VOICE the georgetown
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HEALY PUB TO RISE AGAIN? PAGE 4
HOYAS TO FACE HUSKIES IN SWEET SIXTEEN PAGE 6
WIN WIN WINS PAGE 10
Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w March 24, 2011 w Volume 44, Issue 10 w georgetownvoice.com
OH, SNAP!
2 the georgetown voice
march 24, 2011
comments of the week “Oooh boxes! And trucks! And a room in LXR! It’s almost like Housing decided to play the role of 80’s game show
producer and give away the worst parting gifts imaginable Pyramid home game! Press-on nails! KFC gift certificates! Rolaids! Denture cream! Floodlights! A cordless phone!“ — Matt, “Housing to seniors in Nevils: GTFO”
“Congratulations to Domino’s Pizza… the true winner of the majority of allocations.” —PizzaLover, “GUSA FinApp updates proposed budget”
“If the argument from the neighbors is “too many drunken partygoers” and we reply, like in these signs, “don’t stop us from partying,” we’re going to lose. Every time.” —Doug, “Students launch StopCrimeNotParties.com,
distribute lawn signs”
“Down with tyrants!” —REMOVE THE KING OF GEORGETOWN, “Burlieth resident calls for the removal of John DeGoia, Jack Evans”
Talk Back
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Voice Crossword “There Goes Old Georgetown” by Scott Fligor
Across: 1. See 35-across 12. Ecto- opposite 13. Lebanese Civil War general 14. Athena’s half-brother 16. Old muscle cars 17. Was on a treadmill
20. Old Sumerian city 21. Current measurer 22. Inventors’ protections 25. Lil Wayne song “That ___” 28. Star Wars antagonists 29. Tangent to the curve: abbr. 31. Egg layer 32. First bit of a Latin boast
33. Long-time Chicago Symphony conductor 34. Wrath 35. “How long’s it been?” with 61-across, 1-across, and 46-across 38. CIA forerunner 39. “One ___ loneliest number” 40. Three-time speed skating gold medalist Karin 41. Hwy. 42. “ESPN 8, the “___” 43. Often given in ft. and in. 44. “___ the left” 46. See 35-across 49. Loops 52. Computer communication with the world 53. Hard things to break 56. Angelina Jolie role in movie of the same name 58. IPod model 59. Regulation CC 60. Scottish singer/songwriter Reader 61. See 35-across
answers at georgetownvoice.com Down: 1. Advantage 2. Within 3. Tokyo, formerly 4. Early Microsoft product 5. Heat 6. Linguist Chomsky and others 7. Zune parody 8. “I’m ___” (I’ll get it done) 9. Actor Kilmer 10. Age 11. Often accompanies a red light 15. Peaceful 18. Close 19. Few enjoy them 21. Penicillin 23. Sleeping sickness spreaders 24. One from Germany 26. “Really?” 27. Go with the flow?
29. Hawaiian singer 30. Ultimatum concluder 32. Criticized XP successor 33. Rogan of “Superbad” 36. Call girl 37. Largest Live Journal community 38. “Little ___ Annie” 43. Aims for 45. Heir 46. Director Wertmuller and others 47. “The Importance of Being Earnest” writer 48. Tag line? 50. Sky in Paris 51. Wildcats sch. 54. “___ Kapital” 55. Intelligence big dog 56. “Told you!” 57. Mike Mullen, e.g.
Are you a logophile? Share your love of words and help us write crosswords. E-mail crossword@georgetownvoice.com
editorial
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VOICE the georgetown
Volume 44.10 March 24, 2011 Editor-in-Chief: Molly Redden Managing Editor: Tim Shine Editor-at-Large: Juliana Brint Director of Technology: Ishita Kohli News Blog Editor: Geoffrey Bible Leisure Blog Editor: Nico Dodd News Editor: Chris Heller Sports Editor: Nick Berti Feature Editor: Sean Quigley Cover Editor: Iris Kim Leisure Editor: Leigh Finnegan Voices Editor: Aodhan Beirne Photo Editor: Max Blodgett Design Editors: Nitya Ramlogan, Catherine Johnson Projects Editor: Brendan Baumgardner Crossword Editor: Scott Fligor Assistant Blog Editors: Diana McCue, Vincent Tennant Assistant News Editors: Rachel Calvert, Ryan Bellmore, Jeffrey Neidermaier Assistant Sports Editors: Adam Rosenfeld, Rob Sapunor Assistant Cover Editor: Holly Ormseth, Kelsey McCullough Assistant Leisure Editor: Mary Borowiec, Heather Regen, John Sapunor Assistant Photo Editors: Julianne Deno, Matthew Funk Assistant Design Editor: Michelle Pliskin Associate Editors: Julie Patterson, Jackson Perry Contributing Editors: Keenan Timko, Matthew Collins
Staff Writers:
Gavin Bade, Thaddeus Bell, Akshay Bhatia, Tom Bosco, Kara Brandeisky, Sam Buckley, Matthew Decker, John Flanagan Kate Imel, Satinder Kaur, Daniel Kellner, Matt Kerwin, Eric Pilch, Sadaf Qureshi, Abby Sherburne, Melissa Sullivan, Mark Waterman
Staff Photographers:
Sam Brothers, Helen Burton, Jackson Perry, Audrey Wilson
Staff Designers:
Megan Berard, Richa Goyal, Ishita Kohli, Michelle Pliskin Kathleen Soriano-Taylor
Copy Chief: Keaton Hoffman Copy Editors:
Emma Forster, Emily Hessler, Kate Imel, Tori Jovanovski, Claire McDaniel, Kim Tay
Editorial Board Chair: J. Galen Weber Editorial Board:
Gavin Bade, Juliana Brint, Ethan Chess, John Flanagan, Ishita Kohli, Tim Shine, Cole Stangler
Head of Business: Kara Brandeisky The Georgetown Voice
The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.
This newspaper was made possible with the support of Campus Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, online at CampusProgress.org. Campus Progress works to help young people — advocates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org. Mailing Address: Georgetown University The Georgetown Voice Box 571066 Washington, D.C. 20057
Office: Leavey Center Room 413 Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20057
Email: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Web Site: georgetownvoice.com The opinions expressed in the Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of the Georgetown Voice. The University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Silver Communications. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.
On this week’s cover ... SNAP Cover Illustration: Iris Kim
the georgetown voice 3 SNAP OUT OF IT
SNAP suffers from arbitrary enforcement Although the stated goal of the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program is to protect students’ safety, for most students, the sight of SNAP’s flashing yellow lights is a distressing one. On Thursday and weekend nights around Georgetown, SNAP is more often seen as a dour party police. By minimizing the interactions between Georgetown students and the Metropolitan Police Department, SNAP serves a legitimate purpose within the West Georgetown and Burleith neighborhoods. But the program has some unfortunate policies too, such as breaking up parties when there has been no complaint from neighbors, which must end. Without SNAP, much of the off-campus noise related to student parties would be dealt with by MPD. While the party probations and work sanction hours doled out by the Office of Campus Life may seem unfair, they are better than the alternative: serious fines and possible arrests. The program is particularly valuable given the new noise ordinances in place that
conceivably allow MPD officers to arrest anyone who makes an unreasonably loud noise between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. But there are some serious problems with the opaque manner in which the program is run. SNAP’s decisions about which parties to break up can be arbitrary and overly strict. Without a clear standard for what constitutes a violation, students hosting parties can never be sure when the wrath of SNAP will fall on them. Their habit of citing and punishing students whose parties did not elicit a complaint targets students who are socializing responsibly. By shutting down parties that make only moderate amounts of noise, SNAP interference punishes students partying responsibly and concentrates student revelers at the few remaining parties, creating legitimate noise problems. Perhaps a bigger problem, though, is the punishment students face after they receive a visit from SNAP. SNAP’s “proactive” approach—which busts parties before receiving
any noise complaint from neighbors—punishes students for a victimless crime. Anne Koester, Director of Off-Campus Student Life, has the final say when doling out punishments that stem from SNAP visits. The appeals process is even more problematically cryptic—sanctioned students report being given no substantive details about the process. When contacted, Koester refused to clarify how appeal cases are handled. While SNAP could be seen as an advocate for and protector of students, its vague standards and mysterious operating procedures instead make it inimical to student life. Georgetown should lay out standard operating procedures, including clear guidelines for what constitutes unacceptable noise levels. Furthermore, SNAP needs to avoid breaking up parties that have not received complaints from neighbors and instead focus on prompt responses to actual problems. With some compromises, SNAP’s yellow beacons won’t have to be a red light for reasonable student parties.
No WAY CHEH
Taxing universities won’t solve D.C. budget woes With the District of Columbia facing a steadily rising $300 million budget shortfall, it is understandable that D.C. officials are looking for novel ways to raise revenue. However, D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh’s (D-Ward 3) recent proposal to strip Georgetown and other universities in the District of their tax-exempt status is not the answer. Georgetown is, after the federal government, the largest employer of D.C. residents, and taxing the financially constrained institution will only hamper its growth and ability to employ new workers. The District’s authority to raise tax revenue is constrained due to the fact that 49 percent of the city’s real estate is occupied by the federal government—which cannot be taxed—or nonprofit organizations like Georgetown, which are currently granted exemption. In addition, as non-profit institutions, Georgetown and other universities enjoy the right to raise revenue with low-interest government bonds. Cities around the country have recognized
the drawbacks of taxing universities, and some municipal governments have attempted to negotiate alternative agreements to replace the lost revenue. In Cambridge, Harvard pays a fee in lieu of taxes to replace the revenue they take away from the city. However, Harvard boasts an endowment of $26 billion. Georgetown’s endowment is a small fraction of that, and any fee would exacerbate the University’s precarious financial situation, which already relies on one of the largest tuitions nationwide. Even paying a small portion of the total cost of services used would open the door to further fee increases and demands from the city, which the University definitely could not afford. Cheh’s decision to target universities specifically is also illogical. Why shouldn’t other charitable institutions, like churches, be asked to pay taxes? Plenty of large D.C. churches and non-profits could afford to bear the cost of their municipal services. Georgetown and other universities are not to blame for the budgetary
hole the District has found itself in, and it is not Georgetown’s responsibility to dig the city out. A better solution would be to take a look at a second major element of the budget shortfall problem—commuters. Approximately 300,000 people who work in D.C. live in Maryland or Virginia. As a result, they file their tax returns there. If the District could institute a commuter tax on wages earned by non-residents, it could significantly reduce the current budget deficit. Although the Home Rule Act of 1973 bars D.C. from enacting such a tax, widespread concern within Congress about budget deficits makes amending the act a possibility. D.C. needs to find ways to fix its budget deficit. However, Cheh’s attempt to pin the issue on universities is misguided. Her proposal ignores other, more equitable solutions in favor of a tax slapped onto D.C.’s largest employers. Georgetown invests a lot of money in the District, but it is no cash cow. City legislators need to stop acting like it should be.
THE BLUE AND GRAY LADY
Bringing newspapers to campus worth the cost When the Collegiate Readership Program was abruptly cancelled this past September, Georgetown lost a valuable program. It was therefore heartening to see the newspapers return a few weeks ago, filling the dispenser in front of the ICC and stocking racks in Leavey and Lauinger. The readership program also returned with some much-needed reforms that will help lower the program’s cost and ensure that more undergraduates have access to the papers. At an initial cost of $6,500 per semester, the price tag for the initiative is large, but it is easily one of the wisest purchases the Georgetown University Student Association has made. GUSA President Mike Meaney (SFS ’12) and Vice-President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) deserve praise for restoring the program swiftly, while also heeding several critiques of the old readership program. Of equal importance, they also changed the distribution locations, offering the paper at Lau instead of at the Hariri building, where they went unread in previous
years. Though pickup rates for last year were actually quite high (more than 70 percent for the Washington Post, and 82 percent for the New York Times) this location change will increase accessibility by making sure that newspapers aren’t being dispensed in remote areas. Anyone who has walked by the ICC, Lau, or Leavey recently can see that the entire supply of the Times is consistently gone by the late afternoon, as are most copies of the Post. This is as good proof as any of how much students value this program. Also, GUSA is now reimbursed for newspapers that are never read. According to GUSA Senator Tyler Sax (COL ’13), every newspaper that is not picked up by the end of the day will be fully refunded. When the distribution crew comes by each morning they tally and then recycle untaken papers. This means Georgetown students aren’t paying for dozens of unread copies of USA Today, and they can be sure that those papers won’t be littering campus, either. Though it is great to see the program back on campus, there is still room for more reform.
GUSA should house all newspapers in a GOCard activated dispenser like the one used outside the ICC. This way, undergraduates can be sure that they are getting sole access to the newspapers their student activities fee money is paying for. GUSA should also look for committed long-term funding partners, so that students can know for certain that the program won’t be abruptly discontinued yet again. Fundamentally, awareness and discussion of contemporary issues are crucial to creating a campus that fosters intellectual growth everywhere, not just in the classroom. When students have the opportunity to read the opinions and reporting of some of the world’s greatest journalists, they become better informed and better thinkers. And with the New York Times announcing that it will soon begin requiring paid subscriptions, the program couldn’t have returned at a better time. Few students are in the position to start paying for their own newspaper subscriptions. Thankfully, GUSA is picking up the tab for them.
news
4 the georgetown voice
march 24, 2011
1789 Initiative on track to hit $500 mil by 2016 Fundraising aided 369 students last academic year
by Rachel Calvert On the heels of an endowment growth campaign that topped $114 million in fiscal year 2010, fundraising for the 1789 Imperative has maintained momentum and is on track to achieve its goals of raising $500 million in scholarship funds by 2016. The imperative was launched in 2009 as an advance component of the University’s broader $1.5 billion fundraising campaign for the Georgetown Fund, which will launch in October. It seeks to help ensure the University’s commitment to meet the fully demonstrated financial need for undergraduate students, a policy adopted in 1978. According to Jeffrey Donahoe, senior director of communications in the Office of Advancement, the decision to move up the public launch of the imperative came as a response to the economic recession of 2008. “An uncertain economy made the need for scholarship support more important than ever,” Donahoe wrote in an email. “Also, the University decided to dedicate all funds raised by the
Georgetown Fund, the main undergraduate annual giving program, to support the imperative.” According to Donahoe, strengthening undergraduate scholarships is currently the University’s number one fundraising priority. It has also been the priority message in the University’s alumni events and publications. In an email, Patricia McWade, dean of Student Financial Services, explained that the project aims to improve Georgetown’s financial aid packages to more effectively recruit top students by competing with the “no loan” policies at other universities. “Our goal in the 1789 Scholarship Imperative is to substantially reduce the amount of loans our students have when they graduate.” McWade wrote. “This allows us to better compete to ‘win’ these students so that they come to Georgetown.” According to McWade, the University hopes to raise $500 million by 2016, covering 1,789 scholarships at $25,000 each. In each $25,000 scholarship, $3,000 will replace what otherwise would have been a loan. The Office of Student
Goal:
1789 1750 1500 1250 1000 750 500
692
250
nitya ramlogan
Financial Services has already included funds from the 1789 Imperative, which is entirely funded by philanthropy, in student financial aid packages.
Approximately 55 percent of the student body receives some sort of financial aid, composed of scholarships, loans, and work study. McWade said that 40 percent of students receive scholarship aid. About 8 percent of these aid packages either do not contain a loan or substantially reduce the loan that would have been awarded. In the fiscal year 2010, the first of the imperative, “current-use dollars” funded 369 scholarships at a cost of $25,000 per scholarship. Unlike endowed donations, which are invested to create a self-sustaining resource, currentuse dollars must be replaced each year with new donations. Also this year, donations raised the number of endowed scholarships to 114, compared to 29 in 2007. Halfway through fiscal year 2011, that number is already at 129. According to the Office of Financial Services, the University’s scholarship budget has steadily increased from $35.3 million in 2004 to $75 million in 2010. Ben Jarrett, assistant director of the Office of Student Advancement, said the University saw its two largest donations ever last year. The
University also raised $5.8 million in donations under $200. Because the imperative funds undergraduate scholarships, Donahoe wrote, the donor pool is primarily comprised of undergraduate alumni. The national patterns for alumni giving to colleges and universities reflects a downward, if less dramatically decreasing, trend. According to the Council for Aid to Education, an independent organization that tracks private donations to higher education, the average alumni donation decreased by 0.4 percent, compared to an 18-percent drop in the previous fiscal year. However, participation fell from 10 percent in 2009 to 9.8 percent in 2010. Jarrett primarily engages with younger alumni, but at Georgetown that demographic’s donations reached an all-time high during the last fiscal year. Within this group, the University closely examines the number of younger alumni who maintain their philanthropy. The number of alumni donors, rather than the size of the donation, is also a uniquely important metric with this demographic.
Student space proposals compete for $3.4 million by Ryan Bellmore Since the Georgetown University Student Association’s endowment commission began accepting proposals on Mar. 16, the improvement of on-campus space has emerged as a common theme in suggested uses for the of $3.4 million available due to last semester’s passage of Student Activities Fee Endowment reform. “I think student space is going to be a theme in this,” Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), a GUSA senator and the Finance and Appropriation Committee’s representative on the commission. Jesse Colligan (SFS ‘14) submitted a proposal to paint murals in locations around campus, such as the Canal Road entrance or the wall under the Yates Field House. According to Colligan, a commission with both University and professional artists could oversee the creation of the murals.
“I sometimes find that the campus has a very gray, dull, sterilized, brick/stone look to it—both inside and outside,” he wrote in his proposal. Lauinger Library administrators held an open meeting of their own on Tuesday to gather student input before they draft their own proposal. The most common topics at the meeting, which was attended by approximately 15 students and library employees, were the need for more power outlets, more comfortable furniture, and a less “basement-like” feel. Library administrators, who conceded that the $150 million renovation of Lauinger described in the 2010 Campus Plan is not in their immediate future, hope to make incremental changes. However, some are still concerned about the potential cost. “Replacing all the furniture in the entire building would take up one fifth of the entire endow-
ment,” said Will Wheeler, head of research and instruction in Lauinger. Wheeler urged precision in the library’s potential changes. He will lead a small-scale study on how library facilities are used beginning this spring and continuing into the fall semester. Wheeler already plans to change the third floor by closing off the circulation desk to allow students in the space behind it and replacing half of the reference materials with additional computer workstations. Not all proposals are space-focused, though. A proposal submitted by Tierra Evans (COL ’14) and Gabrella Ehioghiren (COL ’13), called for the creation of an annual homecoming parade to foster a sense of community on campus. Although some students objected to its effect on student life, Carolyn Chambers (COL ‘11) argued that the creation of new, annual tradition would impact students.
“Everybody remembers Georgetown Day,” Chambers said. “Everybody remembers Homecoming.” The desire for a centralized student space was a chief concern of most proposals though, with many arguing that the proposed renovations to the New South lounge may not meet student needs due to the dormitory’s location. Matt Stoller (COL ‘08) is leading a campaign to resurrect the Healy Pub, a student-run bar that operated on campus for 14 years before closing because of financial difficulties caused by Universitymandated dry nights. Stoller’s proposal, entitled “Bring Back Healy Pub,” cited a 2010 report on student space as well as the success of The Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub, a recently built, student-run bar at Harvard University. “[The proposal suggests] bringing back Healy Pub as a
dignified and student-run gathering place in Healy basement of historical character where students can study and enjoy food, drinks and one another’s company,” reads a message on the group’s website. Since launching its campaign on Wednesday, Bring Back Healy Pub has found a strong base of public support: more than 1,250 people have already joined a Facebook group that supports the proposal. “Almost everyone I talk to on campus, as well as many alumni, seem to be behind this idea,” Fitz Lufkin (COL ‘11), a signatory on the proposal, wrote in an email. “Hopefully, the University will realize what an opportunity it has to unite the campus and alumni communities with this project. Also, I would hope that when a group of students and alumni are thinking of writing a $3.4 million check, the University will listen.”
news
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the georgetown voice 5
LXR to go wireless Friday TEDx brings innovation to the Hilltop by Jennifer Rokosa Although wireless Internet access in LXR, the second residence hall to recieve new wireless access this academic year, it is unlcear wheather the University will fulfill its commitment of installing wireless service in every dormitory by the end of the semester. While expansion to the Walsh building is scheduled for this summer, University Information Services is waiting to announce activation dates for the remaining residence halls that do not have wireless capabilities, including Alumni Square, Darnall Hall, Harbin Hall, Henle Village, Village A, and Village C. According to UIS Director Beth Ann Bergsmark, the University must obtain the necessary permits and finish construction to support an increased power demand before making additional plans for those residences. “We are waiting for these activities to be completed before we can announce dates for the remaining halls,” she said earlier this week. Last July, Bergsmark claimed that the project would “definitely” be finished by the end of the academic year. In a September interview with campus media, Univer-
sity President John DeGioia set a similar deadline. “We’ll be getting [the project] done this year—that was an important check for us,” he said. While the new wireless network will be capable of supporting a higher concentration of users within a smaller area, Bergsmark explained that the older networks can still operate effectively. “[They] have the capacity to support the residents,” Bergsmark said. Wireless access has been generally well received in Copley Hall, where services were activated on Mar. 11. “It’s working really well,” Carolina Caballero (COL ’13), a Copley resident, said. Other students agreed with Caballero’s claim that the wireless works well, although ethernet cable-based access remains a better choice for high-bandwidth activities, such as streaming video. However, some are concerned about the expansion of wireless capabilities into an academic environment. Nate Olson, a PhD candidate currently teaching a Philosophy class in the Walsh building, worries that the availability of wireless Internet may hurt classroom discussions. “It could be more of a distraction than a benefit,” he said.
Let students decide funding
Next week, the Georgetown University Student Association will vote in the student activities fee budget, concluding a monthslong process that determines how to dole out $800,000 in club funding. Under the present model, GUSA is the only body with power over the budget, and GUSA senators ultimately make subjective decisions as to what constitutes an important contribution to student life. But, given that club funding exists for their benefit, students should have a greater say in how the funds are allocated. Consider, for example, the debate over how to spend an increased allocation for the Center for Social Justice student groups. “We had to say, ‘What of these new initiatives do we think would be fun? Which do
we think are strong? And how much more money can we give them to expand and do good programs?’” said Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee. Meanwhile, the 260 percent increase in the Student Activities Commission’s allocation—by far the largest gain of any advisory board—had little to do with any sort of objective reassessment of funding needs or priorities. Instead, FinApp designed the SAC budget to fulfill 83 percent of budget requests, the same percentage as last semester. Malkerson calls this an appropriate allotment to provide money while encouraging participation from the groups. This is not the right way to write a budget. An ideal student
by Jeffrey Niedermaier On Wednesday, members of the Georgetown community gathered in Lohrfink Auditorium to hear “ideas worth spreading” at the TEDx Georgetown conference. TED is a non-profit organization that hosts global conferences to showcase new and innovative ideas. The theme of the Georgetownspecific conference was “Netcetera,” a look at how the Internet has and continues to change modern life. Ceyda Erten (SFS ’13), chair of the TEDxGeorgetown event committee, was a driving force behind the conference. “I was so inspired by the ideas in the TED talks and thought we should create a similar environment,” she said. Funds were mainly provided from the Lecture Fund, where Erten serves as the chief of staff, and Hoya Innovation, an organization led by Michael Wang (MSB ’07). Wang was also one of the event’s speakers; he gave a talk titled “The Internet and the Overachieving Millenial.” Many of the speakers at the event were long-time admirers of TED and volunteered soon after learning about the event. Bob Corrigan, deputy director of Encyclopedia of Life, began his talk on “The Internet and Citizen Science” with an enthusiastic endorsement. “I am Bob Corrigan. I love TED,” he said, “I love the TED movement.” Mike Nelson, a visiting profesactivities fee allocation would reflect the priorities of the student body, not simply recycle last year’s numbers and arbitrarily decide what is an appropriate rate of funding. If students could determine where some or all of the money they pay in student activities fees goes, decisions like these
Saxa Politica by John Flanagan
A bi-weekly column on campus news and politics would more accurately reflect the will of students. One option is to break the $125 student activities fee for fall 2011 into points that students can distribute among clubs based on their interests. In such a system, groups would solicit allocations from regular students, advertising how much a given level of
sor in the Department of Communication, Culture, and Technology, devoted his talk to “The Internet and Diplomacy.” “I’ve been to the original TED in California, and I always got this feeling of being over-caffeinated at the talks like my brain is just tingling,” Nelson, who is also a faculty sponsor of the event, said. Some student speakers, such as Nick Troiano (COL ’12), were involved in early efforts to bring the conference to fruition. After Troiano took a semester-long leave of absence for entrepreneurial projects, however, he could no longer participate in the organization of the event—but he was happy to be able to speak at the event. “It’s always been a dream to attend or speak at a conference, so this is really exciting for me,” he said during his talk, which was titled “How the Internet Can Create a 21st Century Democracy.” “I hope to challenge people’s ideas coming into the conference,” he explained. “Some people think that our two-party system has been around so long and has been so engrained that they can’t change it, but I’d like them to realize that we can by leveraging the Internet and new technology.” Austin Yoder (COL ’11), who also spoke at the event, blogs about his experiences “travel hacking,” or using Internet resources to find affordable flights and trips. Over spring break, for example, he made
student support would buy in terms of programming. Students would then allocate based on what they feel is the most worthwhile use of their money. There are certainly normative issues with this proposal. For example, one can make the case that groups have an intrinsic value beyond the number of members they draw. “Many people on this campus forget how important theatrical performance, dance, and music are for a comprehensive liberal arts education, and it is immensely discouraging to us as an advisory board,” Bobby Gregory (COL ’11), a member of the Performing Arts Advisory Council, wrote in an email. “It is our job to remind them not to forget about this integral component of one’s educational experience that was so near and dear to St. Ignatius’s heart.”
it to Yellowknife, Canada for $32.50. “I want to show people how the Internet can be used to plan out their lives and influence [other] people positively,” Yoder said. “You don’t have to be on a stage to positively impact the lives of the people around you.” Several dozen people filtered in and out of Lohrfink during the fourhour series of talks. They dealt with topics ranging from “The Internet and Virtual Aliens” to “The Internet and Pets.” Many, however, were disappointed to learn that a talk hosted by Nicolas Jammet (MSB ’07), Jonathan Neman (MSB ’07), and Nathaniel Ru (MSB ’07), the three alumni founders of the local organic salad chain Sweetgreen, was cancelled at the last moment. Jevon Walton, special liaison to President John DeGioia’s Office, was one of the conference attendees impressed by the offerings, despite the cancellation. “I came to learn about innovation and how I can apply it to my line of work,” he said. “I liked how organic [the talks] were; each one grew by itself out of a single question.” Erten was pleased with the event, and hopes to watch it grow in the future. “What was most impressive was that it was completely based on student volunteer work,” Erten added. “It will get a lot better in coming years, but I think it was a great success.”
At the same time, these value judgments are already being made by ostensibly elected GUSA senators and the unelected advisory boards. In practice, both groups rely on precedent more than anything else as a guide to setting their funding. But, at any time, either of these groups could arbitrarily decide that a given club does not meet its definition of a valuable contribution to student life. If club funding is meant to create a vibrant student life, it must also reflect the wishes of the student body as a whole. As it stands, GUSA’s centralized funding system risks alienating itself from students’ needs. The obvious solution is to increase the rank-and-file student’s voice in the budgetary process. Find out how many points it takes to buy John for the night at jflanagan@georgetownvoice.com
sports
6 the georgetown voice
march 24, 2010
Hoyas set to dance with UConn in the Sweet 16 by Rob Sapunor The Georgetown women’s basketball team continued their winning ways in the NCAA Tournament, so far, beating the fourth-seeded Maryland Terrapins in College Park Tuesday night, 79-57, in a dominating performance once again led by sophomore guard Sugar Rodgers. Rodgers had a career-high 34 points en route to the Hoyas victory, which puts them in the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1993. Although the second round match was hyped up as a big local rivalry, Georgetown saw it as just another game. “For us it was just the second round of the NCAA tournament, and Maryland was the team we had to get through … on their homecourt,” head coach Terri WilliamsFlournoy said. The key to Georgetown’s success against both Maryland and Princeton on Sunday was their defensive performance. The Hoyas jumped out to an early 11-0 lead before Maryland finally made a free throw over five minutes into the game. The Hoyas 1-2-2 fullcourt defense forced 20 turnovers on the game as the Terps struggled to break the suffocating press. After going into halftime leading 40-24, the Hoyas went on an 11-2 run coming out of the locker room, coasting the rest of the game, with Maryland never getting within 14 points. But the main story of the night was Rodgers, who made 7-of-10 three-point field goals, including a miraculous one-handed bank shot over two defenders as the shot clock expired late in the first half. She also led the team with nine rebounds and two blocked shots. The Maryland defense, who knew she would be a problem, simply had no answer.
“We tried to throw the kitchen sink at her and we couldn’t get it done,” Maryland head coach Brenda Frese said. Rodgers also had two steals and four assists, while making it count from the free throw line, going 7-for-8. “When she gets in the zone it doesn’t matter what you do. She could shoot with her eyes closed and it would still go in,” WilliamsFlournoy said. The Hoyas shot 52 percent from beyond the arc as a team. Maryland only managed to shoot 19 percent from the same distance. Some of the dropoff in their offensive efficiency was affected by Maryland’s loss of forward Diandra Tchatchouang, who left the game in the third minute with a knee injury and didn’t return. She is the third leading scorer on the team, averaging 8.9 points per game. In her injured teammate’s absence, freshman forward Alyssa Thomas had a solid performance, scoring 23 points and grabbing 14 rebounds. However, her play alone was no match for the Hoyas’ offense, who had four players score in double digits. Junior point guard Rubylee Wright was that fourth player with 14 points, all in the second half, including 12-for-12 from the line. The Hoyas go in to the next round with little fear, even against the team that has beaten them twice this year and the last 25 times they have faced them, which happened to be in 1993, the last time the Hoyas were in the Sweet Sixteen. “They’re a great team,” Senior guard Monica McNutt said. “It’s no secret, but they’re human, they’ve gone down. Why can’t we be the team to take them down again?” If the team can play the way they have so far in the tournament, they will at least stand a formida-
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Sugar Rodgers has kept raising the bar all season, saving her best for last.
ble chance against No. 1 UConn. The Hoyas’ full-court press has worn down opponents and forced numerous turnovers. The offense led by Rodgers also has been performing exceptionally well, even though the opposition knows what’s coming. And the Hoyas don’t need any added motivation for their upcoming game.
“When ESPN said that UConn had a potential matchup against Maryland, we were like what? President Obama had us out in the first round,” McNutt said. “So we had a chip on our shoulder this game.” Connecticut has held Georgetown’s offense at bay in the two previous matchups, limiting Rodgers to less than 17 points in each
game and forcing the team to shoot just 25 percent. But, these Hoyas have beaten their fair share of tough opponents, including Tennessee, Maryland (twice), and West Virginia. One more won’t faze this tough-minded team. “I mean UConn is UConn,” Rodgers said. “We’re just going to come out and play hard.”
The Sports Sermon “I’ve been around kids….and uh people…all my life. Um, I’m not the cause of prostitution.” —Lawrence Taylor
When it comes to Thompson, I think it is still too early to judge his resume. I know seven years It happened right in front of seems like more than enough me. I witnessed the end of the time, but it would be prudent to Hoyas season in Chicago last see how he does with another week and I still am struggling to “generation” of players. Were make sense of it. Wright and Freeman the probMany people have already lem? They never won either. Mayseemed to figure it out, though, be Thompson was onto somejudging from Leo’s conversations thing this year by adjusting his and Facebook statuses. Some system to cater to their strengths. have called for JTIII’s job, and an If he can get a better feel for how ultra-optimistic minority thinks to do this, the Hoyas might have a the team is fine and has just run better future under him. into some bad luck. Also, if Georgetown does I don’t think it’s that simple. fire him, who do they get to reAs a starved Georgetown basketplace him? The only high proball fan, still waiting to witness file coach available right now is my first NCAA Tournament win, Bruce Pearl. Although I love his I’m sometimes tempted to take fire and passion, I wouldn’t want the easy way out and say blow him in charge of my up the program and Pete Rose Central school’s basketball fire JTIII. But the Da bettin’ line team—the Hoyas easy way is rarely would be on probathe right way. Margin Dookies Hoyas tion in no time. If Let’s start with (duh!) (underdogs) (favorites) you went the other the most recent disGeorgetown appointment: the Moore Sugar way and hired a hot, UConn Hoyas didn’t lose to Hoyas Deep dished mid-major coach, Pizza a bad team in VCU, Gus Johnson Jim Nantz Rise & Fire the move better pay off quickly, because who are now in the if it doesn’t you’ll have lost a highwith Chris Wright and Austin Sweet Sixteen. That doesn’t change profile coach for nothing and will Freeman leading the team. the fact the Georgetown should’ve have set the program back for The biggest knock against JTIII won that game—they were the years. Moreover, the Georgetown and the program in the last three more skilled team. But on Mar. head coach position isn’t the most years is that they’ve had countless 18, VCU controlled the matchup attractive. Because of its limited top recruits, including NBA lottery against the Hoyas in every way. resources it would be hard to lure pick Greg Monroe, yet never won They outshot them, played betan elite coach to the Hilltop. an NCAA Tournament game. It’s ter defense, and outhustled them. Right now, the program is at impressive that Thompson reTheir 48 percent three-point shootits biggest crossroads since Hibcruited these skilled players, but ing was no accident—Georgetown bert and co. left. But now the team it doesn’t make a difference if it was lost on the defensive end all is more than one year removed doesn’t lead to postseason sucnight and the Rams had open looks from the Final Four and it hasn’t cess. When you have that large a for days. They should’ve been betwon an NCAA tournament game collection of skilled players, the ter prepared for the matchup, but in three years. For the Hoyas, blame should fall on the coach, but part of it was that the Hoyas ran that’s a long time. Someone better because he has won with skilled into the wrong team at the wrong figure out a solution soon, so peoplayers before, I don’t think it is time in VCU. Of course, it didn’t ple like me don’t have to spend time to make any major changes to help that Chris Wright was returndays thinking about it. the program yet. ing from a three-week absence.
by Nick Berti
But that game is only a small piece of the full picture. One of the most frequent critiques of JTIII focuses on his Princetonstyle offense. People have argued about it for so long, the debate feels older than Princeton itself. Yes, the style of the offense constricts certain players, and it can be said that the players must fit the system, not the other way around, which is never a great thing. But Thompson adjusts the system to his players more than people think. With a guard-heavy team this year, the seventh-year coach transformed his system and made it faster. He incorporated a press more frequently than in past seasons and encouraged transition offense,
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the georgetown voice 7
Shaky start builds foundation man has been battling an injury thus far this season and has not had a chance to make a true impact on the season. Despite the hype this class has received, Fried remains reserved, not expecting huge results from his freshmen right out of the gate. “Whatever we get from them is a bonus, in my opinion,” Fried said. “It’s a learning year for them–but they’ve done a great job of looking past the fall and realizing they’re not truly freshmen anymore.” This mix of veterans and underclassmen has the Hoyas looking forward to life after the season’s opening stretch, starting with Villanova and continuing with the rest of the Big East. “Villanova’s big for us,” Fried said. “They’re not necessarily a huge rival, but we have to continue to progress. One of our goals is to go undefeated in the Big East again–obviously the only way to do that is to win the first game.” With a history of success in the Big East, the Hoyas clearly have a great deal to be optimistic about. The team is excited to play at home for the first time since falling to Duke, and is eager to put the early season struggles in the rear-view mirror. “It’s been challenging from the start, but I feel that it’s making us stronger,” Kirr said. “We’re about to head into Big East season and we’re really excited for that.” The Hoyas begin Big East play on Friday at 6 p.m. at Multi-Sport Field.
Goodbye to the old guard
This post-game scene had become a familiar sight to me in three years of covering the team–a group of emotionally distraught Hoyas trying to sum up a season that ended disappointingly early, just like against Ohio in Providence last year and the season before versus St. John’s in the Big East Tournament. I’m sure it wasn’t much dif-
A 1-4 start in any sport usually marks the start of a futile season. For the twentieth-ranked Georgetown women’s lacrosse team, however, it signals a confident beginning. Georgetown’s poor record is the result of the gauntlet the Hoyas had to face at the start of the season: they fell to the second-, third-, fifth-, and 14th-ranked teams in the country. Despite the lopsided results, seventhyear head coach Ricky Fried embraced the brutal stretch the Hoyas constructed to open the season. “A lot of people say, ‘start off easier, get some more confidence,’” Fried said. “My view is that the harder you start off, no matter what the record is, it’s going to make you a little more
Courtesy GU SPORTS INFORMATION
Kelsi Bozel has seven points this year.
No more than half an hour after the buzzer sounded and Georgetown’s season officially ended with a crushing 74-56 loss to Virginia Commonwealth, the Hoyas had to address the media. A visibly distressed John Thompson III took the podium in the bowels of the United Center, flanked by seniors Austin Freeman and Chris Wright. They had little to say. Not that there was much to say about that game, a shocking, thorough dismantling at the hands of a team whose place in the NCAA Tournament many had questioned less than a week before. Indeed, in his opening statement, Thompson bypassed what happened on the court to talk about who it happened to. “It’s hard when you get to this point and the season’s over,” he said. “I end up thinking about
players moreso than the specific game right now. We’ve got a group of seniors—Chris, Austin, Julian, and Ryan Dougherty. Four years goes fast, and they’ve given a lot and they’ve worked their behinds off. And that’s tough. A lot will be said about what this group did or didn’t do in their four years in the postseason, but they gave a lot to this school. And we just want to thank them.” It was hard not to think of this senior class—especially Wright and Freeman, the only ones to play all four years at Georgetown. Those two were the team’s best players and undisputed leaders. They were the McDonald’s All-American guards brought in to lead a new post-Final Four iteration of the Hoyas. And as their coach alluded to, they never brought the team back to those heights.
Backdoor Cuts by Tim Shine
a rotating column on sports ferent after losing to Davidson the year before that. With the benefit of a few days hindsight, however, it’s not totally fair to let those season-ending images define the seniors, indelible as they may be. While they underachieved in the postseason, Wright and Freeman deserve to be remembered with the all-time Hoya greats. Both finished their careers among
What Rocks
battle-tested. We gain confidence from actually getting better as opposed to just the win-loss record.” This season’s Hoyas are led by seniors Mary Beth Brophy and Logan McCraw. Fried considers Brophy the team’s emotional leader, as the group responds positively to her energy. McCraw meanwhile, leads a Hoya defense that has already shown dramatic improvement since giving up 24 goals to Northwestern in their first game. While the captains provide emotional and defensive leadership, senior Jordy Kirr heads the Hoyas’ offensive attack. “Jordy is the motor that makes our offense go,” Fried said. “She’s taken over the mantle [and] jumped all in. She has a good balance of pushing and supporting her teammates while definitely having their respect.” Kirr leads the team with nine assists, and her seven goals make her the second best on the squad. Sophomore midfielder Sophia Thomas leads the team with nine goals. She also leads the Hoyas’ impressive group of underclassmen. The freshmen are the nation’s number-one recruiting class, as ranked by InsideLacrosse. One member of this freshman class is Barb Black, who has earned the starting goalie role. In addition to Black, the Hoyas brought the country’s top recruit to the Hilltop, midfielder Kelyn Freedman. Unfortunately, Freed-
by Kevin Joseph
Rand Ravnaas
While the Georgetown baseball team has experienced many ups and downs over the past two seasons, junior right fielder Rand Ravnaas has been a steady force in the field and at the plate. Ravnaas has made an impact on the baseball field ever since starting 21 of 34 games in his freshman year. By his sophomore year, he was first on the team with a .347 batting average and 11 home runs. Still, he hasn’t become complacent after his early success. “I’ve been working in the off-season to try to cut down on strikeouts, which will hopefully improve just putting the ball in play,” he said. This season is shaping up to be his finest yet. Ravnaas has started the 2011 campaign on a tear. He is hitting .409 while also
the top-20 scorers in Georgetown history, with Freeman coming in at seventh all-time. Wright had the sixth most assists of any Hoya. None of that matters without team success though. And despite a few unfortunate outcomes in March, Wright and Freeman led Georgetown to that, too. They posted an 88-43 record in four years, notching signature victories over top-ranked non-conference opponents like Duke, Memphis, and Butler, and they carried the Hoyas to the brink of a Big East Tournament championship last season. Still, a program like Georgetown doesn’t play for regular season victories. The seniors know that as well as anyone. That’s why they wore such clear anguish on their faces after each postseason loss. Last Friday night, Wright sat with reddened-eyes and the normally stoic Freeman struggled to maintain his composure because
Courtesy GU SPORTS INFORMATION
boasting five home runs and a slugging percentage of .670. Currently, Ravnaas’s ability to get on base has really helped a Hoyas team off to one of their best starts in recent memory. On Tuesday, he helped them earn a 10-6 win over George Mason, reaching base on a fielder’s choice and scoring in the seventh inning. Ravnaas still maintains an important role on the other side of the ball, too, making sure to hold down his part of the outfield. He is modest, though, and does not take all the credit for his success. “My coaches definitely have helped a lot with what I’ve been doing,” he said. “My parents have [also] provided me with the ability to go out and work hard whenever I want to.” —Melissa Sullivan
they had failed at the one thing they wanted most. “I feel like me, Chris, Julian, Ryan—we did what we can to try to help the program,” Freeman said. “We did the best we can. Plain and simple. That’s it.” Freeman’s halting speech as he apparently tried to hold back tears revealed the subtext of his statements: their best wasn’t good enough, at least not when it counted. Freeman and Wright’s best was often the best in November or January, but that offered them no solace. They cared the most about March, and for whatever reason, they came up short. Sadly, that wasn’t good enough to lead Georgetown to postseason glory. But in order to earn a place of respect in Hoya history, that should be more than enough. Was Tim’s best good enough? Email him at tshine@georgetownvoice.com
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8 the georgetown voice
march 24, 2011
A weekend with the party police by Chris Heller It’s difficult to say why a girl in a panda hat wanted to jump into Matt LeBlanc’s arms at 2 a.m. last Saturday. “If I jump, will you catch me?“ she asked him. Was she concerned about her safety? After all, she was standing in the middle of the intersection of Prospect and 34th Streets, watching taxis whiz by as they picked up anyone who stuck around an M Street bar until closing time. “I see that pen in your hand! You’re going to write us up, aren’t you?” she said. LeBlanc, a Student Neighborhood Assistance Program representative, certainly didn’t look like he wanted the faux pelt-wearing stranger jumping into his folded arms. Instead, he urged her back toward the sidewalk, his arms crossed and a knowing grin spread across his face. Meanwhile, her friends stood on the opposite end of the street, giggling and shouting. “Maybe I should call GERMS,” LeBlanc said, jokingly. She screwed up her face, cocking her head at an angle that would topple over most sober people. Then, she returned a tease of her own. “Doesn’t it suck to write people up?” she asked.
sss Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, SNAP representatives patrol Burleith and West Georgetown from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m., on the lookout for crime, safety issues, and out-of-control parties. The service is in its eleventh year, although earlier programs operated through the 1990s under different names. But perhaps now, in the midst of a controversial Campus Plan approval process and an increasingly strained relationship between the University and the community around it, SNAP is more relevant than ever. “The primary goal is to educate students,” Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Jeanne Lord said. “It’s not punitive. ... We want to catch them before they reach a
level where MPD might have to respond.” The key to striking a balance between educational and judicial purposes, Lord explained, is acting before neighbors complain about loud parties. “The majority of the stops are proactive ones and that really works to the students’ benefit,” she said. “That’s our goal.” Cory Peterson, a SNAP representative and area coordinator in the Office of Residence Life, echoed Lord’s sentiment. “We try to be more proactive than reactive,” Peterson said. “Proactive” is a word you hear a lot if you hang around SNAP patrols, as I did last weekend. I met LeBlanc and Peterson on campus at 11 p.m. on Saturday, before they joined a nightly “roll call” meeting inside the Department of Public Safety’s Village C West headquarters. At the meeting, they shared information about the evening’s goings-on with DPS officers, off-duty Metropolitan Police Department officers, and Allied Barton private security officers, who all also patrol on weekend nights. “We do it during every shift,” LeBlanc said. “Over time, it helps us build a relationship with DPS and MPD officers.” Despite these working relationships, SNAP’s proactive approach aims to intercede before other authorities like MPD can step in and act. Before the University’s Office of Off-Campus Life remodeled SNAP in the fall of 2007, it was a response-only program that did operate nightly patrols. Now, SNAP’s neighborhood hotline dials directly to a cell phone carried by a patrolling SNAP representative. SNAP’s efforts have become all the more important to the University since a disorderly conduct law amended by the D.C. City Council took effect last month. The law, which prohibits any loud noise between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. that is “likely to annoy or disturb one or more other persons in their residences,” can lead to 90 days in
CHRIS HELLER
A quiet corner: SNAP patrols the busiest intersections of West Georgetown, listening for any potentially disturbing noises. jail and a $500 fine. “Since the law, we’ve been told to straight up shut parties down,” Dennie Flowers (COL ‘96), a SNAP representative who also works in Yates Field House, said. “It’s a way to make sure MPD isn’t involved. It keeps the kids out of trouble.” Other SNAP representatives tell a different story, claiming that a January 2009 MPD decision to reauthorize the use of 61-D citations, which are noise fines that count as an arrest on criminal records, had already encouraged them to act early. “I wouldn’t say we use the law as a deterrent,” Peterson said. “Just as before the disorderly conduct law, we would tell them about the 61-D and how they can issue it and this is what it is and this is what the fine is.” Afterward, I joined Peterson and Lord on the West Georgetown route, later switching to LeBlanc’s Burleith patrol. Within minutes, Peterson mentioned the “P” word again. “I’d much rather see a student
talk to us than end up in cuffs at District 2,” Peterson said while peering down an alleyway along 36th Street. “That’s never our goal.” The West Georgetown patrol, like its Burleith counterpart, has no defined route. It spans every street between the front gates and Wisconsin Avenue, bounded by Q Street to the north and M Street to the south. Peterson told me he prefers the route because of the area’s high traffic. “I don’t ride Burleith as much as I ride West Georgetown,” he said. “The reason why is with more foot traffic, it’s easier to stay awake. It really has nothing to do with it being more exciting or anything else.” The first response I observed came shortly before midnight on the 3400 block of N Street. As Peterson and a private security officer who drove the SNAP car approached the townhouse, partygoers peered out of a second-story window, but didn’t appear to quiet down. Peterson explained that he’s stopped at the house once before, but only as guests were leaving. This time, the party was just starting. “We’re looking and listening for
suspicious activity and excessive noise,” Peterson said. “If the noise is breaching the backyard into the street, that’s a sign.” The interaction between Peterson and the woman who answered the door followed a pattern that SNAP representatives might call ideal—he told her that he could hear the party from the street, then gave her the opportunity to quiet her guests or end the party before MPD noticed. The woman smiled and thanked him, then closed the door. “That seemed to be pretty effective, right?” Lord asked Peterson as returned to the car. “We’ll see,” he said. The visit, like all others that SNAP makes, will be documented on Peterson’s ever-present clipboard. He’ll submit a report of the incident to the Office of Off-Campus Student Life on Monday morning. (For incidents that involve students living on campus, reports are sent to the Office of Residence Life). Anne Koester, director of Off-Campus Student Life, will then contact, and possibly meet with, the students who live in the residence.
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georgetownvoice.com Koester decides when to dole out punitive sanctions, which can range from fines, mandatory work hours, and party restrictions to alcohol education classes, mandatory reflection papers, and disciplinary probation, based on a student’s judicial history and the details of the incident. “It is my practice to follow up on all SNAP reports received by meeting with the students involved and discussing the relevant report with them,” she wrote in an email. “Whether the followup leads to disciplinary sanctions pursuant to the Code of Student Conduct depends on a variety of factors, such as the circumstances of the incident.” The Office of Off-Campus Student Life prides itself on Koester’s ability to determine appropriate punitive action, according to Lord. “Each one of these incidents is addressed on a case-by-case basis,” she said. “It’s not a presumption that students have done something wrong. Anne takes a lot of time and is really thoughtful in those conversations with students.” Some students, such as Matt Lavin (COL ‘11), who rents a row house on Reservoir Road, agree with Lord. In January, SNAP shut down a party at his house while responding to a neighbor’s misinformed complaint. The following Monday, Koester emailed Lavin and his housemates with a request to meet with her. Although this kind of visit is called a “disciplinary meeting” by the Office of OffCampus Student Life, Lavin was surprised to learn that it didn’t guarantee disciplinary action. “I imagined it was going to be worse,” he said. “[Koester] told us what was in the SNAP report and went over the details to make sure it was all true. Since the call wasn’t meant for our house, there was no punishment. No anything.”
sss Shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, the West Georgetown SNAP patrol ran into its distant relative—a private security officer hired by the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown. Although no official relationship exists between CAG and SNAP, many of the hired officers who work for the groups personally know each other—they even worked for the same company until last fall. The officer told Peterson about loud noises he heard on the 1300 block of 35th Street. A search of the area, however, turned up little evidence to back up his claim. Still, Peterson visited the alleged party house to tell residents about the complaint. “All I hear is foot traffic,” he said. “I think I can hear something in the backyard, but it’s not that loud.”
A student answered the door, claiming that the noise came from a townhouse behind his property, and promised to talk with the residents. While shaking hands with Peterson, he thanked SNAP for stopping by. “He told me he appreciated us,” Peterson said. “He said that when MPD shows up, it’s always a bit tense.” Although the University pays three off-duty MPD officers, known as the reimbursable detail, to patrol West Georgetown and Burleith in conjunction with SNAP, students almost universally prefer to deal with SNAP. “SNAP seems to be a better alternative to having to deal with Metro,” Lavin said. “It could be a lot worse.” However, many residents argue that SNAP is a poor way to control off-campus parties. Community leaders, such as CAG President Jennifer Altemus and Burleith Citizens’ Association President Lenore Rubino, encourage residents to call 9-1-1 to report noise complaints. “We haven’t found SNAP to be an effective deterrent because people still have parties in the same places over and over again,” Altemus said. “If there’s illegal activity, they should call the police. Most of the time SNAP was called, residents found it to be ineffective.” As one of the people responsible for the creation of SNAP, Lord strongly disagreed. “It’s frustrating when people choose not to use it,” she said. “We feel very strongly that we provide this resource and we’d like to reserve MPD for more serious things. We would like our neighbors to call SNAP first.”
sss Almost a mile away from West Georgetown, SNAP’s Burleith patrol wasn’t doing much work, proactive or otherwise. Only one call came in before midnight, but the caller, a Georgetown student, didn’t make a formal complaint. According to LeBlanc, the number of complaints SNAP receives can vary wildly from weekend to weekend. “There are nights where one neighborhood seems to have all the action going on and the other neighborhood will be dead,” he said. “It depends.” But after a while, a call came into the SNAP hotline from a resident on the 3700 block of R Street, complaining about a party at a nearby student townhouse. According to LeBlanc, reasonable amounts of noise early in the evening can quickly become intolerable to some residents. “Once we get past 11 p.m. or 11:30 p.m. into the 12 a.m. range, the line between appropriate and inappropriate is much more well
the georgetown voice 9
defined,” he said. The SNAP car approached the party from the alleyway between R Street and Reservoir Road, where LeBlanc was told that the noise was loudest. As he stepped out of the car to speak with the party hosts, his phone rang again—it was the resident who filed the complaint, confirming that he had the right house. “When SNAP showed up, there was no more than 15 people at the house,” Issei Nino (COL ‘12), who was celebrating his 21st birthday in the house on Saturday night, wrote in an email. “SNAP explained exactly what the neighbor complained about, and we immediately turned the music off and kept it extremely low for the rest of the evening.” Despite Nino’s compliance, his case could potentially be hurt by the actions of his guests, whom he called “friends of friends who were visiting from Harvard.” According to LeBlanc, the guests were “rude and disrespectful” when he approached Nino’s back porch. “That was a good instance where the residents of the house responded very nicely, but some of their guests were not as well behaved,” he said. “Those people are going to get to go home, but the people who live in that house are going to be called in for a meeting. If you’re a party host, you’re responsible for your guests’ behavior as well.” At this point, neither Koester nor the Office of Off-Campus Student Life has contacted Nino, who did not know SNAP was responding to a noise complaint at his house until LeBlanc walked around the block and knocked on his front door. “He told us what happened and that he wanted to see those specific students leave, so we
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Keeping the streets free of criminals, miscreants, and ... drunk freshmen. kicked them out immediately,” Nino wrote. “The students in question had been a pain all night actually, treating guests disrespectfully, so it was kind of nice that we had an excuse to kick him out.” But while he was satisfied with how LeBlanc approached the situation, Nino still believes that SNAP should not break up parties. “Instead of shutting down parties and doling out various sanctions, they should simply notify students if they’re being too loud,” he wrote. “They should only serve as a warning system to allow students to lower noise level before Metro or DPS shows up.”
sss A day earlier, LeBlanc finally convinced his new panda-hat wearing friend to step onto the sidewalk. Although some SNAP representatives only leave their cars to talk to the hosts of unruly parties, he believes SNAP’s charge to “enhance student and neighborhood safety” also means taking care of those who might not be able
to take care of themselves. “There are times when we just want to make sure people get home safely,” he said. “We’ll walk them home, onto campus, wait with them until a SafeRides van comes to pick them up. There’s that judgment to consider, too—when they don’t need to be GERMed, but they’re not okay to get home on their own.” LeBlanc’s friendly questioning of the student’s friends revealed that her brother lived immediately across the street on the 3300 block of Prospect Street. LeBlanc walked the student to the house, watching carefully as she stumbled up a staircase to the door. “I’m not showing up with a badge,” he said hours later. “I’m showing up in a hoodie and clipboard. It puts people at ease.” As she closed the door behind her, LeBlanc turned and began walking towards Wisconsin Avenue. Closing time means that she won’t be the only one who needs help getting home. “I really want to be as friendly with them as much as I can be,” he said. “If they’re responsive to that, we can all have a great night.”
Total number of reported interactions West Georgetown and Burleith Fall 2010 44 (10%)
23 (6%) Residences with 1 SNAP/MPD interaction Residences with 2 or more SNAP/MPD interactions
360 (84%)
Residences with no SNAP/MPD interactions
Graphic by Kathleen soriano-taylor
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10 the georgetown voice
march 24, 2011
The Sweetlife of a new D.C. music fest by Mary Borowiec
Perhaps as a side-effect of the beautiful weather, spring in the District boasts an impressive collection of outdoor music festivals. And this year welcomes a brand new, highly anticipated addition to the annual repertoire—the Sweetgreen-sponsored Sweetlife Festival on May 1, 2011, aptly described as “a festival with a conscience.” With its humble beginnings in a parking lot behind the DuPont Sweetgreen, Sweetlife’s organizers are thrilled to be holding this year’s event in a much more accommodating venue, Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Located smack in the middle of the 40-acre Symphony Woods, this venue creates an appropriately green atmosphere for the environmentally-focused festival. To do justice to the stellar location, Sweetlife boasts an outstanding lineup of performers. The Strokes, who recently released their comeback album
Angles and whom Sweetgreen co-founder Jonathan Neman (MSB ‘07) described as “one of our all-time favorite bands,” are the headliners. Rounding out the lineup are such varying acts as mashup master Girl Talk, American rapper Lupe Fiasco, and electronic revolutionaries Crystal Castles. VIP admission, which brings the ticket price from $55 to $100, will get guests smaller backstage performances by local artists, in addition to backstage passes and a voucher for all the Sweetgreen products you want. But while its lineup grabs the attention of any music lover, Sweetlife is more than a concert—it’s a “celebration of flavorful music, wholesome food, and thoughtful living.” Sweetlife is a lifestyle expansion of the Sweetgreen brand, so the Sweetlife Festival is working to promote not only music, but also healthy living and sustainability. To achieve this, Sweetgreen is partnering with the Jamie
Texas BBQ from NY by Brendan Baumgardner There are two ways to approach a meal at Hill Country Barbecue—you can get one meat, or you can get every meat. So when I stopped by the new, Gallery Place location of this Texas-style BBQ joint, I opted for the greasy, heart-clogging latter. Since opening its first location in New York, the restaurant’s aim has been to recreate the down-home feel of an oldfashioned cookout. Hill Country cooks all of its meat sans-sauce, opting for dry rubs cooked over hickory. Traditional sides compliment the cuts, from corn bread to delicious green bean casserole. For the ambivalent carnivore, the best bang for your buck is the Pitmaster. This $24 plate gets you lean brisket, pork spare rib, beef rib, chicken, and two sides. The spare rib is the standout—tender and smokey without being overpowering. The weakest is the beef rib, which is a bit tough and dry but nicely evened out by the BBQ sauce on the table. On the non-meat side of the dish, the
macaroni and cheese is so cheesy and delicious that it rivals the meat for the most decadent item on the plate. As for the décor—and this is from someone who’s never been closer to the Alamo than an episode of Friday Night Lights—it comes off a little DisneylandTexas. It’s too clean, and the neon beer lights are too bright. Still, the long communal tables and meat wrapped in butcher paper give Hill Country a casual, friendly vibe. For the college crowd, Hill Country is a bit expensive. Aside from the combo platters, dishes are priced by the pound, and when you tack on sides, it’s not hard to go over 30 dollars for not that much food. The drink specials aren’t bad, with five dollar well drinks at twicedaily happy hours, but expect to pay two or three times that for a decent bourbon. Still, if you’re a displaced Southerner hankering for home, or you’re just looking to expand your waistline while shortening your lifespan, you could do a whole lot worse than Hill Country Barbecue.
Oliver Food Foundation, which was formed by celebrity chef Oliver to fight obesity and promote healthier eating habits. All of the proceeds from the event will be donated to the foundation. The Sweetlife Festival will also support organic food and farming by hosting a farmers’ market at the event, selling the produce of local growers along-
side their standard salads and fro-yo. Sweetlife will also be a carbon-free event, thanks to collaboration with green energy groups like Clean Currents. Neman summed up Sweetgreen’s mission in hosting this event on the blog The Vinyl District: “This festival is bringing us one step closer to realizing our vision for the ‘sweet life.’ We’re
excited to bring an event like this to Washington D.C., and to bring together two of the most important aspects of the sweet life: sustainable food and live music.” Consequently, with a carbonfree conscience and food that is sure to be as organic as the festival’s music, the Sweetlife Festival 2011 has all the right ingredients for a delightful event.
I guess it’s true what they say—gentlemen really do prefer blondes.
IMDB
caretaker for an elderly client. Enter Kyle, the client’s skater-boy grandson, who shows up unaccompanied at his grandfather’s doorstep one day. After failing to contact Kyle’s neglectful mother, Mike reluctantly takes him into his own home until they can come up with an alternative solution. To Mike’s delight, Kyle is a seasoned wrestler, and the two easily fill the voids in one another’s lives—specifically Mike’s wrestling team’s inability to win, and Kyle’s lack of a sufficient parental figure. The film is characterized by its optimistic outlook on even the most vilified character or darkest situation—a quality that separates it from comedies which paint issues in black and white. Mike is a well-meaning man, whose unwillingness to share his financial troubles with his wife lands him in a web of lies. But his poor decisions lead him to Kyle, and their mutually beneficial, “win-win” relationship ultimately breeds good from Mike’s fiscal woes. The actions of Kyle’s irresponsible, drug-abusing mother, played to a tee by Melanie Lynskey, are not justified,
but her immaturity is made sympathetic by her status as a young single mother. The film’s best quality is its knack for showing these imperfect characters in their honest struggles to do the right thing, an idea that audience members can relate to. In addition to Lynskey’s moving acting, the film’s cast as a whole shines. Giamatti’s performance is genuine, and real-life high school wrestler Alex Shaffer makes a commendable debut as Kyle. The film’s sensitive subject matter is accompanied by plenty of comical quips and heartwarming scenes that keep the atmosphere upbeat and, if nothing else, pleasantly watchable. Win Win offers a strong and amiable cast of characters driven by an otherwise commonplace subject matter, and in the end, even the seemingly corny scenes contribute to the film’s unmistakable charm. Taking pride in the meaningful relationships formed out of its characters’ simple existences, Win Win’s touching performances thrust this underdog into competition with this year’s contending critic picks.
All Win Win does is win by John Sapunor
Produced in an industry where the average blockbuster offers a surreal narrative alien to daily life, the low-budget Win Win centers on the meaningful relationships formed around rather unremarkable circumstances. The film follows a familially frustrated high schooler and a financially unstable lawyercum-high-school-wrestlingcoach as they form an unlikely bond. And while there is nothing too profound or exciting about the premise, the film’s down-to-earth characters and ability to remain light-hearted yet poignant distinguish Win Win from the average feel-good comedy. Win Win is the third feature film from auteur Tom McCarthy, and he continues to follow the themes of unlikely relationships that he first pursued in The Station Agent, a film about the curious relationship between a xenophobic dwarf and a middle-aged divorcée. In Win Win, family man Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is running a dwindling law firm, and in an attempt to make money becomes the
georgetownvoice.com
“I see you still look like a fifteen-year-old girl, but not hot.” —Blades of Glory
the georgetown voice 11
Stellar expectations for Tenn Cent Fest by Leigh Finnegan These days at Georgetown, it’s all about Tennessee Williams. A flag proclaiming “A Season Named Desire” has been flying over the Davis Center since the beginning of last semester, mysterious signs for the “Glass Menagerie Project” have popped up all over Red Square, and the Department of Performing Arts is bracing itself for an influx of Williams scholars, actors, and enthusiasts this coming weekend. All this hubbub seems a tad confusing at a school with few theater majors and no affiliation to the playwright. It’s this confusion that Performing Arts Artistic Director Derek Goldman hopes to eradicate with this
weekend’s Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival, or Tenn Cent Fest—the climax of the Williamsfocused “Season Named Desire,” and the first large-scale festival in the history of Georgetown’s Department of Performing Arts. And while the festival officially commemorates Williams’s 100th birthday, it is just as much a testament to the dedication and potential of Georgetown’s historically overlooked performing arts department. “In the most exciting and exhilarating way, it’s stretched us incredibly thin,” Goldman said of the festival, which relied on the involvement of over 100 students as well as over 100 professional performers. “It’s taken the incredible commitment of staff and artists volunteering their
COURTESY SUE KESSLER
After this photo, a 10-second delay was implemented on live performances.
The Internet is for porn
Whether you’ve been looking for it or not, I am going to make the rash assumption that at some point, you’ve seen porn on your computer. It’s there. Your most skewed sexual fantasies are your Google search bar’s command. What once could only be found in the pages of a secret stash of dirty magazines or vaguely-labeled, grainy videotapes is now available in unlimited—not to mention free—quantities. And it’s not just of your normal, interpersonal variety. From bestiality to tentacles, extreme porn that used to be seen as a unique fetish now has an audience. And when there’s no limit to how much porn you can consume, there’s also no limit to the way that can carry over into your actual sex life, much to the detriment of you and your partner. This is your brain on porn.
During regular, non-tentacle sex, the brain is stimulated—visually, physically, emotionally, etc. Each stimulus causes the brain to react differently. For example, the brain releases dopamine in response to natural urges like hunger and thirst, but also in response to nearly all addictive drugs, as well as behavioral disorders. Basically, it reinforces behavior. But guess what else triggers it? That’s right, good oldfashioned, x-rated porno. So, if you’re looking at porn and masturbating, you’re telling your brain, “Yes, this is good for me. Do more of this.” As dopamine reinforces urges to look at pornography more and more frequently (and, in some cases, of weirder and weirder fetishes), it can lead to porn addiction. Also, if you watch porn excessively,
time, and students pouring their blood and guts into it.” One look at this weekend’s festival schedule makes that commitment obvious. In addition to performances of Williams’s more high-profile works like The Glass Menagerie, the festival includes a wide array of other performances either written by or related to the playwright. A staged reading of Camino Real, one of Williams’s more controversial and experimental works, will be performed by a cast of 27 students and professionals, including Theodore Bikel, who performed in Laurence Olivier’s original production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Donn B. Murphy (COL ‘72), one of the founding fathers of Georgetown’s performing arts. Although not as famous as his other works, Williams wrote multiple versions of the controversial semi-autobiographical play, and a massive reading seemed a logical keystone for the festival. “Camino Real is still such a radical work,” Goldman said. “I feel like it’s the play he’d want to hear on his birthday.” Augmenting original Williams works like Camino Real are performances outside of the playwright’s canon. These include an “onstage conversayour brain gets too used to orgasming outside of actual, reallife sexual encounters. This can make it more difficult to perform when it’s game time—assuming, since you spend so much time at your laptop, you ever actually get to game time. Though doctors debate as to whether it actually exists, por-
Internet IRL by Nico Dodd
a bi-weekly column about the Internet nography addiction means that people use porn obsessively, often to relieve emotional discomfort or relieve sexual tension resulting from unsatisfying sex with real people. This is obviously bad for sex, and even worse for relationships. How can sex work with a human partner if what you’re really into can’t occur in this dimen-
COURTESY EDWARD ALBEE
Behold, the second most famous moustache at Georgetown. tion” with award-winning playwright and Williams admirer Edward Albee, and a special edition of the Friday Music Series entitled “A Concert Named Desire.” This adds an interdisciplinary aspect to the festival, making it more of a cohesive collection than a series of somewhat related pieces. While the ties between the different pieces are readily apparent, the one thing left unclear is the connection between Tennessee Williams and Georgetown. According to Goldman, a lifelong fan and admirer of the playwright, Williams’ political and social undertones as well as his messages of tolerance embody the mission of the Davis Center and the University as a whole.
sion? You can’t just x-out a boring sexual encounter and click on a link for something even filthier. In addition to the risk of addiction, this can result in a syndrome that Ian Kerner, sex and relationship columnist at AskMen.com, calls SADD, or Sexual Attention Deficit Disorder. People with SADD have trouble concentrating during sex, and, ironically enough, often fantasize about pornography to remain aroused during sex. Syndromes like these demonstrate how sex, like other places where humans have to deal with each other, is being replaced with non-personto-person contact by Internet options that make virtual versions of real-life interactions easier and more convenient. As social networks and online dating services continue to grow, people invest more and more time into communica-
“A lot of the mission of Georgetown is that we come from a space of privilege,” he said. “Theater can be used to shine a light on aspects of our world that aren’t so easy to look at.” With the festival attracting so much publicity for the Department of Performing Arts even before it officially kicks off, it raises the question of whether DPA will pursue similar undertakings in the future. When asked about upcoming festivals, Goldman heaved an exhausted laugh. “I definitely feel like it will fuel other ideas for ambitious things, but next year we’re definitely not doing anything on this scale,” he said. “There’s a reason they only do the Olympics every four years.”
tion that isn’t face-to-face, but screen-to-screen. It follows that people who have unlimited pornographic access may become less dependent on face-to-face romance. Why risk sex that isn’t gratifying, when you’ve got a web browser and a right hand to satisfy you? Convenience has always been the excuse of people who replace real life experiences in lieu of ones that can be streamed to you. You’ve been told that porno is dirty, and there are plenty of moral arguments as to why it’s wrong. If there is evidence that it negatively affects your sex life, it might be a good idea to unglue yourself from the screen and meet someone in 3D. Like sharing a conversation or seeing a live concert, nothing beats the real thing. Email Nico at ndodd@georgetownvoice.com
leisure
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march 24, 2011
C r i t i c a l V o i ces
Of Montreal, thecontrollersphere, Polyvinyl Records Thecontrollersphere, the latest EP from indie pop staple Of Montreal, is in many ways a compilation of rejects. Clocking in at only 23 minutes, the five-song record was primarily composed of tracks cut from their last release, the critically-acclaimed False Priest. Sadly, while False Priest witnessed the band successfully blending funk, electronic, and R&B influences, the tracks that made it onto TCS don’t mesh nearly as well, and the EP feels discordant as a result. But the news isn’t all bad—in fact, this lack of cohesion makes TCS interesting, in a clinical sort of way. The EP dissects many of the diverse musical influences of the band’s previous releases, strips them down, and mashes them all together, resulting in interesting tracks like the revue-
esque “L’age D’or” or the eightminute saga “Holiday Call.” The EP’s opener, “Black Lion Massacre” feels like the black sheep on an album full of them. It starts off with industrial rumbles, dissonance, and crunching guitar strokes, augmented by feedback and waves of steady percussion. Singer Kevin Barnes murmurs above the cacophony about ritual murders and ascensions, adding to the song’s creepy, off-putting vibe. Fortunately, the other tracks bring out sounds that are still varied, but more familiar to fans of the band: “Funkt Sass vs the Root Plume” grounds itself pleasingly in reverbed psychedelic pop, as Barnes croons about “transience exploited vacant energy fields.” However, the abrupt shifts between genres that occur in other songs are a little hit-or-miss— “Holiday Call,” which drifts from psych-funk to a violin-and-synthesizer-anchored world music sound, gives the impression of multiple, incompatible songwriting techniques clumsily pasted together within a single—albeit lengthy—track. Ultimately, TCS isn’t more than the sum of its parts, but in this case, that sum is much better than what most would expect from a collection of castoff songs. Folks already partial to the band’s
Empire state of rap
In today’s rap scene, it might appear that we’re witnessing the Swag Revolution—exemplified by newcomers like Lil’ B and Odd Future Wolf Gang, it’s a movement largely defined by Internet hype and a “fuck the mainstream” attitude to fame. However, there are still some out there who have avoided this path. Among these deviants are a handful of rappers from New York City out to resurrect the classic sound of ‘90s Big Apple hip-hop. And so far, they are doing a pretty convincing job. Underground heavy-hitters like Roc Marciano, whose debut LP Marcberg received impressive reviews across the Internet, have spearheaded this throwback style. Marciano uses timeless beats with warm, vintage funk and soul samples to
complement his complex and unrelenting flow. Other newcomers, like Timeless Truth, J-Love, and Maffew Ragazino, have also stepped up to the plate, dropping impressive debut releases reminiscent of classic New York rappers like O.C. and Gang Starr. But perhaps the most visible members of this revival have been Queens-based crew the Outdoorsmen. The Outdoorsmen are unapologetically New York, from their refined rhymes down to their extensive Polo collections, a nod to New York’s infamous Lo-Life Crew. Their sound and style herald back to the glory days of New York rap, somewhere between the Park Cypher and Shaolin. Of the new New York crews, the Outdoorsmen have been the most accessi-
recent, more experimental releases stand to gain the most from listening, but everyone else should just listen to the tracks that were good enough for False Priest the first time around. Voice’s Choices: “L’age D’or” —Samuel Buckley
Wiz Khalifa, Rolling Papers, Rostrum Records Wiz Khalifa has his own “line” of rolling papers. His breakout mixtape was called Kush and Orange Juice. In 2010, he bragged in an interview, “I might spend, like, ten grand on weed a month. Easily.” Cool story bro. It’s not that drug-obsessed rap is inherently bad—Jay-Z made his name repping a drug dealing past and Clipse’s cokerap opus Hell Hath No Fury is a certifiable classic. Even non-peddlers like Gucci Mane can turn ble for fans beyond the five boroughs. With several homemade music videos on YouTube and countless tweets, they have done a good job of giving some personality and aesthetic to the otherwise music-only movement. Two particular Outdoorsmen have risen to the forefront
Banger Management by Matthew Decker a bi-weekly column about music of NYC’s mix tape scene—the dark and introspective Meyhem Lauren and the unforgettable Action Bronson, who raps about ahi tuna and makes his living as a gourmet chef. The two are arguably the unofficial leaders of New York’s recent revival movement, with not only the most accessible sounds, but also the most developed. Fortunately,
massive amounts of consumption into something genuinely intimidating: a 6’3”, 220-lb former convict on codeine is not the kind of person most of us want to mess with. Bragging about weed, though? That’s setting your sights on the suburban mall crowd, and that crowd is exactly who Wiz Khalifa appeals to on Rolling Papers. This complaint may smack of some sort of hip-hop elitism. After all, the backpack rap of the mid-2000s (Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, College Dropout-era Kanye) is in many ways to thank for the widespread cultural acceptance of rap music we’ve seen in the past five years. But there’s a reason the only backpackers still relevant have abandoned the style’s hallmarks, which have been picked up by the likes of Drake, B.O.B., and Asher Roth: it’s pretty vanilla. More than half of Rolling Papers treads these post-backpack waters, from the god-awful jaunt “Fly Solo” to the shitty partyrap “No Sleep.” But unlike his peers, Khalifa validates the genre to some extent. Tracks like “The Race” and “Rooftops” are hazy cuts that take all the cues of contemporary pop-rap—soft electronics, muted guitar strums, saccharine chorus hooks—and turn them into something ethereal they are its most prolific writers, producing dozens of tracks on several mixtapes over the last year. This month, Meyhem released his first LP, Self-Induced Illness, a stunning collection of 41 of his finest tracks. Likewise, Action Bronson dropped the more succinct 15-track Dr. Lecter, which serves up a riveting dose of classic hip-hop. Together, the two records prove that while the West Coast may be presenting some young talent, the veterans can still step up and score one for New York. Whether or not you enjoy the sound of rap’s classic years, there is something undeniably gripping about these crews’ music. While many talented rappers have taken the easy route with blinged-out singles and mindless filler, this posse has managed to strip away the extraneous and get to the heart of true
and, dare I say, pretty. Weed- and suburban-rap are indeed good bedfellows. Considering that most of Rolling Papers mines this territory, it’s odd that it begins on such an assertive note. The three-song run that kicks off the album casts Khalifa as a poor man’s Rick Ross—his beats are thick and ominous, and his slow, staccato flow is heavily indebted to the Teflon Don. Khalifa has none of Ross’s confidence, however, coming off more like a wide-eyed kid imitating his idols than a fliff-throwing hell-raiser. For all his efforts, “On My Level” is more “Ah, C’mon” than “B.M.F.” To open the album with such laughable braggadocio does the back half no favors—a whole album of his smoked-up poprap would have made for one of the better mainstream hiphop albums in this class. But instead, Rolling Papers feels hollow throughout, as though Khalifa is trying for so much more than he actually manages to deliver. To be fair, though, I’m sure Aqua Teen Hunger Force was a major distraction during the recording process. Voice’s Choices: “The Race,” “Rooftops,” “Hopes and Dreams” —Matthew Collins hip-hop: storytelling. Whether it’s Meyhem’s ode to classic New York graffiti “Got the Fever” or Ragazino’s Queens anthem “Where I’m From,” each song tells a story of a time and a place. The narrative is nostalgic and comfortable—it’s easy to tell that these guys have grown up with hip-hop, and are doing it the way they learned how: with no compromises. There’s no catch or hook, and the veteran confidence of the rhymes proves that these rappers aren’t in it for fame or to ride an Internet trend. So maybe New York’s hot new clique isn’t really new at all, but simply offering a dose of what New York rap has always offered—a love for the music, and the city that inspired it. Show Matt your “homemade YouTube videos” at mdecker@ georgetownvoice.com
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continued from last week... “Look at me, you can do this. Just lower yourself into an L-shape and walk down. You have someone belaying down below so you won’t fall. I promise you that you won’t fall. Now calm down and just lower yourself. Look me in the eyes.” I could see my tears in the reflection of the instructor’s sunglasses. There were no eyes to focus on, no human to stare back at me to understand what I was going through, only the reflection of my own fear. There was no calming me down. This was worse than death. This was my weakness given a pedestal, a culmination of an adolescence spent hiding. I was crying, I was begging for this to be over. I was brought back to the wars of my childhood, the times I would cry in class for a disappointing grade or an embarrassing situation. I had managed to fight the tears for a good five years, but they opened fire upon my face and left their grisly stains all down my cheeks. I was losing, I was losing and everyone was watching. Oh it must have been a sight for war-torn eyes: a fat fuck dangling over a cliff edge and crying to go home. Was it then that Tim suggested that they offer me a candy bar to rappel down the cliff? I don’t know; it’s just something Adam told me later. I was the coward in the war movie, the one who would freeze at just the moment he needed to be a hero. The guy who couldn’t pull the trigger. The instructor made me leave the edge of the cliff to calm down while others went down. They filed past me one by one with that look of pity and shame that comes from being associated with a creature like me. Adam rooted for me; I knew that much. But the others needed me to fail. This was an army of one, and nobody shines their shoes on the frontlines of a Battalion field trip. I was given one more chance. I gripped the rope in front and behind me, and mustered all my courage and strength to form the necessary L-shape. Again, the instructor tried to get me down. “Look in my eyes. Now slowly lower your butt. That’s right, now lift one foot and walk down the cliff.” My shape was definitely not perfect, but once the first step is over, it’s almost done. After I began my steps down the cliff, I sped up as I gained confidence. Walking gradually devolved into free fall, though, and the nightmares of my failure at training were coming true. There was half a second where I could only think about the impending impact and I wondered about my vital organs hoarding blood. But as soon as I was falling I was saved by my belay down below, teamwork in action. I dangled in mid-air, helpless and confused for the longest of seconds.
the georgetown voice 13
FALL By: Jared Watkins
Perhaps that moment best represented my military career. I recaptured the wall and made it down. The next day, we were at lunch and enjoying the civilian life. Adam was there as well as my friends who didn’t have a uniform hanging in their closet. Adam wanted me to recount my war story to the civilians. “Did you tell them what you did yesterday?” Nobody likes their own war story. It takes them back to their old vulnerability. I especially didn’t need a fellow cadet to tell me how proud he was that I made it down the cliff. I told the table, “Oh, I rappelled down a cliff,” and that was the end of it. I didn’t mention it again and kept it away from the public eye. I left the service that year convinced that I didn’t deserve to wear that uniform. I first told our commanding officer that I would be coming back; it seemed so obvious then. Civilians don’t have to keep their promises, though, so they never again measured my hair or told me I needed a shave. My hair is longer now, I’m no longer afraid of some facial hair, but I still keep my gig line straight whenever I wear a belt. Adam stayed all four years in the JROTC. He hasn’t left that town. My older brother is stationed in Alaska with the Air Force. He as well stayed all four years and got the pay-grade bump when he enlisted before graduation. You already know what happened to Tim; he lives on disability checks from the VA with his wife and two daughters. I left those people and that town and started a new life away from all that. Though I try to forget, I can’t stop myself from thinking about my time in uniform and the men and women with whom I served. I don’t have any graves to visit or dog tags to hang. I only have the knowledge that I made it through, and others are still struggling. I have to live for the ones that didn’t make it, for the ones who fell off that cliff and hit the ground. This is for them.
Corporal Jared John Watkins (Retired) Panther Battalion Piedra Vista High School Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
voices
14 the georgetown voice
march 24, 2011
Multiple online personalities change the rules of dating by Kate Imel As I was searching for “friends” on my new Twitter account, I came across some of my old high school flames relaying the sultry details of their latest exploits. These tweets more or less consisted of dirty spin offs of a Tri Delta catch phrase or how “swoll” they are in preparation for some spring break debauchery. As “JacktheKing” and “Alphasmith,” these guys come off as complete assholes. What they don’t show is the Jack who calls me right when I get off the plane, or the Smith who always waits for me to lock my door when he drops me off before driving away. With the multiple spheres that allow us to recreate ourselves comes the challenge of understanding how to perceive others who also create multiple personas. How is a girl to know that the Jack who holds the door for her is also “JacktheKing,” who plans on tweeting about the sloppy and awk-
ward makeout that just occured on her doorstep? There are many implicationsof these different interpretations and expectations that accompany our online presence. The direst is that this compartmentalization has emerged in our college dating culture. We have our Facebook selves, our Twitter selves, our blog selves, and all of these selves are constructions and contortions. Within all of these different arenas, profiles, usernames, and passwords lies a multiplicity of locales to define and create yourself. The problem arises when these selves are not harmonious. The ability for us to go on Twitter under an alias and detail a drunken charade while simultaneously going on Facebook and untagging all but the most preppy and tame photos of ourselves allows us to construct multiple identities apart from our reality. Jack’s Facebook profile might draw interest from any number of women, but if they saw his
Twitter, girls might think twice before allowing “JacktheKing” to “slay” them. This notion is not entirely new: just think of how many friends you have who have drunken alter egos. Any girl who meets a guy at a bar and goes home with him knows not to expect to be invited out on a date, just like if you meet a guy in a class or through a friend, a date is fair game and sexual exploits may come slower. I know plenty of “good” and “nice” guys who in the wrong setting are total assholes, and I know girls who justify the “nice guy gone asshole” because he was hammered or was with his buddies or, a personal favorite, that somehow they gave him the wrong version of themselves, by letting the version that would love to be in a relationship somehow leak into the version that just wants to casually hook up. We take this information in stride, faulting ourselves for our poor compartmentalization in this society
where a multiplicity of selves not only exists but is increasingly eliminating its accountability to the other. And what seems the most terrifying is not that these different selves exist, but that we are knowingly burning bridges to allow this lack of accountability to run rampant. There comes a point when my sober self needs to hold my drunken self accountable, just as I have to hold my Facebook persona accountable for things that might be acceptable online, but not in real life. And sure, there are benefits to this interconnectedness. I can talk to friends thousands of miles away at a moment’s notice and I do have the ability to construct an identity online. But like any new phenomenon we have to make sure that there are barriers, or rather windows, to this ever more compartmentalized society we find ourselves in. Communication in our generation is like the Titanic, an unsinkable vehicle on which we can travel farther and faster than
ever. Much like the compartments of a ship that seal themselves off in the wake of flooding, we create barriers between the selves we construct within these various mediums. The danger in doing so, however, is that at some point these compartments will flood because it has constructed a false identity—apart from the whole. And when it does, each compartment will fill independently, unaware that the ship as a whole is sinking, and we will have burned all the connectors that were put in place to prevent this disaster. Ultimately, if we fail to create harmony between these selves, some over-arching moral code, we will sink, knowing the nature of our disaster of discordance only after we’ve drowned in the hypocrisy of it.
Kate Imel is a junior in the College. Dating advice from her is like sobriety advice from Charlie Sheen.
Summer internship forces student out of Wonderland by Kelsey McCullough My family is about as Disney as you can get, without actually being part of the Disney family. My mother, father, and grandfather have worked at Disney for a combined total of almost 111 years—longer than the Walt Disney Company has been in existence. All of them have worked for the small and mysterious division of
the Walt Disney Company known as Imagineering. The so-called Imagineers design Disney’s parks and resorts and, as they like to say, “make the magic.” For the past three summers, I have been an Imagineer, too, doing the same job my mother did when she first started working there. My mother and my grandfather have never worked anywhere else, and after
Venturing outside the castle may be scary, but it’s necessary.
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working there, I understand why. It truly was the happiest place on Earth. But now I have to start thinking about summer internships and I am forced to ask myself whether I want to go back to Disney for my fourth summer or, like Carl in Up, venture out to a new, constantly frightening adventure that would be non-Disney internships. As a child, I could turn almost any aspect of my life into a reference to a Disney movie or Disneyland. I had a difficult time understanding where magic ended and reality started. I wanted lightup shoes so that I could see my feet during the elevator portion of the Haunted Mansion. In my mind, all tigers were named Raja, like in Aladdin. And when my aunt moved to Colorado and told me the fox from Pinocchio stole her, I wholeheartedly believed her. Disney was the family business, and it defined my future aspirations. I dreamed of becoming a character in the park, an animator, an Imagineer, and everything in between. I had the occasional rebellious phases in which I promised myself I would never work at Disney, but, I knew I would never really know if it would be the right place
for me until I actually tried it myself. My first opportunity to test the pixie dust came the summer before I started at Georgetown. I worked in the Information Resource Center at Walt Disney Imagineering for the last three weeks of my summer. I instantly loved it. Original concept art decorated the walls, people walked around with paint on their clothes, and a real robotic Wall-E even roamed around department-wide meetings. For the next three summers, I watched the sun rise over Disneyland, and competed in canoe races around Tom Sawyer ’s Island. I met the man who wrote Walt Disney’s speeches, and had lunch with the creative executive behind Animal Kingdom. After three summers of working at what I believed to be the happiest place on earth, I felt like I could follow in my mother and grandfather ’s footsteps and have my dream job. However, every person I know who has worked there for the majority of their careers keeps telling me to go somewhere else, at least for just this summer. So now I’m stepping out of the mouse factory, as my grandfather called it, and trying to go
against the destiny that my Disney-infused life is leading me to. I am applying for jobs that do not care that I know who did the original concept art for the Pirates of the Caribbean or that every plant in Tomorrowland is edible. I am applying to companies where I know no one and which I did not know existed until I found them on Google. At the same time, however, I am looking forward to working somewhere where I am not known by my last name or introduced as “X Atencio’s granddaughter.” I am excited to learn the ins and outs of a new business and, I hope bring the lessons I have learned at Disney with me. I am hoping to discover something else that I love on my own. I know that any internship I get for the summer will not include backstage tours of Disneyland or Mickey Mouse pretzels, but I am hoping that if I end up at the right place, I will be able to discover the pixie dust in a new way.
Kelsey McCullough is a junior in the College. She’s looking for a new job, because they cast her to play the Beast this summer.
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Finding faith in the last place you would think to look by Aodhan Beirne Though I had already convinced my parents to let me take Elmo as my confirmation name, I ultimately chose Anthony. My last minute decision was in part because I wasn’t actually ballsy enough to pull off the irony of entering Catholic adulthood with a name that conjures up nothing but images of childhood. But mostly it was because St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost items, was the only
saint I had ever actually prayed to. I’m sure St. Elmo, the patron saint of sailors, would not have appreciated my summers spent at camp purposely capsizing boats, either. My first prayer to St. Anthony came at the urging of my maternal grandmother, who, since my birth, has been my only grandparent. As such, I’ve always tended to heed her advice as my only source of elderly wisdom. Before hanging up the phone, she always implores me
St. Anthony can help you find lost items, and is a great disco dancer.
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Liberating Libya Almost eight years to the day after the War in Iraq commenced, our new conflict in Libya began. Allied planes now fly over Libya; both enforcing a no-fly zone and targeting forces loyal to its dictator Muammar Gaddafi. And while I don’t mean to conflate Iraq and Libya, which are unquestionably different, something about growing up with the failure of Iraq makes me leery of our third military engagement in a predominately Muslim country. In the post-Vietnam era, applications of U.S. force have consistently led to consequences we had no way of predicting ahead of time, a danger that often seems lost to policymakers and pundits. When the use of force is not used as a last resort, we frequently risk the danger of creating more problems than we solve. At the same time, I desperate-
ly want to support the intervention in Libya. For one, Gaddafi is utterly insane, and the world would be better off without him in power. And for those, like myself, who believe in an international order governed by rules, the process was carried out the way it should have been. The mission has been executed with some Arab military assets, and coalition forces gained the support of the Arab League— at least initially, before Arab leaders grew concerned about the offensive bombing campaign that was carried out. The process was also given the blessing of the UN Security Council. France and the U.K. were even more hawkish than the United States and have largely taken the lead in Libya. All of these are welcome developments. Even the process by which the United States decided to com-
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to brush my teeth and say my prayers. Only because she’s my grandmother, I brush my teeth at least three times a day, despite ignoring most other rules of hygiene. Certainly, had my parents emphasized oral health as much, I would have found the nearest pair of pliers to pull my teeth out. I’m hard pressed, however, to find an instance of me defying my grandmother ’s wishes. And so I began to petition St. Anthony anytime I frantically searched for a lost item, just as my grandmother recommended and did herself. And though I missed Ash Wednesday this year, I have only been to Dahlgren a handful of times, and I still think Christmas is about the presents, I continue to adhere to this small show of faith. It still means a lot to me, and I gather it always will. I’ve considered the idea that this might be a result of nostalgia, not wanting to let go of something I did as a child though it might have lost its meaning, like trying to play Pokémon as a 20-year-old. But every time I lose something, I’m reassured of this particular prayer ’s power. There are few times when you feel more mit troops appears to have been carried out in a refreshingly skeptical, deliberative manner. Nonetheless, I think there are some concerns about this conflict that have not been given the treatment they deserve. The media’s drumbeat in favor of war—uniting both left-leaning humanitarian hawks and conservatives who favor a muscular U.S. response to seemingly every global problem—began to grow increasingly
Carrying On by Eric Pilch A rotating column by Voice senior staffers
louder as the civil war continued without external action. Yet, for every counterfactual about Rwanda or Bosnia that can be mustered, you could point to an example like Somalia or Iraq. Although I’ve read many eloquent cases for the conflict in Libya that I’d like to believe, too many scholars and journalists seem to operate under the assumption that action by the United States and its allies will quickly and decisively bring the war to an end. The current military strategy appears to be premised on the
helpless than when you’ve lost something important. You’re panic stricken for the entire time it takes to find it, knowing that you might never find it at all. Amid the panic, however, I’ve always managed to take a few seconds to close my eyes and ask for divine intervention. Without even having found whatever I was looking for, the panic subsides, and I can resume my search more calmly, believing that it is at least partially out of my hands whether or not I find it. On a practical level, the prayer to St. Anthony allows me to continue searching with a more reasonable mindset, making me more likely to search efficiently and find what I had lost. Although I understand that part of the success of the prayer is the fact that I think it will work, I still consider it the most effective way of finding something. If not the item I’m looking for, at least I can find solace, which still counts for something in the face of desperation. And the prayer always works, or rather always seems to work. If I never end up finding what I had lost, I’m far too worried about having permanently lost something to even idea that Libyans could overthrow Gaddafi if only they didn’t have to face additional mercenaries and his warplanes. However, our commitment is almost certainly limited to the air and the outcome of this strategy depends on events almost wholly outside the control of Western leaders or their warplanes. Gaddafi still controls the state apparatus in Libya, has a multibillion-dollar slush fund, and reports strongly suggest he has hired many thousands of foreign troops. With little hope of the military setting aside their arms and implicitly supporting the rebellion, as in Egypt, Gaddafi must be driven from power through armed struggle. Events on the ground suggest a stalemate since bombing began, strongly putting into doubt the idea that Gaddafi will lose power soon. It is also necessary to evaluate the hypocrisy of the United States’ actions in the Middle East over the past few weeks. It’s a difficult task to manage strategic interests and follow through with a genuine desire to promote democracy, as the Obama administration must try to do. U.S. troops are stationed across the Arab world, and regime change can be a risky and chaotic process.
realize that St. Anthony didn’t pull through for me. And of course, when it does, I wouldn’t be bold enough to think it was my own doing, and I say another prayer, both out of gratitude and to ensure that St. Anthony will have my back next time too. Last Saturday night, I misplaced my phone for a few hours. I said a prayer to St. Anthony within minutes. I continued to look, with certainty that I would find it. Perhaps I was too confident, because after not finding it that night, I went to bed, disappointed more that my prayer didn’t work than that I was still missing my phone. I considered whether I should continue praying to St. Anthony, or give up my childish habits. I woke up the next morning and within minutes found my phone in a place I was sure I had already looked. And though I’m liable to misplace my phone many more times, I don’t think I’ll ever be losing my faith in St. Anthony.
Aodhan Beirne is a junior in the College. He might have found his phone, but he didn’t have any messages. However, the U.S. has hardly even pressured governments in Yemen, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia that have brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters. It seems that Western military pressure and media attention are reserved for those countries that are not tied to our strategic interests. As a result, it’s more difficult for our actions to be seen as truly supporting the genuine desire of citizens to overthrow their autocratic governments. All of this leads me to a robust skepticism about the decision to intervene with military force. I genuinely hope that my pessimistic view turns out to be wrong, and that Gaddafi is driven from power in the coming days or weeks. Yet, I think Allied forces may have set themselves up for another protracted struggle without an exit strategy or a clearly defined end goal—a recipe that has rarely turned out favorably in the past.
Eric Pilch is a senior in the College. He just found out Africa was a continent, and not a country.
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