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VOICE the georgetown

IN THE SHADOWS CONFRONTING SEXUAL ASSAULT AT GEORGETOWN

- BY ANA SMITH

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w March 20, 2014 w Volume 46, Issue 25 w georgetownvoice.com

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georgetownvoice.com twitter.com/gtownvoice facebook.com/georgetownvoice

Voice Crossword “Cosmos” by Allison Galezo

ACROSS 1. Nearest star 4. The Tombs after 9 7. Play parts 11. Master Chief’s game 12. Subtle glow 13. Beyond the atmosphere 15. Sagan’s field 17. Kind of eclipse 18. Neighbor of Syr. 19. Most joyful 21. African antelope

22. Scandanavian rug 23. War vet’s woe 24. Comfort 27. Place 28. Ringed planet 30. The sun, e.g.

33. Spheres 36. Poppy drug 38. U.S. space program 39. Morning classes 40. Finishes 41. Clear and comprehensible

43. Record 45. Snorkeling site 46. Magnetic flux density unit 48. Hwys.

50. Glowing gas 51. It’s on tap in Mexico 53. In the style of 56. Owns 58. Milky Way, for one 60. Between liquid and plasma 61. Extraterrestrial 64. Observatory tool 66. Jupiter has 67 67. Vein contents 68. Apparent extremities of the rings of Saturn 69. Son of Seth 70. Topography abbrev.

71. The science guy DOWN 1. Cheeky 2. Extreme 3. Often paired with neither 4. Harbor floaters 5. Carrying a weapon 6. Sun’s emissions 7. Language for the deaf 8. Apple core?

9. Orange-mandarin hybrid

11. Locks 12. Red food coloring ingredient 14. Emission Reduction Unit 16. Stalin’s secret police 20. Herbal brew 25. From ____ Z 26. Like “The Incredibles” 27. Compliment 28. Leaky tire sound 29. Naked 30. Show with Tina Fey 31. Tight 32. Rising to a higher position 34. “Fallout” radiation poisoning units 35. Weight stat.

37. Forest ranger’s degree 42. USPS limbo 47. “Life of Pi” director Lee 49. Full axis rotations 51. Aware 52. Ancient Greek physician 53. Extreme pain 54. Hiatus 55. Between ports 56. Pork 57. Sun burn soother 59. Submolecular unit 62. Music theorist Brian

63. National Space Society 65. Able to

Last Week’s Answers:

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 46.25 March 20, 2014 Editor-in-Chief: Connor Jones Managing Editor: Julia Tanaka General Manager: Nick Albanese Blog Editor: Isabel Echarte News Editor: Claire Zeng

Sports Editor: Chris Almeida Feature Editor: Lucia He Cover Editors: Noah Buyon, Christina Libre Leisure Editor: Dayana Morales-Gomez Voices Editor: Steven Criss Photo Editor: Ambika Ahuja Design Editors: Pam Shu, Sophia Super Page 13 Editor: Dylan Cutler Creative Directors: Amanda Dominiguez, Kathleen Soriano-Taylor, Madhuri Vairapandi Editors-at-Large: Caitriona Pagni, Ana Smith Assistant Blog Editors: Ryan Greene, Marisa Hawley, Kenneth Lee, Laura Kurek Assistant News Editors: Shalina Chatlani, Lara Fishbane, Manuela Tobias Assistant Sports Editors: Chris Castano, Brendan Crowley, Jeffrey Lin, Joe Pollicino Assistant Leisure Editors: Emilia Brahm, Daniel Varghese, Joshua Ward Assistant Photo Editors: Gavin Myers, Joshua Raftis Assistant Design Editors: Leila Lebreton, Andie Pine

Staff Writers:

Sourabh Bhat, Max Borowitz, Grace Brennan, John Connor Buckley, James Constant, Alissa Fernandez, Kevin Huggard, Julia LloydGeorge, Jared Kimler, Lucius Lee, Claire McDaniel, Dan Paradis, Kate Riga, Max Roberts, Jackson Sinnenberg, Deborah Sparks

Staff Photographers:

Marla Abdilla, Katherine Landau, Freddy Rosas

Copy Chief: Grace Funsten Copy Editors:

Judy Choi, Lauren Chung, Eleanor Fanto, Allison Galezo, Juan Daniel Gonçalves, Rachel Greene, Sabrina Kayser, Morgan Manger, Ryan Miller, Samantha Mladen, Nicole Steinberg, Dana Suekoff, Suzanne Trivette

Editorial Board Chair: Julia Jester Editorial Board:

Chris Almeida, Gavin Bade, Emilia Brahm, Patricia Cipollitti, Steven Criss, Isabel Echarte, Lara Fishbane, Juan Daniel Gonçalves, Ryan Greene, Lucia He, Connor Jones, Jeffrey Lin, Ian Philbrick, Ryan Shymansky, Ana Smith, Julia Tanaka

Managing Directors: Mary Bailey-Frank, Allison Manning The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

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 Website: georgetownvoice.com Vox Populi: blog.georgetownvoice.com The opinions expressed in the Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of the Georgetown Voice. The University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Gannett Publishing Services.

All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover: In The Shadows Cover Design: Christina Libre

the georgetown voice 3

AT LEAST IT’S NOT DMT

Room for improvement in emergency response On Tuesday, Georgetown Police Chief Jay Gruber notified the university community via email of possible ricin found in a McCarthy dorm room on the sixth floor after D.C. Fire and EMS were called to investigate earlier that morning. Yesterday, Gruber confirmed that the substance tested positive for ricin, a highly toxic and potentially lethal derivative of castor beans. Surface areas in the dorm room where the substance was found did not test positive for ricin, however, and no evidence was found for any biological threat agents.

The University has handled the situation in a timely and efficient manner, keeping residents of McCarthy informed as the investigation unfolded throughout Tuesday and Wednesday. We also commend Georgetown for providing displaced students in the affected eastern wing of the floor with hotel accommodations on Tuesday night.

This reaction is a significant improvement over the University’s treatment of a

similar incident that occurred in October 2010, when a DMT lab was uncovered on the ninth floor of Harbin. Several miscommunications plagued students the day authorities investigated reports of a drug operation in the dormitory. For instance, shortly after residents received confirmation that they could re-enter the building, they were re-evacuated on the advice of the Drug Enforcement Administration. As investigations proceeded, Harbin was closed off indefinitely with very little information relayed to displaced students.

Though the promptness with which the university communicated updates to McCarthy residents shows that Georgetown has learned from its experience three years ago, there is room for improvement in the way it handles this kind of emergency. It’s not only the university community that has suffered from a paucity of information about the ricin incident, but more importantly, students directly affected by the closing off of their living

quarters have unfairly been kept in the dark about details relevant to their well-being.

For instance, in the email sent by the Office of Residential Living to sixth floor McCarthy residents on Wednesday afternoon allowing them to return to their rooms, there was no mention of whether the substance tested as positive or negative for ricin, and why the rooms needed cleaning. Considering the severity of the situation, and the potential threat posed to students by the findings, it behooves the university to keep students wellinformed about goings-on—especially if residents are being let back into their rooms, and any threat has presumably passed.

We hope that, just as the University learned from 2010’s DMT incident, it will improve its response to any future emergencies in light of its deficient communications strategy over the last two days. The face of uncertainty is one thing—withholding vital information from students who deserve to know what’s going on is quite another.

DON’T BE HASTY

GUSA readership program preemptively cut

The Georgetown University Student Association Senate’s Finance and Appropriations completely cut the Collegiate Readership Program from its draft student activities budget for fiscal year 2015. The program distributes free copies of major newspapers at various locations across campus. Without $14,000 from the student activities fee funding it, the program will be completely eliminated.

According to members of GUSA FinApp, the decision to remove funding to the program was because of a lack of data concerning student use of the program. These members were concerned that faculty and graduate students were taking advantage of a program that was being funded by undergraduate tuition dollars.

Although this concern is legitimate, the decision was made preemptively. This is a

program that has been around for six years and has established itself as a mainstay of campus life. It’s completely dismissive for FinApp to decide that insufficient data is an adequate reason to completely eliminate a program.

Another issue is that there was a lack of both student and faculty input. Eliminating a program that has been around for this long will inevitably affect those members of the Georgetown community who rely on these papers as their news source. The people who depend on the program should have been incorporated into the decisionmaking process and had the option to offer input in some capacity.

In order to adequately address these issues, GUSA FinApp would have to have gathered thorough research on consumption

statistics. If after analysis, it were determined that faculty members were the primary readers and it was not worth student tuition dollars, then alternative funding options should be explored. There will always be people on campus who want to read The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today.

Considering the reading restrictions applied to almost all online newspapers, Georgetown students are limited in their options for access to reliable news sources. An integral component of being an educated student is having global awareness. Therefore, it’s important to look into other ways to continue the Collegiate Readership Program.

Georgetown has the social responsibility to provide its economically diverse community with an accessible link to national and international news.

COMIC RELIEF

Obama’s Between Two Ferns gamble pays off

Last week, the website Funny or Die posted an episode of the satirical talk show series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis in which guest interviewee “Community Organizer” Barack Obama deflected the host comedian’s standard daft questions and plugged the Affordable Care Act website, healthcare.gov.

The video, which had received 18 million views after a week online, provoked a storm of criticism hailing from conservative politicians and pundits. Foremost among them was Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly, who reproached the Galifianakis interview as unbecoming of the president and inconsistent with the projection of strength necessary for the administration to challenge Russia’s recent intervention in Ukraine. O’Reilly’s two criticisms are equally flawed—the first misinformed, the second an attempt to undermine a clear political victory for the president.

In reality, Obama’s Between Two Ferns interview is merely the latest installment

of the president’s signature mix of dry wit and level-headed pragmatism that has paid political dividends. From his infamous June 2009 fly-swatting CNBC interview to successive White House Correspondents’ Dinners to a Mad Men reference in the 2014 State of the Union, Obama is, far from demeaning the office, no stranger to connecting to voters through humor.

Moreover, Obama’s appearance comes with significant precedent. According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who fact-checked O’Reilly after his criticism aired, presidents including Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and W. Bush made appearances on comedy programs during their tenures. Presidents have often used public engagement to cultivate an image, address a demographic or direct a policy agenda directly to the American people—consider FDR’s fireside chats and the contemporary mythology of Kennedy and Reagan.

Indeed it is the sheer spectacle of Obama’s appearance that highlights what

is perhaps O’Reilly’s greatest oversight— that the interview, however much a stunt, achieved its desired effect. Healthcare.gov enrollment, especially among the coveted younger demographic, has skyrocketed almost 40 percent since its release. O’Reilly’s suggestion that the interview damages the administration’s international credibility is a poor bid to sour Obama’s political win.

Ultimately, Obama’s Between Two Ferns appearance did more than boost website traffic and reaffirm his administration’s media savvy. It delivered a satirical censure to critics who selectively idealize the presidential office as both above the common American and above the use of media to advance a political agenda. Parody interviews might not be the most romantic form of political salesmanship, and they might not meaningfully question the president where he merits being questioned, but they do effectively communicate a message. It may have been Obama cracking them, but the jokes ended up being on O’Reilly and other conservatives.

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FBI investigating ricin incident at McCarthy Hall

by Ryan Greene A white powdery substance found in a student’s dorm room on the sixth floor of McCarthy residence hall tested positive for ricin, according to an email from Georgetown Police Chief Jay Gruber sent Wednesday afternoon.

The case is being handled by the FBI, which has identified and taken in a student “subject” for questioning. Gruber said that there is “no immediate threat” to students and that no ricin exposure has been reported.

The University was alerted to the possibility of ricin in a dorm room by a student source on Tuesday night. The Voice spoke to this person, a friend of the subject, who said the subject confided in the source that he possibly “intended to use the substance on another student.”

According to this source, after reporting the details to Counseling and Psychiatric Services but seeing no action, the source went to Dar-

nall Community Director Brynton Lett, the Community Director on duty at the time, who alerted GUPD to the possible threat. The source was not authorized to speak on the matter and did not want to issue any on-the-record statement while the investigation is active.

According to a community-wide email sent by Gruber on Tuesday morning, after this situation developed overnight, the University contacted D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services. While initial field tests for biological agents, which do not include ricin, were negative, subsequent lab tests for ricin came back positive.

“It’s very unlikely that [the lab test] is a false positive at this point,” FBI spokeswoman Jackie Maguire told the Voice.

Maguire confirmed the FBI has identified a subject in the investigation. She declined to identify the subject, saying the FBI will only release his name in the event that it presses charges. She said that terrorist activity is not suspected.

Ricin is a naturally-occurring poison found in castor beans and is capable of killing an adult human with less than a 2 milligram dose.

According to Paul Keim, acting chair for the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, ricin is the most commonly used biological weapon in the United States.

He indicated, however, it is usually “done in a manner that is ineffective. … But its use is a very serious federal offense.”

After the powdery substance was found, the University evacuated 21 residents who occupied the 13 rooms on the east side of McCarthy Hall. According to an email forwarded to the Voice, at approximately 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Director of Residential Education Ed Gilhool told residents they had to leave their rooms by 11:30 a.m. “out of an abundance of caution.”

These residents were not permitted to return to their rooms for 30 hours and were provided with overnight accommodations at the Savoy Hotel.

Resident of the sixth floor of McCarthy Josh Tsung (COL ’15) was not displaced and saw much of the FBI’s investigation on the floor. He described the initial investigation as low activity and observed “just one policeman sitting out in a chair.”

“It wasn’t until 11:30 [a.m.], actually, that everything happened with the FBI,” Tsung said. “I think the hazard control people came and surveyed the area and asked the police to notify everybody to move.”

Tsung saw FBI officials in hazardous materials suits near and inside the subject’s room. He said police and FBI officials were on the floor for four hours and estimated 50 people were on the floor at one time.

At 3:20 p.m. on Wednesday, ResLife gave the students the allclear and let them return to their rooms. Throughout the incident, the University stressed there was no immediate danger to any students.

“In an abundance of caution, the University secured contractors

who specialize in the decontamination of biological threat agents to clean the room under investigation where the contained substance was recovered,” Gruber wrote in the community-wide email.

Gruber also wrote that anyone poisoned by ricin would have to have shown severe symptoms within 24 hours of poisoning. “This window has passed and there are no reports consistent with ricin exposure,” Gruber wrote.

“We [the FBI] did swabs of all sorts of surfaces in the area and those all came back negative,” Maguire added.

As the Voice went to press, the subject in the case had not been charged with a crime and has not been identified as a suspect in the investigation of a crime.

Additional reporting by Shalina Chatlani, Isabel Echarte, and Connor Jones Updates on the investigation will be posted on Vox Populi at blog.georgetownvoice.com.

GUSA promotes conservation Healy Pub vendor to be chosen by April in water week event series

by Shalina Chatlani

by Grace Brennan The GUSA Freshmen Sustainability Council and Office of Sustainability organized the first Georgetown Water Week to highlight issues of water conservation and sustainability at Georgetown.

The environmental initiative began Monday and ends this Friday. “[Many students are] not aware of water conservation issues and filtration issues and how much water goes into food production,” said Makaiah Mohler (COL ’16), head of the Freshmen Outreach Committee, which includes the Sustainability Council.

“Most people don’t realize that you use more water eating one burger than brushing your teeth for an entire year.”

Events will discuss topics including Leo’s water footprint, usage of filtration stations throughout campus, and water pollution in surrounding D.C. rivers. The events are intended to challenge students to find new ways to conserve water, such as refraining from eating meat for one day a week.

“Because meat feeds, it requires even more water,” said

Professor Mark Giordano, who specializes in water issues. “Shutting off the tap to save water is important, but we can save much more water through diet and the way we handle our food.”

Director of the Office of Sustainability Audrey Stewart also hopes to highlight efforts for water conservation on campus implemented in conjunction with the Office of Facilities Management. According to Stewart, such efforts include adding 23 new water bottle filling stations around campus and installing an “integrated water management system” at Regents Hall, “with features like low-flow fixtures and rainwater capture used for flushing toilets.”

GUSA Secretary for Sustainability Gabriel Pincus (SFS ‘14), however, hopes to see more action to improve Georgetown’s sustainability.

“I would like to see us take the lead on implementing innovative water-saving technologies such as low-flush toilets, gray water irrigation, and rainwater catchments,” he wrote in an email to the Voice. “We have a long way to go.”

University officials said this week that they will decide on a vendor by April for the Healy Family Student Center Pub, which is slated to open in August along with the rest of the New South Student Center.

According to Associate Vice President of Auxiliary Business Services Joelle Wiese, the University is choosing from a list that has been narrowed down to “less than half a dozen” candidates from 32 potential vendors.

The original list of 32 was compiled by a student-administration committee after former vendor Fritz Brogan (COL ‘07, LAW ‘10) decided to withdraw from his agreement with the University last December.

“The 32 potential candidates were a diverse group: some are local, while others are from far away, [there] are [alumni] in the group, are from both small and large companies, … operate businesses on other campuses … [or are] completely new to the college market,” she wrote in an email to the Voice.

A major deciding factor has been the willingness of vendors to cater to student feedback and work with challenges that come with operating a pub on a college campus. Another non-negotiable condition is that the pub must be 18 and up, which would allow younger students to enter the

The Healy Pub will open with the NSSC in August. pub, although the federal drinking age would still be enforced.

According to GUSA Senate Speaker Samuel Greco (SFS ‘15), the “accelerated timeline” has also created challenges for interested vendors, such as in the acquisition of a liquor license.

“Asking someone to take on a job in late March to open in August can create a challenge,” he said. “Because there are about 7,000 undergraduates, a lot of people don’t think that’s feasible for their business model.”

According to Nate Tisa (SFS ‘14), outgoing GUSA president and a member of an advisory student working group, the committee is also figuring out how to maintain security and fair employment policies.

“For us to be comfortable with a vendor, they have to be able to employ students and treat them well. We’ve definitely been looking for a vendor

Courtesy of ikon.5

who has good employment policy already,” he said.

Tisa said that some vendors have pitched creative ideas, including a proposal to add a side room usable for separate purposes, such as club space and birthday parties.

Wiese ensured, however, that the pub will operate based on student desires. “The vision for the space, the menu, and the design really varies per vendor,” she wrote. “[But, ultimately] it is important to assess the vendors on how well they will embrace Georgetown, engage students, and focus on making the student pub a ‘student pub.’”

Tisa said because of the reduced timeline, he has confidence the risk of a selected vendor backing out of the agreement is low. “We’ve made it clear that we want it to open with the rest of the student center in August,” he said.

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Hoyas play at McDonough for first time since 2009

by Chris Almeida

A memorial for Mark Adamsson was held Tuesday.

Courtesy of Lucius Lee

SFS junior, Mark

A damsson, di es over spring break

by Claire Zeng Mark Adamsson (SFS ’15) passed away during spring break while traveling with classmates in the Dominican Republic. His death was caused by lung and heart failure, according to Georgetown Director of Media Relations Rachel Pugh.

Adamsson was an international student from Sweden and attended high school in the United States. He died at the age of 22.

Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson announced the news in a community-wide

email on March 9. The University held a memorial service in Adamsson’s honor on Tuesday afternoon in Dahlgren Chapel.

“We still remember the day he knew he had been admitted to the Georgetown School of Foreign Affairs, that was a high water mark in his life,” Adamsson’s mother and stepfather wrote in a statement to Georgetown media relations.

“Most people work a full life in order to end it with a dignified death. Mark was so dignified in life, that when he suddenly left us, he had accomplished more and left an unforgettable legacy of smiles and good deeds.”

The Georgetown men’s basketball team played at McDonough Gymnasium Tuesday because of a scheduling conflict with the Verizon Center. The basketball game was the first at McDonough since December 2009. Georgetown does not anticipate playing another at the gymnasium in the near future.

The game, part of the National Invitation Tournament, was not played at Verizon, the usual arena for the Hoyas’ home games, because of the spontaneity of NIT scheduling. McDonough was filled to capacity with 2,133 fans packing the stands, in comparison to Verizon’s capacity of 18,000 seats. Students were given free tickets at the door while non-student seating was restricted because of space concerns.

Both fans and team members noted the smaller arena created a louder environment.

“The smaller arena trapped in the noise, leading to the earsplitting volume that persisted for pretty much the entire game,” Hoya Blue President Joe Fiorica (COL ‘14) wrote in an email to the Voice. “The game atmosphere was electric. In my four years here, I can only think of a handful of games that were more raucous and loud as this game was.”

Although McDonough is more convenient to access for students, according to Georgetown men’s basketball Head Coach John Thompson III, finances play a large role in the decision to not play games there. Games at the Verizon Center, where tickets are higher in price and can be sold in greater quantity, bring the University greater revenue.

“In this day and age, it would be grossly negligent to neglect the financial aspect. It’s such a part of the equation, that I don’t think you can’t completely answer the question without that chunk,” Thompson said.

There will be no more home games this season as the next NIT game will be in Tallahassee and potential later round matchups will take place at a neutral site. In the future, all men’s home games will continue to be hosted at Verizon.

“People, like myself, who have been to many, many games here, get nostalgic and say ‘hey, we should do that,’ but at the end of the day, we have some financial responsibility and as much as this is a great environment. … Playing here, we could lose a lot of money that we could gain on a badly attended day at the Verizon Center,” Thompson said.

FinApp budget eliminates Collegiate Readership

by Manuela Tobias The Georgetown University Student Association Senate’s Finance and Appropriations committee, in a draft student activities budget for fiscal year 2015 released March 6, ended funding for the Collegiate Readership Program, which distributes free copies of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today across campus. The Senate will vote on the final budget this Sunday.

The Readership program, started

by GUSA in 2008, costs $14,000 and is funded as part of GUSA’s Student Activities Fee Allocation, which collects the student activities fee paid by undergraduate students as part of tuition. According to FinApp Chair Séamus Guerin (COL ‘16), however, the newspapers are often taken by professors and grad students instead. “[The] $14,000 will find great application to other initiatives on campus, whether it’s our own Media Board, whether it’s our Student Activities Commission and all the SAC

groups underneath it, or whether it’s Georgetown Day, which we’re funding for the first time,” he said.

GUSA Vice President-elect Omika Jikaria (SFS ‘15), however, expressed disapproval of the process that went into FinApp’s decision to cut the program in its draft budget. “[GUSA President-elect] Trevor [Tezel] and I believe that this should not be how a widely-used program like Collegiate Readership should be cut. The program needs to be looked at further before it is cut,” Jikaria wrote in an email to the Voice.

GUSA President Nate Tisa (SFS ‘14) concurred. “As college students, it’s really easy to get trapped in our bubble … [and] you want to keep the student body informed and have that easy access,” he said. “Most of us aren’t going to get the paper delivered to our dorms, we don’t sell the papers at Corp locations … so if you want access to a full paper, this is the way that we do it here.”

FinApp Committee member Abbey McNaughton (COL ‘16) agreed

reform should “first involve gauging general student interest,” but said the committee was challenged by a lack of data about the undergraduate student response to the program.

“I am hesitant to continue spending this amount of money on a program with such uncertainty regarding student benefit,” she wrote in an email to the Voice. She added that even if FinApp were to consider alternatives, “We don’t know if that is what students would prefer.”

Currently, Lauinger Library offers a digital alternative to students and faculty through electronic access to The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today via George, the library’s journal database. Not all articles, however, are added to the database on the day of print.

According to University Librarian Artemis Kirk, the library is “continuing to investigate possibilities” to purchase subscriptions to The New York Times for all students, faculty and staff, but faces “prohibitive” costs due to a lack of a pricing model for universities.

Benjamin Shaw (COL ‘08), founder of the Collegiate Readership Program in his role as former GUSA president, said the program should be discontinued if there were better uses for funding that would more directly impact the undergraduate population.

“I would imagine that there’s less funding for things in general. You have to prioritize. I think that student organizations should come before paper newspapers,” Shaw said.

Kirk also noted that “this discussion has made [library staff] aware that it would be useful to have a guide on our website dedicated to newspapers with instructions on how users may access them, and we will work on creating one.”

A two thirds vote on the fiscal year 2015 budget from the GUSA Senate will be required to pass the cut of the Collegiate Readership Program.

Saxa Politica did not run this week due to extended news coverage.

News Hits

Arizona State U joins GU in partnership Georgetown and Arizona State University announced a new partnership at a discussion held on Tuesday at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies’ downtown campus. The partnership, which will focus on building leadership among administrators in higher education, is the first partnership for Georgetown as part of its Designing the Future(s) initiative.

“The intent is, between the two schools, to put together a program that is open to all colleges and universities around the country,” said Arizona State Senior Vice President James O’Brien.

According to Walter Rankin, Dean of the School of Continuing Studies, the universities’ differences made Arizona State, the largest public university in the country, an attractive partner for Georgetown.

The partnership may, according to O’Brien, create a program to educate administrators on leadership beginning as soon as the fall 2014 semester.

O’Brien, however, did not specify what the program would entail, and stressed the partnership was still “very much in the planning stages.”

—James Constant

NATO SG Rasmussen accepts GIWPS award Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Anders Fogh Rasmussen received a 2014 Hillary Clinton Award from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security in a ceremony on Wednesday. The award recognizes service to promoting women, peace, and security.

“Women play a very particular role in … societies,” Rasmussen said. “It is so essential to draw upon women and their human assets in preventing conflicts and in the resolution of conflict.”

In his speech, Rasmussen also discussed the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine and stated it was the most threatening security challenge on NATO’s plate of responsibilities.

The two other Clinton Awards for 2014 were presented to British Foreign Secretary William Hague and founder of the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo Dennis Mukwege in a ceremony on Feb. 25. Rasmussen was not able to make the original ceremony because of scheduling conflicts.

—Steven Criss

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March 20, 2014

Hoyas feed off crowd at McDonough, beat West Virginia

by Joe Pollicino After their heart-wrenching 60-56 loss to last-place DePaul (12-21, 3-15 Big East) in the Big East Tournament, the Georgetown men’s basketball team (18-14, 8-10 Big East) returned to Washington as their slim NCAA Tournament hopes evaporated and a NIT appearance loomed. But despite all the Hoyas have undergone during this tumultuous season, they feel they have an opportunity to prolong their season, unlike many other teams.

“You lose in the Big East Tournament and you realize you are not going to the NCAA Tournament, so ... the next 30 or so hours you are like ‘ugh’” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said: “But then you realize that we have a chance to play. And then all of a sudden the pairings come out and you realize how many good teams in this country and in our league aren’t playing right now.”

The team certainly took advantage of that opportunity.

Although another event prohibited the Georgetown men’s basketball team from playing their NIT first round game at the Verizon Center, it certainly did not prevent the Hoyas and their fans from putting on their own show Tuesday night at McDonough Arena. Feeding off the raucous sold-out crowd of 2,133, the Georgetown men’s basketball team advanced to the second round of the NIT by defeating former Big East rival West Virginia Mountaineers (17-16, Big 12), 77-65.

“It was unbelievable. The energy that we got from the fans—the students, the young alums, the old alums. It was

great,” Thompson III said after the victory. “It was a great environment. I want to thank our fans and I want to thank everyone for that because it helped.”

As has been the case for much of Georgetown’s 2013-14 season, the staunch backcourt of sophomore guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera and senior guard Markel Starks led the way for the Hoyas. Smith-Rivera had his best all-around game as a Hoya, as he scored a game-high 32 points, including 23 in the second half, and pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds for his second career double-double.

Smith-Rivera also went 10-of10 from the free-throw line for the second consecutive game.

Starks, on the other hand, played like a basketball Renaissance man, doing a little bit of everything extremely well for the Hoyas. Starks, selected for the All-Big East First Team last week, scored 14 points, grabbed a career-high seven rebounds, and dished out seven assists.

Starks also had two blocks and two steals for the Hoyas.

“You have heard me say all year, that I think [Smith-Rivera and Starks] make up what I think is the best backcourt in the country,” Thompson said.

“Those two guys are going to sleep well tonight, along with a couple of other people in that locker room.”

The game was a tale of two halves for Thompson and his players. Entering halftime down 33-30 due to poor shooting, missed layups, and lackadaisical defense, the Hoyas found their groove in the second half, shooting 52 percent, while also increasing their defensive intensity.

“I think we were a bit more attentive in the second half ...

STEVEN CRISS

The Hoyas lived to play another day, beating West Virginia on Tuesday night.

In the first half I thought we got a bit too spread out and they were able to get right to the rim,” Thompson said. “I think we did a much better job of protecting the paint but then closing out on their shooters … that made a difference.”

After the game while en route to the locker room, Starks, who most likely just played his last home game as a Hoya, shouted and gesticulated wildly at his peers in the student section, praising them for the tangible home-

court advantage they created.

Starks wasn’t wrong. Strong campaigning on the part of the university to get students to the game made for an incredible gametime atmosphere.

“I just had fun,” Starks said when asked about his emotions following the game. “The energy from the crowd translated to us and I wanted to give it back, just to let them know I was having fun too.”

Georgetown will now advance to the second round, where they travel to face num-

ber one seed Florida State (20-13, 9-9 ACC). After defeating Georgetown nemesis and Dunk City residents Florida Gulf Coast in their first round matchup, the FSU Seminoles will meet the Hoyas for the first time since the second round of the 1992 NCAA Tournament, where they defeated the Alonzo Mourning-led Hoyas 78-68. Although the exact date and gametime have yet to be determined, the matchup will be played sometime between March 20 through 24.

the sports sermon

“I am by no means an expert in basketball. I’m a fan. My expertise lies in managing companies and businesses. I think I’m a little out of my element when it comes to the team.” - NewYork Knicks owner James Dolan

by Chris Almeida This is the first season since 2008 in which the Georgetown men’s basketball team has missed the NCAA Tournament. The Hoyas are now participating in the National Invitation Tournament, often called the “Nobody’s Interested Tournament” or the “Not Invited Tournament,” a perpetual marker of a team that was good, but not good enough. With many declaring that the team has hit “rock bottom,” it seems strange that that the team is now giving the best entertainment experience that has existed all season for Georgetown basketball.

Many NBA teams struggle to fill their 15,000+ seat arenas for every game. For the Hoyas, who play in the Verizon Center, home of the Washington Wizards, it is no surprise that each and every game fails to sell the maximum number of tickets. The stadium is larger than twice the size of the entire undergraduate student body. Even with the large alumni base in the D.C. area, it is clear that the Phonebooth is just too big for the Georgetown fan base.

It’s not even as if all of Georgetown’s students flock to every game. With across-the-bridge Rosslyn being the closest metro stop, and a transfer to a different line being necessary to arrive at the Verizon Center’s Chinatown Metro, many casual fans who would, at other schools, show up to games because of proximity, don’t even consider going to games except for the biggest matchups of the year. And, with conference realignment, there are

few names on the schedule that would catch the average student’s eye. This season, there were no big-name non-conference games at home and many of the Big East games at home were in the 9 p.m. time slot on a weekday. With the difficult travel schedule and late night finishes, many fans are discouraged from attending games.

In addition, the games are broadcast on Fox Sports 1, which doesn’t have online streaming, and sometimes runs other programming over Georgetown games. So, even people who want to watch the game without being in attendance cannot easily do so.

Against the West Virginia Mountaineers, the Hoyas met a strong opponent from a major conference with not only name recognition, but a past intertwined with Georgetown’s. This matchup, purely on paper, looked better than all non-conference games played earlier in the season. More so, the game, played in McDonough gymnasium, was almost filled to capacity and had students waiting outside for hours in anticipation of sitting in the 2,500 seat arena. Instead of a three-part commute, Hoyas only had to make a short walk in order to get to the game site. This location change created a more raucous environment, a close-tothe-court feel that felt more personal, more Cameron Indoor than Wells Fargo Center. When you think about the best environments in college basketball, you think of Hinkle and Allen Fieldhouse, where the stadiums fill up for every game, not pro stadiums that are capable of housing thousands,

but rarely manage to do so. The Verizon Center, for most Georgetown games, is half full. It makes sense to have an 18,000 seat arena when Syracuse comes to town, but otherwise, there is little sense in pretending that enough fans will come to fill the off campus stadium.

Additionally, the game was televised on ESPN. Whether we like to admit it or not, ESPN is the undisputed king of broadcast media in the sports world, and is on the radar of every sports fan in the country. Their advertising reach is larger and their games garner more viewers, whether that be through their online availability, cable package availability, or simply the pure number of television viewers who tune into ESPN when they don’t know what else to watch.

And, most importantly, the Hoyas won. By a lot. A Big 12 opponent came to town and we whipped them. Our star of the future, sophomore D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, scored a season-highof 32 points. The fans roared and the building shook. Markel Starks beamed and winked at the home crowd as he left a Georgetown home court for the last time. The entire experience brought a sense of closure that was unexpected and welcome at the same time.

If we looked at this game without the “NIT” stamp, it would have been one of the most exciting matchups of the year.

An accessible arena, a big time opponent, and superior television coverage made a consolation game feel special. And in a season like this one, isn’t that all you can ask for?

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Baseball fights weather, injuries Finish line for indoor track

by Steven Criss The only members of the Georgetown campus more worried about the number of snow days piling up this semester than Assistant Provost John Q. Pierce would be the baseball team, which has only seen one full practice on a baseball field the entire spring because of the inclement weather.

The team just recently returned from a trip down to Port Charlotte, Fla. for the Snowbird Classic, which produced evenly split results against non-conference opponents that included the likes of Western Michigan, South Dakota St., Saint Joseph’s, and Iowa. Taking this season’s unique circumstances into consideration, the Hoyas have been middling right about where Head Coach Pete Wilk believes they ought to be.

“Between weather issues … lack of practice on a baseball field and our injury issues, I thinkwe’re holding up pretty good,” said Wilk. “We’re having a difficult year getting into any kind

of rhythm from a practice standpoint with Mother Nature, and we got some guys who are banged up right now, and we’re doing about as well as we should be.”

Offensive production from senior first baseman Steve Anderson and sophomore catcher Nick Collins have been essential to the team’s recent performance. They lead the team with batting averages of .348 and .328 respectively.

“We expected them to carry our offense. They’re two very talented kids …They’re carrying the load offensively and that’s … what we thought we were going to build around,” said Wilk in regards to his two batting leaders.

Anderson has been keeping his approach simple thus far and it has paid off. With a team-leading .439 slugging percentage and 12 RBI, he is not letting any of the challenges facing the Blue and Gray get in the way of a successful senior season.

“Not thinking too much is really

VOICE ARCHIVES

Baseball will continue its push for .500 on Friday versus Towson.

An ode to the bracket

On March 25, 2007, I learned what the NCAA men’s basketball tournament can do to one’s heart. I was thirteen years old and my beloved North Carolina Tar Heels were rolling through the postseason. UNC was a number one seed and boasted a starting lineup with four future NBA players, the perfect recipe for a deep tournament run. As a naïve adolescent, my thought process was very simple: my favorite team has the best players, therefore they cannot lose.

Of course, as bracket-fillers rediscover each year, that simple logic does not apply to March Madness, a reality I was introduced to in particularly brutal fashion. One game away from the Final Four, UNC’s Elite Eight matchup was with a team called Georgetown— oh, the irony. I knew the Hoyas had a tall guy named Roy Hibbert and a pretty good player named Jeff

Green, but, regardless, I was absolutely convinced this game was just another stepping stone in UNC’s inevitable rise to the top.

With six minutes left in the game, UNC led by ten points. But the Hoyas wouldn’t go away, erasing the Tar Heels’ lead and forcing overtime. At this point, my parents were on damage control. As basketball fans themselves, they understood that Georgetown had the momentum and was likely to carry it over into overtime—in other words, UNC was going to lose and they knew I was in complete denial. As the Hoyas started to build an insurmountable lead, tears started flowing. Despite the fact that I was about to go to church and it was my sister’s eighteenth birthday (sorry, Caitlin), I barely spoke for the rest of the day.

This emotional upheaval is what the NCAA tournament does

the key,” said Anderson.

The Hoyas have been getting solid innings and earned run averages out of freshman right-hander David Ellingson and junior lefty Matt Hollenbeck, with respective ERAs of 1.17 and 1.08. Georgetown has had some trouble with keeping their runs against low enough to give the offense a chance to build a lead. “We’re throwing the ball up in the zone and ... that doesn’t translate into a lot of success, especially against better teams. We’ve got some kids that have good enough stuff to win if they are down, but if they’re up, our outfielders are going to be doing a lot of running,” said Wilk.

As the snow melts and their home field Shirley Povich battles mud and flooding, the Hoyas must look toward finding some kind of consistency in their level of play if they want to compete when league comes around.

“We finally get into a rhythm down there [in Florida] and then we get yanked back and we’re dealing with six inches of snow here. It’s unbelievable,” said Wilk. “It’s extremely frustrating trying to be a college baseball player and a college baseball coach in this area this year.”

The players are taking their adversity in stride, putting in their hours in the cage and on the Harbin Multi-Sport Field. The Blue and Gray will host Towson this Friday at 3 p.m. depending on field conditions.

to people. Its design is cruel, its results are unpredictable, and the games are always close. It’s like the basketball gods decided that not only will your team most likely lose at some point during the tournament, but that it will probably be

Rise and Fire

by Brendan Crowley A bi-weekly column about sports

in a particularly excruciating way.

Underdogs are empowered, and favorites experience incredible vulnerability, and, for that reason, fans simply cannot miss a game. The stakes are just too high.

At a point, it stops being fun.

As your favorite team advances farther and that bracket shrinks, the closer and closer the glory gets.

Then, unless you are a member of the one out of 68 fan bases that

by Max Roberts The Georgetown Hoyas Track and Field team’s indoor season came to a close this past weekend at the NCAA Indoor National Championship in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The men’s team struggled, and neither the distance medley relay nor 800 meter finalist senior Billy Ledder were able to place. The women’s team, however, found success and ended up with six total All-American honors. The women’s DMR placed seventh, anchored by junior Katrina Coogan who also placed fifth in the 3000 meter race.

The final honor was secured by junior Andrea Keklak who placed fourth in the 800 meter race.

“We had a great indoor season,” Director of Women’s and Men’s Track and Field Patrick Henner said.

The women’s DMR began with junior Hannah Neczypor who then handed off the baton to senior Deseree King. The final two legs were run by freshman Sabrina Southerland and Coogan. As a junior, Coogan looks to continue to improve on a very impressive showing at nationals both in the outdoor season and next year. She already holds records in several events, including the anchor leg of the DMR, at four minutes and 32 seconds.

remains standing at tournament end, you get dealt a full dose of disappointment. The final buzzer sounds and everything ends in the blink of an eye. The tournament moves on and your team is quickly forgotten.

So why do we fill out brackets each year, cry over close losses, and always lose to someone in bracket pools who knows nothing about college basketball? Why do we choose to welcome such suffering? Because when you’re a fan of that team, that one team, that cuts down the nets in early April, with no more opponents to face, there is no better feeling for a sports fan.

In 2009, just two years removed from the Georgetown debacle, UNC captured the NCAA title.

Seeing them pile onto each other near half court, jumping around like children who had just spotted an ice cream truck, there was an undeniable feeling that a little bit

“For her the next big step is trying to win those type of races. I think the last two years she’s been very competitive in them,” Henner said.

Henner stressed the importance of experience and noted that a faster time isn’t necessary to actually place better in major meets.

“Setting a school record is fun,” he said.

Henner also had similar thoughts on the men’s team, whose performance at nationals is not necessarily indicative of their skill. Several athletes on the men’s team had run historic times earlier in the season, but failed to translate that into success at nationals, the first such trip for all of the members of the men’s DMR team. With experience, Henner expects the men to be able to compete at their best under the most difficult situations going forward.

Overall, the indoor season was a very successful one for both the men and women, and the future is still bright.

“This is the most excited I’ve been about the young talent we have, on the men’s and women’s side” Henner said.

Georgetown begins their outdoor season on March 20 at the William & Mary Invitational in Williamsburg, Virginia.

of that championship trophy belonged to us, the fans. Not literally, of course, but for a fan base that had weathered the ups and downs, it was liberating to see success for the Tar Heel players and coaches.

Today, I am a fan of Georgetown, who failed to make the NCAA tournament this year. I will probably root for UNC subconsciously, but more than anything I will enjoy the tournament.

I will inevitably spend too much time filling out brackets, only to crash and burn with the rest of America. I will watch every minute of every game, hoping and waiting for the moments that will join my catalog of the unforgettable. I won’t cry this year (hopefully…), but I will be sad when the last game ends. Because there is a certain magic to March Madness that exists in no other sport, and that’s something I’ll hold on to until the day I die.

8 the georgetown voice

feature

march 20, 2014

what has Georgetown done to help sexual assault survivors, and what is left to do?

By Ana SMITH

During spring break, John* (COL ‘15) was with four friends, all men, at a crowded club. As John and his friends moved toward the bar, two girls walked past, the second ran her hand down his chest before she turned to follow him.

Before John knew she was there she started kissing him. John wasn’t sure how to tell her to stop. “I didn’t really know what to do, the friends I’d come with didn’t know I’m gay and I’d been drinking all night, so I just went with it and we started making out at the bar,” John wrote in an email to the Voice. He didn’t tell her to stop until she reached her hand down his pants. “For the rest of the night everytime she saw me she’d either kiss me or grope me, and when I was leaving she followed me out.”

According to data from the National College Health Assessment, John is one in 33 men who experience sexual assault violence at Georgetown.

This survey also estimates that one in four women experience sexual assault on campus, and that 90 to 95 percent of sexual assaults are committed by people known to the survivor.

In September 2010 the Voice published a feature about the reality of sexual assault at Georgetown in which Jared Watkins (COL ‘11), one of the founders of GU Men Creating Change, a campus group that worked to prevent violence against women, predicted that four or five years later Georgetown would adopt a mandatory sexual assault education program.

“There’s a lot of power politics behind how to make things mandatory. Somehow, they can make going to the Off Campus Student Life meeting mandatory, or you can’t register for spring classes. But we can’t make sexual assault education mandatory?” Watkins said at the time.

* * * Widely-publicized rape cases in universities and towns across the country have led to new federal policies and changes to Title IX, including a requirement for university employees with knowledge of a sexual assault to report the case to the Title IX Coordinator. Ma-

bel Rodriguez (COL ‘14), co-chair of the Sexual Assault Working Group and a Sexual Assault Peer Advisor, believes that these changes have led to “a big push to not only enforce Title IX but also to make sure that universities do everything they possibly can to gather information about this and do something about it.”

As part of this push for greater awareness on sexual assault issues,

ty clause for drugs other than alcohol.

He also hopes to push through changes “that make the language more survivor friendly [by making sure] anything that has to do with past sexual history other than the alleged perpetrator is not admissible.” Tezel further hopes for new confidential counseling hires and ways to “integrate men into the conversation” over his presidential term.

“For the rest of the night, everytime she saw me, she’d either kiss me or grope me, and when I was leaving she followed me out.” the Georgetown University Student Association released a memo in January in support of new White House sexual assault initiatives, asking the administration for changes such as making duress and prior sexual history inadmissible in hearings, decreasing contact between survivors and perpetrators in hearings, and hiring more trauma specialists and confidential health education staff to Georgetown Sexual Assault Prevention and Education. According to GUSA President Nate Tisa (SFS ‘14) the administration’s response was “thus far a very positive [one].”

Sexual Assault Working Group member and GUSA President-elect Trevor Tezel (SFS ‘15) worked with the Tisa/Ramadan administration on the alcohol amnesty clause in the Student Code of Conduct that allows students to report cases of sexual assault without facing repercussions for violating the University’s alcohol policy.

Over the next year, Tezel hopes the Code of Conduct will include an amnes-

More frequent meetings of the Sexual Assault Working Group, changes to the Student Code of Conduct amnesty policy, and the recently released sexual misconduct website are a few of the changes Georgetown has made in how it addresses sexual assault on campus in recent years.

Nora West (SFS ‘15), former GUSA secretary of student safety and health and a sexual assault peer advisor, said that these recent developments have, in turn, resulted in an increase of student awareness and support. “Students now have a better sense of their rights and there is a broader discussion of what the issues are on campus,” West wrote in an email to the Voice.

The incoming class in the fall of 2014 will be the first to go through a mandatory sexual assault educational workshop as part of New Student Orientation. According to Bryn Bogan (COL ‘16), NSO coordinator in charge of planning and overseeing the workshop, titled, “This is Georgetown,” NSO

2014 will “incorporate more information around safety, sexual assault, bystander intervention, health education, resolving conflict, and counseling and psychological services on campus.”

Nonetheless, Tisa believes that one workshop during NSO is “not enough to integrate that knowledge into your life.” * * * John has already decided not to report what happened to him, talk to friends, or seek counseling services from Georgetown. “I don’t think anyone would have really responded to my story. The friends I’d gone with were happy for me and congratulated me afterward,” John said.

John believes that his friends would never think of what happened to him as sexual assault because they, like many others, hold the assumption that it is mostly women who are the victims and men the criminals. “It would definitely be sexual assault if it had happened to a woman, whereas I didn’t even consider anything wrong had happened until I thought about it afterwards,” John said. Unlike the University’s Women’s Center, John has noticed that there is no comparable resource for men.

John’s case serves as an example of the challenges Georgetown will have in addressing sexual assault in years to come.

Anonymous survivors who have talked to the Voice have reported difficulty in accessing Georgetown’s sexual assault resources. On the weekend, when most people are sexually assaulted, survivors were unable to access services, unaware of the existence of a crisis hotline.

The average Georgetown student remains unaware of the recent advancements in how Georgetown addresses sexual assault on campus. Former CoChair of Take Back the Night and Sexual Assault Peer Advisor Kathleen Kelley (NHS ‘14) thinks that one of the greatest issues now is not that students don’t have resources but that they don’t know what those resources are. “There’s a lot of work being done but it’s not being publicized in a way that’s useful for them,” Kelley said.

To Kelley, issues in disseminating sexual assault resource information may lie in the University’s underlying intentions. “Students are brought to the table but it seems symbolic in that they’re not

georgetownvoice.com always being listened to. Administrators have their own sense of what they should be doing. I think they care, but I think they have a lot of overlapping priorities and I think that PR is a more imminent concern for some members of the administration.”

Rodriguez and Kelley both feel that these concerns added to problems with advancements, such as the sexual assault prevention website, that have been criticized for being unclear and confusing. “There’s a strong push to address sexual assault but an even stronger push to appear like they’re addressing sexual assault. … There are all these pushes to having obvious displays of addressing sexual assault … but there’s not a strong ... push to improve the existing resources,” Kelley said.

Director of Health Education services Carol Day emphasized the importance of student feedback to perfect the resources already in place. If students think there is a problem with a resource, it is important for them to give feedback to the administration.

“Students often don’t want to think that this is a problem that could happen to them or anybody they know, so it’s probably not really thought about that much, there tends to be denial about the fact that it’s happening.”

Day hopes that the mandatory NSO workshop will help solve publicity issues for the University as it reaches the whole freshman class. She further hopes that Georgetown will have the opportunity to apply for the sexual assault education grant it was denied in 2009 because the University did not have an education program that reached all of its students at the time.

In addition, many anonymous survivors that the Voice has talked to have reported experiencing negative sessions with Counseling and Psychiatric Service counselors because CAPS only has one trauma-informed specialist.

“We need another confidential sexual assault counselor and advocate at Health Education Services and another trauma counselor for CAPS. ... Additionally, another confidential counselor at HES could allow them to hold office hours, which would potentially break down barriers for students (particularly underrepresented groups),” West wrote.

Staffing decisions are entirely dependent on the Provost. “He can approve funding for new confidential staffers, he doesn’t need to work on this issue more, but rather recognize its importance and support survivors through confidential staffing increases,” West wrote.

Provost Robert Groves empha-

feature

the georgetown voice 9

sizes the importance of “constantly that students are having sex: their assessing ways” to improve resourc- sexual needs, their sexual health, that es. “We will continue to update and hook-up culture that’s happening, and revise programs and consider options supporting student that are in that. if for adding additional resources as we we’re not having those conversations learn more and hear helpful new ideas.” then ... we can’t address the myth of Even though sexual assault issues this grey area between drunk sexual are common on college campuses assault and hookups,” Kelley said. across the country, there are some Day, however, holds that the Uniissues versity t h a t recogs e e m n i z e s unique t h a t t o student Georgeh a v e town. c o n There sensual is dissex and cussion it’s Will SURVIVE SEXUALLY ASSAULT WHILE IN COLLEGE that about a relaw h a t tionship r o l e , between if any, Catholic identity affects how two individuals. ”There’s no reason Georgetown addresses sexual as- why our Catholic identity would prevent sault. West acknowledges that this topic from being something that many students come to George- we educate students about because town from Catholic schools, which we understand that [this is] part of the have a track record of not prop- campus community and what haperly discussing sex education or pens to students at college,” Day said. ways to approach sexual assault. Of the sexual assault survivors To Kelley, addressing sexual as- who report to local authorities, many sault is not just about providing ser- find themselves uncomfortable revices to survivors and holding alleged porting to the Georgetown Univerperpetrators accountable. Preven- sity Police Department. Kelley felt tion is a huge part of it too. “It’s also that while she has had many positive about sex positivity—it’s talking experiences with GUPD, she would about consent, it’s about talking probably never go to GUPD if sexuabout hook-up culture,” Kelley said. ally assaulted and “definitely never According to survivors, the Uni- direct a friend to go to DPS” because versity’s inability to talk about sex she doesn’t think they are sufficiently makes it difficult for the community to trained or won’t respond appropriately. address sexual assault myths. “The “One of the biggest things that University won’t talk about the fact affects whether or not a survivor

25% OF WOMEN 3.0% OF MEN

- SEXUAL ASSAULT AT GEORGETOWN Men WOMen Source 2012 national college health assessment

will report is how the first person they talk to responds,” Kelley said.

Chief of Police Jay Gruber emphasizes that GUPD exists to support students and the number of different options available for survivors could be a part of the reason why not all students that reach out to law enforcement reach out to GUPD. “Every single person on the campus that is a survivor of sexual assault should feel comfortable coming forward to the GUPD … and to me directly,” Gruber said.

“We have officers on every shift 24 hours a day that are trained in Sexual Assault Response Training,” Gruber said. Gruber further hopes that any officer who is not as sensitive to the needs of the survivor as she or he should be needs to be be identified to the leadership of GUPD quickly so they can take action to make sure that officer is getting the necessary training.

“I’m very confident that the Georgetown University Police Department that people were used to two years ago has changed dramatically. I like to think that we are much more sensitive to the needs of the student, that we can help students work through sexual assault,” Gruber said.

Georgetown students have their own struggles to overcome if they wish improve education and rates of sexual assault on campus. Kelley believes that because Georgetown students have a very elite view of their peers they are still struggling with the concept of Hoyas as perpetrators, which is exacerbated by class issues at Georgetown. “People think, ‘Well, my peers are really smart, they were raised well, they were raised in good communities’ … that inhibits our abilities to respond to appropriate cases in our life,” Kelley said. * * * With National Sexual Assault Awareness Month approaching inApril, Georgetown students are gearing up to push for tangible progress. Student leaders are hoping for continued support from administration and increased student participation in order to improve resources for survivors and prevention education.

While Georgetown has seen changes in how sexual assault is addressed on campus in just a short period of time, to Rodriguez, “There’s been a lot of good things happening, but that’s not to say we don’t have a long way to go.” *Names have been changed to protect survivors’ identity.

Sexual Touching without consent

Sexual penetration without consent

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

march 20, 2014

All the world’s a stage at Kennedy Center theater festival

by Manuela Tobias D.C. has long been a cradle for international cultural exhibitions.

World Stages, the Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival, redefines the concept of the global, however, by shining a spotlight on contemporary, quirky masterpieces produced by great artists from 19 countries around the world.

The Voice was invited to see the most recent production, Savannah Bay, produced by Théâtre de l’Atelier and directed by Marguerite Duras, a U.S. premiere, like most of the plays at the festival. Originally performed in the bohemian Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, the play swept the

audience with its exploration of love, memory, and death. The French-language performance was somewhat difficult to follow with its overhead subtitles to bridge the language gap for the American audience.

A granddaughter and grandmother, both unnamed, are the sole actresses in this play, which takes place in a minimalist white room that makes up the stage. Beware the plainness of the staging and small cast, however: the plot, themes and characters of this French play are anything but simple, and far from boring.

The work interweaves the dramatic narratives of three generations of women in a French family living by the seaside. The young woman deals

“Girls—they want to have fun, oh girls just want to have fun...”

Doing it in the dark

I slowly bring my hand closer to my mouth, where it pauses, suspended in midair for an eternity. “I can’t,” I say, abruptly pushing away, appeasing my gag reflex.

The spoon falls back into the bowl, and the mysterious something sinks safely back into the depths of my soup. I am blindfolded, trying a seafood coconut soup at Mai Thai.

Now, let me get one thing straight: I love Thai food. When I was little we used to eat it all the time at a little restaurant that looked like it was someone’s living room. However, when I say that I like Thai food, my experience had up until now been limited to the tiny spectrum of vegetable rice, pineapple chunks, and fried ice cream—the Tom Ka soup was definitely none of those familiar things.

It’s said that we first eat with our eyes. Doesn’t looking

through a cookbook trick your brain into thinking that the food is right there waiting for you? My mouth, at least, never fails to start watering.

Eating blindfolded felt like being in your bedroom as a child in the dark—the nightlight created horrible shadows on the walls that turned the ordinary objects of my bedroom into strange, menacing shapes.

This happened to the food I was eating. Without my sight, the food was removed from its ordinary context and assumed fantastic new qualities.

At one point, a bean sprout furtively dropped into my lap, unnoticed until my hand brushed against it. I shuddered at the contact with that smooth, cold, wet thing, and threw it off my lap onto the floor, picturing little snakes everywhere. The funny thing is, I knew it was a bean sprout after one second, but

with her grandmother’s deteriorating memory and her mother’s tragic suicide a day after her own birth by swimming through her mother’s brief narrative alongside her grandmother, as each fills in the other’s incomplete fragments of memory.

The granddaughter epitomizes, albeit to a perhaps unrealistic extent, an idyllic response to a grandparent’s degenerative memory in her cheery humming, adoring smiles and loving dialogue, while the grandmother takes the stage, quite literally, by launching into her past as an actress as she attempts to relay the story of her own daughter. Time becomes a perplexing vortex as the young woman appears in her mother’s

KENNEDY CENTER

I panicked because of some very primal instinct, triggered by losing the essential sense of sight.

The sense of unease that came with what I was eating heightened my feeling of vulnerability.

Then again, my experience was amplified by my past: When I was about 10 years old,

Eating Out

by Sabrina Kayser A bi-weekly column about food I developed a phobia of eating shrimp. One day, after eating them for years, I suddenly imagined that they could come alive in my throat and wriggle around.

This irrational, yet horrible, fear kept me from eating shrimp for many years, until I finally got over it. Fears have a way of burrowing deep within the unconscious, and when my noodles came with a huge shrimp

black bathing suit, the grandmother lapses between the telling of her daughter’s story and her own, and the room becomes a bay, looking out towards the sea in which the narrative transpires.

The festival also featured renowned Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, a fascinating microcosmic look at Chile under Pinochet’s military dictatorship, Australian David William’s Rupert, a critical and intriguing look at the infamous media mogul, and a Lebanese Canadian playwright’s powerful story Incendios, that was turned into an Academy Award nominated Best Foreign Language Film in 2011, performed by a Mexican theater company.

In the upcoming days, the festival will offer a quirky take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in a combination of human and puppet performances envisioned by critically acclaimed War Horse artistic director Tom Morris and Cape Town’s Handspring Puppet Company.

The festival will also present Penny Plain, a marionette show featuring a blind protagonist awaiting the end of the world who is visited by a series of bizarre characters, including a survivalist, a cross-dressing banker and a serial killer. Not by Bread Alone, a product of the Israeli Nalaga’at Theater, is a play plagued by darkness and silence through a deaf-blind

with full tail and I almost ate it, that fear resurfaced.

In order to try and control some of that panic, I focused on my other senses to get a clearer picture of what was happening, removing some of the uncertainty.

As my dinner companion and roommate Lara noticed, I ate with a deliberate slowness, all of my actions much more measured and precise. I could hear the waitress come to the table, and I listened to the clink of the plates as she set them down. The blindfold heightened my awareness of myself and my surroundings. This may be part of the reason why unknown bits of food attained a massive physical presence in my mind—the way shadows in the dark seem huge and menacing. This also made me take smaller bites, and I was full way before I normally would be. In my mind, I had eaten a gigantic meal.

acting ensemble that give a tour of a bread-making process, to create a proposed intimate, laconic connection with the audience.

Other upcoming plays include the National Theatre of China’s production of Green Snake, an edgy, contemporary take on a romantic Chinese myth; South African Solomon and Marion starring two-time Olivier Award and once Academy Award nominee Dame Janet Suzamn; and Les Souffleurs commandos poétiques, a Japanese theatre company’s collaboration with a French nontraditional performance company in which the performers whisper literary and philosophical utterances to an audience seeking an enlightening respite from the quick pace of quotidian life.

The World Stages Festival, packed with new plays and even a few staged readings, forums and art installations, will come to an end on March 30th with a production of the famous Scottish Robin Hood geared towards younger audiences.

The plays each seem to present a fascinating twist to the classic national theatrical traditions, intertwining the contemporary and the global to create a surely entertaining viewing experience.

The Kennedy Center Now through March 30th, 2014 2700 F Street, N.W. kennedy-center.org/worldstages

The attunement of this sense did not allow me to deduce everything. Both Lara and I got seafood soups, and based on the taste, I was convinced that mine was a very clear, spicy broth, while hers was a richer, curry-like one. Senses are fallible though, as I discovered, and the opposite was true of the soups.

So take this to heart: don’t always believe your eyes.

Food is one of the vehicles that involves the most number of the human senses, like sex.

In fact, our modern lexicon now includes, because of the tumblr community, the words foodporn and foodgasm. Let my blind dinner experience illustrate this point: fear is usually not fully justified, and maybe all you are afraid of is not a snake, but just a bean sprout. Maybe close your eyes to savor something every once in a while.

Blindfold Sabrina at skayser@ georgetown.edu

georgetownvoice.com

“What are we going to do with them? Are we just gonna grow a magic beanstalk?” — Breaking Bad

American Art Museum exhibit gets real

by Nicole Kuhn Having strolled through a couple rooms of the American Art Museum, I went up to a pair of guards and asked to be pointed to the Modern American Realism exhibit. They eyed me with confusion. As I walked away, I heard one whisper “I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

This encounter set the tone for my viewing of the exhibit: it turned out that the guards had been standing in the middle of the relatively large exhibit.

As it happens, the guards’ ignorance ended up mimicking the atmosphere of the exhibit. No buzz, no tickets to enter, no signs, the exhibit really felt like it had faded into the background of the museum.

Spacious, with ample room from one cluster of paintings to the next, the collection of art felt disjointed at times. Though the curation was understandable—sketches paired with sketches, oil painting with oil painting, and so on—I would have preferred to see something more substantial pulling the art together.

Realism came into fruition around the mid 19th century with artists like Honoré Daumier and Gustave Courbet—both foreign painters.

Consequently, having the focus of the exhibit be on realist painters of the 21st century and of American origin did generate some intrigue.

Some key artists were featured, and with strong pieces. Edward Hopper, most popularly known for Nighthawks, perhaps more than any other

Herbs and booze. What else do you need to get through midterm season?

smithsonian

American painter, really epitomizes the realist spirit.

Realism is grounded in representing the things around us just as they are. And yet, as we continue to analyze the minutiae of the books we read in class, finding meaning where perhaps no meaning was intended— so do the fans of Hopper’s paintings.

Hopper’s wife even tried to provide a reason for why the woman in Cape Cod Morning (featured in the exhibit) was looking out the window of her home to which Hopper responded that the woman was simply looking out a window—nothing more, nothing less.

Other standout paintings in this exhibit such as Wolf Kahn’s High Summer and Gregory Gillespie’s Green Landscape embody American scene painting, which became a marked subset of realism among 20th century painters, especially in the United States.

Certain pieces even shock and excite. Expect to spend more than a second staring at the sculpture that is Harold Tovish’s In Memoriam or what I like to call Pyramid of Bowling Balls With Skulls Peering Out from Inside of Them. If that alternate title doesn’t inspire intrigue, nothing will.

American Art Museum 8th and F Street N.W. 11:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. daily americanart.si.edu

the georgetown voice 11

Hilltop Tossers

The Corp tosses our salads with no regrets

by Daniel Varghese The return to campus life from the bliss of spring break is an often sad time in the life of the Hoya. But fear not: this week, the beloved GU Farmers’ Market is back to ease the transition back to the Hilltop.

The Farmers Market returns with some new faces like Hiltoss, the newest Corp service.

Hilltoss is the salad stand whose storefront is set to open next semester as part of the new Healy Family Student Center. The booth found in the Farmer ’s Market is a preview of the full menu, featuring four different specialized salads and a create your own “custom salad” option.

I decided to trudge through the murky weather to taste some of these salads and assess the prospects of the upcoming eatery. Upon our arrival we found the stand bustling with onlookers, observing the menu and appraising the offerings but also without a line, unusual for many booths in the farmers market.

My salad, quirkily named “The Amalfi Coast” contained mixed greens, mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and oregano and

was dressed with a blend of balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil. I also added quinoa, at the recommendation of my server.

After opening my bowl, it was very apparent that the dish had not been mixed well.

My greens were concentrated at the top, while all other goodies had been deposited on the bottom.

Upon first bite I was overwhelmed by the strength of the balsamic vinaigrette, which was aggressively bitter and obscured all of the other ingredients. But after a little bit more mixing on my part, the salad progressively got better. The ingredients were truly fresh and their flavors together, sans the vinaigrette, worked quite well.

Overall, the prospects for Hilltoss look promising. They have an amicable staff, some good recipes, and an interested market. All of their faults can easily be attributed to lack of experience with the recipes and the format of the restaurant, which should be acquired as the semester ticks away. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how much these Corpies can perfect tossing salad before opening.

One Jake Gyllenhaal simply isn’t enough

by Andrew Gutman What would you do if you met someone who looked just like you?

No, exactly like you? That’s the question the film Enemy asks us, to no clear conclusion.

Enemy tells the story of two men: a college professor and a small-time actor—both played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The film starts with the former, Adam, as he trudges through his mundane existence, giving dry academic lectures about war and chaos, until he notices his double, Anthony, in the background of a movie.

Instead of brushing it off as a weird coincidence, Adam becomes obsessed with finding his look-alike, and discovers there’s more to this connection than an uncanny resemblance. The film goes forward from there, concluding in a baffling ending that should not be spoiled if only to preserve the shock value.

Gyllenhaal does good work in his double lead performance, which

is ultimately the pillar upon which the entire film rests. His characters are clearly contrasted, and have distinct enough personalities that they can easily be told apart. He manages both the passive and nervous Adam and the maverick Anthony without a single false note. Gyllenhaal is continuously proving himself to be one of the most reliable stars in Hollywood— following excellent turns in 2012’s End of Watch and last year’s Prisoners, his performance in Enemy continues to impress.

The film is also a triumph of setting a mood. The story is set in a jaundiced Toronto: a completely de-glamorized image of an otherwise great city. Director Denis Villeneuve includes many shots of the city under repair, be it road work or skyscraper maintenance, and shuns the image of the city as a well-oiled machine, instead showing it as decrepit. He also has a penchant for disorienting shots of buildings in odd angles that incite vertigo. It’s all wickedly and excel-

lently manipulative, and comes together to give a feeling of discomfort necessary for the strange and confusing story the film wants to tell.

The story, however, is where the film falls flat. The characters’ motivations are never clear (why is Adam so consumingly fascinated with his apparent doppelganger?), there are a lot of confusing motifs (what’s the deal with the tarantulas?), and the tale never comes together in a meaningful way—certainly not with its final shot being as absurd as it is. Even apparent themes of gender relations and ego versus id get lost in the distracting twists. The film is well-executed on a technical level, and many scenes—especially the ending—are hard to forget, but it just doesn’t feel like it adds up to anything. You can’t fault a film just for being difficult to understand, of course, but you can certainly fault it for being overly obtuse.

Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal’s last collaboration—Prisoners­—was also a film noted for having a difficult and

“I really hate posers. Why can’t this dude find someone else to look like?” sort of sloppy concept but excellent execution. The difference between the two is that Prisoners’ execution by its whole cast and crew elevated what could have been a really uninteresting film, and Enemy’s ridiculous and pseudo-intellectual story dragged down an otherwise well-acted and capably crafted film. It’s possible a second viewing could make the film’s goals somewhat clearer, but the first viewing fails to convince that it’s worth the effort.

imdb

The film opens with a quote: “Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.” In retrospect, it sounds like a challenge. Could it be that this film is secretly really meaningful, but simply too dense to grasp in one sitting, like a good David Lynch film?

That seems to be a common conclusion, but I think that’s giving it too much credit. After all, daring your audience to make sense of your film is something Lynch would never dream of doing.

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12 the georgetown voice

march 20, 2014

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

La Dispute, Rooms of the House, No Sleep Records If every band painted a picture to go along with their work, La Dispute would paint a family van flying off a bridge into an icy river for their third full-length release. With Rooms of the House, the Michigan band delivers a thrilling concept album that tells of a married couple slowly falling out of love. By the end, the couple’s house may stand empty and uninviting, but La Dispute’s new musical direction on Rooms of the House is their warmest and most vibrant effort yet.

The foreboding opener “HUDSONVILLE, MI 1956” spells doom for the wife and husband. A savage storm ravages the Midwest and separates the couple for several days.

The lyrics on this track paint a vivid picture of wind rattling houses and

lightning crashing down from the sky, foreshadowing the couple’s estrangement and inability to communicate their true feelings to each other.

Vocalist Jordan Dreyer is fantastic at narrating the story with emotion and precise word choice. Whether he’s yelling at the top of his lungs or using spoken-word, his poetic delivery remains La Dispute’s greatest strength and most unique feature.

La Dispute have mastered writing music that complements Dreyer’s vivid storytelling. Anchoring the instrumentation is the band’s brilliant rhythm section, which lays down not only memorable and unpredictable drum beats on every song but vibrant bass lines. On “35,” somber guitar notes and a heavy bass throb give way to a crashing symphony of power chords and a series of drum fills.

Compared to La Dispute’s first two albums, Rooms of the House has a much softer tone and a more melodic instrumentation at times.

Tracks like “Woman (in mirror)” and “Woman (reading)” feature soft guitar chords and repetitive percussion.

La Dispute’s new melodic tunes demonstrate creativity and add variety to the album. The times when the band dials back the distortion and slows down the hardcore drumming are no less emotional or exciting and

Festivus for the rest of us

A lot of people I know lose it over summer music festivals.

Whether it’s Coachella, Lollapalooza, Oozlelolooza, or whatever the latest trendy festival is, there’s a ton of excitement surrounding the big, summer festivals. For some artists and bands, their appearance in a music festival is virtually all they talk and Tweet about for months in advance. It’s almost as obnoxious as the dozens of Facebook photo albums friends post after their weekend in a steaming parking lot with 20,000 strangers just to catch a lazy, 45-minute set after 15 openers. Festivals may be the big thing to do in July and August, but count me out.

Last summer, I went to New York City’s Governors Ball with a friend. It was definitely a fun day, but I don’t think I’ll ever go to a festival again after that. The few sets we managed to see were too short, too quiet, and unimpressive.

While Portugal. The Man, Bloc Party, and Beirut have exciting re-

corded music, their sets were nothing special and the bands seemed like they didn’t care about the crowd. The Lumineers’ set was even worse and, to this day, it ranks as the worst, most boring musical performance I’ve ever seen.

I can’t really blame the bands.

The crowds didn’t deserve much love. Most people were absolutely hammered and spent their time talking loudly with their friends, not helping the terrible acoustic.

But these complaints about my day at Governors Ball are only secondary to what I see as the main problem with summer music festivals: they create the wrong kind of expectations and interactions between artists and the people who go to their shows.

To start with, festivals ruin an opening act’s opportunity to have a captive, interested audience that may go on to support their music one day. For fans who go to non-festival shows, the openers are an ex-

give La Dispute a climactic way to dive back into their customary chaos.

In a music world dominated by singles and one-hit wonders, La Dispute’s Rooms of the House is the perfect example of how a cohesive album becomes more than just a collection of songs: it becomes a living story. In the tragedy and wreckage of lost love, La Dispute break back through the frozen river and emerge more creatively invigorated than ever before.

Voice’s Choices: “Stay Happy There,” “Woman (reading)” —Ryan Greene

Skrillex, Recess, Beat Records

OWSLA/Big

Love him or hate him, you know his name, and you’ve made fun of his haircut. Three years after dropping citing way to get pumped up for the main act. Showgoers who have never heard an opener’s music before might really like what they hear.

I never would have checked out some of my favorite bands if I hadn’t heard them open for another artist.

At a music festival, multiple stages and plenty of room to lounge around away from performers mean that no one is ever forced to listen to

Deadbeats

by Ryan Greene A bi-weekly column about music a set they didn’t plan on seeing. The only people to stick around near the stage are either hardcore fans or, more likely, someone who wants to hold a spot for a later act. The openers never get a good chance to impress an attentive ear, so they play like garbage.

Another big problem with festivals is the way they stop bands from doing their own summer touring. This is especially true of

his debut EP, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, Skrillex’s first full-length album, Recess, pushes the boundaries once more. Despite his efforts to diversify, Skrillex doesn’t abandon his distinctive brostep sound, retaining his spot among the most divisive contemporary dance musicians.

“All is Fair In Love and Brostep” starts the album off with a loud, assaulting reminder of Skrillex’s past work. Intense pounding synths span the track, interrupted only by heavily distorted vocal samples and deafening drops.

On this lead track and on “Ragga Bomb,” Skrillex features the Ragga Twins, incorporating elements of their British old school jungle, a genre influenced by reggae and dancehall that relies on heavily syncopated percussion and fast bass-heavy beats.

Though a calculated incorporation of the roots of Skrillex’s brostep, his collaboration fails to do justice to old school jungle as the reggae influence syncopation and rudeboy lyrics are drowned out by the aggressive onslaught of percussive synths.

On another collaboration, “Coast is Clear” featuring Chance the Rapper, Skrillex nods to drum and bass, another British electronic music genre, in his use of a fast, shuffling breakbeat. This song is another atthe travelling music festivals, which go around the country for an entire summer, making a stop every couple of days. Rather than putting together a tour of their own or joining a bigger band, bands on summer festivals just jump on the bandwagon.

They figure the festival will attract more people who might like their music and earn them more money than a regular tour ever could.

This frustrates me, especially since missing a touring festival with a lot of your favorite bands means not being able to see any of those bands that summer, which brings me to Warped Tour. Warped Tour breaks my heart. Every year, a handful of bands I like join the roaming trash heap that is Warped Tour and, since I don’t go to Warped, I don’t have a chance to see any of them.

“Why not just go to Warped Tour and see them there?” you might ask. Well, Warped Tour is particularly annoying because of how many crappy Hot Topic “hardcore” bands there are, along with their obnoxious, 13 year-old fans. For ev-

tempt to highlight Skrillex’s roots but is unsuccessful as the elements of drum and bass are overpowered by the assertiveness of the drops and synthesized shuffle of the track.

Chance’s vocals are tacked on top of messy percussion and do not add anything but dissonance and distraction atop an already cluttered track.

Recess does have moments of cohesion, when Skrillex doesn’t include superfluous and conflicting elements.

“F*ck That” is one of these moments, as a stripped down, deep bass breakbeat without the obnoxious relentlessness of his typical heavy synth lines. The result is a dark dance track reminiscent of British dubstep, a genre that has been tainted by the heavy robotic drops that it is often associated with today.

Skrillex attempts to expand his repertoire beyond the entertainment value of his sweaty locks and hardcore brostep. Recess may have been an attempt to take a break from Skrillex’s recent work, but instead it cements his polarizing, Grammy winning identity. The guy isn’t taking a break.

Voice’s Choices: “F*ck That,” “Fire Away” —Joshua Ward ery Citizen and The Wonder Years at Warped, there are four Sleeping With Sirens and Falling in Reverses.

I’d much rather spend my summer supporting Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s great music venues every other weekend than melt in the parking lot of Nassau Coliseum during the Long Island stop of Warped Tour.

I understand why summer festivals have such success and broad appeal. They give people a way to see a ton of artists, buy cool merchandise, and go outside and get wasted in the afternoon all in one day. But it means these bands are taking the easy way out, and, in doing so, draining away all the personality that comes from a three-band touring lineup and replacing them with the corporate sponsorship and mass appeal of a giant festival.

In short, festivals appeal to casual showgoers. They’re the hors d’oeuvres of the music world. But me, I like to save it all for the entrée.

Paint you nails black with Ryan at rgreene@georgetownvoice.com

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— Dylan Cutler

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14 the georgetown voice

march 20, 2014

Open minds necessary to resolve Russia-Ukraine conflicts

by Nicole Steinberg The pictures drew me in. Independence Square, the central square in Kiev, evoked flashes of post-apocalyptic video games with graffiti and fireballs from Molotov cocktails flaming in the background. I found the Ukrainian conflict oddly thrilling, but difficult to follow, as the initial issue of trade agreements intertwined with complex identity politics, sensitive cultural histories, and lazy misunderstandings. More than anything, however, I found the events in the Ukraine familiar because I saw my family in them.

After reading a New York Times article on the protests in Kiev, I called my mother—who is part Russian, part Ukrainian— to ask her opinion on the issue.

She answered bluntly: “I don’t care.” I was stunned. I responded with a reminder that she should care, if not for the future of innocent lives, then because of her Ukrainian heritage. She countered, “True, but I like my

other half better,” referring to her mother ’s side, a mix of Russian and Jewish heritage.

My mother ’s response elicited more than anger. I was disappointed. In my mind, she represented part of the problem.

While the linguistic and ethnic factions in the country are undeniable—a third of the country’s native language is Russian, and more than half speak Russian to communicate in daily life—this knee-jerk reaction to cling to nationalism narrows the courses of action available to confront the issue at hand: Crimea.

My grandmother ’s Russian words rang in my ear: “Crimea has always been Russia.” She explained that Khrushchev made a mistake and, like my mother ’s Ukrainian roots, Ukraine’s sovereignty over the territory was incidental, meaningless. And though the conflict’s origins cannot be simplified into imagined borders governed by language and ethnicity, nationalism has certainly played an outsized role. It’s difficult to ignore that

the protesters in Kiev dream of NATO and the West while the citizens in Crimea are waving the Russian flag, waiting to rejoin their homeland.

External powers certainly didn’t ignore these profound ethnic divides. Russia and the West accepted them instead, working with and around them—and by doing so, they left themselves with fewer options to deescalate the conflict. They treated the conflict like a soccer game between Ukrainians and Russians in which a loss for one team equals a gain for the other.

This tactless approach allowed for only two options: either Crimea secede from the Ukraine—signifying a win for the Russians—or the Russians in the region stay put and continue to curse the Ukrainian government, signifying a win for the West. There was never room for a third option that would allow for the inclusion of Russian interests in a newly reformed Ukrainian government.

That would disagree with the

framework of the dichotomy to which both Russia and the West subscribe.

Next came Putin. The Russian president was able to seize Crimea due to its ethnic Russian majority and a virtually non-existent Ukrainian government. He wielded nationalistic sentiments and rhetoric to advance his geopolitical agenda; he didn’t want to lose the entire country to the West, so he took what he could.

He played the game well.

The outcome, though contentious, followed logically from the approach. Ukrainians and Russians dreamed of futures by looking to the past. Even my mother, who twenty years ago happily traded purple beet soups for New York-style bagels, was still able to find the part of herself that just can’t let Russia go. Language and ethnicity form strong cultural ties, but it’s my hope that they don’t have to be polarizing. I don’t have to reject my Russian heritage to be American. Similarly, my mother shouldn’t have to reject her Ukrainian heritage to be Russian.

Most importantly, however, the Russian government and the West don’t have to abide by these imagined borders that encourage differences. They could have approached the conflict with more creativity, leaving room for more than two options.

They became victims of their own crude perceptions of the other, and the Ukrainians and Russians living in Crimea are the ones who suffer in result.

It’s easy to brand a Russian-Ukrainian coalition government as idealism, just as it’s easy to throw up our hands, shrug our shoulders, and say, “It’s Russia,” like we can’t expect anything more. But approach does matter.

If we enter a conflict with certain absolutes in mind, we predetermine its course before it has the chance to begin.

Nicole Steinberg is a sophomore in the College. We stole her from Vox this week and will probably not be giving her back, but shh, don’t tell them.

Cura personalis is dead: Traditional values in question on Hilltop

by Joseph Murdy If you attend a Jesuit institution you are bound to hear the same platitudes over and over again: “Men and Women for Others,” “Ad maiorem Dei gloriam” and, especially, “cura personalis.” That phrase is supposedly what sets the Georgetown community apart from everyone else.

I challenge the vast majority of students here, however, to actually live out a lifestyle of caring for the whole person, because right now cura personalis doesn’t exist at Georgetown.

Instead, what dominates is cura ipsius: care of the self.

Of course, this doesn’t mean everyone at Georgetown is self-serving and arrogant.

Who is really always there for you, friends or Burnetts?

LEILA LEBRETON

Nonetheless, in my experiences, I’ve been surrounded by far too many living cura ipsius than cura personalis.

Cura personalis would have you thinking that come Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday, Georgetown students would be looking towards enjoying simply the company of their friends, whatever that may entail, or using the down time to do something for others. That’s what the Jesuits will have you think, but the truth is the vast majority of students care about one thing and one thing only: alcohol and whatever may follow from a night of heavy alcohol consumption.

I’m not criticizing the role alcohol plays in college lives, but when you elevate alcohol above friendships, you are bound to build friendships on a shaky foundation. I don’t drink because I love alcohol—I drink with my friends cause I love my friends. To the average Georgetown student, though, alcohol has trumped friendships.

Friends come second, alcohol comes first.

I found this out very early on in my freshman year. Friends would literally run away from each other so that their ratios would be favorable to get into a

party. What kind of Jesuit spirit is this?

I am not saying that this problem is exclusive to Georgetown. I am saying that this is a problem that college campuses face and it is a particular problem for a Jesuit Catholic school that boasts about its Jesuit values. This issue is obviously not the kind of stuff they have President DeGoia talking about in promotional videos—in fact, it’s inherently contradictory—but it’s a persistent problem.

I know I am not alone because as a leader on a popular freshman retreat, I have met so many wonderful people who feel the same way. These people, like myself, feel like they are drowning in the superficiality of the many relationships they have made in their first year of school. It is hard for those who seek more meaningful relationships to really feel at home on a campus full of superficiality and exclusivity.

The tipping point for me came last month. I went home for the funeral of a high school friend’s father. I knew I had to be there for my friend, no matter the sacrifice. So to make up for the most important class I would miss, I asked if the professor could send

an email to the class asking me for notes. He sent out the email on Monday, but I received no notes, so I sent out another email to the class on Thursday. Not a single person had the decency to send me any notes.

I know that I am not alone in facing this problem, and I know that there are good people out there, for I have met a good number of them. Notwithstanding, the culture dominating Georgetown (as is the culture dominating most elite universities) is one that puts cura personalis on the backburner in favor of cura ipsius.

This is a real problem if President John DeGioia, Fr. Kevin O’Brien, the Jesuits and anyone else pushing Georgetown really want to convince prospective students that what helps Georgetown stand out is the culture of men and women being there for one another. As of right now, these Jesuit platitudes are dead in Georgetown culture.

Joseph Murdy is a sophomore in the College. To be honest, we don’t have the slightest clue who he is or what he likes, but everyone needs a mystery man once in a while.

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the georgetown voice 15

Racism: A sinister instrument that cuts both ways

by Caitriona Pagni After watching the Oscars, I found myself in awe of Lupita Nyong’o. At first, I wasn’t sure what had struck me most about her. Perhaps it was her modern-day Cinderella gown, maybe it was her Oscar-winning performance in 12 Years a Slave, or it could have even been her overwhelming joy when she delivered her acceptance speech that endeared her to me. It wasn’t until I read “The Fetishisation of Luptia Nyong’o” by Charish Halliburton posted in the Motley News that I realized that it really didn’t matter why I liked Nyong’o because a white

girl could only like her for one reason: “Blacks are proud that Nyong’o crushed it in her portrayal of Patsey … Whites seem to be most preoccupied with Nyong’o’s exotic looks.”

Comments like this one show that the stereotyping and vilifying of “whites” remains an acceptable and widely-used tool used by advocates like Halliburton in a misguided attempt to empower minority communities. Accomplishments of members of minority communities are valuable enough to stand as accomplishments in themselves and do not gain value when framed in a narrative of overcoming the oppression of white people.

Racism doesn’t discriminate. Yes, anyone can be a victim.

LEILA LEBRETON

Waging war on the poor

“Do you know how fabulous I’d look? I’d be so skinny!” When the co-host of “The Five” on Fox News, Andrea Tantaros, bragged about how many pounds she could lose, she wasn’t talking about starting some new fad diet. She was talking about living off of food stamps.

Rather than apologize, Tantaros decided to defend herself on Twitter.

“It’s amazing how stupid & humorless some liberals can be,” she wrote.

This episode erupted in November, when Newark Mayor Cory Booker took the SNAP challenge to raise awareness for Americans struggling with food insecurity. Yet five months after Tantaros’ comments, conservatives still treat vital food assistance programs as some sort of joke.

I refuse to laugh, because the political discourse surrounding food assistance programs is more than frustrating—it’s misguided and painfully ignorant, if not simply compassionless. When Paul Ryan gave a speech early this month at CPAC, argued that the left misunderstands the needs of the poor. In opposition to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, he said, “What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul.”

Ryan followed up this comment with a story-turned-parable about a young boy who yearned for a paper bag lunch rather than an impersonal one funded by government programs. But the story, it turns out, was just that—although Ryan

Let the Voice be your voice. We accept opinions, letters to the editor, personal experiences, and creative writing that are exclusive to the Voice. Submissions do not express the opinion of the board of the Voice. The Voice reserves the right to edit submissions for accuracy, length, and clarity. To submit, email voices@georgetownvoice.com or come to the Voice office in Leavey 424.

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Last week, I went to get blood drawn and, although encounters with needles normally leave me a bit light-headed, I never expected my blood to boil. As I sat in the hospital’s waiting room, I happened to overhear the man across from me. Normally, I try not to eavesdrop, but to be fair, he was screaming.

“Now we got a brother in the White House! Those white people got something new coming now. … They [white people] gonna do anything to get ahead! ” He went on and on.

I sat there as his voice drilled into my head, accompanied by the intermittent shouts of approval from some of the other people in the room, and I realized that this man’s unapologetic racism did much more than construct a barrier between him and the white people in the room, it utilized hatred of “white people” as “the others” to create solidarity and lift his community up.

Growing up, I encountered this attitude all the time. For instance, during high school I competed in track meets scattered throughout the city and suburbs of Chicago, one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Because school districts are divided by neighborhood, many of

the teams I competed against were either entirely white or entirely black.

While this didn’t cause any major problems during meets, it was common to hear black runners shout phrases like “Yeah! Beat all them white girls!” when they were watching their teammates race.

If I had said “Yeah! Beat all those black girls!” it would have been received as a statement of oppression and hatred, but somehow its inverse rung across the field as a cry of empowerment, an invocation to overcome, as though beating a white girl would add value to their victory.

The experience of minority communities in the United States is inevitably wed to the experience of overcoming discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantage. However, we need to keep in mind that even though prejudice and stereotypes hold different implications in the real world for different communities, nevertheless, every group must be treated with same standards of respect in racial dialogue. After all, in terms of identity, “white” is just as heterogeneous as “black”, “Asian”, “Latino” or any of the the other labels we use to group people.

If our society wants to brand statements like “You’re so … for a

presented it as true, the boy and his brown paper bag come from the 2011 book The Invisible Thread. In fact, the book’s author, Laura Schroff, works with No Kid Hungry, a group that supports federally-funded school lunches to combat child hunger.

The media swiftly zeroed in on the irony of Ryan’s gaffe. But we should forget it. Even if his speechwriters had caught the falsehood be-

difficulties with moral failures, to muddle financial lapses with ethical ones,” he wrote. The narratives we use to talk about poverty and government assistance in the United States shame and silence those most in need. Instead of hearing their stories, perspectives like Tantaros’ and Ryan’s dominate the debate over funding SNAP. Even on the left, we’re more likely to hear about government assistance from politicians taking “the SNAP challenge” than from parents who actually use SNAP to feed their children. Of course, elected representatives can raise awareness by blogging about their week of eating on a $33 budget.

Still, the SNAP challenge makes me uneasy. It doesn’t simulate the anxiety that comes along with poverty. It doesn’t carry the same shame that society places on recipients of government assistance. It lasts only a week. Rep. Steve Stockman’s (R-Texas) communications director took the challenge and gleefully proclaimed that he was “beating” it, as though poverty were some sort of game. But taking the challenge

Carrying On

by Heather Regen A rotating column by senior Voice staffers

fore he spoke, Ryan’s words would have carried the same message. And that message proves far more enraging than a plagiarized story spun for political effect. Ryan and other conservatives believe that “the poor”— as though all struggling Americans are some one-dimensional damsel in distress—need moral saving.

In a New York Times op-ed this month, Nicholas Kristof dug to the root of such thinking. Some Americans tend “to confuse economic

black person” or “Wow, you’re not even that Asian” as racist, then it should also condemn phrases such as “You’re white-girl wasted” and “You dance like a white guy.” Racism is a two-way street and it really doesn’t matter what side of the street you drive on.

The achievements of individuals who identify with minority communities, whether it be winning a track meet or winning an Oscar, should stand alone as achievements in themselves. Framing these achievements as a subtle one-up over white people in an ongoing battle for racial equality, apart from being an outdated perspective, propagates a divisive “us” and “them” approach to race relations that sullies the success of individuals such as Nyong’o.

Nyong’o’s Oscar is a victory that can and should be universally appreciated. It is a victory for film, it is a victory for the arts. It is a victory for the black community.

It is a victory for women. It is a victory for all.

Caitriona Pagni is a sophomore in the SFS. She may have been a sprinter in hiigh school, but no one can out run the Res Life cops.

comes nowhere close to the reality of living on food assistance, not to say that there is a uniform experience of economic hardship. Today, 46 million Americans receive nutritional benefits from the government, and and each of those people has a different story, a story that’s being drowned out by the GOP’s moral parables and Fox’s sensationalism.

Now that Ryan has given us a fake story, here’s a real one: When my dad went to jail and my mom found herself suddenly supporting my brothers and me on her own, she got help from SNAP to feed us while she looked for a job. Today, she works harder than anyone I know to make sure my brothers and I get the best educations possible. But SNAP isn’t just for drastic cases of parents landing in prison. It’s for acute times of need when people get laid off, and it’s for families who work hard but still can’t make ends meet. It’s a safety net, and it’s saved a lot of people. I shudder when conservatives try to slash food assistance, because they’re not concerned with fighting the war on poverty—they want to wage a war against the poor.

If you have experienced sexual assault, the best course of action is to reach out to an on-campus or external resource as soon as possible for immediate medical care, reliable information, and emotional support.

RESOURCES FOR SURVIVORS Campus Resources

For immediate medical care, contact GERMS (202-687-HELP) or the Student Health Center (202-6872200).

Health Education Services (Village C West 207) has a team of specialists trained to address issues such as stalking, trauma, unwanted touching, relationship violence, and sexual assault. All services provided are free of charge and confidential.

External Resources

D.C. Rape Crisis Center (202-333-RAPE) is a 24 hour, confidential hotline for survivors of sexual assault.

Rape and Incest National Network (1-800-656-HOPE) allows survivors of sexual assault and friends of survivors to ask with a trained volunteer questions about sexual assault.

Washington Hospital Center (110 Irving St. N.W.) provides survivors with D.C. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners who can collect evidence, test for STI and refer survivors to counseling and other resources.

The University Assault, Services, and Knowledge D.C. sexual assault reporting mobile app is a collaboration between the organization Men Can Stop Rape and the D.C. Executive Mayoral Office. The UASKDC app is available for the App Store, Google Play, and Blackberry World.