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FINAPP RELEASED STUDENT ACTIVITIES BUDGET PAGE 4

MEN’S BASKETBALL TO BEGIN BIG EAST CHAMPIONSHIP HUNT PAGE 6

POLK STREET TELLS SUBVERSIVE SF STORIES PAGE 10

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969  March 14, 2013  Volume 48 Issue 9  georgetownvoice.com

2 the georgetown voice

march 14, 2013

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Voice Crossword “March Themeless Challenge” by Tyler Pierce 39. Sound systems 41. A muse 42. Forgo 44. King’s title: Abbr.

45. They’re expected 50. Apply 51. Steeple 53. Folk magic in the West Indies 54. Ham, to Noah 55. Homo Sapien 56. It may show with forgetfulness 58. Some tournaments 59. Hannah Montana and Ziggy Stardust 60. Lone ranger companion 61. Political rabble rouser 62. ___ Hall DOWN

ACROSS 1. Wheel stopper 6. Dice roll, sometimes 15. Where Minos ruled 16. Able to be called back 17. Drive away 18. CH3CONH2 19. Bypass 20. Singer Morrison

21. Admit 22. Farm fixtures 23. Connections 24. Booties 25. Deli sandwich 26. “Come in!”

28. Renting, as a car 31. Types of bagels 37. Encircle 38. Most evil

1. Grasps for 2. Common 3. Corpus of news 4. Dined at home 5. Castrates 6. Desire 7. Take back 8. Certain roses 9. Weed 10. Milan’s La ___ opera house 11. Certain collars 12. Newspaper section 13. Blast from the past 14. Parenting challenges

26. Fund 27. Variety show 29. Elton John, e.g.

30. Anger 32. Canine command 33. A pint, maybe 34. Joy 35. Fabricated international language 36. Vice President Adlai 40. Link 41. Most smooth 43. Equianguar polygon 45. Wanderer 46. Division signs 47. Doesn’t own 48. Lovers 49. Emmy-winning Lewis 51. You can make them out of Jello 52. Cocoon dwellers 57. ___ Zeppelin

Answers to last week’s sudoku

Answers to last week’s crossword

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 48.9 March 14, 2013 Editor-in-Chief: Keaton Hoffman Managing Editor: Gavin Bade Blog Editor: Connor Jones News Editor: Matt Weinmann Sports Editor: Steven Criss Feature Editor: Julia Tanaka Cover Editor: Neha Ghanshamdas Leisure Editor: Julia Lloyd-George Voices Editor: Sara Ainsworth Photo Editor: Miles Gavin Meng Design Editors: Amanda Dominguez, Madhuri Vairapandi Projects Editors: Alec Graham, John Sapunor Back Page Editor: Tiffany Lachhonna Puzzles Editors: Andrew Duverney, Tyler Pierce Contributing Editors: Leigh Finnegan, Kevin Joseph Assistant Blog Editors: Isabel Echarte, Ryan Greene, Caitriona Pagni Assistant News Editors: Lucia He, Julia Jester, Jeffrey Lin Assistant Sports Editors: Chris Almeida, Chris Castano Assistant Cover Editor: Lauren Ashley Panawa Assistant Leisure Editors: Alex Golway, Kirill Makarenko Assistant Photo Editors: Andres Rengifo Assistant Design Editor: Teddy Schaffer

Staff Writers:

Emilia Brahm, Will Collins, Emlyn Crenshaw, Brendan Crowley, Alex Lau, Lindsay Leasor, Keith Levinsky, Claire McDaniel, Liana Mehring, Joe Pollicino, Cole Stangler, Sam Wolter, Claire Zeng

Staff Photographers:

Rebecca Anthony, Max Blodgett, Julian de la Paz, John DelgadoMcCollum, Kat Easop, Matthew Fried, Robin Go, Kirill Makarenko, Tess O’Connor, Matt Thees

Staff Designers:

Karen Bu, John Delgado-McCollum, Christy Geaney, Mike Pacheco, Tom Pacheco, Sebastian Sotelo

Copy Chief: Morgan Manger Copy Editors:

Kathryn Booth, Grace Funsten, Tori Jovanovski, Rina Li, Natalie Muller, Sonia Okolie, Caitriona Pagni, Ana Smith, Dana Suekoff, Kim Tay, Suzanne Trivette

Editorial Board Chair: Patricia Cipollitti Editorial Board:

Maitane Arana, Aisha Babalakin, Gavin Bade, Nico Dona Dalle Rose, Lucia He, Keaton Hoffman, Quaila Hugh, Julia Jester, Caitriona Pagni, Julia Tanaka, Galen Weber

Head of Business: Aarohi Vora The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

This newspaper was made possible in part with the support of

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.

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

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

Email: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Web Site: georgetownvoice.com The opinions expressed in the Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of the Georgetown Voice. The University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Silver Communications. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover: “Eating Disorders” Cover Photo: Miles Gavin Meng (MSB ‘13)

the georgetown voice 3 NO VACANCY

Gtown should pursue serious housing reform On Feb. 24, the Georgetown Undergraduate Student Association passed a resolution introduced by Sen. Abigail Cooner (SFS ‘16) to increase the transparency of Housing Services’ room change policy. While the GUSA bill successfully identifies a key issue that continues to plague students—the lack of a clear, predictable operating procedure for filling housing vacancies—it is limited in scope and effect. To adequately address the failures of student housing, broad-based reform of the system is needed.

Students have been continually dissatisfied with the way that Housing handles roommate changes, particularly with the the limited warnings given by the housing office when filling a vacancy in an apartment or dorm room. Little or no information regarding the incoming roommate is given to current residents, often leading to complicated, contentious situations. Students often move out of a given residence for very specific and

sometimes unsavory reasons, but these are rarely if ever communicated to new roommates before a move-in.

The GUSA resolution commends a recent change in the language used in the transition emails sent by Housing to the roommates welcoming a new student, as well as their establishment of a clear 24-hour warning before move-ins. But, while recognition of these issues is necessary, GUSA must go farther to make housing reassignments smoother. In the interest of all roommate parties involved, the warning time before move-ins should be extended and more background information about each roommate should be given to better prepare students for a new living situation.

The housing process also causes unnecessary grief for students planning to study abroad. With the housing selection process for sophomores being so early in the academic year, many are left without on-campus housing plans for the following year. The

lack of clarity in the entire process does little to alleviate the difficulty to these students. It is imperative for Housing to ensure that students have access to a simplified system for housing selection and roommate changes, perhaps even by consolidating the various web platforms that exist for academics, housing, GOCards, and student extracurricular activities.

While we are confident that the new GUSA executive will be able to make headway on many of Housing’s current issues, it will need to take a more proactive stance if it is to enact serious reform. The administration, too, must give this issue the attention it deserves simplifying the process to accommodate student needs. We hope that students and administrators will find substantial ways to collaborate in order to improve student life on campus and give them more of a say in how they live, and who lives with them.

WAGING WAR

Tougher stance required to prevent wage theft Workers’ rights activists gathered at City Hall on Monday, March 4, in a display of support and solidarity for workers testifying about their experience with wage theft in the District. The Wage Theft Coalition, comprised of advocacy organizations D.C. Jobs with Justice and United Workers of D.C., presented the D.C. Council with wage claims amounting to $260,000 owed to a group of forty workers. This is no small chunk of change for the individuals involved, most of whom are day laborers living at or below D.C.’s meager $8.25 minimum wage.

The issue of wage theft continues to harm workers in the District. Tackle Box, a popular Georgetown eatery, recently suffered a loss on three wage theft claims also brought forward with the help of the Wage Theft Coalition. Georgetown Solidarity Committee and the University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative also participated in this action, putting much needed local institutional pressure on employers violating worker rights.

Regrettably, most of the workers who serve as easy targets for wage theft are immigrants, many of them undocumented.

This breeds a unique environment of fear in the workplace, preventing many employees from speaking out. Unfortunately, employers are aware of the tacit and sometimes explicit threats they can pose to these workers, who in asserting their rights could be choosing between losing wages and deportation. And because there is little fear of retribution on the part of workers, employers are not forced to be accountable for their actions, including failure to pay workers what they are rightly owed. In the perpetual search of profit, it is unsurprising that firms continue to exploit the most vulnerable members of society.

Workers are understandably unsettled at the prospect of approaching the Department of Employee Service’s Office of Wage-Hour, the District’s governmental body charged with the duty of addressing issues of wage

theft. Moreover, in the few cases that are brought forward, many are overlooked because of the high costs associated with bringing the case to justice. Attorney fees and other costs are most often much higher than the small wage claims the case is worth.

The cases presented last week, as well as the changes that the Wage Theft Coalition is proposing alongside supportive D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry, are major steps in the right direction. These include more resources for the Office of Wage-Hour as well as legislation to ensure better protection of workers against wage theft.

D.C. should follow the examples set by cities like Chicago, which passed its own robust wage theft law in January, by cracking down on this practice through stricter wage theft legislation. If an employer’s conscience cannot be relied upon to prevent abusing worker rights, as the case seems to be in the District, then the law must serve as a necessary deterrent.

NICKELBAG

Maryland progresses with disposable bag tax Last Friday, Maryland legislators introduced a bill in the House of Delegates of the Maryland General Assembly that would impose a 5-cent fee on both paper and plastic disposable bags, the first tax of its kind at the state level. Modeled after D.C.’s own 2009 bag tax, the proposed fee would both reduce pollution of Maryland’s waterways and provide a useful source of income for underfunded green initiatives.

Maryland’s Community Cleanup and Greening Act of 2013 is part of a larger wave of legislation across the U.S. to eliminate wasteful consumption of disposable bags, with 11 other states considering taxes or outright bans, all thanks to the precedent set by the District.

The widely touted D.C. bill reduced monthly bag consumption by over 86 percent and generated $150,000 in revenue after its first month, with most of that money going to public environmental education and the cleanup of the Anacostia River. As of last July, the bag fee had raised $5 million for the Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Fund.

The allocation method for Maryland’s proposed bag tax would work similarly to D.C.’s. Retailers would automatically retain 1 cent from each 5-cent fee, and could be refunded up to 2 cents if they establish a customer bag credit program that incentivizes customers to bring their own bags.

The remaining income would be evenly split between the Chesapeake Bay Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and county-level community greening projects like litter cleanup programs and storm water control systems.

More importantly, the bill creates an infrastructure for full elimination of disposable bag usage by forming public-private partnerships to provide reusable carryout bags for seniors and low-income residents, those most disaffected by the new fee and least likely to switch to reusable. By creating long-term incentives for full blown eradication of single-use bags and devoting the majority of the funds to conservation

efforts, Maryland’s version of the bag tax is more focused on environmental protection and less on tapping into a new revenue source than the D.C. bill. This is admirable, even if it could make the bill less palatable to Maryland business lobbies, who were instrumental in defeating Prince George’s County’s proposed bag tax bill in 2012.

All the more reason to press onward.

Maryland is a state with rich water resources: the Chesapeake Bay is North America’s largest estuary and is home to over 3,600 species of plants and animals. And while environmentalists can rejoice that the bay’s infamous “dead zone” has been shrinking, problems related to plastic pollution persist.

Maryland needs to do more to invest in cleaning up its water resources, and while eliminating plastic won’t correct all of its environmental woes, a bag tax is an effective step in improving water habitat quality.

The state legislature would do well to enact the tax as soon as possible, and other states should be quick in following suit.

news

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march 14, 2013

FinApp draft budget out, only 62 percent of requests met

by Matthew Weinmann On Tuesday, March 12, the GUSA Finance and Appropriations Committee released its draft budget, meeting about 62.3 percent of funding requests. FinApp had $979,200 to allocate among $1,571,532.31 worth of requests, which left some groups with only a fraction of their requests met.

The amount requested this year is approximately $60,000 more than last year’s total requests of $1,511,078.04. Last year, the student activity budget increased by raising the student activity fee from $125 to $150. This year, the fee increased through inflation to $153. To meet all of the requests, the fee would have to be $246.

The largest recipient of funds is the Advisory Board for Club Sports, with $234,000. The group will receive the second largest increase of any group, after the Student Activities Commission, which has an $8,000 increase over last year’s funding. FinApp denied ABCS full funding for a club sports trainer program, but encouraged ABCS to continue the pilot program with its additional funding.

“Currently, there is no healthcare system in place for club sports athletes. Athletes have the choice of either calling GERMS when an injury occurs, or attempting to schedule an appointment with student health,” wrote Meredith Kolff, Chair of ABCS, in an email to the Voice about why a full-time trainer was necesary. “The injuries that are more likely to cause permanent damage are the types of injuries that could be prevented with continued attention and care by an athletic trainer.”

ABCS also needs increased funding because of an increasing number of club teams attending regional and national championships. “ABCS was also incredibly pleased that GUSA recognized the increase in club sports teams who qualify for nationals and need additional funding as they become more competitive and successful,” wrote Kolff.

The Performing Arts Advisory Council received all of the funding it requested, $32,500, which is less than it received last year. Those funds will go to support programming and also the estimated costs of moving storage and practice space out of New South during

the construction period. Some of the costs associated with the New South construction are moving the pianos, purchasing and constructing portable mirrors, and moving the wood and marley dance floors, according to Ron Lignelli, the administrator for PAAC. Lignelli estimates the cost of the New South construction to the PAAC groups will be $7,410, but much of the planning has not been finalized.

SAC received $158,000, which combined with funding from tuition dollars and a $7,557 contract with Coca Cola, meets approximately 67 percent of SAC’s requested funds. In the draft budget FinApp noted that student groups “routinely request far more than they actually need for events” and that a significant portion of funding goes into “social” food. According to Jennifer Chiang (SFS ’15), the Chair of SAC, the organization passed a new amendment in its last meeting on March 11 to address food funding. By the new budget guidelines, $8.50 per person is the maximum funding level SAC will provide for food, with exceptions for groups such as the Grilling Society.

“Given that FinApp only allocated 50.08 percent of our request, SAC is not satisfied with its overall allocation,” wrote Chiang, in an email to the Voice. This percentage is how much the funding meets the remaining gap after factoring in tuition dollars and the Coca-Cola contract.

“It pains us to see that FinApp thinks that funding our groups at 67 percent is justifiable because that directly translates to many groups scaling down their programming,” Chiang wrote.

“Therefore, SAC will be appealing this week to FinApp to ensure that our over one hundred student groups have an adequate budget.”

SAC has until next Tuesday to appeal the decision. Still, it is unlikely it will receive more funding.

“At the end of the day, though, we’re still going to be dealing with the same roughly $970,000 figure,” said Sen. Sheila Walsh (COL ‘14), Chair of FinApp. “I think we’ll have to evaluate and really dig deep into the justification.”

The issue of student groups overestimating costs in anticipation of cuts remains. “I think it is inevitable that groups will try to inflate their requests, knowing that

we are probably not going to fund them in full year after year,” Walsh said. However, Walsh believes the advisory boards are honest overall about their needs, citing PAAC as her chief example.

Others support the idea that student groups overstate their needs. “I’ve spoken with a number of student leaders about this with some confirming the theories, and others shocked that it happens,” Chiang wrote. “Because of this concern and the fact that we only received 50.08 percent of our request from FinApp, SAC will be reluctantly much stricter in evaluating whether costs are reasonable.”

This year’s budget is also a guide for funding in the future. It is already based on the previous year’s budget and allocations are very similar between the two.

“I think this year is different and might feel different for boards because this is the first year we are not seeing a substantial increase since SAFE reform,” Walsh said. “I think there might be an expectation that allocations are going to increase indefinitely and that’s just not realistic at all.”

Georgetown community reacts to announcement of Pope Francis I

by Claire Zeng

On Wednesday afternoon, white smoke billowed from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel signifying the election of the new Pope Francis I. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, the new pope will be the first Jesuit and first South American pope. The selection of Francis has been both surprising and thoughtprovoking for not only the 1.2 billion Catholics around the world, but also Catholics here on the Hilltop.

A Jesuit pope is unprecedented because there are so few in church leadership. Jesuits vow to not seek higher church offices, and Father David Collins, SJ, explained that “one of [the reasons] was that Ignatius didn’t want that kind of ambition to taint the society. [Another reason] was that when you think of a religious order as a team, you want to keep your best members.”

Thus, Bergoglio had not even been considered a top contender. Father Matthew Carnes, SJ, said, “I was really surprised. We all expected it to be Cardinal Scola from Milan.”

Furthermore, the election took only two days and five rounds of voting, suggesting that Pope Francis was a

first choice and more favored than suggested by outside media.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1936, Francis was ordained in the Society of Jesus in December 1969 and proclaimed cardinal in February 2001.

In the papal enclave of 2005, during which Pope Benedict was elected, Cardinal Bergoglio took second place in the election.

Many of the pope’s actions already show a friendly character. When he first stepped out on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, he thanked the crowd and asked them to pray for him before he blessed them, symbolizing recognition of his humanity. Francis led a simple life in Argentina, electing

to live in an apartment and take the bus in lieu of utilizing the cardinal mansion and limousines.

The selection of the name “Francis” is also significant. When a pope is elected, after he is asked if he will accept the position, and the second question he is asked is the name he will take on. He does not officially take office until Tuesday mass and thus has not yet explained his choice, but, his name may refer to Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, who was famous for living simply and devoting his life to God. He was an inspirational figure to Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

Carnes also said, “Francis of Assisi’s first call was that of Jesus saying to

Georgetown students celebrate the announcement in Healey Circle.

Louie cona

him, ‘rebuild my house’…recently there’s been a lot of talk of needs for restructuring the church, and I think he [the pope] sees that as part of his job.” The name Francis may also refer to Francis Xavier, SJ, who traveled the world and was a great evangelizer, which has been a major mission of the church recently.

What Pope Francis is most famous for is his work in championing the poor and social justice, which will undoubtedly be emphasized in his agenda when he takes office.

However, he is also very conservative on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion, which continue to inspire heated debates in and out of Catholic circles. “Is he going to change the church’s teachings on that? No, I don’t think so,” Father Chris Steck, SJ, said. “Is he going to work with these issues with compassion? I think he will.”

The response from the Georgetown community has been overwhelmingly positive. In an email to the Voice, Father Kevin O’Brien, SJ, wrote, “Today is a day of great joy for Georgetown as the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university … Our new pope hopefully will bring some renewal to our

church after too many decades of scandal and divisiveness.”

Samantha Lin (SFS ’14), a leader of the Catholic retreat AGAPE, said, “I’m really excited to learn of the election of the new pope so quickly after the conclave began, because for me it means that the Holy Spirit very strongly led the Cardinals to choose him, giving me even more hope and faith in Pope Francis I.” Andrew Schilling (COL ’14), a Knight of Columbus, added that “it will open up a lot of new doors in the church, not just here in the United States but also in Latin America and everywhere around the world.”

The pope will also serve with a living pope emeritus, which has no historical precedent within the last five centuries. However, Pope Benedict XVI seemed to have made it clear that he intended on retiring quietly and deferring to one sole authority in the church. Whether this means Francis will diverge from Benedict’s pontificate is unclear. Father Thomas Buckley, SJ, said, “[Francis] was still the runner-up in the last election … Does that mean he is right along the lines of Benedict? Is he Benedict’s natural follower? ... I don’t know.”

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the georgetown voice 5

Workers, activists highlight increasing wage theft in DC

by Lucia He Last Monday, March 4, the D.C. Council’s Committee on Workforce and Community Affairs hosted a hearing with the aim of evaluating the performance of the Department of Employment Services. In response, a group of 50 workers and community supporters gathered at the Executive Office of the mayor and the council during the hearing to present Councilmember Marion Barry with a symbolic bill highlighting the increasing cases of wage theft in D.C. Alongside the workers and the D.C. Wage Theft Coalition, a group of 12 Georgetown students

participated in the action as part of the Worker Justice D.C. Alternative Spring Break Program organized by the Kalmanovitz Initiative.

“Workers in D.C. are experiencing wage theft quite frequently, and we thought it was important to draw attention to that and to make sure that Marion Barry was aware that this was an area where resources and accountability were needed,” said Ari Weisbard, Advocacy Manager for the Employment Justice Center, an organization that deals with workplace justice in the D.C. area.

The bill presented to Barry was signed by more than 40 workers and claimed more than $260,000 in unpaid wages from a myriad of industries.

Lucia He

Workers demonstrated for unpaid wages outside Tackle Box on M St. on Feb. 7.

Gentrification, depredation

Last week, I took part in one of Georgetown’s Alternative Spring Break programs—Worker Justice D.C. For seven days we gallivanted around the city and its surrounding locales, immersing ourselves in the struggles of working people and joining up with organizations that advocate for them. All of it was incredible, but one experience stands out to me as especially poignant.

On Thursday, March 7, we headed over to Alexandria to work with a grassroots organization called Tenants and Workers United.

Our task was to assist in organizing the residents of the Beauregard neighborhood in the west of the city, whose low-cost housing is set to be demolished next year and replaced with luxury condominiums.

Twenty-five hundred apartments are slated to face the wrecking ball, but developers led by real estate giant JGB Properties have only proposed plans for 800 low-cost apart-

ments in the redevelopment plan, and it will take 40 years for them to all become available.

The long and short of it is that thousands of families will be kicked out of their homes and forced into a low-cost housing market already saturated with the victims of D.C. metro area gentrification. Beauregard is the only remaining low-cost option in the Alexandria area, so residents have to look far and wide for new options. One man I talked to said he was planning to move to a Maryland neighborhood on the other side of the District, and had to leave his job to do so.

If it seems like a raw deal for Beauregard residents, that’s because it is. Few want to leave the stable, friendly community and its good neighborhood schools. For undocumented residents, going out into the housing market means risking exposure, and a move to an-

One of the main concerns of the group was that the current legal system for declaring wage theft is ineffective and fails to get back to workers promptly once their complaints are filed.

“Yes, there’s a legal system to get the workers their wages back, but it’s a very slow system and it’s not as effective as it could be,” said Erin Riordan (COL ’15), one of the student leaders of the Alternative Spring Break trip. “The workers at Tackle Box, for example, had been working with the office that deals with wage theft for six months or longer, and they didn’t get their wages back until they staged a protest.”

José Ramirez, one of the three workers that got back his unpaid wages this past Feb. 7 after staging a demonstration outside M St. restaurant Tackle Box, testified at the hearing and raised his concerns about the ineffectiveness of the Office of Wage-Hour.

“Jim Alvarenga [from the DC Office of Wage-Hour] told me it was difficult to find a solution to my problem because there were no other complaints, so it would be “complicated” for the owner to pay me wages that I was owed,” Ramirez said during the hearing. “After four months, I had no results and decided not to bother Mr. Alvarenga again.”

“I feel that with their inability to find a solution to my case, the D.C. Office of Wage-Hour demon-

strated its inability to enforce the laws of Washington, D.C. Employers like mine mock the established laws,” Ramirez added.

One of the reasons sometimes given for the increasing number of wage theft cases is a lack of communication between workers and employers. Bethany Umbel, owner of Tackle Box, points this out as a fault of her employees.

“None of these people ever called me or reached out to me. They could have come in the last year, but they didn’t,” said Umbel, referring to last month’s demonstration.

“What [the Employment Justice Center] did was to send an email out to 10,000 people in the community saying that I didn’t pay these three workers, without contacting me.”

However, many times workers face barriers, such as language and the fear of losing their job, that hinder them from approaching their employers.

“It’s important to consider the role of intimidation in these sorts of things,” Riordan said.

“Very often we don’t hear more about worker issues because workers are intimidated, they’re scared that they’ll have more wages owed or that they’ll lose their jobs entirely, so they don’t go forward because they don’t think they have a choice.”

Rachel Milito, the administrator at the Kalmanovitz Initiative, agrees.

other town can mean losing a coveted job for anyone.

But JGB and its partners sweetened the pot to get their plan past the City Council, including forking over $66 million for traffic improvements, a new fire station, and $12 million for parks and recreation.

Tenants and Workers United is trying to rally the community to stop

the efforts have thus far fallen far short of providing housing for every gentrification victim, and do nothing to stop low-income citizens from being displaced by rich folks moving to town. A different approach is needed, and Tenants and Workers United may have put their finger on it.

They want the Alexandria City Council to mandate that if the development is to go through, the owners of the condominiums must set aside enough housing immediately to allow every family already living there to stay in their homes. It’s an ambitious proposal, but one that makes sense for D.C. and the surrounding cities to adopt if they are serious about combating gentrification.

Putting the impetus on developers to set aside low cost housing takes the burden off of government and makes the companies think of their tenants as human, rather than numbers on a balance sheet each month.

city on a Hill

by Gavin Bade

A bi-weekly column about the District the council from redrawing the city’s zoning ordinances to suit the developers’ desires, but the plan may go through anyhow.

Usually, problems of gentrification in D.C. and the surrounding locales are dealt with by government setting aside low-cost housing. District Mayor Vincent Gray pledged to create 10,000 units by decade’s end in his recent State of the District address. But,

“Often times employees, especially in restaurants or other kinds of low-wage situations, feel intimidated talking to their bosses,” she said. “When there’s such a difference in power between an owner of a restaurant and the people that work there, they feel like they are not able to go to their boss because they may get fired and they really need that job.”

The group of workers and community supporters is hoping that Barry will take note of their demands and implement the necessary changes to make the legal procedure involved in denouncing wage theft more effective.

“We are very hopeful that Councilmember Barry will continue to work with us,” said Weisbard.

“He promised to do so during the hearing and said he would investigate and that he would look into legislation and introduce new laws if that was needed.”

To some, the support from community members is essential for workers’ voices to be heard and taken into account in the process of legislative reform.

“When workers try to fight these battles on their own it’s easy for them to be retaliated against,” said Weisbard. “When communities and especially students come out to support them, that helps get more attention to the issue and can also help protect the workers.”

Setting aside affordable housing always comes at some cost for developers, but given the size of many of the real estate corporations, as well as the increasingly lucrative nature of developing in D.C., these costs are unlikely to deter economic growth. The city could also come up with ways to balance out the impact on developers, perhaps by lifting the height limit on buildings to allow for larger projects.

Gentrification is more than an economic issue—it’s a question of individual rights. Making sure families are not directly displaced by housing development is not a panacea for economic inequity, but if our local governments are serious about making economic progress work for everyone, they will move to beat back the influence of large developers and make sure there’s a place in their communities for families of all incomes.

If you need cheap housing contact Gavin at gbade@georgetownvoice.com.

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march 14, 2013

Bearcats up first for Hoyas in Big East tournament play

by Keith Levinsky On Jan. 19, a late season collapse appeared to be inevitable for Georgetown men’s basketball (24-5, 14-4 Big East). The Hoyas had lost to the worst team in the Big East, South Florida (12-19, 3-15 Big East), 61-58 and had lost three of their last five games. The team’s second leading scorer and rebounder, sophomore forward Greg Whittington, was declared academically ineligible and was likely out for the rest of the year.

Less than two months later that same team has three trophies to add to Georgetown’s collection— a Big East title, Big East Player of the Year, and Big East Coach of Year. Those are three very surprising accomplishments coming from a team chosen to finish fifth in the Big East by the league’s coaches and that lost a key player halfway through the year. An 11-game winning streak in conference play helped to bring about a year of incredible success.

On Tuesday, Otto Porter Jr. was named the Big East Player of the Year and John Thompson III won his first Big East Coach of the Year award. Porter burst onto the national stage this year by averaging 16.4 points per game, 2.7 assists per game, and 7.5 rebounds per game.

He upped his play during conference games and finished second in the Big East in scoring (18.1 ppg), fifth in rebounding (7.3 rpg), and third in steals (1.8 spg).

Porter was not the only key to Georgetown’s rise this season. With a defense of length and smothering pressure, the team held opponents to 37.7 percent shooting to reach seventh in the nation in that category. On Sunday, junior guard Markel Starks was named third-team all-Big East and freshman guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera was named to the Big East All-Rookie team.

The Hoyas have won their spoils, but the overarching goal set

at the beginning of the season has yet to be reached. The Hoyas are the number one seed in the final Big East Tournament as they head into their Thursday matchup against Cincinnati.

“Obviously, like coach said, we came into this season with a goal,” Starks said at the press conference after the Syracuse game. “A portion of the goal has been accomplished, but at the same time, we still have a lot more of the season to play.”

Ironically, Georgetown’s opponent was selected to finish one spot ahead of Georgetown in the preseason Big East poll. But now after a double-bye, the top-seeded Hoyas will face the ninth seed, Cincinnati, (22-10, 9-9 Big East) Thursday.

Despite their ranking, Cincinnati will not go out easily. They are still looking for a signature win to add to their resume going into the NCAA Tournament, in which they are currently a projected eleventh seed.

When Georgetown visited Cincinnati a month ago, the Hoyas survived to earn a close 62-55 win. After compiling a 12-point lead with 15:04 left in the game, the Blue and Gray allowed Cincinnati and JaQuon Parker to come back and take a one-point lead with 6:54 to play.

Starks made a remarkable threepointer down the stretch, though, and Georgetown closed out the game with free throws.

In a physical game, Georgetown’s lack of depth nearly resulted in a loss. Every Georgetown starter, excluding Markel Starks, picked up four or more fouls in the game. Georgetown used its trademark defense to defeat the Bearcats by holding them to 31.5 percent shooting, including 16.7 percent from three-point range. Ultimately, Georgetown held out to win with its three-pronged offense of Porter Jr. (17 points), Starks (16 points), and Smith-Rivera (14 points).

Cincinnati’s shooting woes have not been limited to its loss against Georgetown. The Bearcats have shot

MILES GAVIN MENG

Otto Porter Jr. will have to continue his stellar offense to lead the Hoyas past Cincy.

40.3 percent on the year, putting them at 306th in the country.

A significant concern for the Hoyas will be the Bearcats’ success down low. The Bearcats average 40.3 rebounds per game and are seventh in the nation. This was certainly important against the Hoyas as the Bearcats outrebounded them 3627. Georgetown cannot allow easy

baskets off of turnovers or offensive rebounds and must tilt the rebound margin in their favor. This could make junior forward Moses Ayegba very important in this game too. The junior center showed tremendous rebounding ability in Georgetown’s victory over Syracuse.

“This group has listened, they have believed in each other and

me,” Thompson said after their final game of the regular season.

“We have been able to figure out how to support each other and find different ways each night to win games.”

We will see if Thompson’s words hold true come Thursday.

Tipoff is slated for noon at Madison Square Garden.

the Sports Sermon “I had a hold of him and I thought I saw Satan in his eyes.” - Canadian first base coach Larry Walker on his stare-down with Mexico’s Alfredo Aceves of the game. Because of the low number of teams participating (16), though, a tie in the brackets is possible and therefore tiebreakers are an important consideration.

World Baseball Classic, Inc., the governing body of the tournament, set traditional baseball etiquette and tournament rules at odds by making the primary tiebreaker run differential. This was the most costly mistake in the whole debacle, because it incentivizes teams to run up the score on their opponents, despite this tactic’s disrespectful nature. For a tournament fighting for its legitimacy on the world stage, introducing a reason for disrespect in a game so heavily based on tradition and customs is a major blunder.

the possibility of getting injured just before the start of the new With Major League Baseball’s season, and this has persuaded Opening Day still over two weeks many big stars to stay away. Conaway, baseball fans usually turn troversy over the rules brings to Arizona and Florida at this into question the legitimacy of point in the year to satiate their the tournament for those players hunger for the diamond. This seaconsidering joining their home son, though, they have been given country’s team. If clashes like the an additional appetizer before the one between Canada and Mexico regular season kicks off. The third recur, teams could start to lose installment of the World Baseball their fan favorites.

Classic arrived last week and has If anything positive could be since provided some exciting acextracted from the throwdown, tion. Amongst the upsets and late it is that no one can question inning comebacks, though, the that these games matter to the biggest news to come out of the players. All the best baseball tournament has been the brawl players may not choose to repbetween North American rivals resent their countries, but the Canada and Mexico. ones that do take pride in whom Canada held a 9-3 lead over they are representing. The ClasMexico going into the top of the sic spreads baseball awareness ninth inning when to countries that do Pete Rose Central Chris Robinson nonot get much exDa bettin’ line ticed Mexican third posure to the lore baseman Luis Cruz of MLB in the U.S. Dookies Margin Hoyas was playing deep Augmenting base(underdogs) (duh!) and laid down a (favorites) ball’s popularity in bunt single. This countries dominatDon’t Matter No. 1, baby Hoyas brought an already ed by other sports Amendola tense game to its is a tough task, but Stamina Welker tipping point. Cruz Injuries Like a Stras if the Classic can Nationals fielded the bunt provide viewers and motioned to pitcher Arnold This kind of lapse in judg- with games full of talent and Leon by pointing at his side and ment is understandable for a passion, then baseball could then pointing at the next batter, tournament so young, but the ig- grow into more of a world-reRene Tosoni—an obvious signal norance of youth can only last so nowned sport. to hit Tosoni. long. After the discontinuation The responsibility to furAfter two inside fastballs and of Olympic Baseball in 2008 and ther this goal of increasing the a warning from the home plate the World Baseball Cup in 2011, global interest in baseball now umpire, Leon finally plunked the World Baseball Classic is the falls on World Baseball Classic, Tosoni right in the middle of the only major international base- Inc. Their official statement afback. With that, the benches were ball tournament left that names ter the incident denounced the cleared. Mexicans began punch- a world champion. These early fight but did not suspend any ing Canadians, and Canadians installments are vital to the lon- of the players involved, mainly began throwing Mexicans in the gevity of the Classic because if because neither team was likely kind of brawl we expect from the it does not gain recognition now to advance to the second round.

Jersey Shore cast, not professional in the early going, its ratings and What they also failed to adbaseball players. commercial success could suffer dress was any future action to be Because of baseball’s eti- and therefore put the tourna- taken to improve the tiebreaker quette, blatantly hitting Tosoni ment’s future in jeopardy. rules. If the Classic is to survive would have been reasonable The key to high ratings in and thrive as the sole proving had this tournament been under the World Baseball Classic is ground in international baseball, regular MLB rules. You don’t lay how many big-name stars each its leaders must give considerdown a bunt in the last inning country can convince to play for ation to changing this policy, for when you’re up by 6 runs—a them. The timing of the tourna- so much more is at stake than well-established unwritten rule ment already proposes risk with simply the etiquette of the game.

by Steven Criss

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Despite loss, Rodgers’s legacy sweet Men’s lax struggles to finish

by Steven Criss A 31-point deficit stood between the Georgetown women’s basketball team (15-16, 5-11 Big East) and their hopes to advance to the third round of the Big East Women’s Basketball Championship in their 89-58 loss to Villanova (21-9) last Saturday. The rout ended the season for the Hoyas as a tournament recordbreaking number of three-pointers from the Wildcats—17—put the game out of reach. The light that never seems to go out for the Blue and Gray, senior guard Sugar Rodgers, gave both Georgetown and women’s college basketball a night for the history books.

In her final game wearing a Georgetown jersey, Rodgers scored a career-high and Big East Women’s Championship record-breaking 42 points. Rodgers has placed her bid as the greatest women’s basketball player in Georgetown program history as she finished her college career with 2,518 total points, the most of any men’s or women’s basketball player to compete at Georgetown.

“[Rodgers] came here and all she had to do was shoot the ball. She shot us right into the tournament,” said Head Coach Keith Brown.

“We’ve been in the tournament every year up to this point, and when a program never really had a winning season or never had an opportunity at postseason play, and a kid walks in the door and you go to postseason play every year; it’s hard to put into words. I just think she means everything to the program.”

Her 711 points this season also rank first in Georgetown’s books.

The list of accomplishments does not end here, as she holds all of the top four ranks for three-pointers in a season, giving her 346 total—another Georgetown record.

“When a player is identified from Georgetown, the first player they are going to think of is Sugar Rodgers,” said Brown of Rodger’s place in program history.

After the early part of the season was plagued with injuries, Rodgers’s role of shooting guard was combined with the role of distributor as well. Her versatility in the offense and ability to adapt in the face

KAT EASOP

Sugar Rodgers placed herself in Georgetown women’s basketball history this year.

Thompson Jr. sets ‘em straight

People don’t find it hard to disagree with John Thompson Jr. After all, during the 1980s, the Georgetown Hoyas became the NCAA equivalent of the New York Yankees, according to former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese.

Thompson was the mastermind behind the hatred, speaking directly and never mincing words.

His brash attitude rubbed people the wrong way, as did his Hoyas’ newfound physical style.

But, as a Georgetown fan, it’s hard not to agree with Coach Thompson. Masked behind the sarcasm and ceaseless cursing is a startlingly realistic perspective on issues. He speaks what’s on his mind and, in the case of the Big East’s demise, could not be more on point.

“We got together, we cursed, and we called each other all kinds of things but there was a certain level of respect,” he said of the conference’s early days. “Then these clowns come in and use us—basketball—and if anything, got what they wanted and ran out.”

He’s right, from a basketball perspective. But from a football perspective, it’s hard to argue with schools like Syracuse and Pittsburgh bolting for the ACC. While there is a certain sense of loyalty to the conference, the dollar signs next to football cannot be outweighed.

Thompson took things further, as he always has (see: Manley Field House). “Football came into the league, utilized our popularity, and then destroyed the league,” he told Fox Sports.

The demise of the Big East is a shame. But in all honestly, I have only been alive for 22 years of the conference. It’s all I have ever known and, by the time I was born in 1990, the league was at its apex.

For people like Thompson, their opinions carry far more credence because of the leap of faith they made to join the fledgling league back in 1979.

“We all took a chance and established something we could be awfully proud of,” Thompson

of adversity allowed her to bring a team of freshmen and previously bench players together.

“Sugar understood going into the season what she had to be. She probably knew we wouldn’t win as many games as we won in the past.

She knew she had to be a leader, she had to be a teacher, she had to be a big sister, and she had to be an aunt to some of them because we were so young,” Brown said.

With the exit of Rodgers, the focus for the Hoyas has shifted toward preparing a young team for the upcoming season. With six new freshmen committed to Georgetown in what could be considered one of the best recruiting classes in the country, the team will have to adjust to a post-Sugar world.

“I think that we addressed just about all of our needs,” said Brown.

“The biggest thing is that we are going to have enough bodies to get back to pressuring the basketball.”

As for Rodgers, her sights will now be set on making a team in the WNBA and possible overseas play in Europe. Brown has no doubts that she will be a quality asset to a professional team and assures that when surrounded by a team of high-level performers, her true talent will be seen.

Looking back on his time with the star, Brown concluded, “Sugar is a great translator. I would say something, and sometimes I can be a tad volatile, she could translate what I was really trying to say. It was great to see Sugar grow. It was fun coaching with Sugar because she thought she was a coach sometimes.” said. “Then a bunch of knuckleheads sat at the table, who didn’t know a fucking thing about basketball and without any concern for the fans or geographical balance, tore it apart.”

Before the Catholic 7 departed for what will now be the new, more concentrated Big East, the conference’s name became a joke

Double-Teamed

by Kevin Joseph A bi-weekly column about sports

for Thompson’s points. The original intent of the conference was to forge rivalries in the major television markets around the Northeast. It did just that, stretching from Boston down to Washington D.C, with New York City as the hub.

Conference realignment had the likes of San Diego State, Boise State, and Houston coming on board, all predicated on keeping the football dollars rolling in. Geographically, it made no sense. As it is, these teams spend exorbitant

by Brendan Crowley One month has passed since the opening of the 2013 Georgetown men’s lacrosse season and the Hoyas have put together a meager record, despite dynamic play in most of their matches.

In their first season under Head Coach Kevin Warne, Georgetown (2-3, 0-0 Big East) has played five exhilarating contests.

The Hoyas have come out on top in two of the five—prevailing 9-8 in overtime against Navy (33) and beating Dartmouth (2-2) 10-9—and fell in the other three against Lafayette (2-5), Harvard (2-2), and Mount St. Mary’s (4-4).

For Warne, what has been most impressive about his players’ performance thus far is their ability to thrive in the midst of obvious change.

“I like how our guys are coming to practice with good energy every day, willing to learn, because when you have a change of systems… there’s gonna be some struggles or those points where certain concepts need to be reinforced over and over and then you’ll have that ‘a-ha’ moment,” Warne said before their loss on Tuesday. “We understand that this is a growing process, but we also understand that we’re four games in, and we should be able to comprehend and build on as we start going into the latter part of the season.”

Last season the team also saw the departure of 16 seniors.

amounts on their travel budgets with chartered flights around the Northeast and Midwest. Add an entire slate of West Coast games and that effect becomes heightened. The extra travel time makes an even bigger farce out of the supposed student-athlete experience.

Yet in the end, that is what it’s all about—money. The NCAA, for all it preaches about the studentathlete experience, is about revenue. It’s why there is such a valid debate about whether major college stars should be paid for their services. Anyone think Otto Porter Jr. wouldn’t appreciate a cut of all the No. 22 Hoya jerseys that have been flying off the shelves?

“All of them run around and talk about educational purpose,” Thompson said. “That’s bullshit.

All of us have made money; all of us have turned down money.”

That, of course, is a little too ideal from Thompson’s perspective. Money-hungry administrators will not look to the pioneering efforts of their predecessors and proceed with that in mind. Nor should they, really. If there’s more

For Warne, repeated excellent performances from senior standout Brian Casey, the team’s top point scorer, and junior faceoff specialist Tyler Knarr, who earned Big East Weekly Honorable Mention honors this past week, have served as motivators for the team’s underclassmen.

Knarr, in particular, has caught Warne’s eye.

“Tyler [Knarr], his uniqueness of faceoff with a long stick presents a challenge to other teams, but he works at his craft unbelievably,” Warne said. “I think Coach [Tim] O’Branski does a great job with our faceoff personnel. But Tyler does a really good job of honing his craft and being able to decipher or dictate to where he wants to put the ball to allow us to have possession. He’s done a great job with it.”

Despite naturally high expectations for the rest of the season, Warne also pointed out the importance of not looking too far ahead, and honing in on what the team can do on a day-to-day basis instead.

“One of our goals every day is just to come out and play with discipline and just worry about one practice at a time. I think it’s important that this group understands that they’re getting better even if they may not see it.”

Next up for the Hoyas is a home matchup against Providence (4-0) this Saturday at noon on the Multi-Sport Field.

money to be had, it would be foolish not to pursue the greener path in today’s ruthless college athletics atmosphere.

It is an unstoppable monster, another point Thompson has wrong. “The only one who could have stopped that shit from happening are the public,” he said.

“Those administrators would have been scared to death if the public had responded to this bullshit.”

While fan resentment may have swayed certain aspects of the decision, the Big East dropped the ball on a lucrative television contract. I have never blamed Syracuse or Pittsburgh for departing.

After all, we sit in the same position right now.

Things won’t ever be the same, but that’s okay. The new Big East won’t have the same football pressures, and we still have Madison Square Garden for the conference’s tournament.

In Thompson’s words, “What else do we need?”

Get some of Kevin’s brash thinking at kjoseph@georgetownvoice.com

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8 the georgetown voice

march 14, 2013

Body of Lies

Eating disorders at Georgetown

BY CAITRIONA PAGNI During his first semester at Georgetown, Zenen Pérez (SFS ‘13), to avoid gaining the dreaded “Freshman 15”, began an extreme vegetarian diet, severely restricting his caloric intake, and monitoring his weight up to three times a day. “My freshman year, I had a scale in my bathroom, and I would stand on it three times a day to make sure that every week or every couple days I had at least lost a little weight.”

By the end of the semester, Pérez had lost 40 pounds. He was unrecognizable. In an interview with the Voice, Pérez recounted an incident in which he encountered an acquaintance he had not seen since he began restricting his eating. At first she didn’t return his greeting, but once she recognized him, she said, “Oh my God, I didn’t recognize you, you look anorexic.”

“At that point I realized it was a problem because at the moment she said that I felt good about what she had to say,” Perez said. “I felt like that was a positive thing … she had noticed that I lost a lot of weight.”

In the American College Health Association Spring 2012 college survey, only 2 percent of students were diagnosed or treated for anorexia or bulimia nationwide in the past 12 months. According to the survey, at Georgetown, 3.6 percent of the student population has been diagnosed or treated for an eating disorder.

While such low numbers may seem inconsequential, in 2006, 58 percent of college females and 33 percent of college males indicated that they were trying to lose weight, and 38 percent of college females and 31 percent of college males reported that they perceived themselves to be overweight.

Only a small proportion of the student population has been diagnosed with an eating disorder, however, Georgetown is far from exempt from the effects of poor body image. Fatphobia permeates Georgetown’s culture. Fad diets and conscientious exercise routines are the norm. One can barely step on campus without seeing a multitude of confident people with the right clothes and the right body.

“Georgetown attracts, admits, and accepts students who come with really high profiles in terms of accomplishment,” said Carol Day, director of Student Health Education Services.

“Sometimes with that sort of level of

achievement comes a level of perfectionism, obsessive compulsive tendencies to ... apply yourself to achieve, and I think those are characteristics that also seem to be prominent in people with eating disorders.”

***

O n e . Two. Three. My body tensed a n d I heaved. Nothing. One. Two. T h re e . I heaved again, Nothing. I stood o v e r t h e toilet, staring down a tooth b r u s h c l utched in my hand. I couldn’t

s t o p . O ne, two, three. I drove the t o o t h b r ush to the back of my throat, a n d i t hit its mark. I doubled over a n d g r i pped the walls of the stall as w h a t w as once my dinner burned my i n s i d e s , making its way up my throat.

T h e b u r ning hurt, but the pain felt like re d e m p t ion. I heaved once more. I saw b l o o d , a nd I relaxed. My body shook, b u t I d i dn’t care. It was almost as if t h e w o r st part of myself had vanished.

I was human again. I didn’t want it to end, and before I could stop myself I was doubled over.

Eating disorders are about so much more than food. I would know.

My problem started like most: small. I would skip a meal here and there. But during my sophomore year of high school, my clothes began to get too tight and I began to lose my mind.

It didn’t matter that I had grown two inches taller—all that mattered was the flashing number on the scale in my parent’s bathroom. I felt like the ideal

of perfectionism was quickly escaping me, and there was nothing I could do about it. My concern turned to panic, and I began to purge.

I purged in the bathrooms in between class periods. I would excuse myself from class to purge. I didn’t want anyone to know. My beauty was supposed to be effortless, my weight was supposed to be natural. When I began losing weight, I felt amazing.

My body was frail, but at least it was pretty, or so I thought.

I often heard my parents talk about me in muffled voices. “She’s skin and bone,”my father said. He sounded upset, but I was elated. My effort was paying off. They were always overprotective anyway, I ran up the stairs to the bathroom and locked the door. One. Two. Three.

Peréz also acknowledged the role his perfectionist drive played during his freshman and sophomore years, but the expectations of perfection and insecurities he experienced arose not from explicit pressure from peers, but from his own image of the Georgetown student. “I thought there was external pressure,” he said. “I thought that everybody cared, so that made me think that I should care.”

On the Hilltop, the University strives to play a collaborative role in addressing eating disorders, and developing individualized solutions to assist students in coping with these body image issues. This approach incorporates many branches of student health care, such as Counseling and Psychiatric Services, the Student Health Clinic, and Student Health Education Services. People Day and Staff Clinical Social Worker at CAPS, Mary Quigley, are on the front lines of this approach.

Day has spent her entire career at Georgetown. In addition to being a certified nutritionist, she also has Bachelor ’s and Master ’s degrees in nursing. She joined Student Health Education Services when the department was established in 1989. Within the department, Day plays a number of roles, and her background has allowed her to work intensely with students with eating disorders.

Day concentrates on the nutritional aspect of eating disorders, focusing her efforts on instilling life-style changes such as incremental meal plans. Quigley, who specializes in identifying and resolving the emotional causes of eating disorders, works on the other side of the coin, focusing her attention on the underlying psychological causes of the issue.

“I try and look at all the other issues underneath that might be connected.

Sometimes it feels like an addiction …

I always feel like there is some psychological reason,” she said.

Collaboration between depart-

georgetownvoice.com ments ensures that students develop a network of support, but also ensures they receive care tailored to their individual disorder. Of the joint effort,“Mostly, the students coming in [at Georgetown] are in need of once-a-week or twice-aweek therapy with nutritional counseling and often we do the team approach,” Quigley said.

Claire McDaniel (COL ‘14), who struggled with anorexia throughout high school, also views the attention paid to appearances at Georgetown as a factor unhealthy eating habits.

“It’s something that’s embedded in the culture ... and it very well might be unconscious, but it’s still there,” she said. “I won’t lie, I feel like it’s less than my high school, but even watered down, it’s still a very potent force that idealizes being thin.”

[Full disclosure: McDaniel is a Voice staffer.]

Georgetown culture exacerbates pre-existing conditions that come from a variety of psychological issues. “I don’t think [Georgetown] promotes eating disorders, but I think it’s a culture of competition and high achievement,” McDaniel said. “A lot of girls say ‘why does everybody look so beautiful and thin?’ … There’s a level of competitiveness, but I think people tend to bring that with them from their pasts.”

Day went on to say that although student life at Georgetown is remarkably competitive, eating disorders are multifaceted and students often allow their need for perfection to drive unhealthy eating and exercise habits without knowledge of proper nutrition. “People struggle at some level that is not officially diagnosable ... something under that level of criteria that you have to match to qualify as having an eating disorder,” she said. “I think a lot of

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people struggle with undereating or the wrong kind of eating, over exercising and being concerned with their body image.”

Pérez echoed Day’s observation, reflecting on his decision to become a vegetarian. “I thought about why I became vegetarian in the first place, and, although I came to other reasons like environmental and ethical reasons, I realized that the main reason was not a very good one to begin with.”

Special diet restrictions are not inherently problematic. Becoming vegetarian or more healthconscious is not a problem in and of itself—but sudden diet changes becomes dangerous when students undertake them without proper knowledge, or in more severe instances, simply to justify undereating. The danger at Georgetown lies not in explicit pressure to be thin, but in the attitude that extreme dieting is not only acceptable, but preferable to gaining weight. Such an attitude desensitizes people to the physical and emotional trauma that causes and results from eating disorders.

In addition to the other pressures at Georgetown, Pérez’s struggle with his sexuality further complicated his insecurities with his body image. “There’s a very big image of what someone who’s a gay male should look like. I wanted to come out, but I always thought that I needed to look a certain way.”

According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, males make up 10 percent of people with anorexia and bulimia.While men remain an oft-forgotten minority when it comes to eating disorders, the underlying psychological pressures are equally strong to those of their female counterparts. Both Day and

the georgetown voice 9

Quigley emphasized that male eating disorders, although related to female disorders, generally come with a different set of emotional baggage and are even more underdiagnosed than female disorders.

Of the 3.6 percent of students who were diagnosed with eating disorders last year, none were male, although individuals such as Pérez confirm that men struggle with the same insecurities as women. “I think a lot of the time that we talk about these issues we talk about women,” said Pérez, “I think that

they acknowledge a problem, then the sooner they can seek out people who can help.”

Quigley, however, insists that outreach education can only go so far. In her view, in order to repair our culture of body dissatisfaction, eating disorders cannot remain on the outskirts of polite conversation. When asked what she would change about Georgetown culture to help students with eating disorders she said, “I think maybe more students talking to other students about their experiences, and I think in general for Georgetown to

women have an absolutely different experience.

“I would come late at night,” he recounts, “and just hear people trying to throw up. I knew what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t necessarily what was happening to me.”

promote more sort of mindfulness, meditation, holistic kinds of events.

Anything that promotes wellbeing.”

McDaniel said, “It’s going to take things like better education on prevalence of eating disorders in college, on helping people who suffer from them. The Women’s Center and Health Education do a tremendous amount of that already, but I think if it had a greater impact on the student body, it would go a long way. I know it would have enormously helped me in high school.

Eating disorders can be life-long ordeals that almost never truly go away, but with effort and support, people can learn to cope and move on. “I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten over these kinds of things,” said Pérez, “I still think about it every day, but I think the process that can help start it really is thinking about the self-harm that I did.”

Pérez never received formal treatment for his condition, but through personal reflection and support from peers in the LGBTQ community, he started on the road to recovery. He has got rid of his scale and his vegetarian diet.

I never received formal treatment for my condition either. Even if they knew, my family never said a word to me about it. Perhaps it wasn’t possible for their straightA, varsity athlete to be starving her body. My awakening came ironically it came in my school’s cafeteria.

It was as normal a day as any other, I was busy chatting with friends when I saw a familiar face across the table. It was an old rival from middle school. I always avoided her, but that day, I couldn’t stop looking at her. One look of her skeletal features and I knew she purged, like me. I was nothing like this girl. I wanted no part of anything she did. I can’t explain why, but that was my moment. I never purged again after that day, but I was lucky. Most people don’t get the luxury of a moment.

“She’s skin and bone,”my father said. He sounded upset, but I was elated. My effort was paying off.

***

Five minutes became 10, and 10 became 30. I was gasping, I was in agony, I was in ecstasy. I did everything in my power not to cry. The walls were thin and no one could know. I lay on the floor the vent on the ceiling faded in and out of focus. Then a knock pierced the air. Shit, they heard. They know.

They’re going to stop me. I stumbled to my knees, still shaking. I pulled my sweatshirt over my head to hide the blood, and unlocked the door. It was my sister. Could she have her towel, the one with Princess Aurora on it?

My breathing relaxed. Of course.

Counseling and Psychiatric Services and Student Health Education Services have launched several initiatives to raise awareness on campus about eating disorders. On such initiative is training RAs to identify and help students deal with eating disorders, running publications such as the Stall Street Journal, and engaging in outreach education programs such as the Engelhard Project, which integrates health and wellness education into courses ranging from hard science to philosophy.

Although these initiatives aim to establish the right precedent, people living with eating disorders often do not wish to acknowledge the issue, and, consequently, may not be proactive enough to seek out the resources that Day and her colleagues have to offer.

“So much of what I went through happened because I was in denial that I had a problem,” McDaniel said. “The sooner that they admit it to themselves, the sooner that

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10 the georgetown voice

march 14, 2013

Subversive Polk Street is filled with seasons of love

by Elizabeth Baker A hustler wrestling with addiction, a transvestite dancer struggling to conquer her “mind and body” problem, a successful businessman trying to salvage what is left of a crumbling neighborhood, and an “indestructible” Reverend tired of identifying bodies of the ones he loves. These are just some of the stories celebrated in Polk Street, written and directed

by T. Chase Meacham (COL ’15).

A co-production between Mask & Bauble and Nomadic, Polk Street is inspired by Joey Plaster’s “Polk Street Stories,” a special radio broadcast sponsored by NPR. Notorious during the 20th century, Polk Street is a small area in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District that attracted a large homosexual population in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The first drag queens, or “female impersonators,” appeared in this area as early as Prohibition, and since then it has been infamous for gay bars, prostitution, and drugs. As the Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s ignited, the gay population grew, expanding to an area called the Castro, which had a cleaner reputation than the sinful Tenderloin District.

The writing of Polk Street immediately draws the audience in, inviting all of us to “lay your dreams on me, child.“ The proximity between stage and audience

lends an air of realism to the show; it’s easy to lose yourself and believe you’re sitting in the bar on stage, or underneath the sole lamplight, an iconic feature of that part of San Francisco. Each actor masterfully “breaks the fourth wall,” talking to audience members as if they were old friends, then immediately reeling themselves back in to interact with another character on stage.

Meacham is able to take the audience from the past to the present in a blink of an eye, without missing a beat or leaving anyone behind.

Despite the play’s confrontation of serious issues like HIV/AIDS, speed, and the merciless thugs of the street, there are great moments of levity within the dialogue, masterfully delivered by the cast.

This is especially impressive, given the unorthodox nature of the play and the zaniness of its characters. Grayson Ullman (COL ’16) donned high heels, wig, and female clothing to appear as Ms. Tammy Levine, the queen of the “other others,” while Gregory Kaiser (COL’16) portrays a former community member who has decided to make a better life for himself. That being said, his character doesn’t want to leave his past friends and lovers behind with the area itself.

When talking to Producer Arianne Price (COL ’15), I asked her if it was easy to tackle such difficult concepts and characters. “We were

SHANNON WALSH

After this profound exchange, he just asked if he could phone home.

very upfront in the audition process,” she said, “but we made sure this was a safe space for our actors, and did a lot of character work.”

When I asked both Price and Meacham about what they hoped the Georgetown commu-

nity would take away from Polk Street, they had the same answer: to start a dialogue. “In my mind, I see the play as Act I,” Meacham said, “and what happens out in the lobby after the show is Act II.” Price acknowledges the mate-

Laura makes the sun shine

I was having one of those days. It was nauseatingly bright all morning and dreary when the afternoon covered the sky with clouds. No one was saying the right thing, and to the friend that asked if I was “sick or tired or something”: yeah, don’t even say that when I’m in a good mood.

On the way back from class, prepared to hide from the world in a shuttered room with only Netflix for company, I got the unfailingly splendid email from the RHO announcing a package.

The contents: The Original of Laura, a “novel in fragments” published more than 30 years after author Vladimir Nabokov’s death and just released in paperback.

The result: Netflix was replaced with reading the whole book in one 40-minute sitting, and “one of those days” was replaced with a hell of a good mood.

Laura is the meditation of a dying narrator whose philandering wife is the eponymous protagonist; it was a dying author’s introspection on love, sex, and art.

Unfortunately, even a monolith of exceptionality must eventually fade and die. Professor Ward, the protagonist, decides to rid himself of his life through repeated, gradual amputation, beginning at his toes until he disappears entirely. He said, “the process of dying by auto-dissolution afforded the greatest ecstasy known to man.”

By writing this last novel, Nabokov almost took an active role in his own deterioration as well, beautifying it and impassioning himself (and therefore his readers) as he always did.

But don’t read The Original of Laura just yet if you’re a Nabokov novice, as it’s not one of his “masterpieces”—I actually hesitate to call it a novel, even if “in fragments” as the cover page suggests. Instead, it’s a glimpse into Nabokov’s mind, his writing process, and his skill, which is significant even in his last years.

Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, published it after the death of his moth-

er, who followed her husband’s dying wish to refuse to release of the work in progress. And it is just that—the paperback is made up of 138 one-sided notecards in Nabokov’s own hand. Which is the coolest thing I could imagine—this is a personal invitation to get to know one of the most incredible artists of the last century.

Nabokov calls writing and Lepidoptera (the study of butterflies) “the most intense pleasures known to man”—probably not the first criteria you look for in an idol. Still, he is a classier and more fitting Most Interesting Man in the World; the only thing he has in common with the Dos Equis man is his disregard for the opinions of others.

Under the Covers

by Emilia Brahm a bi-weekly literary column Nabokov didn’t allow others’ opinions to limit him. In fact, he totally disregarded common wisdom, forming his own, untainted opinions. The dedication in The Original of Laura reads: “To all the worldwide contributors of opinion, comment, and advice, of whatever its stripe, who imagined that their views, sometimes deftly expressed, might somehow change mine.”

He distanced himself from most politics and abhorred the Soviet Union, having escaped Russia just before its formation.

But more interestingly, he distanced himself from anything he found boring, unartistic, and disingenuous. His greatest dislikes, as he revealed in a 1968 New York Times interview, were all things “philistine…and bourgeois.”

Perhaps his obstinacy and sass were rude at times, but who else do you know dares to critique the idols of his genre? The man scorned Dostoyevsky and some of Tolstoy with solid reasoning and no qualms, though they are the heroes of the homeland in which he had so much pride (pre-USSR).

rial is out of most people’s comfort zones, but she hopes that students will recognize that for some people, this kind of life is reality. “You never know what someone’s story is until you ask,” Price said with a smile.

Though his mother tongue was Russian, Nabokov was fluent in five languages. I know I wish I could accomplish this feat alone, and I bet my fellow SFS-ers feel the same. Nabokov didn’t always write in English, but when he did, he wrote novels like Lolita (one of the most banned and honored novels of the 20th century). There is even an almost perverse pleasure in reading this master’s unfinished and unpolished ideas in The Original of Laura. Even on his scattered notecards, Nabokov is a magician with words.

I doubt I’ll ever write a sentence as stunning as some of Nabokov’s prose. We can’t be as intellectual, individualistic, and sure of ourselves every day.

Sometimes, your head hurts, you can’t stand the aggravating bros sitting behind you in lecture, you’re a little (or a lot) hung-over, everyone says the wrong thing, and no one “gets it”—fine, no amount of comforting and empathy will change your mind. But try reading Nabokov. He gets it in a way that a human presence rarely does, because he writes “for myself in multiplicate, a not unfamiliar phenomenon on the horizon of shimmering deserts… not for sticky groups,” as he said in the same New York Times interview.

Let his passion, his incredible wordplay, and his imagery wake you from your funk. Nabokov’s prose (and you really want to call it prose, not words) is magnetic in spite of its brutal subject matter, making the brief story almost irrelevant in comparison to the way it’s communicated. First, read one or two of his novels (Lolita; Pale Fire) and some of his short stories.

If you fall in love with him and the feeling his books bring like I think you will, read The Original of Laura. It will remind you to seek out beauty and individuality in your life, even (and especially) on “one of those days.”

Stop Russian and get to Stalin with Emilia at ebrahm@georgetownvoice.com

georgetownvoice.com

“Josh cut off his penis because something came out of my vagina!” — Piranha 3DD

the georgetown voice 11

Fragmentation deconstructs reality Reviews, Haiku’d

by Sam Wolter

If you happen to be one of the many people who decry abstract art to be nothing more than blobs of paint haphazardly splattered on canvas, then the Morton Fine Art Gallery’s newest exhibit, Fragmentation and Integration, probably isn’t for you. If you have an appreciation for the form or a mind open to exploring new mediums, however, the exhibit offers a thought provoking experience for both art-enthusiasts and newcomers alike, largely due to its laid-back environment and the relative accessibility of some of the works.

The set-up of the exhibit is simple and lets the art speak for itself, with the pieces hanging from bare white walls and no overly complex lighting. With the exception of two pieces hanging on the far wall of the gallery, Fragmentation and Integration divides the room into two halves, with the work of Andrei Petrov

found on the left and that of GA Gardner on the right.

While both artists’ work is certainly impressive, I found myself particularly drawn to Petrov’s paintings and the contemplation they encouraged. Working with oil and a variety of differently sized canvases, Petrov’s six paintings deal with the idea of fragments of memory and the mind’s attempts to put them back together.

This overriding concept is most easily spotted in Petrov’s first two pieces on display, the aptly titled “Cognitive Distortion” and “Moroccan Field Trip.” In the background of the latter painting, a series of stripes gradually grows messier and more jagged toward the right of the canvas. What most immediately draws the eyes, however, is a ribbon-like line flowing through the middle of the piece.

To me, this curving line stuck out like a single coherent thought lost amongst a swirl of various ideas.

COURTESY MORTON FINE ART

“But surely this must allude to the artist’s struggle to think of shit to paint.”

Interesting, but somewhat less captivating, are Gardner’s pieces. Created primarily with magazine and book cutouts and arranged in a paint collage format, the Trinidad native’s work focuses in part on his cultural identity. The most prominently displayed piece, “Home,” showcases this connection to the artist’s homeland and through its lush hues of green evokes images of a Caribbean jungle.

The highlight of Gardner’s segment was the final piece, “Red, White, Blue, and Black,” a massive work featuring cutout strips of multiple colors crisscrossing throughout the canvas. While largely without white space near the top, the piece opens up toward the bottom and creates a visual progression that led to more room for exploration than any of Gardner’s other works.

While crafted from different mediums and engaging the viewer in very different ways, the works of Gardner and Petrov complement each other in a unique manner that I can’t quite put my finger on.

While certainly abstract, much of the work is still accessible enough that even a contemporary art novice like myself can enjoy and glean some meaning from it. With its small size and comfortable atmosphere, Fragmentation and Integration is a good choice for anybody looking to let their mind drift and enjoy art in an intimate setting.

Admission Liz Lemon goes through College applications but Doesn’t go to there G.I. Joe: Retaliation These bad-ass actors Walk like sheep into a film Destined to be shit.

The Host Parasitic love Is just a bit worse than Vampire romance Jurassic Park 3D A classic movie Meets 3D. What have we done To deserve this fate?

Spring Breakers Cancun looks tame next To the shenanigans Of these crazy girls. jOBS Jobs will roll in his Grave knowing Ashton Kutcher Is playing the lead.

—Julia Lloyd-George & Kirill Makarenko

It’s hard to deny a mandate to Chilean political film No

by Will Collins After taking Cannes 2012 by storm and snagging an Oscar nomination, director Pablo Larraín’s No is finally stateside. Following the media campaign launched against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during his 1988 plebiscite election, Larraín’s film also presents a fascinating critique of mainstream media and a harrowing tale of survival and victory under the repressive regime.

In the run up to a straight up-ordown vote to call for new elections in Chile, Pinochet’s regime caved in to international pressure and allowed opposition forces to advertise on state television. No’s fictional central character René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), runs the underdog “No” campaign advocating new elections.

Bucking the advice of anti-regime politicians, he opts for a strategy based on kitschy, modern advertis-

ing techniques rather than serious political commentary. Democracy is sold to the public like a can of coke or bottle of perfume, tagged with a catchy jingle and the slogan “Chile, happiness is on its way.”

Larraín adds a personal element to the film by weaving this gritty tale of an oppressive government with the story of René’s crumbling family.

Bernal’s dual nature of youthfulness and astounding maturity is perfectly suited to portraying the alternate sides of René’s campaign of “happiness” and his troubled marriage.

Aesthetically, No utilizes the film grain of 1988. Larraín’s decision to use 3/4” Sony U-matic magnetic tape, the standard of news channels in 1980s Chile, allowed for the seamless integration of historical footage with the fictionalized story.

Though not all of the 15-minute segments are shown, much of the original 1988 “Yes” and “No” foot-

age is interspersed throughout, and effectively so. Most of No’s humor derives from the 1980s appeal of the commercials, and yet the satisfaction of knowing their creation process channels deep sincerity.

The film’s interest in the role of media in political elections, be it through sugarcoated jingles or brutal documentary, also crops up as it explores the idea of a creator’s satisfaction with his or her work. René works in television, not just in the “No” campaign. His boss runs the “Yes” campaign, inevitably causing tension; the government keeps a close watch on those involved in the “No” campaign.

A key scene offering resolution between René and his boss Lucho Guzmán, played by the remarkably smug Alfredo Castro, occurs just before the climactic election. Guzmán acknowledges that René’s happiness campaign—using rainbows,

pop music, and inflated joy—is strong enough to win. When the results are finally announced, however, René absorbs his triumph solemnly; he knows his future work in media will be similarly superficial, but without holding half the weight.

No, both truthful and visually idiosyncratic, offers sub-

stance in twice-removed fiction.

It’s rare that a film so authentically reflects another form of media, especially one from another culture and era, but Larraín’s creation succeeds in revealing the truth behind the smoke and mirrors of the Chilean political campaign.

IMDB

“Maybe if I just keep walking and avoiding eye contact, they won’t notice me.”

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

march 14, 2013

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

Mindless Behavior, All Over the World, Interscope Records It’s not difficult to imagine the kind of drunken scenario in which teen band Mindless Behavior was named, and their latest album fails to indicate any deeper thought.

Though promising addictive tracks that perfectly fit the definition of “ear candy,” All Around the World offers the kind of forgettable music that we see flit across pop charts on a daily basis.

Hardly signaling a departure from the pop sensation’s debut, #1 Girl, every song on All Around the World makes reference to a girl whether it be falling in love, getting a girl, or having girl problems.

The only exception is “I Lean,” a very repetitive song featuring Soulja Boy of “Crank That” fame— or is it shame?

The quartet’s artistic sophistication doesn’t seem to have progressed much since the release of their first album, remaining consistently superficial. For example, the lyric, “follow me on Twitter” in the song “Pretty Girl,” (featuring a new young artist, Jacob Latimore) echoes a reference to the social media site in the lyric, “a hundred forty characters/ is more than enough,” in the band’s debut song, “My Girl.”

Even so, it is clear that the group is purposefully trying to appeal to pre-teen and teenage girls with this album and, overall, they are successful. The album both begins and ends with fast-paced, catchy songs that people can dance and start a party with (“All Around the World” and “Brightside”). Additionally, almost all the songs sport catchy hooks and upbeat rhythms, perfect to appeal to your little sister, but an irritation to almost anyone else.

“Band-Aid,” which appears in the second half of the album, represents the height of Mindless Behavior’s power. One of the slower tunes, it still includes a catchy beat that meshes well with tweenie bop harmonies Although the lyrics are more than a little cheesy (“I can be your Band-Aid”), it’s likely a go-to for any girl going through her first breakup.

That’s some funny shit

Tommy Wiseau: a name that sends a shiver down the spine of scrupulous movie critics. This heavily-accented film auteur came into the spotlight when audiences took note of his pet project The Room. What should have been an easily dismissed shitty two-hour soap opera gained an instant cult following precisely because its inane script, sloppy acting, and lurid sex scenes appealed to audiences’ craving for that rare “incomprehensibly bad” movie.

Categorizing films as “best worst movies” is not an easy task.

Still, there are a few criteria that can be met for a film to merit that label. First of all, one must look at the filmmaker’s intentions. Tommy Wiseau set out to make a respected adult drama. He spectacularly failed at this task, adding an unintentional comic core to a melodramatic script. Although Wiseau has recently declared that his intentions for The Room were

more along the lines of creating a black comedy, his comments are pure defense. You see, for this first criterion to be met, one must be laughing at—not with—the filmmakers.

Let’s take a look at another kitschy masterpiece. Starship Troopers, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 sci-fi epic, has it all: sex, violence, and aliens. But what sets this apart from the typical flesh/blood-fest is its inconceivably corny acting. The cast is comprised of youthful blondhaired beauties who would be more at home getting spray tans, not out in space valorously fighting evil bugs for the sake of the human race’s survival.

Exhibit A: Denise Richards plays the role of a precocious spaceship pilot who is eventually given command of a ship that carries thousands of crewmates.

Who the fuck made that casting decision? Didn’t anyone on set

The vapidity of such lyrics is still difficult to ignore, however, and the likable beats dominating the album can’t exactly compensate for the blatant lack of thought behind its creation. Though there are always times we want to be mindless, the music for such moments can hardly stand the test of time.

Voice’s Choices: “All Around The World,” “Band-Aid” —Zakiya Jamal

Eric Clapton, Old Sock, Bushbranch Records As the only three-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Eric Clapton has little left to accomplish. Already described as one of the most influential guitarists of all time, the British rock and blues artist can look on his 51-year notice how preposterous the situation was? It’s these little details surreptitiously slipping through Hollywood’s fine-combed editing rooms that turn shitty movies into entertainment incarnate.

Exhibit B: Casper Van Dien, who plays protagonist Johnny Rico, is publicly punished by way of lashings. Van Dien’s Ken-like appearance gives the scene the

Reel Talk

by John Sapunor a bi-weekly column about film excessive sexual undertones rampant throughout the movie. Want proof? When commenting on the S&M-like scene, an IMDB user asked the question: “anyone else get a boner from this scene (and I’m a straight male)?”

For one reason or another, great shitty movies have an obsession with these kinds of lascivious encounters, implied or not. This lashing scene is just the tip of the

career with a certain pride, but he does so with tremendous gratitude directed toward the early influences that brought him to the top of the music world. Clapton’s 20th studio album, Old Sock, pays tribute to these giants by respectfully drawing on their repertoire while injecting his unique Clapton-esque style into every note.

A cover of Taj Mahal’s “Further On Down The Road” immediately establishes a pleasant reggae vibe underscored by echoing backing vocals, occasional dobro riffs, and a leisurely harmonica solo. Clapton’s own unmistakable guitar dominates the latter quarter of the song, providing a smooth contrast to the otherwise rough, though not unwelcome, instrumentation.

This reggae pulse comes in swells that add a dynamic quality to Old Sock. Peggy Lee’s “The Folks Who Live On The Hill,” for instance, slows the tempo significantly resulting in a jazz staple made irresistibly mellow by every participating instrument, from the warm vocals and blues guitar chords to the accompanying accordion and strings.

The beat returns in full force on “Your One And Only Man,” a cover of Otis Redding’s soul ballad. A harmonica and Clapiceberg in Starship Troopers. It’s filled to the brim with nude co-ed shower scenes, fucking in tents, and some risqué shots of Denise Richards. How they passed through the producers’ supervision is a mystery not worth exploring. Nevertheless, this ridiculous excessiveness unintentionally creates comedic gold. Once again, we’re laughing at the filmmakers and actors (and their private parts), not with them.

There’s always been an audience for poorly-made B-films, but it’s a special occasion when a big budget blockbuster is able to mimic a B-movie’s immoderation. Still, one must be able to spot the imitators who, out of their own volition, attempt to make their movies hilariously shitty. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez tried this with their double-feature Grindhouse.

The differences between this and an authentic grindhouse film couldn’t have been more apparent. The actors were too familiar

ton’s steady, driving guitar back the gruff verses and powerful bluesy growls. Even so, the track only hints at the 67-yearold singer’s true capabilities.

Clapton saves his full vocal prowess for his two new tracks.

“Gotta Get Over” is a proper rock ‘n’ roll anthem that rivals that of the most practiced blues vocalists with inviting tones complementing the signature clean guitar solos. “Every Little Thing” features the same vocal range while adding a legato style that allows Clapton’s voice to ring through the verses before backup singers enter into an energetic call-andresponse dialogue over a resurging reggae rhythm.

Though Eric Clapton waxes nostalgic about the melodies of his past for much of the album, he does not allow the reminiscence to diminish the overflowing virtuosity bursting from the surface of the LP. The two masterful originals blend well with the rest of the material, allowing Old Sock to create a comfortable atmosphere that, while incredibly familiar and still aging, fits perfectly.

Voice’s Choices: “Gotta Get Over,” “Our Love Is Here To Stay” —Kirill Makarenko and the script was a little too aware of its “badness”. Still, the movie was more of a tribute than an imitation, so these charges can be overlooked. The moral of the story: if you’re laughing at the movie you’re making, then it can’t be categorized alongside The Room and Starship Troopers in the pantheon of great shittiness.

The unexpected is what makes us laugh the hardest. I mean, there are a few great action scenes and special effects in Starship Troopers, but it is characterized by the gaping flaws that make it comedic above all else. It’s what creates that undeniable connection to its disparate peers—The Room, Troll 2, and Battlefield Earth. We sit and wait for their successors, but like a stroke of genius, their arrivals cannot be predicted. If you’re looking for fillers in the meantime, though, spoiler alert: Piranha 3DD is double the awfulness.

Show John your gaping flaws at jsapunor@georgetownvoice.com

georgetownvoice.com

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the georgetown voice 13

- Christy Geaney

voices

14 the georgetown voice

march 14, 2013

Chavez sparked the revolution, time to set it on fire

by Patricia Cipollitti Hugo Chavez is dead. As a Venezuelan of my generation it’s a reality I find difficult to accept, or even wrap my head around. Chavez came to power in 1999—in other words, he and his revolutionary movement have dominated the national discourse for 14 out of my 20 years of life. I’ve known little else, and it’s difficult to imagine a Venezuela without Chavez.

For better or worse, Chavez was no ordinary president. He was a leader who fearlessly challenged the status quo through his charisma and strength of will, who successfully mobilized the popular masses behind a powerful, revolutionary message of equality and solidarity, and radically changed the course of Venezuela’s history forever.

I can’t doubt the positive legacy that Chavez leaves behind. Before his spectacularly unprecedented 1999 electoral victory, a relatively small elite controlled Venezuelan political life. The state was repressive, corrupt, and perpetuated an unequal and oppressive social structure that left little room for the voices of the marginalized. Although corruption unfortunately continues to plague the country’s governance, under Chavez’s leadership Venezuela has at the very

least been able to achieve the most equal income distribution in all of Latin America.

Through his program of Socialism in the 21st Century, Chavez has been able to redistribute oil revenues to significantly improve the well-being of Venezuelans across social strata. The numbers speak for themselves—after gaining control of the oil industry in 2002, Chavez’s government was able to cut poverty in half, reduce extreme poverty by 70 percent, and decrease unemployment from 20 percent in 1999 to 7 percent in 2012.

Of course, these successes are framed by a dangerous dependence on oil revenues, rampant inflation, and an intentional alienation of domestic and foreign investment to diversify the economy. This is not to mention the gross inefficiency of government-administered services and, the Venezuelan opposition’s most common critique, a deadly upward trend in violence that is reflected in the third highest homicide rate in the hemisphere. These are flagrant oversights on the part of the Chavez administration.

Chavez, or someone like him, was necessary for Venezuela. A movement built around the empowerment of the disenfranchised was bound to spring up at some point given the deep social discon-

tent that had simmered below the surface for decades before 1999.

Chavez had many faults. He was a strongman, sometimes repressive of those who publicly stood against him, who had a flair for the dramatic. Yet, looking past his inflated ego, I credit him with waking up a nation that had become too comfortable with existing structures of power and oppression.

Chavez’s commitment to equality, solidarity, and the “protagonistic and participatory democracy” enshrined in the 1999 Constitution was manifested in his actions. That which I find most valuable in his legacy is Chavismo’s strengthening of the grassroots social movements focused on issues ranging from environmental conservation to gender equality, as well as his emphasis on establishing mechanisms for democratic governance on the most basic local level. The strengthening of socalled communal councils during his tenure is one of many examples.

Even so, his removal from office has been a long time coming.

Chavez himself was beginning to grow complacent with Venezuela’s progress, when in fact Venezuela is far from the socialist utopia that the international left perceives it to be.

In the last few years, he has ignored unacceptable levels of violence nationwide and failed to address the

country’s crumbling economy, as the latest inflation rate rivals Argentina’s at 20.1 percent, and a scarcity of the most basic food staples like corn, flour, milk, and sugar remains persistent. Most seriously, it is the urban working class majority that suffers most from these challenges.

I’m grateful to Chavez for igniting the revolution, but for the last few years it’s been time to pass along the torch to someone else.

At the next presidential election on Apr. 14, Venezuelans will choose between Nicolas Maduro, the former union leader and foreign minister that Chavez hand-picked as his successor before passing away, and Henrique Capriles Radonski, the dynamic opposition leader who amassed almost 45 percent of the popular vote in last October’s presidential elections. Re-elected as governor of Miranda, Venezuela’s second most popular state, last December, Capriles has been wildly popular not just among wealthier Venezuelans but among a large portion of the lower classes who have grown disillusioned with Chavismo.

Maduro has sworn before God and the sword of Simon Bolivar to continue the revolution, but is nowhere near as charismatic as his predecessor. In fact, he seems almost disingenuous, and has not hesitated to play dirty in engaging

rise to unsustainable, even uninhabitable levels. However, we tend to forget the current and real threat posed by these same companies to people all around us. We forget that people today are getting sick, losing access to water and land, and having their rights violated every day.

It’s easy to separate ourselves from people in need, from the future. It’s easy to write off the fight against climate change and the fight for divestment as something that doesn’t matter now. It’s easy to detach ourselves from people in need when it doesn’t affect us and when we don’t see these things happening in front of us, especially from our position of privilege.

I’ve been hearing these stories for a while a now. I’ve seen the pictures of people lighting their tap water on fire and the devastation caused to the tar sands in Canada.

I’ve met people who don’t have any drinkable water, due by the fracking site nearby, and whose families and friends are getting sick. I come from a community that hasn’t been infected like this, but that has the potential to be, even if it’s a few years away. My fear, and when I say fear, I mean a deep anxiety that stresses me out more than an organic chemistry exam or financial aid, is that these stories I hear and see will be reflected in my mountains, destroying my North Carolina community.

When we refuse to act with the individuals affected by climate change, we condemn their struggles and suffering to irrelevance.

When we sit back and distance ourselves from climate change and pollution just because we’re not the ones getting sick, we are belittling and ignoring those who are. We hear these stories, we listen to their tellers, and we shake our heads and say “that’s too bad” and go on studying or running a school or investing in the very companies perpetuating environmental injustice on our planet. By failing to join the fight to stop this injustice, we become party to it, standing idly by as communities that could be ours under different circumstance are destroyed for the sake of greed and development.

How did we reach the point where we can watch the world burn around us and watch our friends and neighbors lose their rights and their lives? And more importantly, what right do we have to ignore those stories for the sake of profit and individual gain?

Most of these frontline groups are in minority and low-income communities and, just like the fight for labor, for immigrant rights, and for fair food, the fight against fossil fuel companies is a fight against the systemic violence that perpetuates apathy and greed.

As soon as we say “that’s bad for those people, but...”, we are contributing to the power structure that is condemning, denigrating, and destroying communities. The question I keep asking is how can we justify this to ourselves? It’s not that we don’t know the effects of the fossil fuel industry on people today—not in a few years or decades, but today. We know that they’re killing the land. And so, with full knowledge, how can we put ourselves above these communities?

I’m not encouraging people to swoop in on these affected communities with a cape and save everything. I’m encouraging people to fight in ways they can. I’m a Georgetown student who is pretty removed from the frontlines of en-

polarizing rhetoric to discredit the opposition, going so far as to call Capriles a fascist. On the other hand, for all of the social justice and unity Capriles the moderate claims to pursue, it is difficult to look beyond the right-wing, neoliberal interest groups that back his campaign.

However, as a very watereddown version of Chavez, lacking that characteristic spark, Maduro merely promises more of a discourse that has already begun to stagnate. Judging from his progressive track record as governor of Miranda, I am confident that Capriles is speaking earnestly when he commits to social justice, transparency, and democracy. And most importantly, even if the more right-wing interests that back him prove to be stronger than I foresee, I believe that the civil society empowered during these last 14 years will not allow a reversion to the Venezuela of before—because in the long run, it is ordinary Venezuelans that will ensure the peace, justice, and solidarity we seek in our country.

Patricia Cipollitti is a sophomore in the SFS. Like Otto, she donates clothes to the thrift shop so that Macklemore has something to wear.

To invest in America’s communities, divest from fossil fuels

by Sydney Browning Two weeks ago, I attended the Power Up! Divest Now! Student Convergence at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Students working on divestment from across the country gathered to learn from each other and share tools and ideas to help build a student movement.

We heard from activists on the frontlines of the fight against climate injustice, living and fighting in communities poisoned by the fossil fuel companies and affected by global warming. They shared stories of illness, death, and oppression, all emanating from the fossil fuel companies embedded in their areas.

Often when we’re talking about climate change, we talk about the future. We talk about how if fossil fuel companies burn all of their reserves, the global temperature will

CHRISTY GEANEY

The humans have no need to worry, if all else fails Otto will tip the scale.

vironmental degradation. So what can I do? I can fight for Georgetown to divest from these companies that are devastating the people around us. That’s something that students can do, they can hold their universities responsible for their investments. And yes, divestment by itself will not reverse the entirety of injustice inflicted upon the world by fossil fuel companies, but it’s a step. The fight for divestment isn’t just about the fight against the global temperature rising; it’s about fighting for those communities that are facing the threat posed by the fossil fuel industry today.

Divestment isn’t simply withdrawing financial holdings from these companies, it’s withdrawing Georgetown’s investment in the violence and oppression directed at these communities. It’s a tactic, just like pipeline blockades, petitions, giant rallies, and tree-sits. In one of the most pressing justice issues facing us, we have to use all strategies and all steps in order to change. And we can change things.

We, as students, can fight and win.

Sydney Browning is a sophomore in the College.

Like Otto, she is environmentally friendly and turns paper into trees.

voices

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15

Unregulated drone wars threaten U.S. prestige abroad

by Bardia Rahmani & Sam Wolter The Senate has finally confirmed John Brennan as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, yet controversy over the Obama administration’s drone program still lingers. The criticism came to a head last week with Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster of Brennan’s nomination in which he questioned the use of drones against American citizens and pressed the Obama administration about recently released Department of Justice memos.

In the memos, the Obama administration advances four criteria for the use of unmanned combat drones. The target of a drone attack must be, first, a “senior operational leader” that, second, poses an “imminent threat” to American national security and whose capture is, third, “infeasible.” Finally, the

drone attack itself must be consistent with “law of war principles.”

While Paul Rand’s focus on the hypothetical use of combat drones on American soil was sensationalist, there is still a pressing need for greater scrutiny of our drone operations. The Obama administration’s four criteria are sound safeguards in theory, yet the gap between theory and practice has been troublingly wide. In eight years, the George W. Bush administration only approved 52 strikes in Pakistan, which was increased by 310 under Obama. Since 2008, the CIA has shifted away from drafting a list of high-value al-Qaeda leaders and instead uses “signatures,” or strikes based on suspicious behavior.

The deteriorating standard for drone attacks is problematic. First, we have increasingly targeted what one senior Pakistani official calls “mere foot soldiers” that

KAREN BU

This drone only kills with kindness, Otto Porter style. #OttoPorterFacts

Birth of a self-made man

The thought of being my own boss is surreal. Taking on some kind of entrepreneurial endeavor, making my own hours, being responsible for a group of people, and doing things my way—it’s a dream, and something I certainly desire in the future.

My entrepreneurship professor went over a number of financial benefits to starting your own business, focusing mainly on the favorable tax stipulations afforded to entrepreneurs, especially over their nine-to-five counterparts.

But while it sounds great, I couldn’t help but think of how risky it is. What’s more, the financial backing needed for such an endeavor could be high. All that is assuming I’ve had a few years of work under my belt, like the majority of entrepreneurs.

Then I did a little more thinking, back to freshman year and one of my closest friends at Georgetown, James Li (MSB ’13). He has always forged his own path, despite the lure of the traditional MSB route that promises a stable future.

For a student to become an entrepreneur amidst classes, internships, and the like is pretty difficult.

With his startup, Encore HQ, Li took a risk and ran with it. His application features a slick platform that allows nonprofits and social impact organizations to create quick and effective newsletters to showcase their stories.

It has taken his entire time at Georgetown to get it right—at least in my estimation. Li feels he always has work to do, a characteristic he shares with my like-minded roommate, Joshua Leslie (COL ’13).

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pose a long-term but certainly not an “imminent” threat to the U.S. Second, monitoring suspicious behavior instead of compiling a list of leaders means that we frequently mistake innocent civilians for enemy combatants. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that of the some 3,000 killed by drone strikes, between 475 and 900 were civilians, of which 176 were children.

Our current drone policy is ethically worrisome and may be inconsistent with “law of war principles.”

But the greatest consequence of the program may be neither moral nor legalistic, but pragmatic. Drone attacks, especially when perceived as indiscriminate, are deeply unpopular in the Middle East. A 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes project found that of Pakistanis who considered themselves well informed about drones, 97 percent considered drone strikes bad policy. Our extensive use of drones runs the risk of creating more terrorists and alienating potential allies.

Yet, to paraphrase Churchill, our drone program is the worst tactic against terrorism–except for all the others. We are engaged in a never-ending “War on Terror,” and it is unfeasible to pretend that the U.S. is not going to aggressively attack terrorists or suspected terrorists around the globe. Taking the U.S.’s established role as “globo-cop” as

Leslie started Himalayan Spirit 8848 and debuted his first line of clothing this past winter. The fashion company, like Li’s, is socially conscious, as it looks to provide organic clothing and helps provide jobs and other benefits to residents of Leslie’s native Nepal.

The impact these businesses have on their lives is similar to balancing two internships in my own life. There’s a big difference,

Carrying On

by Kevin Joseph

A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

of course, as the two of them are accountable to themselves while I have authority figures to please.

Long-term, I would be far happier with the former. In the present day, though, I don’t know if I have the savvy to work through the speed bumps that come along with starting a business. Experience is key and it’s why Li and Leslie are the exceptions rather than the norm.

Both friends have done tremendous work in that regard— they suffer along with the company’s growing pains but rise up with successes. For now, as students, it’s a strongly vested interest. Check

given, we should focus on how to act in a manner that results in the least damage possible. With this in mind, we may come to the difficult conclusion that drone strikes, for all their flaws, are nonetheless the best way to fight the new war when compared with our other options.

By most reports, combat drones have decimated al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan. Relative to other courses of action, drone strikes do offer the better possibility for reducing civilian deaths. The highest estimates by the Bureau of Investigative Journalists show civilians as making up around 20 percent of those left dead by drone strikes in Pakistan, compared to ground actions by the Pakistani military upped the figure to 46 percent.

Drones are far from a silver bullet to the national security threats that face our country or a technology that we should necessarily pride ourselves on. But they are effective tools in our arsenal and offer better solutions than anything else; that the Obama administration has used them recklessly at times is not an indictment against drones strikes themselves. Instead of criticizing drones, we must push for changes that will help us use this foreign policy tool more carefully, more responsibly, and more effectively.

One such solution is to transfer jurisdiction of the drone program from the CIA to the Department of

back after these two graduate, though, and the stakes could become higher, as start-ups like these often mark one’s livelihood.

What’s especially impressive to me is how Li and Leslie have advanced their companies without much help from Georgetown. In the past, the University was not so advanced with its entrepreneurial offerings. The typical finance jobs had a pretty clear-cut path and were an easy stepping stone for students from the business school.

Feeding students into that Wall Street setting is an area where Georgetown has always thrived.

It’s possible that Georgetown believed pursuing more entrepreneurial endeavors would hurt its pristine hiring statistics.

The other, more positive spin on things is that they realized the creative minds they had, especially in MSB. It’s a route I often thought of taking before realizing the lack of liberal arts exposure was not up my alley. A strict accounting or finance regimen, for instance, doesn’t teach students to think outside of the box, a tool that’s crucial to starting and maintaining a business.

Back when Li was a freshman, the University did not have many resources for entrepreneurs. That

Defense. The CIA’s authority over drones is a relic of a time when drones were used for intelligence gathering, and its lack of accountability perpetuates poor decision-making. Combat drones are now used as cruise missiles were, meaning that the program belongs inside the DOD, under adequate legal supervision. Further, we can make fewer, more effective strikes by increasing legal oversight of the program. The success of Foreign Intelligence Security Act courts for wiretap surveillance suggests that oversight could work as a legal mechanism. One possibility, supported by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, is a secret court of federal judges that can quickly review and authorize strikes. Another option is to have DOJ lawyers present throughout the decision-making process.

A system of checks and balances can help us make smarter strikes and reduce collateral damage, decreasing the toll to our prestige abroad. Only by placing safeguards on the drone program can we turn our leastworst option into our best option.

Bardia Rahmani and Samuel Wolters are sophomores in the SFS. As members of College Dems their favorite Otto nickname is Otto-matic.

has changed for the better; today they have multiple business plan competitions, a summer startup incubator, an entrepreneurship fellows program, a group of mentors called entrepreneurs-in-residence, and multiple new classes on the field as indicators of the University’s commitment.

The amount of start-up ideas, from Leslie’s to an app that alerts parents of troubled teens when they post suicidal tweets, really struck me. There’s no saturation of good ideas out there. Nor is there one way to approach the craft. There’s no outright bad idea—it’s more a matter of execution and dedication.

“There’s nothing more exciting than having the chance and full control to be able to build something from scratch, solve a real problem you perceive in your world, and work on something you love every day,” Li told me.

Finding that passion was a task that Li and Leslie realized early on.

Others, like me, are still searching.

And that’s fine—because at the very least, we have evidence that hard work can get these businesses off the ground even in a restrictive college environment. It’s up to these two to keep it flying upward.

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT Andy Zhang College, Class of 2016

Majors: Art & Economics

Favorite hobbies: Basketball, Skiing Listening to: Jack Johnson Inspiration: Chuck Close, photorealist painter

Know a Georgetown Artist?

Contact Tiff at tdl25@georgetown.edu with your suggestions!

How did you first get into painting?

I started drawing when I was four, I got into painting with acrylics a little later and started moving into surrealism painting when I was around 13 years old.

When I was studying abroad, I took a photorealism class and now I’m really working in that.

So you say one of your majors is art, is it something you want to do professionally?

It is definitely something I always want to do, but not professionally. Actually, the summer before my freshman year. I was considering giving it up.

Why? Because I’m not very into what is popular in art today. Art today seems to be all about throwing paint on canvas—an idea of art, instead of style. I’m more about the technique.

Your paintings are very realistic; can you tell me about the process?

Thank you. Georgetown has an amazing realism program in the Art Department, but I want to start to incorporate some ideas into my art, not just representation. I approach each painting by dividing it into a bunch of little abstract pieces and work from there.

Do you enjoy the process or the product most?

Well there are parts of the process I do enjoy, like watching the pieces come together, but it can get pretty tedious. I enjoy the product much more.

So congratulations on recently winning the Uncommon Grounds Art Scholarship!

Thank you, one of my friends recommended it to me, so I submitted my portfolio and won $1,000.

Any big plans with the money?

Yes, I am hosting a student art auction that will showcase Georgetown students’ art pieces, which will be for sale. 25 percent of the profits will go to the students and 75 percent will go to a charity.

Which charity?

It’s actually a charity I founded in high school, a non-profit called “Envision Children’s Education Fund,” which works to transform orphanages into schools. We work directly with the orphanages based in China, but want to expand.

That’s incredible! What inspired you to do this?

In my sophomore year of high school, I took a trip to China and was really impacted by the destitute conditions of orphanages throughout the country.

When I got home, a friend and I started collecting donations from family and the community to start our non-profit. Each summer we pull together our funds and send them directly to orphanages in China. It is great because we can circumvent the government taxes and have direct transference to create these schools.

How is organizing the auction going?

I’m starting it with UG Art Scholarship money, but the marketing has proved a bit difficult. I am still actively looking for artists to submit works to get a collection together.

Very excited to see the collection! Have you sold your work before?

Yes, a few pieces, and I have a piece being sold in Beijing but I don’t really like to sell my pieces. Each of my pieces takes me upward of 50 hours, I become attached and naturally it is hard to let go of them.

If you’d like to submit any artwork to the Student Art Auction, send an email to: GUArtAuction@gmail. com