, as does the Cath-
olic Church and many other prolife organizations. Georgetown
University Right to Life, it should
be noted, proudly supports a
platform that defends life at every
level, for all human beings, from
womb to tomb. Just because a few
people out of hundreds of thousands disagreed over the death
penalty, healthcare policy, and
other issues does not mean that
the fight against abortion has no
basis or that the protesters lacked
consistent direction.
Besides its logical fallacies,
Zipperer’s piece also lacked
sensitivity and consistency. He
seemed to claim that fetuses can
feel no pain, but failed to provide
any evidence for such an assertion. In fact, the vast amount
of medical knowledge that we
have today confirms fetal pain.
Abortion is a behind-the-door execution of a human being. I think
your eyes should be opened to the
pain of others, instead of making
unfounded claims that they are
incapable of feeling pain. Furthermore, elsewhere in his piece,
Zipperer cites the fact that some
protesters expressed support for
the death penalty as evidence of
inconsistencies within the pro-life
movement, but he doesn’t think
through the implications of his
stance on the death penalty. If
death row criminals are placed
under anesthesia and technically
feel no pain, is it all right to kill
them? Personally, I don’t think so,
and I don’t think Zipperer would
think so either. So why does he
think it is acceptable to kill fetuses
just because he assumes they cannot feel pain?
Zipperer also argues that
the lack of support for universal
healthcare among the pro-life
movement invalidates their opinions on abortion, but he doesn’t
examine why so many pro-lifers
are opposed to healthcare reform.
Personally, I fully support efforts
for universal healthcare, especially for pregnant women, mothers,
and children, because I believe
this supports a pro-life society in
which every child is wanted and
can be cared for. But I know that
opposition to universal healthcare does not make someone
anti-life. My support of universal
healthcare is tempered by a deep
concern that my tax dollars could
go toward funding abortions, a
fear held by the vast majority of
pro-lifers. This is a legitimate and
rational concern that Zipperer
should have considered when
discussing healthcare reform
with pro-life supporters.
Before making such broad,
sweeping, and unsubstantiated
generalizations, Zipperer should
have made a genuine attempt
at understanding the pro-life
movement’s arguments on abortion. Instead, he simply attended
one pro-life event armed with
his own preconceived notions
of the movement. It is possible
to be truly, consistently pro-life:
against abortion, the death penalty, and euthanasia. I suggest that
Zipperer join GU Right to Life
in its various volunteer activities at the Northwest Pregnancy
Center, where the pro-life belief
is put into action, where mothers
and children in need are cared for
directly. He could also join us in
participating in monthly blood
drives. Or perhaps he could have
attended the anti-death penalty
event that we hosted last week.
Instead of making a good-faith
attempt to understand the realities of the pro-life movement,
though, Zipperer presented a
flimsy straw-man version of the
movement that he could more
easily argue against.
The pro-life movement is diverse and full of energy, despite
Zipperer’s general statements
to the contrary. As with any national political movement, it is
nuanced and not all of its supporters’ beliefs are identical. Unfortunately, Zipperer had little
interest in seeing the truth of the
movement as a whole.
Caitlin Devine is a
senior in the College. She is currently the director
of the Cardinal
O’Connor Conference on Life.
Party and bullshit: The hassles of entertaining
by Nate Hochstetler
It started out as a nice evening with a few friends at a
Nevils apartment, as it always
does. Then someone’s friend’s
little sister brought her Harbin cluster-mates, someone’s
cousin and all his friends and
acquaintances showed up,
and a few dozen texts and
tweets later, the apartment
was flooded with thirsty, rowdy strangers.
At some point in the evening, one of the apartment’s
residents attempted to show a
boy her bedroom, only to find
that the door was locked. Assuming some randos had coopted the room as their personal love nest, a crowd began
to form outside the door to
harass the couple, banging and
yelling out comments like, “1,
Courtesy NATE HOCHSTETLER
You know, you probably could have just knocked or something.
2, 3 ... Finish! Now GET OUT!”
A brave (and likely inebriated)
soul even attempted to climb
out of an adjacent window in
order to get into the locked
room, but to no avail. One party-goer took it upon himself to
kick down the door; instead,
he managed to break it in half.
Everyone standing around the
door roared in laughter, yelling phrases like “This is cool!
Now you have a doggy door
for your room!” But the room’s
owner wasn’t laughing. After
crawling on all fours through
her broken door and examining
the room, she emerged, defeated. “There’s no one in here,”
she announced. “I must’ve just
locked myself out.”
The party quickly deteriorated, and as I shuffled out of
the apartment, I began to wonder why more people haven’t
stopped accepting their broken-down doors and begun
asking, “Why do I have people
over at all? Why deal with
trashed apartments and excessive tabs at Dixie just to have
a few friends over?” It seems
much easier to go to someone
else’s house or some other
party to have a good time,
free from the stresses of hosting. For as long as anyone can
remember, upperclassmen at
Georgetown have supported
the tradition of hosting parties.
As the years roll on and we ap-
proach our senior year, we take
on the responsibility of buying
kegs and Burnett’s for all.
But why are we so eager
to repay the favor? Wouldn’t
it be easier to just party at our
friends’ houses every weekend
instead of providing all those
Keystones for younger Hoyas?
Once we get past all the annoyances of drunk people consuming our party supplies and
destroying our living areas, we
start to realize the little things
that make entertaining worthwhile. There seems to be an
intrinsic value in having your
guests know that this is your
party, an honor that comes with
all sorts of privileges. Long line
for the keg? Everyone knows
the “no-cuts” rule doesn’t apply to the host. Someone sleeping (or doing something less innocent) in your bed? You have
full authority to drag them
out by the ear. Hosting a party
means you pretty much run the
show, and for many, this is reason enough to throw a rager.
The absence of real sororities and fraternities (sorry, BFrat) is another reason Georgetown students are so willing to
lend their apartments to bacchanalian revelry. Everyone
seems to agree that just because
our school hasn’t gone Greek
doesn’t mean we that shouldn’t
have celebrations of Heraclean
proportions. This aspect of the
party scene may actually allow
for more diversity than Greek
life would provide. Upperclassmen throw everything from
“Guido Bros and Jersey Hos”
ragers to post-basketball game
bashes. There’s also a spirit of
inclusiveness you don’t get at
Greek schools. From Hockey
House to the Village A Rooftops, there are parties all over
campus that are happy to let
you and your friends have a
good time, and you don’t even
have to pay dues to attend.
Looking past the beer cans
and broken doors, it’s clear
that the party scene at Georgetown is worth preserving. The
pros of providing a good time
for the whole school and of
carrying on the school’s party
traditions significantly outweigh the cons of cleaning up
some spilled beer on Sunday
morning. We deal with drunk
guys and cat fights, stolen
knickknacks and raided refrigerators, because, in the end,
we all want to keep the party
going for posterity, and maybe
a new doggie door for your
room really does sound like a
good idea.
Nate Hochstetler
is a sophomore in
the College. He’s
having a party this
Saturday. All are
welcome, just don’t
wreck anything.
voices
georgetownvoice.com
the georgetown voice
15
Hoya pride swallowed amid a crowd of apathy
by Ben Holtzmuller
Until a few weeks ago, I had
never arrived late to a Hoyas Basketball game. So when I showed up
at the front entrance of the Verizon
Center twenty minutes late for a
game against Seton Hall, I didn’t
think much of my tardiness. That
is until the rent-a-guard at the door
informed me, and my flock of fellow freshmen, that there were no
more student wristbands—and we
would be relegated to the 400 level.
Shocked, my friends and I began
the great journey upward. Several
escalators later, we took a seat next
to the other stragglers and attempted to stem our nosebleeds.
You’d be surprised at the
amount of time there is for reflection and contemplation, so high up.
A few of my initial thoughts: “They
look so small from up here,” and “I
could’ve had more leg room had
I stayed in the taxi.” But soon my
mind drifted to loftier notions.
I gazed down at the grey throng
of students and saw that a surprisingly large number weren’t even
paying attention to the game. I
looked at the non-student sections,
whose members were equally unenthused. I surveyed the arena as
a whole: embarrassing! Why were
those comatose students down
there in the student section, while
I, a loud and proud Hoya, was up
here needing binoculars! I started
formulating a list of things that
need to be changed.
As fans, we have to get up for
every game. The team needs us, as
we know from the ups and downs
of this past week playing Duke, USF,
and Villanova. The insane amount
of energy demonstrated when we
play top-ten teams secured us wins
when we were the underdogs. By
comparison, the embarrassingly
lethargic, lifeless crowd we put together for the South Florida Bulls
left us open to the wrath of the arrogant, but undeniably talented
Dominique Jones. The fans can’t be
blamed for a loss, but the team definitely feeds off the energy created
by a great crowd.
Another thing that needs work
is the actual cheering. Some of the
brightest, most creative kids in
America go to Georgetown, yet
we rely on the rote “LET’S GO
HOYAS” chant whenever we’re
on offense. As a fan, it’s hard to repeat the same chant over and over
again. It’s time we switch it up a
little. “WE ARE GEORGETOWN”
and “HOYA SAXA” are good when
thrown into the mix, but we need to
diversify our portfolio further. How
about getting into the other team’s
head. Call out a specific player—
“SMITH IS RATTLED” will work,
for example, when Smith messes
up twice in a row. Or try the simple
“CRY ABOUT IT” when a player
thinks he’s doesn’t deserve a foul.
Get creative—you have four whole
syllables to work with.
Something that has been bothering me since the very first game
is that when the other team is at the
line for a free throw, Georgetown
fans moves their hands right after
the player shoots. What good does
that do? We need to mess up their
concentration mid-shot. The handwave should happen at least one
second earlier, and I am personally
shocked that Georgetown students
have failed to see this logic.
On a grander scale, I think it’s a
travesty that great fans are relegated to the 400 level just because they
weren’t able to finish their pregame
on time. This next proposal might
be the most controversial, but I believe it will improve the atmosphere
at the Verizon center. The first eight
rows surrounding the court should
go to students. This would surround the court with a continuous
circle of jeering fans and excited
Some extremely inconvenient truths
It snowed a hell of a lot this
week. Amid the record-breaking snowfalls, school closings,
and panicking weathermen
came the unfortunate but predictable conservative reaction
that this kind of anomalous
blizzard somehow debunks
the theory of “global warming.” The argument—that rare
instances of severe cold prove
that temperatures are not in
fact trending upwards over
the long term—is seemingly
raised after every dramatic
winter storm.
This argument is, of course,
an appeal to ignorance. No one
notices the increase of a couple
degrees in average annual temperature over a twenty-year
span, but they certainly can see
that global warming doesn’t
seem to be happening now, at
this very instant, in the middle
of a blizzard.
Before I continue I should
clarify: I don’t really “believe in” climate change, per
se—if you called me a “global
warming skeptic” I probably
wouldn’t correct you. With
that said, I never had any
problem with the societal effects of what I lovingly dubbed
“climate change hysteria.” As
someone who cares deeply for
the environment, I think anything that makes my fellow
Americans more environmentally conscious is a good thing,
even if most people only live a
“greener” lifestyle because it’s
trendy among the progressive,
upper middle-class.
But right now I’m watching
the things I hold dear in my
conflicted existence fall apart
from both ends. As much as
I’ve loved the individual decisions to be more environmentally aware, the libertarian in
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me thinks that, outside of basic litter and pollution laws,
it’s not really up to the state to
pass life-changing laws based
upon data that I and many
others are still not completely
sold on.
Despite that, I don’t want
global warming to be false.
Obviously it would be a relief
to know that we aren’t going
to accidentally end the world
due to shortsighted behavior. I
Carrying On
by Matthew Collins
A rotating column by Voice senior staffers
would, of course, feel a certain
amount of vindication knowing that I was correct to not
jump on the bandwagon so
quickly, but if the theory were
debunked, we would be back
to where we were before An
Inconvenient Truth came out.
People would stop concerning
themselves with the environment, causing other adverse
environmental impacts (albeit
non-apocalyptic ones).
LYNN KIRSCHBAUM
Is anyone even watching the game? It certainly doesn’t look like it.
Hoyas and give the Verizon Center
a true college-game feel. I realize
that the University and the Verizon
Center make great money off of
these seats, but it sacrifices an enormous amount of noise and energy.
The University wouldn’t really be
throwing away money by adopting this strategy, either: arenas with
amazing atmospheres attract top
recruits, top recruits attract more
national attention and win more
championship titles, which is where
the real money is. Do whatever you
have to—charge more for a student
ticket package—I want students to
be closer to the game.
Going to high school in Charlotte, N.C., I grew up loving to
But I am afraid that’s happening already, as popular
belief in anthropogenic climate change is dropping at
a remarkable rate. In just the
three months since their last
survey, British polling group
Populus is reporting a 15 percent drop in those who believe
in man-made global warming,
now down to just 26 percent
of Britons. To be fair, these
aren’t American figures (and
despite the United Kingdom’s
reputation as a liberal haven,
none of the towns I’ve been to
in the British Isles have nearly
as many recycling receptacles
as their counterparts on the
Eastern Seaboard do), but this
newly-released poll shows a
drop that is likely mirrored
in America and will probably
lead to a return to our nation’s
former ways.
Granted, this new poll could
be a reflection of the impact of
the “climategate” scandal, but
I can’t help but think that the
decrease in popular support
for the global warming theory
is correlated with more serious
measures being brought to the
table. In the same way Massachusetts
(Massachusetts!)
bailed on healthcare reform,
just as it was starting to get serious, people are finding global
watch basketball. In high school,
basketball games were a hotbed of
school pride and witty chants. I am
so proud of Georgetown fans when
we greet top-ten teams like Duke
and Villanova with the energy I
know we’re capable of. But at most
games against less-respected opponents, I’d rather be in the student
section at one of my high school
games, and that should never be
the case.
Ben Holtzmuller is a
freshman in the College. When he grows
up he wants to be
like Mike. Or maybe
Greg Monroe ... he’s
not that picky.
warming a less enticing notion
as they realize how imposing
the policy solutions would be.
It seems as though the libertarian and the environmentalist
in the average American can’t
be happy at the same time.
We had a bit of a respite,
though, during the Super Bowl,
of all places. Sandwiched between crude advertisements for
cheap beer and inscrutable Tim
Tebow brand reinforcement
was an eyebrow-raising Audi
spot. Centered on the idea of an
overscrupulous “green police,”
the ad for the A3 TDI seems to
mock hardcore environmental
sorts, despite the fact that it’s
selling a product pitched as
the “Green Car of the Year.”
That someone out there thinks
there’s a market for this ad—
that more people than me want
to treat the environment right
but would prefer to do so on
their own terms—shows that
perhaps, in the most American
of ways, we will do what’s best
simply because we want to. I
sure as hell hope so.
Matthew Collins is
a junior in the College and an associate editor for the
Voice. He’s doesn’t
believe in Snowpocalypse either.

Chiming in - The Georgetown Voice

Transcription

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