The Georgetown Voice, April 16 2015

VOICE

the georgetown

BEFORE YOU CLICK SUBMIT Examining Georgetown’s course evaluation system

By Lara Fishbane

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w April 16, 2015 w Volume 47, Issue 27 w georgetownvoice.com

the

Voice

April 16, 2015 This week: Editorial ... Keeping professors accountable in course evals, pg. 3

Course evaluations

The Voice investigates Georgetown’s course evaluation system.

Mixed Doubles

News ... SAC sanctions Philodemic for violations, pg. 4 Sports ... Baseball prepares for a seven-game homestand, pg. 6 Feature ... The flaws of Gtown’s course eval system, pg. 8 Leisure ... Concert choir brings Mozart to Dalgren, pg. 10 Page 13 ... Dinner with the Dean, pg. 17 Voices ... Learning the limits of cura personalis, pg. 18

– Kathleen Coughlin

Mixed doubles similar to a regular crossword puzzle, but each word corresponds with two clues. For example, ECLIPSE could be “New Moon sequel” and “Astronomical event.”

Once you determine which clues match up, add up their numbers, and that corresponds to their spot in the puzzle.

Across 1. Comfort 2. Close and personal 3. Water bird 4. Playstation or Xbox 5. Imply 6. Abandon 7. Performs or works on 8. Old language from the Yucatan 9. Taking everything into account 10. Unchanging 11. Radio interference 12. Crouch down 13. Lowest sound range 14. Glowing insects 15. Female deer 16. Hand tool 17. Null and void 18. Ill or injured person 19. Perfumed smoke 20. Short-lived show about space cowboys 21. Viewed 22. Four 23. Farmer’s outfit 24. Dry, sandy land 25. Orbit shape 26. … … …

27. Suitable 28. A freshwater fish 29. Cooking surgace 30. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings author 31. Enrage 32. Commandeer 33. Oppose 34. Medical fluid administrator

Down 1. Pull behind 2. Restricts 3. Borders you have to stay within 4. For the purpose of 5. Extremely 6. Chopin novel 7. Fermented rice drink 8. Make 9. Car service 10. Capital of Peru 11. Realization 12. Venus de Milo material 13. Count 14. Butter beans 15. Fruits and veggies 16. Autumn 17. Encase in protective plastic 18. Tumble down 19. List of experiences 20. Arithmetic figure 21. Something very boring 22. Cheap flooring 23. Thief 24. Spherical game piece 25. Touch 26. Shepherd’s staff 27. Peace and calm 28. Return to 29. A name in my phone 30. Binding agreement 31. Movie finale to clue 20A 32. Catch a disease

Last issue’s key:

The Georgetown Voice welcomes responses, questions, and opinions from its readers.

Submit all e-mails to editor@georgetownvoice. com. Please include your name, year, and school. Bear in mind that letters may be edited for length and clarity and may be published and used in any medium.

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 47.27 April 16, 2015 Editor-in-Chief: Dayana Morales Gomez Managing Editor: Caitriona Pagni General Manager: Mary-Bailey Frank Webmaster: Maya McCoy Editors-at-Large: James Constant, Julia Lloyd-George, Ian Philbrick Contributing Editor: Chris Castano Blog Editor: Marisa Hawley Halftime Leisure Editors: Erika Bullock, Graham Piro Halftime Sports Editors: Alex Boyd, Rob Ponce News Editor: Lara Fishbane Sports Editor: Joe Pollicino Feature Editor: Ryan Greene Leisure Editor: Daniel Varghese Page 13 Editor: Dylan Cutler Voices Editor: Noah Buyon Photo Editor: Joshua Raftis Cover Editor: Christina Libre Design Editor: Eleanor Sugrue Spread Editors: Pam Shu, Sophie Super Assistant Blog Editors: Grace Brennan, Dominique Rouge, Carley Tucker Assistant Halftime Leisure Editor: Michael Bergin Assistant News Editors: Courtnie Baek, Ryan Miller Assistant Sports Editors: Isabel Echarte, Kevin Huggard, Max Roberts Assistant Feature Editor: Shalina Chatlani Assistant Leisure Editors: Elizabeth Baker, Dinah Farrell, Sabrina Kayser Assistant Voices Editor: Leila Lebreton Assistant Photo Editors: Vicki Lam, Carolyn Zaccaro Assistant Cover Editor: Megan Howell Assistant Design Editor: Ellie Yaeger

Staff Writers:

Chris Almeida, Sourabh Bhat, Emilia Brahm, Emmy Buck, Lilah Burke, Caitlyn Cobb, Brendan Crowley, Patrick Drown, Emmanuel Elone, Tyler Kranawetter, Joe Laposata, Brian McMahon, Maneesha Panja, Brendan Saunders, Thomas Stubna, Manuela Tobias, Colleen Zorc

Staff Photographers:

Ambika Ahuja, Saman Asdjodi, Jen Costa, Megan Howell, Gavin Myers , Freddy Rosas, Taryn Shaw, Andrew Sullivan

Staff Designers:

Erin Annick, Lizzy Blumberg, Caitlin Garrabrant, River Davis, Katie Hyland, Johnny Jung, Erin McClellan

Copy Chief: Dana Suekoff Copy Editors:

Lauren Chung, Bianca Clark, Jupiter El-Asmar, Alex Garvey, Rachel Greene, Madison Kaigh, Julian Sena, Suzanne Trivette

Editorial Board Chair: Kenneth Lee

profess your priorities

Keep professors accountable in course evaluations Of the many adjectives that can be used to describe America’s post-secondary education system, “transparent” is not one of them.

Unfortunately, Georgetown’s course evaluation system is not an exception to this rule.

Despite its relentless email and advertising campaigns to solicit student participation course evaluations, the university neglects to inform students that there is no guarantee that any faculty besides their professors will read their comments.

The Editorial Board recognizes that there are legitimate reasons for keeping evaluations private. One glance at Rate My Professor’s listings seems enough to justify administrators’ efforts to contain offensive comments. Notwithstanding, the comments section in course evaluations can provide details about what professors teach and how they teach that quantitative reviews provided by the university registrar on MyAccess cannot. Given the many biases embedded in simple numerical ratings, like the

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Mailing Address: Georgetown University The Georgetown Voice Box 571066 Washington, D.C. 20057

Office: Leavey Center Room 424 Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20057

Email: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Website: georgetownvoice.com The opinions expressed in the Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of the Georgetown Voice. The university subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

positive correlation between high marks from professors and higher ratings for professors, or the documented bias of giving better scores to male professors, it’s questionable that numbers can tell much of a story at all.

Such tensions embedded in course evaluations are but one aspect of broader issues in higher education that pit professors against students. Although there are professors who manage to balance their research and professorial responsibilities, the sense that professors are researchers first and teachers second is still prevalent among the undergraduate student body. Georgetown is understandably proud of its diverse and accomplished faculty, who are often lauded practitioners in their fields. But all students should have an avenue to express their opinions on their courses and professors, and to know that their opinion is taken seriously by university faculty.

Faculty research is essential to the mission, both historical and current, of any uni-

versity. It is also a public service, enhancing the corpus of human knowledge, but it often comes at undergraduates’ expense, which hardly seems fair given the costs of a Georgetown education and the Jesuit commitment to education through interactive discourse. The Editorial Board has heard students frequently complain that their professors are absent for days on end attending far-off scholastic conferences, or that they limit their office hours such that there is little hope of getting productive face time with them.

We propose that qualitative course feedback be better utilized by department chairs in order to hold professors accountable to their students. This begins with extending access to written feedback to department chairs or to a third party auditor. After all, Georgetown entrusts undergraduates to run its coffee shops, its residences, and even its emergency medical service. Surely it can trust us to take a little more ownership of our education as well.

but do they make bank?

Foreign Service career stats only half the picture

According to the Cawley Career Education Center’s post-graduation employment statistics, in the past decade, more students who graduate from the School of Foreign Service are entering jobs in consulting and financial services than are entering the public sector.

At face value, the career center’s findings seem to show that more and more Hoyas are passing up the public sector altogether. However, these statistics do not necessarily reflect that SFS graduates have changed their career preferences—they show the difficulties that recent graduates face in an unfavorable job market.

The scarcity of public sector openings in a difficult job market has pushed students towards the private sector. And of the few public sector openings that are available, many require applicants to hold graduate degrees, so they are out of reach to even the most ambitious SFS alumni. Moreover, some graduates—especially those who come from low-income backgrounds—contemplate consulting and financial jobs out of consideration for their families or to pay off student loans.

Put simply, the career center’s data do not indicate that SFS students have stopped taking government jobs, only that they are less likely to do so immediately after graduation.

As SFS Associate Dean Emily Zenick recently told The Hoya, the future jobs that SFS graduates may hold are not included in the career center’s survey. Students who want to serve the country may first enter their private sector jobs in order to gain the necessary experience to secure public sector positions in the future.

Nevertheless, students may have gravitated largely toward consulting and financial services for their first jobs because they receive less help in entering other fields. Of the 16 “employer partners” that the career center lists on its website, all of them are consulting or financial services firms. A school that heavily promotes its Washington, D.C. location should be able to say that it partners with D.C. or federal government to provide fresh graduates to their agencies. Students should not have to rely primarily on word-of-mouth from professors, friends, or the Internet to

search for such opportunities without guidance from career center staff.

The Walsh Scholars’ Initiative, which the SFS Academic Council announced on Tuesday, aims to provide students with mentorship from a wide variety of high-profile movers and shakers in public service. While it might help reverse the shift in the SFS toward the private sector, with its application-based process and extremely small size—only five students can join the program—the Initiative does not address the problem that most SFS students are not benefiting from discourse and advice that inspire them to join the public sector.

Ultimately, economic conditions and insufficient qualifications for entry-level government jobs, rather than a mere attraction to the private sector, have lowered the chances that SFS graduates include public sector work in their immediate post-graduation plans. With more inclusive institutional support from the university, the numbers of graduates entering government work could increase and allow the SFS to more fully live up to its namesake as the School of Foreign Service.

we love our cute little freshmen

Editorial Board:

Isabel Echarte, Lara Fishbane, Ryan Miller, Dayana Morales Gomez, Ryan Greene, Laura Kurek, Caitriona Pagni, Ian Philbrick, Daniel Varghese, Garet Williams

The georgetown voice | 3

Making peer mentorships a productive experience

In the next few weeks, Georgetown’s admitted students will commit to becoming members of the Class of 2019. Over the summer, incoming freshmen have the option to communicate with upperclassmen peer advisors, who are chosen by the deans and staff members of the undergraduate schools, about the transition to college life.

Unfortunately, as the program stands right now, the peer advisor programs are not much more than an additional line on the resumes of upperclassmen. Incoming freshmen can read the individual biographies of each peer advisor and email questions, but that is, for many people, the extent of their possible interactions. Sometimes, a reply from the advisor isn’t even guaranteed, making them seem even more remote.

Pre-registration, time management, extracurricular options, and the roommate search are

undoubtedly some key questions all incoming students face in their summer before Georgetown. However, their experience with their new college is likely limited to a Blue and Gray tour that they may have participated in during GAAP week. Some students may not even have had an opportunity to step foot onto campus. Soliciting inquiry emails thus creates a lose-lose situation.

Since admitted students do not know what questions to ask and how to ask them, their peer advisors, while with good intentions, are unable to provide them with useful answers.

We urge deans in the four undergraduate schools to consider revising the Peer Mentor system based on how the Georgetown Admissions Ambassador Program organizes their state, transfer, and international chairs programs for prospective students. In a similar fashion, peer

advisors could organize themselves by state, by major city, or by country for incoming students.

Deans could require them to proactively reach out to those who live in the region and host coffee chats or informal gatherings, in order to not only to create an accessible space to get general advice, but also to provide a way for new students to meet each other, as the students already do independently through their GAAP Facebook group.

All peer advisors should aim to create longterm connections into the school year. However, they cannot cultivate and catalyze such relationships without face-to-face contact. By placing more emphasis on personal social interactions and less on the chore of answering emails, deans should reshape peer advisors into more proactive and valuable mentors who can guide freshmen to their new home on the Hilltop.

news

4 | the georgetown voice

APRIL 16, 2015

Students stage sit in to support “Engaging Differences/Diversity” curriculum proposal LILAH BURKE A group of over 50 students gathered for a sit-in outside of university President John J. DeGioia’s office on April 10 to present a petition expressing support for the “Engaging Differences/Diversity” curriculum change proposal.

The “Engaging Differences/Diversity” proposal would require all students to take courses that relate to issues of diversity. The Last Campaign for Academic Reform, a student group that worked with the Provost’s Committee on Diversity to develop the proposal, unveiled the petition in the wake of a Page Thirteen cartoon in The Georgetown Voice, which many felt reflected a culture of unconscious bias on campus.

Although students have shown support for the requirement up to this point, the proposal still must be approved by at least three groups and two individuals. There has been some student confusion over when exactly the Main Campus Executive Faculty

students take a stand before sitting in degioia’s will vote on the issue. At the town hall meeting in response to the Page Thirteen cartoon in February, representatives for The Last Campaign for Academic Reform said the faculty would vote on the issue in March. They have since amended the date to be the next meeting of the MCEF, April 24th.

Though the MCEF has been the most mentioned faculty group in the discussion, other players also have a role in the proposal’s approval and implementation. The MCEF cannot actually vote on “Engaging Differ-

GU LATINO LEADERSHIP FORUM

ences/Diversity” until the Core Curriculum Committee has approved the proposal, according to Professor Ian Gale, chair of the MCEF. The fifteen-member CCC, created spring 2010 in a joint effort between the MCEF and the Provost’s Office, is a standing body whose purview is the core requirements that affect the university’s undergraduate program. Its members represent all four schools. English professor and Vice Provost for Education Randall Bass and Chair of the Theology Depart-

ment, Rev. Christopher W. Steck, S.J. co-chair the committee.

According to Bass, the CCC would ideally meet once every month of the academic year, but has met more frequently this spring due to the “the urgency of the ‘Engaging [Differences/] Diversity’ proposal.” Gale noted that his group was also working to accelerate the proposal. “The Main Campus Executive Faculty, which is operating in parallel [with the CCC] to expedite the process, has discussed two versions of the proposal this year,” he said.

Bass said that the CCC has continued revising the proposal because of the important impact all curriculum changes have on the campus. He explained that the proposal has been evolving for several reasons, namely, “to find the right language to balance meaningfulness with flexibility; to frame the learning goals so that they can communicate intent to a wide range of disciplines across the campus; [and] to frame the implementation in ways that meet the concerns of all stakeholders.”

The committee is concerned not only with approving the proposal, but also with ensuring that it can work practically, according to Bass. “The CCC is an important proxy for the campus, and its careful consideration of the proposal ensures successful implementation, not just approval,” he said. Bass also explained that this lengthy process is normal for such an impactful proposal. “All curriculum proposals undergo continuous revision and evolution,” he said. “With a substantive change to the Core Curriculum, especially on a topic like ‘engaging diversity,’ this is especially the case.”

After moving through the CCC, the proposal will go to a vote in the MCEF. According to Gale, “Once the MCEF has approved the proposal, it must still go to Provost Groves, President DeGioia, and the Board of Directors for final approval.” Bass anticipates that if the MCEF affirms the proposal this spring, final approval from the Board would be in place by June. It would first apply to the Class of 2020.

Georgetown Day Cup initiative to SAC places sanctions on Philodemic Society for policy violations encourage recycling on campus DOMINIQUE ROUGE RYAN MILLER

The GUSA Senate Sustainability Subcommittee and the Corp Green Initiative have partnered to sponsor the first Georgetown Day Cup competition to promote recycling and sustainability on campus April 25, the day after Georgetown Day. Individual students and student groups can participate in the competition by bringing plastic cups and aluminum cans that they used on Georgetown Day to recycling collection centers that will be set up in Village A, Village B, and Henle. The student group that brings the most cups and cans will win a prize of $300 while the individual student who brings the most will win $50.

The Corp has provided the funding for the prize money and its Green Team will volunteer at the collection sites, according to Chair of the Corp Green Team Cam Smith (MSB ‘16).

“The Corp Green Team helped in the initial planning stage of the Georgetown Day Cup with identifying opportunities for a large scale recycling event on campus,” Smith wrote in an email to the Voice.

Audrey Stewart, director of the office of sustainability,

expressed her support of any initiatives that reduce campus waste including the Georgetown Day Cup. “[We] have a goal to increase the share of total campus waste that is recycled,” she wrote in an email to the Voice.

The Georgetown Day Cup is part of the bigger TerraCycling program on campus that allows students to bring items that often cannot be taken by traditional recycling containers, according to Natalie Kaliss (SFS ‘18), another co-chair of the GUSA senate sustainability subcommittee,.

“Georgetown not only helps the environment when we TerraCycle but also gets money because we send the TerraCycling items to a company that recycles them and gives us cash for them,” Kaliss said.

Smith noted the challenge in changing student habits as they relate to sustainability, but he believes that the Georgetown Day Cup can make students reconsider their actions.

Smith wrote, “We are hoping this campaign will incentivize students to think about all the waste they create and what they decide to do in that split-second decision when they are about to throw away a finished cup.”

On Tuesday, April 7, the Student Activities Commission voted 8-2 to place the Philodemic Society into a Restoration category and ban its travel for the 2016 fiscal year due to policy violations.

Restoration means that the Philodemic Society will not receive a budget at SAC’s budget summit but can request funding on an ad hoc basis throughout the semester. During the semester, commissioners will check in with the group at least twice.

In order to have its withdrawal from the Restoration Process considered, the group will have to present to the full Commission.

According to SAC’s budget guide, policy violations that result in a group being placed in the Restoration category include, but are not limited to: failing to submit a budget form, breaching university and/ or SAC policy, or failing to submit event authorization forms in a correct and timely fashion.

Acting President of Philodemic Society Asha Thanki (SFS ’17) and SAC Chair Connor Maytnier (COL ’17) declined to explicitly state the Philodemic Society’s policy violation.

“They violated policies related to event approval, travel approval, and honesty,” Maytnier wrote in an email to the Voice. “SAC leadership had two in-person meetings with the organization’s leadership

to learn more about the situation.

The entire Commission then heard from the organization’s leadership before ultimately reaching the decision outlined above.”

During the discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, SAC member Mollie Rodgers (COL ‘16) supported placing the Philodemic Society into Restoration but disagreed with the travel ban as it punished all members and not just Philodemic’s leadership.

SAC member Berlin Chang (SFS ‘18), however, argued that the transgression was more serious than those which qualify for Restoration so the travel ban should be upheld.

“I wish none of this had transpired in the first place,” Thanki wrote in an email to the Voice. Losing automatic funding imposes large inconveniences on the organization considering that the Philodemic Society has tra-

ditionally had a high volume of active members and social programming.

According to Maytnier, SAC exists to help student organizations meet their goals and respects the diversity of different group’s desires.

“SAC determined that these sanctions were both fair and necessary, and will ensure that the organization can be successful in years to come,” he wrote.

Thanki also believes that the Philodemic society will be able to recover from this incident despite its dependence on SAC for transportation and equipment.

“Being placed in Restoration will affect the way we function on a very regular basis. I am convinced, though, that the society will make it through this difficult time,” wrote Thanki.

“This is an incredibly unfortunate situation but the Society will be putting its best foot forward as we move on.”

PHILODEMIC HOPES TO RESTORE ITS SAC STATUS MOVING FORWARD.

JOSHUA RAFTIS

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the georgetown voice | 5

SAXA POLITICA: CLASSISM DIALOGUE OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM

BY JAMES CONSTANT

a tri-weekly column about CAMPUS NEWS AND POLITICS

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

DR. HELLMAN TAKES TIME TO SPEAK WITH THE VOICE BEFORE COMING INTO OFFICE.

On the record with Dr. Joel Hellman COURTNIE BAEK On Tuesday, the Voice spoke with the incoming Dean of the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Joel Hellman, Ph.D. Why Georgetown? What do you find appealing about our University, specifically SFS? Throughout my career, I’ve always thought that the the best way to try to solve and engage in some of these places is by really trying to merge big ideas with practical realities. What excites me about Georgetown is that it’s a school that’s designed to be that. It’s got service in its title, it’s got faculty engaged in a broader world of ideas, but also many of whom are engaged in various different ways to applying those ideas to practice. Because it’s in Washington, there’s that headed incentive to engage with those who are doing the implementation. Georgetown has always been a place I’ve looked at for ideas, inspirations, and I was thrilled to hear what they have for research because I think it’s an ideal intersection of big ideas and practice.

Are there are any parts of the SFS curriculum or majors that you’d like to advocate or change?

The first thing I’ll do is to listen to the different members of the SFS community.

The centennial anniversary gives the opportunity to the whole community to think through the kind of education we’ve been providing and providing very well by all account … What I’ll do is to bring together faculty staff students to have those conversations about how relevant is the educational curriculum that we’ve got, new challenges, and what needs to be changed. That dialogue will be about the nature of what we’re teaching, the subject areas, how we can in-

tegrate better with other parts of the school, how we can better integrate ourselves, and the nature of the core.

Another thing about it is that I want to get the information about the students themselves. How are the nature of the students coming to SFS changed over the years ? How are they changing and what are the trends? What are they doing after SFS, and how do they see their SFS education maybe four, five years out, preparing for the type of work they’re doing? I really want to hear not only from the current students but also look at the trends and data about where our students are going and what that says about our program and how we’re preparing them for current issues.

During your time as a dean, do you plan to pursue additional research?

Fundamentally, one of the reasons why I’m coming back to university setting in Georgetown is to re-engage in my own research and teaching.

I started a lot of research at the World Bank, on a range of issues on state building in some of the most difficult contexts.

That’s research that I’ll certainly want to continue with a lot of collaborators both in the World Bank and other academic institutions. It will take a little while to settle in and return to those, but that is a big motivation for coming back.

What did you research during your time at the World Bank?

A lot of my previous research and what I’m still interested in looked at the relationship between business and government. Not only how government shaped the environment for business, but also how business engages with government...and how that impacts overall economic development.

I think we need a much more

I’ll be dedicating my last Saxa Politica column (at least for the foreseeable future) to an issue I’ve seen grow in salience over the three years I’ve spent in college. As someone majoring in the liberal arts, I’ve taken quite a few seminar classes that, many times, dedicate long periods of class time to discussing present-day social and political issues. These discussions are one of my favorite things about Georgetown—I’m consistently impressed by just how smart the people I see chugging Natty Light and gossipping on Lau 2 really are.

In the classes full of liberal, socially-aware students that I find myself in, someone almost invariably brings up economic privilege at one point during the dialogue. Everyone seems eager to cut down their own privilege, to say openly that they attended one of those one-word prep schools in New England that others are supposed to know instinctively. I get the impression that my peers are happy to address the leg up they’ve been given in life, and empathetic to the fact that other, less privileged students in the room had much different paths to Georgetown than they did. When people talk like this in class, I feel confident that America’s future ruling class will deal with the problem of income inequality much better than their parents did.

As Georgetown students, we’re living in a community of extreme wealth and privilege and, as a fairly highly-educated and politically-inclined group of people, becoming increasingly

aware of all those advantages we have over the rest of America.

Yet often it seems as though students here forget about all their privilege the instant they step out of an academic setting.

In one of my seminar classes, my professor usually asks the class about what we have been up to since we last met and devotes the first half-hour to freeform discussion. Several weeks ago, the topic of conversation was spring break, and several students rattled off their fun weeks in Aruba, Switzerland, and various other mouthwatering destinations.

This conversation, however, took place in a classroom full of other students who had previously related their stories of struggling to fit in at Georgetown after growing up in low-income environments.

To me, the stories of expensive vacations felt insensitive. They represented exactly the sort of thing that would make a student from a less-traditional background feel like they are excluded from the Georgetown norm.

They undermined the awareness of privilege that those student had demonstrated when speaking about issues that transcended their own experience.

If we’re limiting our engagement with economic privilege to the classroom, then we aren’t really accomplishing anything. Race, gender, and sexuality are common topics of discussion around campus, and students are mindful not to offend others when talking about them, but income and class haven’t reached that level yet.

At Georgetown, racist, sexist, and homophobic actions and words aren’t tolerated, but no one bats an eye when students talk about their plans for unpaid summer internships in far-flung cities (a luxury that only rich kids can afford) or routinely post pictures of hundred-dollar brunches on Instagram. Perhaps this is because many Georgetown students are sheltered from a world in which they actually have to watch their bank account. In their lives, it is acceptable to spend as conspicuously as they can.

It’s these little things that are the worst part of being at a school full of wealthy students when you didn’t grow up the same way, as a friend on my freshman floor once told me. It’s knowing that they’ll get the latest iPhone the moment it comes out, regardless of the off-contract price; it’s seeing your a buddy lose a North Face jacket at a party and order another one from Amazon without a second thought.

It’s not like there’s an easy solution to this problem; rich people are going to spend money, poorer people are going to wish they could spend that money, and Georgetown’s going to remain more of the former. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask for our student body to be a bit more conscious of how uncomfortable conspicuous consumption can make others. We’ve pretty much got the academic issues surrounding privilege down pat, but it’s something that Georgetown students need to remember outside of the classroom.

consistent approach especially in developing countries to see how the business community interacts with the state and what that means for the economic outcome.

The other thing that I started working on now is to look at the nature of bureaucracy especially in poor developing countries. We have stereotypes about bureaucrats … They’ve almost become a second nature that we accept. So we’re trying to look more closely at bureaucratic behavior especially at local level and try to understand what motivates bureaucrats. In some cases it’s money, in some

cases it’s norms and values, and in some cases it’s being part of a community. How that shapes their behavior and how it differs from what we normally think of as bureaucracy in more advanced country.

You probably heard about the Global Business major. Is that along your line of thinking?

In the Global Business program … whether it be social dislocation, natural resource extractions, and what that means to the community, I think it’s really critical that people who are engaged in global business to have a broader perspective.

First of all, it’s the right thing

to do, and second of all, it ultimately impacts their business down the road. I think it’s part of the Jesuit mission of creating social responsibility and how people think in long term. I’m very excited about that major and I think it’s a great initiative.

Final Comments?

The one thing I would say is that I am really eager to hear from students. I want to hear about their experience in the SFS, what they think they’re getting from the SFS degree, what they think they’re missing from the SFS degree, and where they think it’s helping in preparing for the next step.

sports

6 | the georgetown voice

APRIL 16, 2015

Baseball returns home for seven-game homestand MATT JASKO

The Georgetown men’s baseball team (16-15, 3-3 Big East), is coming back home.

After winning two out of three against Villanova, the Hoyas are set to return home for a 7-game home stand at Shirley Povich Field this week.

For the boys in blue and gray, the action was set to start Tuesday night against the Patriots of George Mason University (14-18-1, 5-7 Atlantic 10), but that game was delayed because of rain. The date for the make-up game has yet to be set. The team will most likely start their home stand with a three-game set against the Stony Brook Seawolves (1611, 9-2 America East), coming in the form of a double-header at 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, with the series finale at 1 p.m. on Sunday. From there, the Hoyas will turn their attention to a Tuesday contest with the Eagles from Coppin State (3-25-1, 2-13 Mid-Eastern) at 7 p.m., before capping off the home stand with a pair of seven-inning contests against the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Hawks (11-22, 9-6 Mid-Eastern) at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

When the rescheduled match up with George Mason does occur, it will be the second between the Hoyas and the Patriots on the diamond this year.

The first battle took place on March 31 at the Patriot’s home field in Fairfax, Va., at which time the Hoyas were helped by an offensive explosion en route to an emphatic 16-9 victory. It was an all-round effort from top to bottom for the Georgetown offense that put up a staggering 19 hits, but catcher

Nick Collins stood out even amidst the offensive parade.

With 5 hits and 5 runs batted in, the Johnny Bench Award watch-listed catcher put up his most impressive game so far in what has been a most impressive season. The North Carolina product is hitting .370 with an on-base percentage of .433, not to mention 4 home runs, 19 runs batted in, and a .528 slugging percentage. For big number 33, it’s been a dream come true. Collins said, “Ever since I was a little kid it’s been a dream to play college baseball and make it as far with my baseball career as I can.”

Collins will lead the Hoyas back on the field Saturday when they return to action against Stony Brook. The Seawolves are a new foe this year for the Hoyas, and they are a tough group led by 25th-year head coach and 2012 College Baseball Insider Co-National Coach of the Year Matt Senk. Pitching will likely be a key of the series, and the Hoyas find themselves in good hands on that front with junior, Matt Smith, and senior, Matt Hollenbeck leading the charge. The veterans have each thrown over 40 innings for the Hoyas this season, with earned run averages of 2.70 and 3.67 respectively. For both, the key to success has been hard work. Speaking of his time of Georgetown Hollenbeck said, “It’s been a fun ride.”

That ride will continue next Tuesday when the Hoyas have their second face off with Coppin State this year. The Eagles have only managed to tally a mere three wins this season, but the game is nonetheless important for the Hoyas. In the first bout between the two squads, Georgetown went to

Georgetown Voice

Baseball rides into their homestand with a winning record of 16-15.

Baltimore and got the best of the Eagles by a score of 10-4.

In that game, the Hoyas leaned on the depth of their pitching staff Jimmy Swad, Tim Davis, Simon Matthews, Nick Leonard, and David Ellingson all put up solid outings on the hill.

Coming off of the three-game, weekend set with Stony Brook, Georgetown will likely need to stitch together another combination of off-beat pitchers to get through the weekday contest with Coppin State.

Joe o’s Pollicin

It is all the more important for the Hoya pitching staff to get through Coppin State effectively because they will again need to quickly turn around for a pair of tough contests on Wednesday night against the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The strain on the pitching staff will be slightly alleviated by the fact that the games against the Hawks will only be seven-inning contests, but it will nonetheless be a litmus test of the physical and

mental toughness of the pitching staff dealing with a relatively high volume of work in a short time period.

Finally, standing at the end of the Georgetown home stand is the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. This will be the second matchup between the two teams this year, with the first having been recorded as an 8-2 Hoya win. That win came one day after Georgetown’s signature victory this year over No. 12 Virginia.

SPORTS SERMON---

““No, Tiger! Dumb Ass!”- Tiger Woods caught on microphone during his first round at the Masters

I’m a pro wrestling fan.

Whenever I tell people at Georgetown this fact, it seems that I’m met by two very distinct reactions. There’s either total condescension, because many find it difficult to understand that someone who attends Georgetown and also loves watching sports in general would waste their time watching grown men in tights spar in the ring. Or there’s complete excitement, because they themselves are wrestling buffs and are almost ashamed to admit that fact, due to the public shaming that comes with it.

But while my initial statement of dedication may be met with gestures of haughtiness or solidarity, even the most devout of wrestling fans tap out when I go as far as to call wrestling a sport. Even my own dad, who introduced me to the likes of The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin when I was just six years old, completely disagrees.

Wrestling can’t be a sport in their minds. But I have kicked out multiple times from their attempts to pin my argument to the mat and end it once and for all. So after much frustration, especially in recent months due to my rediscovered love for the sport, I have decided to write a column outlining why wrestling is in a fact a sport.

First of all, let me address the singular fact that prevents wrestling from gaining legitimacy in the first place. Yes, wrestling is fake. If you’re a wrestling fan and you do not know that fact by now, I’m sorry to break the disheartening news to you. The winners of the matches are predetermined and the movesets utilized in matches are executed

in a way that attempts to prevent injuries suffered by wrestlers as much as possible. But that should not be a reason to disqualify my argument by hitting it with a steel chair.

A sport, as defined by the reputable dictionary Merriam Webster, is “a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other.”

Arguing that what professional wrestlers do each and every night is not athletic would be like kicking out of multiple RKOs from Randy Orton.

It’s very difficult to do. While all wrestlers possess varying styles, they exhibit qualities of other clearly defined sports.

Some exhibit the aerial abilities of an Olympic gymnast by jumping off the top ropes, while others demonstrate the quickness and brawling nature of a prize fighter. And this athleticism does not come without risk. Despite being done in a way that seeks to mitigate damage, most of these moves have the potential to seriously injure those involved, on both the executing and receiving end. This gets lost in the mainstream narrative that wrestling is fake.

Even executing these moves in the safest way possible still means someone may get hurt.

Now, I understand that the predetermined nature makes competitive wrestling suspect to most outside cynics.

But wrestling is competitive by nature. There can only be one Hulk Hogan or John Cena at any given time. Everyone within the WWE is striving to reach that goal. There’s only so much television time that can be allocated to each match and wrestler. In baseball the

quality of a team’s pitching or offense will affect the likelihood of who wins and loses; wins and losses in wrestling are determined by someone’s characteristics as a wrestler. These qualities include the ability to get a substantial reaction from the crowd of either cheers, if playing a good guy, or boos, if playing a bad guy as well as interview skills and solid in-ring ability. It would not be in WWE’s best interest to make someone who does not possess the expertise in these skills the champion, just as it wouldn’t be good for the Mets to make me their next starting catcher.

Although many will disagree, the most established of sports media outlets agree with my premise. When WWE star, and former UFC Heavyweight Champion, Brock Lesnar made his decision on whether to continue fighting in the squared circle or return to life in the octagon, ESPN devoted significant coverage to the “1 in 22 and 1.” If you’re not a wrestling fan, I could write a whole column describing the significance of that moniker, as Lesnar is the only person to defeat wrestling icon The Undertaker at the sport’s annual Super Bowl equivalent, WrestleMania.

SportsCenter also aired highlights from this year’s WrestleMania.

And while I face one of steepest battles in terms of debates, due to the increased devotion of coverage by ESPN and online outlets such as Bleacher Report, more and more people are starting to respect pro wrestling as a sport.

As The Rock would say, people are smelling what wrestling is cooking.

sports

georgetownvoice.com

Men’s lax continuing momentum KEVIN HUGGARD Last Saturday, the No. 14/13 Georgetown men’s lacrosse team (8-4, 3-1 Big East) put on a show for its former members who returned for Alumni Day, winning 17-8 against Villanova (5-6, 0-3 Big East) at Multi-Sport Field.

The victory clinched a spot in the Big East Conference Tournament for the Hoyas, a competition they missed out on last year.

The Hoyas had not beaten the Wildcats since 2011, but an offensive outburst led by the team’s seniors proved too much for the visitors to handle. Senior attack Reilly O’Connor paced the home team with five goals— tying his career high—and added 1 assist. For his performance, O’Connor was named the Big East Offensive Player of the Week. It was the sixth time in his career that O’Connor has earned some kind of weekly Big East honors, but the first which saw him take home Offensive Player of the Week. Equalling O’Connor’s six points was his senior attack partner Bo Stafford, who scored twice while providing four assists.

After a back and forth opening period to the game, the Hoyas held a 4-2 lead. In the second quarter, the home team would break it open. With 13:44 remaining in period, senior midfielder Joe Bucci scored his first goal of the game to put his team up 5-2. He would add a second soon after, as his play sparked a 5-1 run which gave the Hoyas

Things are looking up for Georgetown basketball. Georgetown junior guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera opted to return for his senior season after initially declaring for this June’s NBA Draft. The Hoyas got past their March stigma by defeating a double-digit seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008 this past season.

And now the Hoyas can point to good news off the court.

According to Sports Media Watch, an outlet that tracks television ratings for professional and college sports, the television ratings for the Georgetown men’s basketball team increased from last year. Georgetown’s 25 nationally televised games this past regular season averaged 261,880 viewers. During the 2013-14 season, which

– backdoorcut – chris almeida’s TRI-weekly column about sports

Drinking from the river jordan

GEORGETOWN SPORTS INFORMATION

Men’s Lacrosse clinched a spot in the BIg East Tournament with their win against Villanova. an insurmountable 9-2 lead over their opponents.

The Hoyas took a 9-4 lead into the half, but the Wildcats scored quickly after the beginning of the third quarter, cutting the margin to only three goals.

The home then put the game beyond any doubt, scoring four straight goals on the way to the 17-8 victory.

After a hugely successful week which saw him named the Big East Defensive Player of the Week and United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA) Defensive Player of the Week, freshman goalie Nick Marrocco again delivered for the Hoyas, recording 18 saves in the effort. His USILA honor was the first time a Hoya has earned that distinction during Head Coach Kevin Warne’s tenure at Georgetown. This week, Marrocco was named to the Big East Weekly Honor Roll, the third consecutive week in which he has picked up some sort of conference honors. His 13.18 saves

per game average leads the Big East, and is the third-best mark in the country.

The Hoyas’ defense contributed as well, forcing 11 of Villanova’s 17 turnovers. Sophomore defender Michael Mayer gave a strong showing, forcing three turnovers and picking up three ground balls.

After their loss Denver (9-2, 3-0 Big East), the Hoyas entered the game against the Wildcats ranked No. 17 and in danger of falling out of the rankings if they acquired another loss.

With the win against ‘Nova, however, Georgetown moved to No. 14 in this week’s coaches’ poll. The victory also moves the Hoyas into the Top 10 in the RPI rankings, a tool used heavily by the NCAA when it comes time to determine seedings for the NCAA Tournament.

On Saturday, the Hoyas travel to Charlottesville to take on No. 9/10 Virginia (8-4, 0-3 Atlantic Coast Conference). Faceoff is set for 1 p.m.

Men’s hoops TV ratings increase JOE POLLICINO

the georgetown voice | 7

saw the Hoyas fail to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2009, the Hoyas averaged 222,654 viewers. The most watched regular season telecast was the Hoyas’ Dec. 28 game against Indiana at Madison Square Garden, which drew 1.25 million viewers on ESPN2.

The highest rated game on the Fox Sports 1, which broadcasts the majority of Georgetown games, was their Jan. 24 game against Marquette, drawing in 233,000 viewers.

On March 5, the Voice published a feature regarding how the new Big East has affected Georgetown athletics, including the men’s basketball program, both competitively and financially. The feature showed that television ratings for the men’s basketball team dropped significantly between the 201213 season, when the Big East’s

games were primarily broadcast on ESPN, and the 2013-14 season, the first year of a 12year $500 million contract between Fox Sports 1 and the Big East Conference.

Georgetown Athletic Director Lee Reed is pleased with the higher television ratings.

“We’re pleased with having FOX as our broadcast partner. As a member of the Big East and because of FOX, every Georgetown basketball game is televised nationally,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Voice. “The addition of two national FOX games this year, as well as cross promotion by the network through other sports such as the NFL and UFC, are also a plus. We remain confident that Fox Sports 1 will continue to grow in the coming years and we appreciate the partnership.”

Individual sports struggle without household names.

Golf is struggling right now.

Tiger Woods was transcendentally great during his heyday, but now, he isn’t even great compared to the men competing with him. For much of the last two decades, Tiger Woods drove golf. He was the show. I remember watching an interview with Phil Mickelson in the mid-2000’s, after Lefty had recently won a major title. Mickelson was asked something along the lines of “Are you the best golfer in the world?” But even Mickelson, an athlete at the top of his sport had to yield. “It’s Tiger’s world, we’re just living in it,” he replied.

That dominance is what made golf interesting to the average person. An intricate game played for the most part by the very rich, golf is difficult to understand. It moves slowly. Coverage jumps between different holes and athletes.

And even when something amazing happens, it is muted in the eyes of the general public. Anybody can see why Odell Beckham Jr.’s back-bending catch on Sunday Night Football was amazing, but fewer can understand why a 70-foot put on a wildly sloped green is exceptional. An exceedingly great individual can solve these problems.

Enter-21-year old Jordan Spieth. Spieth, after finishing second at the 2014 Masters, took home the Green Jacket at the 2015 edition tied for the lowest score in history with none other than Tiger Woods, who shot 18-under at Augusta in 1997 at the age of 21. The parallels are eerie, and have been noted by everybody who pays any attention to golf-but understandably so.

Spieth, for better or worse, is being marked as Woods’ second coming. In a sport ruled by veterans, the Texan is dominating while only in his third decade of life.

I don’t know what Spieth will become. The sporting world has seen early bloomers fail before, but Michelle Wie and Freddy Adu hardly proved anything on their respective playing fields. What brought those two to their positions on the covers of magazines was not achievement, but hype, excitement about unproven

potential. Spieth has certainly proven himself. He has, at my age, already accomplished what most professionals cannot in their entire careers.

If Spieth manages to continue his winning ways, he could bring mainstream excitement back to golf. Tiger was exciting because he was invincible. He was a new phenomenon. Tiger was a young kid who fist-pumped in a sport where most simply tipped their hats. He was an athlete in a sport filled with men who looked like anything but. It will be impossible for Spieth to revolutionize the sport in the way that Tiger did. A good comparison can be found in the NBA: no matter what LeBron James does, he will never have the cultural impact that Michael Jordan had.

Greatness is not simply about winning, it is also about timing. But just because golf’s golden age is fading along with Woods, doesn’t mean that Spieth can’t make the game exciting again. Everybody should be rooting for the Texan to succeed in his career.

If Spieth fades into the background, and majors continue to get swallowed up by a committee of narrative-less, unexciting golfers, the sport will fail to have a great storyline. In individual sports, the most interesting ages come from great rivalries or the field struggling to catch a single man who seems to be bulletproof. The latter is the storyline that golf thrived on until Woods’ fall from grace.

Honestly, golf audiences were spoiled by Tiger, and to have another Woods-esque figure rise so quickly would not simply be unlikely, but also unreasonable to expect. But the fact of the matter is, it seems like Jordan Spieth is headed the right path.

As fans, in Spieth, we may be getting much more than we deserve, but nevertheless, if you like golf, or especially if you don’t care for it, you should be excited, because this could be interesting. Spieth has the ability to renew interest in a sport that has lost its way in the sporting landscape due to Tiger’s poor play. He represents the best hope for American golf’s future and for making every event he enters a must-watch for sports fans.

8 | the georgetown voice

PASSING JUDGEMENT:

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The effects of anonymous By: Lara Fishbane evaluations “I WANT YOU,” reads a long-forgotten sign that still remains affixed to the wall of a Car Barn classroom. This sign, and many others like it, are the last remnants of the Office of the Registrar’s campaign in the fall semester to increase the response rate of student course evaluations.

Although these and other humorous signs, along with advertising efforts, have been successful in raising the number of students who submit course evaluations, they do not inform students of what happens after they press submit.

According to Luc Wathieu, deputy dean at the McDonough School of Business, the biggest misconception among students about course evaluations is that they do not know which faculty members actually have access to the different parts of the evaluation.

Although quantitative evaluations are made available to administrators, deans, department chairs, faculty, and students, only the course instructors have access to the qualitative comments.

The quantitative portion of student course evaluations asks students to evaluate the course by ranking various aspects including the effectiveness of course materials, how stimulating the class is, how much was learned, and overall evaluations of the professor on a scale from 1-5. The qualitative section asks the same questions about material, learning, and the instructor, but allows for students to elaborate on their numbered responses through written comments.

“Students don’t know this, because when I read evaluations, it’s apparent they think they are writing to deans, but they are really only writing to the professor,” Wathieu said. “Only the professors see everything so that they can learn from the comments. They are always very anxious to hear what the students have to say.”

One of these professors is Manus Patten, who has been teaching in the Biology Department at Georgetown for the past four years. Patten teaches three courses per semester and takes the time to read every student comment he receives. “Reading course evaluations actually just takes a lot out of you,” Patten said. “You get hung up on the negative comments and you feel really bad because at the end of the semester, you’re emotionally drained, you’re tired, and you’d like to think you’ve done something good.”

David Lipscomb, a professor in the English department, also takes each student’s individual comments very seriously, especially in evaluating the success of each of his assignments. “More than anything, I want to make sure that every assignment I had was useful in meeting the specific goals I set for the class,” he said. “It’s important to hear directly from students about what worked for them and what didn’t so that I can adjust the assignments when or if I do teach the course again.”

Although Lipscomb thinks that the written comments are helpful for improving his courses, he has found that the numbered scores given by students about the overall quality of the course and instruction aren’t as useful. “I try to look at the more specific questions about the assignments and material covered. If students aren’t rating assignments as highly, that will raise a red flag,” he said.

“But students’ overall ratings of a professor aren’t really helpful. Being liked is a nice thing, but it’s not especially important in terms of what [students] are learning. What evaluations need to get at is how much students are learning.”

Michael Bailey, chair of the government department, similarly uses course evaluations to try to better understand how much students are actually learning in their government courses. “I look at the grades in a course in relation to the amount students have reported to learn,” he said. “If I see high grades, but the amount studied and amount learned are on the low end, then I’ll note that to the faculty just so they know and can improve.”

Bailey, however, does not believe that the course evaluation system is perfect. According to Bailey, faculty should push students to do their best work and they shouldn’t be afraid to tell students when they’re wrong, but the course evaluation system doesn’t allow them to do this. Course evaluations skew the relationship because faculty then are performing a service for students to be evaluated by students. “I worry sometimes that some faculty—maybe their grades get a little higher or they hold back on pushing students because of evaluations,” he said.

“

Reading course evaluations actually just takes a lot out of you,” Patten said. “You get hung up on the negative comments and you feel really bad because at the end of the semester, you’re emotionally drained, you’re tired, and you’d like to think you’ve done something good.

”

According to a faculty survey conducted by the Voice, 81.6 percent of the 38 professor respondents self reported that they have not altered their grading at all due to course evaluation feedback and 63.2 percent have not altered their workload.

Patten has found that the evaluation system isn’t conducive to making worthwhile changes in his teaching. “I have found so little that I have been able to act on,” he said. “I really need context for the negative feedback and getting it anonymously, I don’t

April 16, 2015 know if I can dismiss it as a student disgruntled with his C grade or if it’s a student whose opinion I should value and I should be taking more seriously.”

The Voice’s student survey reveals that 57.9 percent of the 38 student respondents have reported at least once giving a professor lower ratings if they expected to receive a lower grade in a course and 63.2 percent of students have at least once given a professor a higher rating based on receiving a higher expected grade in the course.

According to Patten, the most useful suggestions for improving his course come from one-on-one meetings with students because then he understands the basis for their comments. Therefore, at the end of each semester, he has meetings with students and teaching assistants to ask about how effective his teaching methods were.

Lipscomb also suggested changing the timing of course evaluations in order to improve their usefulness. He explained that end of the semester evaluations have value when a professor teaches the same course year after year and really wants to refine it, but that adding evaluations throughout the semester in order to make course adjustments would be more beneficial to the students currently enrolled.

Lipscomb then added that he would also find it helpful for gauging learning if evaluations were conducted several years or semesters after a student completes a course to keep track of how much information students retain from the course. “We also don’t talk about transfer, how much material transfers,” he said. “I would love to see how transferrable was the knowledge [students] gained, how much they used it in subsequent courses.”

Patten identified biases inherent to the anonymous course evaluation system. He believes that responses are often biased by outside factors that have nothing to do with the quality of instruction.

“The difference between negative and positive feedback so often has to do with popularity, likability, and these kinds of things,” he said. “I think I benefit from a lot of the biases that these evaluations reveal.

I’m a young, tall, white, male. I don’t get evaluated in the same way that my colleagues do who don’t have those same features.”

Wayne Davis, chair of the philosophy department, has noticed that female professors within his department are attacked in their evaluations in ways that their male counterparts are not. “Female teachers get some of the most hideous comments—about their dress, about their appearance in class, how hot they are or not,” Davis said.

Benjamin Schmidt, a history professor at Northeastern University, recently published an interactive chart online, which reveals unconscious gender biases in professor ratings on Rate My Professors. His findings reveal that women teachers are not only more commonly referred to as “bossy” and “aggressive,” but also are more “ugly” and “mean.”

Interim dean of the School of Foreign Service James Reardon-Anderson acknowledged the potential danger of anonymous student evaluations and explained that this is why student comments are available only to the individual faculty member. “Some of the evaluations can be quite impolite,” Reardon-Anderson said. “When it’s anonymous, some students use poor judgment and there is an inclination to protect faculty just as we try to protect students from deleterious comments.”

On the other hand, Reardon-Anderson also acknowledged the potential benefits of a more transparent system, saying that direct student feedback to department chairs or deans would give students more of a voice in their course evaluations.

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georgetownvoice.com

Professor Survey

How helpful are course evaluations for improving your teaching methods and course content/structure?

10.5%

21.1%

18.4%

42.1%

not at all helpful

7.9% very helpful

Have you altered how you grade due to course evaluation feedback? not at all

5.3% 2.6% 10.6%

I have changed my grading slightly I have changed my grading moderately I have changed my grading significantly

81.6%

Have you altered the material covered in your course due to course evaluation feedback?

yes

39.5%

no

60.5%

Student Survey

I give professors low ratings if I expect to receive a lower grade in the course.

Never 36.8% Rarely 18.4%

28.9% Sometimes Often 15.8% Always 0.0%

Do you fill out course evaluations?

5.3% 2.6%

15.8%

Never Rarely Sometimes

50.0% 23.6%

Often Always

The current course evaluation system is a good way of evaluating courses and instructors.

5.3%

2.6%

strongly disagree

2.6% 36.8%

52.6%

strongly agree

According to University Registrar John Q. Pierce, allowing for anonymous responses gives students a non-punitive forum for providing feedback on courses and their professors. Students are able to give open responses and faculty can choose whether or not to respond to them—both without punishment. He suggests that best way to minimize biases within the current system is to increase the participation rate so that data is not heavily skewed by the extremes.

Parnia Zahedi (COL ’15), the president of the College Academic Council, explained that the academic council’s role in course evaluations is to encourage more students to participate. The College Academic Council joins the registrar in sending out email blasts every semester requesting students to give their feedback.

“Back when we had written evaluations, participation was nearly 100 percent because students had to fill out a form in class,” Pierce said. Since switching to the online system five years ago, participation rates among students have fallen to between 60 and 70 percent. “For this process to be reliable, the response rate really has to be over seventy percent,” Pierce said.

“The validity of our data depends on it.”

Chair of the Main Campus Executive Faculty Ian Gale said that he has recently assembled an ad-hoc panel of professors, which met for the first time on March 30, to understand different biases that affect the course evaluation system at Georgetown. Studies at other universities have noted correlations between evaluation scores and the professor’s age and the grades awarded in a course. “If you have a younger professor and higher grades in a course, then the evaluations are going to be higher,” Gale said. “But it’s unclear whether the students are learning more or if younger teachers are just teaching to the test.”

According to a preliminary analysis recently conducted by the Office of the Provost at Georgetown over the past few months, there are already a few factors that clearly affect evaluations at Georgetown.

“We found that courses with high mean grades usually generated higher evaluations of the instructor,” Provost Robert Groves wrote in an email to the Voice.

“We further found that small-enrollment courses tend to generate higher student evaluations.”

Groves wrote that continual analysis of the course evaluation process over time and across departments and schools is helpful in terms of understanding how to improve the system and change its design in the future.

“This is important because raises depend on these results and so do rank and tenure decisions,” Gale said. “Our goal is to make more information available so you know that you’re treating people fairly in these big decisions.”

Administrators, department chairs, and deans use the quantitative course evaluations in merit review, the annual performance review of faculty, which affects their salaries, tenure and promotion cases, and adjunct re-hiring decisions.

“From an administrator’s point of view, when we assess the performance [of a faculty member], we’re pretty much looking at those questions that give an overall evaluation of the faculty member and that indicate the availability of the faculty member,” Reardon-Anderson said. “Those are the most crucial areas.”

The other questions on the evaluation are useful, Reardon-Anderson said, but when evaluating faculty, the most important thing is to make sure that faculty members are good instructors who available to their students.

Ori Soltes, a full-time non-tenure line faculty in the theology department, however, does not think

the georgetown voice | 9 that evaluations have any impact at all on tenure decisions. “My sense is that student input isn’t taken as seriously as the university would like to pretend it is,” he said.

“A number of years back, I had applied for the full-time tenure line Jewish studies position in my department. … My classes were packed, overflowing, over registered, my evaluations were superb, my recommendations were superb, I had students without my even knowing it who wrote letters to my department, but I did not get the position,” Soltes said.

“It had nothing to do with evaluations, well with anything really, except what the then chair thought was the wise thing to do for the department. He knew that if I didn’t get the position, I would stick it out and I did.”

Wathieu asserts that, in the MSB, research is the most important thing for faculty members seeking a promotion. “We want thoughtful professors who contribute and are not just diffusing knowledge, but also creating it. We want professors to be passionate about a particular topic,” he said. “But, if a professor has consistently low ratings and is not teaching well, it becomes a problem. Anyone who gets promoted must also be a good teacher. Usually, good researchers are good teachers.”

According to Davis, professors in the philosophy department spend the first few years learning and improving based on their evaluations so that by the time they’re up for tenure, they are good professors. Following that, Davis said, professors usually maintain their high evaluations.

“

My sense is that student input isn’t taken as seriously as the university would like to pretend it is

”

Even after faculty are tenured, Reardon-Anderson said that administrators still analyze the evaluations carefully to make sure that professors are performing at the highest level. “Administrators pay very close attention to the results,” he said. “They continue to review tenure professors, but it’s especially important for adjuncts.”

Adjunct professors represent 42 percent of all faculty at Georgetown’s main campus, according to Director of Media Relations Rachel Pugh. “Adjuncts are hired one semester at a time,” Reardon-Anderson added. “You want to always check up on them to make sure your department is hiring the best adjuncts.”

Soltes, however, argues that these crucial decisions aren’t actually based on evaluations. Rather, he argues that they are made on the basis of how large course enrollment is and the overall needs or the department. “If they’re eager not to rehire an adjunct, then they might bring up negative course evaluations, but as far as I can tell, you can have glowing evaluations that go completely ignored,” he said.

Reardon-Anderson contends that administrators do in fact matter. “When I was a program director, I either did or did not renew faculty on the basis of evaluations so I can tell you firsthand that they do matter,” he said. “Students here can have a big impact and I’m not sure that they know this.”

According to Zahedi, when students don’t fill out their course evaluations, they’re missing an important opportunity to have their voices be heard by faculty. “I do wish that more students were taking time to fill out their evaluations because not only are professors reading them, but deans and administrators are paying attention to them as well,” she said. “What we say on them is more important than we think.”

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10| the georgetown voice

APRIL 16, 2015

Georgetown University Concert Choir: Bringing Mozart Bach SABRINA KAYSER For many Georgetown students, McNeir Auditorium is a bit of an enigma. Aside from the occasional lecture or small performance, it’s a space that often sits empty during the day. On Monday and Wednesday evenings, however, the space fills with the sound of student voices as the Georgetown University Concert Choir gathers for their weekly rehearsals.

As members of Concert Choir, one of the three choral music groups sponsored by the Department of Performing Arts, students have the opportunity to hone their vocal technique. Under the tutelage of

“I think people join because they want to sing really good music. We sing Mozart. It doesn’t get much better than that,” baritone and President of the Concert Choir Anebi Adoga (COL ‘16) said. “Mozart, Brahms, Bach—we sing some of the most critically acclaimed music ever written.”

The singers have nothing but praise for Director Binkholder. “You have a director-instructor who really, really cares about bringing the best out of each individual person, so you end up sounding way better than you ever thought you could,” Adoga said.

Professor Binkholder’s students appreciate not only his musical instruction, but also the concern he shows them as individuals. He “always makes sure that we are feeling well as people and not just pupils,” alto Rosa Cuppari (SFS ‘17) said.

Additionally, Professor Binkholder stresses the importance of art as part of being a well-rounded person. “What I want to give them is the space to allow art to be in their lives, because I think that that’s a perpetual goal, not just a collegiate idea, I want it to be a lifelong goal,” he said.

The director has many goals for the choir. “I’ve tried to take it back it GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY CONERT CHOIR back to its original thought of doing

their director Frederick Binkholder, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, the choir has had the opportunity to perform masterpieces from musical history in locations on and off campus, ranging from Gaston Hall to St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Baltimore to the Verizon Center.

Students join the choir, which counts as a one-credit course, for many reasons.

“It’s very nice to meet people who share your interests,” soprano Xinlan Hu (COL ‘18) said.

For alto Rosa Cuppari (SFS ‘17), “it’s been a place to just de-stress and let go after working hard all week while still creating beautiful works.”

singing about hellfire—and still smiling

UNDERTHECOVERS

major works,” he said. According to Binkholder, one of strengths of a program like the choir is that it allows students to not only see grand works of art and to look at them from an intellectual sense, but to also get a chance to perform them.

During their final concert of the semester on Sunday, the Choir plans to perform Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor in Dahlgren Chapel—a complex and ornate piece the famous composer never finished due to his untimely death. A requiem is a funeral mass, and the challenge in performing Mozart’s piece lies not in the work itself, which is relatively straightforward for the voice, but rather in capturing the intense emotion of such a heavy work. Such a challenging piece is only done through a group effort. “You could never imagine doing this work on your own. It was a group effort, and it enabled you to be involved in the creation of a masterpiece, which was wonderful,” Hu said.

Every year, in addition to concerts that feature bigger musical works, the choir performs Christmas carols at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center during the holiday season. Last December, the group held its fourth annual charity concert for the Lom-

bardi Center which raised about $500 for cancer research.

Adoga reflected on the experience of singing at Lombardi.

“What was really touching was in the beginning when we could see some people who were there waiting starting to sing along. Family members, some patients too, singing along with us,” he said. “It was really emotionally heavy, very inspiring as well. Heartbreaking, but kind of in a good way, that we were able to help these people find joy in these difficult situations.”

Moving forward, Professor Binkholder hopes to make further integrate service into the choir’s schedule. “[It gives] the students a chance to latch onto something greater than themselves, and I think that seeing that would be a really nice goal for the ensemble. We do it a little bit, but I would like to make it a structural part,” he said.

When asked about his favorite part of being director, Professor Binkholder smiled. “I love the absolute brilliance of my students,” he said. “They keep me on my toes … it keeps me young.”

Dahlgren Chapel April 19, 3 p.m.

Free

Persuing the persistence of memory

A bi-weekly column about books by James Constant Memory is a fickle aspect of our lives. Vibrant memories can provide a level of certainty to conceptions of self, but they also hold painful details that sour relationships and cement hatred. Amnesia can erase old resentments and bring enemies together.

Does forgetfulness excise people’s true selves, or does it permit them to eclipse pasts they would rather not remember? Kazuo Ishiguro asks this question in The Buried Giant, his first novel since 2005’s Never Let Me Go. A novelist that defies easy categorization, Ishiguro has leapt from the ever-so-slightly sci-fi boarding school setting of his last book to full-on swords and sorcery in the post-Roman wasteland of an England divided between native Britons and Saxon migrants.

Ogres, pixies, knights, and dragons enter the picture, but similarities to Tolkien are few—this is not a tale of good and evil, nor one riddled

with thrilling battles. A frail, elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off from their tiny village in hopes of finding their son, who left them after an incident neither protagonist can remember. They can’t recall much, for that matter, nor can anyone else in the land. A fog, believed to emerge from the breath of a mighty she-dragon, has robbed Britain’s inhabitants of their memories. The pair is joined on their journey by an aging knight who served under King Arthur, a Saxon warrior on a cryptic quest, and a peasant boy with a mysterious wound that refuses to heal.

The fog that coats the land also seems to have taken the ability to have normal, fluid conversations away from every character. Axl and Beatrice speak like children to each other, with Beatrice often exhibiting the mental capacity of an infant in her stilted sentences. Axl’s insistence on referring to his wife only as “princess” is grating, and everyone

else speaks in a kind of indistinct ye-olde English that’s easy to mock.

Ishiguro’s writing of individual sentences and scenes is anything but elegant. There are few, if any, passages worth underlining, and little sensuous texture in this world of rolling hills and forests. The art of the beautifully-written page can’t be found here. The book is more concerned with making a statement when taken in its entirety.

The Buried Giant is strange, somewhat awkward, even aimless, especially in its early chapters. Axl and Beatrice’s trek appears utterly foolish, as neither one remembers where their son lives, his name, or any defining feature about him. But the longer they stick around, a magical sort of sadness grows around them, something that permeates every event the pair bumbles their way into. This is a depressing book, and unrelentingly so—its characters so caught within the mist sur-

rounding them that they lose any knowledge of pleasant times before the forgetting began. A monastery that seems pleasant at first glance holds shockingly gruesome secrets; a trusted soldier’s quest is revealed to be genocidal. Such are the things in store for the reader. Their horrors are left to fester, unexplained and unanalyzed by Ishiguro, who draws his world over a canvas crusted with old bloodstains.

The mist, it is revealed, is the work of man (or a wizard, as it is), an enforced forgetting of a crime so terrible that King Arthur decided that any memory of it would plunge the country back into bloodshed.

Should old wounds be reopened in for the sake of truth and reconciliation, or will the consequences be too great? The same question applies to Axl and Beatrice’s long relationship, as they anxiously wonder whether the loss of their memories has strengthened their love into some

thing irrational and unbreakable. At the end of the novel, the sadness of the answer is almost unbearable.

The Buried Giant weaves its strands of plot and allegory to a finish that is among the most haunting I’ve ever read. The novel’s weight comes from its power to move and to question, not in its clumsy prose.

Love, shielded from pain, is a lie, Ishiguro posits, and the slow, somber march towards emptiness over the last five pages is tremendously affecting. Axl and Beatrice’s constant doubts and ruminations on the nature of their love, once bothersome, evoke an inconsolable melancholy.

As husband and wife trundle along their long path, Beatrice, walking in front, would often call out, “Are you still there, Axl?” He always is, until he remembers.

Remember the past with James at jcc286@georgetown.edu

georgetownvoice.com

“I DON’t wanna die at james franco’s house.” — this is the end

the georgetown voice | 11

Paper beats canvas at NGA Maxime a treat for student bourgeoisie MIKE BERGIN

An abstract splatter of colors next to an impressionist portrait sounds like the formula for a disorganized mess of an exhibit. But the latest exhibit at the National Gallery, Focus on the Corcoran: Works on Paper, 1860-1990, proves that the combination might not be as ridiculous as you would expect. The collection is a compilation of a diverse and varied range of works commonly tied together only by the surface on which they were created, paper.

Normally, putting such a variety of works on the same walls would create a loud and flashy incoherence.

But despite the ambitious chronological span and wide range of mediums featured in the collection, there is a subtle modesty to the collection as a whole. I say this because it is hard to believe that such a large scope of works are tucked away in the small, two-room gallery space.

The neutral green walls and soft lighting add to the soothing aesthetic of this art series. Despite being surrounded by some of the most iconic artwork of the last two centuries, one cannot help but feel a calm sense of permanence to these drawings, prints, and watercolors. Era upon era of art is represented like a travel through art history: realism turns to impressionism falling slowly into the modern and avant-garde.

The first, slightly larger room of the exhibit houses a series of works created over the course of the 19th century. Upon entering the first phase of the gallery, I was first drawn to a work by John Singer Sargent, “Male Torso with Pole.” Although ornately framed, the work is clearly an unfinished sketch. Quick lines and half finished details capture the central male figure’s muscular physique. The simplicity of this sketch makes it so powerful, for the only focus is on the strength of the human form.

James McNeill Whistler’s “The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore” and a cluster of similar works immediately follow. Stylistically, all three are slightly abstracted to give the viewer a more dream-like perspective. It is interesting to recognize that these works, being separated greatly by time and style, would never be seen together elsewhere. And yet, they fit perfectly in the context of the gallery.

Whilst circling the room, I arrived at two beautiful Winslow Homer watercolors, “Young Woman Sewing” and “Hudson River Logging.” Knowing Homer’s style, these are fascinating choices because of their larger than life characteristics.

It is refreshing to see Homer’s take on a portrait with an undefined background and a broad-stroked, upbeat watercolor, rather than his usual landscape pieces. “Hudson River Logging” is a surreal combination of washedout colors that emphasizes feeling over detail.

“Drawing for Ghost Dance” by Robert Stackhouse pulled me into the second room of the gallery. This painting is substantially larger than all the other pieces in the gallery and therefore pulls viewers into the rest of the exhibit. The drawing of a sculpture has beautiful watercolor detail while intentionally left with certain flaws.

The colors seem to fade along the edges and dilute until they have vanished. Its more rustic nature aids the inviting surprise of rounding the corner to find a long-spanning range of modern art.

The rest of the room features, among other works, William H. Johnson’s warm “Street Musicians” and the eerie “#4 Creek” by Arthur Dove.

Johnson’s work emphasizes extreme two-dimensionality. Simple figures and basic coloring are intentionally left without depth so that the figures have folk-esque, common charm.

Dove’s piece is something completely different—an abstract charcoal left greatly to the viewers interpretation. The alluring descent from light into dark draws the viewer towards the center of the drawing as if traveling down a creek. Stepping back, one can see less literal imagery similar to that of Georgia O’Keefe. Again, these works can feel incoherent at first glance, yet feature a similar use of light and color, despite their divergent content.

Each piece of the exhibit is excellent in itself, inviting museum goers to spend hours examining the intricacies of each one. But the works are compiled together, their combined effect generates sheer awe.

National Gallery of Art 6th Streeet and Constitutional Avenue Feb. 7 - May 3

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

ZOE SUN

If there’s one thing that all Georgetown students learn about the neighborhood, it’s that restaurants on M Street are usually pretty good, but also pretty expensive. It is because of this that when I entered Maxime, the latest addition to the Georgetown dining scene, I prepared my wallet for the monetary beating that was sure to come from its tantalizing French fare. But quite to my delight, my expectations proved unfounded.

Located at the far end of M Street, Maxime has an unassuming outward appearance. The decor of the restaurant is inspired by the French Revolution, with flags and portraits from that era hanging on the wall. With a fireplace and warmhued lighting, the ambiance of Maxime is cozy and seductive, ideal for a casual date or a relaxed group dinner.

The menu is short and simple, with a huge emphasis on the “La Formule,” a prix fixe menu offering warm baguette with butter, mixed green salad, and a choice of steak, salmon, or vegetables with fries on the side. The rest of the menu focuses almost exclusively on mussels, which can be enjoyed with eight different types of sauce. The wine and beer selection is extensive, while the non-alcohol beverage offering was somewhat limited.

The baguette is clearly freshly baked, but the butter that came with it is cold and hard to spread. The salad, however, is mixed and tossed with a perfect amount of ranch dressing that makes the dish light

Do you hear the people sing for pomme FRITES? but satisfying. Yet the true winner among the appetizers is the French Onion soup.

With two slices of gruyere cheese melted on top, the soup is flavorful with a balanced texture of smoothness and chunkiness from the soaked bread. A bit on the heavy side, the soup could very well be enjoyed as a main dish.

The ultimate highlight of the meal is definitely the steak. Medium-rare and medium-well are both executed to perfection; the “secret sauce” that comes with the dish had a citrus taste, one that is unexpected, but actually paired well with the steak. The salmon is fresh and prepared with great care. The skin’s crispy, flavorful, and fatty execution produces just the right balance. It is garnished with the same “secret sauce”, whose citric taste also pairs harmoniously with the tender fish.

Dessert at Maxime is a must. Their Moelleux Au Chocolat is presented in a

MAXIMEDC

white ramekin with a scoop of ice cream on the side. Its opposing textures and flavors—firm and smooth, warm and cool, sweet and bitter—complements each other perfectly, presenting a delicious, yet not overly cloying, decadence.

When the bill came at the end of my meal, I was expecting an exorbitant price for the amount and quality of the food that I just enjoyed. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find quite the opposite. The prices at Maxime were surprisingly reasonable: the threecourse “La Formule” cost less than $20.

With prices like that, Maxime is a delightfully revolutionary change from the expected exquisite yet expensive M street cuisine.

2915 M Street N.W. Open daily from 4 p.m. - 11 p.m. maximedc.com

Kuniyoshi captures intersectionality CAITLIN CAIN

At almost 17, Yasuo Kuniyoshi migrated alone to the United States. Though he is considered an esteemed American artist—spending his career in Los Angeles and New York—Kuniyoshi was never allowed to become an American citizen.

Despite this fact and the Pearl Harbor era he lived in, Kuniyoshi was incredibly pro-American, and his artistic style is an amalgamation of East and West.

The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the American Art Museum features 66 of Kuniyoshi’s works—including Kuniyoshi’s complete set of self-portraits.

The works featured in this collection are all oil paintings or black ink drawings.

While the oil paintings are traditionally Western, the black ink drawings are a reminder of Kuniyoshi’s Eastern roots. His art comes in three stages, paralleling the human experience. His early art is filled with youth, optimism, and images of children. During his second and more worldly period, his art hints at an ungraspable sophistication. Finally, his late work is fixated on disillusionment and demise.

The opening piece of the exhibit is “Self-Portrait of a Photographer”—a strong piece completed in oil that asserts Kuniyoshi’s Okayama heritage. His cheekbones are exaggerated, his skin pale white with no hint of pink, his eyes stylized. The second self-portrait in this exhibition, “Self-Portrait of a Golfer,” features Kuniyoshi posed like a samurai yielding a golfclub. The painting is large and confronta-

“Adam, what the heck are you doing down there?” tional—a second assertion of identity. The third self-portrait, however, is unassuming. It was painted in the middle of World War II and is modest, smaller and less confrontational. The final self-portrait is simply titled “Self Portrait,” done by the teenage Kuniyoshi. The portrait is playful, and Kuniyoshi is featured with a curled mustache and John Lennon glasses.

Kuniyoshi’s tendency to paint untraditional subjects also plays a fascinating role in the exhibition. For instance, this exhibition features the oil paintings “Little Boy Stealing Fruit” and “Little Joe with Cow.” These subjects are unique in the world of art, and the images capture peculiar moments in life. Kuniyoshi is certainly not a “still-life-with-fruit” or a “Madonna-with-Child” kind of artist.

Even in his black ink drawings, like “The Calf Doesn’t Want to Go,” a dreamlike feeling is unavoidable. The

AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

piece is a landscape floating in space; a closer view shows the intricate style and delicate touches of fine lines scratched into the ink—a tactile technique that shows Kuniyoshi’s physical engagement with his work, immersed in his own world of dreams.

Kuniyoshi’s art transcends Eastern and Western cultural divisions, and it leaves the viewer with the feeling of a kaleidoscopic heart—in touch with the beauty of all of humanity. Wandering through this exhibit felt much like reading a good book. I even have the feeling Kuniyoshi is the Murakami of the art world, and this exhibit is his 1Q84—his crowning achievement—evoking in us the irrevocable sentimentality of passing time.

American Art Museum 8th and F Streets, N.W. Open daily from 11:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m.

leisure

12 | the georgetown voice

APRIL 16, 2015

CRITICAL VOICES

The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ, Merge Records Metal and Satanism, blues and sadness, rap and da club—some music genres and subject matters just seem to go together. With their new album, Beat the Champ, the Mountain Goats attempt an unconventional combination of folk rock and professional wrestling.

Led by guitarist and vocalist John Darnielle, the Mountain Goats successfully use the storytelling format of folk to tell tales of masked

Matt and Kim, New Glow, Harvest Records If music is one big party, Matt and Kim sit at the head of the kids’ table. The dynamic duo has embraced their indie pop identity over the years, producing energetic tracks filled with bubbly lyrics and beats.

While irresistibly catchy, Matt and Kim’s latest album New Glow proves to be nothing new. On this album, Matt and Kim’s upbeat dance anthems still exude their undeniable charm, but lack any sort of growth.

DeadBEATS

warriors and folding-chair brawls.

Songs like “Unmasked!” and “The Ballad of Bull Ramos” take these stories and add a deeper layer underneath, exploring concepts like death and solitude via analogies between these themes and the actions of the wrestling arena.

Given the subject of the album, the lyrics do sometimes wander into the absurd. During “Foreign Object” Darnielle sings, “I personally will stab you in the eye with a foreign object.” However, because of the pleasant nature of his voice, lines like this come across as fun and even comical in nature.

Musically, Beat the Champ oscillates between an acoustic guitar-centered folk rock and an indie rock sound with a more upbeat tempo and use of electric guitar. “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero,” one of the highlight songs of the album, has a strong indie rock vibe, while “Animal Mask” stands out among the folk songs. Occasional songs,

like “Southwestern Territory,” have a calmer, piano-centered folk sound, giving the album a wide array of moods and tempos.

With this mixed bag of styles, there are bound to be a few miscues.

“Hair Match” is a prime example, as it doesn’t offer much musically and drags on a bit too long. Additionally, Darnielle’s voice here sounds a bit off, a problem that pops up on a couple other songs as well.

These minor setbacks are more than worth the exchange for an interesting subject matter and varying musical styles that give the Mountain Goats their own niche in the indie folk genre. And who knows, Beat the Champ’s success may just start a trend that makes folk and wrestling as common a combination as country and pickup trucks.

This album shows that growth isn’t always necessary for a charming and catchy dance tune.

With the use of bouncy keyboard lines and uplifting drumbeats and handclaps, the vibrant pair holds to their signature, spirited style.

Filled with encouraging lyrics and sunshiny attitude, songs like “Not Alone” and “Can You Blame Me” can successfully brighten even the grayest of days.

On “Not Alone,” Matt Johnson’s animated vocals compliment the catchy beat with a reassuring, albeit surface-level refrain, “Hey There / You know / We’re not in this alone.” This peak of the album captures Matt and Kim’s confident and youthful musical glow.

However, in comparison to their past albums, their sound on New Glow feels a bit stagnant. The rest of the album includes slight variations of similarly layered beats, prominently utilizing key-

board and drums with moments of synth weaved in. “Stirred Up” and “See Ya” stray just far enough from the cheerful style of the rest of the tracks to create some musical depth, but they come off as out of place rather than as an innovative, artistic step on their path towards the future.

The fluffy and repetitive lyrics seem to be merely a means to an end for Matt and Kim in putting on a playful show and lifting the spirits of listeners. Matt and Kim have fun with their music, and don’t show any signs of changing that with their latest effort. New Glow may lack something new, but its light and playful notes throughout prove that dancing on the table - even the kids’ table - is always in style.

Voice’s Choices: “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero,” “Unmasked!”

—Jon block

Voice’s Choices: “Not Alone”, “Can You Blame Me” —DINAH fARRELL

CONCERT CALENDAR SATURDAY 4/18 Global Citizen Earth Day National Mall, all day, free

SATURDAY 4/18 Martin Sexton 9:30 Club, 6 p.m., $30

SUNDAY 4/19 Seryn Black Cat, 7:30 p.m., $10

SATURDAY 4/18 Blitzen Trapper Black Cat, 9 p.m., $20

SATURDAY 4/18 The Mowgli’s U Street, 10:30 p.m., $10

MONDAY 4/20 Manic Street Preachers 9:30 Club, 7 p.m., $25

Save the heckling for Ed Nonymous

A bi-weekly column about music by Ryan Greene

If you’re seeing a band at a concert, you should stop heckling. Few things are more annoying to encounter at a show than a fan who heckles a band over and over again.

I understand where band hecklers come from. More often than not, a band heckler clamors to hear his or her favorite song—usually an obvious big hit. Aside from that, band hecklers either try to make a joke or try to say something to get under a band’s skin. In every case, however, band heckling is one of the most disrespectful things a fan can do at a show and can sometimes change the way a band performs forever.

Radiohead famously never plays “Creep” because of how many fans yell and scream for it to be played throughout their concerts. Heckling alienates the band and makes the rest of their music seem less important when they hear fans repeatedly request one single song.

A few weeks ago I saw Taking Back Sunday at 9:30 Club.

For the entirety of the first half of the show, one drunk fan screamed and screamed for the band to play “MakeDamnSure” between every single song. It was distracting and rude, and it clearly bothered frontman Adam Lazzara.

About halfway through the show, during a break between songs, Lazzara heckled back, telling the man to shut up and assured him that “MakeDamnSure” was on its way in the band’s planned setlist.

The heckler should not be decried too much; he just wanted to advocate for his favorite song. But his yelling and complaining is disrespectful and does seems downright ignorant when you consider that Taking Back Sunday was only in the first half of their setlist. He wasn’t yelling for a niche song. He wanted their big hit—obviously the band was probably going to play it.

He should have just been patient and waited until the band chose to deliver.

A band is under no obligation to play their single bit hit at a show, and their decision not to do so does not war-

rant any amount of heckling.

Too many concertgoers feel that their favorite band owes them when it comes to playing fan-favorite songs. They go insane when a band doesn’t play every single song that their fans would desire to hear. Not only does that disrespect the wishes of the band, it is a selfish and unrealistic way to think about a concert performance.

Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem’s frontman, has written about dealing with fan heckling. Tired of exhaustive requests for Bruce Springsteen covers and being told to “shut up and play,” Fallon addressed fan hecklers in a post on the band’s website last July.

“Don’t come to hear a cover, it probably won’t happen,” Fallon wrote. “Don’t come to yell at me when I’m trying to share something with the audience to reach out to them about something I feel is moving me.”

Fallon goes on to write that any particular Gaslight Anthem show will have its own unique set list, and that fans shouldn’t go in with any lofty expectations about the show.

When someone buys a ticket to a band’s show, they’re not paying for a specific set of songs.

They’re paying to see the band go up on stage and do whatever they want for an hour or two.

The band reserves the right to decide what songs to play and how many breaks they’ll take between songs.

Fan heckling is born from the misconception that bands owe something to their fans when they perform for them.

The only thing they owe fans is an honest, energetic attempt to entertain them. That doesn’t include any particular song, and it certainly does not give a fan the right to dictate when a band can and can’t take a break between songs to talk to their fans.

In the end, when a fan yells and requests a band to play a song, they are essentially saying they don’t trust the band’s judgement. It’s a selfish way to act. Concerts are about fans interacting with a band’s presentation to them.

Heckle Ryan’s band at rcg63@ georgetown.edu

georgetownvoice.com

PAGE THIRTEEN

the georgetown voice |13

– Dylan Cutler

voices

14 | the georgetown voice

APRIL 16, 2015

An open letter to all incoming students: Viva Casa Latin@ KEVIN RUANO My piece is a cry to decolonize; to blatantly deface and dismantle the structures on this campus that alienate by telling us that we cannot be proud of our working poor background, our accents, and our black and brown skins; to realize that there is no shame.

We need not a degree, or an acceptance letter from an affluent and predominantly white institution to give us our worth. Our stories and struggles— those that we demand a space for—are the true foundation of our beauty.

This letter is our affirmation that this campus cannot ignore, for we, just like those who came before—indios, slaves, campesinos, obreros, immigrants—endure.

To those newly admitted, Jack the Bulldog has a house, on 36th between P and O Street. If I had told my dad, he would smile slightly, and chuckle with his gaze faced down toward the ground.

He’d say, “Mira, tenían razón Los Guaraguao.” Look, The Guaraguao were right.

Guaraguao who sang:

Que alegres viven los perros, en casa del explotador.

Usted no lo va creer Pero hay escuelas de perros Y les dan educación Pa’ que no muerdan los diarios.

Pero el patrón hace años, muchos años Que esta mordiendo el obrero.

How happily the dogs live in the exploiter’s house.

You are not going to believe But there are dog [training] schools That give them education So they don’t to bite the newspapers.

But the boss for years, many years Has been biting the worker.

Pero mira. But look. You, newly admitted. In the Junited Estates—in Georgetown—there are houses for dogs. El Patrón has given el perro, Jack, a multi-million dollar townhouse, as we Latinos beg the university for a

bone—for a house, for a space to express our own.

Can I tell you that the institution, Georgetown, welcomes you, asks you to be open to the diverse experiences of those around you, tells you that you will learn from each other? Do I omit that, when you hear “Spring Break in the Caymans,” see that the Spring Fashion catalogue students put together includes a $200 shirt and a $325 blouse, it might be hard not to feel excluded? Do I spend my last dollar buying that Brooks Brothers shirt, those salmon Polo shorts, Sperry Top-Siders, as if a piece of clothing with some smiling whale is going to mask my accent and brown skin? Or do I fight?

Te digo that even when we get a casa, we will not allow the university to put us on a leash. They tell us not to bite the hand that feeds us. They’ve told ours to be silent in the fields of concrete and green, in their houses, kitchens and offices.

No más. No silence can be afforded. Racism and classism exist even here in this heaven, where white

angelic bodies reign, where capital affords you power and belonging.

Here where John Carroll waits like St. Peter at the gate, admitting you who leave your homes to come to one of the most privileged places in the country.

I’ve had it with the nice talk.

Mijos, mijas, and all y’all, this campus does not have a Casa Latina.

And we need you to be aware.

Don’t get me wrong. Latinos are here. Look at yourselves. Look at how you make up twelve percent of your incoming class.

If you come, there are several here ready to make you feel like you’re at home. But, I want you to know what you are signing up for, when you sign that paper committing yourself to attend this Hilltop. Babosos, la lucha doesn’t stop when you walk through those gates. Beans and rice follow you even though they might taste worse without consomé, at Leos. That lack of salt may assault your identity. I know. There is no place to affirm that tu lucha es mi lucha. Pero con-

fía. It is. There is no space to dialogue, to discuss, and to discover our person: queer, women, men, black, brown, poor, proud and all we are in jumbled Spanglish. Pero confia, we are fighting for a permanent home.

Excitement and fear run through your veins. We’ve been there; feeling alone, leaving those los que nos aman y entienden for those who might not accept us. I want to congratulate you. You’ve made it vos, gotten that letter and probably that financial aid with as many zeros that you didn’t know existed. I’m proud of you, fool. I hope you join us in establishing our presence—let this institution know that our liberation is not based on silence, not on assimilation, but the expression of ourselves and our identity. Demandamos Casa Latina.

KEVIN IS A FRESHMAN IN THE SFS

Helpless in Henle: Lessons learned from a temporary handicap RACHEL ANDERSON My lack of athleticism was never more apparent than a few Saturday nights ago when I gracefully tumbled down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, bruising my pride and breaking my leg. After a hazy four hours in the ER, SafeRides deposited me—splint cast, crutches, and all—on the curb outside of Henle. That first night, it took me about an hour to get from the curb to my bed, and I got my first taste of what the next few weeks would hold.

I admit that prior to this experience, I hadn’t dedicated thought to the issue of disability access at Georgetown. Sure, I have seen my peers with more obvious ability struggles and thought, “Wow, what a tough campus to navigate,” but I never countenanced the possibility that I could have a disability (albeit temporarily) or that navigating the channels of the administration could be more difficult than navigating campus itself.

For me, trying to use crutches to get to class has been a laughable experience. I go up the flight of stairs in my apartment, down two flights to leave my building,

RIVER DAVIS

A VERITABLE LABYRINTH NAVIGATING HENLE WITH A BROKEN LEG IS A NIGHTMARE

up another set, down a couple steps, down the Darnall elevator—and that’s just the routine to leave Henle. From there, going anywhere is exhausting and painful. The crutches tear the skin on my sides; the pain made me ill my first day going back to class after my accident. I have had to give up on attending my favorite class for the rest of the semester simply because it’s located in Car Barn.

When I emailed my dean the day after I broke my leg to ask about accommodations, the only recommendation my dean gave was to get a motorized scooter, even though I am living in a wheelchair inaccessible building.

In utter disbelief, I followed up with my dean and was told that according to the not just him, but also both the Academic Resource Center and Disability Support Services, my best option—and the only option even for students living in ADA inaccessible housing like Village A, Village B, Henle, and university townhouses—was to obtain a wheelchair.

I was given no options for housing or transportation, and no protocol for dealing with a temporary disability. When I asked if I could just get a ride in a golf cart from outside Henle to my classes, I was told that allowing students to ride in golf carts would be a liability.

This denial of such a simple request, in addition to the lack of

support I received, blew my mind.

Though I understand why having injured students in the golf carts could be a liability, I have to wonder: has this situation honestly never arisen before? Did the university purchase those golf carts, used to shuttle around the aged Jesuits and help maintenance workers, and really not think that one day there would be an injured athlete or student who might need to use one?

Given the number of the dormitories on campus that are not ADA accessible, the extensive construction that makes traversing the Hilltop even more difficult than it already is, and the great likelihood that another student might be put in a similar situation as me, it seems ridiculous that the university hasn’t invested the time and energy into contacting their insurance carrier or legal department about covering that liability, or developing any sort of protocol to help students attend their classes when they have trouble getting around.

When my circumstances changed because of an accident for which there is nothing to blame besides my bad luck, Georgetown’s promises of cura personalis went out the window.

Hiding behind bare-minimum legal requirements and shrugging at their own utter lack of forethought does not qualify as “caring for the whole person.” In fact, it falls woefully short.

I do not pretend to understand the struggle of navigating this campus with a permanent or far more serious disability. But if my experience has given me any insight into the bureaucratic nightmare of receiving accommodations, then Georgetown needs to drastically improve the services available to students of every type of ability.

As Disability Support Services is more than happy to point out on their website, the law does not require Georgetown to provide transportation services for students with temporary disabilities, but Georgetown needs to hold itself to something higher than that pathetically low standard. Among the many issues on this campus for which there seem to be no right solutions—inadequate student club funding, the development of a satisfactory campus plan, balancing housing to make students and neighbors happy—I feel that this is one small instance where there’s an easy answer.

Georgetown’s administration has the ability to put concerted effort into making legitimate adjustments to its accommodation policies—for $60,000 a year, the administration can go the extra mile and make Georgetown work for us.

RACHEL IS a SOPHOMORE in the COLLEGE

voices

georgetownvoice.com

THE GEORGETOWN VOICe | 15

Cheat, heckle, and strip: A guide to tabletop gamesmanship JOE LAPOSATA I’ve been an avid tabletop games player since before I can remember. I can thank my dad for this. Since I was just a baby, he taught me how to move the pieces in Monopoly, how to count the points in Scrabble, and most importantly, how to accept defeat with something at least vaguely resembling grace—although I’m still working on that last one.

It was my sister who taught me that it was possible to cheat, when as a six year old, she convinced a four-year-old version of me that “favu” was a type of Egyptian pyramid, and that I

ought not challenge her Scrabble play, marking the last time I’ve ever trusted her. It was my brother who taught me how to cheat well, if for no other reason than that he gave me endless opportunities to practice.

I’m sorry, Mike: I didn’t actually top-deck Monster Reborn all of those times—it was taped under the nightstand. And it was my friend Andrew who taught me that cheating, although easy once you know how, is almost always a less satisfying way to win than skill. I’ve won too many patient games of Risk—turtling in Australia until I swept to sudden victory—to discount the sheer satisfaction of understanding that you

LIZZIE BLUMBERG

THESE PIECES AREN’T WORTH MUCH BUT FRIENDSHIPS HAVE BEEN ENDED OVER LESS

CARRYING ON

played better, harder, smarter than your competitors.

I consider myself an expert in the card-and-board game genre, and in my hearty experience I find that it is often underappreciated at Georgetown, deemed too nerdy by people who don’t consider Cards Against Humanity a tabletop game (which, by definition, it is) and too boring by people who have had a game console for at least ten years. What follows is a dual-purpose guide, meant to provide baptism to the uninitiated and spiritual guidance to those who’ve already embarked on the path to tiny plastic nirvana. Heed my advice (or go directly to jail).

First, let’s explain nomenclature: a tabletop game is a game played by two or more players frequently involving but not limited to: cards, coins, chips, boards, game-specific pieces, alcohol, dirty stories, electric swing music, sex jokes about members present at the table, and dice. This primarily differs from video games in two functions: 1) that the game itself is physically present, and not electronically represented on a screen, and 2) that there is

COMING TO TERMS WITH POP

BY CHRIS ALMEIDA

A ROTATING COLUMN BY SENIOR VOICE STAFFERS

What is good music? I’m not sure I know—but I’m pretty sure you don’t.

I like to think that I know why I choose to listen to my particular selection of music.

Most of the time, I enjoy jazz because, as a performer, it gives me something to emulate or, more realistically, to strive for. Inventive solo lines or bold ensemble sounds inspire me to create whenever I take out my horn or get together with other musicians. But even I have to admit, not everything that I listen to is symbolic or intellectual.

When we talk or write about music, we look at the musical content of a song. Casual listeners enjoy grooves or drops, while more interested or informed

critics look at instrumentation or chord structures. We can all talk about lyrics. The depth of analysis from various music listeners is often varied, but one thing is consistent: we can always talk about what we hear.

Cultural context is much less subjective, but often left unexplored by the masses.

Those who know to look can see the relevance of D’Angelo’s Black Messiah or Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly in light of current events. Both albums are protests of sorts, the latter being a bold depiction of a black man confused about how to feel about his place in the present world.

No matter, music can be (and is often) appreciated through

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a strip-version of the game that doesn’t end in one fully clothed participant, with everybody else naked. Trust me when I say that that gets very weird, very quickly. Sometimes I regret all the hours I spent practicing Halo.

The most important part of playing in a tabletop game is being a good participant, which means that you need to act in your own self-interest.

Again, it’s not fun at all if somebody beats you when you aren’t playing your hardest. This also means that you need to make other players feel bad for screwing you. Let them know that they’re the biggest jerk imaginable—not that this will stop them, but because it will incite them to belittle you and in turn allow you to gain more satisfaction when (if) you win. As the saying goes, “treat others as they have treated you before, because you tricked them into doing so.”

Another aspect fundamental to the game experience is how and when to heckle your opponents. Unless they’re about to flip the table and leave, I can answer these questions: the how is “without mercy,” and the when is “always.” My favorite method— and I’m not making this up—is

aesthetic and historical lenses.

What we don’t talk about often is the manner through which music often has its most prominent impact.

Music can be like a scent; it can transport you to a different place in time and space.

Events in a person’s life often take place with music lingering in the background. This is the strongest emotional pull that music can have. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a piece of exaltation known for centuries for being joyous and hopeful, is a wonder in content, but it has no sentimental place in my life. On the other hand, Radiohead’s OK Computer, the soundtrack for my unfulfilled teenage years, still makes me deeply uncomfortable. Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” still takes me to the garage where my high school band played our music in front of a group of appreciative peers. Would I say that either are musical masterpieces? No. But their impact on me, personally, is often much

stronger than even the most ingenious compositions.

This is how I have come to understand party anthems. It seems inconceivable to me that people could really appreciate much of Taylor Swift’s music for its musical complexity, or lack thereof. Many of her songs sound so similar to me that I have asked “Oh, who sings this?” about the same track over the course of a few hours. Marketing and relatability aside, music such as Swift’s takes people back to a time when they were enjoying themselves will have eternal appeal.

In the end the quality that makes music “good” may not have to do with the actual music at all, but rather its place in a person’s life. No matter how many qualifications I have for a particular song or artist or genre, nothing I can say can force somebody to enjoy a piece of music. Pop music is everywhere, and its constant presence forces its way into the lives of most people who listen

to find an idol of some sort (which in my case, is a 5-pound bag of coffee with a skull on it that I have because shut up i don’t have an addiction, ok?! and, having named it, speak only through it. “Two rocks for a sheep? Well, what does the Satan-baby think? What’s that?

Burn everything? Right, I need at least three rocks.”

Playing board games with my dad are some of my most treasured childhood memories, and I wouldn’t sacrifice them for anything. That’s why it makes me mad when I see such a vivid interpersonal form of contact go underappreciated by such a large swath of campus. So go forth and conquer, Hoyas, and make a point of winning. Unless you’re playing strip Cards Against Humanity, in which case you should lose, and lose fast. Nothing tests friendships quite like seeing how desperate they are to put clothes back on you.

JOE IS a JUNIOR in the COLLEGE

to the radio or go out in public. Most of us don’t choose pop music, it is forced upon us. I’ve been lucky to have many musical experiences, but for many, what they hear by accident is all they know.

The thing about art is that, by its nature, it is completely subjective. All of the musical analysis and historical relevance in the world cannot convince the masses to enjoy a piece of art. People can only hear what they hear. They can only think what they think.

Believe me, I would love to condemn others for having poor taste. I would love to say that those who revel in Top 40 music are objectively disgusting. I would love to take away Spotify privileges from people who dismiss Snarky Puppy but listen to Meghan Trainor. And often, within my means, I do all of these things. But in the end, I can’t give a good reason why their music is any better or worse than mine, because there are factors at play when listening to music that go beyond the sounds playing through everybody’s headphones.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I think most of the beholders are ignorant. But I can’t prove it.

The First Annual

G e o r g e t o w n D ay

CUP

Who: You! [As an individual or group]

What: Collect cups

from Georgetown Day festivities

When: April 25th, 12-4pm

Where: Village A

Community Room, Village B, & Henle

Why: Recycle for cash prizes!

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