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VOICE the georgetown

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H*YAS FOR CHOICE STARTS CONDOM DELIVERY SERVICE PAGE 4

FOOTBALL GEARS UP FOR PATRIOT LEAGUE PLAY PAGE 6

OSCAR BAIT: 12 YEARS A SLAVE PAGE 10

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w October 17, 2013 w Volume 49, Issue 10 w georgetownvoice.com

« Second-class faculty » The hidden struggles of Georgetown’s adjunct professors

by Lucia He

2 the georgetown voice

october 17, 2013

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Voice Crossword

ACROSS 1 Baseball tar 5 Box score accompaniment 10 Sterling Cooper dealings 13 Gross swelling 15 Luxury Honda 16 UT athlete 17 TV show leftover 18 Cryer’s co-star on Two and

“Midterm Break” by The Voice Crossword Team

a Half Men 19 Freudian term 20 Satirical magazine 21 Something like this 23 Treaty details 25 Loveable but not-so-smart Friend 26 World’s fastest sprinter 28 __-minded 31 Youngest Grand Slam winner Michael

32 Gumby’s best friend 33 Renaissance string instrument 34 Vulgar-sounding beaver’s creation 37 Freudian error 38 Rappers’ humble abodes 40 “Damn girl, you lookin’ __!”

41 Krueger’s favorite tree 42 Eastern European capital 43 Mattress supports 44 To undo a Cat’s Game?

45 Children’s book character Bedelia 46 Cooked brown 49 What makes a rio 50 Adams who took Rose and Driftwood 51 Wished for a redo 52 A place like Lau 55 JFK alternative 56 Juvenile porcine language 59 Togo neighbor 61 An arm and a __ 62 Vote in 63 New food to a toddler, perhaps 64 Afore 65 Goes to Leo’s after 4:30 66 Clean freak’s nemesis DOWN 1 Salon treatment 2 Bright thought

3 Geek 4 Flightless Australian bird 5 Blues singer’s voice, often 6 Repeated call 7 Key ball in pool 8 “Whose side __ you on?”

9 Shampoo line 10 “__ your eyes!”

11 Doctrine of faith 12 Trudge, through puddles 14 Mark who fought Octavian 22 So far 24 Brain scan, for short 25 Durable set of wheels 26 Pudgy kid 27 Head accessories 28 Domed corner 29 Cotton capsule 30 Lowfat (as in milk) 31 Owen in Sin City 34 Obsolete phone feature 35 Prefix with matter 36 City near Phoenix 38 Reference a source 39 Senator Harry 40 Kind of market 42 Tolled 43 Like a handwritten letter in the rain 44 Rockies-based Native American tribe 45 Era 46 Paris room 47 Sometimes needs management

Answers to last week’s sudoku

Answers to last week’s crossword

48 Common practice 49 Polly to Tom Sawyer and Petunia to Harry Potter 51 Asian diet staple 52 Doily material 53 Pen fillers 54 Calls of hounds 57 Boxer Muhammad 58 X 60 __dinger

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 49.10 October 17, 2013 Editor-in-Chief: Gavin Bade Managing Editor: Connor Jones Blog Editor: Julia Tanaka News Editor: Lucia He Sports Editor: Chris Almeida Feature Editor: Patricia Cipollitti Cover Editor: Kathleen Soriano-Taylor Leisure Editor: Heather Regen Voices Editor: Ana Smith Photo Editor: Andres Rengifo Design Editors: Lauren Ashley Panawa, Teddy Schaffer Projects Editors: Alec Graham, John Sapunor, Cannon Warren Puzzles Editor: Tyler Pierce Creative Directors: Madhuri Vairapandi, Amanda Dominguez Back Page Editor: Tiffany Lachonna Social Media Editor: Rio Djiwandana

Assistant Blog Editors: Minali Aggarwal, Isabel Echarte, Ryan Greene, Laura Kurek Assistant News Editors: Jeffrey Lin, Claire Zeng Assistant Sports Editors: Chris Castano, Brendan Crowley, Joe Pollicino Assistant Cover Editor: Neha Ghanshamdas Assistant Leisure Editor: Dayana Morales Gomez Assistant Photo Editors: Kathryn Easop, Joshua Raftis Assistant Design Editor: John Delgado-McCollum

Staff Writers:

Tim Barnicle, Emilia Brahm, Will Collins, Emlyn Crenshaw, Claire McDaniel, Liana Mehring, Dzarif Wan, Sam Wolter, Abby Greene, Abby Sherburne, Steven Criss, John Guzzetta, Jackson Sinnenberg, Joshua Ward, Annamarie White, Daniel Varghese, Max Roberts, Max Borowitz, Sourabh Bhat, Emmy Buck, Kevin Huggard, Chris Wadibia, Kenneth Lee, Shalina Chatlani, Deborah Sparks, Manuela Tobias, Grace Brennan, Mary-Bailey Frank, Raphaella Baek

Staff Photographers:

Elizabeth Coscia, Robin Go, Alan Liu

Staff Designers:

Karen Bu, Mike Pacheco, Tom Pacheco, Sebastian Sotelo, Christina Libre, Sophia Super, Pam Shu, Corrina Di Pirro, Katarina Chen, Dylan Cutler, Noah Buyon

Copy Chief: Sonia Okolie Copy Editors:

Grace Funsten, Caitlin Healey-Nash, Morgan Johansen, Sabrina Kayser, Samantha Meaden, Dana Suekoff, Isobel Taylor, Suzanne Trivette , Eleanor Fanto

Editorial Board Chair: Caitriona Pagni

General Manager: Michael Grasso Managing Director: Nick Albanese The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

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

RUBBED THE WRONG WAY

Condom delivery service makes students safer

Today, H*yas for Choice took a positive step forward by establishing a new condom delivery service on campus. The program will let students request condoms and pamphlets to distribute at parties and other social events.

With the introduction of this service, H*yas for Choice continues to push Georgetown toward addressing the sexual health needs of students. As of Aug. 15 the University altered its insurance plan to in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act. Policyholders may receive prescriptions for contraception from the Student Health Center. Contraception must be paid for separately by the insurance company, outside of Georgetown’s group health plan.

Although this change is progress, it was ultimately forced. Students still cannot obtain contraception anywhere on campus, including the Student Health Center. H*yas for Choice is the only group on the Hilltop that provides condoms to students.

In light of Georgetown’s continued refusal to promote contraception as a method of safe sex, the presence of H*yas for Choice on campus is invaluable to the promotion of safe sexual practices among the student body. Furthermore, this service will increase student access to contraception on campus, thereby empowering students to choose to engage in responsible sex.

Conservative student organizations fear that the presence of condoms at parties may contribute to increased pressure to have sex at parties and higher rates of sexual assault. However, given the fact that this initiative is unprecedented at Georgetown, these concerns are purely speculative. Moving forward, H*yas for Choice must remain cognizant of the effects of the delivery service and be willing to make appropriate adjustments if it hurts student safety.

Sexual assault is a result of a combination of factors such as alcohol, drugs, lack of respect for the victim, and an internalized rape culture. It would be foolish to assume the mere presence of condoms at parties would incite incidents of sexual assault.In fact, there is no reason to believe that enhanced, easy access to contraceptives could endanger any students in any way. Critiques of the program stem more from anxiety about human sexua;ity than from concerns for safety.

By providing a condom delivery service to parties, H*yas for Choice is honoring its purpose as an organization by making contraception available to students and educating students about safe sexual practices.

The condom delivery service is progress for Georgetown, and will provide invaluable resources to Georgetown students who continue live in a culture that puts students’ sexual health at risk.

JUST DESSERTS

Rights of workers at risk in new Hoya Court With the introduction of new restaurants in Hoya Court, concerns regarding the extension of the Just Employment Policy to all campus workers have emerged among unions and student activist groups.

Employees at Hoya Court will not be included under the union contract that protectsAramark workers at Leo’s and other campus amenities until the contract is renewed on January 1, 2015. This lack of official representation leaves workers at Hoya Court unprotected from harassment and without an institutional route for self-advocacy. Georgetown needs to extend the benefits of this policy to workers at Hoya Court as soon as they arrive on campus, not a year later.

Georgetown’s Just Employment Policy, created in 2005 after years of efforts by both students and workers, has held the University to a higher standard of working conditions, providing not only “fair and competitive com-

pensation packages” and the right to “freely associate and organize,” but also a “safe and harassment-free” working environment for University employees and contract workers on campus. It is a pointless policy, however, if its benefits do not extend to all who work at Georgetown, including new employees.

In the years since the implementation of the policy, the administration has made some progress in supporting workers’ rights. In 2011, Georgetown supported Leo’s employees, who rose up against Aramark in an effort to create a union. In May of this year, the administration also backed the unionization of adjunct faculty members, who advocated for greater job security and consistency in wages.

Despite these steps forward, it is clear that more work is necessary. Ongoing reports of harassment of Leo’s workers and employees at Epicurean that have occurred just in the past year point toward the University’s failure to enforce the Just Employment Policy.

Without the protection of the Policy, workers would certainly be unable to count upon the University to protect them from abuse.

Additionally, adjunct professors make up 45 percent of Georgetown’s total faculty, but they do not receive any health or retirement benefits, monetary aid for research and conferences, or office space from the University.

While the administration has not obstructed adjuncts’ efforts to unionize, passively supporting unionization efforts is not enough.

The University needs to uphold workers’ rights by holding itself accountable to the standards set forth in the Just Employment Policy, as well as every company it contracts out to. Rather than waiting for students and unions to force it into action, the administration must take on a proactive role in protecting the rights of every individual it employs, and it must send the message that the harassment of workers will not be tolerated on this campus.

CHARTERING NEW TERRITORY

Editorial Board:

Gavin Bade, Patricia Cipollitti, Lucia He, Quaila Hugh, Connor Jones, Julia Tanaka, Ryan Greene

Mailing Address:

the georgetown voice 3

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

Email: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com 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 Gannett Publishing. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover: Adjunct Professors at Georgetown Cover Ilustration: Madhuri Vairapandi

Shutdown shows need for budget autonomy

Over the last few days, the effects of the government shutdown have wreaked havoc on D.C.’s budget. As the Voice went to press it seemed that Congress was moving toward a compromise that would reopen the government, the shutdown has proven that fundamental changes must be made to the District’s budget autonomy in order to ensure operational stability in the future.

Throughout the shutdown, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D) tapped into the District’s $144 million Contingency Cash Reserve Fund to pay the 32,000 workers on the District’s payroll. As these emergency funds dwindled, Gray considered asking D.C. courts to move up the implementation date of an amendment to the District’s charter that will allow D.C. to appropriate its own tax and fee revenue.

D.C. voters approved the charter with a ballot referendum on April 23, 2012 and, if implemented, it would allow the D.C. government to spend its own tax revenue without seeking Congressional approval. But, this solution is not without problems. D.C. Mayor spokesperson, Pedro Ribiero, raised questions about the legality of moving up the implementation date of the charter amendment. D.C Attorney General Irving Nathan accused Gray of violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits government officials from spending funds that Congress has not legally appropriated.

D.C. is the only local jurisdiction in the United States that requires Congress to approve its budget, even though it relies largely on locally-raised taxes for revenue. During the shutdown, the legal dilemma created by the Act added to D.C.’s

financial burden by severely limiting the legal options District officials can pursue to fund local operations. Without government funds many city services such as the school system, would be paralyzed.

Despite the legal conflict the charter amendment creates, it will be implemented unless Congress steps in to stop it. In this case, where the government shutdown proved that the District cannot continue to function under federal budgetary control, Congress should simply take a laissez-faire approach to the issue and allow the amendment to stand.

The guiding principle of government should be to do no harm.

By doing nothing on the charter amendment, Congress would do the District a service by freeing it from the partisan squabbling that plagues federal government and allowing it the room to breathe.

news

4 the georgetown voice

october 17, 2013

H*yas for Choice announces new condom delivery system

by Jeffrey Lin

In an attempt to make condoms more accessible to Georgetown students at parties, H*yas for Choice officially announced their new condom delivery service today, Oct. 17. Students hosting parties can now request for H*yas for Choice to deliver condoms to their events.

The idea for a condom delivery system began when both members of the club and outside students voiced concerns about the limited availability of contraceptions provided by H*yas for Choice.

“People would come up to us at the table and make comments on how we only table from 10 am to 4 pm,” said Abigail Grace (SFS ‘16), vice president of H*yas for Choice. “That’s not necessarily prime time when you need to find a condom immediately.”

“I think this was just sort of a collection of comments and ideas.

During SAC fair, we pitched [the condom delivery system] to a few frats and gauged their responses,” said Lanier Hagerty (SFS ‘14), campus outreach coordinator for H*yas for Choice. “Getting [condoms] into parties would make a lot of sense.”

The online form for the condom delivery system asks questions such as the estimated attendance of the party, where the

party will be, and if a person requires pick-up or delivery.

Students can access the form at tinyurl.com/hfcdelivery.

After someone either picks up the condoms or a H*yas for Choice member delivers them, the person hosting the party will be responsible for providing them to people.

At a recent party this past weekend, H*yas for Choice held a testrun of the condom delivery service.

“It’s not awkward. We just put them in a bowl in the corner. There were around 40 condoms in there when the night began, and there were maybe 10 when the night ended,” Grace said. “People take them because you put them in an inconspicuous place.”

Thomas Lloyd (SFS ‘15), who attended the party, said, “I think the people really liked it. It was a sign of good intent by promoting safe sex at parties and being responsible adults.”

Some people, however, have criticized the condom delivery system. “Hoyas do not need more contraception, or a more efficient method of distributing them,” said Andrew Schilling (COL ‘14), outside guard of the Knights of Columbus. “Unfortunately, the proposed plan does nothing to tackle the urgent problems of Georgetown’s current hook-up culture, like the high rate of sexual violence committed against women.”

Grace strongly rebuked this idea. “To me, when people say that, it is ridiculous. Why is a person who is already going to assault someone who sees a condom more likely to assault someone? … Is what [an attacker] thinking about, ‘I need a condom’?” she said. “We recognize that [sex is] going to happen. I think that being prepared in all sense and to make this campus as safe of a place as possible is what we’re trying to do.”

Grace cites D.C.’s high HIV rate and the threat of other STDs as more reasons to increase access to condoms. According to a report by the D.C. Department of Public Health in 2012, 2.7 percent of D.C. residents were living with HIV by the end of 2010, the highest rate in the nation.

series of deferrals. The D.C. Council was supposed to vote on the bill on Oct. 1. According to Councilwoman Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), head of the transportation and environment committee, the D.C. Council still needs to resolve the details of the bill.

In response to Mayor Gray’s proposal, activists in D.C. and surrounding areas launched the “One City, One License” campaign, which advocates for establishing standard driver’s licenses to all applicants in the District, including undocumented immigrants.

The campaign has garnered significant support from the Hispanic community. Tamira Ramirez, one of the community organizers for the D.C. Immigrant Rights Coalition, has been heavily involved in the campaign’s efforts to get the word out about the bill.

“We’ve collected several phone numbers from petitions

for all, and we have over 6,500 phone numbers that we’ve basically been calling petitioning to the D.C. Council to have one licensing individually over the weekend,” Ramirez said.

Georgetown students such as Tessa Pulaski (SFS’15), coordinator for the Day Laborer Exchange Program through the Kalmanovitz Initiative, learned about the campaign from the group D.C. Jobs with Justice.

“I think it’s a great campaign and a great way to push the D.C. Council to vote,” Pulaski said.

“D.C. is a small enough place that campaigns [such as One License] are very effective and can easily target specific councilmembers.”

As a Georgetown student who has the opportunity to work closely with many undocumented residents, Pulaski can speak first-hand of the importance of the bill to these individuals.

“D.C. has one of the highest AIDS rates in the nation,” Grace said. “Instead of viewing Georgetown as a bubble, when you look at the situation, you realize … we might be on a Catholic campus, but the second you walk out those gates, that doesn’t guarantee what’s happening out there.”

As a measure to add context to the presence of condoms at parties, H*yas for Choice plans to give out pamphlets informing students the condoms are not present to promote sex, and detailing the dangers of sexual assault.

Despite its conflicting views with H*yas for Choice, the University will not interfere with the establishment of this program.

“This group is not an organization with access to benefits and

H*yas for Choice begins its condom delivery service today, Oct. 17.

Max blodgett

they don’t use University resources,” said Todd Olson, vice president of student affairs. “We know that members of this group are our students and our individual students certainly have rights and we respect the autonomy of our students. As such, we believe this activity falls within the rights of our students as individuals.”

The pick-up location for condoms will be Red Square, a free speech zone.

“The point is they are either picking it up in Red Square or someone is delivering it to someone,” Hagerty said. “Unless the University wants to say that you cannot have condoms, there is no conflict that I can see.”

Grace hopes people will understand the presence of condoms is not meant to promote sex, and that the new service only seeks to provide students with more access to condoms. “Condoms are expensive. People don’t talk about that either,” Grace said. “[George Washington University] has condoms in their vending machines. If you’re going to argue that having condoms around promotes sex, then that would be promoting sex on a daily basis,” Hagerty said. “It’s more about increasing accessibility. If we can’t put condoms in vending machines, then we’ll put them in parties.”

D.C. Council to vote on licensing of undocumented workers

by Deborah Sparks

The D.C. Council postponed voting on a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for local driver’s licenses on Tuesday, Oct. 15. Mayor Vincent Gray (D) first proposed the Drivers Safety Amendment Act last May. “This legislation is the right thing to do for our undocumented residents and our entire community,” Gray wrote in a press release.

The D.C. Council now plans to vote on the bill Nov. 5.

If passed, the bill will amend past legislation that requires the label “not valid for federal purposes” on the licenses of all undocumented immigrants. Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Washington, Nevada, Oregon, and California now allow licensing of undocumented immigrant drivers.

Tuesday’s decision to postpone voting is part of an extended

“It’s hard to make this a political priority, but this bill will definitely affect a lot of the people that we work with in the Day Laborer Exchange Program,” Pulaski said.

“They have to take public transportation to work from Maryland usually, and it takes a really long time to get to their jobs. I’ve talked to a lot of workers about it and they’ve said that the legislation would really benefit them.”

In addition to using driver ’s licenses for transportation purposes, access to federal identification would allow undocumented immigrants to use basic services, such as housing resources or bank accounts.

Christopher Wager (SFS’17), a member of Hoyas for Immigrant Rights, is also involved in the Day Laborer Exchange Program.

“I talked to [a man named] Elmer last week who is from El Salvador. I asked him what could be

done to improve his situation, and he said that if he were allowed to drive a car, it would make working [for private owners or contractors] so much easier,” Wager said.

Issuing of standard licenses for undocumented residents may prompt the federal government to designate D.C. residents’ drivers licenses as invalid for use at federal security checkpoints. Some advocates, however, have asserted this possible inconvenience is not a priority.

“I can understand that concern, but I think that the most important issue here is the human rights connotation that [the bill] has. Different licenses would lead to a lot of unneeded discrimination and create a concept of a second degree resident,” Wager said.

Despite a month’s delay, the coalition is going to continue lobbying. “We’ll be back next week to double check on individual council member’s votes,” Ramirez said.

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The Corp launches Kill the Cup campaign

by Lara Fishbane The Corp launched a social media campaign called Kill the Cup to reduce the waste created by disposable cups on Tuesday, Oct. 16.

Kill the Cup is a project developed

by Social Ventures for Sustainability, an organization funded to decrease wasteful consumption by providing consumers with rewards for using reusable mugs when they order beverages. The project started as a pilot campaign at UC San Diego, where Mike Taylor (COL ’05) and Drew Biel, Social Venture co-founders, received graduate degrees in business.

“We developed a spring war where users upload photos and share their responsible behavior on the Internet,” Taylor said, “After designing that framework, we were looking for other places to deliver this campaign in a box to other universities and we thought Georgetown would be a great next candidate.”

Social Ventures created the project after Biel realized how many cups his co-workers were wasting. “No matter how I pleaded with them, they would never take the step to bring their own cup,” Biel said, “We found that Starbucks offers 10 cents off when you

bring your own cup. We thought that that wasn’t enough, so we decided to make it into a game.”

Participants can upload photos of themselves with reusable cups to killthecup.com in an attempt to win various prizes. There will be four weekly prizes of $25 Corp Gift Cards, three creativity prizes of t-shirts, and one grand prize including a $50 Corp Gift Card, a tumbler, a t-shirt, and a tote bag. A $550 grant from the Corp Philanthropy with the hopes of changing consumer behavior Committee is funding the campaign.

The Corp already offers 25 cents off for students who bring their own mugs to its coffee shops, but they are hoping the prizes will further motivate students to be more eco-conscious.

“Because the campaign is so highly incentivized … hopefully that will make people more interested in using them,” Whitney Pratt (COL ’15), vice chair of the Corp Green Team, said. “Hopefully [it will] serve as a reminder so that when people leave their houses, they will bring their tumblers.”

Another part of the campaign is that students can buy tumblers at The Corp, which will save them 30 cents with every purchase. “[We are] offering tumblers in our stores and there

Free speech applies to all

When William Blatty (COL ’50) accused Georgetown of acceding to “intolerant orthodoxies,” I, like most of my peers, shrugged it off.

Recently, though, I was forced to reconsider.

In the last two weeks, groups of LGBTQ students protested two events hosted by Love Saxa, a student group devoted to fighting the hook-up culture and promoting “traditional” marriage. On Oct. 3, the group invited sociologist Mark Regnerus to speak at a talk entitled “The Mating Market: Current dynamics, sex-ratio imbalances, and their consequences for young adults.” While sounding perfectly mundane, some pro-gay activists attended the event not because they had a problem with the subject matter of the talk itself, but because they didn’t want the University to invite the speaker.

Regneres was the author of a 2012 study which found that children of parents who have same-sex relationships fare worse than children of opposite-sex marriages by some metrics. While the study was

both flawed and limited in scope, he took pains in the conclusion to stress that his findings did not imply causality. Regnerus has acknowledged that the differences he found could be a result of the small sample of committed same-sex couples in the study.

One of the organizers of the protest cited Regnerus’s “prejudicial opinions” as a reason why Love Saxa shouldn’t have invited him. As a professor at the University of Texas, a prominent family researcher, and a public intellectual, Regnerus was preeminently qualified to speak on the subject of “the mating market.” As for his “prejudicial opinions,” he does oppose gay marriage. But so does virtually every Republican politician coming to speak on campus. So does the Catholic Church.

It doesn’t matter that Regnerus has written many articles that clarify the results of his study in order to counter the frequent misrepresentation of its conclusion in mass media, or that he went on the record to denounce a Russian

will be a 30 cent discount … to get people more engaged in our particular campaign,” said Caroline Williams (MSB ’14), business development chair for The Corp.

After its implementation at UC San Diego, Taylor and Biel found the campaign successful in reducing paper cup waste. “The rate at which people bought coffee in reusable cups at UC San Diego rose from 11 or 12 percent to around 20 at the end of the campaign,” Taylor said, “We estimate that they saved around 1300 cups from entering the environment, which is 80 pounds of landfill.”

Social Ventures will offer data analysis and keep track of the percent of reused cups and total purchases at Corp coffee shops.

In addition to reducing waste, The Corp anticipates the campaign will have other benefits. “We’re really hoping that members of the Georgetown community will become aware of how wasteful coffee cups are,” Pratt said.

The Corp expects to continue its collaboration with Social Ventures beyond the four-week campaign. “We’re hoping to run it every year and to get people excited about it and thinking about sustainability,” Pratt said.

politician who cited his study in reference to a law that would separate gay or lesbian parents from their children. An academic community requires freedom of expression to explore controversial issues in an honest way. Ideas that were considered morally repugnant 100 years ago are now commonly accepted. Without a chance for fringe thinkers to air their ideas in a pub-

Saxa Politica

by Connor Jones

A bi-weekly column about campus news and politics lic forum, old orthodoxies can’t be dismantled, and no one’s thinking can be challenged.

When Blatty references “intolerant orthodoxies,” I can only think of this misguided tendency to reject speakers because they espouse conservative beliefs, which are, in fact, often thoroughly Catholic. He has a point: When Kathleen Sebelius was invited to speak on campus, she didn’t receive a letter from over 90 faculty and staff members calling her political positions un-Catholic like Paul Ryan

LGBTQ panel discusses social issues

AMBIKA AHUJA

Outober’s “Beyond Gay Marriage” event brought six panelists to campus to discuss social issues surrounding underrepresented members of the LGBTQ community on Wednesday evening. “We need to reach out to a wider variety of voices,” said Carly Rosenfield (COL ’14), one of the two event coordinators. Outside the event, when asked about recent controversy over Love Saxa’s anti-gay speakers, Thomas Lloyd (SFS ’15), president of GU Pride, said, “Right now, the first thing that is going to happen is a formalized response written by me running in the Hoya ... that will basically set the ground rules between GU Pride and Love Saxa. ... Gay people can hate the hook-up culture too, but Love Saxa seemed to be debating more who can be authentic versus what authenticity looks like and how everyone can pursue it.”

— Manuela Tobias

did, even though her positions are at least equally counter to Catholic doctrine.

Under no circumstance should an unpopular political stance be considered grounds for not inviting a speaker to campus. In fact, we should listen to every bigot and hypocrite who comes here and proceed to tear apart their arguments in questioning. If they’re wrong, we should be able to show why they’re wrong. And, if students think a speaker is reprehensible, they can protest outside, which is exactly what that group of pro-gay activists did.

Georgetown should even let someone like Ryan Anderson speak on campus. A Heritage Foundation fellow and the closest thing to a millennial leader in the fight against LGBTQ rights, Anderson espouses beliefs that many students find offensive. He’s publicly said that gay and lesbian couples make worse parents. He’s invested a significant amount of work into fighting same-sex marriage, which I consider to be a matter of civil rights.

When he came to campus on Oct. 8, GU Pride organized a protest of the event, which dozens of students attended. In the question-and-answer period, students grilled Anderson for failing to explain how same-sex couples are different from infertile straight couples, for failing to account for numerous studies showing that same-sex couples make excellent parents, and for relying on antiquated sexual norms. The event sparked a spirited discussion that probably served to convince people that Anderson was wrong more than anything else. The controversy likely increased event turnout significantly.

Forcing students to articulate their own beliefs and to pose challenges to people they disagree with is central to the University’s mission of educating its students.

When deciding who to invite to campus, administrators and group leaders should ask one question: “Does this person have something interesting to say?”

Want to speak out with Connor?

Email him at cjones@georgetownvoice.

sports

6 the georgetown voice

october 17, 2013

Football looks to build on loss against Fordham

by Sourabh Bhat This past Saturday, the Georgetown football team (15, 0-1 Patriot League) took on the undefeated No.9 Fordham Rams (7-0, 2-0 Patriot League), falling 34-12 despite a strong second half. The scoreboard made the game look like a one-sided affair, with Fordham scoring 21 unanswered points in the first quarter. But as the game went on, both Georgetown’s offense and defense grew more confident. Fordham came into the game fresh off blowouts of Lehigh and Columbia, as well as a tough victory over Temple, whereas Georgetown has had an unfortunate slow start to the year.

Fordham for the most part relied on its passing attack, even though senior running back Carlton Koonce came in averaging over 120 yards rushing. For most of the first quarter, Fordham junior quarterback Michael Nebrich had his way with Georgetown’s defense, repeatedly targeting junior wide receiver Sam Ajala, who finished with 90 yards receiving. Part of this success came because the Georgetown defense was worried about the threat of the deep ball, and allowed Fordham’s receivers to remain open on comeback routes. Another factor in Fordham’s early offensive success was its use of the hurry-up offense, a strategy that caught Georgetown unaware. After the first quarter, however, Georgetown’s defense, while not making any drastic changes, was more disciplined, and limited the powerful Fordham offense.

The biggest change for Georgetown came at the end of the first quarter when se-

nior starting quarterback Isiah games of scoring at least 50 more for the team to be compet- will have to make a difficult deKempf was pulled after a pick- points. The quality of defen- itive against powerful offenses. cision between Kempf, Nolan, While the loss is disappoint- and Barnes in the future. six and freshman Tim Barnes sive play as well as special This Saturday, the team travels was inserted into a game for teamwork was a good sign, ing, Head Coach Kevin Kelly the first time this year, due to with junior Jordan Richardson said that he “liked the way [the to play No. 16 Lehigh (5-1, 0-1 Pathe fact that the regular back- leading the way with six tack- team] played in the second half, triot League), the Hoyas’ second up, sophomore Kyle Nolan, les, a blocked extra point, and and that’s something that we consecutive ranked opponent. Nevwas injured. Despite being a safety. In fact, the 25 points can build on.” He also empha- ertheless, Lehigh’s defense allowed placed into a difficult situa- that the Hoyas allowed to Ford- sized that Patriot League play the same Fordham team to score 52 tion and faced with Fordham’s ham was the lowest point total starts next week and that it was points, which means that it could aggressive pass rush, Barnes that Fordham has been held to important that the team main- be a chance for the Hoya offense to performed well, and led sev- this season. Senior kicker Matt tained the level of play that they score enough points to give the team eral quality drives. Even as MacZura converted an impres- demonstrated in the second a chance for its second win.

Following their game against LeFordham’s defense constantly sive 49-yard field goal, which half of this match. The Hoyas’ collapsed the pocket, he kept is a good sign for the Hoyas’ quarterback situation remains a high, the Hoyas will return home to his cool and had several well- offense, which needs to score mystery, and the coaching staff play Colgate on October 26th. timed deep balls and runs.

Georgetown’s lone touchdown came late in the game, but the quality throws showed that “I just think that despite whatever happened, there was a lot of things that I did and that we did as a team, and that number was special down there. And I was a little bit upset about that.”- Dwight Howard when asked about the Magic giving Tobias Harris his former jersey number 12.

Barnes is more than ready for Despite a late night on Friday, my aced by a 45-7 loss at the Bears. Of the collegiate level. by Chris Almeida friends woke me up early on Sat- Baylor? No, of Brown. Even when When asked about how he urday morning. They took me out- playing on even ground, against Whether we like it or not, approached the high pressure side where I saw a campus full of the non-scholarship Ivy League Sunday may be more associated situation, Barnes said, “I knew students and alumni tailgating in schools, the Hoyas can’t come with the NFL than it is with the I had to be confident and just the enormous shadow of Lane Sta- close to competing.

Christian Sabbath.

Each week, we relax, and know that everybody Of course basketball brings dium. When I got to my seat, rowwatch ESPN for hype and analysis, trusted me.” students together, but there is dy Hokie students surrounded me. we pour over our fantasy waiver Early in the game, he played nothing quite like having thouAs the team entered the stadium to wires, and we pray that our divicarefully, but as the game prosands of people gather on campus Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” I got sion rivals will lose.

During the gressed he took more and more on Saturdays.

At Georgetown, the chills.

Even with a team to which I weekend, we get together, eat, risks as he became more comlack of a football team detracts had no allegiance, I couldn’t help drink, and make much more noise fortable with the offense. His offrom the college experience.

There but get caught up in the overthan is acceptable during the week, fensive line protected him well isn’t one event that you can expect whelming atmosphere provided all to cheer on the Redskins, the throughout the game which is Broncos, the Crimson Tide, or the by 66,000 fans screaming at the everybody you know to attend, impressive, considering the qualspare the Syracuse basketball same time.

Ducks. ity of Fordham’s pass rush. Luckgames,which we don’t even have Rewind two weeks.

I’m sitFootball is a central part of ily for the Hoyas, Barnes has scheduled anymore. ting in the stands of 2,500-seat American culture, serving as a catbeen practicing regularly with Basketball is the only profitMulti-Sport Field watching our alyst for social gatherings and prothe team because of Kempf’s inable team on campus, but at least football team receive a 50-22 shelviding a break in our busy work jury, so he was able to feel comteams like soccer find success in lacking.

Our opponent?

Oregon? schedules.

Even more, football is fortable without a long adjustDivision I against the country’s Freezing.

Michigan?

Ice Cold. a central part of college culture.

At ment period. top competition.

Before coming to Pittsburgh?

Not even close.

Appaschools with strong Division I proAnother bright spot in the Georgetown, I didn’t know much lachian State?

Gettingwarmer.

It grams, what alumni most strongly game was the performance of about the soccer teams, but now I was Princeton.

On Homecoming, identify with in the years following senior tight end Daniel Sprotte, take pride in telling others about the cornerstone of college foottheir graduation is not so much who had five catches for a caour top notch programs.

Football ball’s season, I sat in a stadium their classes or connections, but, reer-high 92 yards. Georgetown with a capacity smaller than my plays in the smallest stadium in rather, their football team. also outscored Fordham in the high school’s football field watch- Division I-AA and struggles to My boss at my job on campus second half, a remarkable pering the Hoyas receive a merci- string together wins—the team went to the University of South formance in light of the fact less beating from a school that is is 1-5 this season. This record is Carolina.

He says he rarely sees his that Fordham is undefeated better known for anything else it not to detract from the efforts of college friends now but going to and coming off three straight see South Carolina’s powerhouse does other than than its football the football team, but a combifootball program brings them to- program. To draw parallels to my nation of a losing and a lack of gether each year. Before my dad ac- previous statements, my supervi- atmosphere makes for subdued cepted a job at Georgetown, he was sor at my internship, who attend- weekends, at least until basketball getting offers from other schools, ed Georgetown, can hardly recall season comes around.

I’m sure I’ll walk back into one of which was Ohio State. When anything about the football team Multi-Sport Field quite a few more being courted and given a tour, the during his tenure as a Hoya.

To say that the student body at times before I leave the Hilltop, first place he was taken wasn’t the business school, but, instead, the Georgetown is missing out on the but that’s not to say that I won’t “Horseshoe,” the Buckeyes’ mas- football experience is an under- be disappointed. There are many statement. We sport a non-scholar- great things about Georgetown. But sive football stadium.

This past weekend, I drove ship program in a Patriot League there’s nothing quite like walking down to Blacksburg to visit some that recently started to allow into a stadium with the grill smoke friends at Virginia Tech. There, the scholarships. The embarrassment in my nose, the drumline in my ears, weekend centered around football. at the handsof Princeton was pref- and a sea of fans in front of me.

the sports sermon

GAVIN MYERS

Football struggled to hang with FCS power Fordham on Saturday.

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Xavier too much for men’s soccer Women’s soccer stumbles

by Chris Castano The Georgetown men’s soccer (93-1, 2-1-1 Big East) team hit a bump in the road Saturday in Cincinnati when they were defeated 2-1 by the Xavier Musketeers (6-5-2, 2-2-0 Big East). This loss was the first in nine games, and marked the third game of the season in which the Hoyas did not shut out their opponent.

The game was somewhat of an experiment for Georgetown Head Coach Wiese, even though he seemed to have found his preferred formation for competitive play in a four-man defensive line, opting to start the match in a 3-4-3 formation with sophomore defender Cole Seiler, senior midfielder Joey Dillon, and freshman midfielder Jared Odenbeck as his three center backs.

Bakie Goodman returned to the lineup after having made the Big East honor roll for his performance and

goal last Wedneday against No. 25 Providence.

Even though the Hoyas lost, they were the first on the board. In the 31st minute, sophomore forward Brandon Allen barreled past three defenders, scooped the ball up, and slotted it past Xavier keeper Eric Osswald to get the Blue and Gray on the scoreboard.

Sadly, this would be the last time the Hoyas found the net in what proved to be a frustrating offensive performance.

Both teams were locked in a stalemate until the 45th minute of the first half when Xavier midfielder Garrett Halfhill sent a long pass to junior midfielder Will Walker, who in turn rounded Georgetown goalkeeper, junior Tomas Gomez, with one touch and leveled the scores just before the break.

Fortunes didn’t improve much for Georgetown as they were outplayed during much of the second half. Xavier outshot the Hoyas 7-1 over the course of the last 45 minutes of the game. The

ANDRES RENGIFO

Men’s soccer sufferred a rare defeat on Saturday away versus Xavier.

Peterson’s family matters Professional athletics often comes under fire quite for the ever-increasing emphasis on their commercialism. After all, each major American sports league is a massive business that brings in profits that most other ventures can only dream about. You can’t blame business executives for turning sports into commercial powerhouses because what they have done for the popularity and participation of these sports is invaluable. I’m not pleased with how much money has become a focus in the world of sports. Too many athletes choose teams and contracts based almost solely on how much money they’ll bring in, but I have to accept the fact that the love for the game or love for one’s team is not always going to be the number one priority for executives, managers, and athletes.

But what I can take solace in is

that among the changing motives of professional athletes, I can be sure that there will still be those who regard the game as more than just going to work. Adrian Peterson has shown, in an amazing gesture to the importance of football, in this past week that professional sports can serve a deeper, more meaningful purpose. Last week when Peterson’s son was placed in critical condition due to injuries sustained from domestic violence on behalf of the child’s mother’s boyfriend, Peterson was steadfast in his declaration that he would play in Sunday’s game against the Panthers. After his son passed away, Peterson’s plans did not changed.

It was disappointing to see so many news outlets criticize Peterson’s decision to play last Sunday.

Not only did these criticisms show that these members of the media

shot that proved fatal to Georgetown’s hopes for the game came in the 74th minute when Walker buried the ball in the back of the net after a series of quick passes.

Georgetown had one final chance on net before the game was over. Junior midfielder Tyler Rudy launched a shot towards the Xavier goal. Osswald was equal to the effort and Georgetown fell 2-1.

After a resounding 8-0 win against the Seton Hall Pirates, offensive production seemed to be on the rise for the Hoyas. Some would say this match indicated otherwise, but, as he has all season, Georgetown Head Coach Brian Wiese indicated that sometimes these things happen.

“Tonight was a tough one. After [Allen] scored a great goal, they got a lucky one just before the half, which really changed the complexion of the game. Credit to Xavier; they played a great game and handled some things that we didn’t,” said Wiese.

With this loss, Georgetown falls to a record of 9-3-1 overall and a mixed record of 2-1-1 in Big East conference play. Georgetown hasn’t played a midweek game due to entering a bye week, but will return to action against Butler University on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Shaw Field. With many tough Big East opponents on the horizon such as No. 11 Marquette and No. 43 St. John’s, the Hoyas will be looking to improve their fortunes and performance. did not respect Peterson’s choice in a method of coping, they made me think that they were making an overall statement about sports— they are just a game.

Who has the right to criticize what Peterson thought would help him most after losing his son? There is no right way to deal with such a tragedy and, for Peterson, playing football has

All The Way

by Steven Criss A bi-weekly column about sports

always been his way of fighting through the toughest moments.

For him, football isn’t just a game.

How anyone can call into question his relationship with his son based on his decision to play is unimaginable to me.

In fact, I would even venture to say that participating in sports is one of the best methods of coping we have. For Peterson, playing

by Emmy Buck After suffering a loss to Marquette last year in the 2012 Big East Tournament Championship game, 1-0, the Georgetown women’s soccer team (11-1-2, 3-1-1 Big East) was primed for revenge last Sunday in a match against Marquette (12-3-0, 5-0-0 Big East).

The Hoyas met the Golden Eagles at Valley Fields in Milwaukee. After a 13 game winning streak, No. 6 Georgetown lost to No. 18 Marquette 4-0 on Sunday. The Golden Eagles scored two in the first half and two in the second half.

Marquette took the game to 1-0 with a goal in the 11th minute of the game. Junior midfielder Daphne Corboz made an attempt to tie the game with a shot that went wide. After moving the ball up the field, Marquette scored again from the 18-yard box in the 37th minute of the game.

At halftime the Golden Eagles were up 2-0, leading in shot attempts as well at 6-4. Georgetown worked on rallying together to defend their winning streak in the second half, but Marquette seemed prepared for the Hoyas. In the 50th minute of play, the Golden Eagles scored again. The final score in the 56th minute of play

in that football game meant being around the guys he spends most of his hours working with to ultimately achieve a shared goal. The feeling of camaraderie and brotherhood that exist among members of a sport team are tough to recreate anywhere else.

Although the Panthers left the field Sunday with the win, that Peterson was able to give it his all in a game that rests in the core of his life’s passions should be considered a valiant victory, regardless of what the scoreboard reported.

“I never thought about not playing. It was all about just going out there and having the strength to play and having the strength to get through and help my team. That was my focus,” Peterson said.

Those who disagreed with his decision are prevented by ignorance from seeing that getting out on that field was the best way he could receive the support he needed from what he calls his “fraternity of brothers.” The thinking that the

was an unassisted play made by Marquette senior midfielder Cara Jacobson, downing the Hoyas 4-0.

The Hoyas came into this game with a record of 11-0-2, having beaten Providence the previous Sunday 2-1. After facing off against Marquette, Georgetown is now 11-1-2 overall, with a 3-1-1 in the Big East Conference.

Georgetown is ranked No. 1 in the country for scoring with an average of 3.31 goals per game. Players such as Corboz, the Big East Preseason Offensive Player of the Year, helped take Georgetown to a top ranking. After missing the first five games of the season due to injury, Corboz averages 1.46 goals per game and 1.36 assists per game.

Brenn has also shown herself to be a force to be reckoned with, ranking fourth in the Big East with 18 goals. The Hoya offense may be top in the nation, but junior goalkeeper Emma Newins proves that the team’s defense is not to be shrugged off. Newins is ranked No. 24 in the nation for goals against average at 0.61. Senior captain Emily Menges takes charge of one of the most experienced back-lines in the Big East.

Georgetown looks forward to asserting their dominance in their upcoming game this Thursday against St. John’s (7-3-3, 1-2-2 Big East) at 3p.m. on Shaw Field.

NFL or other major sports leagues are anything less can be derived from the fact that our attentions are really only drawn to the games. We watch our favorite athletes put on their show under the big lights, but what we don’t see are the hours and hours of practice, film-watching, strategy-making, and bonding that goes on between these teammates.

For those like us who are not actually part of this family of sorts, it is hard to imagine the relationships that are built through playing on these professional sports teams. We see the commercialized result of the almost nonstop preparation these guys put in, but that is only a small portion of the actual lifestyle they lead. Pro athletes may be increasingly distracted from purer motives by bloated contract deals and stardom, but this by no means excuses the thought that sports cannot fill an essential emotional role in life.

Discuss Peterson’s story with Steven at scriss@georgetownvoice.com

feature

8 the georgetown voice

{

{

Some professors are more equal than others

Adjunct professor Ori Soltes lectures to a packed classroom.

Ori Soltes wakes up every morning at 5:30 a.m. to get his two sons out of bed, feed them breakfast, and drive them to the bus stop. Before he lets them out of the car, Soltes hands each of his kids the lunches he prepared for them the night before.

After a quick game of basketball with some friends at 6:30 a.m., Soltes heads over to Georgetown’s main campus. Once he reaches Maguire Hall, he sits at the desk and starts going through his inbox. Outside his door in Maguire 207, the sign reads “Rabbi Harold White.”

According to the University, Soltes is a “full-time, non-ordinary” faculty member.

After teaching at Georgetown for 20 years, both for the Theology Department and the Program for Jewish Civilization, he still doesn’t have his own office. Soltes borrows Rabbi White’s office on Thursdays and another instructor’s ICC office on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Like Soltes, most adjunct faculty face limited options when it comes to finding space to meet students for office hours. The concerns faced by adjunct professors at Georgetown, however, stretch beyond access to permanent office space. Adjuncts at Georgetown and other institutions of higher learning across the United States receive salaries as low as half of those of tenure-track professors, seldom have access to any health or retirement benefits, and must cope with job insecurity year after year.

Recognizing these hardships, Georgetown’s adjunct faculty voted in favor to form a union under the D.C. branch of Service Employees

JOSHUA RAFTIS

International Union, SEIU Local 500, in May of this year.

According to Rachel Pugh, director of media relations, approximately 311 of the 650 Georgetown adjuncts eligible to vote exercised their right to do so. Of these, 72 percent voted in favor of forming a collective bargaining unit.

The voting was limited to Georgetown’s main campus and did not include faculty who teach at GU’s Law Center or Medical Center.

With the unionization measure passed, Georgetown professors joined those at American University and George Washington University as part of a larger initiative led by SEIU to organize adjuncts in the District. According to Anne McLeer, director of higher education and research for SEIU Local 500, this inter-university unionization effort gives the professors, who often teach at more than one institution at a time, more leverage during contract negotiations.

« I fit my research

around the other things I do to feed my family because the salary I get is ridiculous »

“The adjuncts in the city realized that there’s a labor pool of highly qualified, really good teachers in the city that the universities depend on. So everyone realized that to be really strong in the industry, [the

SEIU has] to represent all the colleges,” McLeer said.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, part-time faculty represented 50 percent of all teaching faculty at degree-granting institutions in 2011, up from 34 percent in 1987 and 22 percent in 1970. In addition, more than two-thirds of instructional faculty nationwide is non-tenure track.

“There is no doubt that the number of adjuncts is increasing, while the number of tenured faculty has gone down. A lot of it is precisely to save money,” said Pablo Eisenberg, Senior Fellow at the McCourt School of Public Policy and a founding member of New Faculty Majority, a national coalition of adjunct professors. “Adjuncts are cheaper, and they also can be dismissed without any protection. That is, most adjuncts in colleges don’t have access to a hearing if they get fired.”

After going through his email and doing some research for his latest book, Soltes grabs a quick bagel for lunch at More Uncommon Grounds and then heads over to teach his 2pm class. Soltes teaches a total of six undergraduate courses per academic year, in addition to a graduate seminar within the Liberal Studies program.

Though he has taught a full-time course load for about 13 years now, Soltes’s contract is renewed on a year-to-year basis. Unlike other adjunct professors, though, Soltes managed to negotiate a health insurance plan with the University in addition to a relatively high salary for an adjunct professor.

When Soltes negotiated his contract with the University, he was paid $42,000 for six courses, an equivalent of $7,000 per course.

This year, he received his first pay raise. His annual salary is now $42,280.

At Georgetown, adjuncts make up almost half of the total faculty employed on Main Campus at 43 percent, and teach over 1200 courses per academic year. Their salaries range from $3,000 per three-credit course in the English department to $8,500 per three-credit course in the Communications department, according to the Adjunct Project, a database of adjunct salary data from universities across the country compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

On the other hand, according the the Chronicle, average faculty salaries for the 2012-2013 academic years amounted to $173,600 for fulltime professors, $109,400 for associate professors, and $96,000 for assistant professors.

october 17, 2013

by Lucia He

“The labor for tuition of courses are not adequately compensated, and it’s so disproportionate to what regular professors are making,” said Katerina Downward (SFS ‘14), a student involved in the campaign to organize adjuncts last year. “It’s just making this hierarchy and polarization among the very people who are supposed to be most valued in an institution of learning.”

The disparity between the salaries of tenured and non-tenured faculty is a concern for most adjunct professors, and features in negotiations between the union and the University administration.

“Students don’t pay different tuition rates for a class if it’s taught by a tenured professor or an adjunct. So why should from a compensation or operational aspect, the professor be treated differently?” Stephen Lane asked, an adjunct professor employed by the American Studies Program.

The salary gap between faculty members is significant and is exacerbated by certain administrators’ salaries. According to GU’s tax filings, President John J. DeGioia received a compensation package totaling $925,071 in fiscal year 2011, making him the 44th highest paid University president in the country.

The highest paid employee at Georgetown was men’s basketball coach, John R. Thompson III, who was paid $2,211,250. The Washington Examiner reports that former provost James O’Donnell received an annual salary of $394,509 in 2010.

“The situation is getting worse. As the number of adjuncts goes up, [and] tenured faculty go down, you have this enormous increase in high pay for administrators,” Eisenberg said. “[Administrators] get a lot of money and somehow there’s no money for adjuncts. University administration say ‘Oh yeah, we don’t have money to pay for that’ and yet they have plenty of money to excessively build buildings, athletic facilities, and pay coaches millions of dollars.”

Georgetown has allocated $60 million toward the construction of the new Intercollegiate Athletics Center, expected to break ground in the spring. The school also plans to fundraise $150 million to renovate Lauinger Library.

Mark Waterman (SFS ‘13), another student involved in last year’s adjunct unionization process, agrees with Eisenberg. He questions whether these numbers are representative of where the University’s interests lie. “Does the University focus its priorities on making sure that professors are well-paid and that the instruction is of really high quality?...Or are we focusing on having sexy sports teams and buildings and a good brand that we can promote? Are we looking past what a university

georgetownvoice.com

should be really based on, which is having excellent quality instruction and learning environment?” (Full disclosure: Mark Waterman was a Voice staffer prior to his involvement with the adjunct unionization campaign.)

Administrators from the Office of Communications, the Departments of Theology and English, and the Office of the Provost did not respond to several requests for comment about adjunct pay and treatment.

The clock strikes 6:15 p.m. and Soltes rushes out of his last class of the day to catch a train to New York, where he’s scheduled to speak at a conference.

Less than half of Soltes’s salary comes from his work at Georgetown, even though he teaches a full course load. The other half comes from his other engagements, which include leading weekend seminars at Johns Hopkins University, speaking at churches and synagogues, and attending conferences around the country.

When asked about balancing his course load with these other activities, Soltes said, “I fit my research around the other things I do to feed my family because the salary I get is ridiculous.”

Soltes is the author of 14 books and has published around 250 peer-reviewed articles.

This research, however, is not supported by the University. “I can’t go to my department as an ordinary faculty [member] does and say: I need to go to this conference, I’m speaking [there], can you support my research?” he said.

« Judging from my

experience, being at Georgetown, adjuncts seem to be treated better »

Kerry Danner-McDonald, an adjunct professor in the Theology department, agrees, and adds that time constraints also limit the chances for adjuncts to conduct their own research.

“A full-time professor normally gets a research budget. The University will pay for them to travel to academic conferences. They usually teach one or two classes a semester and so they’re also paid and expected to be researching for the college,” she said. “What happens with the adjunct staff [is that] if you’re getting paid so little, you have to work more classes, so you don’t have time to keep up your publications because it is like you’re working multiple jobs.”

Many adjuncts say these obstacles not only hinder them from moving up the academic ladder, but also delegitimize their work as professionals. “[Adjuncts] don’t feel like they are treated and respected as [the] professionals that they are, in many ways,” McLeer said. “From being considered temporary workers so that they can be dropped at any time, to not being included in academic decision-making, to having no offices.”

feature The treatment of adjunct professors, however, varies from department to department.

“There’s absolutely no consistency throughout the University when it comes to treatments, rules, and regulations pertaining to adjuncts,” Lane said. “For example, there are some departments where adjuncts have been told that there’s a limit to how many class hours one can work. Whereas, across the hall or in another building or program, another adjunct may not have that limitation.”

For instance, Christian Golden, an adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy who recently received his doctorate from the department, is thankful for the treatment he has received.

“I certainly don’t feel undermined or disrespected by other faculty in the department,” he said. “I don’t have any health insurance coverage whereas I did as a graduate student here.

However, the chair of the [philosophy] department has helped me to arrange to get private health insurance, which I don’t think I could have expected, and I am very grateful for. Judging from my experience, being at Georgetown, adjuncts seem to be treated better.”

lenge a student who thinks he should be getting an A and really should be getting an F, will I be invited back to teach next year?’”

On his way out of campus, one of the many blue signs hanging from the posts outside Copley Hall catch Soltes’s attention. It reads, “Women and Men for others.”

“Georgetown, as a Jesuit institution, with ad maiorem Dei gloriam all over the place, with all of those series of features that Georgetown associates itself, all of those nice-hanging pendants in Red Square ... cannot afford not to think about certain things which have moral implications,” Soltes said. “Even if they are fiscal [issues], they have moral implications.”

« If I teach this

book, will I be invited back to teach next year? »

the georgetown voice 9 little as $2,700 per three-credit course. Now, its baseline per-course wage is $3,000.

Unlike AU’s administration, which, according to the school’s newspaper, The Eagle, hired lawyers to prevent adjuncts from organizing, Georgetown’s administration has been receptive to negotiations with adjuncts.

“The University respects employees’ rights to freely associate and organize, which includes voting for or against union representation without intimidation, unjust pressure, undue delay or hindrance in accordance with applicable law. We appreciate the participation of all of those voters who cast ballots in the election,” University Spokeswoman Pugh wrote in an email.

Negotiations between the University and the newly-organized faculty, represented by a bargaining committee of eight Georgetown adjunct professors, are currently taking place. According to McLeer, a contract could be written as soon as the end of the upcoming spring semester.

Soltes drives his motor scooter up his driveway, from which he can see that his sons’ bedroom lights are already off. He quietly steps into the house and walks into the kitchen, where he takes some bread and turkey, makes two sandwiches, and puts them in two lunch boxes with a bag of chips and an apple. The kids’ lunches are ready. He heads to bed, ready do it all over again tomorrow.

While other adjuncts echo Soltes’s sentiThough he must renew his contract every ment, Georgetown still pays its adjuncts maryear, Soltes is confident that his position at ginally higher salaries than local and national Georgetown is stable. He teaches an average of peers. According to the Adjunct Project, AU 240 students a year, and his classes are normal- pays its adjuncts a salary as low as $2,800 per ly over-enrolled. course, while Catholic University of America However, not all adjunct professors are so pays $2,700 per course at the least. Before its confident about the future of their careers. adjuncts organized, GWU paid its adjuncts as Additional reporting by Jeffrey Lin “Many adjuncts don’t know if they will be re-emGeorgetown’s Division of Labor ployed from one semester to another,” Lane said. “They might just not get a phone call to be reupped. Clearly $1,000,000 we don’t know until, sometimes, a couple of weeks before a semester starts.”

According to McDonald, the constant threat of profes$800,000 sor turnover hurts an adjunct’s relationship with her or his students. “[When] I make $2,211,250 connections with students, $2,211,250 they want to know what I’m teaching next year and I often $600,000 don’t know if I’ll be back next year or if I’ll have upper level courses,” she said.

This persistent doubt often limits the academic free$400,000 dom and creativity of adjunct professors, since taking risks $925,071 and stepping out of the mold $925,071 may mean not being rehired. $173,600 “Because of the instabili$173,600 $200,000 ty and marginalization, there can be often a feeling that $42,280 $42,280 [adjuncts] don’t have real access to academic freedom,” McLeer said. “There’s a concern about ‘If I teach this book, will I be invited back John R. Thompson III President DeGioia Tenured professor High-end adjunct to teach next year? If I chal(FY2011) (FY2011) (FY2012) (FY2012)

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

october 17, 2013

Ejiofor breaks chains and fourth wall in 12 Years a Slave

by Rianna Folds Full disclosure: I am a descendent of slave owners. However, it doesn’t take a sordid family history to be struck by the stark anguish of Solomon Northup’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) captivity in 12 Years a Slave.

After being seized by duplicitous slavers in 1841, New York resident and free man Solomon is held against his will for—you guessed it, twelve years—by two different slave owners. Solomon, who is renamed Platt without his knowledge or permission, is owned first by Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), and then by Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).

These two men fall far from each other on the spectrum of compassion. Ford is benevolent and clearly uncomfortable with ownership of a fellow human. He treats Solomon with respect, but not as an equal. This dynamic between Ford and Solomon should have been explored further.

12 Years a Slave intends to make viewers face the harsh realities of slavery, and, in many cases, slave owners were not crazed sadists. Often, they were passive participants in an inhumane system, an idea that makes us uneasy and forces us to look at the oppressive structures we play right into today. But unfortunately, the film moves on too quickly to spark much contemplation.

Contrastingly, Epps is exactly what viewers expect of a slave owner. He enjoys inflicting pain and is wildly jealous of anyone who threatens his hold on his property. In this case, property includes the exquisite Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). Though 12 Years a Slave is Nyong’o’s film debut, she is magnificent as the tragic Patsey.

Ejiofor is a relative newcomer as well, but I fully expect Best Actor nominations for him during awards season.

Solomon’s struggle to retain his identity is what makes this film a masterpiece. He transforms from a proud, self-assured person into a hunched, deferent slave. Initially, he insists, “I don’t want to survive, I want to live.” But later he chastises a fellow slave for weeping over the loss of her children, saying simply, “I survive.”

By the end of the film, few vestiges of Solomon’s initial identity remain. Despite this transformation, he eventually secures his freedom.

Epps’s plantation blurs into nothingness as Solomon rides away, but Patsey’s plaintive wail rips a hole in the satisfaction viewers expect from this one-man emancipation. Solomon may be free, but millions of others remain enslaved against their will.

We repeatedly watch Solomon commit acts which seemed unthinkable only moments before, begging the question: How far would we go to survive? Is it worth it to compromise principles merely to eke out existence? Director Steve McQueen asks these difficult questions in his film adaptation of Solomon Northup’s autobiography of the same name.

It’s clear why so many stars were attracted to this project, including Brad Pitt and Paul Giamatti. Yet their random appearances as minor characters distract from the film’s power.

Hans Zimmer’s score borrows heavily from his Inception work, with some added clanking to remind you that you’re watching a movie about slavery. But despite all these heavy hitters, the film’s true value remains with rookies Ejiofor and Nyong’o.

IMDB

“Hans Zimmer got upset and left. Can you play the score for this scene?”

McQueen, writer and director of Shame, brings the same discomfiting thoughtfulness to 12 Years a Slave. Nudity and gratuitous n-word usage prove more heartbreaking than offensive.

To add disorientation to discomfort, shots often cut abruptly from darkness to light. This both echoes

the visceral pain Solomon faces as an enslaved free man, and forces viewers are to confront a distant but devastating reality.

Fortunately, we have left slavery behind as a nation, but Solomon’s journey serves to illustrate struggles we can never forget. In perhaps the most haunting shot in the film, Solo-

When coming out is a crime

Born in 1973, Abdellah Taia is the first openly-gay Moroccan author to address the gay scene in North Africa. During OUTober, a celebration of LGBTQ culture here at Georgetown, I saw a friend post on Facebook about Taia’s new movie Salvation Army, an adaptation of the eponymous novel featuring a young, gay Moroccan boy.

And then I saw the comments. They were from two well-traveled, well-off young Moroccans I got to know while studying in Morocco for a semester, and whom I consider good, trustworthy friends.

They lambasted Taia, saying they were ashamed he was from their homeland because of his openness about his sexuality. I was in shock. I bought two of Taia’s best-known novels right away—Salvation Army and An Arab Melancholia. (He has written six novels total; only the above two are translated into English.) Both feature young, gay Moroccans coming to terms with their sexuality. Taia depicts the culture of sexual tourism found on the beaches of Agadir, a gang-rape, a romance with an older European, and sexual feelings for an older brother— risqué topics even in liberal societies, but ground-breaking in Moroccan society.

I read Salvation Army in French (L’armee du salut) and English, and found that Taia’s work carries its literary value in translation. I doubt that it carries the same polarizing social force, though. We may never understand the intensity and power of Taia’s stories in his context, but he does do a good job illustrating why they are so powerful.

All of Taia’s novels were originally written in French—not Arabic, which Taia considers his mother tongue. In fact, French is not an official language of Morocco. Only

Arabic and Amazigh (Berber) are listed in the constitution, though you wouldn’t know it from daily life. School is conducted in French and Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic, a formal version of Arabic that is used on the news, in diplomacy, and taught at Georgetown, but very different than the Arabic spoken in the streets.) At home, Moroccans speak Darija, a mixture of French, Arabic and Amazigh. It is virtually incomprehensible to other Arabs and is very far from the MSA Georgetown students slave over in our intensive classes.

Darija is basically never written. Moroccan street signs and school assignments are in Arabic and in French, and the language of private journals probably depends on the authors’ cultural context. Taia, growing up in a

Under the Covers

by Emilia Brahm A bi-weekly literary column poor Arab family with few ties to the cosmopolitan colonizer across the Mediterranean, wrote his journal in Arabic. Still, he chose to write his novels in French.

In an interview with AlAkhbar, an Arabic publication, Taia said, “I am forced to write in French! This makes me feel like a traitor. A traitor to my family and my ancestors.”

I don’t think he is a traitor to his country. I think he is the opposite. He is trying to reconcile his sexual identity with his cultural one without demonizing either. He hasn’t given up on Morocco, even though he lives in France and writes in French.

In fact, I think he reappropriates the French language. Taia said to the Moroccan French-language newsmagazine Telquel that he “writes poor, meaning with a very simple vocabulary and a particular rhythm.”

mon looks left, right, and around the camera. Then, for a fleeting moment, he stares straight at the audience.

McQueen’s cinematography is so masterful that it leaves you wondering if this was really a break in the fourth wall. But whether or not Solomon catches your eyes, 12 Years a Slave looks straight into your soul.

His writing may be “poor” in word choice, but it is saturated in beauty. I usually like the challenging, erudite exhibitionism of Nabokov, Pynchon, and other intelligent show-offs. But Taia’s concise sentences are clear-eyed and enthralling. They wear a Moroccan honesty and intensity that I felt in every interaction I had there. You can experience the same intensity in his work, where you know that some of the content is fictional, but nothing feels more genuine.

The combination of straightforward writing style and emotional vulnerability is totally disarming. Taia refuses to hide. This puts so much power in his words and allows you—forces you—to identify with Taia’s characters and therefore face yourself.

This style is in contrast— consciously, I think—to the very florid French writers idolized by his young protagonists, like Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola. Taia uses colonial language, but in his own way, according to his own aesthetic and principles.

I want to see the movie version of Salvation Army, because I bet Taia’s aesthetic eye will translate incredibly into colors and pictures. It is slated for release in France early next year, and I hope it makes its way over the pond to our theaters soon after.

I will always be an outsider to Moroccan culture, even though I was welcomed there as warmly as if I had been born and bred. Perhaps more warmly, compared to some of native Taia’s experiences. I hope that he faces less discrimination as his books become more widely read. With National Coming Out Day and OUTober still on our minds, I hope we can all learn from Taia’s bravery.

Read your rights with Emilia at ebrahm@georgetownvoice.com

georgetownvoice.com

“Boys, you got to learn not to talk to nuns that way.” — Blues Brothers

Mask & Bauble plays with Woody Allen

by Emilia Brahm Don’t Drink the Water, Woody Allen’s Cold War farce set in the American Embassy of an unnamed country behind the Iron Curtain, first hit stages in 1966. This midterm season, from Oct. 17 to 26, Mask & Bauble’s adaptation succeeds in bringing the script’s comic relief alive for harried students.

Its madcap ensemble includes a magician priest, three tourists from New Jersey running from the communist police, and the fumbling son of a famous diplomat, protagonist Axel Magee. When Axel’s father puts him in charge of a short trip, chaos ensues— Woody Allen style.

Well-meaning Axel Magee, played

by Nick Norberg (COL ‘16), fumbles around causing disaster after disaster.

According to producer Nora Genster (SFS ’16), Axel is “everything Georgetown students strive not to be.”

Director Joe Madsen (COL ‘14) hopes we learn a lesson from him.

“I hope that Georgetown students get that they don’t need to take things too seriously all of the time,” he said.

Norberg’s enthusiasm is key in sending this message to the audience, and the rest of the cast is not far behind. Among them, Walter Hollander, played by Matthew Grisier (COL ‘16), epitomizes the idiot abroad with more silly one-liners than anyone else in the play, pulling off the curmudgeonly New Jersey caterer with panache.

Supporting actors Albert Scerbo (COL ’15) and Nick Phalen (SFS ’16) nail comic, stereotypical Eastern European accents in their roles as Krojak, the passionate communist policeman, and Priest Drobney, who has been locked in the American embassy for six years. Phalen is adept at using his long body to make any situation hilariously awkward, whether attempting magic tricks or climbing tables.

Allen is great at writing dynamic male characters, but he’s less adept with women. Still, Maddie Kelly (COL

Marla abdilla

“Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?”

’16) is charming as a lovelorn youth specializing in silly eyelash-batting.

Alice Neave’s (COL ‘16) portrayal of Killroy—the killjoy embassy secretary—proves hilarious. In a great example of the power of physical comedy, Claire Derriennic (COL ‘17) spoke little but flurried around the stage as the eternally attentive assistant Ms. Burns. Her scurrying brought more laughs than some of Allen’s best lines.

What stands out in this production is the costuming, blocking, and set design. Costume designer Audrey Denis (SFS ’15) nails Mr. Hollander’s outfit with a Hawaiian shirt, awkward shorts, white orthopedic shoes, and a bucket hat.

“The reason the wallpaper looks so atrocious, the reason there’s a jackelope sitting center stage, is because we were going for something just a little off and weird,” stage manager Michael Donnay said. The topsy-turvy design adds to the claustrophobia of being stuck in an embassy. It’s an anything goes environment that carried the show, thanks to the great work of set designer Sam Buckley (COL ’14).

Slapstick requires great blocking, good effects, absurdist set and props, and most of all, creativity and silliness from all those involved. These details come together to give Don’t Drink the Water a professional quality and laughs accessible to all. The blocking was comprised of “a lot of ideas that we came up with on our own, which played out beautifully, in my opinion,” said Madsen. I can’t disagree.

the georgetown voice 11

Reviews, Haiku’d Kill Your Darlings There is a sex scene Between Radcliffe and Dehaan Need I say more here?

Bad Grandpa Jackass essentials: balls, uncouthness, and Grandpa...

Well, this is awkward.

Ender’s Game Child soldiers in space Not the invisible kind Speakers for the dead Last Vegas Old age Hangover Subs roofies for Viagra Viva Las Vegas

Free Birds Birds on a mission They don’t want you to eat them Hope the pilgrims win Carrie A seventies great Remade with more blood and gore How original

—Brittany Berlin, Dayana Morales, Ryan Vislosky, Josh Ward, and Sam Wolter

Fifth Estate or Fifth Column? Cumberbatch has you decide

by Ryan Vislosky Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate takes an impressive cast (who doesn’t love Benedict Cumberbatch and Professor Lupin?) and combines it with one of the most controversial events in recent history to make one of the most ambitious dramas I’ve ever seen.

Told through the point of view of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a hated rival and prior co-worker of Julian Assange, The Fifth Estate takes a look at the tumultuous foundation of WikiLeaks.

While watching the trailer may lead a potential viewer to believe this movie takes sides on this controversial topic, the film does so much more than that, and it does it with flare.

The movie begins in 2010 with the release of the Afghan war

logs, but soon begins telling the story of the WikiLeaks’ founding through Domscheit-Berg’s eyes.

While The Fifth Estate tackles a massive amount of events in its two hours and five minutes, the viewer doesn’t feel too jerked around. Granted, there are an excessive amount of fast-forward montages, but the acting performances of Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl make these sequences easy to ignore.

The two actors’ interpretations of Assange and Domscheit-Berg make up for what, at times, feels like artificial character development and flat relationships. Cumberbatch plays the role of Assange so confidently—as is needed for a character like Assange—that you feel like you’re actually looking into the emotional tribulations and intel-

lectual articulations of the man himself. Brühl also does a good job of pulling you into the story, all while providing a counterbalance to Assange’s idealism.

The Fifth Estate paints a vivid picture of the stories of the documents they release, images of blood juxtaposed with truth, creepy music played in the background of acts of government brutality. Yet The Fifth Estate does more than just present these events as facts. Cumberbatch’s Assange argues that every conspiracy begins with two men and a secret.

This secret eventually weaves a web of lies and deceit that only can result in blood, but one righteous man decides he can bring it all to the ground. The Fifth Estate knows it’s playing with controversial topic, but it doesn’t get

carried away with righteous sentiment. Rather, it simply begs the viewer to do something. In the drama of everything you watch, are you willing to find the truth, to challenge the mold? It would be so easy for the movie to lie to us—as real-life Julian Assange

claims the film does—but by dramatizing events, director Bill Condon asks us to form our own opinions on WikiLeaks and the search for the truth. Just don’t GChat your friends about how much you liked the movie—the NSA is listening.

The NSA is now reading your thoughts and printing them on your face.

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october 17, 2013

C r i t i c a l V o i c es

The Avett Brothers, Magpie and the Dandelion, Universal Records “Let’s find something new to talk about / I’m tired of talking about myself,” Seth Avett sings in the opening lines of his band’s most recent release, Magpie and the Dandelion. Candid as always, the Avett Brothers confess in this moment the fear that keeps any well-established band up at night: How do we create something new, but stay true to ourselves?

If there is an answer to this question, the Avett Brothers seem to have found it somewhere in the rock-n-roll and folksy twists and turns of their latest creation. Though the album departs somewhat from the raw, energetic tone of their earlier work, it is marked by the same profound honesty that has always been the power behind their music.

Magpie and the Dandelion opens with the lively, bluegrass sound of “Open Ended Life,” a track that seems to invite the listener along for a lyrical ride with the band (“Pack a change of clothes,” Seth sings). Its energy, however, cannot fully obscure the doubts about the future that slip into the lyrics, even this early on the album: “I can’t stand the unexpected…my trust has dwindled down.”

Indeed, this upbeat beginning soon gives way to a slower, more contemplative mood. And as the music transitions into the soft, acoustic sounds of “Morning Song” and “Bring Your Love to Me,” the shadow of pain in the first song slowly builds to full-blown heartbreak and despair.

This punch-in-the-gut emotion comes to a climax in “Good to You,” a simple, piano-based track placed midway through the album. The images of missed moments in this song—a funeral, a wedding, a daughter’s childhood—capture the immense guilt of letting someone down who desperately needed you. The sadness and uncertainty in its closing lyric, “If I come home/Will you still want me to?” are impossible to miss.

Without a doubt, Magpie and the Dandelion has captured something new, but it does so in the same unabashedly candid style that so many

Primetime has gone brain dead There’s something about zombies. I’m not sure if it’s the palatable idea of flesh-eating corpses or the escapism that a zombie apocalypse offers citizens of a government shutdown, but Americans just can’t get enough of The Walking Dead. Apparently, we like it even more than Sunday night football. This is a big deal for me, since I’m the kind of quintessential American that knows exactly what those cactus-shaped posts on either side of the field are for and wouldn’t dream of ignoring the Super Bowl until Beyoncé comes on. In short, zombies are huge.

I know this, of course, because I checked out the TV ratings recently.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever done this, but it’s a surefire way to make you depressed about the State of the Arts in 2013. I recognize that’s the kind of snobby hipster nonsense statement that probably makes you envision me wearing a lot of scarves and bemoaning the decline of culture over wine, so I’ll counter it with a slight-

ly different assertion: I feel lonely, America! I want to understand!

Enlighten me about the wonders of NCIS and the irresistible drama of Duck Dynasty. Explain to me why Dancing with the Stars and The Voice are such a big deal. I mean, all I can do is imagine Russell Crowe dancing in a glittery leotard yelling, “Are you not entertained?!”

For a while, The Walking Dead was an exception for me. It was a show that garnered both insanely high ratings and followed an undeniably riveting narrative. The premise was enough to hook me, but the intriguing way that the series married ordinary life with the extraordinary circumstances of a zombie apocalypse was bizarrely alluring in its contrast to the exaggerated drama of every other zombie-related form of entertainment I’d ever seen.

Obviously, there are still incredibly high stakes involved, but there’s also a sense of community and nor-

have come to love. No, it’s not the same Avett Brothers who exclaimed “I wanna love you and more!” (“Live and Die,” The Carpenter). But music, like the people who create it, isn’t something static. It’s about change, it’s about growth, and above all, it’s about honesty.

Ultimately, Magpie and the Dandelion captures the truth it was meant to: it’s not about being perfect. It’s about being real.

Voice’s Choices: “Bring Your Love to Me,” “Good to You” —Andrea Keklak

Paul McCartney, New, Hear Music Paul McCartney is the only artist on earth who could get away with calling a new album “New.” malcy added to the mild stresses of regularly occurring life-and-death situations. The very first scene of the season premiere captured this odd combination perfectly, as Rick casually strolls out to the backyard of his prison home while listening to some country music on his unexplained MP3 player.

A gaggle of zombies mills outside the gates, but the flippancy with which he shrugs them off leads you

Idiot Box

by Julia Lloyd-George A bi-weekly column about TV to think he’s just a regular guy going through his morning routine, rabid monsters in close proximity aside.

There’s evidently a comic element in the absurdity of the situation, but it highlights a natural human propensity to adapt to even the strangest and most challenging circumstances. These quiet, revealing moments are barely enough to make the show worth watching, however, simply

New is not even all that new, as the album is pervaded by classic McCartney sounds and visions from his pre-Beatles days.

But does this matter? Of course not. What does matter is that this is one of Sir Paul’s best solo works to date.

New does actually include a few new ideas among the swath of older ones. The LP walks a somewhat tight balancing act between the McCartney music that we know and love and more experimental sounds. A perfect example of this is the track “Alligator,” an electronically driven song that also features a harpsichord on the verses.

It is this juxtaposition of classic and modern across the album that makes it refreshing.

Those long-term fans of Macca get the classic songs that they crave while he demonstrates his growth as an artist and keeps up with the times.

The passage of time plays a significant role as one of the disk’s main themes, especially the haunting ballad “Early Days.” The song, a strippeddown acoustic number, is McCartney’s most recent hymn to John Lennon as he sings about because it has so clearly lost sight of what makes a good story.

Characters, after all, are minimal considerations in a series that plays like a video game. The rising death count is the main source of consistent drama, simply because the writers seem to have a hard time finding other ways to drive the plot forward.

That is, of course, until they find a way to incorporate a tyrant with an eye patch into the mix or introduce some minor character with a bizarre virus that induces zombie-dom.

Most characters on the show feel like a caricature of some sort, not people with real nuance. Rick is the greatest example of all, since he comes off as some kind of saintlike cowboy just trying to care for his family on the frontier of Zombieland. There are few sides to him other than his brief bouts of insanity in the last season. The female characters are even less relatable. Although Michonne is the ultimate badass and my hero in both life and a hypothetical apocalypse, she doesn’t nearly get enough screen time to visibly

their first days in The Quarrymen. The cracks and falsettos in McCartney’s vocals give the song an unusual texture—a mixture of country-western and traditional ballad. It is a powerful sentiment that Lennon’s memory still holds such a grip over McCartney even 30 years after his death.

Gems in the album include “Appreciate,” which sounds more industrial than rock-based, and “I Can Bet,” which is propelled by a driving electronic piano riff. Title track “New” strikes a chord, musically and thematically, to the Revolver track “Got to Get You into My Life,” while “Everybody Out There” showcases a bouncing rhythm and timbre reminiscent of the Wings’ track “Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

If you have not yet fallen in love with Paul McCartney’s music, this LP is a great chance to do so. New might not refer to how groundbreaking the album is, but instead the fresh fans it will garner.

Voice’s Choices: “Early Days,” “Appreciate” —Jackson Sinnenberg develop and doesn’t seem to show very many hints of sincere weaknesses. Don’t even get me started on the non-white characters.

It’s easy to see why Americans are so in love with The Walking Dead because it has so many of the recurring features of popular television.

If you throw people into a difficult situation with a lot of external tension, you have easy entertainment.

It doesn’t matter if the characters are flat and much of the conflict feels forced, because the persistent sense of danger is all that matters.

If such a show affirms traditional social conventions of gender, race, and morality in the process, then the danger it presents remains trapped within the boundaries of narrative. It’s both safe and exciting, like watching gladiators fight in a pit below you. It’s not that I don’t understand the allure. It’s just that I wish we could see beyond bread and circuses.

Share your undead heart with Julia at jlloydgeorge@georgetownvoice.com

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-Dylan Cutler

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14 the georgetown voice

october 17, 2013

Stigmatized maladies: Mentally ill need our support, too

by Lara Fishbane I’ll never forget the day she told me “I wish it was cancer,” because no one could ever wish for cancer. Cancer sucks and everyone knows it.

Cancer is probably the most feared disease in the modern world, and the most widely combatted is breast cancer. Think Pink Walks, Shopping for a Cure, and other forms of donation raise an estimated $6 billion a year for breast cancer research and survivors. Turn something pink, raise the price, tell people 10 percent is going to breast cancer, and everyone buys it. It feels good to give money to a cause and it’s trendy to sport the pink attire.

To be fair, these efforts are all warranted. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, breast cancer is the second most common cancer in the United States and the third most deadly. In fact, 213,732 people were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 and 41,076 people died from it.

Also in 2009, 36,909 people died and over 700,000 were hospitalized because of self-harm. These statistics are significantly less publicized, but representative of an equally harsh reality that no one seems as eager to raise awareness for. Everyone knows that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, during which we wear pink ribbons, but hardly anyone knows that last week, Oct. 6-12, was Mental Illness Awareness week.

In 2011, my best friend almost succumbed to her depression because she was too afraid to ask for help. There is still a prevalent stigma against people suffering with mental illnesses, despite all the efforts made to change that fact.

She didn’t mean that she really wanted to have cancer. She just wanted it to be okay for her to need support.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, people come rushing to offer help. They sit by the patient’s bedside, hold his or her hand, cook meals, and bring flowers—as they should. How-

ever, when someone says that he or she is depressed, people run in the opposite direction. They act as though it’s the plague, as if by standing too close, they could get sucked in. When it’s you against an external disease, everyone has something to say, but, suddenly, when it’s you against yourself, they all fall silent.

And all that’s if people believe you.

Depression is the misunderstood epidemic, as Susan Polis Schutz said. People think that depression means being sad, but there is a difference between sadness and depression. Sadness has a place and everyone feels it to different degrees. Depression is the unwanted guest. It’s there, even when it shouldn’t be because everything is fine.

And, it’s not its victim’s fault.

My friend was bombarded with the same trite clichés such as “it will get better” and when it didn’t, she was told to “suck it up and get over it” since sadness is natural and should go away with time. It’s an implicit social standard that

you’re supposed to hold it together no matter how bad things may seem.

In college, we see people doing this all the time and it looks normal. People are running around competing over who can take the most credits, be involved in the most clubs, work the most hours, sleep the least, and make it all look effortless. Admitting to struggling in the slightest is admitting to actually having human flaws. No one wants to do that.

If people are expected to constantly be perfect, how can anyone be comfortable enough to confess to being depressed? Counseling and Psychiatric Services only sees about 10 percent of students, which has nothing to do with CAPS not being widely available enough. It is because there is a stigma against mental illness in this country, especially among high-achieving college students.

Depression will not go away if you ignore it. Breast cancer will spread to other organs and kill you if it is not properly treated, but depression will consume

you as well. If you have to live with it for long enough, it will eventually start to eat away at you until there is nothing worth fighting for. Once you give in, it’s terminal.

It’s hypocritical to say that one illness is more deserving of sympathy and pomp than another. Breast cancer has stolen the spotlight in terms of support.

The key is to continue fighting it, but also to realize that it’s not the only disease that demands action. No one talks about depression because it’s still too uncomfortable to mention. The only way to get equal awareness and eliminate the stigma is to open up the conversation to include all different physical and mental illnesses. No one should ever have to feel as though his or her suffering is any less significant.

Lara Fishbane is a freshman in the College. Her mom just bought her a new pink bed and towel set. She really hates it.

Free condoms at parties may encourage sexual assault

by Mary-Bailey Frank Rape is frequently ignored when dealing with the idea of the “party scene” because of the lack of informed discussion surrounding sex crimes. For this reason, there’s a chance that the new condom delivery service created

by H*yas for Choice has the potential to do more harm than good.

This service will offer bulk condoms for pickup or delivery at the request of party hosts in an attempt to promote safe sex at Georgetown. The program is necessitated by the lack of easy access to condoms since Georgetown doesn’t permit their sale on campus.

But, sexual assault and rape are among the most prevalent issues facing young men and women in college.

National reports found that one in four college-aged women and one in ten college-aged men are victims of a sex crime. According to Sexual Assault and Health Issues Coordinator Jen Schweer, Georgetown matches the national average.

Despite these statistics, there is despairingly little conversation among students and the general public on how to lessen instances of assault. It is an occurrence that has been dismissed as habitually inevitable.

The stated purpose of this new service is not to increase the rate of sexual assault, but we should consider the unintended consequences of providing free condoms in bulk at parties, which are already full of “hook-up culture” pressures. The danger is that sex un-

CHRISTINA LIBRE

Georgetown Bro: “I just don’t have any self-determination with these clubs, man.”

der pressure is not safe sex, and it is not consensual sex. Sex under pressure is sexual assault.

Partying and drinking seem synonymous in college because at every party there is alcohol readily available.

What if at every party there are condoms readily available? It’s not to say that students will be inspired to have sex just because they see a condom, but rather that, over time, students will begin to inadvertently associate partying with having sex, just as they have grown to associate partying and drinking. Social pressures already lead to sex crimes. My concern with the condom delivery service is that it will increase this pressure and generate an atmosphere even more conducive to sexual assault. H*yas for Choice needs to keep this under consideration.

Sexual assault is already rampant at parties. In a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice, at least 80 percent of all sexual assault cases occurred at social interactions like parties, and women who attended parties with binge drinking were 1.5 times more likely to be sexually pressured. Although sex at parties is ideally between consenting individuals, too many of these interactions are not.

I have often heard “rapists are going to rape people no matter what” when this issue is discussed. This statement is an inaccurate generalization about rapists, insinuating that all rap-

ists intentionally seek nonconsensual sex, enough to assault 25 percent of the women at Georgetown. But, nine out of 10 female rape victims are well acquainted with their attacker and view them as friends. At parties, sexual assault is most often the result of a combination of pressure from the perpetrator and a lack of visceral, negative response from the potential victim. Although silence is in no way consent, pressure from friends can stop women from definitively saying no to sexual advances.

Added pressure from the party atmosphere on top of the pressure students already face from peers could increase the rate of sexual assault.

I have seen the effects of these social pressures at parties first hand. Several friends who never knew about “hookup culture” before college are now overwhelmed. They have come to view it as a norm of college life, as something expected. I have seen too many friends give in to pressure from guys to engage in sexual activities, and I have had to step in and say no on their behalves.

Social pressure alone is a powerful motivator, especially at parties. There’s no telling what might happen if you throw bulk condoms into the mix.

H*yas for Choice does not have an obligation to focus on sexual assault prevention—that is not the purpose of the club. However, H*yas for Choice has created a service that is intertwined with the issue of sexual assault because

their consumers are partying college students. It is not an issue that can be glossed over when adding free condoms to an atmosphere dominated by peer pressure, drunken behavior, and an unacceptably high number of attempted sex crimes.

There is already a serious lack of attention to sexual assault, which affects millions of people nationally and hundreds of students on the Georgetown campus. I am not placing the burden of fixing sexual assault on H*yas for Choice. Rather, I feel that their implementation of the condom delivery service gives them enough direct interaction with the party scene for them to consider the possible side effects on sexual assault.

All I ask of H*yas for Choice is that they pay special attention to this possibility. They should be commended for their efforts so far to include educational pamphlets with every condom package, but, until parties are no longer plagued by high rates of sexual assault, efforts to just make sex safe at parties will never have just the intended outcome. H*yas for Choice should either address this issue or consider not creating this service at all.

Mary-Bailey Frank is a freshman in the College. She also opposes the presence of rubber bands, rubber ducks, and tires at parties.

voices

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the georgetown voice 15

It’s time to give common workers the microphone and listen

by Jeremy Dang A dollar is a snack from the New South vending machine, a drink from Hoya Snaxa, or onefourth of a vanilla iced chai latte at Uncommon Grounds. It’s a short trip on the metro. But, for someone else a dollar can mean the difference between having a roof to sleep under and being homeless for a night. It can mean the difference between keeping a family fed and letting your loved ones go hungry.

Last Thursday, a discussion was held in Gaston Hall entitled “The State of the Black Worker in America.” As I sat there worrying

about my midterm the next day, the speakers discussed the struggles they went through just to secure a living wage and those the common worker goes through every day to stretch minimum wage into a living wage on top of working with large corporations to secure their rights. They discussed the helplessness of being voiceless, of being at the mercy of corporations because they could not form a union to air their struggles.

It’s easy for us to forget the plight of the common worker because many of us have never had to experience it. For me, “work” means taking the subway to

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Latest: Georgetown students rally in attempt to relate to workers’ plight.

Iran, U.S. ready to make nice?

Iran finally seems ready to cut a deal with the West on its nuclear program—it’s just a matter of the West being ready to do the same. The United States needs to suppress its historic distrust of post-revolutionary Iran and see this as the opportunity to develop a working relationship.

Ignore Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crying wolf. President Hassan Rouhani has been given a mandate by the Iranian people to reach an agreement with the West. The sanction regime has made it almost impossible to do business within Iran, especially with the country facing a severe currency shortage. Despite what Iran hawks like Netanyahu claim, Supreme Leader Khamenei needs to respect the will of the people to maintain his legitimacy. With everyday Iranians struggling to make ends meet, contin-

ued confrontation with the West is no longer a viable option.

Looking at the power structure within Iran, it is also important to recognize how close Rouhani is with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a major voice for moderation and pragmatism. Rafsanjani threw his considerable support behind Rouhani after his own candidacy was denied

by Khamenei through the Guardian Council. Although Rafsanjani was essential to Khamenei’s ascension to the position of Supreme Leader, he is now at odds with Khamenei over the best way forward. With Rafsanjani’s triumphant return to Iranian politics, Khamenei faces a strong coalition of moderates, led by one of Iran’s cagiest pragmatists.

In talks at Geneva this week, Iran is talking about an agreement that will

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Bethesda once a week, doing a job that I really like, and promptly getting paid enough money to keep any college kid happy. For others, “work” is synonymous with struggle, with survival. Work is sustenance. It is the difference between life and death.

Why is it that I get to have fun while others have to scrape to get by? It’s because I had the good fortune to be born into a loving and hard-working family. For no reason whatsoever, I was given opportunities that some are never given.

It’s hard to realize that the differences between us and those less fortunate are few. There is absolutely no reason why the birth lottery ought to determine who gets to be on top in life. There is no reason why the arbitrary accident of class should be able to dictate the rest of our lives. While I am by no means denying the role of hard work in success, I think it would be absurd to deny that where we begin affects where we end, and that it would be unjust to simply embrace that randomness and arbitrariness.

The solution is to level the playing field, which means improving

conditions for those who help make society tick without being recognized. As students, we sometimes forget about the difficulties of these people. But one can realize the common worker is stripped of his or her political voice. For example, WalMart’s wage policy prevents its workers from forming unions, a trend that is prevalent among big corporations.

My argument does not concern any particular right of a worker, such as the right to a living wage, but rather the workers’ right to have a voice in the first place through unions and other mediums that allow workers to express their needs and fight for their rights. A relationship in which workers are at the mercy of larger corporations is one of an oppressor and a victim.

Workers’ voices are marginalized every day simply because the relationship between corporations and workers is not an equal one. The only way to actualize an equal relationship is to give the worker the voice to defend those rights in the first place. It is precisely because workers’ rights are so ambiguous that workers need a voice to ex-

create a “trust-building road map with the [West].” While it’s clear that Iran is not about to give up its nuclear program, Iranian negotiators are saying they want to explore ways to make the Iranian program more transparent, and in return for enhanced inspection, regimes ask the West to lift the sanctions. The conversation Iran wants to have is about stockpiles, percentages, and inspection schedules. If the United States and Russia could agree to an inspection regime able to reassure each

of automatic resumption of sanctions lurking in the background. Iran will probably continue to have “breakout capacity”—the ability to rapidly produce a nuclear weapon—but with a tough inspection regime, Western and Israeli leaders will have the information they need to make informed decisions regarding Iran’s capabilities and intentions.

It will no doubt be difficult for the United States to trust Iran and vice versa, both during and after negotiations.

But an effective agreement will accomplish U.S. objectives and provide a basis for improved relations on a host of other issues.

First, by regulating and preventing the full militarization of the Iranian program, Israel will be safe from an Iranian nuclear holocaust. Israel is right to fear a hostile, nuclear Iran.

An agreement on the nuclear issue will be the first step on eliminating the hostility between the West (Israel) and Iran, while also de-fanging the Iranian program.

Iran is also the chief ally of the terrorist organization Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria. It is likely any agreement will be narrow and focus solely on the nuclear question, leaving out these complicated issues.

But it will be hard for Iran to be on

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other about the other’s capabilities after the Cold War, it is difficult to see why such a system could not be established for Iran.

Furthermore, Iran developed much of its nuclear capacity on its own, with most of its technological advancement taking place under sanctions. It is foolish to think that Iran will unlearn its nuclear technology.

Well-crafted and rigorous inspection regimes for Iran already exist and can ensure full compliance with any agreement, especially with the threat

press their struggles. Unionization is a necessary prerequisite to any other workers right, because it is the medium through which workers can claim their rights in the first place.

As college students, it’s easy to forget that there’s a world beyond our Georgetown bubble. It’s also easy to claim that we do not have the time or resources to fight the injustices around us, but the truth is that, as students, we are in a unique role to actualize change. Clubs like the Georgetown Solidarity Committee and programs like the Day Laborer Exchange Program and the Kalmanovitz Initiative are mediums for the Georgetown students to understand and advocate for workers. As students, many of us are the winners of the birth lottery.

As such, we are obligated to fight for those who aren’t as lucky as we are, even when it is difficult or inconvenient to do so.

Jeremy Dang is a freshman in the College. Traveling to Bethsda once a week earns him plenty of money because he’s an exotic dancer. friendlier terms with the West and also support Hezbollah and ship weapons to Assad. Hopefully a nuclear agreement will encourage Iran to adjust its cost-benefit analysis of its allies.

A stronger West-Iran relationship will hopefully also encourage democratizing elements in Iran and prevent rigged elections like those seen in 2009.

Perhaps such an agreement would make it harder for the Guardian Council to only approve conservatives and pressure the Council to allow moderate candidates like Rouhani to run.

Finally, an agreement would strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Using the NPT as the basis for an agreement and related inspections will prevent further deterioration of an already weak treaty regime and discourage other countries from violating their obligations.

By many accounts, the talks in Geneva have been productive, and all parties are staking out realistic bargaining positions. After decades of distrust, it will be hard for the West to believe in Iran’s sincerity and agree to Iran’s right to nuclear production.

But, Rouhani will only be able to cut a deal if the West meets him halfway.

No journey begins without taking the first step, and the journey to normal relations with Iran lies in a nuclear deal.