The Georgetown Voice, January 21, 2010

VOICE the georgetown

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OBAMA EXCITES KENNEDY CROWD PAGE 4

BENCH PRESS: HOYAS NEED TO STEP UP PAGE 6

HIPSTERS REVOLT! PAGE 10

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w January 21, 2010 w Volume 42, Issue 16 w georgetownvoice.com

a new hoya paranoia

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january 21, 2010

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“Date Lab Georgetown: Reciprocation problems” “Georgetown alum’s non-profit raises money for Haiti’s development” “Fashion Props: Back to School” “Neighbors brainstorm some interesting locations for the Georgetown Hospital” “Another Georgetown business, Commander Salamander, is closing” “Angert outlines GUSA’s plans for this semester”

Vox Populi

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Voice Crossword “New Year” by Cal Lee

ACROSS 1 Apple on a desk?

5 What we have here 9 With improved protection 14 First name associated with Wendy’s

15 Speak with wild emotion 16 Championed Greenpeace animal 17 Bigshot in Dubai 18 Marine mammal 19 Sniper, perhaps 20 Popular New Year’s goal

answers at georgetownvoice.com 23 __ __ jam 24 “Just __ __ thought!”

25 Day-___ 26 __ Bator 27 Why a field goes to fallow 31 The base of a stairwell, generally 33 Verb with “vous” 34 Patriot League team 36 Caper 39 Aardvark food 40 Saw out of the corner of one’s eye 42 Subject of “Hunger,” 2008 film 43 Gulf coast city 45 Sentence building block 46 Fail to mention 47 Refreshment stop 49 Devilish deed?

51 Dreaded Paper 53 Adv. baseball stat 55 Cry on game day 56 Winter Olympic surface 57 Popular New Year’s goal 62 Like some yogurt 64 Hindu princess 65 Prime draft status 66 Often accompanies a “Not Guilty” plea 67 The “E” in Q.E.D.

68 What a period signifies 69 Composition 70 Very hot 71 Sharpen DOWN 1 Roman calendar days 2 First word, often 3 Tel __, Israel 4 Chex and Balance?

5 Like climates around the equator 6 Damage 7 Working anonymously, in short 8 Trophy that annually switches hands 9 Mimic a pendulum 10 Hawaiian tuna 11 Popular New Year’s goal 12 Tennis start Dementieva 13 Aired again 21 Manipulate 22 Innumerous years 26 Egyptian tomb decorative, perhaps 27 Type of freak 28 Mediterranean lava source 29 Popular New Year’s goal

30 Comes about 32 Prefix with pole 35 6 on a telephone 37 Pupil controller 38 Andrew Lloyd Webber production 40 It may have its origins in hot water?

41 Heinousness 44 Oil alternative 46 Wisconsin city home to a children’s apparel company 48 Marker letters 50 Portuguese saint 51 Fey and Turner 52 Where Madeleine would go 54 Improper look 57 Cleaning product generonym 58 Late night Corp product, perhaps 59 “__ the Mystic,” Van Morrison song 60 Noble light 61 Be wide open 63 Animated monkey Share your love of words and help write crosswords.

E-mail crossword@ georgetownvoice.com.

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 42.16 January 21, 2009 Editor-in-Chief: Jeff Reger Managing Editor: Juliana Brint Publisher: Emily Voigtlander Editor-at-Large: Will Sommer Director of Technology: Alexander Pon Blog Editor: Molly Redden News Editor: Kara Brandeisky Sports Editor: Adam Rosenfeld Feature Editor: Tim Shine Cover Editor: Iris Kim Leisure Editor: Chris Heller Voices Editor: Emma Forster Photo Editor: Hilary Nakasone Design Editors: Richa Goyal, Ishita Kohli Literary Editor: James McGrory Crossword Editor: Cal Lee Contributing Editor: Daniel Cook, Dan Newman Assistant Blog Editors: Hunter Kaplan, Imani Tate Assistant News Editors: Cole Stangler, Galen Weber Assistant Sports Editors: Nick Berti, Rob Sapunor Assistant Cover Editor: Jin-ah Yang Assistant Leisure Editors: Brendan Baumgardner, Leigh Finnegan Assistant Photo Editors: Jackson Perry, Shira Saperstein Assistant Design Editors: Megan Berard, Robert Duffley

Associate Editors: Matthew Collins, Lexie Herman Staff Writers:

Jeff Bakkensen, Cyrus Bordbar, Sonnet Gaertner, Aleta Greer, Victor Ho, Kate Imel, Satinder Kaur, Liz Kuebler, Walker Loetscher, Tim Wagner

Staff Photographers:

Jue Chen, Matthew Funk, Danna Khabbaz, Sarah Vazquez

Staff Designers:

Marc Fichera, Dara Morano, Marc Patterson

Copy Chief: Geoffrey Bible

Copy editors: Aodhan Bierne, Keaton Hoffman, Matt Kerwin, Molly Redden

Editorial Board Chair: Eric Pilch Editorial Board:

Brendan Baumgardner, Juliana Brint, George D’Angelo, Emma Forster, Chris Heller, Dan Newman, Molly Redden, Will Sommer, Cole Stanger, Imani Tate, Galen Weber

Head of Business: George D’Angelo Director of Marketing: Michael Byerly

The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday. If you would like to subscribe, make a check or money order payable to The Georgetown Voice and send it to the mailing address listed below. Subscription rates are as follows:

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Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Newsroom: (202) 687-6780 Fax: (202) 687-6763 E-Mail: thevoice@georgetown.edu Web Site: 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. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Silver Communications. All materials copyright The Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover ...Women’s Basketball Cover Photo: Hilary Nakasone

the georgetown voice 3

q YOU’RE ON MY BLOCK

Residents’ demands must be reasonable Anyone following ongoing discussions between neighbors and the University about Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan has heard the overwhelming negative response to the plan from the locals. While many of their specific criticisms of the plan may seem nitpicky or nonsensical, most students have been willing to admit that permanent residents deserve a say in the future of their neighborhood.

However, a recent open letter from Citizens Association of Georgetown president Jennifer Altemus (COL `88) makes it clear that many of the most vocal neighbors will not be satisfied until no Georgetown student is allowed to venture past the front gates. This expectation is entirely unrealistic and precludes any meaningful cooperation between the University and the community. If neighbors stick to the rhetoric and mindset of Altemus’ letter, the University will not be able to negotiate with them in any meaningful way.

Altemus’ letter opens with strident demands about student housing, writing that the University must “house most of its undergraduates on campus and move the

undergraduates in off-campus Universityowned townhouses on campus.” Declarations like this demonstrate just how unreasonable the neighbors can be—not only do they demand that all undergraduates live on-campus, they also want to re-define “on-campus” to exclude university-owned buildings located on university-owned property that happens to be outside the front gates—as if the entirely symbolic walls marked a magical campus boundary.

Altemus may be a fairly recent Georgetown graduate, but it is clear that she is completely out of touch with the reality at her alma mater. Students do not choose to be gouged by resident landlords—few wish to live in cramped dorm-style residence halls for four years—and the space to build on campus would not permit expansive and luxurious apartment complexes that would appeal to upperclassmen.

Altemus goes on to make similarly impractical and petty demands about transportation. The letter decries the current traffic congestion in Georgetown, and states

that the only acceptable solution would be to channel all traffic through the already clogged Canal Road entrance—and lead to absurdly inconvenient routes to nearby areas like Dupont Circle.

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of Altemus’s missive is her request to “[Relocate] the hospital to another site on the University campus accessed from Canal Road.” Even if such a move were not cost prohibitive, the idea that there is enough open space on the south side of campus to accommodate an entire hospital and medical school is prima facie ridiculous.

The neighbors certainly deserve a say in the future of their community. But they need to recognize and accept the fact that they are living next to a vibrant and growing university that enriches the neighborhood by supporting local businesses and serving as an intellectual and cultural hub. Until the neighbors step away from their unrealistic demands, they will have no hope of having any substantial input on Georgetown’s future plans.

q OUR 5-CENTS WORTH

D.C. makes the right move on bag tax While Georgetown students were away on winter break, a new tax approved by the D.C. Council over the summer came into effect, levying five cents on every disposable bag. The Council should be commended for taking the lead on environmental issues with this progressive tax that will help reduce the overabundance of filmy plastic bags that so frequently end up on the sides of roads, in trees, and floating in lakes and rivers.

Disposable bags are a perfect target for this type of tax. After cigarette butts, singleuse bags are the second most common form of litter, with an estimated 90 billion disposed of per year worldwide, according to a United Nations report published in 2009. D.C.’s tax will be especially environmentally friendly, with its proceeds primarily going towards cleaning up the heavily polluted Anacostia River.

Washington is just the second major American city to enact legislation limiting the usage of disposable bags—San Francisco banned plastic bags outright in 2007—and the move has inspired many other cities like Athens, Ga., Orlando, Fla., and Santa Monica, Calif. to consider similar legislation. The United States is notoriously slow on environmental issues—even China has had a plastic bag ban in place since January 2008—and it is noble that Washington, the nation’s capital, did not bow to pressure from the powerful plastics industry.

The city also deserves credit for partnering with CVS and Safeway—the two largest sources of plastic bags in the city—to make thousands of reusable bags available to customers during the initial days of the tax. Other stores, like Trader Joe’s, gave away free reus-

able bags to help customers into the habit of bringing bags with them when shopping. The new law lets stores keep two cents of the tax instead of the usual one, so long as they actively promote the use of environmentally friendly bags, according to The Washington Post.

Opponents say the tax is unnecessary, arguing consumers already use and reuse the plastic bags. However, a 2007 Environmental Protection Agency study found that only 5.2 percent of plastic bags are recycled.

Fortunately, the left-leaning D.C. Council decided to combat this environment-threatening laziness, enacting a tax that forces consumers to think about the ecological effects of disposable bags on a daily basis. The District has demonstrated national leadership on this important issue. Now it falls to other cities to follow suit.

q TRAININ’ FOR SAFETY

Time for leadership change at Metro Given the series of worker and passenger deaths, train crashes, and other mishaps marring John Catoe’s three year tenure as Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority General Manager, many Metro riders understandably saw his recently-announced resignation as cause for celebration. But as the WMATA Board of Directors moves to appoint his replacement, the need for urgent reform has not dissipated. The board must find a capable public servant who has the drive and experience to clean up a once proud system that has become, in Catoe’s own words, a “poster boy for safety issues that other systems should avoid.”

Catoe swept into the top WMATA position with far-reaching promises of increased safety and reliability, but his record will be overshadowed by the June 22 rail crash on

the red line that left nine people dead. Although federal authorities have not yet completed a final report on the crash, it has been widely reported that the red line’s crash avoidance system failed multiple times before the deadly accident.

According to The Washington Post, members of WMATA’s Board had urged Catoe to stay at the post in 2010—arguing that a change could be disruptive, and that Catoe had the management skills to lead Metro out of a tough time. But just last month, a Metro subway train nearly hit a team of inspectors evaluating safety conditions, indicating that Catoe has not done enough since the crash to remedy safety issues.

It will be difficult to find the right public servant to take charge of the D.C.-area’s public transit services. The Board must lead a

careful, nationwide search for someone who can restore confidence in the safety and efficiency of Metro. The new General Manager will serve with a fresh executive team following the departure of Catoe’s top deputy, safety officer, and two other managers. This new leadership must receive full support from the WMATA Board and local governments in holding employees accountable, improving safety, and putting an end to the costly mistakes of the past few years.

In announcing his resignation, Catoe somewhat smugly stated that, “good leaders know to impact change. Great leaders know when it’s time for leadership change.” It is indeed time for a leadership change, and we hope Catoe’s successor will restore Metro’s proud tradition of safe, convenient service.

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january 21, 2010

Obama celebrates MLK Day with GU

by Cole Stangler President Barack Obama commemorated the first Martin Luther King Day of his term by appearing as a surprise guest at Georgetown’s annual “Let Freedom Ring!” concert at the Kennedy Center this past Monday evening. The concert featured music by Georgetown’s “Let Freedom Ring!” gospel choir and Grammy-award winning artist India.Arie.

At the event, University President John DeGioia presented the John Thompson Sr. Legacy of a Dream Award to former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo (COL ’91).

Obama praised Mutombo’s charitable efforts, saying that he is attacking poverty in Africa “with the same ferocity that he used to block shots in the NBA.” The president also displayed his own version of Mutombo’s famed finger-wag, the former Georgetown center’s signature celebration gesture.

In Obama’s brief speech, he stressed the importance of remembering King’s perseverance, especially as the nation struggles through tough times. He said a concert was a particularly fitting

way of celebrating the occasion.

“Songs played … an important part in the civil rights movement,” Obama said. “Dr. King and his associates would go around to different communities … They’d know which were serious about the boycott, which had the discipline to pull it off, when folks in those communities were singing freedom songs. When he saw young people singing in the face of hostility, he said that’s when he first saw the face of the movement. He said it was about the faith in the future. He said it was based on hope.”

The event, featured the “Let Freedom Ring!” choir, composed of members from the D.C. community, Georgetown students, faculty, and staff. Reverend Nolan Williams Jr. of Metropolitan Baptist Church, who penned two original songs for the occasion, led the choir. Williams’ first song, “I’m Gonna Do All I Can” is a tribute to Mutombo’s mission of alleviating poverty in Africa. The second, “I Am The Dream,” is a tribute to the message of Dr. King.

“The second piece was a challenge to make the MLK birthday more than just an event, but actually to embrace

the principles of his dream and life work, and bring our society closer to becoming the beloved community he envisioned,” Williams said.

As the “Let Freedom Ring!” choir finished their set and waited for Arie to take the stage, Williams went off script to introduce the five Georgetown students who soloed during the performance and express his own opinions on the significance of Martin Luther King Day. “It requires us to do more than just to take a day off and attend a program,” Williams later said. “It requires us to buy in to principles that inform how we treat other people and handle people whose values are different than ours.”

Although the president was on hand, Arie’s performance did not shy away from her usual political commentary. In her song “Ghetto,” she sang “to be hungry in L.A. is just like starving in Bombay/ homeless in Morocco is a shelter in Chicago,” culminating in the refrain, “America is a ghetto.”

India.Arie captivated the audience with her songs and ambitious clothing selection, sporting a bright orange shawl before

Kara Brandeisky

The president is in the building for the Martin Luther King celebration.

appearing for the encore with a set of butterfly wings. When she launched into “There’s Hope”— an Obama campaign fixture—the 2,400 on hand burst into a frenzy, dancing and clapping along in unison. But it was Ryan Wilson (COL ’12) who was faced with the daunting task of following President Obama’s speech with his own remarks. “[President Obama] was extremely, extremely nice—the entire family was,” Wilson said.

“I think meeting him is actually what calmed me down before we eventually went out on stage. He was so nice and really expressed his belief that it was a great event

and that there was nothing to worry about.”

Wilson’s speech, witnessed by many of his friends and family from his hometown of Atlanta, GA., touched on the common theme of maintaining King’s dream and progressing towards the type of society he envisioned.

“His legacy is something that I think we’re still trying to really understand,” Wilson said.

“People often speak of the dream and I don’t think that we’re there yet—so until we get to that place, I think it’s important to continue to honor his legacy in hopes that every time we do so, we get closer to accomplishing his dream.”

LGBTQ Center brings alumni back to the Hilltop

by Molly Redden When Georgetown’s LGBTQ community won their decadeslong battle for a resource center in fall 2007, the biggest beneficiaries were expected to be current LGBTQ

students. But according to LGBTQ Resource Center Director Sivagami Subbaraman, even greater success has centered around alumni.

Although it ‘s not a role anyone in the university administration expected her to embrace, Subbaraman

has made it her mission to bring Georgetown back into the good graces of estranged LGBTQ alumni.

“Some are very angry. The experience was detrimental to them, and toxic. Some have sworn to never, never, never come back to cam-

LGBTQ Resource Center opens the door to alumni who have felt alienated in the past.

Shira Saperstein

pus .... They are a very angry and disenfranchised group,” she said.

Any community experienced while they were at Georgetown “was like a cabal. It all functioned like a secret society, it’s sad.”

Subbaraman has been contacting alumni who have identified themselves as LGBTQ and encouraged them to come back to Georgetown.

But because it was not until the 1980s when GUPride successfully sued Georgetown University for the right to exist as a University-sponsored group, many alumni went their entire Georgetown careers without having any sort of open community—University-sponsored or not.

When Subbaraman arrived at Georgetown, she said, she was given a list of four or five alumni who identified as LGBTQ and kept in contact with the University, meaning they donated or attended University events.

With the help of those alumni, and the results of an alumni survey conducted by the Alumni Associa-

tion in which more than 40 alumni disclosed that they were LGBTQ, the list has grown to over 300 alumni.

Bringing new alumni into the fold, of course, is an opportunity to increase donations to the school.

Asked about this, Subbaraman chafed a bit.

“I’m tired of people thinking that the only reason we’re contacting our LGBTQ alums is for money,” she said. “Yes, the donations have been coming in, but ... many of our LGBTQ alums are extremely politically or corporately successful, and they deserve to be celebrated just as any other Hoya. Think of the intellectual engagement, knowledge, mentorship we’ve been missing out on. The greatest thing that we’ve been missing out on is the human capital.”

William O’Leary, the Vice President for Marketing and Communications in the Office of Advancement, said that his office does not track giving based on sexual orientation.

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the georgetown voice 5

Hoyas with Haitian ties reflect on future UIS: Wireless must wait

by Satinder Kaur

Although Garvey Pierre (COL ’09) lost his sister in last week’s tragic earthquake in Haiti, he still has hope for his country. As a resident of Portau-Prince, Haiti until he was 15-years-old, Pierre has found the international support in the days since the earthquake “overwhelming.”

“I am extremely pleased with the world response so far, in terms of the compassion and support that we have been receiving,” Pierre wrote in an e-mail.

Pierre has been advocating for Haiti since coming to Georgetown. Bringing attention to pre-earthquake issues in Haiti by working with Vwa Ayiti, a non-governmental organization that focuses on developmental projects in Haiti.

Now he believes Haiti can use its current assistance to rebuild the country and create a new level of self-sufficiency.

“It would be counterproductive to only provide temporary relief in a situation like this,” Pierre said. “We have a real opportunity to decentralize the nation, re-invest in its crumbling infrastructure, and provide the country with an ‘economic stimulus’ that may relieve the people of their dependency on outside help … for good.”

Maurice Jackson, an associate professor of Atlantic and African-American history, agrees that international support has been tremendous, and believes

that American support in particular is important to the relief response.

Given its proximity to the Haitian embassy, Jackson said Georgetown is the perfect place for students interested in helping with the relief effort.

“Americans do have a great volunteer spirit,” Jackson said.

“We as Americans can do a lot to restore that [Haitian] civic society.”

While Pierre and Jackson see great potential for Haiti’s future, Denise Brennan, an associate professor of anthropology who has worked in the Dominican Republic and is familiar with Haiti, is more circumspect.

Though she does believe the Haitian people are “incredibly resourceful,” she also points out that pre-earthquake Haiti was

Jackson Perry

Bravin’ the cold: GU Gospel choir shows solidarity with Haitian victims.

Metro: a waste of space “Location, location, location” is the first rule of real estate, and it’s hard to think of a better location than the land around a Metro station. Given the easy access to restaurants, stores, and apartments, the land that the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority owns around stations presents a prime opportunity for development and could provide an infusion of revenue for the cash-strapped system.

Yet much of the land sits unused. In the catastrophe that is WMATA’s budget—$175 million shortfall for next year—unused land is a minor problem. But

plagued by deep-seated social issues, including problems with its infrastructure, low literacy rates, and a poor health care system.

“If you’re in a pile of rubble, I just don’t know how you can get out,” Brennan said. “Most of the country is just hanging on.”

Despite uncertainty about the future, many Haitians at Georgetown are optimistic. Elizabeth Louis (COL’11), who has family in Port-au-Prince, Les Cayes, and Léogâne, believes that the faith Haitians have in each other and their nation will help them through their ordeal.

“I think Haiti does have a good future,” Louis said. “The Haitian people are resilient.

They will get through this as a country.”

WMATA’s mistakes with what could have been a small golden goose help explain why Metro remains perpetually in the red, forced to hike fees, and unable to upgrade its decaying set of cars and tracks.

During the construction of the transit system, WMATA obtained swathes of land in the District, Maryland, and Virginia. Some of this land has been sold or rented out to real estate developers and turned into mixed-used buildings, like the office complex built over the Rosslyn station.

The land around other stations, though, remains vacant,

marked by empty lots that bring in no revenue.

Recognizing the missed opportunity to improve both the areas surrounding stations and the organization’s bottom line, WMATA convened a task force

City on a Hill

by Will Sommer

A bi-weekly column on D.C. news and politics in 2006 to find out why so few developers wanted to build on WMATA land, despite the advantages of being so close to a station. The task force’s damning report, released in 2007, criticized WMATA’s joint development program for being difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

by J. Galen Weber and Cole Stangler Village A, Village B, Harbin, New South, and Nevils will be the first residence halls to benefit from an expansion in wireless internet service, according to University officials.

Associate Director of Academic and Information Services Donna White announced that the University was in the evaluation stage of expanding wireless access.

Approximately 20 students attended the town hall, held by University Information Services in McShain Lounge.

As the plan currently stands, residence halls that rely on a fiber optic network for internet will be the first to benefit from an expansion of wireless internet service.

Residents in the so-called “fiber dorms”­­­—Village A, Village B, Harbin, New South, and Nevils—currently need a media adapter to plug into the internet.

During a question and answer period students expressed frustration about Georgetown’s limited wireless network, which is nonexistent in many parts of the campus.

“I’m just wondering why Georgetown is so late in the game,” Zoë Lillian (SFS ‘13).

UIS officials explained that wireless shortfalls were main-

The task force recommended reforming the process for developing land around stations, focusing on changing the bidding process.

“The guidelines we set up were really helpful,” Cheryl Cort, a task force member and the policy director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said.

WMATA’s Board of Directors agreed with the task force, and adopted many of the report’s suggestions in February 2008.

Metro seemed poised to finally take advantage of its land.

But then, the economy folded in on itself, and former suitors for Metro land wanted nothing to do with new ventures.

The recession has affected existing construction around sta-

ly the result of Georgetown’s reluctance to invest in a wireless infrastructure, which is expensive to maintain.

“Georgetown is never going to be on the leading edge,” White said. “We’re never going to put ourselves out there when the technology is thrown at us.”

The schools that have invested in extensive wireless networks, White said, have spent millions of dollars doing so. Georgetown has only slowly expanded its new network, which she said protects the school from having to reinvest in new technologies every couple of years.

Still, UIS officials said they were determined to expand the wireless network, and that the project is currently in the evaluation stage.

White also announced that on February 1, University Information Services would be kicking off a secure wireless network as a pilot that will be running in St. Mary’s and the Harris Building on Wisconsin Avenue. Eventually, when an updated wireless network is installed, the entire network will require a Net ID and password to log on.

Will Cousino (SFS ’12), Vice President of Interhall and event organizer, said he was pleased with the turnout of the meeting and with the UIS presentation.

tions. Although WMATA agreed to a new development around a Wheaton, Md. station in June, other proposals, like one in West Hyattsville, Md., have been abandoned by developers.

WMATA has more serious problems than dabbling in real estate development—passenger safety, an intimidating budget shortfall, and the search for a new General Manager after John Catoe’s sudden resignation last Thursday. But the empty areas around stations represent one of many failures on WMATA’s part that have made our transit system so dysfunctional.

Sitting on some prime ideas?

E-mail Will at wsommer@george townvoice.com.

sports

6 the georgetown voice

january 21, 2010

Hoya bench needs to step up as season progresses

by Tim Shine On January 17, the Georgetown men’s basketball suffered a demoralizing loss to a top-5 team on the road, just before an unrelenting stretch of four tough games in two weeks.

After last Sunday’s loss to Villanova, that would be an apt description for the current season’s squad—just as easily as January 2009, when the Hoyas lost to Duke before dropping their next four games.

Beginning last night at Pittsburgh, the Hoyas play three of four games against top-10 opponents, with a rest coming against Rutgers.

“We have a stretch where we have a game and then two days, a game and then two days, a game and then two days—that’s the nature of Big East basketball,” Head Coach John Thompson III said before his team started the current gauntlet against Seton Hall last Thursday. “We have a few very short turnaround situations coming up right now.”

Those situations will test the endurance of Georgetown’s overworked starters—the Hoyas rank fourth-to-last in bench minutes among Division I teams.

Thompson doesn’t think it will be an issue.

“There’s been an understanding, at least internally, from the beginning that they were going to play big minutes,” Thompson said.

“Conventional wisdom would say, ‘Oh, they’re going to break down’... [but] I don’t know that there is a risk. They’re young, they can play all day.”

Still, if there was a time for Georgetown’s short bench to be tested, it’s now. After the transfer of Nikita Mescheriakov in December, Thompson has just four scholarship players in reserve, all of whom remain enigmatic.

Before the season started, conventional wisdom pegged freshman forward Hollis Thompson, who spent last spring practicing with the team after enrolling early, as the surest thing off the bench.

And while he has garnered the majority of the bench minutes and even earned Big East Rookie of the Week honors in November, Thompson’s shooting touch hasn’t been apparent in conference play.

His low point came last weekend against Villanova, when he went 0-for-7 from the field, including 0-for-5 from three-point range.

Still, opponents know it is only a matter of time until Thompson starts connecting.

“Hollis Thompson, you know he can score,” Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright said. “With Chris Wright, Monroe, Freeman, and Clark you know they’ve got four big time scorers, I think Hollis Thompson is the next guy that’s capable.”

While Thompson may have taken a step back in Big East play, fellow freshman Jerrelle Benimon has begun to establish himself as an important contributor. The 6-foot7 forward is undersized for the Big East, but makes up for it with strength and tenacity on the boards.

“Jerrelle is super strong, he’s very, very physical. He’s probably the strongest on the team, I think,” junior forward Julian Vaughn said. “He’s young, so

JACKSON PERRY

Hollis Thompson will have to eat some minutes to keep the starters healthy.

he’s going to make mistakes and stuff, but he knows how to play hard and he knows what he’s supposed to do out there. He doesn’t get rattled or get nervous.”

Benimon hasn’t displayed superstar potential, but he has proven to be an able body capable of pulling down rebounds and making hustle plays—exactly what Coach Thompson needs from his supporting cast.

Still, it would not hurt for the Hoyas to get a few more points from the bench, an area in which it has been sorely lacking. That was certainly the case against Villanova, when starters Wright and Vaughn were limited by foul trouble. The Wildcats won by five, but their bench outscored the Hoyas 25-4.

For now, Coach Thompson isn’t worried.

“It’s an issue if the people that are coming in aren’t producing,” Coach Thompson said. “It’s an issue if all of a sudden there’s a tremendous drop-off from the guys in foul trouble, but the guys that have been coming in have been giving us terrific minutes, and I don’t anticipate if we were to have foul trouble in the future that is an issue.”

the Sports Sermon “Three home teams advance, and the f--king Jets!”

— New York Jets Coach Rex Ryan on his team moving on to the AFC Championship game though L.A. will always be a Lakers town, Carroll and his players are superstars in the city. All in all, Pete Carroll was essentially a professional coach in L.A. Despite all of these reasons to stay, Carroll will be manning the sidelines in Seattle at the start of next season. Ironically, the reason Carroll came to USC may be one of the reasons he is leaving: Carroll had a shot at the pros in the 90s, and as his tenure at USC suggests, the stint was not terribly successful. It must also be noted that Carroll is leaving behind a whirlwind of controversy stemming from alleged NCAA infractions by Reggie Bush and Joe McNight. When Seattle came knocking, the memory of a failed run in the NFL along

two seasons in the NFL. Nick Saban and Bobby Petrino It is said that the grass is alboth made the mistake of leaving ways greener on the other side. college for the pros. Saban was a This tendency to always strive head coach in the SEC, and had for something apparently better recently led LSU to a BCS Nahas created a destructive trend tional Championship. However, in the sporting world: successthe prospect of more successful ful college coaches leaving their years in Baton Rouge was simply posts for a shot with a profesnot as tempting as the Miami Dolsional franchise. College football phins. Surprisingly, Saban was an coaches are most often guilty of unsuccessful pro coach. After just this mistake, and recently, yet antwo years Saban returned to the other has fallen victim.

SEC with Alabama and won the Earlier this month, UniverBCS National Championship this sity of Southern California Head past season. Petrino left Louisville Football Coach Pete Carroll left the to head the Atlanta Falcons, but college ranks, taking the same poPetrino returned to the college sition for the big money of the NFL field after just one year. with the Seattle Seahawks. He The case maybe most simileaves behind the school he headlar to Carroll’s is that of Howard ed for nine years— Schnellenberger. As Pete Rose Central nine years that saw detailed by ESPN’s Da bettin’ line the Trojans become documentary film, the jewel of the colThe U, SchnellenDookies Margin Hoyas lege football world. berger’s fantastic (underdogs) (duh!)

There are few (favorites) recruiting turned football jobs in the Miami into a naArenas Bullets Stern world like coachtional powerhouse Manning ing USC. First, Car- Sexy Rexy in just 5 years. After 110 lbs roll had guaranteed Masturbation Woods Sex Rehab a national champihimself top-10 teams onship season, he into the future for as long as he with the brewing NCAA trouble resigned as head coach for a prowanted, thanks to the USC recruit- were strong incentives to take the fessional job. The league he joined ing juggernaut. Whereas schools offer. One cannot fault this com- fell through, and Miami went on such as Florida and Texas can petitive spirit, but history shows to become a dynasty without him. dominate their respective states, that college coaches leaving for the Pete Carroll has everything USC can pick out major talent pros often return to school with he could want at USC. Sure, the from all across the country. Their their tails between their legs.

NFL offers a new challenge for roster is complete with All-AmerSteve Spurrier, “the old ball- Carroll to tackle, but he had the icans from every region of the coach,” led the Florida Gators opportunity to be the greatest country, and nearly all top rising throughout the 90s, winning a college football coach of all time. recruits have USC near the top of national championship and be- There is something to be said for their lists. USC is such a convinc- coming immensely popular with the likes of Bobby Bowden and ing sell to high-school stars that fans and alumni (helped by the Joe Paterno, both lifetime coachat one time, the Trojans had eight fact he was an alumnus himself es at one school. They are behigh school All-American running and a Heisman Trophy winner). loved by all, they many football backs on the roster.

Although he had tons of success games, and regarded as the best.

Along with these on-field and the ability to stay for many Carroll could have been better. perks, USC offers something no more years, the allure of the NFL So, this coming fall, when other college program can: large was too strong and he ultimate- Carroll is standing on a rainy Semarket coverage and a fan base ly left to coach the Washington attle sideline, he may think back to without a pro-franchise to com- Redskins. We know how that those sunny Saturday afternoons pete with. In effect, Los Angeles one turned out for the Redskins. in Los Angeles Coliseum. He does have a professional football Spurrier returned to the SEC might think back and realize, he team—it’s the USC Trojans. Al- with South Carolina after only had it all and he gave it away.

by Adam Rosenfeld

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Women swim strong, men take a dive

by Nick Berti As the swimming and diving team returns to the Hilltop from winter break, one pre-break trend still looms large. With the Big East Championships looming less than a month away, the women’s team continues to excel, while the men still struggle to find their footing against difficult opponents.

This imbalance played out in the team’s last event of the calendar year. The men were defeated against Villanova, while the women dominated Mansfield.

The men lost to the Wildcats by a score of 175-125. Despite the loss, freshman Paul Quincy provided a bright spot by winning the 500 and 1000 freestyle and attaining a Big East-qualifying time in the 100 backstroke. Joining Quincy, Junior Alex Hanson qualified for the Big East Championships with an impressive showing in the 100 breaststroke. Sophomore

Victor Lopez-Cantera also contributed by taking the 100 and 200 butterfly.

The women handled Mansfield by a score of 244-34. They won a staggering 16 events on their way to the thrashing, improving their record at the time to 6-1. Freshman Samantha Kietlinski carried the women by winning the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle and was part of winning the 400 freestyle relay. Megan Harvey and Lindsay Vickroy both qualified for the Big East by swimming in the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle respectively. If crushing Mansfield in swimming wasn’t enough, Angela Pontes won both the one and three meter diving events.

Luckily for the men, they have four meets left to prove their talent and overcome early season woes. They are coming off a very tough loss against American last Friday. While they won five events, victory eluded the team by a mere two points.

The women avenged the men’s loss by handily defeating American 159-83. They rode a wave of freshman swimmers on their way to winning nine of 13 races. Four of the races won were swam by freshmen, including two by Samantha Kietlinski, and one each

by Christina Costa and Christina Daquila. The highly touted freshman class has brought excitement to the entire team and hopes of a strong showing in the Big East Championships. It wasn’t only the freshmen that contributed to the recent win. Junior diver Caitlin Karniski had a record setting performance with a score of 270.90, breaking Georgetown’s 3-meter diving record (266.03), set in 2001.

Her score of 257.78 broke Georgetown’s 1-meter diving record (255.98), set in 2006.

Another promising sign for the Hoyas is their early season win over Big East foe Seton Hall. The win was the first time they had beaten the Pirates, giving them much needed confidence for the

Iron Hoyas: The women swimmers and divers have anchored the Blue & Gray all season.

The gun show Not to be outdone by the Tiger Woods fiasco of late 2009, this year had already produced its first sports-related scandal, just hours into its first day. As sports fans around the country groggily roused ourselves on January 1 and stared with bloodshot, hangover-glazed eyes into our Google Reader feeds, we were greeted by the seemingly sensationalized news of an alleged gun duel between all-star point guard Gilbert Arenas and injured reserve guard Javaris Crittenton in the Wizards’ locker room on December 21. It seemed too farfetched to be true.

Unfortunately, as pieces of the story slowly filtered out via Twitter and blog posts from Mike Jones (a former Wizards beat writer for the now-defunct Washington Times sports section), the story as initially reported was largely true.

Here’s what we know: after Are-

nas refused to pay Crittenton a gambling debt of $1,100 (amassed while playing boo-ray–a Cajun card game whose intricate rules are universally disputed–on the team plane on December 19), Crittenton became irate and threatened to shoot Arenas in his surgically-repaired right knee, while Arenas responded that he would set Crittenton’s car on fire.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In the Verizon Center’s locker room on December 21, Arenas set four of his own unloaded guns (one of them a gold-plated, .50 caliber, semiautomatic Desert Eagle pistol) out on a chair next to Crittenton’s locker with a note saying, “pick one.” Upon entering the locker room, Crittenton became furious, throwing one of Arenas’s guns across the room, and drew his own pistol, chambering a round. As he began singing, somewhat creepily, everyone else, including Arenas, nervously backed out of the room.

COURTESY SPORTS INFORMATION

Although Arenas issued an apology through his lawyers, he was less than contrite about the incident on Twitter, writing, “i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE.. lmao media is too funny.”

The final straw came on January 5 when, during pregame introductions for a game against the Philadelphia 76ers, Arenas made

Backdoor Cuts

by Sean Quigley

a rotating column on sports guns with his fingers and pretended to shoot his teammates, again showing he was less than sorry about the controversy. The next day, NBA Commissioner David Stern suspended Arenas indefinitely without pay, and the Wizards almost immediately removed all signs of Arenas from the Verizon Center, taking down the enormous banner of his like-

postseason, particularly for a team relying so heavily on freshmen.

The final four regular season meets for both the men and women all come against non-Big East opponents. The men must focus on finishing strong, while

the women have higher hopes, as they look to continue their season-long dominance and extend their momentum into the postseason. The Hoyas next meet is at home against Army, on Friday at 5 p.m.

FAST BREAK

The rule of thumb for the Hoyas this season: as Chris Wright goes, so goes Georgetown.

Entering Wednesday night’s contest against Pittsburgh, the Hoyas were 12-0 when Wright scored in double figures, 1-3 when he didn’t. Against Pitt, Wright reached double figures.

The No. 14 Hoyas (14-3, 5-2 Big East) ended a three-game losing streak against the No. 11 Panthers (15-3, 5-1 Big East), taking down the Big East’s co-leader 74-66, on one of the conference’s toughest home courts.

Pitt had not lost at the Peterson Events Center in 31 games, the nation’s second longest home winning streak, and Georgetown became just the second team to win more than once in the arena.

The Panthers would not give up the streak easily, keeping pace with the Hoyas for most of the contest. The two teams had been deadlocked 31-31 at halftime, and were tied with just over six minutes to play in the game.

But Wright distinguished the Hoyas. The junior guard had 27 points on 11-of-17 shooting, including five consecutive points to start a 7-0 run putting Georgetown ahead

ness that hung on 6th Street, removing his jersey from the team shop, and even editing him out of the intro video. While the guns were registered in Virginia, Arenas didn’t have a license to carry them in D.C., and on January 15 he accepted a plea bargain that convicted him of felony gun possession. He won’t be sentenced until March, but he is expected to receive six months in jail.

Just like that, the former allstar combo guard went from franchise player and fan favorite to convicted felon and public enemy number one. Throughout the entire process, Arenas seemed flippant and irreverent, never seeming to truly grasp the severity of the situation. His actions look especially poor in light of the November death of Wizards owner Abe Pollin, who in 1997 changed the franchise’s nickname from the Bullets to the Wizards to disassociate the team from the gun violence that plagues the District.

for good late in the second half.

Wright was backed up by three other double-figure scoring performances. Sophomore Greg Monroe had 13 points and 11 rebounds for his seventh doubledouble of the season, and junior Austin Freeman, limited to 27 minutes with foul trouble, also scored 13 points.

After being held scoreless and fouling out last game against Villanova, junior Julian Vaughn had a complete game with 11 points, 5 rebounds, and 6 assists.

Junior reserve Gilbert Brown had a career-high 20 points to lead the Panthers.

Even after the Hoyas late run, the Panthers refused to relent. Pitt closed to six with just under a minute to play, but thanks to their ineffective three-point shooting (4-of-18 on the night), and clutch free throw shooting by Monroe and Freeman (6-of-8 in the final minute), Georgetown held on.

Next up for the Hoyas is a Rutgers team still looking for its first conference victory. Tipoff is at noon, Saturday, at the Verizon Center.

—Tim Shine

Whatever happens to Arenas, he should remember that all is not lost. In the NBA, plenty of players have resurrected themselves after committing career suicide. Ron Artest, with all of his prior troubles, is now a model citizen for the defending-champion Lakers. Latrell Sprewell, who choked his own coach in practice, was eventually welcomed onto the Knicks.

What Arenas must know now is that he has forever changed his image. He can no longer be the fun-loving goofball NBA star. He needs to quit acting like this is some big joke, recognize the severity of his actions, and begin rebuilding his image. His mocking on-court gun show was a poor start. Only after he stops trying to live in the headlines will fans and the league allow him to start walking the long road to forgiveness.

Challenge Sean to a duel at squigley@georgetownvoice.com

feature

8 the georgetown voice

january 21, 2010

the lady hoyas’ transition game

by Tom Bosco Last Saturday afternoon in McDonough Arena, the Georgetown Chimes walked out to midcourt to belt out the National Anthem while the Georgetown women’s basketball team prepared to take on last year’s national runner-up, Louisville.

Looking around McDonough, the walls of the arena revealed a stark difference between the Georgetown men’s and women’s basketball programs.

The north side of the gym is covered in the NBA jerseys of Hoya legends like Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and Roy Hibbert. The east and west walls are lined with banners honoring the men’s multiple Big East titles and Final Four appearances.

The women’s accomplishments are more meager by comparison. In the southeast corner of the gym, a mere four banners hang from the wall. Two are from 1993—Big East Co-Champions and a Sweet Sixteen appearance banner—one is a 1997 Big East Division Champions banner, and the last is a 2009 Na-

tional Invitational Tournament Quarterfinal banner.

But despite the differences in history, this season, the women’s team is reminiscent of their male counterparts, a fact that for the most part has gone unnoticed by a good portion of the Georgetown population.

The No. 19 Hoyas (16-2, 5-0 Big East) have dealt with being unknown for quite a while.

“My freshman year, we were nobodies,” junior forward Monica McNutt said. “People didn’t even know there was a Georgetown basketball team. Women’s team, excuse me. They know about the boys’ team.”

This year’s success hasn’t exactly brought the program the respect it may deserve.

“It’s still not great now,” sixth year head coach Terri Williams-Flournoy said. “I think there’s a lot going on here in the Washington Metropolitan area. But you know, it’s more of, you know, people don’t know. They’ve always assumed that Georgetown women’s basketball was not that good of a program. So the stereotype that

MATTHEW FUNK

The Big Dance: The team breaks it down during Midnight Madness in November.

we’re dealing with is they don’t know until they see us play.”

The team resorts to any promotional tactics it can to raise awareness. Students are offered free pizza at games, starters throw t-shirts to fans after being announced, and players sign autographs after games. Those techniques, along with the improvement of the team, have led to larger crowds at recent games.

“It’s gotten a whole lot better this year,” sophomore forward Tia Magee said. “You’ll see the crowds getting bigger, and bigger, and people actually recognizing your face and telling you good job and good game.”

The women are finally starting to make a name for themselves, riding a program-record 15-game winning streak into the national rankings and a tie at the top of the Big East standings. It’s quite a start for a team that hasn’t finished higher than ninth in the conference since the Big East expanded to 16 teams in 2005.

The only explanation for their success is that Williams-Flournoy has finally gotten the players who can play with her—and with each other.

When Williams-Flournoy took the helm in August 2004, she was already two years behind.

“We were very late recruiting,” Williams-Flournoy said. “I got the job in August, so we were almost two years behind in recruiting, and in this business right here you have to be two years ahead, not two years behind.”

Williams-Flournoy still didn’t mind taking over the program. Previously, she was an assistant coach at Georgetown between 1992 and 1996, and she went to high school in nearby Hampton, Virginia.

“Georgetown’s always been my dream job,” she said. “I was here as an assistant coach and always wanted to come back close to home, so as soon as the job opened up, I just started making phone calls.”

In Williams-Flournoy’s first three years, the program had trouble winning. One of the key reasons was a lack of consistency in her

assistant coaching staff. Georgetown’s women’s sports full-time assistant coaches make only $38,994 a year—a number that, coupled with the District of Columbia’s high cost of living, makes it hard to retain a consistent coaching staff.

“It’s hard to get everyone to say exactly what you want them to say, it’s hard to go out and hire someone new every year and teach them over again. That’s definitely the key,” Williams-Flournoy said.

Now every member of Williams-Flournoy’s staff has been at Georgetown for at least two seasons. Not coincidentally, the team has improved drastically.

Last season, the Hoyas made an unexpected quarterfinal run in the NIT, and this season, the Hoyas cracked the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 1993.

The Hoyas have also thrived because Williams-Flournoy is no longer lagging two years behind.

Along with team recruitment coordinator Keith Brown, she has brought in a group of players who fit all the necessary roles of a successful team. It is this rare completeness that has allowed the Hoyas to break into the upper echelon of the Big East.

“It’s hard because you put a team together and you think about where everybody’s going to go, and it changes,” Williams-Flournoy said. “We didn’t recruit [sophomore forward] Tia Magee to be our starting five. It’s just how the team has gone and the way we’ve played. And everybody has just bought into their role.”

Williams definitely could not have predicted how well her recruits would get along with each other. The Hoyas’ chemistry is as important to their success as anything they do on the court.

McNutt swears that the Hoyas should have their own reality show.

“We’re hysterical,” McNutt said. “You have never met a group of girls who get along better. We have so many divas on this team, it’s just so entertaining.”

When asked who the biggest diva on the team was, McNutt didn’t hesitate.

“Sid. Sidney. Sidney Wilson.

Diva extraordinaire.”

Wilson, a 6-foot-6 freshman from Silver Spring, Md., continued the jibe, faux-attacking McNutt back.

“Well, I think that Monica has no right to speak, because we both are in competition with each other for the diva role,” Wilson said in her best diva voice. “I don’t know who I would put first. We’re definitely tied. I think it’s a tie.”

Although she wouldn’t win any competition with her teammates, if there is any one Hoya who has cause to act like a diva, it is star freshman Ta’Shauna “Sugar” Rodgers.

Williams-Flournoy and Brown had already proven to be excellent recruiters in spite of running a Big East program located in ACC country, but Rodgers was their biggest get yet. The 5-foot-11 guard currently leads the Big East in scoring, averaging 18.4 points a game. She has also won four Big East Rookie of the Week awards, the most in the conference.

In the first half against Providence last Tuesday night, Rodgers demonstrated just how advanced

HiILARY NAKASONE

McNuttin but net: The forward lines up.

feature

georgetownvoice.com her game is. With a defender running up to her at full speed, she caught the ball in transition. Miraculously, Rodgers seemed to slow the game down—she stood upright, looked at the charging defender, and stopped her momentum on the spot. Then she proceeded to make a hard crossover, faking out the defender and opening a clear path to the basket for an easy layup. It was a subtle move, but only a few people can pull it off.

While Rodgers might be the centerpiece of the program’s recruiting over the last few years, Williams-Flournoy has placed the perfect complements around her.

Senior Shanice Fuller and sophomore Rubylee Wright have taken charge of the point guard position.

Both players excel while playing with entirely different styles.

“Shanice is more of a true type point guard,” Williams-Flournoy said. “She does push it in transition, she kicks it ahead, she wants to run the team. She wants to make sure everybody’s in the right position. Rubylee is just going, just going 100 miles an hour.”

Wright is generously listed at 5-foot-3 and is by far the smallest player on the floor at all times. But what she lacks in size she more than makes up in energy and an ability to swing the game in the Hoyas direction. Against Providence, the Hoyas let a 21-point lead shrink to four. In a four possession span, Wright had an assist to senior forward Jaleesa Butler, caught a Rodgers airball and laid it in on a reverse layup, and hit McNutt in transition to bring the Hoyas’ lead back up to 12.

“I really don’t think about [my size] because I have a brother that’s 6-5, so I used to always play against bigger people. So it’s never been a thing,” Wright said. “It’s just something that I’m used to, and when I get on the court with bigger people there’s no difference because I’ve seen them before.“ Georgetown is also undersized in the frontcourt, but the athletic tandem of Magee and senior forward Jaleesa Butler fit perfectly into the Hoyas’ transition offense. Magee is an especially troubling mismatch for opposing teams.

“For her size, she’s playing a position that makes her extremely tough to guard,” Williams-Flournoy explained. “She’s our starting five. You think of most fives, they’re not as athletic as she is, they’re not as quick as she is, they can’t play inside out. She fits into what we want to do here at Georgetown.”

Of course, what they want to do is run, and the success of any transition attack is predicated on communication. Fortunately for the Hoyas, they have developed strong connections both on and off the court.

“I just think that’s why we get along so well,” Wilson said.

“We’re able to communicate be-

cause not only do we have communication on the floor, but we have communication off the floor with school work, our personal lives, so it just makes it easier and translates onto the court.”

The Hoyas clearly have a special bond. Before games, the Hoyas lock arm-in-arm behind each other’s back before the National Anthem is sung. They are always talking to one another during games and helping each other out.

Off the court, the team is all smiles.

The Hoyas are constantly smiling, laughing, and being “goofy,” as Williams-Flournoy put it.

“You would think we’ve been around each other our whole lives,” Magee said. “I think our team is really unique. I can’t see any other group of girls getting along the way that we do. We all are really like sisters.”

It says a lot that the team’s vocal leader is little-used senior guard Kenya Kirkland. Kirkland embodies the spirit of the Hoyas—she holds everyone accountable at all times.

“Our team, we have an understanding that when you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Kirkland said. “It really doesn’t matter if you’re a leader or not, and I think that’s a good thing about our team, because we hold each other accountable.”

That accountability includes keeping up the aggressive style of play that the Hoyas bring to the court. Magee says that practices sometimes get so aggressive that “we forget that we’re teammates sometimes.”

“I’ll tell you what—this team does not do well with walk through,” Williams-Flournoy said.

“Let’s walk through it—no. Everything we do has to be live scrimmages and competitive. If it’s not competitive, it’s not as fun to them.”

The Hoyas competiveness never wanes, but they are susceptible to a run from the opposing team. Last Tuesday against Providence, the Hoyas let their 21 point lead dwindle down to 4 before they turned on the jets again. Last Saturday against Louisville, the same thing happened. The Hoyas let a 16 point lead become a one-point deficit late in the second half before coming back for a four-point victory.

For now, the Hoyas’ aggressive style of play and tough mentality allows them to regain the lead once they give it up. Later in the season, this might become a little dangerous.

“We’re going to continue to work on it and we understand that if we continue to give away leads, we not be able to pull it away down the stretch. I mean, it’s the Big East,” McNutt said.

Besides giving away leads, the Hoyas aggressiveness can be dangerous in other ways.

That aggression might have gotten the best of the Hoyas when

the georgetown voice 9

Oh no you didn’t: Her fellow Hoyas look on as sophomore Alexa Roche swats a Southwest Baptist shot. they got in a pregame scuffle with Louisville. The Washington Post reported that about an hour before tip-off, an unnamed Hoya tripped a Louisville player, setting off a melee. No penalties were issued at the time because the fight took place more than fifteen minutes before game time, but Georgetown suspended two players for the team’s upcoming game against DePaul this Saturday.

Georgetown Sports Information declined to release the names of the suspended players.

Despite the recent altercation, don’t expect the Hoyas to turn down the heat anytime soon.

“I don’t think that you can ever be too aggressive,” Williams-Flournoy said before the fight occurred.

“Y’all might think when we foul we’re being too aggressive. When we don’t foul, that’s the problem.”

The team’s aggression is mimicked by their head coach. Williams-Flournoy, a kind, southern lady, puts on a tougher face when she’s coaching. The Hoyas know that they cannot make mistakes without being held accountable and facing the consequences.

The Hoyas know that they cannot make mistakes without being held accountable and facing the consequences.

Those consequences?

“It’s called running,” Williams-Flournoy said.

The coach’s intense style is conducive to her game strategy— pressure defense.

“Wow,” McNutt said when asked about the focus WilliamsFlournoy puts on defense. “If we practice for three hours … we work on defense for two hours and fifteen minutes.”

The 6-foot guard talks with an upbeat certainty, a sureness that turns into a more-than-confident swagger when she steps on the floor. Her swagger is the crux of the Hoyas defense, and the heart of the entire team.

The Hoyas offer a multitude of different press offerings, all of them involving constant ball pressure and traps designed to force a turnover. The 1-2-2, the Hoyas most frequently used press, depends on the skill of the “1,” the point woman in the press.

That’s where McNutt comes in.

“She’s absolutely perfect [for the point]. She’s long, lanky.

You know I wouldn’t want to start as a point guard facing her right away. I wouldn’t want to do that,” Williams-Flournoy said, chuckling.

The anatomy of a basketball team is sometimes hard to grasp. It’s impossible for a coach to know in advance how players will play with each other on the court, what roles they will fulfill, and how they will get along with each other off the court.

In this instance, WilliamsFlournoy didn’t plan for every player to have the roles they currently have for the Hoyas. She didn’t know that the team would bond so tightly. But somehow, she created the perfect atmosphere for this year’s team.

JUE CHEN

The Hoyas are more than a basketball team. They’re a sisterhood.

“I think it’s very, very important because I’ve been here four years and I know the difference between team chemistry and not,” Kirkland said. “In the previous years, we weren’t as close as we were and it would reflect in our game. Now, I feel like everybody’s my sister, and that’s something I couldn’t say two or three years ago. It’s just a good thing to feel like it’s my family because now on the court it’s easier to play with them, it’s easier to talk because you have that understanding off the court.”

And as a family, the Hoyas are going to places they’ve never been before. Just ask Monica McNutt.

“You know, we had a powwow with our coaches today and we just go, honestly, we’re the only ones who can stop us,” McNutt said. “Who knows? The sky’s the limit.”

She might be exaggerating.

But if the Hoyas keep up the success they’ve had this season, McDonough Arena will be hanging another women’s banner this season.

Sweet as Sugar: Freshman “Sugar” Rodgers takes it to the hole.

HILARY NAKASONE

10 the georgetown voice

Cera-iously twee

by Shira Hecht Your tolerance for Youth in Revolt will mostly depend on how tired you are of Michael Cera. Little George Michael is this movie—he plays the central character, Nick Twisp, as well as Nick’s alter ego, a French lothario named “Francois Dillinger” who sports white loafers, high-waisted pleated pants, vaguely European bling, and a blossoming porn-star mustache.

Nick is lonely, lovelorn, awkward, and very much a virgin.

When his mother and her boyfriend take him on vacation, he falls desperately for Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a girl who lives with her very Christian parents in a two-floor trailer nearby.

Youth in Revolt follows Nick’s increasingly implausible, desperate, and occasionally hilarious attempts to get and keep Sheeni, taking him through French prep-schools, arson, fake illegal immigrant smuggling, seduction, and shrooms.

Some of what transpires is funny, but often the plot doesn’t really make any sense. The movie is so twee, though, that complaining about plausibility seems like complaining about artificial flavoring in your Chapstick—yeah, it would be better if it were real, but there’s not really enough substance for it to matter anyway.

Cera pulls all his usual tricks—he spends some time without his clothes on, he runs around a lot with arms flailing, he wears a backpack that slumps his shoulders down. As usual, he stammers and stutters and

is polite in all the wrong ways, he doesn’t fit in and has embarrassing parents, and he chases the beautiful, witty, but slightly strange girl. Everything happens exactly as you would expect.

Well, not exactly as you expect. Things just sort of happen, in an order, but without any kind of momentum or point. Rather than a satisfying story arc, this movie moves in a straight, stuttered line—the plot equivalent of one of Cera’s haltingly delivered, extra courteous pick-up lines.

Perhaps Youth in Revolt’s constant production delays impeded director Miguel Arteta’s vision: the movie is strangely off-kilter. Plot points and characters are brought in and then inexplicably discarded, from Nick’s Indian co-conspirator Vijay to Sheeni’s dog, both introduced for a few laughs then left hanging around the margins of the scenes, just getting in the way.

In fact, Youth in Revolt so belongs to Michael Cera that it seems sometimes as if all of the other characters are hanging around the edges, as human props who occassionally set up jokes. No one else is an actual character so much as a casting request—“slutty mom” (Jean Smart), “grouchy dad” (Steve Buscemi), “loutish cop” (Ray Liotta). It seems such a shame to have all these great actors forced to play second fiddle in a movie that doesn’t quite know what it’s doing, but this movie is clearly meant to be a Michael Cera showcase. It’s just not clear whether we have any use for one.

Do you want to play a game of “Hide the Frozen Banana” with me?

IMDB

leisure

january 21, 2010

Hilary Nakasone

Wait, are they kissing in the play within the play? Or pretending to kiss in the play within the play?

Real monsters of meta

by George D’Angelo The concept of art within art—like a painting of a painting—can often be difficult to grasp. It is not always easy to determine where the the art ends and the frame begins. In The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard’s 1982 play currently running in the Devine Studio Theatre at the Davis Performance Arts Center, director Andrew Dolan (COL ‘10) does an excellent job of managing the concept of a play about a play. The main characters of the show are directors and actors who are struggling with their own theater projects in their “real” lives.

As the show begins, the curtain partially opens to reveal a man sitting at his desk in a bathrobe, drinking wine and building a house of cards. After a short dialogue in which the character, Max, reveals that he knows that his wife, Charlotte, has been cheating on him—infidelity is a common theme in this soap-opera-esque play—the audience sees that they were actually watching a production of House of Cards, the play written

by Henry (Daniel Lerman, GRD ‘10), a kooky playwright and the central character in the show.

Henry is dramatic yet cool,

detached yet affected. He is the kind of sarcastically endearing character that carries a play. Lerman embodies the kooky New York playwright with obnoxious wit and fast-talking gusto. Henry is entwined in an affair with Annie, an actress who shares his theatrical aspirations played by Stella Clingmon (COL ’10).

While Lerman’s performance stands out, Clingmon also did an excellent job as Annie, the hot-blooded and discontented young actress searching for the kind of love you read about in harlequin novels. Annie is never fully satisfied with her current lover and gets involved with three different men during the course of the play.

Clingmon’s passion and fervor as Annie makes the infidelitious “pure love” seeker surprisingly believable.

It’s too bad there wasn’t more of Danny Rivera (COL ’11)’s Billy, a young, flirtatious and hilarious actor. Billy is at his best when he acts out the ill-fated script (yes, another play within the play) of Annie’s political prisoner friend.

Rivera brings a breath of nontheatrical humor into the play, which is refreshing, as the plot often gets caught up in the intricacies of the characters’ the-

ater-centric lives.

Technically, the play is well executed. The plain set is accented with subtle details like framed photos of the actual actors adorning the set. In one cleverly constructed scene, Billy and Annie film one of their plays. Though they are facing away from the audience, their faces are projected (via the camera’s perspective) on the set’s wall. Not only does this engage the audience, but it also visually underscores their onstage romance.

Performing metafiction is always a risky endeavor. Straying too far into the world within the world risks alienating the audience, but leaving the internal elements undeveloped feels hackneyed and cheap. The Real Thing presents a particularly interesting challenge, as the internal theatrical elements feature so prominently in the plot.

Fortunately, Dolan, the cast and the crew rise to the occasion.

In short, though it may leave you’re head spinning as you leave the theatre, The Real Thing is worth checking out.

The Real Thing will be playing in the Devine Studio Theater at the Davis Center from January 21st to January 30th.

“Nice marmot.”—The Big lebowski

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the georgetown voice 11

Please stop watching Two and a Half Men Archer, Thursdays, 10 p.m., FX

If FX is willing to take a chance on animated spy parody Archer, I’m willing to try at least a few episodes. While its highly stylized animation may take some getting used to, the show plays like a smuttier Get Smart—the original series, not the Steve Carrell abomination of an adapted movie.

Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) is the star agent— with the unfortunate codename “Duchess”—of the International Secret Intelligence Service, which just so happens to be run by his mother (Jessica Walter, perfectly channeling Lucille Bluth). Between bickering with his ex-girlfriend and co-worker (Aisha Tyler, also known as the only black person ever on Friends) and dodging HR complaints, Archer brings the office absurdity of Better Off Ted to the world of James Bond.

—Dan Newman

Parks and Recreation, Thursdays, 8:30 p.m., NBC

Chuck, Mondays, 8 p.m., NBC

One of the best shows in recent memory almost didn’t get a chance to have its third season when NBC nearly cancelled Chuck, a comedy that mixes spy intrigue with nerdy jokes, action, and a heaping of unrequited love. After its second season ended with a cliffhanger, devoted fans refused to accept NBC’s decision not to renew the show and mounted an online campaign to save it. Thanks to a Subway sponsorship deal, Chuck got another 19 episodes.

The dialogue is cheesy and the plotlines are sometimes transparent, but the most compelling reason to watch Chuck is the charisma of the cast, led by Zachary Levi and featuring an angry Adam Baldwin. Chuck thrives on knock-off James Bond plotlines, but the real appeals are the nerdy protagonist’s relationships and how they affect his clandestine spy work. It’s quirky and geeky, but tough to stop watching.

—Sean Quigley

Chuck the Chuck, cheapo There’s nothing worse than being predictable. That’s why I shrink from serving Charles Shaw, or two-buck Chuck, as the bargain Trader Joe’s wine is affectionately known, at dinner these days. As tolerable and affordable—only $2.99 a bottle!— as the wine is, it’s gotten to be just too damn ubiquitous. (As a college student regularly subjected to Keystone and jungle juice, I consider the word tolerable to be quite a compliment.)

Spend three bucks on a bottle of wine and everyone’s going to know it.

I’m not too concerned with how these wines taste—this is college, after all. For those of

you with more sophisticated palates, go enjoy your nutty, impertinent Merlots and your full-haunched yet playful Pinot Grigios. This column is not for your kind.

Plus, one of the perks of shopping for wine at Trader Joe’s with a five dollar per bottle budget is that a reasonable baseline of quality is assured.

Unlike inexpensive wine from, say, Towne, you need not worry about offending your friends’ taste buds with what might pass for fermented prune juice.

What really matters when buying bargain wine from Trader Joe’s is the label. And thankfully, for just a dollar or two

Who would’ve guessed that Greg Daniels and Michael Schur could mine suburban doldrems for comedy gold yet again? Wedged between Community and The Office, Parks and Recreation’s tribute to municipal government has been overlooked these past few months. Let’s stop that nonsense.

Do you like mustachioed civic servants who moonlight as jazz saxophonists? Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) is your man. Or how about a homeless man-child who tries to win back his girlfriend by virtue of his shoeshine prowess?

Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) will satisfy your needs. And don’t forget about Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), the show’s headliner. Daniels and Schur—veterans of The Office— know how to handle an ensemble cast and make an audience howl with laugher. But, Parks and Recreation isn’t the next Office. It’s better.

—Chris Heller

more than two-buck Chuck, you can get wine that looks every bit as sophisticated as your parents’ favorite ‘98 Bordeaux.

Take the Aquila D’Oro Toscana 2008, a dry red Tuscan wine that will set you back a mere $3.99. With its name in a sweeping gold typeface against

Bottom’s Up

by Sam Sweeney

A bi-weekly column about drinking. a muted black background and shimmering crimson red leaves lining the bottom of the label, the wine looks positively regal.

As for how it tastes? Red. Pretty good. Like I said, this is college.

If you want a wine that’s

Burn Notice, Thursdays, 10 p.m., USA

24, Mondays, 9 p.m., FOX

This week, 24 fans were finally rewarded with the return of another action-packed day in the life of Jack Bauer. Although recent seasons of 24 have been criticized for predictability, the eighth season adds fresh relevance to the flailing series.

Day Eight begins with a United Nations peace initiative between America’s President Taylor and President Hassan of Kamistan. The attempts to settle a nuclear disarmament agreement evoke the current relationship between the United States and Iran, making Kamistan more relevant than the other fictional countries featured on past seasons of the show.

Bauer, who initially intends to retire and focus more on his family, finds himself inevitably drawn into the world of counter-terrorism. Disappointing for him—and henchmen around the world—but not for us.

—Kat Lynn a little more mod-looking, I’d point you towards the 2008 Purple Moon Merlot. Also $3.99, the label of this California wine has a Cro-magnonstyle etching of a man in what looks like a grass skirt triumphantly holding up a bunch of grapes. Triumphant, indeed.

I could go on. There’s the quirky Dr. Jebediah Drinkwell’s 2007 Meritage, the penguin-adorned 2008 King Shag Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, and so on. Trader Joe’s has no shortage of four and five dollar bottles of wine that look as if they cost three or four times that.

For this, we owe our thanks, at least partially, to Fred Franzia, the wine mogul whose empire includes Charles Shaw.

Burn Notice doesn’t seem all that different from the rest of the USA Network’s programming.

In every episode, a quirky but kindhearted protagonist solves the problems of strangers in trouble—only instead of an obsessive germaphobe or a smarmy fake psychic, the protagonist is a suave ex-spy named Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan). What sets Burn Notice ahead of the rest is the action. Each week the show cranks it to eleven with explosions and gunplay that would leave Adrian Monk whimpering in a corner. At the same time, things never get too heavy. In true 007 style, one liners and bullets are traded in equal measure. Bruce Campbell is particularly delightful as Westen’s boozy, womanizing army buddy. Toss in Gabrielle Anwa as the sexy Irish assassin turned girlfriend, and you have a show well worth watching.

—Brendan Baumgardner

Franzia, though a multimillionaire, would fit right in at college; he believes any bottle of wine shouldn’t be more than ten dollars. Franzia snaps up established, financially distressed wineries. Then, he exploits their brand names to market thousands of gallons of wine, purchased on the cheap off the bulk market.

The result? A profusion of super-cheap, fairly tasty wines.

And if you spring for a step above two-buck Chuck, no one at college will be any the wiser.

Let us raise our glasses then, my fellow sommeliers, to bargain wine with luxury labels. Cheers.

Kick back after a long day and uncork Sam’s bottle of white at ssweeney@georgetownvoice.com.

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

january 21, 2010

Critical Voices

Spoon, Transference, Merge Records Seven LPs deep and one thing is abundantly clear: Spoon has the paradoxical gift of consistent inconsistency, a sense of “progression” without dilution. Transference, the Austin band’s fifth album in a decade, has the all the trimmings of a Spoon record—the quiet seductiveness of Girls Can Tell (“Before Destruction”), the quirky pop experimentation of Kill the Moonlight (“Is Love Forever?”), the purist, less-is-more songwriting of Gimme Fiction (“Mystery Zone”)—but it still has a soul it can call its own.

If there’s one thing guitarist/singer/songwriter Britt Daniel seems bent on accomplishing with this latest batch

Mouse, trapped For the past week or so, I have been sharing my apartment with a skinny, hairy, uninvited guest—a mouse, who pops in and out through a hole in the wall. He is small, and relatively harmless, so I didn’t mind lending him my living room for a few hours of the night. I let him run around and get his exercise in the comfort and safety of my home.

But when he decided to permanently inhabit my favorite study corner, I realized that he had far outstayed his welcome.

One morning, as he sat innocently beneath my study chair, I prepared to attack. The closer I got, the faster my heart beat; as he saw me approaching, his little heart began to pump as well. I was ready to

of songs, it’s distancing himself from the Sixties-glazed nostalgia of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the group’s 2007 pop opus. Can a song like “Trouble Comes Running” make it onto the radio like “The Underdog” did?

Probably not—the first 13 seconds sound like they were lifted directly from a demo rather than meticulously mixed by Berry Gordy Jr. The same goes for “Before Destruction,” when Daniel’s vocals first emerge.

Transference seems to intentionally indulge its own rougharound-the-edges aesthetic: “Mystery Zone” cuts out unexpectedly, as do the reverberant vocals on “Is Love Forever?”

These are the sort of amateurish moments that peppered A Series of Sneaks, but 12 years down the road, when “sloppy” doesn’t seem like the sort of sound Spoon should be bringing to the table. But it’s the looser qualities that give the brilliant bits that much more weight— like when the guitars cut back through “Mystery Zone,” or “I Saw the Light” transfigures into something completely different.

Comfort in imperfection—it looks dangerous on paper, but

it seems to hold Transference together just fine. Call it maturity, existentialism, or blissful sabotage—it’s what allows Daniel to sing “Are you quite certain of love?” while dancing around the room.

fight, but the mouse’s body was preparing him for flight— he dashed right back into the hole in the wall, faster than he ever had before.

This survival instinct was all a result of a hormone called epinephrine, or more commonly, adrenaline, secreted by a set of star-shaped glands that sit on top of the kidneys. This is the hormone that’s responsible for the feeling that you experience the night before taking the LSAT, or during the half hour you spend in the waiting room before your job interview.

When an animal, or a human, perceives a threat, the brain sends a signal to the glands, telling them to send epinephrine into the bloodstream. Once the body’s cells have gotten the message, they can collectively scream out commands to other areas of

the body. They push your heart to beat faster and with greater force, they coax your liver into releasing more sugar and providing more energy, and they suck blood away from your skin and towards your heart.

Ultimately, epinephrine temporarily makes the skin pale, the

Voice’s Choices: “Before Destruction,” “Trouble Comes Running,” “Is Love Forever?”

—Daniel Cook

Vampire Weekend, Contra, XL Recordings Vampire Weekend came out of nowhere in 2008, writing songs about the Oxford comma, ripping stylistic quirks from Paul Simon, and generating not only an astounding amount of hype, but also haters who found them too uninspiring, too un-

rub some Dirt on It

by Sadaf Qureshi

a bi-weekly column about health mind alert, and the body strong.

Back in the day, when primitive man had to fight off grizzly bears, or attack wild animals for food, epinephrine was a vital asset. Increased energy output allowed for increased physical performance and better chances of survival.

For most of us, though, perceived threats come in the form

original, or just too preppy.

Contra, their newest release, should quiet those haters. It’s the sound of a young band coming into its own, fusing the spiky Afro-influenced pop of the debut with ideas very much borne out of modern radio-ready pop.

Contra is a less organic affair than its predecessor, which relied primarily on traditional rock instrumentation. On opener “Horchata,” the band opts for the flair of marimbas and a programmed electro beat. Cheerful synth lines and distorted electronic snares dominate “White Sky” before Koenig busts out a catchy wordless chorus.

On a few songs—“Cousins,” for example, or the excellent “Holiday”—Vampire Weekend tightens things up with precise guitar work and jaunty rhythms. Like their debut’s best track, “A-Punk,” these songs remind us that Vampire Weekend has, at a base level, a gift for fast-paced, simple pop.

Yet the band is not afraid to step out from Vampire Weekend’s shadow. On “California English,” Koenig sings with Auto-Tune, on “Diplomat’s Son,” easily the band’s longest

song at six minutes, guitarist/ producer Rostam Batmanglij samples M.I.A. and indulges in a long narrative about youthful, upper-class rebellion.

While excellent songs, anyone clamoring for the simplicity of the band’s debut will prefer tracks like “Run”—which features a Mexican-influenced horn section, countering assertions that Vampire Weekend mines only Afro-pop—and “Giving Up the Gun,” perhaps the band’s most conventional modern rock song.

It’s clear from even a cursory listen of Contra that the band’s members do not want to be pigeonholed. They can write twominute punk songs or six-minute electro-epics. They can rely on synths or guitars, and they can sound timelessly international or distinctly emblematic of a particular moment in time in New York City. As a result, there’s something for everyone on Contra, and it’s worth a listen, even for those that mocked their debut.

of preparing for upcoming exams, giving a presentation, or interviewing and applying for jobs and graduate schools, all of which are rather sedentary activities.

Despite the natural build up in energy due to the flow of adrenaline, it is socially unacceptable to dispense that energy in day-to-day surroundings.

No one gets up and does a set of jumping jacks after completing a particularly difficult exam problem, or asks to jog around the perimeter of the room while responding to a tough interview question. Civilized man has become good at holding things in. For most of us, adrenaline just keeps building up, and bouncing off the interior walls of our bodies, waiting to be dissipated.

What’s the best way to get it all out? Exercise. We spend too

much time sitting around and thinking, and not enough time getting out and playing.

I myself am fairly unenthusiastic when it comes to exercise. I go for long walks instead of long runs, and though I always take the stairs no matter how high the climb, I don’t always enjoy it. But exercise isn’t really a choice, and it doesn’t really have to be painful. Snowball fights and chasing after Frisbees count. It’s a biological obligation, an unyielding demand. Even my furry friend, who darts around the livingroom all night, knows the necessity of a good workout.

So when that daunting paper assignment hits the table, it’s time to hit the gym.

Voice’s Choices: “Cousins,” “Holiday,” “Run” —Justin Hunter Scott

Get Sadaf’s epinephrine flowing and her heart pumping at squreshi@georgetownvoice.com.

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In the eternal darkness that is a winter midnight, I threw all my suspicions to the wind and consulted a false prophet. I’ve been lonely as of late, waiting for a knight—any knight—even one riding by in tarnished armor on a sickly nag, to stop for me. The mood was just right for me to be properly duped into thinking I was Venus.

In a moment of weakness I believed him for just a second. Oh, I could have Adonis, because he wanted me too. You know about the Indian prince I crave? Within my grasp says this wise man. And that Christian boy who briefly met my eyes while handing out fliers for a prayer group I had no intention of ever attending, he was crazy about me. From one short-lived glance. That was the power this soothsayer made me believe I had in the dark of the night. It didn’t end there. The one I’m almost ashamed to want, the one most unattainable to me in the cosmic sense, he desires Venus as well. Then the tone changes, and this dress-up Tiresias tells me about myself, things I guess I just didn’t know. My greatest fear, he tells me, is success. In that moment, instead of questioning his connection with the hereafter, I questioned myself in defeat. For the last eight years of my life, there’s been nothing more terrifying to me than failure, and here this wolf in sheep’s clothing is telling me the exact opposite.

Maybe I do fear it, in some small way, success means maturing, and though I’ve waited forever to grow up, it frightens me just a little. So I continued sitting in on this unsettling séance.

In a second it all changes and my new God tells me the most cutting of truths. With one word, one name, I am shaken to the core. After months of shoving it down into the darkest recesses of my mind, moving on in the only way I know how, this secret Judas speaks the taboo word. “Gabriel.” It has taken me so long to get to this point, to not think constantly about the angel Gabriel

fiction

the georgetown voice 13

P R O P H E T

and the gaping hole he left in my chest. I got drunk off the hint of the otherworldly hanging in the air, and left myself vulnerable to the musings and guesses of a wannabe soothsayer. Oh what dangerous spells he weaves with such chance words! As soon as he spoke of Gabriel, that hole in my chest opened up again and began to throb as painfully and emptily as before. What fated words! Why couldn’t that pretend Nostradamus just reach into my caved-in chest and squeeze my still beating heart into submission, into defeat? Because, in truth, he knew not what he said. My stone face, my stone heart, revealed nothing. For all that this traitor knew, he wasn’t hitting any real mark. However, knowing what I do now about his covert methods, it pains me deeply that Tiresias dared bring it up.

In the bitterest twist of fate, that false prophet broke my heart. Feeling used, feeling betrayed, I stepped out into that winter night with a masquerade smile on my face. I laughed through the pain, the exquisite hurt, because I didn’t want this faux Nostradamus to see just how sad I was, just how affected I truly was. Today I went to his altar, to make a sacrifice … all my skepticism for one answer. Just about to plunge the dagger into my sacrificial lamb, the false prophet shows up, unaware of the dagger, the sacrifice, the sadness and death.

Looking deep into the eyes of my dress-up soothsayer as he reveals the cunning with which he managed to pull the wool over my most skeptical eyes, a cry begs to be loosened from my lips. But my face is carved of granite, and my throat is paralyzed. Tiresias used me, used what pathetic scraps of my pained, teenage story he had from my own mouth to break me down. He takes off his mask, his cape, and his voice raises to a tone much closer to my own. I’m looking not at a false prophet at all, but rather a pretend prophetess … The dear friend of my soul, using my own foolish words and dreams against me.

A n A S TA S I A Baran

voices

14 the georgetown voice

january 21, 2010

No end in sight for the floundering “War on Terror”

by Cole Stangler With General David Petraeus, the architect of the surge in Iraq, speaking in Gaston Hall today, questions about the rise of American militarism and misguided nation-building projects loom larger than ever. In replicating the Patraeus strategy in Afghanistan, Obama ignored the lessons of history, the advice of foreign policy experts, and the views of the many Americans and Afghans who are tired of war and foreign intervention. Instead, our president urged U.S. forces to intensify their efforts in Afghanistan as a necessary step in the vague and unending “War on Terror.”

From the outset, the media portrayed the American-led invasion of Afghanistan favorably. It has also been called the “good war” or the “just war,” framed as a war that needs to be fought for the sake of national security and the annihilation of Al-Qaeda. Yet, in spite of the positive press, most Americans

remain unconvinced. In a December poll conducted by CNN, only 43 percent said they were in favor of the war. After seven years in Iraq, the American public is unsurprisingly uneager to prolong another unnecessary fight.

Despite the eerie, Bush-like fearmongering that dominated Obama’s speech at West Point—in which the president boldly declared, “We did not ask for this fight” and asserted that “there is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat”—foreign experts have consistently highlighted the dangers of committing another 30,000 troops and the impossibility of winning such a conflict. But it doesn’t take an expert to question the feasibility of stabilizing this ethnically diverse and decentralized nation, especially when both the British and the Soviets failed miserably in similar nation-building projects.

Perhaps the most crucial of the problems facing the American nation-building effort is the Afghan

government’s abject lack of credibility. Hamid Karzai’s government has an embarrassing, almost negligible amount of respectability in the eyes of most Afghans. His new cabinet is a motley crew of warlords and criminals. Karzai has only barely managed to survive— desperately propped up by the American`s-led forces—and continues to receive our country’s support even though his recent re-election has been widely recognized as fraudulent.

There is also significant tension between Karzai’s government and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which has tried desperately to mask his government’s corruption. In a December issue of the British daily newspaper The Guardian, Peter Galbraith, a former UN deputy special representative who was fired for attempting to expose the massive vote fraud in the 2009 elections, noted the increasing desperation of the UN mission.

“It has no credibility with the opposition and is not respected by Kar-

zai,” he wrote. “A guy like Karzai does not respect someone he feels is in his pocket.”

Galbraith also noted that NATO’s efforts are undermining the UN’s authority in the nation. What supporters of the war have failed to acknowledge is the impact this surge will have on Afghan civilians.

Apart from almost surely increasing civilian casualties, an increase in NATO forces runs the risk of attracting more disillusioned Afghans to resistance of foreign occupation. By further militarizing the conflict, U.S. policy risks making the Taliban’s grievances appear legitimate.

If Obama is truly intent on repairing America’s standing in the world, he has chosen a disastrously misguided route. Continued occupation of Afghanistan does not in any way make us safer—instead only solidifying the increasingly popular perception that the United States is an uncompromising, imperialist power. Like Lyndon B. Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam, an

unpopular and unnecessary war threatens to derail Obama’s ambitious agenda and ultimately define his presidency.

Most disappointingly, our president has accepted the dangerous and faulty logic of his predecessor’s “War on Terror,” buying into the idea that young Americans should be sent to die in foreign lands in order to protect the rest of us from an ill-defined enemy. Although Obama may feel courageous for not admitting defeat, it would take true courage to acknowledge we cannot complete an impossible task. This is an opportunity for Obama to truly live up to the change promised by his now distant presidential campaign—and put an end to unquestioned American military intervention.

Cole Stangler is a freshman in the School of Foreign Service and an assistant news editor for the Voice. We almost kicked him off for hating on Obama .

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Cali anymore

by Laura Kelly

I’ve gotten paler and seem to walk faster. Flip-flops have been replaced by rainboots and Chipotle or Qdoba is really the closest thing to Mexican food I can find. I’m starting to think J.Crew is more of a cult than a clothing store, and I’ve accepted that people actually walk on escalators. I attribute every brain malfunction to frost bite and check the weather report

on a freakish basis. I’m from California, and over winter break, I realized just how different my life is on the East Coast.

When I stepped onto the Georgetown campus for the first time this past August I went into culture shock. I was overwhelmed by the myriad of salmon-colored J.Crew shorts, the same Longchamp bag in every color under the sun and naturally, Sperry Top-Siders.

Where I’m from, salmon is a fish, not a color. And typically, boys tend to avoid wearing anything more than shorts and a t-shirt on any given day. But there I was, walking to class overhearing bromance conversations about Vineyard Vines flip-flops and coordinated shopping dates.

The walk itself was a different experience altogether.

In California, we stroll at a leisurely pace, but here, the default pace is somewhere between speed walk and light jog. Maybe East Coasters walk with more purpose, or maybe it’s just colder outside.

Returning to my favorite coffee shop in L.A., I sat in my standard corner. To the left, was a woman in her eighties, straight ahead a grown man painting in water colors, and to the right, middle schoolers ruffling through a backpack to find something illegal, probably firecrackers from Chinatown. I always order coffee from the same guy with gaged ears, countless tattoos, and a yellowish streak in his hair.

He always proceeds to ask me about my day; this time, we had an entire conversation about the new green tea mints he tried.

That, I think, is the biggest difference between the two coasts. We in California are weirder. At Georgetown, I’ve talked politics and listened to drunken rambles in different languages. It’s a level of sophistication that I know I was lacking back home. But at the same time, the quirkiness that runs rampant in Los Angeles is what I miss the most.

And even though the differences are readily apparent and

occasionally overwhelming, I realize that the two shouldn’t be compared. You can’t compare apples to oranges, surfboards to snowboards, or water polo to lacrosse. I understand now that while the regions and their inhabitants are decidedly diverse, neither is better or worse. The differences simply epitomize why I left California—to try something new.

But what had I gotten myself into? After merely two days on campus, I found myself crouched in my room, on the phone with my best friend, trying to scheme my way back to my sunny suburb of Los Angeles. Coming from a school with four thousand other students, I was used to everyone having a quirk. But here, whenever I stepped outside I encountered a seemingly perfect, cookiecutter world. Every girl was dressed perfectly, smiles were ubiquitous, and it seemed as though I was the weird girl, dropped in an adolescent version of The Stepford Wives.

But as I started talking to the perfect, East Coast girl bots, I realized that beyond those beautiful pearls and matching bow, she was just as weird as I am. I may shuffle into a room and embody a typical Californian free spirit, but deep down, underneath the J.Crew polo, I know she wasn’t clone I thought she was.

And maybe that’s it. What I had expected, the image that was the basis of my intimidation was simply a façade. The differences that made me feel at times too awkward for my own good, ultimately forced me to escape from the shell in which I had grown up. The uneasiness that plagued my first semester of Georgetown made me accept that yes, it is different: the people, the place, the culture. But I left California for a change—not necessarily to change myself, but at least to expand my comfort zone, to understand more than my L.A. bubble. And if my middle school yearbooks are any indication, the truth is that to grow is to feel awkward.

I’ve become so accustomed to Eastern ways that I cross the street wherever I want—I’ve learned that crosswalks are more of a suggestion than a requirement. The sun is now a tenacious enemy, as my translucent skin is no longer a match for the fierce 75-degree January heat of the Mid-Atlantic region. Hopefully, I’ll make it through the winter alive. I got a second Snuggie for Christmas, so there’s a

Laura Kelly is a freshman in the College. She’s got more bounce than all of y’all combined.

voices

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the georgetown voice

15

The arts at Georgetown: a work in progress

by Lily Kaiser I almost didn’t come to Georgetown because I thought the arts program was so bad. In my family, art was more important than friends, schoolwork, and sometimes physical health. After I finished my freshman year of high school with a very strong GPA, my mother took me aside with a worried look and asked me, “But what are you doing to be creative?”

So when I came to Georgetown, I balked. The Davis Performing Arts Center was just two years old, and tour guides happily showed it off as a sign of how fast the arts were growing, but I was privately alarmed it had taken Georgetown until 2005 to build it. Despite my reservations, I enrolled, telling myself that I was headed in a new, more scholarly direction. My years of high school plays were far less important than the serious-minded, academic classes I’d be taking here to prepare me for real life.

When I found out that three kids that I knew from the Charles River Creative Arts Program—a wonderful summer camp that narrowly escaped the acronym CRAP, to the delight of every ten-year old there—were at Georgetown too, I was shocked. Some of the most artistic people I knew had come to Georgetown, a university where the visual arts classrooms are confined to a single floor and the Per-

forming Arts Department was created fewer than five years ago. Was it a coincidence?

Yes and no, according to Dr. Anna Celenza, chair of the Performing Arts Department.

“Are we actively recruiting? No, but we’re recruiting students who come to visit,” Celenza said. “Before, when students came and did tours, [DPAC] wasn’t here. Seeing this building in the middle of campus—it’s almost like if you build it, they will come.”

The department has taken off since it became independent from the Department of Art and Art History in 2008. According to Celenza, Theater and Performance Studies and American Musical Culture each have 20 majors and 30 minors, about as many as Georgetown is currently equipped to handle. The Department of Art and Art History boasts even higher numbers, not to mention a popular Masters program in Museum Studies that fills up every year, according to Department Chair John Morrell.

In the past few years, the performing arts in particular have been greeted with an unprecedented amount of enthusiasm.

Maybe that’s the reason, despite my rocky first impression of the arts at Georgetown, there is a lot more going on than I perceived. But a great

beginning also presents the University with a bigger question: where do we go from here?

“We as a faculty are now stopping and assessing what it is we’re doing, looking at what our major goals are,” Celenza said. “We’re not looking to build a graduate program in performing arts or increase by 100 majors, we want to do what we do better.”

Celenza admits that if a prospective student comes to her hoping to become a first-rate professional musician, she tells them Georgetown is not the place to be. But she’s working hard with the rest of the performing arts faculty to build connections with D.C.-area organizations like National Public Radio, Rolling Stone, and Arena Theater, that offer internships and jobs to a steady stream of Georgetown students.

This growth spurt is an exciting start, but the state of the arts at Georgetown still leaves a lot to be desired. Morrell is proud of what his department has to offer, but after more than 15 years teaching drawing and painting at Georgetown, there’s a disappointment in his voice that hasn’t yet tinged Celenza’s.

“It’s frustrating sometimes because you want it to happen faster than it is,” Morrell said.

During the last fundraising campaign, the University was unable to secure the money to renovate Walsh,

SHIRA SAPERSTEIN

Michaelangelo? Renoir? Klimt? Maybe one day, Georgetown ...

but Morrell hasn’t completely lost hope. When he cheerfully dusted off the architectural drawings that were created for Walsh in the nineties, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s a five-story visual arts paradise, with expanded digital labs and skylit studios for majors. It’s nowhere close to being built, but it’s more than I thought Georgetown was capable of planning for.

Morrell dreams big—he advocates adding a course in the arts as part of the core curriculum—but in the meantime, he’ll be satisfied if every student who wants to take an art

‘Roids are all the rage in the baseball world The biggest sports story over Christmas break was hardly even news: Mark McGwire used steroids for most of his fifteen years of baseball-crushing. But the consequences of this admission are less readily apparent. McGwire had been left out of Major League Baseball’s prestigious Hall of Fame for suspected steroid use. Confirming those suspicions, logically, should do little to change his legacy. But it feels as though this painful confession—the first to come from a star athlete without any formal accusations of steroid use—might be what it takes to save not just one man’s legacy, but that of an era.

Baseball has evolved from its earliest days. Put any of “the greats” in the contemporary game and they would be hilariously outmatched. Like all sports, today’s game has maximized its use of science to ensure a higher quality of

athleticism in even the worst competitors. In the late 1980s, science found a new way to help players: anabolic steroids. The league decided to ban this particular technological advancement, and smartly so—steroids aren’t good for players or the children who look up to them, and are illegal under U.S. law without a prescription.

This ban, however, was something of a farce. The league didn’t start testing for steroids until 2003.

The MLB, of course, had no real reason to test—before the 1994 players’ strike, steroids didn’t seem too prevalent. Afterwards, baseball’s brass were willing to turn a blind eye to unusual statistics, if that’s what it took to regain the popularity lost since the strike.

Beyond damage to user health and well being, the main concern with steroid use seems to be what these inflated numbers mean in the

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context of baseball history. Can we say that Barry Bonds has the most home runs of all time? Can we say that all four thousand of Roger Clemens’s strikeouts are legitimate? Can we say that Rodriguez’s “youngest player to 500 home runs” title is correctly given? If we choose to bar Mark McGwire from the Hall of Fame, do we also need to remove any references to this

Carrying On

by Matthew Collins A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

World Series victory? Steroid use opens the door to a stampede of complexities leaving fans to ponder the legitimacy of their heroes’ athletic accomplishments.

Steroids’ effect on baseball is inestimable. Although there is no firm data on steroid use and baseball performance, it is safe to say that the sport was completely changed by steroids. Players were playing better than they should have been at every level and every position. As ESPN’s Tim Keown

puts it: “There is a reason ballplayers ... use steroids: they work.” Every measurement—from regular season team wins to World Series victories, individual home runs, and strikeouts—was immeasurably changed in the 1990s. We don’t have any way of knowing who used steroids in the decade before testing started, so we can’t even begin to parse how things would have worked out otherwise. And considering that quite a few of the players named in the Mitchell Report weren’t abnormally large, we can’t even be sure that great apparent non-users like Omar Vizquel or Pedro Martinez—players who could be touted as the “true greats” in an era of rampant rule-breaking—did in fact abstain.

Those with the power to memorialize the era, then, must choose to embrace the 1990s or ignore them entirely. By ignoring these numbers because they are impure, and then reverting to old records, we are making an implicit assumption that yesterday’s figures are completely legitimate.

Considering, however, that Hank Aaron has admitted to amphetamine use to improve his game

class can.

To my surprise, I’m taking two. After a year of avoiding the arts, fearing that they would let me down, the art I saw on campus persuaded me that it could be fun. Who knows? I might even learn something. And at the very least, I’ll make my mother proud.

Lily Kaiser is a sophomore in the College. She is so fine that she could probably even make an impression on Monet.

and Gaylord Perry—a renowned spitballer from pre-ban years—is revered as one of the best pitchers of all time, we cannot be entirely sure of just how pure yesterday’s game was anyway. In fact, we can be pretty sure that it was almost as impure as today’s.

Precedent isn’t always the best thing to follow—just because yesterday’s stars may have cheated doesn’t mean we should be so willing to accept today’s druguse standards. But that might be exactly why the steroid era—and McGwire’s admission—was actually a great thing for baseball. In today’s panopticon of media coverage, some impurity or other was bound to come out. No other sport has the combination of tradition and popularity of baseball, making it uniquely ripe for this problem.

McGwire’s unwarranted, sincere apology has just about closed this era by setting another precedent: the greats from my youth need to admit and apologize so that the rest of baseball can accept them and—most importantly—finally move on.

Matthew Collins is a junior in the College and a contributing editor for the Voice. He once wanted to try steroids, but he didn’t have the balls.

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