The Georgetown Voice, October 9, 2015

VOICE

October 9, 2015

The Georgetown

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OCTOBER 9, 2015

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE Volume 48 • Issue 4

staff editor-in-chief Chris Almeida Managing editor daniel varghese Executive editors Noah buyon, christopher castano, lara fishbane news editor ryan miller assitant editors Courtnie baek, lilah burke, Liz teitz Leisure editor Elizabeth baker assistant editors Jon block, dinah farrell, brian Mcmahon Sports Editor Joe pollicino assistant editor max roberts halftime Leisure editors Mike bergin, erika bullock Sports editors alex boyd, rob ponce assistant sports editor matt jasko Voices editor graham piro assistant editor charles evain

“lady in gold” by Megan Howell

Editorials

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design Cover editor megan howell editors eleanor sugrue, ellie yaeger spread editors pam shu, sophie super

Carrying On: The More You Know Megan Howell

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PHOTO editor JOSHUA RAFTIS

Right to Life, With Conditions Sophia Kleyman

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copy Chief suzanne trivette editors Sharon Mo, Hanh Nguyen, Amal Farooqui, Maddi Kaigh Anna Gloor, Clara Cecil, Greer Richey, Hannah Wingett Dana Suekoff, Rachel Greene, Matthew Soens

You Can’t Handle the Truth Jospeh DiPietro

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online online editor kenneth lee social media editors sahil nair, tiffany tao

The Balancing Act Elizabeth Baker

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Editorial Board chair Laura Kurek

Break Point Chris Almeida and Joe Pollicino

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Role Call Amy Guay

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editor@georgetownvoice.com Leavey 424 Box 571066 Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057

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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. 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.

associate editors marisa hawley, kevin huggard, sabrina kayser, christina libre Staff writers sourabh bhat, Emilia brahm, Emmy buck, Caitlyn cobb, brendan crowley, Patrick drown, emmanuel elone, joe laposata, maneesha panja, Brendan saunders, thomas stubna, manuela Tobias, colleen zorc staff photographers Ambika ahuja, saman asdjodi, jen costa, megan howell, gavin myers, freddy rosas, Taryn Shaw, andrew Sullivan staff designers Lizzy blumburg, river davis, katie hyland, Johnny jung general manager tim annick

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

read more on georgetownvoice.com

Georgetown receives $50 million gift from parents of alumni to fund athletics program Student-athletes at Georgetown are set to benefit from one of the largest donations ever made to the school, a $50 million gift from Peter and Susan Cooper to support athletic leadership development and improvements to Multi-Sport Field. Read Liz Teitz’s report online.

The $100 Billion Fallacy “For Rouhani to pass up a miraculous infusion of capital in order to bankroll foreign fighters would be bad economics.” Read Bardia Rahmani’s takedown of Republican criticism of Obama’s Iran deal online.

Mixed Doubles

By Kathleen Coughlin

INSTRUCTIONS: Mixed doubles is similar to a regular crossword puzzle, but each word corresponds with two clues. For example, ECLIPSE could be 1)“New Moon sequel” and 6) “Astronomical event.” Once you determine which clues match up, add up their numbers (1+6=7), and that corresponds to their spot in the puzzle.

ACROSS 25. Casual affair 8. Vodka cocktail 1. Futurama robot 26. Outer edge 9. Fred’s earless brother 2. Chat 27. Chinese zodiac 10. Remove wrinkles 3. Houston player animal 11. Fragrant smoke 4. Put your shirt back on 28. Dishonest 12. XBOX or Wii 5. Drunken spree 29. Dwayne Johnson’s 13. River side 6. King or queen pseudonym with “the” 14. What the Eiffel Tow7. Ender’s Game author 30. Emotion er’s made of 8. High-tops 31. Convent occupant 15. “A ___ by any other 9. St. George’s foe 32. Hottest month name would smell as 10. Fruits and veggies 33. Fictional work sweet” 11. Remedy 34. Like a Jackson Pol- 16. Two-base hit 12. Bent lock painting 17. ____ O’Donovan 13. Hebrew letter 35. Venerable 18. Teller’s place 14. Fresh and new 36. Type of music 19. Voice quality 15. Yield 20. Alternative to nothing 16. Blemish DOWN 21. Green Nickelodeon 17. Pleasant 1. Provide comfort fairy 18. French seaport 2. String game 22. Wine type (ignore the 19. Influence 3. Desolate accent) 20. Stellar prefix 4. Constellation 23. Improve muscle 21. Throw angrily 5. Vonnegut novel definition 22. Back talk 6. Eddard, Catelyn, 24. Name of 3 presidents 23. Switch sides and co.

24. Not concrete 7. Enrage

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Last issue’s solution:

Correction for last issue’s puzzle: The clue for 11 ACROSS should have been “Humiliate,” not “Tomorrow in Paris.”

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EDITOIRALS

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OCTOBER 9, 2015

Underserved Tennis Community Without Adequate Facilities If you look around the Georgetown campus, you’ll be captivated by the elegant Healy Hall, the shimmering Rafik B. Hariri business school, and the stately-and-state-of-theart former Jesuit Residence. Soon, this motley collection of buildings will be joined by a gorgeous brand-new dorm, the Northeast Triangle. The Georgetown community prides itself on its campus—carefully maintained and constantly updated. Yet, despite the ceaseless construction and renovations, no effort has been made to bring back an outdoor tennis court.

Up until 2014, tennis courts were another defining feature of the Georgetown landscape, and more importantly, the Georgetown experience. And then, the courts were demolished to make room for the John Thompson Jr. Intercollegiate Athletic Center (IAC). Ironically, the IAC—designed to provide upgraded training facilities and thereby solidify Georgetown as a real player in college sports—has destroyed one of the most popular sites for competitive and social participation in sports on campus.

While Georgetown’s prestigious basketball and soccer programs will no doubt benefit from the IAC’s amenities, the cost is already being borne by their sibling Division I tennis team, which has been relegated to training at a local high school.

Perhaps even worse than the physical destruction of the tennis courts is the blow that’s been dealt to the wider sports culture at Georgetown. Georgetown athletics cannot be taken seriously while teams are competing for practice time with 14-year-olds. Worse yet, the tennis teams now have no reg-

ular home court to call their own—no space on campus to bask in the cheers of fans and classmates. If Georgetown can ever be considered an elite athletic program, it needs to give its teams—all its teams—a fair chance to compete.

Even if you ignore the impact of the John Thompson Jr. Intercollegiate Athletic Center on the varsity tennis teams, you can’t dispute that the destruction of the tennis courts has eliminated one of the most popular spaces for Georgetown students who do not play the sport at a varsity level. The outdoor tennis courts, which did not require previously scheduled reservations, was an inclusive gathering place where anyone in the Georgetown community could enjoy tennis, together. People of all ages and skill levels were able to share this space, challenge themselves, and appreciate the beauty of the game.

Though the IAC will surely improve training for our most competitive varsity sports on campus, it is a space few Georgetown students can enjoy. This would not be an issue if the outdoor tennis courts were relocated to another part of campus, but, unfortunately, they were not. Georgetown students now have to compete for reservations at the handful of courts at Yates Field House with regular Yates patrons—an obstacle that has decimated the Club Tennis team and has significantly discouraged casual tennis-playing on campus.

And while university funds are busy building new dorms per request of our neighbors, other spaces on campus available to all Georgetown students, like Kehoe Field, have been consistently passed over in the selections for renovations.

Kali Sullivan

The Editorial Board is well aware of the space restrictions on campus, but it is difficult to believe that there is nothing that can be done to improve the situation. Now with the announcement of the new renovations to the Multi-Sport Field, which will soon be renamed Cooper Field, we know that improvement to the sports culture at Georgetown is truly possible. Unfortunately, it seems like these improvements favor certain sports over others. If Georgetown wants to be a legitimate center for college athletics, it needs to make an effort to improve the training facilities across all varsity sports and the spaces of inclusion for everyone in the Georgetown community to enjoy.

A Failing Grade College Scorecard Underwhlems We’ve long held these truths to be self-evident: America’s higher education system is broken, and U.S. News & World Report’s perennial “Best Colleges” rankings are rubbish. So it came as a relief when President Obama announced in his 2013 State of the Union address that the Department of Education (DoE) would create a data-driven “College Scorecard” for the purposes of comparing schools using a single metric: “where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”

At the time, the College Scorecard seemed like a classic two birds, one stone solution.

It wasn’t. Or, more accurately, it was never given the chance to be. What the DoE unveiled to much fanfare last month was more of a data dump than a scorecard. The Economist summed it up nicely: “[The College Scorecard] merely allowed prospective students to compare colleges by three factors: graduation rate, average annual cost of attendance, and median earnings of alumni.”

What happened? Essentially, Congress and the education industry joined together to derail Obama’s initial proposal—and leading the charge was none other than Georgetown University.

There was a logic to this lobbying: attempting to neatly compare colleges and universities using a single criterion fails to capture the whole picture. There are, truth be told, too many variables to consider when assessing whether one school is better than another. This is not an apples-to-oranges argument: you can compare schools—just not with a convenient letter grade. Georgetown held a similar view. In a interview

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with the Voice, Associate Vice President for Federal Relations Scott Fleming commented, “I think when you start rating one institution over another, there are so many variables, and different schools are right for different people. And, so, the rating system probably wasn’t going to be able to capture that just right.”

It’s probably not a bad thing, then, that Georgetown and the larger education industry succeeded in quashing the DoE ranking system as it was originally conceived.

That said, the education industry’s lobbying efforts have not produced anything of much value for students and parents. NPR’s Cory Turner observes that “calling this a scorecard is like calling Mt. Vesuvius a hill; at best, it’s an understatement.” And, much like the infamous volcano, the College Scorecard presents a misleading façade.

Unless you’re a statistician, it’s hard to make heads or tails of the current College Scorecard. There is too much data and too little context. Sure, some of the numbers are appealing— for instance, the median post-graduation earnings (10 years after graduation) for Hoyas ($83,300) places Georgetown in the top four within the category for all liberal arts schools. The data, however, are extrapolated from only students whose social security numbers are in the DoE’s registries—i.e., students who receive federal tuition aid. This means that information on roughly 50 percent of all graduates is not factored in.

As Fleming correctly pointed out, “there’s a lot more to a college education than what one might make, dollar-wise, in their job. Georgetown is proud of, and it’s inherent in

Erin Annick

who we are, creating men and women for others.” College is unquestionably an investment, but certain aspects of the higher education experience cannot be translated into monetary terms.

We’re more interested in how Georgetown helped shape the College Scorecard into what it is today. President DeGioia himself is the vice chair of the American Council on Education, an industry group that offered stiff opposition to various iterations of the College Scorecard (including the present one). In this capacity, DeGioia was a lead participant in meetings at the White House and at the DoE. We can’t know what was said in those meetings, though Scott Fleming insists that the “conversations were not designed to say ‘don’t do this,’ but rather, ‘we want you to be sensitive to certain things as you do this’.” What we do know is that Georgetown had a role in shaping the College Scorecard. We hope they used it to the benefit of students. And we hope in the future Georgetown will use its influence to improve the Scorecard.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

The More You Know The Value of Knowledge for Knowledge’s Sake

When a high school teacher, the marvelous Ms. Hadley Moore, introduced the word “perennialism” into my vocabulary, I immediately thought of perennials, the plants. You know, those plants that come up year after year, no matter how harsh and unforgiving the winter may have been? However, I soon discovered that my botany-centric definition was only part of a bigger picture.

Perennialism, as Ms. Moore explained, is an educational philosophy that emphasizes principles and reasoning over cold, hard facts. Advocates of this line of thought seek to promote personal development, as opposed to rote learning and the regurgitation of events, names, and years. It originated during the Renaissance, and is the foundation of today’s liberal arts model for education.

I came to realize that I had been a perennialist all my life—I just didn’t know there was a name for it until high school. I had become quite comfortable with the previous nomenclature: nerd, bookworm, dork, etc. These labels had been hurled at me ever since I brought my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird to recess in the first grade. I felt pretty great that I could finally justify my bookishness with a long, fancy word like “perennialism.”

Ellie Yaeger

Perennialism has been (and continues to be) a part of my everyday life because it’s all about extending education beyond the classroom. It’s probably a part of yours, too. You don’t have to look too hard to find ways that you are learning: on sports teams, in extracurricular activities, or even amongst your friends on a Saturday afternoon. Perennialism teaches that what really matters is that we try to find ways to learn for the sake of learning in our “non-academic” lives. We all have moments when we would rather do anything but homework, and that’s quite alright.

Not all learning is accomplished in the classroom. In these moments, we should throw ourselves into our passions.

Perennialists promulgate ideas that are pertinent to everyone, everywhere—in other words, universal truths. I find these truths most often in the classroom, because that is my primary passion. I also find these truths in the art studio or in Georgetown’s community garden. I find these truths when I lay out on my blanket on the front lawn and talk with my friends. You might be getting the impression, then, that this is an easy philosophy to apply, but, like anything, perennialism has its flaws.

The philosophy does require a significant amount of discipline from its practitioners. Reading the classics of the Western

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Carrying On: Voice Staffers Speak

literary canon, wrestling with complex philosophy, writing about aspects of theology that just simply cannot be accurately put down into words, are all learning experiences perennialism encourages—and they can be quite taxing. But if you can harness your discipline and carry on, the benefits will reveal themselves in due time.

Now sticking it out and learning for the sake of learning is all well and good, but we can oftentimes encounter knowledge that can’t be easily incorporated into our daily lives. You may not see the surface-level benefits of reading Chaucer if you plan on being a physical therapist, and you may not see the point of learning the art of scientific reasoning if you want to be a ceramicist. Perennialists maintain that the mere act of learning and acquiring knowledge is what lets us know that we are growing and getting better. Getting lost in Milton’s Paradise Lost, finally determining that the series from chapter 17 of your calculus textbook actually tends toward infinity, defending why you think socialism would be plausible on a large scale, and so on, are all aspects that make up the kind of people we become. We are lifelong students. Studying calculus makes English teachers better at teaching English because it inspires them to incorporate a different kind of analysis than is typically used in literature. Studying Platonic philosophy makes chemists better chemists because it inspires them to hone their reasoning more critically. Knowledge doesn’t have to directly correlate to what your intended career might be. In fact, the linkages between knowledge and application are much more dynamic.

So, if there’s no such thing as “useless knowledge,” then a question arises concerning how to handle knowledge that has been proven to be wrong. The geocentricity of Ptolemy, Hitler’s “Final Solution,” or the racial caste system of the American South’s Jim Crow are examples of this flaw. However, there is still value in this knowledge. We expose ourselves to these wrongs in order to educate ourselves; the more we know, the less we will be likely to make the same or similar mistakes.

As someone who wants to teach someday, I can’t imagine a better way to enrich the soul than to wrestle with the philosophical musings of Descartes, or to study the same works that inspired Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jackson Pollock, and Stephen Hawking, or to understand the mistakes that have led to terrible historical atrocities. So maybe my first hunch wasn’t that off—maybe being a perennialist does have something to do with those hardy little plants that keep popping up each spring, year after year. Those plants have established roots which firmly hold them in place. They have experienced rough times, and yet the continue to bloom and grow, despite the difficulties. They stick to established truths while still taking in whatever their environment may bring. Being a perennialist is as much a life philosophy as it is an educational philosophy for me. So watch out, students: spring is coming.

BY MEGAN HOWELL She is a sophomore in the College.

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VOICES

Right To Life, With Conditions The Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Generation

The “pro-life generation,” if it is going to keep calling itself that, needs to realize its obligation to the full definition of its chosen moniker.

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OCTOBER 9, 2015

The day before Kelly Renee Gissendaner was executed by the state of Georgia last week, Georgetown’s Right to Life group, Vita Saxa, held a “Pro-Life Rally” in Red Square.

“Join us as we rally together to protect the rights of the unborn,” read the rally’s event description on Facebook. Vita Saxa’s mission statement claims that, “Through persistent effort we can, and will, create a society in which abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty have no place.” Yet not a single word in the event’s description so much as mentioned the fact that a woman’s life was to be ended the next day.

This same trend has occurred, as the issue of funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that has unfairly become the scapegoat for all things “pro-abortion,” brought our government to the brink of a shutdown.

The pro-life movement has rallied around the cry of bringing an end to legal abortions and accessible health care, only to have forgotten the larger implications of the term “pro-life”.

The “pro-life generation” has demonstrated, through their one sided support of end-of-life issues and ingenuine rhetoric, that their definition of “pro-life” doesn’t actually apply to all life. The application of the death penalty in the United States has been nothing short of a massacre, stopping the lives of 1,416 people since 1976. Still, “pro-life” activists ignore visceral examples of its horrors in their focus on abortion. When Oklahoma botched the execution of Clayton Lockett and left him writhing in pain on a gurney for 43 minutes before dying of a massive heart attack, the movement stayed silent.

While in practice the term “pro-life” is used almost exclusively in reference to abortion, its literal meaning is all life, regardless of age or innocence, which the movement has ignored. This fact seems to have escaped anti-abortion activists’ notice, who have focused nearly all of their visible efforts towards ending abortions. If one is to believe that abortion is an act of murder, it is unavoidable to admit that the death penalty is as well. It is an issue that must concern the anti-abortion movement, yet it has been effectively ignored.

This is despite the fact that much of conservative rhetoric around end-of-life issues has deep theological roots and the Catholic Church has an established stance against the death penalty. In a letter to the president of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Pope Francis expressed the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty and called its use “inadmissible,” re-

Andrea Leng

gardless of the crime. Citing God’s justice and plan for humanity, he maintained that the death penalty provides no justice and instead violates human dignity.

Even the less liberal Pope John Paul II said that even those who have “done great evil” deserve the dignity of their lives and the chance to reform in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. One would expect that the pope would be able to influence “pro-life” activism. In fact, the opposite has been true.

Despite having vehemently denounced the death penalty, he hasn’t been able to goad anti-abortion activists and politicians into making state execution part of the conversation, even at a Catholic university such as Georgetown. It is unfathomable to me that a group of individuals that so ardently fights for one’s right to life, as Vita Saxa claims to do, seems to simply ignore that the death penalty is inarguably a life issue as well—one that scores of religious leaders have come out exceptionally strongly against.

But sure, it is easier to quote a statistic about how abortion might “stop the hearts of 3,500 babies” each day, a phrase Vita Saxa chalked in massive letters in Red Square the Tuesday before Gissendaner’s execution.

Without delving into the legitimacy or construction of this statistic, you must acknowledge that the action of chalking it in a public space is an example of how the rhetoric used to promote the anti-abortion agenda relies heavily on imagery that is, on its surface, composed of universal moral truths.

Nobody would disagree that it is wrong to kill a baby. Furthermore, expressing this widely held view is not difficult. Yet defending the lives of people who have potentially committed horrible crimes is a much tougher sell, even if it is just as valid. There can be

no doubt that the people condemned by the death penalty were sentient, living humans, unlike there is in the discussion of abortion.

Yet, the “pro-life generation” has focused most, if not all, of its visible efforts rallying against a woman’s right to choose and the accessibility of affordable reproductive healthcare while ignoring the injustice of these murders.

The “pro-life generation,” if it is going to keep calling itself that, needs to realize its obligation to the full definition of its chosen moniker. Being “pro-life” means more than posting cute pictures of babies on Facebook and shaming and victimizing women who have had abortions as “baby killers.” By calling yourself “pro-life,” you agree to uphold and defend the dignity of all human life, not just the cute and cuddly kind.

When did cutting off funding to healthcare, the purpose of which is to sustain life, become more important than actually defending the rights of living people? “Pro-life” has been reinterpreted to only mean “anti-abortion,” despite the wider implications of the term. But you cannot pick and choose which lives you are going to defend. If you truly believe that the “fundamental right of humankind” is life until “natural death,” as National Right to Life does, you cannot stay silent about the death penalty. Nobody gets to be selective about to whom they apply their morals. People who call themselves “pro-life” should stop operating under the charade of being crusaders for all human lives and start actually sticking to what their rhetoric implies they believe.

BY SOPHIA KLEYMAN

She is a senior in the College.

OCTOBER 9, 2015

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

The Importance of Free Speech on Campus We have a duty to offend. That duty does not fall to me, to you, or to any one individual—but make no mistake that it does fall to us. As with all issues that require collective action, we cannot afford to ignore that this duty is imperative.

This idea is by no account novel. The great philosophers of ancient Greece were acutely aware of the necessity to provoke society into questioning its hierarchies, its laws, and its values. Socrates called himself a gadfly, an annoying creature which stings society into consciousness of itself, impelling the society to re-examine what it does and what it ought to do. To actualize his vision, Socrates paid a high price, but his message was not lost. Long after his time, his admonition to induce continual societal introspection has lived on and thrived.

In its nascence, civil discourse was limited to matters that were deemed of no concern to the common people. Candid commentary on such weighty issues as governance, morality, or policy was exclusive to the stately marble halls of patricians, aristocrats, or whichever class was endowed with the privilege to rule. Gradually, civil discourse found its way outside these elite institutions and into the homes of the many— sometimes in trickles, other times in waves.

Time progressed, and this discourse grew from those initial experiments of hushed speech to the unremitting and thunderous assertions of today’s talking heads that are broadcast globally and instantaneously. At no small expense, speech became a phenomenon that was accessible to the many. The 17th century saw the British Bill of Rights allow for legally unimpugnable speech on the floor of Parliament. A century later, the French National Assembly set forth a Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen that claimed unhindered speech as a birthright and not a gift from a sovereign. Most recently, the United States Bill of Rights set into law the unambiguous right of the American citizen to act unrestrained by government with bold and unjustified speech, an ideal backed by the force of law.

My aim in this chronology is simply to bring forward the sharp contrast between the state of free speech as an aspirational end in times past and free speech as, at best, an arbitrary means among students at Georgetown. Throughout previous centuries, blood was spilled, monarchs were toppled, and popular assemblies were convened in the hope of someday achieving unrestricted speech. Today, far too many Georgetown students view free speech as a threat to some more noble and remarkably (though unsurprisingly) elusive goal.

When begrudgingly articulated, this ambiguous goal often takes the form of some newfound right to proceed through academic inquiry with one’s sensibilities unoffended. Too often among campus organizations, free speech is invoked only when convenient as a political instrument of the group or cause du jour. What this means-centric mindset fails to appreciate is the very basis for the conception of free speech: by advocating unhindered speech only in support of one’s own personal inclinations, one has adopted a de facto preemptive censorship. When speaking of censorship, it becomes tempting to appeal to legal protections rather than weigh the merits of free speech itself. We must as individuals proactively embrace free speech in Georgetown’s policies and, more importantly, in our dealings with one another.

Unfortunately, though our university has strong protections of free speech in its rules (from an objective, historical perspective), we Georgetown students have a less-than-stel-

Samantha Lee

lar track record in its practice. The heckling of General David Petraeus during his 2010 speech, the disruption of World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim by GU Fossil Free, the calls for disinvitation of Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius as a commencement speaker in 2012, and perhaps most egregiously, the exhaustive efforts to mitigate a speech on feminism by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers just last year each instantiate the culture of free speech on campus: a hinderance to our more important, subjective goals. It is this culture that is far more damaging than any university policy that allows a single vocal club to engage in free speech but withholds express university endorsement and material support.

It is not sufficient that, when confronted with a message deemed ill-conceived (to give a milder tone to the language used by predominant student pundits), we respond

by quickly reiterating the opposing individual’s right to speak while simultaneously demanding the quarantine of the undesired speech and institutional denunciation of the speaker. The interjection of warnings before certain speech considered to be so grave as to trigger incalculable mental distress in any who may be so unfortunate as to suffer knowledge of it is but another example of our hollow words in support of free speech.

We maintain our elaborate institutional safeguards while undertaking as individuals extensive precautions to neutralize the substance of this very same free speech by constructing trigger warnings and “safe” spaces, demanding to rescind invitations, and launching crude but effective efforts to simply be louder than the undesirable speaker.

To create a safe space devoid of free speech or permit an opt-out system is to say that free speech itself is dangerous and must be curtailed. To claim that this is a praiseworthy example of the practice of free speech is to make a mockery of its substantive value and be complacent with intellectual dishonesty.

To treat free speech as more than a pro forma observance and to practice it as individuals is to come face to face with those very discomforting words from which it has become not only acceptable but admirable to shield oneself. To hear them in their entirety, as harsh or unwelcoming as they may be is the duty that each of us has if we are to say we support free speech.

It is our obligation to be offended, for without being offended we cannot truly know our own values, beliefs, or limitations but simply succumb to the echo chamber that has become all too commonplace in academia. More importantly, it is our duty to offend—to say those things that others do not want to hear. To do this, we must make a collective effort to dispel the idea of a right to feel secure in our own thoughts and emotions, for surely, no such right exists. To engage in this effort, the endangered vestige that is free speech must once again be viewed by us, the students of Georgetown, as something more than a procedural formality. For, to develop a more ethical and informed individual, university, or society, and to formulate our own responses we must first hear what is being said by those with whom we could not disagree more.

VOICES

You Can’t Handle the Truth

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We must, as individuals, proactively embrace free speech in Georgetown’s policies and, more importantly, in our dealings with one another.

BY JOSEPH DIPIETRO

He is a sophomore in the College.

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OCTOBER 9, 2015

The Balancing Act:

Reflecting on the Relationship Between LGTBQ and Catholic Communities at Georgetown

“I spent many nights lying awake in bed, knowing that my sexual orientation conflicted with official church teaching, and crying out of fear and sadness.

I taught Sunday school, and would deliberately skip over chapters that were less than LGBTQ-friendly.

In fact, I felt sort of a duty to teach and spare any LGBTQ student who was in that class, like I once was, from some of the pain and embarrassment that would follow,” Thomas Lloyd (COL’15) wrote in an email to the Voice.

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t’s been a busy week in the world regarding Catholic and LGTBQ relations. Immediately after leaving the United States, news reports exploded concerning a meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to serve marriage licenses for same-sex couples. According to Davis’ lawyer, the pope told Davis to “stay strong.” Days later, it was then revealed that the pope also arranged a personal meeting with an Argentinian friend, Yago Grassi, and his partner, Iwan Bagus.

The couple has been openly gay and together for nineteen years.

Just when the Vatican thought it was receiving enough press as it attempted to depoliticize the pope’s meetings, a Vatican priest came out as gay.

Father Monsignor Krysztof Olaf Charamsa held a press conference in Rome on Saturday, asking Pope Francis to revise Catholic doctrine on homosexuality. With his partner by his side, Charamsa declared, “Every homosexual person is a son of God. This is the will of God for our life, also for my life with him.”

Promptly after Charamsa’s announcement, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said, “Monsignor Charamsa will certainly be unable to continue to carry out his previous works,” and the priest has been stripped of his duties at the Vatican. Even though the Vatican has not released the exact reason for Charasma’s dismissal, and his breaking of celibacy could easily be cited rather than his homosexuality, such a development is likely to to spark conversation.

This discussion of intersectionality between sexual orientation and religious affiliation has been occurring on Georgetown’s campus for quite some time—long before Pope Francis expressed his “who am I to judge” mentality in 2013. The Georgetown administration, alongside Campus Ministry and the LGTBQ Resource Center, have created safe spaces for students to embrace their various identities, from queerness to Catholicism, in ways that have made Georgetown a paradigm for other Catholic and Jesuit universities struggling to define their relationship with LGTBQ students.

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he interactions between the Georgetown administration and LGTBQ groups on campus began over a decade before the 21st century. In the 1980s, the lawsuit Gay Rights Coalition v. Georgetown University brought about the recognition of GUPride as an LGBTQ student group. Before the lawsuit, groups such as GUPride were not officially recognized by the university, and therefore were not granted funding. According to Lloyd, “It was made clear that the Catholic identity was a part of the objection, as was fear on the part of a few key closeted administrations. Georgetown was forced to recognize pride, and so, for nearly twenty years, GUPride existed despite Georgetown’s Catholic identity.”

Yet in the late 2000s, a series of hate crimes inspired student activist groups to protest. The most notable of these acts was in September of 2007, when police later reported a male student was followed to 36th and O to the shouts of “Where are you going, faggot?” before being tackled and attacked. These acts of violence, and the fact that their reports were delayed (according to the Resource Center), prompted the Out for Change campaign, a student initiative amongst multiple activist groups, which called for the administration to respond to such violent acts. The famous “I Am” shirts that students wear every year during Coming Out Week were originally created for the Out for Change campaign.

The demonstrations succeeded in prompting the creation of the first LGBTQ Center at a Catholic college. “This marked the first time that the University was engaging in a proactive, direct, support of LGBTQ issues and the LGBTQ community. This then also required a re-framing of what being LGBTQ at a Catholic School can mean,” wrote Lloyd.

Father Kevin O’Brien, Executive Director of Campus Ministry, recalled Jesuit involvement in the founding of the Center.

“At least two Jesuits [Father Boroughs and Father Gray] were involved...One of the reasons for the creation of the Center was how could we better care for our LGTBQ students, and as an exercise of our cura personalis, caring for each person in mind, body and spirit.”

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ven in its mission statement online, the LGTBQ Resource Center is directly tied with Jesuit principles and ideals. Under the section “Our Jesuit Values,” the Resource Center declares that it “envision[s] the work of the Center in the context of our understanding Jesuit values and principles… We seek to appreciate the inherent mysteries and paradox of our common human condition, and find ways to support all community members to achieve a full range of expression of their own humanity.”

Underneath the Resource Center’s mission statement is a letter from Fr. O’Brien himself. “We join the Center in caring for

By Elizabeth Baker students in times of need and in exploring faith in light of sexual orientation… we help each person grow in faith, hope, and love, which ultimately defines who we are as a Jesuit and Catholic university,” he wrote.

Campus Ministry has always been involved in assisting LGTBQ students and the Resource Center, providing various means to engage in dialogue with those struggling with their sexual orientation and religious identity. Prayer groups for those who identify as queer have existed on campus longer than Father O’Brien can remember, giving students an opportunity to pray together and embrace their religious affiliation. “The point of the group was not activism,” said O’Brien. “It truly was to build a supportive faith community, where each person could work out their identity and dialogue with their faith.”

Sivagami Subbaraman, director of the LGTBQ Resource Center, spoke about how important the relationship between the Center and Campus Ministry was for students. “I appreciate that in Georgetown, because of its strength around interfaith, [Campus Ministry] allows us to provide opportunities for students to think, ‘how does my own spiritual life intersect with my LGTBQ identity’ — and there aren’t many places to explore that connection,” she said.

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uring his tenure as president of GUPride, Lloyd worked hard to incorporate Jesuit principles into the mission of the Resource Center and LGTBQ groups on campus. When looking back on the prayer groups, he wrote that, “Campus Ministry independently recognized the need for and value in a separate place for LGBTQ Catholics to explore their identity and faith simultaneously.”

Current president of GUPride, Campbell James (SFS’17) also reflected on his own experiences with intersectionality. “I came out as a freshmen at college… I lived in a very conservative, religious area growing up, and I was very uncomfortable with the thought of telling my schoolmates and church friends,” he wrote in an email to the Voice. “I think that the Office of Campus Ministry has a great relationship with the Center and with Pride...I think this really fits with the office’s aim to be resource for all students, not just students of faith.”

Tim Rosenberger (COL’16) looked back on his own internal conflicts with religion and sexual orientation before college, and the support he found here amongst ministry on campus. “My faith was a big part of why I thought I needed to date and eventually marry a woman,” he wrote in an email to the Voice. “Until I found a way to reconcile Christianity and my sexual orientation, I consistently opted for my faith over being able to date people to whom I was sexually attracted to. Georgetown has a robust Prot-

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estant ministry that allowed me to discover that I was okay to be both gay and Christian… we also had an amazing gay Lutheran chaplain, Pastor Phil Gaines, who really helped me grow.”

Although not a Catholic, Brian Council (MSB’16) was on the board of GUPride for two years. When considering the Center’s relation with Campus Ministry, he said, “The university puts a lot of thought into how [GUPride and Campus Ministry] interact with each other, but I don’t think that’s in a negative way—there’s a history there between Pride and Campus Ministry.”

Subbaraman also talked about how the positive relationship between Campus Ministry and the Resource Center is a bond that cannot be found on most college campuses, let alone in many religious settings. “Historically speaking, we [the LGTBQ community] have never been made to feel that we have a right to be taken seriously in our religious identities,” she said. “...Most religions are negative to LGTBQ people... I think for me, that connection [between Campus Ministry and the Resource Center] has been very powerful.”

In his email, Lloyd discussed the importance of including Campus Ministry in Resource Center events to continue a positive relationship and dialogue between religious affiliations and sexual orientation on campus. “The center is pretty integral to many faith-based initiatives. Bringing Chaplains in to coffee hours, hosting an LGBTQ tea with Campus Ministry, sponsoring panel discussions on faith. It’s hard to find a religious event without some effort being made to include LGBTQ voices - admittedly with a few glaring exceptions - and a lot of that is because of the advocacy of the Center,” wrote Lloyd.

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n 2015, Georgetown hosted the second annual IgnatianQ, an annual event that allows LGTBQ communities across Jesuit universities to meet and engage in important dialogue. Both Lloyd and Council contributed in hosting the event last March.

“I described to Campus Ministry [in our pitch] as ‘a gathering space for LGBTQ students at Jesuit Colleges, to build community, share experiences, and gain a better understanding of what it means to exist at the intersection of these identities,” wrote Lloyd.

After attending the first event at Fordham University, Lloyd believed Georgetown was more than qualified to host IgnatianQ because of its available resources and more developed community. Council recalled that he personally asked his own Chaplain to speak at IgnatianQ, who was “more than happy” to accept the offer.

I found a way to reconcile “Until Christianity and my sexual

orientation, I consistently opted for my faith over being able to date people to whom I was sexually attracted.

–Tim Rosenberger

”

While Fordham’s conference addressed “Finding God in the LGBTQ Student Community,” Georgetown’s ultimately successful hosting of IgnatianQ in March of 2015 focused on “Forming Contemplative Communities to Ignite Action.” According to Lloyd, “[The theme] pulled on three Jesuit values — being contemplatives in action, building community, and of course, ‘setting the world on fire.’”

Father O’Brien delivered the keynote when Georgetown hosted IgnatianQ last year, and recalled the event with a positive attitude. “It wasn’t just about LGTBQ identity,” he said, “It

was also about how the values of the spirit of Georgetown, the ones we see on those blue banners, how they are expressed in our care for LGTBQ students.” Plans are already being set in motion for the third annual IgnatianQ, but the location has yet to be determined.

Settings such as ESCAPE, too, give an outlet for the gay community to express their struggles with faith and sexual orientation. Affiliated with Campus Ministry, ESCAPE is an overnight experience for first-year and transfer students to get away from the Hilltop to the Calcagnini Contemplative Center in Bluemont, Virginia.

Father O’Brien recalls times where the conversation of queerness and religious affiliation came to the forefront of ESCAPE discussions. “One of the reasons why I think it [ESCAPE] is so popular is because we create a safe place [where] people can be who they are, and bring their experiences into the conversation… I’ve certainly heard team members talk about coming out experiences in a very powerful way, which can only help students who are struggling with their identities,” he said.

The Resource Center has also attempted to facilitate this dialogue through Gatherings, a monthly event that encourages LGTBQ leaders to discuss the different diversities across campus and how to interact and intersect with their LGTBQ identities.

didn’t serve as an activist group, rather a space to meet others and make lasting friendships. “I think the other part of it is just what the students hope to get out of these groups. I usually have viewed GUPride more as a social group… Some people… would want someone more eager to use it for that purpose… I think that’s where a lot of that desire to create a dialogue would come from.”

It is important to remember, however, that these alliances and cooperative moments have happened in the past. James reminded the Voice of a moment last spring, when the Westboro Baptist Church came to Georgetown to protest. Before GUPride chalked in Red Square, the Catholic Daughters held an open rosary to all participants. It was a moment of unity between two separate groups in the face of adversity - one that, however, appears to be an anomaly, rather than the norm.

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cross the board, both students and faculty have suggested similar ways to facilitate such a dialogue — as uncomfortable as the conversation may be. “I think a good place to talk would be open dialogue within the groups, and see what could grow out of that,” said Worden. Yet the dilemma with engaging in this dialogue is in fact the amount of discomfort this kind of conversation can lead to. “I don’t think there isn’t an interest — a lot of people I’ve spoken to have expressed interest in oth Campus Ministry and the Resource Center have worked having these conversations,” said Worden. “I think the problem to create safe spaces where dialogue on intersectionality be- is that we’re afraid to. We don’t know who to talk to, or how to tween religion and sexual orientation can become fluid. Yet in re- go about it.” cent years, there has been a lack of dialogue between student-run groups, particularly those such as GUPride, and more religiously affiliated groups like the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic The relationship between Daughters. According to records at the Resource Center, the last the Center and Campus cosponsored event between GUPride and Knights of Columbus was in 2010; the last event coordinated between GUPride and Ministry is good, but Right for Life was in 2012. [amongst] the student Last year, Lloyd encountered another Catholic group on campus, LoveSaxa, that bluntly refused to cosponsor an event body... I’m sure there’s with GUPride. “[LoveSaxa] refused to co-sponsor a group not much collaboration or discussion about the pressures of having “authentic” relationships… they could pick the date, time, moderator, and Pride communication. would pay for it... But their president at the time, and their board, refused to accept the proposal, claiming that we had no –Justine Worden common ground,” wrote Lloyd.

In some of these other student groups, the dialogue addressCampbell eagerly expressed an interest with collaborating ing the intersections between religion and sexual orientation does with CMSF student groups in the coming year. “Faith and sexunot occur — even amongst members themselves. Justine Worden ality are very private and important identities that people hold. As (COL’17), a member of Vita Saxa and the Catholic Daughters, such, it is hard to have dialogues that could be possibly offensive, noted the silence on issues such as these. “[Catholic Daughters] even with no bad intentions,” he wrote. “I think that allowing rarely talk about sexuality issues, which for me is kind of both- students to express themselves and to come into dialogues with ersome … there’s a need for not necessarily direction, but reflec- open ears and assuming the best intentions from their peers is the tion,” she said. “I know a lot of our members, including myself, best place to start our mutual learning.” have varying points of view and varying degrees of experience Father O’Brien, too, acknowledged that these conversations with these issues. Maybe that’s why we don’t talk about it.” are important to have — even if students may have differing Worden, however, had an enthusiastic response about the opinions. “At a Jesuit university, we need to create times and spacCenter and its relationship with Campus Ministry. “I’m glad that es where these conversations could take place… they often can we have the Resource Center - I think it’s good, and necessary be difficult — the point is to listen to the experience of another, to have that support for those who identify,” she said. “The re- so as to understand their position or their belief, and to see if lationship between the Center and Campus Ministry is good, but there is room for common ground. And if there isn’t, to address [amongst] the student body... I’m sure there’s not much collabo- the differences and work through them.” ration or communication.”

Subbaraman hopes that events such as the weekly coffee According to Lloyd, the stance a group takes could very hours hosted by the Resource Center will encourage students much depend on who is running it at the time; “The organization to interact with one another and have an open dialogue about [GUPride] could take a combative stance, or just focus on com- these relationships and issues. “ Ultimately, [the dialogue] will munity building. I’d like to think the pride I led was somewhere in have to come from students. You’re going to have to tell us the middle, pushing the boundaries of what is required of a Jesuit what prevents you from reaching out to people different than school to be true to our values,” he wrote. you,” she said. “I think it’s about instilling that sense of advenCouncil agreed. When looking back at his time on the ture or curiosity, or feeling we will all gain if we get out of that GUPride board, Council acknowledges that for him, GUPride comfort zone.”

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Break Point

The Murky Future of Tennis on Georgetown’s Campus

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asey Distaso (NHS ‘14, M ‘18) used to stand on the Georgetown tennis complex next to McDonough Arena and look. He looked over at Multi-Sport Field, and then beyond to the surrounding dormitories. He captained the Georgetown varsity men’s tennis team to wins and losses against some incredible teams on those courts.

Standing there, he felt like he was in the center of campus, at the heart of Georgetown.

Distaso managed to stick around the Hilltop as a student at the Georgetown School of Medicine, but he’ll never stand on those courts again. The space next to McDonough where the courts used to be is under construction, now the site of the brand new Thompson Center for Intercollegiate Athletics.

Slated for completion at the start of the 2016-17 academic year, the $60 million, 144,000 square foot facility will house two basketball courts, one for the men’s and the women’s varsity teams, locker rooms for the basketball, lacrosse, and soccer teams, team meeting rooms, and coaches’ offices for men’s and women’s basketball. The building will also have a state-of-the- art weight room, a training room, an area for sports medicine, and a student-athlete academic center.

But not tennis courts.

“Tennis is a vibrant sport here, year-round”said Georgetown Tennis Head Coach Gordie Ernst. While Ernst leads the university’s varsity team, he also understands the impact the removal of the outdoor courts has had on the Georgetown tennis collective.

“The impact is not only on us but the whole Georgetown community,” he said.

Distaso and Ernst are two of many. Now that these courts are gone, without replacement, all those who play tennis on the Hilltop have to vie for what little space is left, or find somewhere else to play altogether.

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rnst knew it was coming.

“You’d have to be a complete nitwit not to come to this campus and see this very little space, where facilities are beginning to age and people want to build new things,” he said.

Various members of the departments of Development and Athletics had been telling him the courts were going to be removed for years. But Ernst always believed there was a plan for life after the outdoor courts. But nearly a year after their removal, an on-campus solution has yet to be found, forcing the coach and his players into unusual circumstances.

“It’s had a tremendous impact on the program and the teams,” said Ernst, who is in his tenth season at Georgetown.

The teams now practice outdoors on the courts of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, the all-girls high school that borders Henle Village on the northwest end

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of the university’s campus. The school’s four courts are only a short walk from the site where Georgetown’s tennis facility used to be, but it does not have the same homey feel as before.

“The kids feel like they’re guests and do not feel like it’s their own,” said Ernst.

It’s also affected the team’s ability to host matches. Now, the team only plays one match on campus, at Yates Field House, during their year-long season. Last season, the men’s team played two matches near campus, one at Visitation and one at Georgetown Prep. The women’s team played two matches at the Arlington, Va. YMCA and one match at Bell Haven Country Club in Alexandria, Va. Otherwise, the team spends the rest of their season playing away matches, away from fans and familiar territory. The increased travel has placed an academic burden on the tennis team.

“It’s nice to get a reprieve from Georgetown every now and then,” said sophomore Peter Beatty (C’18). “But it puts a lot of pressure on us because we miss more class. We have to leave the night before for a match instead of being able to walk down [to McDonough].”

“I know so many of my friends, my teammates’ friends want to come and watch and experience a tennis match but they never have the chance to ... It does suck,” said women’s varsity tennis captain Victoire Saperstein (COL ‘17). “I wish we had a home-field advantage when we’re technically at home and we don’t.”

Some other varsity sports, such as softball and baseball, play their home games off campus, but the teams use a consistent venue for home games. The tennis teams are the only varsity programs on campus, except teams such as track and field and swimming and diving which compete in meets, without a regular site for home matches.

“I think what it does is it takes the Georgetown element out of sports. These players practicing at Visitation and playing on the road, they’re sort of separated from the university and the university is separated from them, and I think that’s what is so important about sports,” said Distaso. “Especially in college, here at Georgetown, when you’re not making money, it’s important that the university and the teams are always together.”

Although Georgetown has struggled to accommodate tennis, its peer schools have impressive tennis facilities. Penn, the school Ernst coached at prior to his arrival at Georgetown in 2005, recently built a 12-court outdoor complex funded by and named after Clay W. Hamlin III, parent of former Georgetown tennis player Liz Hamlin (G’14). Princeton incorporated tennis courts into Jadwin Gym, the home venue for the varsity basketball teams.

“Virginia, Stanford, Duke, those are top tier schools, they all have phenomenal tennis facilities, I mean Yale’s indoor facility was kind of a dump indoor situation, but they raised some money, and now they have that world class facility,” said Ernst. “Harvard’s

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

By: Chris Almeida and Joe Pollicino Abbey Roberts

got a phenomenal one, Princeton isn’t great, but what Princeton did was they built the indoor courts underneath the basketball gym. So Jadwin gym, that’s where Princeton plays, down in the basement 2 or 3 floors down, are these indoor courts that the teams practice in and, you know, and their outdoor courts are a lot more phenomenal, because they have a lot more land, don’t forget, so they have a beautiful tennis facility.”

Ernst and his players know that they can’t have the university meet all of their demands, but when they play at other facilities, their daily inconveniences caused by having no outdoor courts are further brought into frame. Saperstein described her recent experience traveling to University of Colorado Boulder earlier this year and playing at their picturesque facilities.

“It was a bit of a B-slap,” said Saperstein. “Just being like, ‘oh we have to go back to reserving courts now.’”

But Saperstein and her teammates try not to dwell too much on their unfortunate situation.

“Now we obviously have to move on. It’s over. We lost our courts.”

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wo years ago, Georgetown Club Tennis was made up of over 300 students. In the absence of an intramural program, the team welcomed serious players looking to compete below the varsity level, as well as students looking for regular recreational play.

This year, because of the lack of courts, the club turned 140 players away during tryouts in an effort to cut their roster to 40 players. Fifteen of these players are part of what Club Tennis President Max Roder (COL ‘17) calls a “social team.” The club team, social team excluded, practices on three courts at Yates twice a week from 10 p.m. to midnight.

The gym’s fourth court is always left open for members. This three-court system combined with a late time slot is less than ideal for full-time students.

“The main issue is the practice times. People want to take that time to study or sleep and they don’t really want to have to go and practice at night,” said Roder. “So, we have a 10 p.m. time and an 11 p.m. time and our 11 o’clock time is usually pretty sparse because people don’t want to play at 11 at night.”

Practicing is inconvenient for current members of the club team, but for all those turned away from the team in its new format, finding court time and a hitting partner is even more difficult.

“They can still book courts at Yates and hit, but it’s not the same if you can’t have an organized team or play outdoors. We share courts with Men’s Varsity, Women’s Varsity, and outside members,” said Roder. “I taught (at Yates) as a teaching pro last year, and

I didn’t teach a single Georgetown student. Mainly it’s outside people coming to Yates.

Everybody is using four courts, so it’s not easy to get court time.”

Each year, the club tennis team hosts “The Duel in the District,” a tournament for club tennis programs across the country held in honor of Michael Jurist, a member of the team who was killed in 2007 after being struck by lightning.

“Last year was the first year we couldn’t have it on campus. Last year we hosted 16 teams. It’s a big thing. We always hosted it outside on the old courts,” said former club President Elizabeth Kelly (NHS ‘15).“People would come watch their friends play, and people who didn’t know anything about club tennis would be able to come and hang out for an hour.”

Now, the team rents space at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center, a tennis facility about seven miles from Georgetown’s campus which hosts the Citi Open, a part of the ATP and WTA tours’ US Open Series, each summer. Though the facility manages to meet the tournament’s needs, renting the space creates financial and travel-related issues for the team. Moreover, the off-campus location of the tournament makes it unlikely that many students will attend what used to be an easily accessible sporting event.

When Georgetown had outdoor tennis courts, the Club Tennis team had a large footprint on the university campus. Without facilities, the team has been brushed aside.

“What used to be the biggest club sport on campus has now dwindled to [40] people.

And no one is ever going to see those matches,” said Kelly.

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homas Chiarolanzio, a senior associate dean in the College, has worked at Georgetown for the last 20 years. For the last 15, he has been playing tennis.

“I was relatively new to the tennis scene, but I would connect with different faculty that play. We could get together and play outdoors when it was available,” Chiarolanzio said. “The outdoor courts, for me, during the day were generally available. So you always had court space to get out there and hit the ball. At that time, I had no complaints.”

Chiarolanzio isn’t the only non-varsity or club player looking for court time. Each year prior to the excavation of the outdoor courts, Ernst hosted a tennis camp for grade school-aged kids.

“I had 300 kids in my camp last summer [in 2014], and a lot of the kids were children of professors, children of ambassadors. You’ve got the Obama family out here. They were in my camp, Malia and Sasha. I’ve given lessons out here to the First Lady,” said Ernst.

Now, due to a lack of courts, Ernst is not able to host his camps, the effects of which are twofold. First, Georgetown will no longer be able to attract future Hoyas

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through the tennis camp which hooked Peter Beatty (COL ‘18), a current member of the men’s varsity team.

“You think about what an opportunity that is to have all these young kids, potentially future Hoyas, to be right there at Georgetown, coming to tennis camps and thinking, ‘Hey I want to come to Georgetown when I’m applying to colleges,’ that’s another loss,” said Distaso.

Ernst will also not be able to share in the revenue generated by the camp, which previously was an important financial source for the coach. Ernst said that losing the camps has been a “big financial hit” for him and his family.

Though the teams on campus which need court time in high volume may struggle to find areas for practice and competition, the tennis community at large, full of more casual players, is substantial at Georgetown.

. ..

“You would hope that an institution like Georgetown would be able to supply [tennis courts] to its campus community.”

. . .

– Thomas Chiarolanzio Last week, with rain making the courts at Visitation unplayable, the varsity team was forced to move indoors for practices. Chiarolanzio, who plays tennis during his lunch hour, tried to reserve courts at Yates, but was unable to due to the needs of the varsity team combined with the already-high demand for court time. With thousands of community members between undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff, it is likely that many others had a similar problem. There simply isn’t enough court time to go around at Georgetown.

“It’s a great sport and I love to play it. I play it all the time. You can play until you’re 80 years old. You would hope that an institution like Georgetown would be able to supply that to its campus community,” said Chiarolanzio. “It does to a certain extent, but it’s really limited, and that’s unfortunate.”

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aught between all these pressing demands of groups starved for court time is Jim Gilroy, the director of Yates Field House, the on-campus recreational facility which has the only four tennis courts on campus, all of which are indoors.

“The whole reason for Yates being built was to give non-varsity athletes a place they always know they have access to,” said Gilroy. “We try to uphold that model.”

Opened in 1979, Yates was designed to meet the needs of an undergraduate population that was roughly 5,000 students. But with the growth of the university to approx-

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imately 7,000 undergraduates, a now sizeable graduate student population that uses the facility according to Gilroy, and an outside community that comprises a substantial part of Yates’ 10,000 members, Gilroy and his staff have been forced to juggle the various needs of their respective members.

“On a typical day in 1986, we might have had a thousand people come through,” said Gilroy. “Yesterday, we had about 2,300. So it’s more than doubled every day, the number of people that use Yates. So we need something just to keep up with our peers.”

Gilroy and his staff have heard complaints from members about the increased use of the tennis courts by the varsity and club teams.

“We’re trying. We’re trying to find times for the tennis. We’re trying to find time for the club team,” said Gilroy. “At the same time, we want students to be able to walk in the door and know they’ll be able to play tennis or basketball or jump on a treadmill. It’s not easy. But I’m trying.”

The answer to the logistical quagmire Gilroy and staff find themselves in is simply defined but right now unobtainable: a new building.

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he administration, in response to the removal of the outdoor tennis courts and the additional stress put on Yates, has sought options to replace the existing fieldhouse with a new building and a tennis facility. Right now, however, it has not been viewed as practical, according to administration officials, due to the cost associated with such a project and the limited space on campus.

“Finding enough space for enough tennis courts has just been a difficult proposition because there have been plans for academic space that is more important than the tennis courts. There are plans for other living spaces because of our goal to put more undergraduates on campus,” said Director of Athletics Lee Reed. “It’s just 104 acres, and we’ve exhausted what we can build on campus. I think people underestimate the size of tennis courts. How much space do you really need to have multiple tennis courts out there? Now, could we do a one-off and place a tennis court, one here and one there? Maybe. But I think even that has been challenging. I really don’t have an answer for the long-term on this one.”

As a result of limited space on campus, the roof on top of Yates has so far been identified as the only viable location for replacement courts. But the cost surrounding such an endeavor has prevented the idea from taking off.

“We’ve looked. So we have a complicated issue which is the roof of Yates. We’ve got to replace that roof, we’ve got to replace that field. Right now, it’s been cost-prohibitive to be able to do it, but when we’ve looked at that, we’ve also looked at what would it take for us to put outdoor tennis courts as part of that renovation,” said University President John DeGioia. “And we’ve got some ideas there, but right now we haven’t been able to execute any of it for cost reasons. That would be I think the only place on campus we could imagine outdoor tennis.”

Excluding tennis courts, simply replacing Kehoe Field, which sits atop the roof of Yates, and its deteriorating synthetic turf surface would cost anywhere between $10 to $15 million, according to Gilroy. “We need to start thinking about a new facility,” he said.

Reed has held “preliminary conversations” with prospective donors around building tennis courts, but the uncertainty of the University’s future plans for Yates has complicated those discussions.

“We’re all aware of the need, but it’s a matter of coming up with the right construct to make it work… Would it be short term? Long term? Because now you have to think about the future of Yates,” he said. “How much longer will Yates be around? If you’re going to dump 17, 18 million dollars into a facility for tennis courts, I would hope that it would be part of a larger effort. So, I think the campus planning process helps us think through these kinds of challenges.”

But while cost and space have stood in the way of the construction of new outdoor tennis courts, the University has found ways to meet other athletic needs. On October 6th, the University announced the receipt of a $50 million donation from Peter and Susan Cooper, parents of three former Georgetown football players, to complete the unfinished Multi-Sport Field, the home venue for the varsity football, lacrosse, and field hockey teams, and expand a student-athlete leadership program. Among the improvements for Multi-Sport Field, which will be renamed Cooper Field after its completion, will be new locker rooms and seating areas.

According to The Washington Post, $10 million of the Coopers’ gift will be used to enhance the facilities of Multi-Sport Field for students and visitors. New seating areas around the field as well as new locker rooms, among other improvements will be completed in the next 12 to 18 months. Multi-Sport Field is also home to university-wide events, such as Relay For Life, and is used by students engaged in club and intramural sports.

In a conference call with media announcing the donation by the Cooper family, Reed pushed back against the suggestion that the project, which will do little to improve condi-

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tions for the tennis community at Georgetown, implies that constructing tennis courts are not a priority.

“We will have time … That’s not to say that Kehoe Field or our tennis courts are not important to us, because as I’ve said earlier this week they’re extremely important projects to us, but this was the next one that was ready to be moved forward,” said Reed. “It was important from a strategic standpoint, not only for varsity athletics, but for the university and the community. This is the project that makes the most sense at this time.”

“If I look at the big picture, obviously [tennis] is not a priority” – Peter Beatty Speaking before the announcement of the donation, Ernst hoped that the University could organize a fundraising effort for new courts. He acknowledged that tennis, like any of the other 27 varsity sports at Georgetown, is in a fierce competition for limited funds.

“It’s just tricky, you have this thing that everyone is fighting for, everyone’s fighting for a certain amount of dollars,” said Ernst. “I want to believe that at some point [the

administration] said, ‘Oh maybe if we did this or thought about fundraising in this way we could have done it on the roof or in the basement (like Princeton). Or out front here.’

That would’ve been really cool.”

But Ernst understands the dynamics of present-day intercollegiate athletics. A varsity hockey player while at Brown University, Ernst knows more mainstream sports naturally receive more attention and focus than tennis.

“With universities, no one’s buying a ticket to tennis, so it’s not a revenue sport,” said Ernst. “And I completely get it. Don’t forget I was a hockey player too. But it’s not like football, lacrosse, soccer, hockey, those bigger sports...I certainly understand it all.”

The players understand as well.

“I’m used to that. I don’t know if it’s a priority at most schools. If I look at the big picture, obviously it’s not a priority,” said Beatty. “Obviously, I’m bummed out about that.

But I understand that Georgetown is not all about tennis. Athletics is a whole group of a bunch of different sports. I understand.”

Reed insists, however, that tennis is just as important as all other varsity sports.

“Absolutely, I care about tennis,” said Reed. “Every single student athlete and coach that comes here, I want to...my job is to provide them with the absolute best experience that they can have, to put them in the position where they can have a really, really positive experience. That’s not lost on me that now they don’t have a place to play.”

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riority or not, nearly a year after the removal of Georgetown’s tennis courts, there are no concrete plans for an on-campus replacement.

While Ernst and his team still feel sour about the loss of their courts, they have found ways to persevere. For the first time since Ernst arrived over a decade ago, both the men’s and women’s teams have defeated ranked opponents while the women even defeated Syracuse for the first time in team history. Ernst has also been able to assemble his best recruiting classes as of late.

“We’re just finding ways to get it done. It’s all about finding the right kids who get it,” said Ernst. “We don’t have courts, okay? But they get the fact that they’re going to be at Georgetown on a great team and deal with it. We’re building a lot of character.”

The community, from students to staff, is hopeful that the university will eventually find the space and the funds necessary to construct a tennis facility that’s worthy of Georgetown. “It’s a sport of a lifetime… It’s a sport like golf, it touches a lot of people in all aspects of life,” said Ernst. “ I think it’s a shame that more places don’t understand how tennis can be a more integral part of a university community. Because it really is, in so many indirect ways.”

Additional reporting by Chris Castano and Daniel Varghese

Joshua Raftis

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SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

Analyzing Feminism in Popular Culture

by Amy Guay

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his summer saw the budding friendship between Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer, much to the joy of every Buzzfeed user and Twitter fanatic. According to Rolling Stone, after spending the last few months together on tropical getaways and dancing together atop Billy Joel’s piano, the pair is co-writing a movie where they appear as sisters, according to the New York Times.

The project is likely to be green lighted by a movie studio regardless of what it’s about, considering the high pop culture status of both Lawrence and Schumer. Lawrence easily topped Forbes Magazine’s “World’s Highest Paid Actresses 2015” list in August with a whopping $52 million in earnings, making her the second highest paid actor or actress in the world, behind perennial earnings leader Robert Downey Jr. The likely success of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2, set for release in November, along with awards buzz for her starring role in the upcoming dramatic film Joy, means Lawrence could occupy a top spot for yet another year.

Schumer herself has gained wider prominence and recognition more recently than Lawrence. An on-the-road stand-up comic for many years, Schumer developed a compelling and unapologetic feminist stage presence. This carried over to her Comedy Central sketch comedy show Inside Amy Schumer, which has received rave reviews since it began airing in 2013.

Schumer’s debut film Trainwreck, which she wrote, cemented her place as a darling of late-night talk shows and one of Hollywood’s preeminent female voices.

The movie features Schumer in the titular role as a women opposed to monogamy who finds herself falling for a sports doctor (Bill Hader). Although it does not stray too far from traditional rom-com tropes, the movie gives Schumer’s trademark subversive feminist humor a venue to the masses.

And, as Trainwreck grossed $30 million opening weekend and continued to rake in cash following some laudatory reviews, it seems like the masses approved.

Dr. Emerald Christopher-Byrd, a faculty member of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University, completed her PhD dissertation on media representation

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of gender. In an email to the Voice, she noted the special significance of Schumer’s triumph in the traditionally male-dominated field of comedy.

“Women have simply been labeled as ‘unfunny’ for various reasons,” she wrote. “Now that there is an understanding that there is actually a market for women comedians, there has been a small change. However, there is this constant need, just as in other professions, for women to find that balance between smart and raunchy in order to somehow remain relevant.

There is not the same expectation for men.”

Soyica Colbert, an Associate Professor of African American Studies and Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown, sees reason to celebrate the dialogue surrounding Trainwreck. “What’s so exciting about Schumer is that she doesn’t look like a prototypical Hollywood star and she is very open about that fact,” she said. “In general, I think it is important for women to be able to occupy spaces usually associated with men. That is central to feminism. Schumer isn’t just participating in those spaces, but she’s having a conversation about why she’s participating in those spaces. And she’s drawing attention to the structures that prevent other women from participating.”

Trainwreck was just one of the many films that led critics to call this summer a defining season for women. Over the last few months, audiences saw women in central roles in big, high-budget hits—not just low-budget independent films. Charlize Theron drew acclaim for her commandeering, scene-stealing performance in the highly anticipated reboot Mad Max: Fury Road. Spy, the comedy starring hit-maker Melissa McCarthy, was a financial and critical success. And Pitch Perfect 2, a film directed by Elizabeth Banks became the highest-grossing musical comedy film to date.

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till, despite these celebration-worthy summer movies, the vast majority of big blockbusters are touted by men, about men, and for men. And no matter how many accolades and critical acclaim films like Mistress America or Diary of a Teenage Girl receive, statistics show that the studio, for the most

part, is still completely dominated by men. In a study done in 2014, The Guardian reported that more than three-quarters of the studio was run by men — and only 22% women. After studying over 2,000 films, the study proved just how minimal effect women had on the filmmaking process; only 17.5% of visual effects were done by females, 16% musicians, 13% editors, 10% writers, and just 5% directors.

“We have women in the military in larger numbers; directing [still] remains one of the most segregated fields” said Bonnie Morris, an adjunct professor in Women’s and Gender Studies and self-professed film buff.

Performing Arts Department Chair Maya Roth sees this trend occurring in theater as well, and hopes to nurture a variety of roles for women and men that challenge existing preconceptions.

“In the canon and in contemporary plays staged, male roles are more often central and numerous,” she said, “One of my guiding commitments as professor, director, and acting mentor, we aim to level the playing field—and to provide diverse, multiple roles for women...Often plays that focus on feminist stories and women’s experiences reimagine form and cultural relations. That’s exciting—and I see my students revel in discovery of that artistic and social range.”

Of late, many movie stars have spoken out about feminist issues and the changes that must be made in their industry, including UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson, Viola Davis (notably in her recent history-making Emmy acceptance speech) and Meryl Streep. But when it comes to celebrities embracing feminist rhetoric, female professors who spoke to the Voice preached caution.

“One of the biggest shifts that I’ve seen is that when I ask one of my Intro to Women’s Studies classes who they identify with feminism, they name a famous woman,” said Dr. Morris.

They identify feminism with power... coupled with the explosion of social media leads to young girls feeling like attention means success.”

“There are a couple of things happening with what I call ‘pop feminism,’” wrote Dr. Christopher-Byrd. “Celebrities

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

are profiting off of the use of feminism... without really embodying what it is to be feminist. On the other hand, given our culture’s obsession with celebrities, the feminist ‘endorsement’ sometimes opens a door for dialogue... The dangerous area is when people take the word of celebrities as the endall-be-all of what feminism is.”

“I definitely think young celebrities ascribe a certain ‘cool factor’ to feminism,” said Dr. Colbert. “I do think that it opens the door to make feminism something... accessible.

You have to ask: what precisely am I talking about when I say someone is a feminist?”

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hat question was at the heart of a debate involving another tale of powerful celebrity female friendships.

The firestorm started this July, when Nicki Minaj complained that “Anaconda” was not nominated for video of the year for the MTV Video Music Awards. Taking to Twitter to voice her opinions, Taylor Swift was quick to critique the rapper for not supporting fellow female artists. Fast forward to September. Right before the VMAs, Miley Cyrus critiqued Minaj’s character with The New York Times. When wrapping up her acceptance speech for Best Hip-Hop Video at the VMAs, Nicki Minaj referred to Miley Cyrus as “this b*tch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press,” following up with a pointed “Miley, what’s good?” Needless to say, these moments sent the Internet ablaze with exclamation point-laden tweets and conspiracy theories that fueled morning talk shows for days after the fact.

While the concept of intersectionality within the feminist conversation has been around for decades, the renewed focus on the word is a testament to pop culture’s unmistakable influence on the movement, for better or for worse. The fact that Georgetown’s United Feminists hosted a discussion on tone policing and diversity in the media based on the debacle is a small example of its impact.

Mary Rogers (COL’16), an undergraduate assistant at the Georgetown Women’s Center, saw a theme prevalent in contemporary feminism.

“It [the VMA debacle] definitely spoke to a lack of understanding between parties on intersectionality. The needs and wants of a feminist movement comprised of upper class white women is radically different from a feminist movement that incorporates women of different sexualities, races and socioeconomic status,” Rogers wrote in an email to the Voice, “It’s something the feminist movement has struggled with from the beginning—becoming more inclusive and including all women’s voices.”

Dr. Christopher-Byrd highlighted the lack of celebrity understanding as one of the causative factors of the dispute.

“When Minaj sent her original tweet about her video not being nominated for Video of the Year, she was critiquing beauty standards that are so prevalent in the media. Swift took Minaj’s words and solely attributed them to be a gender issue, and then accused Minaj for pitting women against one another,” Christopher-Byrd said, “Failing to look at the intersections of race, class, sexuality, etc. ignores the very lived experiences of women.”

“The exchange between Minaj and Cyrus is yet another example of the failure to fully examine the social issues happening in the media,” she continued. “Cyrus focused on Minaj’s failure to be nice when addressing her issues rather than Cyrus (privileged based on race and body type) acknowledging the double standard that exists in the media not only based on gender, but race and body type as well.”

Rogers cited the media’s habit of dubbing a disagreement between female celebrities as a “cat fight” and still sees a reason to admire all three music giants.

“I think they [Swift, Minaj and Cyrus] represent empowerment in their own ways. Some may identify with Swift’s strong call to sisterhood and the way she handles her business decisions, others may find empowerment in the way Minaj refuses to apologize (and I mean that in a good way) for looking the way she does as a black woman owning her sexuality.

Others still might see Cyrus’ display of her own sexuality as empowerment as well as the way she has been questioning gender binaries in the public eye.”

The music industry has always been a lightning rod for feminist issues, which has, like the movie industry, been exacerbated by social media and our fascination with celebrities.

“Although some of the spats can seem quite juvenile when they start calling each other names and subtweeting each other, they also bring these issues to the forefront for discussion and awareness,” said Dr. Stilwell. However negative and uncomfortable, the Cyrus, Minaj and Swift exchange provoked a necessary, constructive dialogue that brought attention back to an important tenet of feminism that is often ignored by mainstream media.

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eorgetown’s theater department has led the way for such conversations. Dr. Colbert is part of a national organization called the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, which aims to bring together theater professors across the United States. “We made criteria of the things you should be doing and I was really proud that Georgetown stood out as an example; we checked all the boxes.” Looking back at the past few years of Georgetown theater, she noted, “I am really proud to be a part of a department that focuses on having an inclusive season to connect with everyone at Georgetown.”

While Georgetown itself has been making strides to promote intersectionality and inclusivity in its performing arts, Hollywood still has a long way to go before it passes the test. “There has to be not only equality of representation for directors and actresses but also [equality] in salary,” said Dr. Christopher-Byrd. “Unfortunately, the industry focuses largely on consumerism and the bottom line. [In order for change to occur] it will not only take films that star or are directed by women to do well in theaters, but it will also take actresses and actors standing up in their profession for change to be made.”

Rogers sees an important role for women in the decision making process. “[We need women as ] the power players who decide, ‘Hey, you know what, people would actually like to see this movie, people would actually like a female story and a female perspective. The success of movie like Bridesmaids, Trainwreck, Pitch Perfect—they’re not anomalies. We are half of the population; our views do resonate.”

“In particular for film and music we still grapple with the [sexualization of women],” she said. “We still need to overcome assumptions that women can’t be funny or that people don’t find female perspectives interesting, that women can’t make their own decisions and be successful. That’s just a short list. I think film and music are influenced by these things. It’s not one directly affecting the other but more of a give and take.”

This summer saw a movie about a preteen girl’s emotions (Inside Out) and a song about “Bad Blood” between old girlfriends. “Fight Song,” an anthem of female empowerment, soared out of every radio station. The trailer for Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s new comedy Sisters dropped to wide excitement from women and men alike. New conversations will arise because of these events. The relationship between feminism and pop culture is a nuanced, adaptive movement — yet certainly this summer, and hopefully the upcoming year, will point women in an upward direction.

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Designed by Emma Francois

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