11 29 2012

VOICE the georgetown

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MATH PH.D. PROGRAM RETURNS TO GEORGETOWN PAGE 4

SOCCER REACHES UNCHARTED TERRITORY PAGE 6

CHRISTMAS IN THE DISTRICT PAGE 11

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969  November 29, 2012  Volume 47, Issue 15  georgetownvoice.com

Studying with Stimulants

2 the georgetown voice

november 29, 2012

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Voice Crossword

G E O R G E T O W N ’S B L O G O F R E C O R D S I N C E 1969 BLOG.GEORGETOWNVOICE.COM

“Whatever Suits You” by Tyler Pierce 38. Loathsome 39. On the safe side, at sea 41. 1971 Neil Young song 43. ___ king 46. Pink, as a steak 47. Density symbol 48. Saudi, e.g.

49. Crappy D.C. taxi company 52. Clings on 57. Kind of control 58. You need it to travel 59. Conjectures 60. Tools for cutting 61. Judges, sometimes DOWN

ACROSS 1. Kind of acid for a body builder 7. Runner’s bane 14. First Phantoms song 15. South Asian island nation 16. Don’t fear him 17. Wrote up for speeding

18. Joe Dirt actor 20. Time periods 21. Work unit 22. Bangkok native 26. Banned insecticide 27. 2008 monster movie 31. Highway division 32. Baroque 33. Baggins’s 37. Sage

1. Stuffed with bacon 2. Frightened 3. Tie 4. Alternate spellings of teepees 5. Some coffee 6. Automobiles 7. Connector 8. Hair bugs 9. Breed 10. Campus “frat” 11. Big bang producer 12. Barely make, with “out” 13. “Far out!”

15. Yearn (for) 19. Hireling 22. Cans 23. Oral sex

puzzle answers at georgetownvoice.com 24. Choir member 25. Footnote word 27. Influence 28. Cow catcher 29. Wheel on a spur 30. Like most southern food 33. Physicist Niels 34. Concept 35. When repeated, a 1997 Jim Carrey comedy 36. Make yawn 39. Horrified 40. Hang over one’s head 42. McDonald’s cookers 43. Esoteric 44. Wagon fort 45. The Sound of Music figure 48. Let in 49. Ship with lateen sails 50. Smell 51. California wine valley 52. 30-day mo.

53. ___ chi 54. Cooking measure

55. Balaam’s mount 56. Tax preparer, for short

ARE YOU A LOGOPHILE? Share your love of words and help us write crosswords.

Email crossword@georgetownvoice.com.

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 47.15 November 29, 2012 Editor-in-Chief: Leigh Finnegan Managing Editor: Keaton Hoffman Blog Editor: Vanya Mehta News Editor: Gavin Bade Sports Editor: Kevin Joseph Feature Editor: Connor Jones Cover Editor: Neha Ghanshamdas Leisure Editor: Mary Borowiec Voices Editor: Claire McDaniel Photo Editor: Lucia He Design Editors: Amanda Dominguez, Madhuri Vairapandi Projects Editors: Christie Geaney, Cannon Warren Puzzles Editor: Tyler Pierce Assistant Blog Editors: Morgan Manger, Isabel Echarte Assistant News Editors: Julia Jester, Matt Weinmann Assistant Sports Editors: Chris Almeida, Steven Criss, Keith Levinsky Assistant Leisure Editors: Will Collins, Julia Lloyd-George, Kirill Makarenko Assistant Voices Editor: Sara Ainsworth Assistant Photo Editors: Julian de la Paz, Matt Thees Assistant Design Editor: Lauren Ashley Panawa

Staff Writers:

Maitane Arana, Jane Conroy, Alex Lau, Jeffrey Lin, Shom Mazumder, Caitriona Pagni, Paul Quincy, Heather Regen, Abby Sherburne, Melissa Sullivan, Fatima Taskomur, Ambika Tripathi

Staff Photographers:

Rebecca Anthony, Max Blodgett, Matthew Fried, Kirill Makarenko, Tiffany Lachhonna, Tim Markatos, Gavin Meng, Tess O’Connor, Larissa Ong, Andres Rengifo

Copy Chief: Tori Jovanovski Copy Editors:

Patricia Cipollitti, Grace Funsten, Morgan Manger, Rina Li, Sonia Okolie, Caitriona Pagni, Ana Smith, Dana Suekoff, Kim Tay, Suzanne Trivette

Editorial Board Chair: Rachel Calvert Editorial Board:

Aisha Babalakin, Gavin Bade, Patricia Cipollitti, Nico Dona Dalle Rose, Katerina Downward, Keaton Hoffman, Julia Jester, Linnea Pittman, Cole Stangler, Galen Weber

Head of Business: Aarohi Vora Business Staff: Sara Ainsworth, Zoe Disselkoen, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Charmaine Ng

The Georgetown Voice The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

This newspaper was made possible in part with the support of

the georgetown voice 3 UN “ACC” EPTABLE

ACC an unlikely option for GU basketball In the latest installment of the NCAA conference realignment saga, Rutgers announced last week that it would be leaving the Big East Conference for the Big Ten, and yesterday Louisville left the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Even with the influx of mediocre Conference USA teams joining in 2013 (including the Tuesday additions of Tulane and East Carolina), the fall of the Big East looks more imminent than ever. With a lackluster BCS football program but a premier basketball tradition and nationally ranked soccer and lacrosse teams, Georgetown needs to focus on carving a space for itself in the changing world of NCAA athletics.

This inevitably means leaving the soonto-be extinct, or at the very least unrecognizable, Big East.

In the wake of Maryland’s departure for the Big Ten, some, including sports blog Casual Hoya, have suggested that Georgetown could get picked up by the ACC as a nonfootball school. The conference already has a similar arrangement with Notre Dame’s football program, which operates independent of the school’s other teams. In terms of

geography and maintaining important rivalries, a move to the ACC would make sense for the Hoyas. But for the ACC it all comes down to earnings from football—the average ACC football program reaps in $17.1 million per year to the Big East’s $3.18 million and $1.56 million for non-football schools.

True, adding Georgetown to the ACC replaces the D.C.-area broadcasting void left by Maryland’s move. And with the addition of Louisville solidified, the total number of member schools would be at an uneven 15, potentially leaving room for Georgetown to squeeze its way into one of the few stable, storied divisions left in the NCAA. If it seems too good to be true, it is. Notre Dame only secured its non-football status because its immensely popular and now NCAA-leading Fighting Irish agreed to play five games against ACC opponents each year.

And while there is something to be said for padding one’s schedules with easy wins to secure bowl eligibility, Georgetown football is too weak and the ACC’s need for poor teams too insignificant to make such a deal work.

Sending our football team to be throttled by

stronger ACC teams at the beginning of the year, when the strength of the opponent is irrelevant and victories less meaningful to rankings, will only damage morale. And lastly, there are just better ACC candidates with strong Division I football programs out there: UConn, for example.

Both President John DeGioia and Athletic Director Lee Reed need to be proactive in ensuring the long-term success of Georgetown athletic programs—basketball paramount among them—which means not waiting for the ACC to call. Instead, Georgetown should work to form a basketballfocused super conference comprised of the remaining Catholic schools in the Big East (Marquette, Providence, St. Johns, Seton Hall, DePaul, Temple, and Villanova), along with some other minor conference basketball powerhouses like Virginia Commonwealth, Butler, and perhaps Xavier.

Creating a new conference is both daunting and unpredictable, but so is the future of the Big East. If ACC Commissioner John Swofford extends a hand to Georgetown, great. If not, it’s time for to start thinking outside of the Big East box.

RAISE WAGES, LIVE BETTER

Look to living wage bill for D.C. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart was the target of protests at stores nationwide on Black Friday, when many workers threatened to walk out over a long list of complaints about unfair labor practices--unlivable wages, insufficient benefits, and poor working conditions. Wal-Mart is notoriously unfriendly to workers’ attempts to unionize, but the past few months have witnessed an unprecedented wave of labor activism across Wal-Mart’s supply chain.

While the attendant public scrutiny may sustain the workers’ momentum, national media coverage and solidarity protests outside stores had minimal impact on WalMart’s Black Friday profits. Labor advocates need another ally to pressure the goliath.

Since Wal-Mart was eager to enter the D.C. market, this was an opportunity to pressure the company to submit to regulations protecting workers’ rights to fair labor practices.

Last year, Wal-Mart went on a hearts and minds tour to win over the D.C. media, likely activist opponents, and the City Council, all paving the way for four proposed stores within the District. The development was largely met with open arms, and one store is slated to open next year. For several wards, Wal-Mart will mitigate the food access problems created by food desserts. The company agreed to sign community agreements requiring them to invest in hyperlocal charities, among other things. However, these agreements contain virtually no protections for workers themselves, making Wal-Mart a sub-par option, as job creators go.

With a liberal population and an active small-scale government, the District is in a good position to regulate the wages WalMart pays its employees. After Wal-Mart announced that it had found a location for

its first store back in 2010, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union released the results of a poll finding that some 76 percent of residents would support legislation “requr[ing] big box stores to pay more than $12 an hour and hire from the surrounding community.”

Last year, now-Council Chair Phil Mendelson proposed a bill requiring Wal-Mart and similar box stores to pay its employees a minimum wage. Essentially, the effort fizzled.

Now that Wal-Mart is a sealed deal for the District, we should reconsider implementing a meager but much-needed worker protection program.

A city like D.C. is unlikely to scare away Wal-Mart with this minimal regulation, and it would be a great first step towards implementing the kinds of changes that workers across the country are demanding.

THINK GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL

Campus Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, online at CampusProgress.org. Campus Progress works to help young people — advocates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

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On this week’s cover: “Study Drugs” Cover Photo: Lucia He (SFS ‘15) Spread Illustration: Theodore Schaffer (COL ‘16)

Little hope for Doha environment conference This week and next, signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its principal treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, are gathering in Doha, Qatar, to coordinate an international response to climate change. Judging from the failure of past conferences to establish far-reaching, binding agreements in Copenhagen and Cancún to effectively tackle global warming, the prospects for the latest climate conference are bleak.

Previous attempts at international emissions regulations have been unsuccessful because major powers are often reluctant to sign onto and enforce these treaties. Most notably, the U.S. failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the most significant binding agreement for industrialized countries to date. China is also at fault; its ‘developing country’ status exempts it from Kyoto obligations to reduce emissions.

Together, these two nations are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions. Any

successful international climate change treaty requires these powers’ earnest participation.

States like the U.S. and China are afraid of losing a competitive edge if they are the only ones implementing green reforms, often seen as anathema to growth.

However, it is imperative that major industrial polluters commit to these kinds of treaties, at the very least to bolster their implementation. Given Republican control of the House, cities and states should begin looking into improving their own, small-scale environmental policies—consider it making change where you can.

California’s historic 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act and the recent inauguration of the law’s cap-and-trade program provide a model of local-level action. Though cap-andtrade in particular may not be the most effective strategy to tackle global warming, it sends a signal to national government that it needs to take action. As the 8th largest economy in

the world and the 12th largest carbon emitter, California also sends an important signal to the international community that developed economies are willing to do their part.

Local eco-friendly initiatives include the District’s plastic bag tax, which was instated two years ago. At five cents per bag, this isn’t much more than a symbolic measure, but nevertheless it is changes like these that express popular concerns, initiate a broader dialogue, and serve as jumping-off points for more effective change.

Instead of counting on delegates in Doha to achieve any sort of meaningful agreements or enforceable commitments, inhabitants of the planet should take matters into their own hands at any level they can. Though local movements may not be enough to prevent global temperature increases, they are indispensable in signaling a grassroots desire for environmental regulations necessary for broader social change to materialize.

news

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november 29, 2012

Math Department plans to propose new PhD program

by Connor Jones Georgetown’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics is planning for a new PhD program, a proposal for which may be formally submitted for approval by the University as soon as the fall of 2013. Currently, the Math Department is the only science program at Georgetown that does not support a PhD program.

The department had previously offered a PhD program, but it was dissolved by the University the late ‘70s. “It was a small program,” said Dr. James Sandefur, Chair of the Mathematics Department.

The University discontinued the PhD program, along with the master’s program, in part because it was so small and focused on the less practical field of pure mathematics.

“There were not that many jobs available,” Sandefur said. “Right now, if you get a PhD in pure mathematics, you would have difficulty getting a good job.”

In the years since the program’s closure, the Math Department has refocused on applied mathemat-

ics and statistics, especially since the master’s program was reestablished in the fall of 2006.

“What has changed is, when we started our master’s program, we hired three statisticians, and we added a fourth one this year,” Sandefur said. “So we didn’t have the statistics component, which is where a lot of the jobs are, and since our programs were previously cancelled, over that time period, our department has been evolving more toward applied mathematics.”

The department has been encouraged by the growth of the graduate program over its six years and sees it as a model for how the PhD program could be implemented. “The master’s program has been extremely successful,” Sandefur said. “It’s much larger than we initially expected.

We were hoping to have like 20 or 30 students and now … we have between 70 and 80 students.”

Like the master’s program, the PhD program would either offer a degree in Mathematics and Statistics or two separate degrees in either Applied Mathematics or Statis-

tics. “All of the [graduate students] that have wanted to get a job have been able to get good jobs,” Sandefur said. “Many of them have been getting more than one job offer, so, in this economy, these master’s students have been doing quite well.”

The Steering Committee for the Math Department’s graduate program has been organizing the planning for the PhD program so far. Although the department has considered proposing a program in years past, Director of the Math master’s program Ken Shaw says the committee is serious in starting it up again this time around.

According to Shaw, the Math Department’s self-study last year reestablished the motivation to create the program. “In the process of self-study, I think, people realized how interested people are in having a PhD program and we included a lot of language about a possible PhD program in the self-study,” Shaw said. He says the department is still in the process of determining the “critical issues” that would have to be resolved before the program is officially proposed.

“Those are some of the big issues: what kind of program it will be, how many additional staff do we have to have, how many students we’re going to recruit, how we’re going to support them, and, more generally, how we’re going to pay for the entire thing,” Shaw said.

Georgetown has only recently begun to make major investments in the sciences. Any program would be expensive, and it is unclear whether the University would approve the funding. To this point, there has been no formal communication between the Math Department and the administration.

The earliest any formal proposal could be submitted, according to Shaw and Sandefur, would be the fall of 2013, and the earliest the program would begin enrolling students would be the fall of 2014. The proposal would require approval from a number of University offices and bodies, including the Dean of the College, the Provost, and the Board of Directors.

Although the establishment of a Math PhD program would have barely any effect on undergraduate

life as a whole, the program would provide students with more access to research opportunities and advanced course offerings.

“I always recommend that students switch schools if they’re going for a PhD, just to get a different exposure, different faculty, different ways of teaching,” Sandefur said. “But by having one here and having some good courses that our top students can take, they would be better prepared to go into some of the top PhD programs around the country.”

Although no announcements have been made yet, many master’s students have shown interest in continuing their math education at Georgetown. “I definitely see an interest among my peers in establishing a program here,” said Nicole Huret (GRAD), a math master’s student.“It would be a huge benefit to have PhD students available in terms of teaching certain undergraduate courses, as well as just to have around to benefit the general discussions that occur on a daily basis.”

Five Georgetown alumni prepare for new careers in Congress

by Julia Jester Though the 2012 election madness has finally drawn to a close, the political whirlwind has only just begun for the five Georgetown alumni elected into the 113th Congress for the first time. In January, these five new Democratic members of the House of Representatives will join an additional nine former Hoyas reelected into the House, as well as two alumni elected into the Senate.

Representative Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) (L’84) won her seat in New Hampshire’s Second District after losing her bid in 2010 by one percent. “The reason I got involved is really about equal opportunity and fairness,” she said, “Making sure that all families in New Hampshire and around the country have opportunity for education, and training, and good jobs, and access to affordable healthcare.”

“When I lost, I came very close in a big Republican sweep election,” Kuster said. “So the biggest difference for me was having President Obama on this ticket and to have such an organized, grassroots campaign for the presidential [election].”

Kuster coordinated with the Obama campaign, having been a supporter of the president since 2006.

“The big news really was young people voting,” she said. “We had in New Hampshire 100,000 new [young] voters register on election day, which was a lot in a state that’s less than a million and a half people, so that was the biggest difference in terms of the electoral impact.” Kuster ran what she called a “people-powered campaign,” throughout which she utilized volunteers and attended over 200 grassroots events in her district over the past two years.

The kind of public connection Kuster showed in her campaign aligned with what Professor Mark Rom of the Public Policy Institute and the undergraduate Department of Government attributes to the political success of Georgetown alumni.

“I think a lot of it has to do with Georgetown as an institution and the kind of people we attract,” Rom said. “And we do attract people who are smart, ambitious, hardworking, and nice. Those characteristics are the characteristics of most politicians … They’re interested in other people, they’re concerned about other people, and those things, it helps bring them to Georgetown.”

Such qualities are what attracted Kuster to both the Hilltop and public office. “I think the focus of Georgetown on public policy is unique.

Primarywire

Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) (L’84) is one of five new Hoyas in Congress.

First of all, you’re uniquely situated in D.C., I mean that’s why I chose Georgetown,” Kuster said, who worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative director prior to law school. “I had lots of classmates who were involved, so I’m impressed with the opportunity that Georgetown students have for practical internships and experiences on Capitol Hill.”

Kuster also believes Georgetown prepared her for her work in public policy and running for election, noting particularly the positive experiences she had with her law professors, including the reelected Eleanor Holmes Norton. “What I really appreciated was the practical,

hands-on perspective of my professors,” she said. “It wasn’t a strictly academic approach. My law professors all had been engaged in public policy themselves, and that was very helpful to me, their practical knowledge and experience.”

While Ivy League schools boast numerous Congressional alumni as well, Georgetown is unique in its Jesuit identity, fostering cura personalis in its students and alumni.

“I think there is something to me that feels important about working at an institution that says, ‘We care for the whole person and we have an educational mission to serve the greater good,’” Rom said. “I don’t

think that we glorify individual success or wealth. We want our people to be successful, but I don’t think what identifies a Georgetown graduate is someone who is rich and famous, but more someone who is solid and important, important in doing real work for society.”

On whether Georgetown’s Jesuit identity guides her work as a politician, Kuster said, “Not in the religious sense, but certainly the values do. My political career is guided strongly by my values of equal opportunity for all, liberty and justice for all, fairness, and I think those are values that are very consistent with the Jesuit philosophy.”

Now that the election is over, Kuster and the other Georgetown alumni prepare to enter or return to Congress, and current Georgetown students are applying to intern on the Hill next semester. Kuster said she welcomes all Hoyas. “I would love to have Hoya applicants, absolutely,” she said. “They should feel free to be in touch with my office as soon as we open our doors on Jan. 3rd.

Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) (GRAD’94), Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) (L’73), John Delaney (D-Md.) (L’88), and Filemon Vela (D-Texas) (C’85) declined to be interviewed.

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Students and employees concerned with Yates Fieldhouse

by Matthew Weinmann Every undergraduate at Georgetown pays $360 a year for a Yates Field House gym membership, but concerns about club access and the management system at the campus gym leave some wondering how good a value that price represents.

A persistent issue at Yates is reserving space for student groups.

Student clubs and organizations receive scheduling preference over outside groups, according to Jim Gilroy, Director of Yates.

“To be quite honest, it’s almost exclusively student groups and organizations,” he said. “It could be anything from a club or sport teams to a graduate student organization to a biology class who wants to reserve a court to play a pickup basketball game.”

Student groups still must compete with each other for time slots, sometimes leaving clubs with inadequate practice time or subprime scheduling. The problem is particularly acute when it comes to the pool.

“Compared to a lot of schools, we have a small pool, and I have 4 clubs and a varsity team to accommodate” Bower said. “So, we’ve had to give up some of the programming that’s been requested.”

Yates’s pool closes at 10 p.m., yet

the rest of the facility remains open until midnight Monday through Thursday. “We close at 10 p.m. because of low usage at the end of the day, and the need to be fiscally attentive,” Gilroy wrote in an email.

“Last year we agreed to stay open until 11 p.m. on Wednesdays to accommodate the water polo teams, and we paid for the lifeguard.”

That practice ended when the team did not show up some weeks and failed to notify Yates in advance, which left the field house paying for an unneeded lifeguard.

One idea floated by a student employee (who preferred to remain anonymous for job security reasons) called for student groups to provide their own lifeguards after 10.

“Obviously most of the club

JULiaN De La PaZ

Many students think Yates could be doing more with its money.

Slow but steady progress?

Writing this column has yielded copious amounts of startling conclusions regarding the state of Georgetown’s internal structure.

As expected, most of said revelations revealed the University as ideal porn for fans of institutional ineptitude, self-imposed and selfaware bureaucratic asphyxiation, and inexplicable breakdowns in otherwise intuitive communication structures.

Far more startling, however, is the progress that the administration has made over the course of the fall semester of 2012, in spite of its best efforts--conscious or otherwise--to avoid doing so.

GUSA President Clara Gustafson (SFS ‘13) and Vice President Vail Kohnert-Yount (SFS ‘13), of course, are free to claim credit for a portion of the improvements. After all, the Georgetown community got access to Zipcars on campus, two food trucks Thursday through Saturday outside of Lauinger Library, and an evidentiary standard raised to a “clear and con-

swim team is lifeguard certified,” the employee said. “I wonder if they supplied their own lifeguard if they could stay open past 10.” Gilroy said that Yates would “certainly” be willing to discuss a club covering the cost of their own lifeguard.

Gilroy says Yates’s break-even budget is $5 million, with just more than half of it coming from undergraduate fees. “Of that, we have about 1,500 non-student members, and those memberships provide us with about a million dollars” said Gilroy. The approximately 7,500 undergraduates paying the mandatory subscription built into tuition provides about another $2.7 million.

Contributing to the high upkeep costs is a management system that employs four assistant directors and

vincing” burden of proof, though only for on-campus violations.

But bringing BBQ pulled pork to drunk students at 2 a.m. is hardly worthy of the title of an improvement; the true benefits came into the world from the University’s administrative offices.

Even the change in the burden of proof was ultimately in the jurisdiction of Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson.

GUSA merely led a nonbinding referendum, the impact of which was largely symbolic.

Combined with the 2010 Campus Plan’s removal of the unpopular party registration system, the above alterations to the administration’s policies towards the student body, if respected by students, can ensure that on-campus life becomes increasingly vibrant.

Organizational life of students, too, scored a number of major victories; the Center for Student Programs, in a welcome display of initiative, played a major role in this revival. Along with the Center for Social Justice and

Campus Ministry, CSP launched The Blueprint program to kick off the move towards a less strangled administration, giving student groups a preliminary roadmap for combating the red tape-strewn wasteland of Georgetown’s numerous administrative offices.

In a more surprising instance of practicing what the office preached, CSP appears to have improved its internal structure to a noticeable extent. Reimbursements, payments, and orders have become more streamlined and are completed in

Saxa Politica

by Kirill Makarenko

A bi-weekly column on campus politics and policy a timely manner. The CSP staff has become more responsive to student needs. Even the Office of Campus Activity Facilities, once known for misplacing and botching orders both as a result of a lack of student knowledge of OCAF operations and occasional incompetence, has become more transparent.

No list of Georgetown problems is complete without the

another four supervisors of the recreation center--positions which may be superfluous.

This management system has expanded considerably over time.

“I wouldn’t say it’s modeled on any other gym, it just sort of developed” said Gilroy, who began working at Yates in 1980. “Whatever we had to do, we developed that way, added positions, and we are what we are today.”

Although student staff at Yates generally think highly of the managers, some see places to cut back.

“The managerial positions do not require much work on a minuteby-minute basis,” one student employee said, “so their presence is not always needed.”

Another employee echoed her co-worker’s sentiments. “I don’t know if I fully understand the management system,” she said. “I do feel like sometimes the managers may have a lot of downtime and there are a lot of redundant positions, with people kind of hanging around.” The employee pointed out that a manager got married, saying, “I don’t know if there is going to be a replacement for her, so was her position very important?”

Gilroy holds that Wednesday is the only day the gym is overstaffed.

“It is the only day of the week when

most lacking feature of the University’s existence: technology.

Deteriorating infrastructure and aging systems are all too present on campus, a concern which at last appears to be being taken seriously by students and staff members through a series of firsts and completed projects.

Connection quality aside, SaxaNet and GuestNet WiFi networks have finally eclipsed the unsecured HOYAS, which University Information Services removed on Nov. 14. In spite of grumblings relating to the lack of push technology support on GuestNet, internal security is certainly necessary to protect privacy and prevent phishing of thousands of accounts.

The most promising technological progress, however, came from h.innovation, a collaborative effort between alumni, faculty, and current students dedicated to “facilitating an ecosystem of innovation” at Georgetown. From Nov. 18-19, the group organized the first Georgetown Hackathon, a two-day, 100-student competition focused on identifying and resolving innovation-related is-

all the full-time staff are at Yates,” he wrote in an email. “Wednesdays are our staff meeting days, and the overlap also allows the managers from each shift to exchange information about what has been happening on each of their shifts.”

Perhaps contributing to the seemingly large number of managers is a lack of advancement potential for student employees. “I don’t know if there is any way I can advance my position, instead of just working more hours,” said one of the employees. “I think it would be interesting if there were ways for students to move up in the system.”

Gilroy agreed that student employee mobility is an area which requires some improvement. “We do have Supervisor positions in the intramural department that our officials ascend to,” Gilroy wrote. “We have talked about this during our staff meetings, and we agree that we should be able to develop similar ‘levels’ throughout Yates that would give some students more responsibility and authority.”

“There are two managers that close at night, but could there be one and then a student that’s higher up? Maybe,” said one employee. “But you’re not leaving a student lifeguard in charge of Yates Field House.”

sues on campus. Participants in the event had no trouble identifying issues or creating feasible solutions, foreshadowing the impact that even small, dedicated teams can have in the future of Georgetown’s innovation strategy, especially if they include students in leadership roles.

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud; none of the enumerated changes are in any way perfect or complete. The University continues to bend to the will of the neighbors, countering the gains of eliminated party registration by increasing the rate of crackdowns on off-campus festivities; CSP still attempts to fit student organizations to a stifling administrative mold; and technology on campus is just barely staying ahead of obsolescence. Even so, the progress made this semester is palpable; perhaps with renewed efforts on the part of both the student body and the administration, the Georgetown experience will truly be worth $200,000.

Reminisce with Kirill at kmakarenko@georgetownvoice.com

sports

6 the georgetown voice

november 29, 2012

GU soccer makes history with Sweet Sixteen win

by Chris Castano Upon arriving at Georgetown’s campus one thing is immediately clear: this place has history. From the imposing statue of John Carroll to the incredible images on the walls of Gaston Hall, it’s plain that staff and students alike value the historical identity of the Hilltop.

But that’s not to say new chapters in the chronicle of Georgetown aren’t welcome to be penned. Thankfully, the Georgetown men’s soccer squad (18-3-2) was more than willing to take up authorship.

The No. 3 seeded Hoyas downed the Syracuse University Orange (14-6-1) 4-2 on penalty kicks after battling their opponents to a 1-1 stalemate. This win ensures the continuation of a journey in the NCAA Tournament for the squad, which will play in the Elite Eight for the first time in the program’s history.

“I think there are a lot of things to it. I think the fact that we didn’t have Tommy Muller playing was huge,” said Head Coach Brian Weise of his team’s performance. “That was a gametime decision. You walk into the game saying to yourself ‘it’s on’ of these two lineups. The guys didn’t know and I think they stepped up and did a great job.“ The game began brightly for Georgetown, as freshman forward Brandon Allen got his first look in on goal, shooting high. The 20 minutes following that chance were fairly uneventful for the Blue and Gray; both Syracuse and Georgetown won free kicks and fouls, but neither squad really threatened the other ’s net.

The team’s season started to look like it might be coming to an end in the 29th minute of the game, when Syracuse’s Jordan Murrell served up a long free kick right to Orange midfielder Jordan Vale. The ball would

find its way into the top left corner of the Georgetown goal, and the first half ended 1-0, Orange.

The second half brought better fortunes for the Hoyas as they seemed to grow into their style of play. The Blue and Gray outshot Syracuse 21-5, and took nine corner kicks to the Orange’s three.

As the game entered its final stages, the season seemed all but over for Georgetown, until a scuffle for the ball in front of the Syracuse net made an instant hero out of Allen. Georgetown tied the game 1-1 in the 85th minute.

During extra time, the Hoyas seemed to further fall into the rhythm of the game.

“In the NCAA tournament in the end of a game, when you’re losing, it’s really easy to change who you are,” Coach Weise said. “When one sees single digits on that clock, a lot of players would have just started panicking... If you had watched that game and had not known the circumstances, you still would’ve recognized our style of play. The guys were almost agonizingly calm.”

Extra time finished and the game went into penalties. Soccer fans know that penalty kicks are an excruciatingly nervewracking way to decide a game.

However, sophomore goalkeeper Tomas Gomez was thankful to hear that whistle blow.

“For me I was kind of happy that the game went to [penalty kicks]. In overtime you can get on the wrong side of the result,” said Gomez. “If they score, the game is over and the season is over. I knew that if we went to PKs we could pull it out. I was hoping just to make one save.

They missed wide and we made all of our PKs so everything turned out for the best.”

Syracuse missed its first penalty kick, blazing a shot wide of the goal. They followed

MATTHEW FRIED

Brandon Allen has been instrumental all season with timely goals.

up the miss with two well-struck balls that Gomez could do nothing about. Georgetown would bury their four penalties; a surprising result for a team that missed all three of the penalties awarded to them this season. On the Orange’s fourth kick, Gomez would come up with a huge save and seal the game for the Hoyas.

Georgetown will now face the San Diego Toreros (14-8-0) at home on Saturday at 1 p.m.

The Toreros defeated Tulsa in the Sweet Sixteen 2-1 and will be looking to build on their strong performances in the tournament so far.

“At this stage in the tournament, there’s not one team that

you get a warm and fuzzy feeling about facing,” Weise said.

“San Diego has some real threats and weapons. They have players who are playing well and who can make plays…this is the team that we’re dealing with. They’ve gone to three away sites and won. They’re not going to come here and be afraid of us.”

the Sports Sermon “It was just like a car accident. I was like, ‘Whoa, what just happened? The ball is gone.’ It was weird, man.

That sucked.” - Mark Sanchez on running into an offensive lineman for a fumble unconventional only a couple of years ago. It’s a testament to innovative thinking that, according to Thompson, it’s now the standard around the Hilltop.

As with Porter’s relative obscurity last season, Whittington has flown largely under the radar for over a season now. After all, his freshman campaign was largely predicated on the defensive end, where he shut down smaller guards with his seemingly endless wingspan.

Every so often, he would take the Hoyas out of an offensive rut with a three, but that’s about all we got.

And so this season has been a trial by fire for Whittington—given the starting role and a laundry list of re-

ter. Ironically enough, though, it was Porter’s absence from Unprompted praise from an the lineup after suffering a mild opponent. In life, it comes rarely concussion that initially thrust enough. In the sporting world Whittington into the spotlight. it’s almost unheard of, which Since then, they have been part is what made Indiana Head of a balanced Hoya attack on Coach Tom Crean’s praise of both sides of the ball—spreadGeorgetown sophomore Greg ing the scoring load around Whittington last week slightly while utilizing that length on surprising. the defensive side. But the “I think Whittington is one two players have co-starred in of the underrated, undervalspearheading these efforts, fillued future stars in college basing up the stat sheets thus far ketball,” he said. “Everyone this season. For Whittington, knows Otto Porter right now, it’s something he always knew but Whittington is going to be he would need to do. tremendous.”

“Gotta be a leader from This is big coming from day one,” he said back in OcCrean, the man behind the countober. “Gotta teach these freshtry’s No. 1 team. But it doesn’t man, these young bucks, how come out of nowhere, the 6-footto work hard and get ready for 8 guard has been the season. It’s not Pete Rose Central a mainstay in the going to be easy.

Da bettin’ line Georgetown rotaThere are no easy tion since his arrival games this year so Dookies Margin Hoyas on the Hilltop back we gotta be ready.” (underdogs) (duh!) in 2011. Really, the (favorites) His newfound surprise is the route leadership role is Jets Talent he took to get there. Pop Warner plenty evident on Tennessee W h i t t i n g t o n Georgetown Ranked, bitch the defensive end, never emerged as an where he has taken ACC ?

Big East elite college prospect charge of commuuntil he turned heads during sponsibilities from Thompson, nicating with his teammates. his senior season at Maryland’s he just had to be a top con- Of course, this has been a gripe Oakland Mills High School. His tributor for the Hoyas to have with Thompson of his young recruitment picked up slightly, success this season. squad, but even he understands with interest from Clemson, De“Greg Whittington has a that it’s a work in progress.

Paul, and local rival Maryland. lot of responsibility this year,” He has certainly given WhitThe Columbia native quietly Thompson said after the sopho- tington plenty of time to do so, committed to Georgetown and more picked up 15 rebounds as he leads the team in minwas, to be frank, quite the after- in a full 40 minutes against utes with an astronomical 38.6. thought of John Thompson III’s Duquesne. “Some days he looks For a guard, so to speak, those recruiting coup that brought at that responsibility as a bur- minutes and a team-high 9.0 Otto Porter Jr. to campus. den, but it is what it is. He has rebounds per contest are pretty But the potential was always a lot of responsibility to do a lot rare. But for opponents, the there, as Whittington emerged of different things for us. Most Howard County native simply with the All-Met Player of the days he’s going to have a very turns Georgetown into a matchYear award as a senior, averag- difficult defensive assignment, up nightmare. ing 23.5 points, 11.6 rebounds, he’s going to have to rebound Whittington , since freshman 4.4 blocks, 3.0 steals, and 2.7 the way he did today, he’s going year, signs off Twitter before assists. For Thompson, Whit- to have to have to get his team- most games with “HoCo on my tington’s recruitment is just mates shots, and he’s going to back”, a reference to his native another example of his line of have to score.”

Howard County. Funny enough, thinking. A lengthy guard or He has been able to contrib- just a few games into his sophoforward who could potentially ute in that manner without all more year, he has the Hoyas on play three positions was quite the brouhaha surrounding Por- his back too.

by Kevin Joseph

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Up-and-down weekend for basketball BigEast-SECChallengeawaits

by Brendan Crowley This past weekend, the Georgetown women’s basketball team (42) experienced a change in scenery, leaving behind the plummeting temperatures of D.C., for the sunshine of California. The Hoyas, playing in the 2012 Cal Classic, had their hands full for the duration of the trip, playing two games against pesky Cal State University Fullerton (2-4) and powerhouse California (5-0).

First up for the Hoyas was a Friday night clash with the Titans of CSUF, a member of the Big West Conference which entered the game with a middling 2-2 record. The first half was a familiar sight for Hoya fans; Georgetown overwhelmed the Titans with their relentless fullcourt pressure, forcing them to turn the ball over 11 times. At the half, the Hoyas held a comfortable 35 -16 lead, anchored by star senior guard Sugar Rodgers’ 18 points.

Whatever comfort the Hoyas felt at the close of the first half quickly turned to chaos in the second, as the Hoyas squandered their lead, allowing the Titans to claw back to within

two points and have possession of the ball with 36 seconds left in the game. The Hoyas, however, were able to force a quick turnover and run out the clock, holding on to win 53 to 51. Rodgers led all scorers with 22 points in the game, also adding 8 rebounds and 4 steals.

“We didn’t play with enough energy in the first game,” first-year head coach Keith Brown explained.

“What I was able to do is put freshmen on the floor because we had a big lead, and, of course, they dwindled the lead.”

“We won the game,” he continued. “We probably should have won by more…but they pulled it out and a win’s a win.”

Next up for the Hoyas was a date in the championship against the No. 11 Golden Bears of California, who were coming off a 91-58 beatdown over Eastern Washington.

After a back-and-forth first half, the Hoyas trailed by just 5 points, paced by 12 from Rodgers and 9 from junior forward Andrea White.

The Golden Bears, however, were too much for the Hoyas in the second half. A 9-0 run in the

Sugar Rodgers led the Hoyas during their trip to California.

ANDRES RENGIFO

NCAA punishes the innocent I have a bone to pick with the NCAA concerning the punishments it handed down to the Ohio State Buckeyes and Penn State Nittany Lions after scandals at each school, and the respective effects on both football teams.

In late 2010, it was discovered that Ohio State was involved in a scandal in which players on the team sold memorabilia, like championship rings, jerseys, and awards to the owner of a tattoo parlor in return for both money and tattoos, violating NCAA rules. It subsequently came out that coach Jim Tressel knew about these violations, and neither reported them nor did anything about them. The players involved were rightly suspended for five games, and Tressel eventually resigned on May 30, 2011. But in December of the same year, the NCAA decided to hand down additional punishment, by putting Ohio State on probation, taking away a few scholarships and banning the team from postseason play for one year.

Penn State suffered one of the biggest sanctions in NCAA history in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, for which the NCAA punished Penn State by making it vacate all its wins from 1998 to 2011, taking away 40 scholarships over a four-year period, putting the team on probation for five years, and banning it from postseason play for four.

Now, the severity of the scandals—especially Penn State’s—is not lost on me whatsoever. I agree with most of the punishment that was handed down to each school by the NCAA. What I do disagree with is the stipulation which keeps the schools out of postseason play.

This type of ban hurts both the players and the new coaches who had absolutely nothing to do with the scandal. Considering that both OSU and PSU essentially cleaned house, effectively getting rid of anyone involved in the scandal, I find it unfair that the NCAA

half pushed California’s lead to 10, and though Georgetown continued to fight back, additional runs by the opposition proved insurmountable, and the Hoyas suffered their second loss of the season, falling 72-56.

A concern for the Hoyas following the loss was their inability to protect the paint, allowing repeated dribble penetration en route to 20 team assists for the Golden Bears, statistics Brown was not pleased with.

“In that game we just gave up too much penetration, because their point guard must have had 14 or 15 assists,” he said. “It wasn’t that we [weren’t] physical enough, it was that we gave up so much penetration that they had dump-offs.”

Brown also explained the effect that inexperience had on his team’s defensive struggles. He feels their age is betrayed by their unrefined technique.

“Freshmen swing, upperclassmen move their feet. I tell them, ‘Baby, you gotta stay out The Matrix.’ They’re swinging their arms just like they’re in The Matrix.’ I say, ‘Baby, you gotta move your feet!’”

Despite the loss, Brown remained pleased with his team’s overall performance in the tournament, highlighting his squad’s nonstop effort.

“I was so proud of the girls,” he added. “Actually, Cal gave them a standing ovation, commending how hard they played. So overall, it was a good trip for us.”

is implementing punishments on those who were not involved as opposed to those who were. This essentially lets the perpetrators get off somewhat scot-free while the innocent are punished.

Some of the players have been at these schools for four years, have done everything right, and both want and deserve to have a

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

by Alex Lau

A bi-weekly column about sports shot at a national championship.

This is the situation Ohio State finds itself in, after finishing the season as only one of two undefeated teams in college football. In a world without a postseason ban, these players would most likely have the opportunity to play for a national title. But because of the poor decisions of others who are no longer with the program, they are not allowed to do so.

Penn State did not have a good enough year to contend for

by Keith Levinsky After garnering the No. 20 ranking in the AP Poll, Georgetown (4-1) will look to prove that it deserves its new status against Tennessee (4-1) this Friday. The Hoyas are coming off last Saturday’s 72-50 blowout of Mount St. Mary’s. Although the Blue and Gray won by 22 points in the end, they only led by two at halftime after a sloppy first half.

“We have to get to a level mentally where that does not happen. We have to be better than that.” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “I didn’t recognize the team that was on the court. In the second half, we picked it up a little bit, if not a lot.”

Georgetown welcomes its first major conference challenger to the Verizon Center for the Big East-SEC Challenge. The Volunteers are fresh off a 77-50 romp of Oakland. On Nov. 16, Tennessee suffered its lone loss of the year to Oklahoma State, 62-45, in the Puerto Rico Tipoff.

Georgetown’s frontcourt will have a difficult match-up against sophomore forward Jarnell Stokes. At 6-8 and 270 pounds, Stokes is arguably the strongest forward Georgetown has played this year. The preseason all-SEC forward leads the Volunteers in scoring and rebounding. Georgetown sophomore forward Mikael Hopkins will have to fight for position in the post against Stokes.

a national title, but the team still finished 8-4, an impressive feat considering the year which the team and university had. The players who had nothing to do with the scandal (one which exclusively involved coaches and university management with no player violations whatsoever) had the right to revive their football team from the ashes and play in a bowl game.

People will argue that the only way to keep scandals like this from happening is to lay down the law with these teams.

They say that vacating wins does not necessarily have a major effect, because the memory of the wins will always be there. To them, I say that vacating wins may not be a great answer, but that does not mean a postseason ban is. The NCAA should take away more scholarships before it imposes such a ban. This does not have the direct effect on players that a ban does, because even though it impairs a team’s ability to get more talent and equally con-

“Mikael has to do a much better job of positioning at the defensive end,” Thompson said.

Tennessee’s other all-SEC player is junior guard Trae Golden. Golden has heated up of late with season-highs of 18 points and 7 assists against Oakland. Tennessee’s top three-point shooter is junior guard Jordan McRae who is shooting 41.7 percent from three-point land while averaging 10 points per game.

Georgetown’s 2-3 zone may not halt the Volunteers as the Hoyas will have to keep track of Stokes all game. Many teams, including Oklahoma State, have been double-teaming the forward. It certainly worked for Oklahoma State, as they allowed only 45 points.

Offensively, with Stokes in the middle, the game may come down to Georgetown’s perimeter players to put the ball in the hoop.

This shouldn’t be too much of the problem with the emergence of junior guard Markel Starks, who has averaged 19.3 points per game over the past three games.

“The fact that he is shooting a high percentage is a positive thing,” Thompson said.

“We need him.”

It is time for Georgetown to prove its status as a national powerhouse. It remains to be seen which version will show up on Friday: the Hoyas from the Barclays Center or the team that played Mount St. Marys.

Tipoff is at 6:30 p.m.

tend with other teams for a title or bowl, it still leaves the possibility for the team to at least make a bowl.

The NCAA should also do more to keep the perpetrators from ever getting back into college football or being honored in the future, as Jim Tressel and his 2002 national champion team were this past Saturday. These actions would go far enough in sending a message to both the teams and the guilty parties.

The NCAA needs to concentrate its efforts towards punishing those who committed the crimes or infractions if it plans to keep throwing down these hefty punishments in effort to make itself relevant. The more unreasonably harsh these punishments get, the less credibility the NCAA will have and the better and more victimized violating schools will look.

Charge Alex with a foul at alau@ georgetownvoice.com.

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november 29, 2012

Artificial attention: The consequences of study drugs

By Lindsay Leasor

TEDDY SCHAEFFER

It’s the end of the semester, crunch time for every class, and you’ve fallen behind on your schoolwork. The Georgetown culture, in which classes, social life, and extracurriculars fight for every minute of your schedule, is starting to take its toll, and you find yourself scraping to find enough time and energy for every aspect of your busy student life.

It takes a special kind of person to pull of such a balancing act with ease. But 36 milligrams of Concerta later, that balancing act becomes a lot easier.

Concerta is the extended-release version of Ritalin, which has been a popular medication to treat attention disorders and other conditions for years. The active ingredient in both medications, methylphenidate, is a central nervous system stimulant which focuses activity in certain regions of the brain. Georgetown psychology Prof. Chandan Vaidya has worked extensively with magnetic brain imaging to observe the effects of this type of drug.

“What it changes in the brain, it acts on two neurotransmitters,” she said.

“One is dopamine and one is norepinephrine, and both of these have to do with our attention, cognition, and frontal lobes that are very important.”

Dr. Chandan Vaidya, a neurologist.

ANDRES RENGIFO

Methylphenidate blocks the reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine into brain cells. The resulting excess of these neurotransmitters in the blood boosts energy and focus. Users of such drugs report feeling confident in themselves and their work, allowing them to accomplish monumental assignments without anxiety or fatigue.

“It’s not something that you want to take,” said John*, Georgetown student and recreational user of Adderall, another cognitive enhancing drug. “It doesn’t make you feel good. But I usually take it when either I have a free day and could use it to get a lot of work done or I have a lot of work backed up. It’s usually for utility and necessity…I use it whenever I feel like I need to.”

Cognitive enhancers—Adderall, Concerta, and Ritalin, to name some popular ones—may help students focus on a given task, but the drugs hold unpredictable risks for recreational users.

Even if the dosage is appropriate and side-effects are negligible, working with an unauthorized study aid treads into problematic moral territory.

Prof. Vaidya conducted research on the effects of psychostimulants in schoolage children, and found the drugs were nondiscriminatory in their positive effects. rew“Kids in the study were doing a task that is an attentional task. And what we saw was that Ritalin increased activation in the ADHD kids,” she said.

“So the idea is that, in those regions, if they have an attentional deficit, the drug compensates for it. … [I]n control children, we saw a change such that activation actually decreased. But the most intriguing and interesting finding was that both groups improved performance on the attentional task.”

Because an attention deficit can exist with or without the hyperactivity component in ADHD, the predominant criterion for diagnosis is an individual’s ability to remain focused. “Attention is a continuum. There is no objective marker between who is affected, who does have ADHD, and who doesn’t. You are just at the lower end of something

that is a continuous variable,” Prof.

Vaidya said.

Patrick Kilcarr, Ph.D., Director of the Student Health Center ’s Center for Personal Development, counsels students facing personal and academic stress.

Through his encounters with students who have prescriptions and those in need of them, he acknowledges the advantages psychostimulants can have in achieving one’s potential.

“I actually, as a therapist, believe ADHD is underdiagnosed, especially in women,” Dr. Kilcarr said. “Because they are bright and compliant, people push them along without really looking more closely at what may be underlying their inattentiveness. I also do think that there are moments of misdiagnosis or a rush to judgment about a child and based on some over activity, they are placed on medication.”

Half an hour after you wash the little white pills down with the remnants of your coffee, they start to kick in. The people around you become less exciting, Facebook becomes less distracting. Regardless of your typical work ethic, feel how effortlessly your eyes graze the black and white pages now.

Notice how the page looks different than before. The white is brighter, the black richer, and the letters paint even the most abstract ideas with ease. You tear through the pages, free from distraction. Anxiety has almost completely disappeared. You know you do not want to make a habit of this, but you start to think about investing in a small supply, just in case of emergency.

Jeremy*, a Georgetown student, is diagnosed with ADHD, and has been taking medication for a few years.

“It was originally my parents’ suggestion,” he said. “I was definitely exposed to it a lot more when I was growing up, because my siblings were given it and so I was given it. It was just assumed that I was going to take ADHD drugs to ensure academic success.”

This type of pressure placed on children at an early age can alter their perceptions of these drugs from treat-

ments for a disorder to artificial tools for scholastic achievement. “I think there is something wrong with our society,” Prof. Vaidya said. “It kind of is a reflection on the competition. Everyone wants to excel and everyone wants to get into the best of everything, so whatever gives you an edge.”

Time for a break from all this reading.

Go for a walk through the library. Try and talk to people in a crowded room. Feel the difference in the surroundings. Grapple with the unfamiliarity of a familiar place. Notice your other senses have dimmed: your brain wants to think, not see or hear. Your peripheral vision is blurred, and you can only focus on the person speaking directly in front of you. You are fully engaged, but social interaction has never been this difficult.

If a person is not attention impaired, enhancing cognition with drugs can inhibit other important skills. “I would feel more socially reserved. In face to face social interaction, I would be more irritable and feel a lot less like talking to people,” Jeremy said. “There is a certain extent to which you lose spontaneous creativity and it makes it difficult to interact with other people. Natural conversation is improvising.”

Right before college, Jeremy stopped taking his medication as prescribed and began to accumulate a stockpile. He charges $5 to $10, depending on how well he knows the buyer. But, like many students who sell study drugs, he does not see himself as an actual “drug dealer.”

“Because it was not in any way an actual source of my income,” he said.

“And also, I would never try to find customers. I would only deal to people as they came to me. I really wasn’t trying to make money off of it. It was something I barely thought about at all.”

Sales increase around exam time, and he notices a trend in customer type.

“It’s always a friend of a friend who had bought something before, who is extremely stressed in school, and thought that they needed something beyond their own abilities to help them get through it,” he said. “It’s a response to

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georgetownvoice.com anxiety that drives people to want that kind of thing.”

Medications which prove useful to individuals with and without actual prescriptions are the most prone to misuse. As diagnoses increase among college students and students nearing college, availability increases as well. This convenience and, more importantly, the reputation of effectiveness contribute to a growing trend of the use of these stimulants as study aids on college campuses.

“Behaviorally, it is not surprising,” Prof. Vaidya said. “If you have a deficit or a disorder versus if you were normal, nonetheless, behaviorally, it was helpful. So it’s findings like this that actually support the use, so it is no surprise that they are effective. That’s the reason students would take them before an exam when they are studying. It focuses you. And in many ways, they are safe.

There’s no danger of abuse or addiction when taken at very low dosage.”

You feel some pressure now in your forehead and temples, but it isn’t distracting because of how focused you are on your schoolwork. But your heartbeat is accelerated, your appetite is gone, you’re starting to feel anxious, and you have no desire to sleep, despite that you’ve been awake for an unnaturally long time. It’s different, and because it’s not your drug, you can’t tell if it’s normal or not. But you’re studying like a machine, and you have no intention of slowing down.

“The problem with taking other peoples’ prescriptions is that people do not know how [a drug] will react to their system and body,” Dr. Kilcarr said.

“I have had multiple situations where someone being prescribed the medication has a negative side effect, such as heart racing or feeling over-caffeinated, and we need to adjust the medication.

This occurs under supervision. When someone takes someone else’s prescription, there is no monitoring.”

The owner of the pills knows what it does to him, but satisfaction is not a guarantee in the market for prescription drugs. “My body is really used to it so it affects me in a different way,” Jeremy said. “Some people did report really negative effects when they used it. They say they felt too anxious and shaky and nervous.”

the georgetown voice 9

You begin to think that perhaps testing this drug for the first time the night before an important final was not the best idea. Luckily, the side effects that you feel right now are not too intense to inhibit your studying. A Concerta overdose is messy, but you looked up the symptoms on Wikipedia—you have no fever, aggression, or hallucinations, so you’re just fine. You don’t worry about the risk of side effects after the rug wears off; you’re too far in the zone for that.

“Maybe it does nothing, but there is equal chance that it does something bad on how it’s changing your neurotransmitters’ functioning,” Prof.

Vaidya said. “So repeated usage over a long term may be bad for you. Definitely, developmentally, there are many more risks because the brain is growing. Even college kids, a person in their early twenties, your brain is still developing. The more we know now tells us that maturation goes on into the early 20s in terms of frontal lobe development. So, from that point of view, it’s better not to subject it to substances that one doesn’t really need.”

Yet the prevalence of recreational use of cognitive enhancers is staggering. In 2010, 60 Minutes reported that 50 to 60 percent of college juniors and seniors have abused psychostimulants, either by stealing them, falsely reporting symptoms to obtain a prescription, buying them from another student, or trading them for other drugs. Students increasingly view these drugs as a means to academic success, raising the question of whether the illegal use of an enhancer without demonstrated medical need is academically dishonest.

“All it does really is change my attitude,” John said. “I’m not proud of the fact or happy with the idea that I use it for those purposes, but it’s still for the sake of utility. And the only person that’s going to have a problem with me using it is me.”

Under the Georgetown University honor code, “cheating is the use or attempted use of unauthorized materials, information, study aids, or unauthorized collaboration on in-class examinations, take-home examinations, or other academic exercises.” This definition

MAX BLODGETT

Guess how many of these people are on Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin, or all three.

ROBIN GO

JULIAN DE LA PAZ

Most study drugs purchased by Georgetown students begin as legal prescriptions. does not explicitly state that drug use qualifies as cheating.

However, cognitive enhancers could be understood as an unauthorized study aid. The key distinction is that the student in question retaining information using a tool which is not readily available to other students.

Because the definition in the Honor Code is ambiguous, students take it upon themselves to formulate their own opinions.

“The effects on academic integrity are negligible,” Jeremy said. “Because, ultimately, anything you did, you still did. You’re not taking credit for anything someone else did. That’s the basis behind academic honesty. You’re not presenting someone else’s work as your own. And I don’t think the effects are strong enough that you could say that something you did while under the influence was so different it can’t even be counted as your work. The ideas came from your head. The medicine just helped you focus a little bit more and get it out.”

For now, the University can, at most, reprimand students for the illegal purchase of prescription medications. However, the trend has not existed long enough for there to be a codified standard for punishment.

“These drugs are good in the sense that they help people work on those kinds of virtues—diligence as a virtue, concentration, commitment, things like that,” John said. “But at the same time, they are morally problematic because instead of a person developing from their own will, they have to use a drug to make sure that they do that.”

Other students with ADHD consider unprescribed use of psychostimulants morally equivalent to cheating. “Some students get extra time on exams and others also get prescribed Adderall,” Thomas DeBow (COL ’15) said. “If you take Adderall without a prescription, it’s the same as taking extra time on an exam without the right approval.”

As with other drugs taken to enhance performance, the physical advantages are tightly woven in with a placebo effect.

“It really doesn’t do anything more than drinking a lot of coffee,” Prof.

Vaidya said. “But think about what coffee does for you—it doesn’t make you smarter, it makes you stay awake

longer and focus a little bit better. Just multiply that fivefold. It’s different than coffee because the effect is stronger. It narrows your tunnel of focus so you’re able to keep out distractions and stay on task. But in terms of the stuff you would learn and all the effort you would use to learn the information, store it in your mind and retrieve it appropriately, that is all work you are still going to have to do.”

Some doctors and informed, prescribed users argue that the effects of the drug for non-prescription users would not be as satisfying if those users knew how the drug works in the brain. “If other people knew about it, it would be sort of disenchanting … if they realized that it was just increasing the blood in my brain,” Jeremy said.

“And so I think people would respond differently if they knew.”

After a sleepless night in the library, you go straight to your exam and take it.

You pass with flying colors. You wonder how much was because of the drug, and how well you could have done without it.

You wonder if you should take it again for your next exam.

“You can look at yourself and say, ‘I’m satisfied with my character, I’m satisfied with how I act and how I behave and for what purpose I do things. I’m satisfied with my functioning as a human being as of now.’ And people that would be quick to deny [their drug use] see in themselves and see in their actions something that’s wrong,” John said.

“Everyone has to make their own decisions emerging from their value set and ethical standings,” Dr. Kilcarr said.

“Every student on this campus has the capacity to fully engage their subjects and have the success they want without using someone else’s prescription medication. It requires being organized, a bit of discipline, and certainly planning.

Learning to tap into your own mind during these four years is the essence of the college experience. Taking shortcuts or doing what seems to be the easy way only develops bad habits or reinforces behavior that is taking the person farther from their potential.” *Note: Names have been changed.

Additional reporting by Connor Jones

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10 the georgetown voice

november 29, 2012

Tolstoy’s Karenina remastered as modern day romcom

by Julia Lloyd-George Tragedies have a habit of giving themselves away; in many cases, the victim’s name flashes in the title like a morbid neon sign. Whatever fate befalls these characters lingers in the shadowy background, progressively coming into focus as the story unfolds. Anna Karenina is no exception, a tale of a woman whose own tragic flaw is a violent passion for a man, which consumes her entirely.

Hardly a stranger to literary adaptations, Atonement director Joe Wright tackles this classic 19thcentury Russian romance with a daring that surpasses a mere homage to Tolstoy’s epic. The result is a lavish picture of infidelity and ignominy which, though not quite immune to melodrama, justifiably earns appreciation in its own particular way.

The magnificent production design is one aspect of the film that practically screams for attention from the first shot, as the title fades in the background.

Moscow is portrayed on alter-

nating stage sets, each scene of domesticity or ballroom blitz coordinated with impeccable costuming and painted backgrounds. Though the opulent set and design elements initially seem a tiresome gimmick that distracts from the emotional heart of the story, it turns out to be a creative way to emphasize a simple message—Anna’s world is one dominated by artifice and theatricality, with everyone playing a part that society has designated. Her deviance from that unbending social structure is a rejection of her role as dutiful wife and mother, as well as the path to both her freedom and destruction.

Long a favorite of Wright’s and practically the queen of period dramas, Keira Knightley fits her role of the titular heroine like a glove. Reining in her trademark pout, she masters the tortured glance of longing across grand marble ballrooms with panache.

The chemistry between her and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the blueeyed and mustachioed heartthrob playing homme fatale Count Vron-

sky, is also palpable enough to keep all those meaningful glances from entering cringe-inducing Twilight territory.

More importantly, though, Knightley shows no restraint in playing an unraveling woman governed by intense emotion— there is an unmistakable sense of abandon to her every expression.

Meanwhile, Jude Law is hardly recognizable as the rigid Karenin, yet he delivers a strong performance as the stoic husband Anna leaves for more excitement.

Contrasted with Anna’s own fiery extramarital romance, the story of idealistic farmer Levin (Domnhall Gleeson, whom Harry Potter fans will recognize as Bill Weasley) and his quest for the affections of a princess (Alicia Vikander) provides a welcome yang to the central story’s yin.

Theirs is a tame and gentle love which takes its time to blossom, chaste and controlled in its purity. Many of the scenes they inhabit are set in the countryside, a pastoral landscape with no trace of the theatricality that

The French Chef, and her seminal book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as the ways in which she introduced new dishes and methods to Americans hungry for a taste of the exotic and unfamiliar.

Child’s kitchen is both a focal point of the exhibit and a reference point for viewers. As they

as Child herself, kitchens of suburban mothers and wives across the country in the 1950s were furnished with the latest technology to make cooking fast and simple. Displays of microwaves, Tupperware, and TV dinners replaced the careful charm of Child’s kitchen in

dominates urban Moscow. Nevertheless, it’s a story that interweaves seamlessly with the drama at center stage.

The screenplay, by Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love writer Tom Stoppard, deftly skims the novel’s dense material to find the major takeaway of Tolstoy’s sprawling narrative. It is a story of a fading empire, yes, and the desire for fervent change in an unyielding society. Yet it is impos-

sible to deny that this is truly a love story, an examination of that “illusion” in all of its manifestations.

For the most part, this adaptation does that notion justice. At film’s end, though, you’re inevitably left with the sense that the spirit of Tolstoy’s tragedy has been lost in the shuffle of petticoats and drama. Perhaps the story would have been better served by stripping it down to find the naked emotion at the core.

latinareview.com

“I’m sorry PETA, but I need this muffler, Russia is fucking freezing.”

From TV Dinners to Happy Meals: America’s culinary history

by Alex Golway Food is a funny thing; while eating is a natural and necessary ritual, the experience of having a meal and the implications of what—and how— we eat are not things we think about. Food: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000, a new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, discusses the cultural and social changes in how Americans make, prepare, process, and ultimately eat food.

While a seemingly mundane topic for any non-foodie, this exhibition fascinates in its ability to illustrate how the history of food and wine in America is nearly impossible to extricate from political and social narratives.

The first thing viewers see upon entering the exhibit is the kitchen of culinary legend Julia Child. Donated to the Smithsonian in 2001, the kitchen was reassembled from Child’s Cambridge, Mass. home. Throughout her long career, Child encouraged Americans to treat cooking as an art instead of a chore and the exhibit highlights her television show,

alexandra galoway

“Food, glorious food! Hot sausage and mustard! While we’re in the mood.” make their way through the exhibit, visitors confront changes in food production and consumption that challenge the ideals embodied by Child’s kitchen.

While Child’s kitchen is fit for a culinary master such

this part of the exhibit, aptly titled “New and Improved!”

The focus on easy-to-prepare food reflected American gender roles during the prosperous and comfortable ‘50s—advertisements promised women

that with a quick meal, they would have more time to take care of their husbands and children. Food shows viewers how wartime technology made a smooth transition to suburbia, as advances in processing allowed food a longer shelf-life, food could be transported longer distances and stored in local supermarkets. This cultural contradiction is just one of many ways in which Food illustrates the various approaches to the American table which characterized the latter half of the 20th century.

Expanding beyond the traditional wartime narrative, Food presents viewers with examples of how different cuisines and cultural practices interacted within the American social consciousness and ultimately at the American table. A desire to expand cultural horizons led to the rise of ethnic eateries, ranging from Ethiopian food in Washington, D.C., to Cambodian cuisine in New Jersey. In fact, Food has an entire section devoted to the rise of Mexican food in the United States—undoubtedly a consequence of

immigration and cultural diffusion. The rise of environmentalism, in part a consequence of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, manifested in the vegetarian and local food movements.

As for the 1960s counterculture you hear about from rock ‘n’ roll music and historic political protests? Their approach to food was a rejection of the processing and packaging that grew so popular among American consumers.

The American table was both a melting pot and a battleground—Americans of all backgrounds came together to share their ideas of what we should eat and how we should eat it.

From the backyard barbecue to the parking lot of the McDonald’s drive-thru, Food shows the breadth of ways people, technology, and culture transformed the American table.

The exhibit sheds new light on a history we’re all familiar with, placing important cult ural and social movements in a new, unusual context. It sure gives us something to think about next time we decide what to eat at Leo’s.

georgetownvoice.com

“i was inspired, and i’m an accountant.” —Jerry maguire

the georgetown voice 11

It’s beginning to look a lot like Xmas Reviews, Haiku’d lez’hur ledger

by Mary Borowiec

When joking about Christmas in the District, a city ruled by politics, Jay Leno quipped, “The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C.. This wasn’t for any religious reasons; they couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.”

While the Supreme Court justices aren’t likely to pull a Grinch anytime soon—the city’s morality aside—Leno reminds us why Georgetown’s Catholic identity comes in handy Dec. 1: University-funded Christmas festivities.

Whether you are a holiday devotee or simply looking for an excuse to spike your cocoa with peppermint schnapps, here is the rundown on getting into the holiday spirit here at Georgetown.

While pictures with Santa are likely not on your agenda, LateNight Breakfast with Santa can at least boast convenience. Thursday Nov. 29, 9 to 11 p.m. in Sellinger Lounge, this Interhall event kicks off the season by sticking to Buddy the elf’s “four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup.” In other words, pancakes, hot cocoa, coffee, and gingerbread cookies. Also close to home, Winter Hoyaland provides the chance to

decorate the campus on Dec. 2, 12 to 6:00 p.m., with lights, wreaths, ribbon, and a supposedly 20-foot tree.

While Georgetown’s tree in Dahlgren Quad may disappoint those accustomed to the Rockefeller Center’s monstrosity, the Tree Lighting always delights.

Beyond the lights and tinsel enveloping the Hilltop, there is no shortage of spirit downtown and in the greater DMV, if your enthusiasm takes you that far. Of course, the National Christmas Tree lighting at the White House (Dec. 6) and the National Menorah lighting at The Ellipse (Dec. 9) prove trustworthy classics. Less conventional but potentially more enjoyable than bearing the crowds on the mall, the Carroll Arts Center is hosting an Ugly Sweater Holiday Party Nov. 30, at 5 p.m. With awards such as “Ugliest Family, “Best Vest,” and yes, “Ugliest Couple,” this event is a winner, if for nothing more than inspiring your own tacky holiday sweater party.

As lightshows are another holiday staple, the Washington Waterfront Association and Old Dominion Boat Club are celebrating the 20th Parade of Lighted Boats on Saturday, Dec. 1. Starting from Alexandria and headed toward the Washington Channel, a cozy bonfire at

All’s fair in love and housing

Dear Emlyn, Despite the fact that I’m a freshman, I got things going really fast with a girl this semester, and we’re in a happy relationship. I even visited her family over Thanksgiving, and her mom loved me. The problem is this: I’ve got a terrible, terrible exam schedule, which is forcing me take time off from work. Less work means less money. I want to do things with her before we part ways for a monthlong Christmas break, and I want to buy her something nice for Christmas, but I barely have any money or time.

How do I navigate a thin wallet and a fat schedule?

-Poor in Love Dear Poor, Congratulations on achieving worthwhile human contact!

Your problem is a pretty common one, and with some creativity it’s easy to fix.

First thing’s first: you may not know this since you’re a freshman, but study days are the shit. It’s like 35 percent study,

30 percent end-of-semester parties and shenanigans, 20 percent comfort/stress eating, 15 percent naps. You can definitely fit some time in there for some romancin’.

I am not saying that you ditch all of your papers and exams for fine dining for two at 1789, but you can spend your study breaks walking the canal with your girlfriend rather than wasting time on Buzzfeed and submitting Georgetown Compliments about yourself. Also, see if you can change your remaining work hours to early morning or late afternoon, so you’ll have the rest of the day to do what you please.

Bosses are usually flexible schedule-wise during exam season, especially if you conveniently stress-cry in front of them.

As for your thin wallet, remember that not every nice Christmas present is an expensive one. Think really hard about what you’re going to get her, and go the clever, heartfelt route rather than the flashy, expensive

7th and Water Sts. SW will welcome spectators as the boats, and Santa, roll in around 6:30. Close by at the waterfront, the Christmas Bazaar at the House of Sweden provides a mix of carols, artisan gifts, and food from up North. Held on Dec. 1, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Bazaar is in perfect proximity to the new skating rink if Swedish Christmas disappoints.

Unique to D.C., the DAR Christmas Open House on Dec. 5 is another must-see, as this home to the Daughters of the American Revolution surveys historical holiday decorations and music throughout American History, each of the 10 rooms fitted to a different decade.

Yes, Christmas is a religious holiday at Georgetown. Hark the herald and hear your fellow Hoyas sing at the GU Concert Choir performance, Gloria, Monday, Dec. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Davis Center, the Messiah SingAlong at 4 p.m. also in the Davis Center, Tuesday Dec. 4, or check out Modern Musick: Music for Advent in the Jesuit Residence also on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

And finally, maybe Georgetown’s Advent Reconciliation Service, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m., can remedy Leno’s difficulty in finding three wise men and a virgin. one—meaning stay away from M St., unless it’s that awesome new thrift store, Buffalo Exchange. My boyfriend got me an *NSYNC tshirt there for $4. What’s more heartfelt than that?

Finally, if you want to do some Christmas-y stuff real cheap, I’d suggest looking into D.C.’s many outdoor ice skating rinks. Admission for adults is usually only $7 or $8, which I’m pretty sure is, sadly, cheaper than a meal at Leo’s.

you’ve got issues

by Emlyn Crenshaw a bi-weekly advice column Dear Emlyn, I’m a rising junior and went through the housing lottery. I had a shitty number, and my friends and I ended up with a dingy Village A. We’re talking a small, one story apartment, basement level, right on Library Walk. It sucks. I would much prefer living in a townhouse, or perhaps a small castle of some kind. Help me get over this.

-Gonna have a Rat Problem

Django Unchained Tarantino has slaves kicking ass and breaking chains. Where is 2 Chainz?

The Hobbit You may not fetish hairy feet or hairy dwarves but Gandalf is sexy.

Les Miserables I dreamed a dream of Hugh Jackman’s Australian Accent. Sorry, Hathaway.

On the Road Jack Kerouac cries because Kristen Stewart stars.

On The Road will suck.

Hyde Park on the Hudson Premise: FDR is...

It does not matter at all Bill Murray’s on screen.

Life of Pi Indians, tigers, and boats, oh my! But this film explores God, not Oz.

Dear Rat Problem, You’ve got to remember that getting a townhouse was almost twice as hard this year as it was last year—a lot of houses weren’t available for selection because they’re being given away to faculty or something—so you probably had your expectations too high. We can’t all be lucky like me (pause and take a moment to imagine the beautifully sassy hair toss I just did).

Remember when you were a freshman, wide-eyed and naïve and desperate for a night that didn’t involve Brown House?

That freshman would think that a basement Village A is the coolest ever. You get a kitchen! You get to name your apartment something badass like “The Dungeon” or “The Bat Cave!”

You are living the dream.

I’ve also noticed that the quality of your housing somewhat depends on your own commitment to that quality.

Let me explain: let’s say you get lazy with decorations, or only buy a bunch of Bob Mar-

ley posters and tapestries.

Maybe you never clean or vacuum. Well then, tough titties, pal. Your apartment is gonna suck. But commit to your Village A cellar and take some initiative to make it great— get some retro movie/band posters, consider a disco ball, clean regularly, play ambient music—and your little abode won’t be all that bad.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask Campus Housing to remove some furniture if you have an exceptionally small space. All Village As come with a certain number of chairs and a couch for the living room, but if you have to cram it all in and end up having no extra space, just get rid of it. You can get pillows or beanbag chairs for people to sit on, which is funkier anyway. It’s all about the ambience you create, not your lottery number.

Send Emlyn your housing selection numbers at ecrenshaw@georgetownvoice.com

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

november 29, 2012

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

Wu-Block, Wu-Block, E1 Music An irreplaceable attribute of good music is its ability to relate to an audience; to a degree, a listener must identify with any work of art to enjoy it. The true masters stand out, however, when they deliver quality material with absolutely no semblance of a connection to the majority of society. Wu-Block, a group effort between members of New Yorkbased rap groups Wu-Tang Clan and D-Block, does exactly this on its selftitled collaborative album.

The themes presented on WuBlock are by no means surprising given the participating members, headed by Ghostface Killah of Wu-Tang and Sheek Louch of D-Block. Album opener “Crack Spot Stories” serves as the perfect launching point for the LP, spitting effortless lines detailing sex with Asian women, various

locations to obtain cocaine, and enumerated euphemisms for genitalia over smooth R&B backing vocals and kicks.

Though unique for each track, these beats and harmonies contribute little to Wu-Block’s success as a whole. The album is instead crafted by startlingly clever and at times borderline intellectual wordplay starkly contrasted with bawdy themes. “Comin’ For Ya Head,” for instance, directly references Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, superimposing an existentialist commentary on verses describing cocked guns and death threats.

“Different Time Zones,” a tribute to a lifestyle of throwing cash at trips from New York to Paris to Brazil while carrying “a briefcase of Euros and Indian money,” approaches lyrical composition from a different angle. Numerous glosses on the narrative and various asides keep the listener engaged while cruising over the “ooh”s and rhythms. “I should make a documentary on what race can give the best head,” Ghostface muses, while examining white women laying in his bed.

Over the course of the album, some topics become redundant. Toward the middle, “Cocaine Central” at last desensitizes the listener to drug references, leaving only eyerolls as reactions to the theme.

The life of pie sisters

Every grandchild may proclaim her grandmother the best baker around, but unlike the rest of yours, my grandma has a trophy to prove it. Sitting on top of our dining room cabinet, its shiny plaque declares her the winner of the Beverly Hills Pie Contest. She makes her pies less often today, but when my brother Ross and I were in middle school, we would often come home to a dining room table piled high with Granny Smiths.

Grandma’s apple pie is serious business in the Amos family. Her recipe may only have six ingredients—flour, butter, eggs, apples, cinnamon, and sugar—but its preparation verges on ritual.

After grandma used to put out the apples, we would quickly reduce them to thin, white slices, a splay of newspapers protecting the wood table from the heaps of juicy green peelings that always accumulated around us. Then we let the apples sit for hours, stewing with sugar

and cinnamon in their own juices.

How well the simple filling turns out is all a matter of timing.

Leave it too long and the Granny Smiths lose their bite; don’t give the mixture enough time to rest and the apples won’t soften or form their own glaze. How to get the pie right is hardly something you can put down on an index card, so my brother and I knew we had finally mastered the recipe when we won the Beverly Hills Pie Contest decades after my grandmother had.

Still only in middle school, we were the youngest contestants in the bake-off. So when we smiled from the stage with a giant check that neither of us could hold up on our own, we incited the anger of quite a few 50-something bakers whose pies hadn’t placed.

Unfortunately, it’s incredibly tedious to replicate grandma’s pie in Georgetown housing—the crust may only call for butter and flour, but it takes quite a bit of counter

Still, various sexual escapades and reckless abandon inundating Wu-Block are entertaining for all, not just the target audience of the collaboration. With complete disregard for standards of conduct and an abandonment of morals, Wu-Block tramples social mores while demonstrating linguistic and sampling mastery. Unoriginal, but entertaining.

Voice’s Choices: “Drivin’ Round,” “Different Time Zones” —Kirill Makarenko

Alicia Keys, Girl On Fire, RCA Records With the music industry plunging into and subsequently drowning in a sea of synthesizers and dubstep beats, established artists are able to venture into previously uncharted terrispace to roll out the dough properly. D.C., however, offers a few good places to buy a slice of pie.

Between Dixie Liquor and Revolution Cycles, Pie Sisters is both the closest bakery as well as the best. Fighting Georgetown Cupcake and Sprinkles for M St. foot traffic, Pie Sisters boasts a gimmicky pastry called the “cuppie,” which looks like a cupcake

Plate of the Union

by Heather Regen a bi-weekly column about food but uses all the traditional ingredients of a slice of pie.

Though delicious, the cuppies are difficult to eat, and because Pie Sisters bakes them in cupcake pans, the crust-to-filling ratio is higher than a normal slice. This works well for cream pies, which benefit from the extra crunch, but pies like the bourbon chocolate pecan are better as traditional slices, which pack in more filling.

tory. Even Alicia Keys, who has for the most part been absent from the recording studio since 2009, has fallen victim to a timid yet mostly effective attempt at a stylistic transition on her gripping, self-reflective fifth studio album Girl On Fire.

The album begins with “De Novo Adagio,” a haunting piano intro that seamlessly transforms into the opener, “Brand New Me.” This powerfully inspirational anthem of evolution and growing confidence mirrors the themes with building instrumentation; the first half has Keys crooning over soft piano chord progressions and subdued drum beats before the track bursts into a chorus lifted by Keys’ soul, strings, and a drum-pad crescendo.

These drums, along with other assorted electronic beeps and whistles, dominate the following “When It’s All Over,” an optimistic look at the conclusion of a relationship. “At least I got to love you,” Keys sings, before concluding the track with 45 seconds of babbling courtesy of her two-year-old Egypt. Despite such distractions, the display of vocal mastery does not lose its appeal.

Extreme attempts at stylistic reinvention which expand beyond the addition of electronic Unfortunately, the tiny store doesn’t offer a welcoming place for sit-down diners. It’s less homey than photogenic, which is fitting given Pie Sisters’ recent perusal of a Cupcake Wars-esque reality TV show. The occasional camera crew kills the local-bakery feel of the place, and although a sign posted on their door recently welcomed customers in during filming, the boom poles and light setups crowding the small space said otherwise.

Cupcakes and macarons and food trucks all had their five minutes of fame, but pies seem more difficult to craft into some chic foodie phenomenon. Pie is a classic American dessert—it’s something grandma makes for family holidays or local bake-offs—not a trendy sweet that reality TV chefs should fight over. But perhaps no dessert, not even apple pie, is safe from our bizarre fetishization of confections.

Pie Sisters doesn’t completely ignore the stodgy delightfulness of pie. They’ve attempted to merge

elements do manage to ruin a part of Girl On Fire. Nicki Minaj appears on the Inferno version of the title track, which otherwise would have been a phenomenal female empowerment ballad. Even with matching themes and experimentation on the LP, Minaj’s two verses come as a worrying and inappropriate shock that, at the very middle of the album, accomplishes nothing more to create an annoyance.

Though this growing instrumental and musical variety injects momentum which blends well with Keys’ traditional style, tracks featuring only Keys and her piano stand out as the most memorable works. “Not Even The King,” for instance, generates its beauty from the intimacy she creates with a slightly raspy voice, audible breaths, and command of octave climbs in the chorus superimposed on simple piano chords.

“I’ll never be perfect,” sings Keys on “Brand New Me.” Girl On Fire proves her wrong; if Nicki Minaj hadn’t made an appearance, Keys might have been rather close to perfection.

Voice’s Choices: “Brand New Me,” “101” —Kirill Makarenko their gimmicky cuppies with a more classic message: “Tradition starts here.” Chalkboards propped along the walls tell stories about how the three sisters grew up canning peaches and baking with their mother. So maybe the bakery will succeed at repackaging this hominess and find a way to cash in on the Georgetown-bakery-turnedTLC-program trend. But I certainly hope they don’t.

The last thing we need is another Georgetown Cupcake swarming with starstruck tourists. And unlike GC, the desserts at Pie Sisters aren’t vapid and sickly sweet—the slices of pie have real richness and texture, and they’re some of the best I’ve ever tasted. So I’m crossing my fingers that Pie Sisters’ pilot doesn’t get picked up. Georgetown needs a real, decent bakery far more than America needs another reality TV show about frosting or buttermilk cream fights.

Beg for Heather’s award winning pie recipe at hregen@georgetownvoice.

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page thirteen

the georgetown voice 13

— Madhuri Vairapandi

voices

14 the georgetown voice

november 29, 2012

Happiness is a warm, but ignored, mark of success

by Sara Ainsworth Holidays are a stressful time; there are drunken relatives, nagging relatives, and generally just a lot of relatives. Inevitably they corral the younger generation to talk about their lives and their daily routines. More often than not, they complain about how stressful work is or how there’s something missing. Very rarely does one hear, “I’m perfectly content with where I am right now.”

This isn’t confined to distant relatives; it applies to siblings and parents as well. My sister is applying to colleges, and the anxiety associated with the process is taking its toll. Having gone through it all three years ago, I feel her pain. At the same time, I have to ask myself—what is it all for? We do well in junior high to get into a good high school, to get into a good college, to get a good job, to get what exactly? To be successful? On whose terms?

There seems to be a constant momentum to keep going, but very rarely a focus on what is at

the end of the journey. Relatives never ask “Are you happy right now?” Instead they ask about what classes you’re taking, how they apply to your life goals, and what exactly your life goals are. Most things in life have become a means to an end. Even things such as education have become a stop on the great trajectory. I know too many people who don’t value their education, who take classes because they’re “easy” without stopping to realize all of the knowledge that they have access to. Students all over the country, and especially at Georgetown, mindlessly intern for companies they don’t believe in and in fields they have no intention of joining because “it looks good on a resume.”

While the continual resumebuilder may be quite prevalent on campus, there also seems to be a counterculture emerging, spearheaded by our generation.

We’ve been dubbed the “Me Generation,” or the kinder “Generation Y,” and have become the subjects of a number of articles.

We’re cited as unconventional

and not adhering to the norms of the workplace. According to some, Generation Y has no company loyalty, is unwilling to put in the hours at the cost of having a life, and disdains the rigid 9-to-5 working hours to which our parents were enslaved. Our generation looks for more out of our jobs; we want to feel fulfilled, inspired, and impactful. It seems rather strange that wanting more out of life than endless hours at the office so that we can make partner and “be successful” is somehow going against the grain.

Pushing the envelope against current corporate structures also pushes against what it means to be successful. Millennials (another kind nickname) are more likely than any other generation to measure success not based on what we own, but rather on the feeling of waking up in the morning and knowing that a difference is being made because of the work we’re doing. That some members of the older generation see this as a negative trend demonstrates exactly how material

our understanding of success is.

It’s unbelievably archaic, but still quite common, that the white picket fence, the roast on the table, and the new car in the driveway are still such huge parts of the American dream.

Clearly there are instances in which the white-picket-fence version of success is appropriate, particularly when it implies a rise out of poverty. But financial security is not something to be settled on. In times of economic difficulty, it’s difficult to measure success by the contents of your bank account. Not having a certain amount of money in no way means that you aren’t successful, and a society that bases success on capital gains is one that will ultimately end up dissatisfied. There is no longterm satisfaction to be found in material goods, as there’s always something new to want.

As Buddha said, “Desire is unquenchable.”

There’s a story of a child answering the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “happy,” and his

were relocated every few years.

It was unlikely that these itinerant priests would receive a fixed salary and, often, the church would provide him his home. This tradition served as a humbling reminder to the priest that his livelihood depended upon his relationship with the people of the community that he served.

Upon arriving in Chattanooga, Tenn. with a group of eight graduate Muslim students from Georgetown and our Imam, I experienced something not unlike this old tradition. Though the circumstances were entirely

different, the spirit was much the same. We set out for Chattanooga on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with the hope of reaching out to our Christian sisters and brothers, of growing in mutual understanding of each other’s religions through conversation, and of building bridges between our communities by working together to restore St. Mark’s Church.

At 3 a.m. on Thanksgiving day, when our van finally pulled up to the Church after over 10 hours on the road, members of the community were there waiting for us. They greeted us not only with smiling faces and warm words of welcome, but also with a kitchen counter lined with food, a full fridge, sleeping bags, and rooms that they had prepared for us in the Church.

Like the priest who arrives at a new congregation, we depended upon the people of the Church as much as they depended upon us to serve them and their community. As keenly as I felt the hospitality that early morning of our arrival, I also felt the responsibility and expectations that it implied.

Over the course of the next few days, this symbiotic relationship grew and strengthened, nourished by ongoing conversations and collaboration. We shared nearly every meal with members of the Church, who graciously cooked and served

us the famed comfort food of the South. We conversed about everything from the mundane to the magnificent, learning, along the way, about each other’s backgrounds, histories, and beliefs. We bonded over a shared goal as we re-painted rooms together, cleared weeds and trees and brush, and laid down mulch in the Church playground, side by side. We attended each other’s religious services, and even attended a Jewish Shabbat service together. As we worked, ate, and prayed together, we grappled with common misconceptions on both ends of the table, highlighting the many overlapping areas of our philosophies without forgetting the important distinctions.

And as the Muslims and Christians shared the very same space to worship, each in our own respective ways, I was constantly reminded of the words of Rabia Basri, a Sufi poet of the 8th century—“In my soul, there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel. Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.”

Truly, the superficial matters of which words we use for “God,” or which language our Holy Books were revealed in, or what our traditional places of worship tend to look like, fell away.

It no longer mattered whether we said Musa or Moses, Jesus or Isa, Noah or Nuh. Barriers

teacher telling him that he didn’t understand the question. Instead of teaching our children that what defines success is based upon our possessions, such as job titles and property values, we should teach them that success is self–defined. Someone else may not agree with my idea of success, and that is perfectly acceptable. The need for social validation should be eliminated, and in its stead there should be a focus on feeling fulfilled and inspired.

We may be called the “Me Generation,” but we’re doing something right when it comes to defining our goals and structuring our lives. Our society would generally be much happier than it is now (at 105th happiest country in the world) if we reoriented what it means to be successful.

Sara Ainsworth is a junior in the SFS. She’s happiest with a glass of wine, and a man massaging her feet.

Currently accepting apps for a masseuse.

Voyage to foreign land of Tennessee leads to reflection on faith

by Sadaf Qureshi Years ago, in the South, “pounding of the preacher” was a common custom used to welcome newly hired priests to the town and to the congregation.

Members of the church would each bring a pound of food to the home of the incoming priest to help stock up his pantry— a pound of sugar, a pound of flour, a pound of butter. It was small-town living and Southern hospitality at its finest; one would expect no less. But the tradition also had a greater significance. At the time, priests

Chattanooga is such a cool word. Just say it. Chattaanoooooooooga.

KAREN BU

melted, as we got to know one another on a personal and human level, distilling, little by little, fear of the foreign.

But it wasn’t only the foreign that I, and the others, were engaged with; we reexamined the familiar as well. Having been raised as a Muslim, there are so many practices and aspects of our faith which I had taken for granted, which I had forgotten to stop and marvel at.

When the Imam explained our five daily prayers to our Christian friends, I was humbled to discover that some of what was mentioned was new to me, or had been lost in the hidden alcoves of my mind.

It took this simple trip to Tennessee for me to recognize that the true object of travel is not to set eyes on foreign land, but to gain the insight necessary to set eyes upon one’s own land, and one’s own self, as if they were foreign to you. Like the itinerant priest who is forced to keep redefining his home, I was reminded of the need not to become so comfortable with my own territory as to disregard its many mysteries and unexamined crevices.

Sadaf Qureshi is a first year medical student. Other cool things from Chattanooga? Samuel L. Jackson. True story, look it up.

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15

Hipster hysteria! Much maligned epithet must ironically die

by Julia Lloyd-George It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment, but at some time early on in my freshman year, my fellow floor residents decided to collectively brand me as a hipster.

Perhaps it was my refusal to wear North Face or my relatively obscure taste in music, but there was apparently something distinctive about me that caused the damning term to creep into the common room vernacular whenever I showed up to discreetly microwave Leo’s cookies. Soon enough, I felt like I was going around with a scarlet “H” pinned to my flannel shirt.

Unusual at it may sound, this was my first encounter with hipster shaming, or frequent use of the label at all. I’d come from a high school environment in which uniformity (well, there were also uniforms) was the norm and the “alternative” scene was so small it hardly merited notice, much less concentrated scorn. If the term ever entered conversation at all, it was a fleeting whisper in comparison with the intense debate that the “H” word seems to produce on the Hilltop. I apparently hadn’t realized that I was attending the 10th most hipster college in the nation, even if the title was bestowed because of our “ironic” preppiness.

TEDDY SCHAFFER

If you must ask how much flannel is too much, you have too much flannel.

Imagine all the people

Carl Sagan was not alone in thinking that “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” Indeed, imagination’s undeniable connection to art, innovation, and real-world problem solving has put the word on a pedestal. To some, it may even be the decisive characteristic which makes humans human. So what’s the downside to this core element of the human mind?

Not too long ago, Philip Roth announced his retirement.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s career produced 31 novels, but he would surely be apprehensive about labeling writing a profession. Writing was who he was. It’s how he breathed. This was a man who flourished in his own imagination, and he would not be the first to admit he paid dearly for his commitment to the craft.

A fundamental element of Roth’s work is his characters’ parallels to his personal life. The novelist Nathan Zuckerman’s smash-hit Carnovsky is a facsimile of Roth’s breakthrough Portnoy’s Complaint. Yet Roth takes stretches this motif a bit further. Zuckerman’s personal afflictions, namely relationship troubles, mimic what few know of the famous author’s own crises. In essence, Roth drags his real-world dilemmas into a fictional medium, leaving his actual problems unresolved.

It may be a stretch, but I have a hunch that Roth not only sourced his material from his own life, but also intended to deal with his problems on the page instead of the here-andnow. (I’m sure his ex-wives agree. I can imagine the scene: “Philip, why don’t you come to bed honey? I’m feeling extra naughty tonight.” “Sorry, dear,

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As a result, this sudden association produced something of an identity crisis in me—I questioned whether I truly fit the stereotype and, if so, whether I was merely conforming to a doctrine of non-conformity. Turning the lens on myself, I saw that my love of vintage t-shirts, my tendency to read The New Yorker in indie coffee shops, and my ukulele ownership may very well be red flags for the hipster inquisition.

Nevertheless, I still didn’t really know what exactly I was guilty of.

At its heart, it seems that “hipster” is a derogatory charge because of said defendant’s blindly insistant deviation from the mainstream; anything popular or “cool” is frowned upon, while anything old or obscure is placed on a pedestal hand-carved in Portland.

Admission to liking anything that several million people are also fond of is a major faux pas, a situation which has birthed a lot of closeted Katy Perry fans. Taste is a fundamental part of identity, used as a marker to measure oneself in comparison to others. Moreover, anything done or worn “ironically” is immediately granted protection—lack of sincerity eliminates the hipster as a target of derision for that button from the NRA.

This is the essential definition of a hipster, yet it’s also a label with which no one consciously identifies. Therein lies the paradox, which is also what makes the rise of the hipster such a bizarre sociological phenomenon. Calling someone a hipster, oddly enough, is often an indicator that one also fits the qualifications. It can betray insecurity about having truly good taste, since the label denotes vacuity and superficiality—rather than genuinely liking something for itself, the hipster supposedly champions everything for its mere status as a cultural outlier.

That’s the reason labeling someone a hipster is such a slap in the face; it’s the same as calling someone an elitist, or a snob. Hipsters reject cultural populism, considering themselves superior by being part of a perennially unreachable elite. That’s why they’re genuinely maddening—no one wants to feel like their shameless love of Ke$ha or their failure to read Foucault makes them a cultural lemming.

At the same time, hipster shaming isn’t helping matters. Victimizing a Bon Iver fan who happens to own a few secondhand shirts by labeling him a cultural elitist just isn’t fair, because that’s simply making a whole bundle of negative associations

but I’m in the middle of writing a sex scene.”) So did drawing out his problems through his imagination’s puppets get Roth’s personal life back on track? Of course not. In fact, upon receiving the copy of an aspiring novelist’s book, Roth cautiously stated, “I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself.”

Mind you, the aspiring novelist did not notice the presence of sarcasm in these statements.

Roth is one miserable old man,

let’s move on to another cultural fixture: me.

I used to watch television a lot, but now I’ve limited myself to movies and books. I live vicariously through these figments of other people’s imaginations, but that does not inhibit me from letting my own imagination flow. The other day, I imagined myself writing the next Oscar-winning screenplay. I use my imagination all the time, but all it seems to do is distract me from the real world. Once I finally apply myself, my imagination kicks in again and I picture a superior version of the project. So I stop applying myself. Imagination is really just procrastination’s partner in crime.

So do I use my imagination to escape my social and professional shortcomings?

Without a doubt. In fact, there seem to be two Johns that exist at once: Famous John, whose path to success is already laid out, and Real-World John, whose ambitions are projected through Famous John. However, Real-World John thinks Famous John is going to do all the work when the time comes.

Real-World John uses Famous John to feel superior to others, because he knows when Famous John says “Kiss my ass,

Carrying On

by John Sapunor

A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

despite his imagination’s best efforts to make sense of his state of melancholy.

But what if Roth had no intention of escaping the real world through his imagination?

It is just as easy to say that his life was merely material for his novels; he may have had no intention to come to term with his afflictions through his fictional selves. Or maybe his novels served as reflections on his misery, a sort of discourse on the troubled human condition.

Well, if that’s true, then my Roth theory disintegrates. So

based on superficial facts. Moreover, calling someone else snobby doesn’t make you any more tolerant. Calling someone hip doesn’t make you any more mainstream.

In an ideal world, hipsters would be eliminated from both our collective lexicon and as a social aspiration. People would stop constantly doing things ironically, choosing to be sincere and forthright in how they present themselves. People would stop making judgments about what others like, whether that’s something as universally beloved as vanilla ice cream or something as bizarre as basil lemon gelato—everything under the cultural sun would be equal.

Until that day, I’m happy to endure eye rolls as I let my freak flag fly.

I don’t consider my taste to be better than anyone else’s, and I certainly don’t eliminate anything popular from that category. How you decide to label me is your business. In my defense, however, I still have that new Taylor Swift album on repeat.

Julia Lloyd-George is a sophomore in the College. If she had been alive in the 80s, she would have rocked a perm, ironically of course. so-and-so,” in his Oscar acceptance speech, he’ll have shown everybody who’s boss.

Famous John is basically a representation of my possibilities. He’s the hope that keeps me going. He’s the fuel to my fire. Unfortunately, this imagined self is not the same as motivation. My imagination is, rather, holding me back. It’s time for Real-World John to take center stage and escape the delusions of grandeur that Famous John reminds him of. So let’s go John, write that Oscar winning speech you’re so sure about. No? You don’t have time? Well kiss Famous John good-bye. You see, without Famous John around, I bemoan my unachievable goals. And I’m not motivated enough to raise my self-esteem through proactive efforts. Imagination is an enabler of laziness, but this imaginative, delusional laziness has a sweet veneer, unlike the raw, fuck-my-life licentiousness that possesses the RealWorld John.

I’ll be alright. I still have time to change my ways, unlike Mr. Roth. Famous John is taking the back seat to the real John. I can see the Oscar already. Goddammit, I just imagined something. This might take some work.

50 shades of blue and gray Here’s the 10th installment of the Voice’s serial romance novel-cum-murder mystery, “50 Shades of Blue and Gray.” The final chapter of this steamy thriller is all up to you—send your 1,000 to 1,500-word submission, under your real name or your fake one, to editor@georgetownvoice.com by Monday night at 10 p.m., and we’ll pick our favorite ending for this series for next week’s back page.

From what I can tell, there are two things that will paralyze a man, render him helpless, remove all his agency. One is abject fear. The other is sex.

Needless to say, I wasn’t really making my own decisions when I emerged from my professor’s erotic dungeon. I was irrational. Sensual. An animal guided more by instinct than intellect. Here I was, walking down Prospect in broad daylight, unaware what day or time it was, bleeding from a head wound inflicted by a professor who ordered the murder of the girl I was falling for in front of me, then basically had her way with me and told me another killer was still running around campus, and all I could think about was how I’d like to tie her up and seek stinging, sweaty revenge with her riding crop.

I couldn’t stand any theatrics at this point. I jumped to my feet and kissed her hard, pushing her up against the desk. She reached down and unbuttoned my pants as I found the zipper on the back of her skirt. When it fell to the ground I found my suspicions about her underwear justified.

“Mmm, someone’s aggressive tonight,” she whispered.

I flipped her around and bent her over the desk. Her tan, toned buttocks flexed and she let out a guttural moan, pushing her shoulders down so her face pressed against the table. “C’mon! Harder!” she gasped, and l released all my anger and anxiety, toppling over her computer monitor as we both moaned.

Things got worse come Monday. I awoke from a long sleep to find the campus on lockdown. I read the DPS statement on Vox,, too scared to leave my apartment.

The killer had been caught. An insane transient who had lived among students for years, usually subsisting on meager wages he collected from handing out Wingo’s coupons to drunk students. There was no motive. He just snapped. They called him a “lone wolf.” They compared him to Jared Loughner and the D.C. Sniper. Georgetown made the national news for weeks. Police presence quadrupled on campus. A curfew was imposed—temporarily, they told us. Parties were outlawed. Too dangerous and disrespectful in light of the murders. The cops never came to talk to me about any of the killings.

I collapsed back into the chair with my pants still around my feet and shirt soaked through with sweat.

She turned and slowly began taking off her shirt, one button at a time, without looking at me. Her bra was black lace. She knelt in front of me.

At first, I was plenty angry. I thought about going to the police myself, about calling the Post and telling them what really happened. But before any of that I had to go to Psych and face Prof. Cheney. It was all casual until the end. She lectured on contemporary interpretations of Freud and never once made eye contact with me. I sat and roasted in my seat, watching her thighs and ass squeeze against the fabric of her pencil skirt and wondering if she was the kind of woman who didn’t wear underwear. Then she gave back our papers, sliding mine cooly onto the desk without a word. She’d given me a D+. There was a note.

“Then who? The administration?

The police?”

Clearly, the key concepts of this course have eluded you. I highly encourage you to attend my extended office hours tonight at 8 to discuss remedial work.

And further down, Oh, and I wouldn’t think about going to the police if I were you. Trust me when I say I know exactly where you live and how to get to you and your friends. If you’re smart, you’ll just come in tonight for some extra credit.

I wish I could say there was some apprehension to complying with her requests, that I somehow wanted not to take her because of what she had done to Corinne. But I craved the guilt and anger of all of it and wanted in the worst way to teach her a lesson for tying me up.

I arrived 10 minutes late and sat down in front of her desk. She rose slowly, walked around her desk and stood in front of it with her arms crossed. Her eyes sparkled with mania of a predator.

“What are we going to do with you, young man?”

“Did you hear? They caught the killer. I think it’s marvelous, don’t you? And campus hasn’t run so smoothly in years!”

“That’s why you’re doing this? For order?!”

“Well, no, dear. I’m not the one who’s doing anything.”

“Oh darling, you’re so naïve.

It’s cute really. There are much higher powers involved here. But no more questions.”

She leaned closer, her hair tickling my thighs.

Just then, the entire floor of the ICC fell dark. I gasped, but Cheney didn’t miss a beat.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Spread me out on the desk.”

But then a crash, and I heard the door behind me kicked in.

She screamed, trying in vain to cover her breasts. Before I could turn around, the assailant clubbed her in the head and she collapsed into a sweaty, luscious heap on the floor. The barrel of a handgun pressed against the back of my head.

“Don’t worry, your cougar’s only asleep,” the assailant whispered. I thought I recognized the voice, but it was so soft I couldn’t even assign it a gender.

“Get your pants and come with me,” the figure said. “It’s time we put this whole issue to bed.”

— Tony Martino