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VOICE the georgetown

TRAILBLAZING A NEW PATH FOR COLLEGIATE SCHOLARSHIPS

By Claire Zeng

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w April 10 , 2014 w Volume 46, Issue 28 w georgetownvoice.com

2 the georgetown voice

april 10, 2014

by Allison Galezo Voice Crossword “A Weekend at Georgetown” 45. Paint party &

ACROSS 1. Foreign service frat 4. Pirate’s drink of choice 7. Budweiser’s lower calorie cousin 10. Most famous party house on campus 15. Keyboard key 16. Service frat 17. Comparison words 18. American Eagle’s underwear brand 19. Frat often found at Blue House 21. ___stone Light 22. Finishes a solo cup in one gulp 23. People you don’t

want to bump into at parties 24. Apiece 25. Cry of discovery 26. Burnett’s unit of measurement, plural 30. Club fair 32. Party house; you can often find Zeta Psi here 36. Frat that claims its members are “True Gentlemen” 39. Musical composition 40. Good weed has a lot of this compound 42. Drunk people flock to Epi to do this 43. “Mother” in Arabic 44. Pirate’s cry

handcuff party frat 47. Homemade bomb 48. Like Burnett’s 50. National Security Education Program 52. Fourth-yr. students 54. A beer-lover’s dream 55. Miley Cyrus dance move 57. Earth-friendly prefix 60. Katniss’s weapon 63. Slang for a popular study drug 64. Takes care of students who get too ratchet at parties 66. Hotspot for hungry drunk people 69. Event centered around alcohol consumption 71. “Son __ _ bitch!”

73. Non-magical sister in Frozen 74. 45-inch unit of length 75. Chemistry suffix 76. 2009 Miss America Katie 77. Say this twice to get Appa to fly 78. ____ Lemon; popular yoga pants company 80. Barcode on U.S. merchandise 82. Not intoxicated 84. Daytime sleep 86. What you do if SNAP comes into a party 88. Drink of choice for drinking games

& present A Discussion of Press Freedom and State Press Alumni Lounge Monday, April 14 at 6 p.m.

92. What one does on the lower floor of Brown House 95. Enjoyment 96. Burnett’s classy cousin 99. “_ ____ my drinks myself” 100. Also 101. Bitter malted barley beer 102. “New” prefix 103. Incredibly cheap beer brand 104. 14 gallons to Hungarians 105. Indian novelist 106. Tolkien tree creature DOWN 1. Stupefy 2. Suffix with googol 3. Feminine diminutive suffix 4. Big Sean genre 5. FedEx rival 6. French pronoun 7. To get high 8. Addicts 9. 24 hours 10. One of the “Three B’s” composers 11. Detox place 12. Tulsa sch.

13. Fake head of hair 14. Nintendo Super ___ 20. Booty 24. Letter afterthoughts 25. Your head does this the day after drinking

27. Georgetown student 28. New Deal agcy.

29. Drunk or hyped to become drunk 31. Art Technology Group 33. Accessory at Hawaiian themed parties 34. OPEC member 35. Airport abbrev.

36. Gas guzzler 37. Wild or crazy 38. Plato’s “ideas” 41. One GERMS skill 45. Sketchy or sleazy 46. In-process Research & Development 49. Spy novel org.

51. Attack a fly 53. Witness 56. Skrillex’s favorite Japanese city 58. Slang for insane (“That shit ___”) 59. Prefix with potent 61. Nail polish brand 62. “What’s up?” slang 64. Measure of smoothness with the opposite sex (or same sex) 65. Syrup 66. Unagi at Kintaro 67. Not sing.

68. Sick/cool 70. Bodybuilder’s unit 72. Fantabulous 76. Govt.-issued ID 79. Not abridged 81. Complete opposite of 82-across

83. Abbrev. for a Moroccan airport 85. Eagle’s nest 87. Take back 89. Sea bird 90. Biblical paradise 91. Violent disturbance or protest 92. Excessive noise one might find at a party 93. MLA alternative 94. “Yeah, right!”

95. Air safety org.

96. The Tombs, e.g.

97. ____ carte 98. Dream job of MSB students

Last Week’s Answers:

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 46.28 April 10, 2014 Editor-in-Chief: Connor Jones Managing Editor: Julia Tanaka General Manager: Mary Bailey-Frank Blog Editor: Isabel Echarte News Editor: Claire Zeng

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

Staff Writers:

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

Staff Photographers:

Marla Abdilla, Katherine Landau, Freddy Rosas

Copy Chief: Grace Funsten Copy Editors:

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

Editorial Board Chair: Julia Jester Editorial Board:

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

GIVE ME A SIGN

GUSA resolution aims to assist deaf community In a resolution passed on April 6 concerning student accessibility on campus, the GUSA Senate asked the University to set up a funding system to bring sign language interpreters to campus without using Student Activities funding—a reform that would lessen the burden for Georgetown’s deaf community.

Presently, there is no centralized system to pay for sign language interpreters at extracurricular events, and the responsibility often falls on individual students to arrange for their own interpreters. Due to the high demand for interpreters in D.C., in order to guarantee an interpreter for an event, students must submit requests four weeks in advance. This process severely limits the ability of students with hearing impairments to participate in many events their peers enjoy, which are often announced at short notice.

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

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

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

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

All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover: Trailblazing Cover Design: Christina Libre

In addition to the logistical limitations to accessibility under the current system, the question of funding is also ambiguous. “If I ask for interpreters, it’s through the Academic Resource Center, and it’s a battle, not necessarily with the ARC, but with the departments here because it is all about money,” Heather Artinian (COL’15) previously told the Voice.

The University cannot continue to rely on SAC funds to pay for interpreters because, as the GUSA resolution points out, some SAC groups receive as little as $96 per semester and the hourly rate for an ASL interpreter is approximately $70 per hour. This cost places a heavy burden on student groups and puts an accessible campus culture out of reach.

While a centralized funding system for providing interpreters without using SAC funds would be a tremendous step forward for creating a culture of acces-

sibility at Georgetown, it is only the beginning. Of all the aspects that relate to diversity, culturally and institutionally, Georgetown has paid the least attention to disability culture, and it lags behind peer institutions in addressing issues of accessibility.

Student activists on campus have voiced the idea of creating a Disability Cultural Center, which would serve as a much-needed hub of activity and a source of advocacy that would finally give disabled students a recognized place in the Georgetown community.

With its proposed funding resolution, GUSA and student leaders have shown initiative in making campus more accessible, but they must not lay the issue to rest. Although it is small, the disability community needs to become a visible and active participant in Georgetown’s conversations about diversity.

GENERATING SUPPORT

GSP vital for first-generation college students

Twelve percent of admitted students to the Georgetown Class of 2018 are first-generation students, a similar rate to last year’s accepted class and that of most Ivy League schools. Though the national rate of first -generation students attending college is markedly higher, at 30 percent, the University’s increased focus on supporting firstgeneration college students is commendable, most notably through the Georgetown Scholarship Program. First-generation students tend to need more support in attending college and are also more likely to drop out and achieve lower grades than students whose parents attended college.

Georgetown has shown a commitment to supporting these students financially, academically, and socially through GSP, which has burgeoned in recent years—from supporting just 50 students when it began a decade ago to 640 students attending the University today. The program, in addition to offering fi-

Managing Director: Tim Annick The Georgetown Voice

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nancial aid when accepted, helps students assimilate at Georgetown when they arrive. GSP support ranges from finding internships and jobs, for example, to helping students with expenses not usually listed in financial aid forms, such as purchasing work clothes for professional interviews. It has shown a commitment to not only bringing students to the Hilltop, but also to making sure they are able to make the most of their experiences here.

The success of such far-reaching support is evident: GSP-supported first-generation and low-income students boast a graduation rate of 98 percent, compared to 32 percent nationally. Furthermore, the program makes Georgetown attractive to students who might go elsewhere because they have better financial aid packages—while the University-wide yield rate for admitted students is 46 percent, GSP-admitted students and its 1789 Scholarship recipients have a yield rate of 67 percent, according to GSP’s website.

Focusing on helping first-generation and low-income students is a meaningful way to bring diversity to a campus that often seems to be full of students from higher socioeconomic classes. In the coming years, this focus could be more beneficial than focusing on race and ethnicity to ensure a diverse community. The Supreme Court will soon release its decision on whether Michigan’s ban on affirmative action is discriminatory. Depending on the outcome of the case, the decision could signal the end of race influencing college admission decisions. Admitting low-income and first-generation students, then, would be an effective way to ensure diversity on campus.

Regardless of the outcome of the affirmative action case, Georgetown should further support GSP, which has seen striking growth and success in recent years, to ensure socioeconomic diversity on a campus where tuition continues to rise each year.

UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

Shooting shows veteran mental health neglected

The rhetoric is tired—and so are we at the Voice. Gun control has dropped off the map of firebrand issues in political dialogue. When it is discussed, it is separated into categories: expanding gun control measures or shoring up resources for mental health.

The shooting at Fort Hood on April 2 exposed other issues in the gun control debate, especially regarding military personnel. This is the second shooting at the Fort Hood base, the first one taking place in 2009, and the third shooting to take place on military grounds, the last one at the Navy Yard in D.C. last September.

These events raise a question about how the military handles the mental health of its veterans. With the growing acceptance and increased diagnoses of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the military must shift its focus to address veterans when they return. More than 22 veterans a day commit

suicide according data released by the department of Veterans Affairs in January.

Ivan Lopez, the perpetrator of the shooting, allegedly snapped because he was denied leave to attend his mother’s funeral.

Lopez was treated for mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. Even so, Lopez’s Ambien prescription does not constitute holistic mental health treatment.

Military officials expressed skepticism that his four-month tour in Iraq could result in PTSD severe enough to trigger a shooting. They are downplaying traumatic experiences Lopez may have had while on duty, even if he was not on the front lines.

This shooting is proof the military needs to adapt to the postwar era and deal with the effects the mental scars of war has on its veterans.

The military is struggling to provide adequate mental health services to all its veterans and scrambling to find qualified

professionals to fill the psychiatrist and psychologist positions established by the department of Veteran’s Affairs, leaving the system overtaxed, according to Derek Bennett, chief of staff for Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Of America, in an interview with NPR. What’s more, many veterans are still fighting to receive their benefits, as it was in Lopez’s case. The combination of financial and emotional stress leaves veterans in a precarious position that could be prevented if the military created the resources needed to place military mental health care on the same level as physical health care.

Since the first shooting at Fort Hood, we have seen tragedies across the country—Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook—and yet we remain stagnant. We cannot afford to stand on square one forever, and the military can take the first steps by treating its members with the healthcare they deserve for their service.

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april 10, 2014

GUSA, Corp launch off-campus housing review site

by Deborah Sparks The Corp, in conjunction with the Georgetown University Student Association and Georgetown Student Tenant Association, launched Roomr, the first Georgetown student-run, centralized platform for evaluating landlords and off-campus properties, on Monday. The website allows those with Georgetown email addresses to access and contribute to a database for landlord and property reviews as well as subletting opportunities.

“From GSTA’s perspective, we’ve constantly seen people have horrible experiences with their landlords. Every time, you fall into the same trap, because there’s no warning,” said Alyssa Peterson (COL ‘14), founder and former co-director of GSTA, a nonprofit founded in 2013 that reviews leases and gives advice on students’ tenant rights.

According to current GUSA Secretary of Neighborhood Relations Christopher Kraft (SFS ‘15), the University does not currently provide information on housing or offer tenants a forum to post reviews on their landlords. According to Peterson, Roomr will provide this forum and will be more trustworthy from students’ perspectives.

Roomr opened on Monday but will be formally launched Friday.

“When things come from the University, students don’t necessarily subscribe to the concept,” said Peterson. She added that GSTA will moderate and approve each comment to prevent slander.

While The Corp is the primary sponsor and will both design and financially support the website, GUSA worked with GSTA on the initial idea and proposed the idea to The Corp last fall. The University was invited to provide feedback on Roomr’s user-friendliness and supports but will not be financially or legally involved with Roomr, according to Peterson. According to The Corp CEO Sam Rodman (MSB ’15), Roomr will continue to undergo

The Corp

revisions and actively seek feedback from its users.

Director of the Office of Neighborhood Life Corey Peterson agreed that a student-run site for landlord and property reviews would be most effective. “Having the website created and moderated by students allows everyone to discuss the good and bad of living in privately owned housing and how properties are managed,” he said.

According to Max Harris (COL ’15), GUSA director of communications, GUSA will help advertise Roomr through the Georgetown Community Partnership and ensure that students know about the website and the benefits of using it. “A major

part ... will be to encourage seniors to sign up,” he said.

Corp employees were the first students to upload information and provide feedback on landlords and houses. Landlords are given user reviews and ratings on a scale of one to 10 in three categories: overall, efficiency, and response to email. While landlords may contact GSTA regarding reviews they believe are unfair or unjustified, only Georgetown students can post on Roomr.

According to GUSA Vice President Omika Jikaria (SFS’ 15), Roomr will also help the University comply with the Campus Plan, which requires Georgetown to maintain a curated list of rental properties that maintain a Basic Business License, coordinate with the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to address problematic landlords, and encourage good behavior from landlords.

“It is our hope that as Roomr is used more, it will change landlord behavior as they seek better ratings,” said GSTA Co-Director Mary Hanley (COL ‘16), who also suggested that Roomr may expand from database to a communicative tool between landlords and students.

GUSA hosts first campus- ResLife to end $25 floor wide week of arts events fund collection next year

by Grace Brennan The Georgetown University Student Association Senate Subcommittee on Creative Expression organized the first Georgetown Arts Week this week to generate visibility for different arts groups on campus.

“There’s a small community [at Georgetown] that knows about [the arts] and is involved with it, but our goal is to bring the arts community to all of Georgetown,” said Melissa Frazee (COL ’16), a member of the Creative Expression subcommittee.

The decision to create an Arts Week stemmed from a subcommittee report on the “State of the Arts and Creative Expression.” According to GUSA Senators Jonathan Thrall (SFS ’17) and Andrew Walker (SFS ’16), who founded the subcommittee, feedback from multiple art groups led them to conclude that arts groups felt unnoticed on campus and wanted more funding.

“[Art groups wanted] visibility and help with publicity and collaboration with different groups,” said Walker. “We thought Arts Week would be the best way to achieve that.”

In planning the event, according to Walker, the subcommittee noticed that many performances and shows were already occurring around the same dates, including the a cappella Spring Sing concert and the play She Loves Me, and decided to form the week around these events by featuring other events like Open Mic Nights in Uncommon Grounds and a cappella performances at Lauinger Library.

The primary goal of Arts Week, according to the subcommittee, is to draw attention to all of the different arts groups on campus and to the accessibility of these events.

“While this is only a week, we’re really hoping that this isn’t the only time that people care about the arts on campus,” said Walker.

by Kenneth Lee Resident assistants will no longer be required to collect the $25 in floor funds from students living in on-campus housing starting next academic year. The Office of Residential Living will provide RAs and hall community directors with a budget sourced from University operating expenses rather than taking the programming funds directly from students’ pockets.

According to Director of Residential Life Stephanie Lynch, the policy of floor funds put residential staff and students in an “awkward position.”

“Advantages [of ending floor funds] include providing for a process which avoids nickel and diming students, removes peers from collecting money, and does not make students unintentionally disclose their socio-economic status,” she wrote in an email to the Voice.

According to Lynch, the University compared itself to multiple Jesuit and D.C. schools in addition

to institutions in the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, an organization of 31 private colleges and universities that support each other on financial and academic issues, of which Georgetown is a member.

“This information, in conjunction with a previous external review and feedback from student and professional staff, confirmed the process of collecting floor funds should discontinue,” she wrote.

According to Senior Director of Finance and Administration Patrick Durbin, Director of Residential Education Ed Gilhool will determine how much funding RAs and community directors will receive under the new scheme early next month.

Gilhool did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls for comment by the Voice.

When asked, Durbin was unable to estimate the monetary impact the change will have on residential programming or on the University’s financial situation, but said he does not anticipate that it will affect University budgeting.

News Hits

D.C. Council passes landmark sexual assault survivor rights bill The D.C. Council unanimously passed the Sexual Assault Victim’s Rights Amendment Act of 2013 on Tuesday. The legislation focuses on improving how the Metropolitan Police Department investigates cases of sexual assault and treats survivors.

Among other reforms, the act designates a spot on the city’s Sexual Assault Response Team for a representative from D.C.’s university community.

“This is important because we know that this is a crime that disproportionately affects college students,” said Marisa Ferri, an organizer at the D.C. Justice for Survivors Campaign working on SAVAA. According to Ferri, the representative will likely be a professional employee of a university.

The legislation also gives sexual assault survivors the right to a victim advocate, which is someone trained in survivor’s rights, during hospital exams and police interviews. Previously, a survivor could have been denied access to an advocate in both situations.

“What this legislation does is make sure a survivor can have a standard at the point of being assaulted,” said Sherrell Gordon, executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center.

The city council will have to vote for the SAVAA again in May before it reaches Gray’s desk, but Gordon said she is “extremely confident” it will pass and be signed into law.

—James Constant

GCP releases complaint data from neighborhood The Georgetown Community Partnership released data on the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program and Student Conduct outcomes for fall 2013. This is the first public data released by GCP on neighborhood reports on noise violations since its creation after the 2010 Campus Plan agreement.

Data revealed the Office of Neighborhood Life received 305 “contacts” last semester, 73 percent of which were due to noise complaints. Out of 72 noise-related incidents on Georgetown-affiliated off-campus residences, 51 resulted in an student conduct charge.

Out of the methods of reporting, 58 percent were through the Office of Neighborhood Life’s helpline, and 27 percent were from proactive SNAP patrolling. Five percent were due to 911 calls, and six percent were from off-duty Metropolitan Police Department officers.

—Claire Zeng

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Seven professors will rotate in teaching the Bioethics MOOC.

SHALINA CHATLANI

Kennedy Institute to begin new MOOC next Tuesday

by Shalina Chatlani Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics will launch its first massive open online course on April 15. The course, “Introduction to Bioethics,” is a six-week MOOC with more than 25,000 people already enrolled from over 155 countries.

Through the MOOC, which will be hosted on the EdX platform, users across the world will be able to view and engage in pre-recorded lectures developed by seven Georgetown faculty.

“All of the faculty are senior research scholars at the KIE … and have extensive teaching experience in bioethics,” said KIE Design Coordinator

Kelly Heuer. “We are showcasing that KIE has a really deep bench in bioethics with people who have a lot of different perspectives and different areas of research.”

Despite the expertise of the faculty, concerns have been raised on whether educators can still engage with students in the types of intimate conversations that occur in a bioethics class over a digital platform.

“One thing that we have done is structure the [MOOC] so that … we start out with the foundations. … The stuff that’s a little more politicized, we deal with later,” Heuer said in response.

Heuer added that the institute has considered issues of anonymity with

The importance of local journalism

This may be the end.

After three years writing for this preeminent newsweekly, my time as a reporter, editor, and columnist is ending soon. Over the course of my time covering campus news, I have covered both breaking news and issues that have been stewing for some time, both the wonky and the accessible, both the important and self-important. But I chose to cover all of it for a reason, and each article reveals an aspect of campus life.

Yet an aspect of student life that we often overlook is the role that campus media plays. Georgetown University is the District of Columbia’s largest private employer. With over a $1 billion in revenues and expenditures, the University is a major corporation where over 20,000 people study and work. An additional 16,000 people live in the Georgetown neighborhood. So the Voice and The Hoya have a lot to cover.

Even though it may seem like Congress and the President hold a powerful sway over the lives of ordinary Americans, much more power is wielded by local representatives.

In the past six years of the Obama presidency, the major accomplishments the White House can tout are the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd/ Frank Consumer Protection Act, the abolishment of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. These policy changes are each very significant in themselves, but, thinking about myself, none of them directly affected me, whereas policies about who gets graduation honors affect me directly. So does a requirement that juniors live on campus, and so does club funding.

I’m sure many others in the Georgetown community have similar experiences. Local issues affect people more than they think. In the rest of America, education policy affects more people than same-sex marriage. But what gets people to protest?

In short, there’s an imbalance about what people choose to care about. Unfortunately, negative attitudes about local current events pervade public opinion, though I have reasons to be hopeful. Whenever big news breaks, I hear people talking about it, and they do seem to care.

online users and the large enrollment of students, which prevents faculty from assigning and grading in-depth papers.

“We have 25,000 people enrolled and growing … and the tools we have for grading essay-type things are rudimentary,” said Heuer, who also expressed concerns about the possibility that anonymous commenting may turn negative.

Although classroom teaching is important, according to Karen Stohr, one of the faculty members involved in the MOOC and a senior researcher for the KIE, teaching a MOOC also gives faculty valuable perspective on how to improve their teaching.

“Personal interaction with students is the most rewarding part of being a professor,” wrote Stohr in an email to the Voice. “But working on the MOOC has pushed me to think differently about my teaching strategies, to focus more on the student’s perspective on the classroom experience. That’s valuable for me in my traditional classes.”

The Institute worked with a range of groups, including students from the Communication, Culture, and Technology program and the Candles Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, on platform development.

When asked about the challenges the institute faced in the week before the launch of the program, KIE Director Maggie Little joked, “We haven’t slept much, but we’re having a blast.”

Then again, maybe the circles I socialize with include a disproportionate number of student leaders.

As I’ve written about before, plenty of people would dismiss local news as a class of media. One particularly egregious comment left on a Vox Populi article about the proposed satellite campus stuck with me: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if students rallied around issues of broader scope and much more significant

Saxa Politica

by Connor Jones

A tri-weekly column about campus news and politics impact than a satellite campus? …

Bougie Georgetown students are upset about having to take a bus to class while others struggle to simply live.”

Comments like this miss the fact that reporting is an essential element for the integrity of any local community. As the aphorism goes, daylight is the best disinfectant. People in power have the incentive to act against the will of their constituents. Sometimes, they can do that covertly. A reporter’s job is to examine public records, acquire information from public of-

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GUSA Senate passes bill in support of accessibility

by Jared Kimler The Georgetown University Student Association Senate unanimously passed a resolution concerning student accessibility that asks the University to provide funding for sign interpreters at student events, which previously had to be funded by the Student Activities Fee. “University officials approached us [early in the fall semester] and said they couldn’t fund these accommodations,” said Lecture Fund Chair Chris Mulrooney (COL ‘14).

“We were puzzled because the University traditionally could fund these accommodations.”

The Lecture Fund has had to fund around $3,000 so far in the current academic year for sign language interpreters, which was not a cost built into its initial budget.

According to Mulrooney, the shifts were due to University budget cuts, but are “not sustainable.”

Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson said in February in a Voice feature on deaf culture that “the system we have has been a bit

ficials and write about what these initiatives mean for the community.

To deny that Georgetown needs reporting is to deny that Georgetown is a community, which is a proposition that I disagree with deeply.

Like the media at large, the student newspapers serve as a linking institution between the general public and officials in the University administration, members of student government, and local politicians.

Having a public record of events enables a community to orient itself. It enables political action and is necessary for an electorate to be informed.

While this function is necessary on a national level, it’s vital on a local level.

Georgetown is all about serving the community. Some people choose to volunteer for service. Others choose to run for student government. Others still picket and protest.

But student journalists serve the community in their own way as well.

While I don’t claim that the Voice acts as the true “voice” of Georgetown, in my time as editor, I have tried to give space to whoever takes the initiative to write an opinion and attach their name to it. Some stories have been contentious, but, for there

bureaucratic, a bit clunky, and we need to improve it.” The University and the Lecture Fund have been holding private talks regarding the reallocation of funds, but nothing has been finalized.

“It’s not like the resources are going to grow. It’s going to take some rearranging of resources,” said GUSA Senator Abbey McNaughton (COL ‘16), who introduced the bill.

Groups like the Academic Resource Council and the Diversity Action Committee provide funding for students who need interpreters in class, but according to Mulrooney, the current issue is that these groups do not have enough funding.

The resolution states that requiring interpreters to be funded by the Student Activities Fee violates the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and calls for the University to “recognize the current inhibitors and diminishes these barriers prior to the start of Fall 2014.”

“I hope the University acts quickly so that this is no longer a problem. Ultimately, we’re trying to make for a more inclusive community,” said Mulrooney.

to be a dialogue on campus, there must be oppositional viewpoints.

Yet there is a tendency to question whether we actually need free speech on campus—which presents the most serious threat to the integrity Georgetown community.

Too many times, I have been told I shouldn’t have published an opinion piece because some people find it offensive. Too many times, student activists have suggested that a controversial speaker should not have been invited. Too many times, have people insinuated that free speech is no longer necessary on campus.

This position is usually argued by progressives, who, after spending decades fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights, have decided that the principle that allowed them to push for such change is obsolete.

Both freedom of speech and the press are necessary for a community to be open, fair, and honest. As I disappear from the Voice’s masthead, I hope those values remain strong at Georgetown long after I am gone.

Bid Connor a tearful farewell at cjones@georgetownvoice.com.

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april 10, 2014

Men’s lacrosse survives late charge from Providence

by Kevin Huggard The Georgetown men’s lacrosse team (4-7, 1-3 Big East) survived a late charge by the Providence Friars (3-9, 0-3 Big East) on Wednesday at the MultiSport Field to win their first Big East game by a score of 108. After a tight first quarter, the Hoyas seemed to seize control of the game, building a 9-2 lead by the end of the third quarter. But the game was not safe, as the Friars went on to score six straight goals in the 4th quarter to cut the lead to one goal before senior attack Jeff Fountain scored with 00:01 on the game clock to secure the victory.

The Hoyas, who looked dominant through much of the first three quarters, barely clung to their lead in the face of a flurry of fourth quarter Providence shots. The Friars took advantage of penalties late, scoring two late goals while a man up.

Leading the comeback was Providence attack Andrew Barton, who contributed four of the six late Friar goals.

“I just think we didn’t have enough poise and allowed them to have multiple possessions, which we talk about all the time: make a stop defensively, and then clear the ball. They put a lot of pressure on us [and] I don’t think we handled it as well as we need to, but that will be addressed in practice this week,” said Georgetown Head Coach Kevin Warne.

Despite the Hoyas holding many of the early possessions, Providence struck first with a goal at 11:06. After some more dangerous possessions, freshman attack Peter Conley got Georgetown on the board with an unassisted goal from the middle of the field with 8:27

to go in the quarter. After controlling the play for much of the middle part of the period, the Friars retook the lead. Junior attack Bo Stafford scored for the Hoyas on an assist from Conley, ending the quarter with the score tied at two.

In the beginning of the second quarter, Providence threatened the Hoya goal, but were turned away several times by excellent saves from junior goalkeeper Jake Haley. Then the Hoyas took advantage of a chance of their own when senior midfielder Grant Fisher scored to give Georgetown its first lead of the game.

Peter Conley followed that up with his second goal of the game to make the score 4-2 in favor of the Hoyas. Then senior defender John Urbank found the ball after a scrum in the front of the net and and swept it in for a goal, his first of the season. This goal seemed to take some of the air out of the Friars attack, which for much of the rest of the second quarter failed to produce any threats on the Hoyas’ side of the field.

“At the end of the day it comes down to [senior defender Tyler Knarr]. I think he was able to control 16 of 20 [faceoffs], which is fantastic. He’s the guy who was able to control the tempo and that’s what we talked about before the game,” said Warne about his team’s early lead. “We were very, very unselfish which I thought allowed us to have success.”

In the game, Knarr broke his own single-season Georgetown record for ground balls, his tenth of the game giving him 118 on the season, best in the nation and six better than his previous record-setting total from last year.

In the third quarter, Providence continued to struggle to find any success on the offensive end, as a combination of dom-

STEVEN CRISS

Men’s lacrosse looks to continue its winning ways against Lehigh this Saturday.

inant possession by the Hoyas and strong work from the defense frustrated the Friars. Georgetown ended the quarter with the best-looking goal of the day, as after a series of quick passes, Fountain circled around from behind the Friar net, took a pass and deposited the ball past the Friars’ goalkeeper.

The Friars got one back with 10:12 remaining in the fourth

quarter on a goal from Andrew Barton. Providence’s threat continued to loom, as a race to the sideline left Haley out of his net.

He scrambled back to his goal just in time to stop the shot. Just moments later, however, he could not stop Barton as he ran free down the middle of the field and bounced a shot into the net.

Providence continued to press the Hoyas’ defense, taking advan-

tage of defensive breakdowns and penalties to bring the score to 9-8 on a Barton goal with 44 seconds left to play. The Friars looked like they might just complete their comeback, but Knarr won a crucial late faceoff and the ball got upfield to Fountain who scored as time expired.

The Hoyas next travel to face Lehigh this Saturday, as they look to build on their victory.

the sports sermon

“Someone who picked Kentucky or UConn to reach the final may have access to [a DeLorean].”- ESPN Twitter

by Chris Almeida The men’s college basketball season started with the quintessential matchup of experience against raw talent in the matchup between Kentucky and Michigan State. It ended in the same way with the championship game between the Kentucky and University of Connecticut.

With the Huskies taking the title, their fourth in the last 15 years, we saw that pure ability, even in extreme abundance, cannot independently and universally lead to success.

UConn’s triumph proved, or at least preserved, our delusions that hard work, the implementation of a system, and learning over time are all necessary factors in the pursuit of victory. We, the public, don’t like it when winning comes too easily. The fact that a player or group could step on the field of play and dominate while neglecting some or all of the factors of preparation that are essential for others upsets us.

It cheapens the meaning of the trophy that comes at the end of a successful campaign.

For the most part, we don’t see talent alone finding its way to the top. Michael Jordan and LeBron James each took time to find a winning formula. Even James’ Heat took a year to learn to play as a team and develop role players before they could take their first championship.

The San Antonio Spurs get older each year. They lack the dynamic star that other teams find in James, Kevin Durant, Paul George and the like. Nevertheless, the team manages to develop as a cohesive unit.

They understand that even though nobody on the team has the pure basketball ability of the League’s top five players, there is more to winning than bringing in top individuals. The Spurs, through age and injury, boast the NBA’s top record and ran off a dizzying 19-game winning streak this season.

In baseball, though there is little hope for the league’s lowest payrolls, the top paid lineup (the Yankees for pretty much every season in this millennium) has not been able to find its way to a World Series title, save 2009. Simply stacking a lineup with talent does not a successful season make.

Even in the world of individual sports, it is clear that the development of skills as well as the mental game are more than enough to make up for slower muscle fibers. Few in the tennis community would argue that anybody other than Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, or Andy Murray is the best tennis player in the world.

However, most would say that a player like Gael Monfils is the most athletic man in the sport. Monfils shows flashes of brilliance, runs of unbelievable play, but lacks the polish that the top players have ridden to their spot at the head of their sport through hard work.

When players explode onto the scene with little work or team experience and manage to win, it bothers us as fans as much as it bothers competitors. This discomfort may be because it robs us of the team-building narrative or takes away our sense of familiarity. Or maybe it’s because

we’re all just jealous that some individuals’ God-given gifts alone make them better than any of us could ever be.

But, for now, the inexperienced, young, and supremely talented, embodied by John Calipari’s Wisconsin army, have been kept at bay. The Huskies showed us that experience and heart—concepts that are slowly becoming obsolete, at least in the one-and-done world of college basketball—still mean something on the road to a title.

We want to believe that, in the end, you can be anything with enough work. This, in all likelihood, is a falsehood, but this year’s NCAA championship delayed the realization that some are simply born better than others. Sports are stories, and “the best team won,” is rarely a great narrative, even if the “best team” didn’t look the way they were supposed to for most of the season. What this season showed us, just as the 2013 men’s college basketball season did, is that the kids who stack the teams on the playground won’t always win. There’s room in the record books for the gym rats who weren’t marked as NBA All-Pros in elementary school. College basketball, like the rest of sports, like the rest of the world, isn’t doomed to follow the plan.

We watch and play sports because there is always a possibility for a game to go offscript. This time, a team that will send seven or more players to the NBA this offseason lost to a team that may send two.

Yes, eventually the recruiters will find their way over the team-builders. But not today.

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Baseball struggles against Xavier Women’s lax snaps streak

by Brendan Crowley The Georgetown men’s baseball team (12-16, 0-3 Big East) received a rude welcome to Big East play this weekend, losing three straight games at the hands of the Xavier Musketeers (16-13, 3-0 Big East), who are newcomers to the conference this season.

The Hoyas were plagued by sloppy play in the field all weekend, committing a combined 10 errors resulting in 13 unearned runs over the course of the three game series.

Will Brown, the starting pitcher in Georgetown’s 11-6 defeat on Sunday, witnessed firsthand what errors can do to a solid pitching performance.

The junior pitched six solid innings, surrendering only one earned run on eight hits allowed. However, mistakes in the field led to four unearned runs, putting the Hoyas in a deep hole early in the game. Despite the

blunders, Brown stressed that fault couldn’t be placed on any one individual.

“The most important thing is to stay together as a team,” Brown said.

“There’s no blaming or finger-pointing. There’s plenty of other games where we made no errors and they picked me up when I had a bad outing … That stuff happens in baseball, it’s a sport.”

Despite the series sweep at the hands of the Musketeers, off the field, the Hoyas had a clear victory. Earlier this season, the Hoyas partnered with St. Baldrick’s, a childhood cancer charity that funds research to help kids diagnosed with cancer.

As of Saturday evening, the Hoyas had raised $46,000, the second largest total ever raised by a college baseball team in St. Baldrick’s 14-year history.

Georgetown senior captain Steve Anderson, who spearheaded the

VOICE ARCHIVES

Baseball will look to turn around their season against Creighton this weekend.

The Jeter Standard Opening Day is a day of rebirth. The promise of a fresh season resting just beyond the tossing of the first pitch is enough to wipe away the past season’s disappointments. It is another opportunity for the victors of the previous year to celebrate their memories and begin defending their champion title. It is a time to revel in the newness of the season and in anticipation of all of the unexpected surprises that will undoubtedly pop up throughout the summer and early fall.

Before selling my soul to the cold and moving to Washington, D.C. to attend this fine establishment, arriving at the ballpark early on Opening Day to grab a cheeseburger with my brothers and father was an occasion I eagerly anticipated. Sitting down the third base line and looking up at all the field-preppers hastily grooming the dirt to perfection while the

players launched warm up throws across the outfield inspired an elation in me that only Opening Day could bring about. These days, separated by many thousands of miles from my home ballpark, I have to make due with a small student-budget television and a stiff Village B couch in viewing the beginning of a brand new season, but regardless of where I am or who I’m with, Opening Day still inspires the same joy.

This season, though, Opening Day took up a heavier focus on completeness and finalization, as the baseball world has finally reached the beginning of Derek Jeter’s last season in uniform. The 39-year old Yankees shortstop has been the face of baseball for almost two decades. After his 2013 season was cut short because of an injury, he announced in the offseason that his twentieth season in pinstripes would be his last. So, when Jeter

fundraising efforts, has a personal connection to the difficulties surrounding cancer that St. Baldrick’s works to alleviate. Anderson lost his mother to cancer at age eight and a portion of the funds raised by the team will be donated to the Dana-Farber Institute of Boston, where his mother received treatment. “[The event] really surpassed my wildest dreams about what it could become,” said Anderson. “I started back in December and January, planning it all out, thinking if we could get $15,000 that would be amazing … It was a pretty emotional day, not just for me, but I think the team really rallied behind the whole effort. We make a real difference…

It was pretty special.”

On Wednesday, the Hoyas hit the road to take on George Mason, but fell 6-5 against the Patriots. Next up for the Hoyas is a three game set this weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, against the Creighton Bluejays (15-101, 0-0 Big East). For Georgetown, rediscovering their identity as they enter the heart of Big East Conference, play will be crucial.

“The thing they say about baseball is that you play so many games that a couple of games, here and there, early on don’t determine the whole season,” Anderson said.

“We’re looking forward to getting back out there.” stepped onto the field this past weekend in New York for his ultimate Opening Day start, Major League Baseball and its fans looked on with feelings much to the contrary of what baseball’s first day typically evokes.

All the Way

by Steven Criss

A bi-weekly column about sports

Throughout baseball’s tumultuous battle with steroid abusers and the current shift away from the traditional nature of the game, Jeter has always been a beacon for how baseball should be played and how professional athletes should behave themselves. On the field, he epitomized what it meant to play with passion, as well as etiquette, by balancing both the fervor to win with the recognition of how important playing with respect and composure really is. Off the field,

by Max Borowitz Despite struggling during the last few games, the Georgetown women’s lacrosse team defeated Big East rival Marquette last Saturday, ending a six game skid that saw the Hoyas struggle to play up to competition. The Blue and Gray improved to 4-7 (1-1 Big East) following the 12-5 victory over the Marquette Golden Eagles. Meanwhile, the visitors fell to 5-6 (1-1 Big East) with their loss to Georgetown.

Georgetown won off of an impressive defensive performance, particularly in the second half, where Marquette’s offense was utterly stifled.

Despite two Marquette goals at the end of the first half to bring the score to 5-5 at the break, Georgetown’s defense stiffened up, allowing not a single goal for the rest of the game, while only allowing a meager two shot attempts after the midpoint. Marquette struggled offensively for much of the game as a result, a detail that is reflected in the twenty turnovers they committed on the day.

Despite Georgetown’s impressive second half performance, the half began on an ominous note for the Hoyas.

At the beginning of the second half, Georgetown’s defense

Jeter never made a big fuss about his personal life and, quite remarkably, was able to keep the attention off his private life, leading the media to focus on his production as a ballplayer.

Today’s baseball players need to take a serious look at how Jeter constructed his career and managed his Hall of Fame worthy success. Five World Series rings, over 3,300 hits, 13 All Star Game selections, Yankee Captain, career batting average over .300, more than 1,200 Runs Batted In, and never did Yankee fans, players, or coaches need to worry about his composure or behavior. The MLB’s youngsters should be making an attempt to live up to the Jeter Standard, instead of hot-dogging it around causing a ruckus both on and off the field (I’m looking at you, Yasiel Puig and Bryce Harper).

Jeter has never played for a team other than the Yankees since his debut in 1995, a feat that seems incomprehensible with the way

suffered a major lapse, as Marquette was given a breakaway opportunity to take the lead, only to be stymied by freshman Maddy Fisher, whose excellent performance earned her the first victory of her Georgetown career.

Following Fisher ’s exemplary save, the Hoyas seemed to take back the momentum, allowing them to go back on a 7-0 run to close out the game, a run that would prove decisive. Following the critical save, senior Kelyn Freedman, who notched six goals on the day, would give Georgetown the lead they would never give back. Freedman, along with senior Meghan Farrell, junior Mollie Caputo, junior Sammy Giordano, and senior Jody Cumberpatch would all add goals, leading to the decisive 12-5 result.

This critical victory will hopefully allow the Hoyas to get back on track, after having lost six consecutive games, three of which were by a single goal. As Georgetown continues on its Big East schedule, they will head to Storrs, Connecticut to face the Huskies of the University of Connecticut (7-4, 2-0 Big East), before finishing their roadtrip in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where they will face off against a struggling Rutgers team. (6-6, 0-2 Big East).

players seem to jump straight to the highest bidder. Not that the Yankees ever had any shortage of cash to deal out to Jeter, but his dedication to the team ranks right up there with any of his physical achievements and statistics. The qualities he embodies as a ballplayer have exalted him to much more than just the guy with the number “2” on his back.

He is not just baseball’s greatest role model, but possibly one of the most outstanding figures in sports worldwide. If there is ever any question as to how appreciated his contribution to the game has been, just keep track of the gifts and pregame ceremonies he receives while on the road this season. Jeter may have brought the attention away from the fresh atmosphere of a new season this past Opening Day, but over twenty seasons, he will have surely provided a lasting impression for future athletes to abide by as right way of doing things—the Jeter Standard.

8 the georgetown voice

feature

april 10, 2014

BEYOND THE NUMBERS HOW THE GEORGETOWN SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM IS REDEFINING FINANCIAL AID

For much of its history, Georgetown’s student body could be summed up by four characteristics: white, Catholic, from the Northeast, and wealthy. While the image has shifted and student dialogue on diversity has developed significantly, the discussion of wealth and the divisions it creates is still one in its growing stages.

“Even ten years ago, people didn’t discuss socioeconomic background. It just was not something that you talked about,” said Missy Foy (COL ‘03). “It’s so neat to see the current generation discussing it so actively now.”

Foy is the director of the Georgetown Scholarship Program, Georgetown’s first program to support first-generation college students and students from limited financial means. The idea for the program first launched at the alumni reunion of 2004, when two visionaries and many enthusiastic alumni decided to make fundraising for scholarship a Georgetown imperative.

In just 10 years, GSP has become much more than the money. It has evolved from a scholarship for 50 students to a vibrant community of 640 students that achieves a 98 percent graduation rate for first-generation college students and students with limited financial resources—a number that GSP proudly champions as overwhelmingly higher than the comparable national rate of 32 percent.

The Scholarship

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In 2003, after the conclusion of the Third Century Campaign to raise $1 billion to increase the endowment, the largest fundraising effort in Georgetown’s history at that point, Dean of Admissions Charles Deacon (CAS ’64, GRAD ‘69) and Dean of Fi-

nancial Student Services Patricia McWade decided that financial aid had to become a priority.

“We were losing great students to other schools, because the other schools were offering no-loans or reduced loans in their financial aid packages,” said McWade.

The problem is still one Georgetown continues to address. “The number one and two reasons why we lose students are cost of attendance and financial aid offer,” Foy said.

tance and value to the University of having these bright, great students at Georgetown.”

The original GSP Scholarship was an award of $15,000 per student per year, which helped cover tuition and fees that totaled $30,163 in the academic year of 2005-2006. Tuition has since grown by 48.8 percent to $44,881 for the 2013-2014 academic year.

In 2010, after fundraising for the scholarship was incorporated into the

I WORKED REALLY HARD TO GET HERE AND FELT THAT BEING OF A Low SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASS WAS A PART OF MY IDENTITY THAT I DIDN'T WANT TO BRING WITH ME

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According to Deacon, financial aid was becoming one of the “most important unfunded liabilities of University admissions” and was coming out of staff income or other University expenses. “It was clear that, to continue our need-blind financial aid policy, we needed to make a significant move in fundraising for financial aid,” he said.

Deacon and McWade brought the proposal to the Alumni Admissions Program chairman’s conference in 2004 and launched the idea at the alumni reunion in May. Committed alumni began fundraising in September and succeeded in raising $1 million in just a year, and $1.7 million the following year.

“All of our [AAP] alumni are committed to the task of interviewing 25,000 applicants and take it very seriously. … We took the same spirit of getting involved and staying involved, and we believed we could raise money for GSP not just for year one, but year two and on,” said Paul Goodrich (CAS ’65), chairman of the AAP Board from 1977 to 1991 and the first chairman of the GSP Executive Board, from 2004 to 2010.

“The key to all of it was just merely engaging the alumni in the impor-

Office of Advancement’s Campaign for Georgetown, it was renamed the 1789 Scholarship and raised to $25,000 per student per year. GSP was singled out to solely focus on programming for those students.

The Program

In her second semester at Georgetown, Amy Hang (COL ’09), a member of the first class of GSP Scholarship recipients, visited Foy, who then worked as an admissions officer, with a group of other GSP Scholars. In Foy’s office, they expressed that they were struggling with the transition to Georgetown.

“My first semester at Georgetown was extremely lonely and hard. … My parents have the extent of a second-grade education and worked a lot of low and minimum-wage jobs to help me get to where I am,” Hang recalled. “It was such a culture shock.”

According to Truman Liu (MSB ’15), current president of the GSP Student Board, many GSP students face challenges in transitioning to Georgetown. “Coming from different backgrounds, they may feel that the opportunities are more distant, for instance, in terms of getting profes-

sional attire, or traveling abroad, or getting those experiences that seem like they could be offered to anyone, but might seem more difficult for GSP students,” he said.

GSP scholar Jimmy Ramirez (COL ‘15) agreed, adding that during his first two years, he did not want to identify as coming from a low-income background because he felt there was an associated “stigma of shame.”

“I worked really hard to get here and felt that being of a low socioeconomic class was a part of my identity that I didn’t want to bring with me,” Ramirez said.

In response, with Deacon’s support, Foy, Hang, and fellow GSP students began to create a GSP support program, starting with mentorship.

“I would do my regular admissions stuff, and at 7:00 at night, Amy would come over with a group of students, almost cloak and dagger, and we’d put together a student board, begging and pleading people to be mentors, because people didn’t even know what GSP was back then,” said Foy. “There was no sense of community, students didn’t even know who the other GSP students were.”

Concurrently, through panels and student dialogue, the importance of a support program became more apparent to alumni and administrators.

“On a panel for alumni, it became obvious that lots of these students had nowhere to go for winter break, and Leo’s closes, and students are here. So, what can we do to realize that this is an unfair environment?

These are all little things that became known certainly because the program brought together the discussion,” Deacon said. “It’s not that people were complaining. Rather, this is the way it was.”

In 2008, in recognition of the importance and size of GSP, a formal office with an operating budget was established under Healy Hall, and the formal position of GSP Director, both funded by the Provost’s Office, was created for Foy, who was single-handedly helping 256 GSP students at that point.

“Dean Deacon said, ‘Missy, you’re going to have a free-standing office, employees, row of offices, people meeting with hundreds of students, and a lounge,’” said Foy. “At

georgetownvoice.com the beginning, I never thought that in a million years, the little thing that we were doing that just felt like the right thing to do would become this sophisticated, well-recognized operation—in the Healy building of all places too, which is really neat.”

“It was an important milestone because it’s a place where GSP students can feel like it’s theirs and it’s home,” said McWade. “It’s in Healy, right under the clock tower … so that students aren’t thinking, well, this is just a marginalized program off somewhere.”

“Thrive, Not Just Survive”

GSP now serves 640 students, or 8.6 percent of undergraduates and will graduate its sixth class of students this May. GSP is structurally led by a 17-member executive board headed by chairman Jimmy Eisenstein (MSB ’80) and a 10-member student board led by Liu.

“Initially, there was some concern that students that are a part of GSP might not feel like they’re part of the [Georgetown] community, because [GSP] might be thought of as being exclusive … [and] not otherwise part of the University,” said Eisenstein. “It’s instead become a very desirable program, even for students who are not first-generation students, who want to be a part of this community.”

Through gifts from alumni, GSP has been able to support basic necessities and assistance for emergency situations that do not fall under academic expenditures, including 80 bedding packs, and a necessity fund that includes medical expenses, a coat fund, flights home, and other needs. GSP also hosts a mandatory budget bootcamp for freshmen, and Financial Aid Peer Counselors train GSP students to successfully navigate financial aid.

“I didn’t have a coat coming to Georgetown because I had never needed a coat, coming from California,” said Ramirez. When he first applied for a coat scholarship, which he described as “coveted,” he did not get one. “It’s simple things like that, and GSP has grown to the point where now, students can be warm,” he said.

Beyond the staff, GSP has expanded to include 100 GSP peer mentors, 66 faculty and staff mentors, 400 “one-on-one” Friday meetings between students and alumni or supporters, and regular alumni roundtables. 104 regional alumni mentors also support students closer to home.

“You don’t really know what you’re supposed to do. You don’t know, [for instance], about internships. It’s really difficult, and you don’t have the support system other stu-

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dents have,” said Yvonne Espinosa (FLL ’84), a GSP San Diego regional mentor, discussing her experience as a first-generation student at Georgetown before GSP existed. Espinosa had to take two leaves of absences due to finances.

“That was why I started working with the GSP when I heard about it … [so I could talk to students about] even things like staying in school and continuing, even with family hardships or external struggles,” she added.

GSP’s core, however, is the community. From the beginning, GSP organizes volunteer alumni who greet and help students, who often arrive

the georgetown voice 9

multiple academic conferences, and McWade will be discussing GSP at the CollegeBoard Forum in October.

According to Communications Officer Maggie Moore (COL ’09), GSP will also be featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Diversity May issue.

Additionally, alongside Duke and Brown, Georgetown is currently participating in a research study called the “First Generation Forum” led by Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Richard Light.

The study, according to Light, arose from the observation that at “America’s finest campuses,”

STUDENTS THAT BENEFIT FROM THE GSP NECESSITY FUND. FOOD STIPENDS FLIGHTS WINTER COATS SUPPLIES MEDICAL &AND DENTAL TEST PREP CONFERENCE COSTS EMERGENCY COSTS LODGING

on their own, move in. GSP also hosts the Preparing to Excel pre-orientation program. Throughout the year, Foy makes sure to hold regular community events and keep traditions, including an induction ceremony for freshmen, the Thrive Summit for second-semester freshmen, a Thanksgiving dinner at the Daily Grill, and group activities for students who cannot afford to travel home for Thanksgiving, a senior graduation ceremony, and group activities with pizza at the GSP Office.

“I think they’re sick of pizza now,” Foy joked.

In recognition of her work with GSP, Foy will be receiving the 2014 William Gaston Alumni Award, established in 1963, for outstanding community service.

“Missy has made GSP her life,” Goodrich said. “I applaud her and her staff for all they do.”

GSP as a National Model

GSP’s success has not gone unnoticed by other universities. Foy has presented on the GSP model at

first-generation students were a growing population. The project, which began two years ago, is interviewing 25 first-generation and 25 non-first generation students one-on-one about their experiences at each university.

“We began to ask what the campuses can do to really help First Gen students succeed in every way once they arrive on campus,” Light wrote in an email to the Voice. “I would say that all the colleagues from all of the campuses are finding that Georgetown’s ideas are often cutting edge in the best sense.”

McWade believes GSP’s uniqueness partly stems from its emphasis that its students are just as academically competitive as non-GSPers.

“Many of our colleagues around the country have programs that have a remedial component. The student wasn’t ready to do the math, or the writing. That’s not what this program is about,” McWade said.

Going Forward

Although Foy now has been joined by three other staff members,

who are all GSP alumni, the staff has felt the crunch as the number of GSP students continues to grow. “We really felt it this fall with 640 students … because we also manage 300 alumni volunteers and the board, and report to constituents too,” she said.

Due to University funding limitations, an alumnus personally funded a five-year staff position for Alejandra Martinez (SFS ’13). “I get emotional every time I think about that somebody could be so kind to do something like that,” Foy said.

According to Foy, the GSP budget from the University averages just around $200 per student per year, which covers all programming. The necessity fund of $100,000 each year comes entirely from philanthropy.

“The biggest obstacle is that we need more money. … If we have more money, we can have more students in the program,” said Bob Burkett, a GSP mentor and senior advisor to President DeGioia.

For the student leaders of GSP, the main concern is how they will balance the growth of the program while maintaining the community feel.

“Because we’ve grown so much, it could feel like you are walking just into another Georgetown office, and we try our best to combat that. [For instance,] every intern that sits at that front desk knows the students that are coming in, to make sure they feel they have friends in the office,” said Luisa Santos (COL ’14), outgoing GSP student board president. “But it’s hard when you have 600 students.”

Nevertheless, GSP and Georgetown leaders are optimistic about GSP’s security and continued success.

“To say that it is a problem that we are helping so many kids and that we have so much programming—I think that is amazing,” said Hang.

“That’s a great problem to have.”

Foy continues to look forward at opportunities she wants to see GSP add, including a career development and education enrichment fund for costs such as tutoring, flying to job interviews, having an in-house mental health counselor, hiring more staff, adding juniors to the business attire program, adding more “honorary” GSPers who are not 1789 Scholarship recipients but come from similar backgrounds as GSP students, and having a GSP house.

Ultimately, Foy’s “dream of dreams” is a gift to endow GSP, which McWade estimated would require $25 million.

“I want to endow this program because I want to ensure … its future, that this network of resources and supportive community is able to be financially sustainable for the future,” Foy said.

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

april 10, 2014

Jodorowsky’s Dune brings epic back from the recycling bin

by Emilia Brahm “Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction novel Dune asserts an unattainable reality, a universe represented by the innovators who see one step beyond the expected and the logical.

If assessed by his oeuvre of absurd, surrealist films, Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky is

either many steps ahead or totally befuddled. Based on his bizarre 1970 hit El Topo and the more erratic The Holy Mountain (1973), Jodorowsky seems the latter—the films are enticing for their outlandishness but present no digestible philosophy.

After the wild cult success of his mystic and surreal early films, Jodorowsky decided to take on a new project: turning Herbert’s Dune into a film. Jodorowsky’s Dune, directed by Frank Pavich, chronicles the attempt and failure to realize this project in

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.” Take note, GU.

Putin’s Complaint

Oscar Wilde said that artists are useless. Of all the useless artists out there, some have to be more self-obsessed than others. In literature, Philip Roth comes to mind as one of the most masturbatory and indulgent of all time, as his own name appears in many of his novels. If it doesn’t, his alter egos (most notably, Nathan Zuckerman) will. Roth’s authorial persona is childish and petulant. He throws temper tantrums in the theme park where he dragged his parents (er, readers).

On the other side of the library you can find Kirill Medvedev, Russian poet, essayist, and activist.

Medvedev’s writings are impossible to put down (more so than Exit Ghost or Portnoy’s [eternal] Complaint) and decidedly not useless.

In 2003, Medvedev renounced the copyright to all of his work, just after the devastating elections, which failed to provide the liberal-democratic opposition party Yabloko with the 5 percent vote necesary to participate in the Duma.

Medvedev’s work was recently

compiled by American literary magazine N+1—without his cooperation, but theoretically, with his permission—as a volume entitled It’s No Good. It includes poems from before and after his break with the literary world and myriad essays.

Medvedev addresses the glitzy new publishing world in Moscow, where a regular cup of coffee costs $8.25—so much for the starving artist. To become successful enough to afford some joe, Russian writers must appeal to logocentrism—the society’s obsession with language over meaning.

Forgoing the popular way of writing, Medvedev cares most (as evidenced by his own poetry) about the concepts that the words convey. I love this conceptualism.

I want to apply it to the critique of today’s sterilized MFA writing, or even of the tight, complex but not-so-compelling award-winners, like Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. Good technique without conceptual substance is like a Leo’s cupcake. I want fresh strawberries

fascinating detail, doubling the audience’s regret that Dune was never made.

But, rewind: the year was 1974 and the time was right. Jodo, as he is known by his former colleagues interviewed in the documentary, was popular in art circles, he had the funding, the vision, and more than enough energy, and soon began amassing a team of, in his words, “prophets…and warriors to change the world.”

Jodorowsky’s Dune interviews these said-warriors, showcases their work, and highlights how magical the process of Dune’s pre-production was. They—notably all men—are nerdy, awkward oddballs, and very talented in their own realm. It was Jodorowsky’s impassioned encouragement that brought their life’s best work out, as many of them acknowledge.

Beyond the stories of the participants in this three-year attempt at making Dune, the film shows a world begging to be put to film.

The illustrator Moebius’ intricate storyboards and the planet of the evil Harkonnens, designed by the undeniably eldritch H.R. Giger, stand out. In combining story and imagery and music, Jodorowsky’s Dune succeeds on many levels.

In fact, it’s an adept piece of documentary filmmaking. The music is tight, the imagery smooth, the cinematography clean - only once is it slightly out of focus as it zooms out to capture Jodorowsky spontaneously picking up his cat to tickle him.

And yet—it was too perfect.

What a criticism—too perfect?

But for a story about the creation of Dune—a story of a secret meeting with Dalí in the St. Regis hotel bar in NYC under the 8-by-30 foot Maxwell Parrish painting of King Cole farting, a story of chasing a retired, huffing-and-puffing obese Orson Welles around the bistros of Paris and hiring him with payment of unlimited ambrosial catering from his favorite bistro (the gourmand swallowed the bribe like a draught of expensive wine with his coq au vin)—the presentation was too divorced from reality, technically flawless, and boring.

I wanted messy, strange, quixotic, like Jodo’s story. I wanted young Jodorwsky, wild haired, throwing himself into new characters and around the city with strange friends.

But just like the vast phantasmagoria that was—and would have been—Dune, the movie, this version of Jodo was not sustainable.

after a homemade meal, like Medvedev’s poetry and prose.

Medvedev says, “Poetic language in Russia.…is a source of healing, or a method of oppression … If you don’t give Russia a living language, it will take a dead one … and everything will remain as it’s always been.” His own poetry more than fits the bill of being “living.”

Medvedev continues to address the self-indulgence of Russia’s au-

over by the motorcycle that the new protagonist rides into the sunset.

This isn’t to say that poetry or novels must directly address politics, but they, and their creators, must acknowledge the fact that they exist enmeshed in a political system.

Art and politics can’t be divorced.

Every book I have reviewed, every book you have read for pleasure this year is political: their content and production may affect others.

If a writer denies this, they are being self-indulgent.

“The hardest thing of all is to be democratic, under any circumstances,” Medvedev quotes poets Alexander Brenner and Barbara Shurz.

“Democratic art teaches that....we need constantly to understand that we are mortal, limited, cruel selfish, greedy, ignorant beings, but...we may be able….to approach a very intense form of love, and powerful contact with one another, and genuinely elevated expressions of our thoughts and feelings.”

Medvedev is democratic. All truly moving art is democratic. And democratic art moves one to be democratic in one’s own life. Lest I

Under the Covers

by Emilia Brahm

A bi-weekly literary column thors who claim to write personal, “private poetry” or prose. Though there are books of self-discovery that move beyond the individual, like Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, Medvedev alerts us to the proliferation of the bildungsroman, usually featuring a young man on the road to self-discovery (yawn). This is the writing of a “private poet,” and is mostly a navel-gazing mess. In the face of Russia’s corrupted society, the bildungsroman has to be run

After the failure of Dune, Jodorowsky formulated psychomagic, a practice based in Tarot cards and zen buddhism. Psychomagic asserts that a symbolic act, like hypnotism or even more active, risible spectacles, can be taken as fact by an unconscious mind, and therefore heal internal conflict.

Dune as Jodorowsky planned it never came together (David Lynch made an embarrassingly mediocre version in 1984—not good enough to deserve praise, not bad enough to become a cult film). And yet, the symbolic act of the two-year compilation: planning, sketching, modeling, has been taken as fact

by Jodo’s unconscious (and conscious mind, too).

Jodorowsky has moved beyond the wave that peaked at Dune, and this documentary does too. Perhaps the clean editing and sharp image are the zen version of maturity, adulthood, where we can enjoy and learn from the wildness of youth from a safe distance, like looking through the scrubbed-clean glass window of Jodo’s Paris apartment at the street below, where Jodo once ran, wild-haired, with Mick Jagger and Salvador Dalí, shouting about madness and art as loud as he could.

begin to sound too logocentric myself, I suggest you all read It’s No Good. Medvedev is a great intellectual who offers a “disengaged critique of Authority, in a non-identification with any official discourse.”

Medvedev calls for an art that recognizes human failure, “yet has faith in them that demands the strictest possible ethical relation to people and art and life; that tries to justify and improve social existence.” Because literature has impacted me so deeply, I write this column, and this is why: I believe that art has the power to “justify and improve social existence.”

Whether through art or economics, we must be men and women for others. This is how we should guiltlessly justify our own version of an “overall ineffectual existence” as students, not immediate actors of change. It’s No Good, sure, but there are things that make it better. For me, art is one of those things, and I will not be a private artist any longer, not until everyone can be, too.

Send Emilia your private poetry at ebrahm@georgetownvoice.com

georgetownvoice.com

“And you can tell Rolling Stone magazine that my last words were... ‘I’m on drugs’.” — Almost Famous

Touch Me exhibit not very pleasurable

by Daniel Varghese Enter space...interact.

The words are printed on an unassuming white wall at the entrance of of Touch Me, the current exhibit in The Flashpoint Gallery. This new creation from the minds of installation artists Emily Biondo and Bradford Barr creates an interactive environment of light from the most basic form of human interaction: touch.

The exhibit’s composition is simple. The walls are lined with flickering white and blue lights, which are captured in translucent white cloth that is formed into pyramidal masses. Between these two grand masses are three pairs of plain woven gloves, hung from the ceiling by braided arrangements of copper wire and spaced roughly six feet apart.

Gently place glove on right hand, the text at the entrance read. I inserted my hand into the glove, noticing

that the palms and fingertips were covered by metallic fabric. Touch glove hands with a person wearing the glove across from you. I held the hand of the person across from me, and looked around the room.

According to the description of the installation provided by the gallery, “individuals will have an immediate and dynamic effect on their surroundings by simply touching another person...the installation will begin to glow, change and flash, immersing viewers in a lit geometric space built by their own touch.”

I looked to the walls around me, hoping to see a glow, a change, a flash, but did not witness any noticeable difference. The space did not become markedly brighter. I stood in the middle of the installation, awkwardly holding hands with the person next to me, until the absurdity of the situation overcame us and we let go of each others grip.

“Now touch me, baby. Can’t you see that I am not afraid?”

Cultural DC

In Touch Me, I observed negligible changes to the lighting of the installation, which was supposed to be sensitive enough to detect not only the actual holding of hands, but even the movements of hands within this basic interaction.

To be fair, it is possible that these changes would have been much more apparent if all three pairs of gloves were being utilized. But if that were to be the case, than the exhibit misses the true beauty of hand holding, which is a shared experience between only two people.

The exhibit felt as if it had been placed fairly haphazardly, and not in a positive, organic way. The wiring that connected the hanging gloves to the light bulbs along the walls was entirely exposed in its journey to the lights. It gave off a sense of disorder that did not seem conducive to the expression of something as pure as hand holding.

Ultimately, Biondo and Barr’s Touch Me was underwhelming at best. While the underlying concept behind the exhibit was interesting, albeit familiar, the execution was lackluster and prevented the installation from really achieving its potential.

Flashpoint Gallery 916 G Street N.W. Tues. to Sat. 12 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Glazer’s Under the Skin out of this world

by Andrew Gutman A black screen. Odd sounds, slowly becoming louder. Suddenly, a spot of light appears and gradually moves a little closer… This scene is how Under the Skin begins.

A creepy, disorienting movie the whole way through, this sci-fi fever dream seeks more to discomfort than entertain. In spite of that, it’s fascinating the whole way through, offering a tantalizing story and striking, eerie visuals.

Under the Skin centers around Laura, an otherworldly being who has stolen the body of a human, played by Scarlett Johansson. She spends her days driving around Scotland, searching for men to seduce and bring back to her home.

She then leads them into a strange black void, where she traps them in a dark pool of liquid. We are never told her reason for doing this.

She is assisted by another one of her own who has taken the body of a motorcyclist. Even so, she decides

to leave this job behind, even though there isn’t anything else she can do on Earth.

If that synopsis seems sparse, that’s because there isn’t much to tell.

Under the Skin is a movie that doesn’t much value exposition or establishing dialogue—it simply drops you in a situation, gives you just enough to start guessing, and moves forward.

It’s hard to even say what exactly Laura is supposed to be: many people have dubbed her an “alien,” but there’s little to support that she’s from another planet. We only know that she is not human.

We never know what is done with the men she traps, nor is her relationship with the motorcyclist ever clarified. This isn’t a movie about finding answers—after all, letting the audience know everything wouldn’t be quite as unnerving.

Johansson’s performance contributes a great deal to the film’s uncomfortable atmosphere. In her conversations with potential victims, she can never quite string together a co-

the georgetown voice 11

Saxa Poetica

A Spotlight on Student Poetry

Lullaby Cars appear as whitelight, sliding then fading along their paths, buckling darkly and blue.

In the day the road is all curve, tar-black and heatwave sliding down to the ocean.

There was only one direction but now you can confuse the bulbs with stars, there is upwardness here, not the expansiveness of the sea but the delusive weightlessness of a lamp at night trapping everyone in its glow. Sleep.

The island doesn’t need you, it will burn with or without your knowledge, the black charred wood will turn white with the marble, the ash will cover the ground like feathers, and it will be dark outside this room, everything will seem black and white, but the colors are there but you will have to wait until there is more light to see.

The Birth of Futurism Every time his fingers twitch he is thinking about folding a butterfly wing in half, and in half again into a small rectangle of creases and then dropping it into his pocket. He will convince you that it was your idea. You keep your hands closed. He keeps his eyes closed, cataracts, like opals, that everyone strains to see when his lids flutter.

He keeps them closed. He runs a small museum, Maritime History, where he stores torpedoes, sliced open and wired tightly with coils of red and blue, like capillaries. There is one room full of seashells, just seashells. All of them delicate and white and lit by electricity and a sense of what feels like vertigo, but is really just the potential of so many brittle bodies with rooms like cupboards inside of them.

The fact that you could shatter them all. You touch his face, and then hold your hand a moment apart, hovering between sliding down to his neck to rest your palm around the nape like he is some handful of animal about to buck, or pull away. His breathing is too loud for this room and your body is too large, the broad metal chests of his machines hum behind the glass like the souls of the creatures that lived in the seashells, like invitations to violence.

—Katie Mitchell

herent line of questioning. Her lines sound rehearsed and unnatural— asking someone for directions only to cut them off with “Do you live around here?” or “Are you alone?”

Her character frequently seems uncomfortable, unfamiliar with a body that is not hers and unsure of how to interact with these beings she’s trying to mimic. It’s a subtle, low-key performance that’s different from her previous work.

IMDB Director Jonathan Glazer, though Johansson’s acting made us wish we could get “under her clothes” instead. primarily a director of music videos and commercials, is best known for whole film feels cold, even at its any closure—just a grim, haunting his crime film Sexy Beast, which was most shocking, and can be difficult finality.

Under the Skin is polarizing. also noted for being strange, uncon- to grasp as a result; then again, this ventional, and intensely grim. His is not a film that needs to be grasped. Some will like it for its atmosphere visual style is on full display in Under The goal is not to reach the ending, or Scarlett Johansson’s performance. the Skin, from the curious opening se- to relate to the characters, or to find Others will hate it for its opaque quence to his many shots of the Scot- answers; it’s simply to follow Laura storytelling or lack of relatable chartish landscape at dusk. His palette is and see her experiences. It seems acters. But even with that, it’s hard very dark for most of the film, with possible that Laura might be just as to dismiss this film. It exudes powmany scenes taking place at night, confused as we are, simply follow- er over its audience—nearly every adding to the film’s ominous and ing orders or instinct. While the plot frame is striking and few scenes does start rolling around the middle could be called boring. It’s excellentvague atmosphere.

Under the Skin is an aesthetical- of the film (when Laura abandons ly put together, and in the end, nearly and topically dark movie. The her work), the finale doesn’t offer ly impossible to forget.

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

april 10, 2014

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

RAC, Strangers, Pt. II, Interscope Records The second installment of RAC’s two-part debut album, Strangers II, is a stark departure from the band’s previous work of creating peppy, electronic remixes for other popular artists. Then again, as this record drives home—change isn’t always a bad thing.

RAC, an acronym for the Remix Artist Collective, used Strangers II as a canvas to explore a slightly darker, yet still heavily electronics-driven, side of their music. Songs like “I Should’ve Guessed” and “Ready For It” manage to describe rather unpleasant scenarios in awfully positive ways. The former describes someone with severe depression while the latter explains a discreet affair—however, you can’t help bob-

bing your head and tapping your feet to the up-tempo, synth-driven beats in both songs.

It’s almost like Bugs Bunny describing a crime scene: you’re not sure whether to laugh him off or take him seriously, regardless of how absurd he may appear. More than one track on this album combines late-80s discotheque beats and floating, high-pitched female vocals, which only adds to this strange, strange dichotomy of gloomy lyrics and funky music.

But this album is not just an exercise in melodic depression. For every faux-goth track with themes of loss and pain, there are just as many classic feel-good summer tracks. For instance, take “405,” a catchy, groovy song that paints an allegorical picture of a California highway. It refers to “friends I’ve yet to meet” and talks about the simple joys of “going for a ride,” which takes on several meanings in the context of this song.

The same is true of the final track, “Cheap Sunglasses,” which brings an unusually Caribbean feeling to the tale of a playboy, with an emphatic xylophone and the mystifying command, “No cigarette for you.”

Ultimately, I think RAC is still working out their kinks as

Hitchhiker’s guide to the summer

I’ll never cease to be amazed by Georgetown students’ globetrotting habits. I love hearing friends describe the details of their summer travel plans—itineraries range from cross-country road trips to exploring cotton farms in Xinjiang.

It’s a bittersweet feeling to hear a sophomore friend describe her summer plans that remind me of my own adventures. She, too, has the opportunity to travel and conduct research on her own. There’s the whole nostalgia for my own adventures from 2012 and excitement for her future— the usual mix of emotions of a second-semester senior.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to travel for ten weeks to conduct research. Although I had been able to craft a research proposal, I found it difficult to conceptualize what exactly I needed to do to bring my plans to fruition. In the days leading up to my departure, I packed and repacked my bag

multiple times and scoured the Internet for stories about traveling in Crimea and the Caucasus.

Then again, no amount of refined Google searches could have prepared me for traveling by myself for eight weeks.

The shock of being alone in a strange place was overwhelming at first. It took time to push myself out of my comfort zone, but after a few weeks, I found my stride.

How to reserve rooms in hostels, budgeting for food and museum tickets, securing transportation, in a foreign language—all skills a solo traveler needs to survive abroad.

At a party last week, a girl asked me for advice about traveling alone for several months.

While some may be travel purists and reason that people should learn these skills for themselves, I really wish someone had given me a bit of advice before boarding a plane.

a group making their own music, instead of just remixing what other musicians have already put out. And, perhaps understandably, this novelty showed in Strangers II. But who am I to complain? RAC’s songs are (by and large) fun, the album is tightly produced, and I’m seriously looking forward to what they come up with next.

Voice’s Choices: “Cheap Sunglasses” and “Repeating Motion” —Riley Mellen

Cloud Nothings, Here and Nowhere, Carpark Cloud Nothings has really produced something special with Here and Nowhere Else. Promenading I’ve got two big takeaways from my adventures (and misadventures) abroad. One, always have a back-up plan, and two, take the time to figure out your travel style.

No matter how solid you think your itinerary is, sketch out a few alternative plans. You are not invincible, and your plans are not infallible. The back-

Day Tripper

by Colleen Wood A bi-weekly column about travel up plan serves multiple purposes, but primarily, it’s a practicality. You never know when an outbreak of the bubonic plague will hit Kyrgyzstan, messing up your travel plans (true story).

You might end up realizing that the bus you planned on using for travel only operates during the other half the year.

In a moment of crisis, you don’t want to have to plan out an

along the line between rage and beauty, Cloud Nothings’s latest release is an effective juxtaposition of pop hooks and seething punk.

Where one would normally expect chaos from overdrive and anxious percussion, there is grace. Here and Nowhere Else is the most charming carny at the fairground. It is the relief of finally emptying your stomach after a night of nauseous heaving. It is getting the shit kicked out of you in the most beautiful place on Earth.

The album’s tone is set with the opening track, “Now Here In,” a frenzied hymn to apathy sporting J Mascis-esque sensibility and drums so intense that they could’ve been sampled from a symphony of erupting mortars and howitzers. These certainly aren’t puttering drums.

They are, along with the consistent strength of frontman Dylan Baldi’s melodies, the proverbial icing on this sweet, sweet musical cake.

Much of the songwriting on Here and Nowhere Else feels like walking up a ziggurat, with each successive terrace climbed bringing you closer to the song’s climax. “Psychic Trauma,” for example, begins with guitar, drums, and bass. Cue the vocals, they intensify, the drums harden, distoralternate route. You’ll save yourself a lot of stress if you have a few options sketched out in advance.

It doesn’t even have to be too detailed, just the name of a place to stay and directions from the bus station into town.

If you’re not going to take this advice, at least consider this second bit of wisdom: be honest with yourself about your travel style. From TV or movies, we get bizarre ideas about the “right” way to travel. There are competing pressure points about needing to see every landmark, every historical building, each street corner in order to prove you’ve been somewhere, while simultaneously you have to spend hours in quiet cafes or restaurants, people watching and reflecting on the world.

No travel style is necessarily better than the others.

Granted, it will probably take some time to develop your preference—take time to recover from jetlag before jumping into visiting museums, exploring the town, and meeting new people.

tion is added, everything swells, and finally, screams. The song is at full power, you’ve reached the apex, and it’s time to come back down. The songwriting reflects your descent in that parts start to fall away, but it keeps in mind that you’re still excited to touch the ground.

The second to last track, “Pattern Walks,” is a songwriting anomaly. A nearly seven-anda-half minute ballad, “Pattern Walks” is strictly punk for almost half of the song before plunging into an ambient guitar sprawl.

From this point emerges a chant of “I thought” among apocalyptic drums and uncharacteristically dreamy guitar, the only discernable remnant of Cloud Nothings’ more ethereal releases circa-2009.

Here and Nowhere Else is the best Cloud Nothings release to date. Diverse, compelling, and re-re-re-re-re-listenable, Here and Nowhere Else’s brilliance shines through on each and every track.

Cloud Nothings you say? More like Cloud Stunnings!

Voice’s Choices: “Now Hear In” and “Pattern Walks” —Connor Rohan If you’re traveling alone, you don’t have anyone else to please, and there’s no reason to force yourself to go on daytrips or evening outings that you know you won’t enjoy. This luxury is subject to change, of course, when you travel in a group—but for the time being, find what makes you most excited to experience a different place and a different culture.

After a few weeks, if you feel a lot more comfortable spending the afternoon walking through the backstreets of a city than barhopping with new friends, don’t try to convince yourself that the only way to truly travel is to visit every bar listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook.

The chance to spend the summer abroad is an incredible opportunity—be careful, though, because wanderlust is a contagious bug.

Give Colleen your tip at cwood@ georgetownvoice.com

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— Madhuri Vairapandi

voices

14 the georgetown voice

april 10, 2014

From digits to dehumanization: Minor League Baseball

by Chris Castano Before the summer of 2012, I couldn’t have told you jack-crap about the sport of baseball. I had played in rec leagues back in middle school, but never really caught the fever. You can probably imagine I was a little anxious when I was asked to emcee local single-A ball games in front of my whole community.

It was a seriously sweet gig. I signed people up to play games in between innings, orchestrated pre-game events down on the field, and generally ran around having the time of my life performing for an average crowd of 3,000 people. I was never really in it for the sport. Like any good performer, I was in it for the crowd, for the people. However, the people at the ballpark who would most profoundly affect my summer weren’t those in the stands.

I expected to ignore the players on the field, and focus all of my attention on those in the crowd, but instead wound up caring more about how those in the crowd were

treating the players down on the field. It only took a few games in the stands for me to realize how quickly sports fans can get so caught up in numbers and analysis, that they sometimes forget those playing the game are human beings.

During my first few days on the mic, I quickly learned that no one shows up to single-A games to see if a team wins or loses. Instead, coaches and fans alike are more focused on how certain individuals are performing. Every single-A team is affiliated with an MLB franchise and if players do well, they move up to double-A, then triple-A, and finally the big time. Today’s lower league rookies are tomorrow’s major league all-stars.

Every time one of the players stepped into the batter’s box, or onto the mound, his numbers were put up onto the big television screen above center field. As soon as those slides were displayed on the jumbo-tron, the crowd would erupt into chatter. Everyone talked like they knew where players had been, and where they were going.

I watched and listened as these young men were reduced to digits and decimals.

After I finished helping clean up after the games, I would walk back to my car out behind left field.

As I rounded the outfield fence to where my aging Saab was parked, I had to pass by the visiting team’s bus. The opposing team was always sitting around outside on stumps, barricades, or against the outfield fence. Without fail, almost every single one of them would be on their cellphone.

These weren’t happy calls.

Hands were attached to foreheads, ardently rubbing temples. Some of them just sat, listened, and stared off into space. Some of them paced up and down the fence, obviously agitated. These weren’t triumphant victors, or the great participants of America’s pastime. These were kids, only a little older than me, who were chasing their dreams on the road, far away from their loved ones. I was always shocked to see the same weary look on everyone’s face regardless of their number of hits or errors.

I’ll never forget the look on Mookie Betts’ face after a game in 2012. Betts was a shortstop that played for the Lowell Spinners, the single-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. All of Vermont Red Sox nation showed up to the ballpark when the Spinners came to town to see Betts take the field. He was supposedly their future shortstop, and as such, he was under close scrutiny all night.

Betts had a really solid game.

He put up good numbers all night, avoiding errors, and batting well.

At the end of the game, Sox fans left the park satisfied. But, when I got out to the back of the park to leave, Betts didn’t look like a future MLB shortstop. He looked more like what he really was: a 20-yearold kid from Tennessee, trying to make his dreams come true far away from his home and his family.

Accordingly, he was posted up next to the stadium pylon, on his phone.

Sports are supposed to be an escape. They’re supposed to make things simple. One team wins, and one team loses. A player’s value in such a context is based solely off

of his performance on the field.

Sure, sometimes we peek into the private lives of major athletes, but usually it’s through the lens of reality TV, or advertising. In the minds of the masses, athletes are moneymaking machines who take home more in a year than a small underdeveloped nation’s GDP. That’s not to say those guys don’t exist, but for every one of them, 40 more are fighting the reality that they’ve got a set amount of time they’re relevant to their profession, and that those in their profession are really only relevant for their stats, not their stories.

What I got to see in those moments behind left field late at night, after the fans had left and the jumbo-tron turned off, was that there were no winners or losers. There were only people just trying to get by one of the only ways they knew how.

Chris Castano is a sophomore in the College. He’s got baseball down now, but anything about basketball may as well be written in Chinese.

Structural violence in Panama targets indigenous tribes

by Brittany Neihardt ¿Hay más pantalones? For the indigenous people of Latin America, resources are sparse. Four years ago, I started the first of several travels to Santiago, an inland Panamanian town, to work with Nutre Hogar, a recuperation center for severely malnourished children. In the small town, there was a faded pink building with a blue roof and a rusty swing set that grew to be near and dear to my heart.

About four times a year, the staff at Nutre Hogar drive into the

mountainous regions of Panama to visit the indigenous communities.

Families walk for miles to bring their children to meet with doctors and social workers. Once there, children are examined by the doctors and then receive donations of food and clothing. On that trip one year ago, I sorted and distributed clothes to the impoverished children. Near the end of the day, a young, thin boy approached me looking for a pair of pants he could wear to school. I searched through stacks of clothing and dug through heaps of mismatched items, but there were only

LEILA LEBRETON

¿Hay más pantalones? Lo siento pero no hay más pantalones.

three pairs left—far too small to fit the seven-year who waited patiently. I knelt down on the ground and looked the little boy in the eyes. Lo siento pero no hay más pantalones.

Lo siento mucho. I’m sorry but there aren’t any more pants. I am so sorry.

He nodded and, of all things, thanked me. These men, women, and children don’t suffer from poverty because they are bad people.

They struggle to feed and clothe themselves because they are the descendants of native Panamanian tribes. All across the world, indigenous communities are suffering, the Panamanians being a representative example. The government fails to acknowledge their needs and they are continuously refused the resources necessary to survive. In many Latin American countries, indigenous communities have even been driven from their land by their own governments. Now left to live in areas without ample access to food, these children starve.

Then, those children come to Nutre Hogar. The caretakers at the center, many of whom work for no pay, do so in order to provide these children with a chance at a higher quality of life. The paltry federal funding allotted to Nutre Hogar doesn’t even cover the daily operating costs, but the staff does remarkable work with the limit-

ed funds they are given. The fact that their service is so desperately needed is most worrisome to me.

The poverty of indigenous tribes is rooted in centuries of subjugation and discrimination originating from the arrival of Europeans who proclaimed that Indians were inferior. The repercussions of that proclamation continue to resonate to this day, as Indians live in huts of mud and corrugated metal.

Sociologist Johan Galtung writes that “cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look, even feel, right.” In this case, cultural violence is the establishment of indigenous Panamanians as second-class citizens because cultural practices like communication, business practices, and social interactions have been so Westernized, they limit the ability of the natives to integrate into mainstream society. The cultural aggression and hostility creates a system of structural violence in which the existence of poverty, disease, unemployment, and lack of resources are all normalized.

The indigenous peoples are alienated in a land that is their home and has been for centuries. Their languages are not recognized outside of their small communities and they have no money (or even opportunities to earn it) that would allow them to become members of the

larger society. Instead, they remain on the outskirts of civilization. They work all day and yet rarely have enough food at the end of the day to feed themselves.

It’s true that generous donors can help alleviate the hardship in these communities and that Nutre Hogar can take in a certain number of starving babies to nourish them.

But this material aid is, regrettably, ephemeral.

As impactful as these solutions are, they can only last as long as supplies or volunteers do. What is most needed is a series of long-term changes. In order to truly fix a problem there must be a focus on the root cause of the issue. By only focusing on the effect of the problem—like the lack of food—the solutions devised are not sustainable. Instead, the cultural convictions and structure that allows for malnutrition must be addressed. Native peoples should no longer live under a hierarchy of racial ancestry. Our solutions must make places like Nutre Hogar unnecessary rather than the only option left.

Brittany Neihardt is a freshman in the College. When she’s not volunteering in Central America, she is keeping a close eye on the Corp and their... business practices.

voices

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 15

Empowering student tenants through support and advocacy

by Nick Suttle and Mary Hanley On October 17, 2004, nearly 100 firefighters were called to the 3300 block of Prospect Street after an anonymous 911 call alerted authorities of a blaze burning through the townhouse at 3318 Prospect. The first responders arrived at 8:52 a.m. and the fire was completely extinguished by 9:20 a.m., but upon searching the house the crew discovered that not all of the residents had managed to make it out of the house. Daniel Rigby (MSB ‘05) was found lying on the floor of his room at the basement level, having already passed away due to smoke inhalation.

D.C. Fire Department spokesman Allan Etter claimed that the house violated several fire codes, from having metal bars blocking any

possible exit through the basement windows to an air conditioning unit obstructing the back door. Once the fire had spread from an electrical meter up the walls and burned through the first floor, Rigby never had a chance to escape. Not only was this the second fire on the 3300 block that month, but after city officials performed inspections on other blocks, thirty-nine students were forced to vacate their rooms due to closures.

Even after this loss to the Georgetown community, many townhouses still go through extended periods of time without inspections and renovations, regardless of how decrepit they become. Students are constantly forced to deal with safety code violations and subpar living conditions because unhelpful, recalcitrant landlords are too focused on avoiding

GSTA will fight the landlords, so that you don’t have to.

LEILA LEBRETON

The walls are closing in

Imagine a massive intergalactic trash compactor, Star Wars Episode IV-style. You and me, and the rest of the world’s population, are caught inside. The wealthiest of the bunch have managed to escape to the middle, furthest from the slowly but surely incoming walls.

Everyone is going to perish, but at least we’ll be able to prolong our stay in the compactor.

The walls that promise to put an end to life as we know it are climate destruction on one side, and injustices of various sorts on the other.

Like in Star Wars, we can’t stop the walls from inside the compactor by pushing against or jamming something between them—by “cleaning up coal,” geoengineering our atmosphere, or even securing the ever-elusive emissions commitment from national governments. No, in order to stop the whole apparatus, we have to turn off the mechanisms that are moving the walls to begin

with. The change needs to happen at a fundamental systems level: economic, political, and otherwise. The hopeful part is that, unlike in A New Hope, we don’t need R2-D2 to step in on our behalf. We ourselves can dig deep to get to the roots of climate destruction and socioeconomic injustice, and replace them with more just systems of human organization.

This metaphor was given to me last weekend by Gopal Dayaneni, a life-long climate justice activist, at a convergence of more than 200 student activists campaigning for fossil fuel divestment across North America. Dayaneni used the trash compactor to illuminate a major weakness of most mainstream environmental campaigns: a failure to recognize the wave of structural injustice crashing down on the other side. But, coming to terms with this failure, movements such as ours are presented with an opportunity to broaden their vision to include the entire compactor.

expensive building updates. Every Hoya has the right to clean, safe, and affordable housing, and as the co-directors of the Georgetown Student Tenant Association, we work to protect this right by helping students challenge abusive landlords.

The Georgetown Student Tenant Association is a non-profit student organization that provides confidential counsel to peers seeking off-campus housing and to those encountering the problems all too common for tenants. We strive to represent the voice of tenants and we act as a liaison between student tenants and D.C. agencies with the authority to take action.

It is highly apparent from our work that many Georgetown students experience problems with their landlords. Students commonly report that landlords withhold security deposits, charge illegal amounts for safety deposits, and refuse to make necessary repairs despite legal obligations. Many student tenants deal with rat infestations, mold, broken heating/ air-conditioning, broken doors, and leaky roofs. These living conditions are a part of everyday life for too many Georgetown students.

It is concerning that so many properties in Georgetown do not have the proper licensing. When properties do not have Basic Business Licenses, they have not been inspected in several years. These houses

may be unsafe for students. In order to rectify this issue, the GSTA alongside the Office of Neighborhood Life and D.C. governmental agencies, worked with the unlicensed properties to schedule inspections and fulfill compliance requirements. Still, many homes have not successfully completed these inspections. It is of the utmost importance that all student homes are inspected regularly to ensure that they are safe.

Students need help in taking a more active role in asserting their rights as tenants. Anyone who has tried to live off-campus knows that the hunt for off-campus housing is a competitive endeavor at Georgetown, and landlords take advantage of their leverage. Students that push back against unfair leases or ask questions may lose out in the market. They need to take the time to read their leases and ensure that they work with a reputable landlord. The competitive nature of the market results in leases that scam the tenants who do not know their rights or are panicking to resolve their housing hunt without reviewing the conditions of the lease.

The GSTA offers a lease review service and our advocates utilize knowledge of D.C. housing law to identify confusing clauses and even clauses that blatantly violate the law at the expense of the tenant. If tenants know their rights, and even their re-

The fact of the matter is, divestment from fossil fuels is but one crucial element in the transition away from an extraction and oppression-based economy to one that is sustainable and just. This “just transition” pays attention to the working class folks on the so-called ‘frontlines’ of environmental struggles,

coal company responsible for the mines and countless environmental harms in Black Mesa. As I write this, they are staging a sit in outside of their Chancellor’s and Admissions offices to await an answer from Wash U’s leaders. This is inspiring, and I have no doubt that student persistence will produce results as it seldom fails to do.

However, student campaigns to discredit fossil fuel companies must be simultaneously accompanied by additional strategies to facilitate this “just transition” to better systems.

This includes providing immediate relief to communities in need, such as when water resources were compromised in West Virginia earlier this year as the result of a chemical spill from one of Freedom Industry’s coal facilities.

A “just transition” also entails finding economically, as well as environmentally viable, alternatives for the communities that, on one hand, suffer tremendously from the health and associated harms brought

Carrying On

by Patricia Cipollitti A rotating column by senior Voice staffers

such as those working the coal mines on Navajo and Hopi lands in Black Mesa, Arizona.

One part of the approach is comprised of student efforts to cut ties with the companies directly responsible for these operations. Two days ago, students at Washington University in St. Louis escalated their five-year long campaign to encourage their institution to cut its ties with Peabody Energy—the very

strictions, the relationship between tenants and their landlords will hopefully become more functional and civil and less exploitative and belligerent. This is the motivation behind all our services, like one-onone meetings with tenants already in poor living conditions, or the newly launched Roomr website that allows students to review their landlords to give future tenants more information before signing their leases.

Overall, the GSTA seeks to educate, advocate, and represent the interest of students living off-campus.

We are students as well, encountering the same issues and battling the same abuses. It is imperative that students understand that they have a legal right to clean and safe housing.

We cannot settle for unresponsive landlords and, through the Georgetown Student Tenant Association, we hope students can assert their rights as tenants. In the future, we hope to become a model for more than just Georgetown. We aim to export our project to schools throughout D.C., creating a D.C. Tenant Association Network that can tackle landlord-tenant issues on a larger scale through combined advocacy efforts.

Nick Suttle and Mary Hanley are the co-directors of the Georgetown Student Tenant Association. Students can access Tenant Association resources at gs-ta.org about by extractive industries, but on the other, will undoubtedly bear the brunt of unemployment if these companies find a need to cut costs.

In other words, we need to be reinvesting in localized solutions that directly benefit these populations. This takes more than just reinvesting in large renewable energy enterprises.

For instance, one activist I met this weekend is working on a project to transition reclaimed coal lands into solar farms. These will create longterm investment in her community by hiring locals and using existing coal-driven energy infrastructure and markets.

In other words, stopping the global compactor from destroying us all necessitates aligning strategies that work clearly towards a united vision: justice. There is no one silver bullet to solving the climate crisis and none to resolve social and economic injustices. Until we realize that all of these issues are intertwined, we’re going to have a very hard time of getting out of the compactor in time.

Delicious Dishes

Jesu it

ts a O

getting creative at Leo's

Pot

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ash-up M to

Upstairs Ingredients: Bread, olives, tomatoes Directions: Toast bread from soup station on medium.

Cover toasted bread with tomatoes from burrito bar.

Add olives and olive oil from salad bar if desired.

Change up your boring breakfast.

n 始 i B g n rusc a B h

Downstairs Ingredients: potatoes, sour cream, broccoli, shredded cheddar and jack cheese, onions Directions: Cut and scramble the potato.

Mix in sour cream and cheese.

Microwave until melted.

Add broccoli and sprinkle more cheese.

a ett

Grab a quick vegetarian lunch!

Upstairs Ingredients: granola, dried cranberries, apple slices, raisins Directions: Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Add any other ingredients that suit your fancy.

Switch up your side dishes at dinner.

Share your creations with us and they could be featured in the next edition of Delicious Dishes! Email recipes to design@georgetownvoice.com.