The Georgetown Voice, April 29, 2010

VOICE the georgetown

0

BENEFITS DON’T SATISFY GU VETS PAGE 4

WOMEN’S LAX WINS DOUBLE OT THRILLER PAGE 6

CLIMATE RALLY TAKES ROOT PAGE 11

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w April 29, 2010 w Volume 43, Issue 1 w georgetownvoice.com

Planning for Disaster Georgetown’s Emergency Response

2 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

letter to the editor

In response to “Does Norton Even Want Voting Rights?”

(Editorial, April 22, 2010) While we are glad that the Voice editorial board chose to highlight D.C. voting rights last week, their editorial couldn’t be more off base. To begin with, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, whom the College Democrats brought to campus last week, has been a fierce advocate of D.C. representation throughout her time in office.

While it is important to look carefully at what elected officials are doing, the recent editorial was far too critical of a respected and dedicated public servant.

In particular, the title “Does Norton Even Want Voting Rights?” was simply without merit. As anyone who listened to her speak when she was here on April 13 knows, there is nothing that Representative Norton wants more than voting rights, and to suggest otherwise is a gross distortion of the facts. It is important to recognize that, for most of her time in office, she served in a Republicancontrolled Congress that refused to cede any form of increased participation to her.

Since gaining a Democratic majority, Norton has worked for, and gained, successive and gradual victories for the cause of D.C. representation.

She became the chair of a subcommittee, serves on three committees, lobbied for and received a vote in the House’s important Committee of the whole, and lifted a ban prohibiting the District from lobbying on its own behalf. In her eight terms in Congress, Norton has made significant progress in making the voice of the District heard in the House.

Also, while acknowledging the problematic gun provisions that the Senate attached to the bill, the Voice’s recent editorial dismisses them as simply “putting [Norton] in a difficult position.” Rather, they put the entire District in a dangerous position.

The Ensign Amendment, inserted arbitrarily into the D.C. Voting Rights bill contains absurd provisions, including: prohibiting D.C. from enacting any gun laws—which any other local municipality can do; repealing gun registration requirements; eliminating any and all age limits on gun possession; reducing

and eliminating criminal penalties for gun offenses; allowing the possession and transportation of assault rifles like AK-47s, Uzis, AR15s, and sniper rifles within the District; repealing waiting periods for gun purchases by individuals convicted of domestic violence, other violent crimes, or who are mentally ill.

As the bill was approaching the floor, the National Rifle Association was vigorously working to not only ensure that these elements remained in the bill, but to add further progun provisions to the final bill. Taken in sum, these measures are dangerous and clearly beyond the realm of the acceptable. Local leaders, like Norton, Mayor Adrian Fenty, a majority of the D.C. City Council, and DC VOTES (the leading advocacy organization for D.C. voting rights, of which the College Democrats are a coalition member), agreed that such gun provisions made the final bill unacceptable.

It is a sad day in the United States when the most basic civil right of representation is denied to 600,000 people by a single, monied interest group. The NRA, under the thin veil of protecting Second Amendment rights, has essentially exerted veto power over a decadeslong effort to bring the full rights and protections of the Constitution to the residents of the District and undermining their selfdetermination and autonomy.

Beyond that, the NRA and the politicians that it supports are using the District and its residents as pawns in the larger political debate on gun rights. Norton bravely fought against the largest and most powerful lobbying group in the country. While she may not have won this battle, we are confident that she will win the war in the end.

Bryan Woll President Georgetown University College Democrats Melissa Miller Vice-President, Georgetown University College Democrats

Voice Crossword “Georgetown Day” by Cal Lee

answers at georgetownvoice.com

As a freshman, I noticed that the Voice ran its own crosswords, written by a current student and tailored to the Georgetown community. Inspired, I started writing puzzles for the Voice. Four years later, I can say it has been a defining part of my college experience. It was challenging trying to weave life at Georgetown into a 15x15 grid and rewarding seeing people working on one of my puzzles. This is my final puzzle. I’d like to thank everybody who ever gave me a clue or tried to solve one, and especially the Voice for granting me the freedom to publish these puzzles. I hope that they will remain a part of the paper in future years. – Cal Lee 70. Smarts 71. New Age artist DOWN

ACROSS 1. Maternally related 6. Weather forecasting tool 11. Classroom activity 14. ___ Games 15. House for an ensemble 16. Roth from Inglourious Basterds 17. What you say when a Corinthian temple does not have Corinthian columns?

19. Hwy. 20. Chess move 21. Alternative entrance 23. For Better or For Worse creator Johnston 25. It can force the truth 26. Untagged 29. Lauinger loads 31. Mideast money 34. In the style of

35. Maritime greeting 36. House extension?

38. Cornell Haynes’ better known name 40. Fresh 42. Land of over a billion 43. Southern city school 45. College in 50 down 47. Nav. rank 48. Molecule part 49. Gave medicine to 51. Outline 52. Latin for thigh 54. Makes a hole 56. Parts of the Hanging Gardens 59. Servant of a dictator?

63. Latin 001 verb 64. Code of law in Ancient Greece?

66. Pacific ___ 67. Polynesian island 68. Protusion on an animal 69. Cleaned up

1. Like a memorable failure 2. Star gazing grp.

3. Taylor and Coulter 4. Kindgergarden crime 5. Poet Dickinson 6. Louis XIV, for one 7. Service chapters 8. Actress Richards 9. Least sprinkled 10. One who always runs on time?

11. Intolerant like an emperor?

12. Chorus part 13. Waterfront walk 18. Virginia’s place in the union 22. Half a pop group 24. When hands come together 26. Nick name?

27. People indigenous to two continents 28. Best season to be in the Italian capital?

30. Diaz’s voice partner 32. Getting everything right 33. Sign of a college graduate?

35. Russian-born author Rand 37. Cleanse 39. Not as cool 41. Gardener’s nemesis 44. School 46. Changes 50. Famous trail 51. Picasso’s land 53. Half of a different pop group 55. Formally the Romani 56. She won gold over Michelle 57. Give off 58. “___ digital short...”

60. Long gone age 61. Stupefy 62. French filmmaker Jacques 65. Pub order

comments of the week “Neighborhood relations MUST be able to be improved. Not for the campus plan, for general student life off-campus. While some sit back and forfeit themselves, let the GU Samaritans give it a shot.”

— Samaritan on “Town versus gown: Why can’t we be friends?”

“Holy shit, there’s a first amendment right to photograph? Has this guy been operating by a secret parallel Constitution? What other heretofore secret rights are in that thing?”

— --- on “Burleith resident told to blur photos in response to complaints” “I think it’s hilarious that the Hoya wants to go independent [...] Regardless, it seems like the Voice is doing a better job in responding the changes in the newspaper market. Also, looking at Vox and the things it posts (which I sometimes shake my head at), I don’t see how the University is hurting their journalistic integrity.”

— Joe C on “Hoya defers independence, reflects on diversity progress”

Talk Back

blog.georgetownvoice.com || georgetownvoice.com

editorial

georgetownvoice.com

VOICE the georgetown

Volume 43.1 April 29, 2010 Editor-in-Chief: Juliana Brint Managing Editor: Molly Redden Editor-at-Large: Tim Shine Director of Technology: Alexander Pon Blog Editor: Chris Heller News Editor: Cole Stangler Sports Editor: Nick Berti Feature Editor: Sean Quigley Cover Editor: Holly Ormseth Leisure Editor: Brendan Baumgardner Voices Editor: Keaton Hoffman Photo Editor: Jackson Perry Design Editors: Megan Berard, Ishita Kohli Literary Editor: James McGrory Crossword Editor: Mary Cass Assistant Blog Editors: Geoffrey Bible, Julie Patterson Assistant News Editors: Emma Forster, Holly Tao Assistant Cover Editor: Jin-ah Yang Assistant Leisure Editors: Nico Dodd, Leigh Finnegan Assistant Photo Editor: Hillary Nakasone

Associate Editor: Iris Kim Staff Writers:

Cyrus Bordbar, Tom Bosco, Kara Brandeisky, Matthew Collins, Kate Imel, Satinder Kaur, Scott Munro, Rob Sapunor, Keenan Timko, Imani Tate, Tim Wagner, J. Galen Weber

Staff Photographers:

Max Blodgett, Jue Chen, Matthew Funk, Lexie Herman

Staff Designers:

Richa Goyal, Dara Morano, Marc Patterson

Copy Chief: Matt Kerwin Editorial Board Chair: Hunter Kaplan Editorial Board:

Kara Brandeisky, Ishita Kohli, Jackson Perry, Sean Quigley, Molly Redden, Eric Pilch

Head of Business: Eric Pilch

Director of Marketing: Michael Byerly

The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday. If you would like to subscribe, make a check or money order payable to The Georgetown Voice and send it to the mailing address listed below. Subscription rates are as follows:

Domestic, year-long: $38 Domestic, semester-long: $27 International, year-long: $52 International, semester-long: $43 Mailing Address:

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

Office:

Leavey Center Room 413 Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20057

Newsroom: (202) 687-6780 Fax: (202) 687-6763 E-Mail: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Web Site: georgetownvoice.com

The opinions expressed in the Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of the Georgetown Voice. The University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Silver Communications. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover ... Emergency Prep Cover Illustration: Holly Ormseth

the georgetown voice 3 WILL BLOG FOR SLEEP

Shuttering Burleith’s cranky shutterbug The contentious relationship between Georgetown neighbors and University students hit a new low this week with the rise of DrunkenGeorgetownStudents.com. The site is run by Stephen R. Brown, a cantankerous Burleith resident with a camera and limited website design skills and publishes damning photographs and commentary about the weekend partying habits of his student and “young professionall [sic]” neighbors. The photos, which show Georgetown students socializing on their balconies, backyards, and roofs, originally identified party locations by address.

After receiving numerous complaints from students, Brown’s original host server asked Brown to blur students’ faces, remove their addresses and eventually asked him to remove the site entirely. Unfazed, he relocated to DrunkenGeorgetownStudents. blogspot.com. Members of the Georgetown community should continue to voice their opposition to Brown’s tactics, regardless of which host server is currently foolish enough to publish them.

Brown’s website is shameful and petty at best, and illegal at worst. Accusing his subjects of being “frequently violent and unreasonable,” and referencing their “crimes related to alcoholism and ‘puiblic disturbances [sic],’” students pictured on Brown’s site might be able prove a false-light claim under D.C.’s Public Defamation Law. According to the Citizen Media Law Project, part of the Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, students could sue for false light “when a false and offensive statement is made about them to the public and causes them distress.”

Legal issues aside, Mr. Brown’s site goes beyond reporting and recording crime, veering into vigilantism. Speaking to students on his blog, he said he hopes “this locartion may stand between you and a good job [sic] ... Perhaps in the future you will feel a little twinge that perhaps the time you kept your neighbors up all night is the reason they said they chose the other candidate.” Purposefully harming the reputation of the University

and its students is not only mean-spirited, but will discourage future communication between neighbors and the University.

The heartening reaction by Georgetown students and administrators to Brown’s site show that the campus community can get results when it is united and committed to a single cause. Too often in debates between the University and residents, neighbors accuse students of being childish and unengaged in local issues. Certainly those claims hold less water today, when one of their own acts as thoughtlessly as Brown has over the course of the last few weeks.

Hiding behind his camera and a serious misappropriation of the First Amendment, Brown pretends to be fighting for the rights of his community, but his site is little more than grandstanding. Kooks like Brown can gain momentary attention with their loud and shameful tactics, but in the end, reasonable discourse and the University community will win the day.

GUTS BUS`TED?

Weekend GUTS routes must continue Tired of complaining about lengthened GUTS routes to Dupont Circle, sporadic weekend service, and no rides to the Verizon Center during basketball season? Don’t worry, Georgetown Univeristy Student Association and the Student Activities Commission have you covered—weekend GUTS routes might be gone for good on the Hilltop next year thanks to a lack of financial oversight from the two organizations. Ultimately, Georgetown’s entire shuttle program should be the university’s responsibility. However, for the time being it will be up to student organizations to ensure that weekend GUTS bus service is maintained.

Funding for the University’s GUTS service currently comes from two separate sources: the University runs shuttles during the week but services on the weekend are paid for with student funds.

The SAC-sponsored account which funded weekend GUTS service for the past

four years will run out before contracts are signed for the fall semester, leaving students with even fewer weekend transportation options.

The University should already be providing this essential service to members of Georgetown’s on-campus student population. As a school that boasts access to D.C.’s political and cultural opportunities Georgetown should do all it can to minimize the negative effects of our neighborhood’s limited transportation options.

However, turning over funding and management of weekend services to Georgetown administrators almost certainly cannot be accomplished before the fall semester.

GUSA, SAC, and other student advisory boards will need to work together to find the funds to continue this essential service before it can be turned over to University management. As part of a recent agreement with GUSA, SAC has consented to spend

down its reserve funds over the course of the next three years. Coordinating with other advisory boards, SAC should use some of these reserves to temporarily fund weekend GUTS services.

GUSA has promised to conduct a survey about weekend GUTS usage, a good first steptowards giving student groups hard data about how vital this service is to the University community and giving administrators insight into which times and weekend routes are most often used by students.

Hopefully this data will convince the University to step up and fund weekend service in the future.

Until then, GUSA and SAC, who were partially responsible for the financial mismanagement that caused this situation, must put aside their differences and prove to University administrators that weekend service is essential to on-campus student life at Georgetown.

GROW A SAC

New culture of accountability at SAC? The long and tumultuous conflict between the Student Activities Commission and the Georgetown University Students Association appears to have ended in a ceasefire, with a compromise announced last Sunday which will finally make SAC almost fully accountable to the student body. Though it is unfortunate that University administrators had to become involved, both sides should be commended for making concessions and finally reaching an agreement.

The best part of this compromise is that now there is a transparent, accountable process for choosing SAC chairs and commissioners. A group including the current or incoming SAC chair, a commissioner elected by the sitting members of SAC, a staff representative of Student Affairs, and student

representatives from no fewer than two other advisory boards will now elect new SAC commissioners. Additionally, student clubs will elect a new SAC chair each year, ensuring that more student leaders have a say in who runs this vital advisory board.

While members of GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations Committee had hoped that their agreement with SAC would require SAC to hold open votes on all decisions it makes, the final agreement involved a compromise whereby only votes on financial allocations will be public. Since SAC was so recalcitrant on this issue, this is a reasonable middle ground between the two organizations that protects clubs where their vital interests lie, namely annual funding.

The final important provision of the agree-

ment involves SAC’s reserves. SAC Chair Ethel Amponsah (NHS`11) told the Voice in March that the organization had $215,000 in reserve funds. Under the new agreement, they will be spending down their reserves over the next three years to $150,000, a level recommended

by Georgetown’s Office of Student Affairs.

This should bring SAC’s reserves to a more reasonable level and ensure that funds drawn from the Student Activity Fees are spent to improve student life at Georgetown, rather than sitting idle in a bank account.

Reaching a final compromise between GUSA and SAC hasnt been an easy process.

However, the agreement announced on Sunday will finally force the hisorically stubborn SAC to be more accountable to the students whose money it distributes.

news

4 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

Veterans benefits increase, GU vets not satisfied

by Holly Tao Although Georgetown announced this week that it would increase the aid it gives to undergraduate veterans fivefold, veterans’ advocates on campus say the new aid package is still not effective in controlling the cost of a Georgetown education.

In comparison to the $1,000 undergraduates received from Georgetown through the Yellow Ribbon program in the 2009-10 school year, eligible veterans will receive $5,000 from the University in the coming year. For every $5,000 the University gives its students in benefits, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides a matching grant of $5,000, as is required under the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008.

The Yellow Ribbon Program does not necessarily guarantee that undergraduate veterans will receive $10,000 in addition to their need-based financial aid

packages , though. Georgetown’s different schools offer financial aid packages based on need, and the money that veterans receive from the Yellow Ribbon program is often subtracted from these other financial aid packages.

Barbara Mujica, a professor in the Spanish and Portuguese department and faculty advisor for the Georgetown University Students Veterans Association, was not pleased with the changes, writing in an e-mail that this kind of Yellow Ribbon rate is “considered an insult by many veterans.”

Veterans also receive different amounts of financial benefits from the respective schools within the University. While undergraduates receive $5,000 from the University, students enrolled in the graduate sector of the School of Continuing studies receive $10,140 in benefits. Veterans who are graduate students will not see any increase in their benefits.

“This was handled poorly because [the conditions for the

financial aid package] were not explained prior to the students receiving the money,” Erick Brine, a graduate student and the President of GUSVA, said. “There is no net benefit for them.”

Brine also pointed out that there is also a large discrepancy between the aid that Georgetown University gives to its veterans and the benefits that other peer universities offer.

The $9,376 total compensation offered to Georgetown undergraduate veterans in 2009 is significantly lower than the $77,309 offered by Dartmouth College, for example, or the $65,208 offered by Columbia University, according to the U.S. News and World Report.

Peter Nesbitt (SFS ‘11) wrote in an e-mail that the problem lies in a provision in the Post-9/11 GI bill that says that veterans must receive at least 100 percent of the tuition of the most expensive in-state public university. In D.C., the most expensive and only public school, the

University of the District of Columbia, costs only $7,376 a year.

However, it hasn’t prevented American University or George Washington University from providing enough monetary benefits to cover veterans’ full tuitions, Nesbitt said. “[American and GWU] demonstrate their commitment to veterans despite a law that puts their universities in poor positions,” Nesbitt wrote. “Georgetown has decided to pass the effects of the poorly written law onto veteran students.”

The absence of a central veterans’ office in the University can make the bureaucracy of the VA all the more difficult for student veterans to handle. Brine said some students are fined when there are miscommunications between the University and the VA regarding tuition payments. For students who have to pay the extra tuition fees, this can be painful.

Students are currently meeting with administrators to estab-

lish a veterans’ office, which Brine hopes will be operational sometime next year.

“The problem is there are places where there is support in the university, but the university has not informed the student veterans very well on [where these resources are],” Brine said. “It is not very helpful when you do not know who to contact. It’s not a contentious relationship, but there is still a long way to go.”

In the meantime, student veterans’ advocates are trying to get the University to create an official record of all of the veterans on campus, which would enable the University to inform veterans of scholarships that specifically pertain to them and help veterans to establish an alumni network program. “Everyone has been extremely supportive of veterans at Georgetown and there has not been anyone here that has not provided the level of access and support that we wanted,” Brine said. “But it is a long process.”

GUSA execs reflect on campaign promises, new initiatives

by J. Galen Weber After a rare second-term election fueled by a list of promised new initiatives and the slogan “Because Results Count,” Georgetown University Student Association President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) have spent the beginning of their second term shoring up existing initiatives and doing preliminary work on some news ones, but they have been forced to delay action on some of their most ambitious projects until the next academic year.

In the first months after the election, much of Angert and Kluger’s nergy has been spent firming up support for initiatives like the University subsidized LSAT familiarization course— one of their biggest first-term accomplishments—and the GUSA Fellows Program, which houses Georgetown students with unpaid summer internships for free.

“At least in recent weeks it’s been a high degree of maintenance on programs we have running … but we’ll be able to expand our focus now that we’ve nailed down Summer Fellows,” Angert said, noting that work on the GUSA Summer Fellows Program is a high priority because of the impending end of the school year.

On the issue of funding reform, perhaps the most prominent issue during the election, Angert appears to have satisfied his critics. GUSA Senator Arman Ismail (COL, ‘11), who ran against Angert in the election and challenged his handling of funding board reform, now praises his ability to work with the GUSA senate.

“I think he’s got along very well with the GUSA Senate,” Ismail said. “Funding board reform has moved forward in a good way,” Ismail said.

Ismail said that he would like to see Angert work with Senate to strengthen the currently weak connection between GUSA and the student body.

Apart from the LSAT familiarization course and the Summer Fellows Program, much of the executive’s focus has been on the issue of increasing student space. Angert has worked in recent weeks to fulfill his campaign promise of opening up the GUSA office to all student groups. At the moment, it remains inaccessible.

Angert attributes the difficulty he has faced to the fact that progress depends largely on the cooperation of several university offices and administrators.

“The amount of work it takes to get something like this done here is tremendous,” said Angert.

He and his staff have also been working on creating a web page that can be used by student groups to find and reserve space.

They plan to include photos of the spaces on the pages, an amenity not currently offered by the University.

“Once the summer comes, we can really sit here and make moves on a lot of this stuff … I’ll be here working on these initiatives and helping out with Summer Fellows,” said Angert.

Still, while Angert’s past initiatives like the LSAT familiarization course and funding board reform have made progress in recent weeks, many of the main issues Angert and Kluger campaigned on have recieved little attention since the election.

One of Angert’s more highprofile promises was to bring Zipcars to Georgetown, accessible with students’ GOCards. Angert said he has been in touch with representatives from Zipcar, but that his work on the initiative has since been postponed so that he can focus on raising funds for weekend GUTS bus services.

Angert has also succeeded in allowing students to bring food into the library. That initiative was first brought to Angert by Mimi Powell (COL ’10), who said she found Angert to be extremely

HELEN BURTON

GUSA executives seek to fulfill their ambitious agenda. receptive and willing to help set up meetings between Powell and school administrators.

Powell said Angert has pushed for broader changes to the food policy than she has.

“He is much more ambitious in what he wants to achieve,” Powell

said. “He wants to open up the whole library to food at any time, I don’t know if that’s possible.”

Still, Powell doesn’t feel Angert is unreasonable in his initiatives.

“He’s very realistic. He’s good at dividing up what needs to be done and keeping tabs on people.”

news

georgetownvoice.com

GUSA searches for GUTS funding

by Holly Tao The account that funds the Georgetown University Transportation Services bus services on Saturday nights and Sundays is almost completely depleted, leaving the Georgetown University Student Association and the Student Activities Commission, whose Alumni Gift Account have funded the service for the past four years to question whether the service should be continued and, if so, where sustainable founding for it can be found.

“There is only a few thousand dollars left in the [Student Activities] Gift Account, and it will be depleted by the fall,” GUSA Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13) said. Malkerson suggested that the exhaustion of the Gift account was due to recent economic conditions.

“Trending with gifts across the board, the amount of gifts received by this account has gone down over the past couple of

years,” Associate Director of Student Programs Bill McCoy wrote in an e-mail.

When the idea of weekend GUTS buses was first proposed in 2006, the University, which was already funding weekday and Saturday buses, did not agree to fund the new bus schedules.

After the University refused to fund Saturday night and Sunday routes, the GUSA executive and SAC voted to allocate funding from the Alumni Gift Account, which consists of alumni donations towards student activities.

GUSA Speaker Adam Talbot (COL’11) suggested that GUSA should first look at the ridership of the weekend buses to determine if students are using this service.

“Certainly, from the reaction of students, this is an important issue to look at,” Talbot said. If students really find it a valuable asset, the University should foot the bill.”

MAX BLODGETT

The future of Saturday and Sunday night GUTS buses could be in doubt.

When Club Lau just won’t do Suggesting new facilities for Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan is like playing the world’s most infuriating game of Tetris. Anyone walking around campus can see that the University has tried to fit a lot into a small space. Adding to the challenge are our vociferous neighbors, who would love if the University would stick to building behind its largely ceremonial front gate. Unfortunately, students still lack space on campus for important aspects of student life. Luckily, the 2010 Campus Plan offers an opportunity to make some major changes—if students speak up about their needs.

One group, the Student Space Working Group, has already started advocating for some improvements. SSWG released a report yesterday which found that students have difficulty locating places to

study, trouble reserving spaces for group meetings, and little on-campus space to socialize that is not already reserved for another function.

Most tellingly, when the SSWG asked students what they considered to be the “center of student life on campus,” the most common response was Lauinger Library. Lau is an inefficient “beacon of our commitment to learning” when people use it for too many different activities. Lau 2 is a place people go to study quietly, work in groups or gossip about last weekend, but none of these activities mix particularly well with the others.

We need more spaces set aside for each of these purposes.

Some parts of the 2010 Campus Plan only aggravate this problem.

Sellinger Lounge—another place already used for studying, socializing, performances, eating, and

Talbot said that while using funds from the reserve accounts of student organizations is an option, he questioned whether GUSA, which operates on a $10,000 yearly budget, should be required to fund the service.

GUSA Senator Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) agreed with Talbot.

GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) said that while money from student organization reserves could provide emergency funding for the GUTS buses next year, it would be difficult to encourage the organization to keep giving money to the GUTS buses year after year.

“If SAC wants to pitch some of their reserve money towards it, that is their decision,” Angert said.

“There is no way we can force any of the funding boards [to contribute].”

Instead, Angert is approaching administrators and offices in the Medical Center and Law Center to find out whether they would be willing to give money to the GUTS bus fund.

Erika Cohen-Derr, the Director of Student Programs, did not indicate whether SAC would take initiative in locating another funding source and encouraged student leaders to find other funding sources.

“I know they want to do what is right by students, but they also have to make difficult decisions about how to allocate resources,” she said. a mishmash of other scheduled events—will soon become a walkway into the new science building, making it an even more inadequate space than it already is.

Student space is not a new issue.

In 1999, a group of juniors and seniors compiled a Report on Student Life, which detailed problems about a lack of space for extracurricular groups. While the group recom-

Saxa Politica

by Kara Brandeisky A bi-weekly column on campus news and politics

mended the construction of a student union and reorganization of the Leavey Center, few of their recommndations were actually realized.

The current 2010 Campus Plan has several measures aimed at using remaining space to improve the undergraduate experience, such as adding expansions onto Leavey

the georgetown voice 5

DPS responds to assaults

by Eric Pilch After a recent string of assaults on or near campus, Georgetown’s Department of Public Safety has not increased patrols, but continues to work closely with the Metropolitan Police Department and the Student Advisory Safety Board to increase campus safety, according to Associate Dirctor of DPS Joseph Smith.

In the three weeks prior to March 30, six assaults took place around the University.

Since then, highly publicized sexual assaults occured in Copley Hall and on Prospect St, the latter taking place at gunpoint.

“At DPS we are working hard to address the issue of assaults,” Smith wrote in an e-mail. “In general, DPS has sufficient patrol staffing to respond to crime problems with increased patrols to deter criminals.”

According to Smith, for incidents occuring off-campus DPS coordinates crime prevention efforts and shares information with MPD. As part of the 2010 Campus Plan, Georgetown is paying for three additional MPD officers to patrols in areas where student live on

and Lauinger. One plan, which SSWG member Fitz Lufkin (COL ’11) considers most important, is to renovate 30,000 square feet of space under New South to create a student center that could house clubs and include a lounge.

It seems likely the University will prioritize projects like the New South student center in the next decade. Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson said that plans to develop student space in New South will definitely be included in the 2010 Campus Plan.

But he said that while the student center is an important project, other parts of the plan, such as the new science building, will have priority.

SSWG member Max Glassie (COL ’10) said the recommendations from the 1999 Report on Student Life were neglected because other projects took precedence, but also because the Report on Student Life recommendations did not gain widespread student support. He said the next step

Thursday through Saturday nights to increase student safety, and to maintain a relatively peaceful party scene, Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson said last week.

Charles Joyce (COL ‘12), Georgetown University Student Association Director of Student Safety and a member of the Student Safety Advisory Board, said he sees the issue of increased MPD patrols as a double-edged sword, with campus safety on one side and student life on the other.

“It’s alright to have cops around, and it certainly makes people feel safe and solves the problem of local crime,” Joyce said. “At the same time, that affects student life and can sometimes cause students to feel uneasy.”

Both Joyce and Smith encouraged students to take a number of basic steps to ensure their own safety, such as always locking doors and walking in groups at night.

“A surefire solution would be to get students more aware of their surroundings … making sure that their friends get home safely and make use of campus services to their full extent,” Joyce said.

is to institutionalize the SSWG so that it includes faculty and administrators, in the model of the Diversity Initiative working groups. Glassie said that while the administration has been keeping the SSWG informed about the 2010 Campus Plan, the report should mostly be used as a reference for other groups who want to advocate for a variety of improvements to student space—from big projects like the New South Student Center to smaller projects like better lighting—so that student space issues are “continually addressed.”

The neighbors have been mobilizing for a long time to advocate for their interests. It’s time that students too start mobilizing and advocate for more student space on campus, so they can reserve a few Tetris blocks for those things they need most.

Tell Kara about your block fitting problems at kbrandeisky@georgetownvoice.com

sports

6 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

Lightweight crew prepares for Eastern Sprints

by Rob Sapunor Georgetown’s lightweight crew team has spent its entire season preparing for one thing: Eastern Sprints. Even though the crew team is winless so far this season, they are by no means out of the competition.

One sign of hope for the team is last weekend’s meet against Princeton and Penn where the Hoyas lost to top ranked Princeton by only 2.4 seconds in the varsity race. The win was Princeton’s 20th straight regular season victory. Although the Hoyas couldn’t win the varsity race, they managed to pull off a victory in the combination 4Varsity/2Freshman race, beating Princeton by over four seconds.

The race taught the Hoyas that even though they came up short, there is no reason to give up on the season. The crew team has been practicing nonstop since September to prepare for the playoffs. Although the regular season didn’t go as well as they had hoped, the team is not demoralized since their league is so competitive.

“It became clear that there aren’t one or two dominating crews in the league, and the win at the championship race can go to any team that wants it the most,” sophomore rower Stephen Kendall said.

Before looking ahead, the lightweight crew team is looking to fix some technical flaws, including their execution of race plan and stroke technique, over the next few weeks. As

a result of their hard work the team is reaching their postseason speed. In prepartion for the Eastern Sprints, the team has added extra workouts to their traditional early morning practices.

The seniors on the team have provided the younger varsity crew members with inspiration to work harder. The sophomores spent the year adjusting to the complicated “varsity technique” from a much more simplified freshman stroke, with the seniors pushing them to catch up.

“They have had an immense impact over the team. This particular group has been fantastic about unifying the team and creating a team culture so that every rower feels like they are a comfortable part of this family,” Kendall said.

The team’s top 12 varsity members improved a lot over the winter training, which has inspired those below them to work even harder.

In a match on April 18th against Navy and Delaware, the Hoyas were in last place with only 500 meters left, but were able to catch Delaware to take second place with a time of 6:06.3. The time was just three seconds behind third ranked Navy and two seconds ahead of Delaware.

These recent results have been consistent with their earlier season races. The team opened the season with a four-second loss to Princeton at the Fosburgh Cup and an under one second loss to Yale on April 10.

Lightweight Crew hopes to save their best for last

MATTHEW FUNK

The team has reason to hope for a solid postseason performance, especially since their training regimen is designed for them to peak during the post season, while some other schools taper towards the end of the year. For the Hoyas, their best is still yet to come.

The close competition among the teams in the league means that anyone can take home the hardware in the postseason. The first race will be the Eastern Sprints in Worces-

ter, Massachusetts on May 16.

Georgetown has never won the Eastern Sprints, but hopes to pull off a victory nonetheless. Last year Princeton went home triumphant, but the Hoya’s recent close races with them make the team hopeful.

“Our goal is to have a better race than our last race. If we row to our potential, if we row the way we practiced, we can win,” Kendall said.

The lightweight crew team has not seen this season as a

disappointment, but rather as a linear improvement, which leads into these final two meets.

Kendall also said that there have been no high or low points so far this season since they are hoping to get their season highlights in the postseason.

“Our heart is there to win it, and we want it the most.”

Both the lightweights and heavyweights will head up to Worcester to face the rest of the EARC crews May 16 for the historic Eastern Sprints.

the Sports Sermon “Some people watch adult videos on their computer. I go to YouTube and watch Jahvid Best highlight clips. That’s what gets me aroused.” —Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz (C ‘89) batting average plummeted to .238 while he struck out 134 times, a career high.

This season has not started much better for Ortiz who is hitting a measly .154 while racking up over twice as many strikeouts as hits. If these stats aren’t enough to paint a depressing picture, anyone who has borne witness to this tragic downfall will tell you that “Big Papi” looks completely lost at the plate. Though he is only 34 years old, his demise has led many to wonder whether Or-

dwindle from 39 to 13 as he turned 34, and he retired right Four years ago when David after his 35th birthday.

Ortiz was 30 years old, he had Since this trend of sluggers one of his greatest seasons ever. bottoming out in their mid-30’s His 54 home runs during the is so well-established, there is 2006 campaign were the most no reason to believe it won’t in a single season for the Red continue in the future. This is Sox. From 2003-2007, there was where it gets interesting. Deno hitter more dominant than spite all the buzz about Ortiz’s “Big Papi.” As a die-hard Yanstruggles in the Major Leagues kees fan, every time he would this April, the Philadelphia step to the plate in a big situPhillies decided to give star ation my stomach would drop. first basemen Ryan Howard When he decided to swing, a five-year contract extension I’d cringe and hope that he worth a total of $125 million. wouldn’t make solThe extension id contact and send comes on top of Pete Rose Central the ball into the Howard’s two Da bettin’ line stratosphere. year deal, so the 30 It seemed as year-old Philly will Dookies Margin Hoyas though pitchers be on the team’s (underdogs) (duh!) (favorites) lost color in their payroll until he is faces whenever the Celtics Funny Bone 37, which in slugCavs Dominican slugger ger years is about D.C. Ovechkin Misery was even on deck 60. When the conGravity Paralysis Bucko because there was tract takes effect in no easy way to get two years, Howhim out. If you threw it inside, tiz’s days in Boston are num- ard will be the second highest he’d crush it over Pesky’s Pole bered. How can someone who paid baseball player per year, in right field, and if you tried is only 34 and only two years behind only Alex Rodriguez. to sneak an outside fastball removed from being one of With Ortiz’s downfall takby him he’d make you pay by the greatest hitters in the game ing place before their very sending it into Vermont over be finished? Has his weight eyes, why are the Phillies givthe Green Monster. Some of and lack of athleticism finally ing Howard so much money his home runs still haven’t caught up with him? now? They still have two years landed yet.

There have been many before his current contract exAfter leading the Red Sox heavy sluggers who have seen pires, at which time they can to multiple World Series titles their careers cut short because analyze his performance and and capturing the hearts of of sharp declines in physical determine if they should offer every member in the Red Sox abilitiy. Former Red Sox great him a deal.

Nation, Ortiz now finds him- Mo Vaughn was a force at FenHoward is more athletic self in a very different situa- way Park who put up gaudy than Ortiz, but he also weighs tion. The once feared slugger numbers during his prime. 260 pounds, which will hamper is now a shell of his former When he turned 35 though, his him as he gets older. What will self. His struggles began last numbers quickly dropped off they do if Howard’s numbers season when he only hit two and a year later he was no lon- suddenly cliff dive with three home runs during the first half ger a major leaguer. The same years left on the contract? of the season. Although he im- went for Detroit Tigers slugger Will history repeat itself? proved his power numbers and Cecil Fielder. The 240-pound For the Phillies, that is the $125 finished with 28 dingers, his righty saw his home runs million question.

by Nick Berti

sports

georgetownvoice.com

Women win in OT thriller

by Tim Shine Before the opening draw against Loyola on Wednesday night, the seniors on the Georgetown women’s lacrosse team were honored in a ceremony for their final home game. Later, with 17 minutes left to play in the game, it looked like that would be the last happy memory the seniors would have on the Multi-Sport Field.

With almost three-fourths of the game having gone by, the Hoyas stared down a seven goal deficit, as Loyola’s Grace Gavin scored the Greyhounds’ fifth unanswered goal to take an 11-4 lead.

But the seniors wouldn’t give up their last home game without a fight. Georgetown (10-5, 7-0 Big East) rallied back, rattling off seven straight goals to take the game to overtime. The Hoyas finally prevailed 13-12 in double over-

time on senior Ashby Kaestner’s game-winner.

“I had been making mistakes all game and I had started dwelling on them, and I just stopped,” Kaestner said. “No one was even thinking, we were just getting the ball in the goal.”

The problem early on was that Georgetown had been thinking too much. They allowed Loyola to take a 3-0 lead early and struggled to recover for most of the first half. It was only when the Hoyas allowed the game to come to them that they were able to succeed.

“I think the biggest thing was we started playing instead of trying to play perfectly,” Head Coach Ricky Fried said. “The goals weren’t all scripted goals, they weren’t all set plays. The players were making plays and that’s the way it’s got to be for us.”

The Georgetown comeback started soon after Loyola took

HILARY NAKASONE

The Hoyas Double OT Win provided excitement for Senior Night

Natty enlightened Shortly after waking up last Sunday, I got a call from a friend. The Nats were playing the Dodgers at 1:35 p.m. Did I still want to go?

On a typical Sunday afternoon I’m usually debating whether or not I can put off Leo’s brunch and the start of my day for another half hour—forget about getting half way across the city.

But I gave up on yet another lazy Sunday and decided to make the trek to Nationals Park for one simple reason. It wasn’t that I was expecting to watch a classic. No, it’s that the value proposition was too great—how can anyone pass up a major league game on a sunny spring

afternoon for just five bucks?

Coming to D.C. as a Yankees fan, I certainly couldn’t miss that opportunity. I could watch pretty much every Nats game this season for the same price as a single game in the Bronx (and probably with a better view—you can find some great seats in the “grandstand” when the stadium is at less than half of capacity). Of course, you get what you pay for. For much of my recent memory “major league” baseball was a charitable description of what the Nationals played. After having the worst record in the MLB two years in a row, the team should be thankful that someone is paying $5 to sneak down to the lower level seats.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t expecting too much from the Nats on Sunday. And when I got to

their seven goal lead, with junior Jordy Kirr scoring back-to-back goals in a span of 30 seconds. Kirr led the Hoyas with four goals on the game. From there on out, the Hoyas were in control.

“We haven’t had momentum all season,” Kaestner said. “This was the first game we had momentum, clear momentum.”

It wasn’t until 1:19 was left on the clock that the Hoyas finally got the equalizer, as freshman Sophia Thomas scored off an assist.from Kirr.

The Hoyas’ momentum carried into overtime, where they dominated the ball for most of the first period of extra play. Graduate student Bunny O’Reilly scored the go-ahead goal, and all Georgetown had to do was hold on for three minutes.

For two minutes and fifty four seconds they did. But the exuberant Hoyas just couldn’t wait the final six seconds. Senior goalie Formby laid the ball down to run out the clock, and Georgetown started celebrating.

Unfortunately a Hoya attacker went offside during the celebration, giving Loyola one last shot.

After they cleared out all the Hoyas, who had rushed onto the field in the excitement, Loyola managed to tie it up off the penalty shot with four seconds left.

Thankfully for the Hoyas, Kaestner was there to save the day with the goal in sudden death double overtime, a fitting end to a thrilling Senior Day. “If you look at the whole game I think it reflected perfectly in their play,” Fried said of his seniors. “I think a lot of them were tight coming into the game. [They] played a little tentatively, dropped some passes, did some uncharacteristic things.

But they came up huge when they needed to.”

the stadium and found that grandstand tickets were sold out, forcing me to pay an exorbitant ten dollars to get in to the game, I was really disappointed—I missed out on the one thing I came for.

But something miraculous— on par with long-necked gi-

Backdoor Cuts

by Tim Shine

a rotating column on sports raffes, or maybe even magnets— happened next. The Nationals played a good baseball game.

They even won. Someone named Scott Olsen out-dueled the Dodgers’ Chad Billingsley over seven shutout innings, and the home team eked out a 1-0 victory.

I’m not ready to call the Na-

the georgetown voice 7

Hoyas fall in final minutes

by Adam Rosenfeld

Men’s Lacrosse 13 UMass 12 Georgetown With a two-goal lead and things going his team’s way, Georgetown men’s lacrosse head coach Dave Urick had to feel confident with five minutes left in last Saturday’s game at UMass. Unfortunately, the game took a turn for the worst, and the Hoyas gave up three unanswered goals to lose the game 13-12.

“We let one get away,” Urick said. “We really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on that one.”

Georgetown had jumped out to a quick lead early in the game, racking up a fivetwo advantage in the second quarter. The lead didn’t hold until the half, though, as the Minutemen carried a sevensix advantage into the break.

The third quarter was hard fought and physical, with junior midfielder Max Seligmann scoring the only goal on a laser from 15 yards out to level the game at seven.

The Hoyas looked like they would not be denied as they gained a three-goal advantage, aided by senior Andrew Brancaccio’s fifth goal.

However, the Minutemen proved to be resilient and managed to keep the Hoyas from truly pulling away.

A combination of turnovers, defensive lapses, and

tionals for real just yet. After the last two seasons, any reasonable fan would have to wait until, say, October, before giving this team real credit. Still, after losing ten of their first eleven games to start last season, I’m now willing to admit that The Nationals—who are still hanging around .500 almost a month into the season—are an actual major league team.

And there’s reason to believe that the best is yet to come from this squad. Star third baseman Ryan Zimmerman has been held back by a hamstring injury for a number of games, and their number one overall draft pick/ messiah Stephen Strasburg has so far lived up to the hype in the minor leagues and will likely be pitching in the bigs sooner rather than later.

poor offensive execution spelled doom for the Hoyas as UMass netted three unanswered goals—including two scored with less than a minute and thirty seconds left—to steal the victory.

The loss was made all the more devastating by Georgetown’s perilous post-season positioning.

“We went into our final three games thinking that we had to win them all to be in the playoff picture,” Urick said.

This may have been true, but fortunately for the Hoyas, a number of other highly ranked teams—including Cornell, Drexel, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins—all lost their weekend games.

One thing is certain: Georgetown cannot afford another slip-up in their final two games. The Hoyas must finish with an unblemished record if it wants to stay on the radar of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.

The Hoyas’ next game is against Big East rival Rutgers. Although the Scarlet Knights may not have an imposing record, Urick is not taking this game lightly.

“They’re playing a lot better than their record would indicate,” Urick said.

“But I’ve watched a couple of their games, including against Syracuse, and I thought they played extremely well.”

Georgetown looks to keep their post-season hopes alive against the Scarlet Knights this Saturday.

Game time is at 6 p.m. on the Multi-Sport Field.

Sunday was my inaugural trip to Nationals Park, and now I know it certainly won’t be my last. Going to a baseball game is always fun, but nine innings requires a serious time investment, one that’s a lot more worthwhile when there is a quality game being played on the field. There’s still reason to question how good this squad will be this season, but there’s still hope—and besides, after years of futility Washington baseball fans will take what they can get.

I’m not ready to get carried away just yet, though—next time, I’m making sure I get a five dollar ticket.

Want to help Tim sneak down to the good seats? E-mail him at tshine@georgetownvoice.com

feature

8 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

LOOKING FORWARD OR FALLING BEHIND?

by Will Sommer

On May 8, 2007, Department of Public Safety officers were faced with a terrifying prospect: an anonymous caller to the Metropolitan Police Department had threatened to commit “mass murder” inside the Bunn Intercultural Center. Just weeks after the Virginia Tech massacre, Georgetown was facing the possibility of a similar tragedy during finals week.

DPS responded to the ICC

threat while MPD officers searched the building. According to Vice President for University Safety Rocco DelMonaco, police officers found no threats in the ICC, and though they were able to trace the call to an off-campus pay phone, the perpetrator was never found.

The system worked as it had been designed to, except for one thing: the University’s executive leadership was in Rome, Italy,

JUE CHEN

Piling on the weight of responsibility: The ROTC prepares for the worst.

at a Board of Directors meeting, and no one could reach them for the duration of the situation. While DelMonaco wrote in an e-mail that this did not affect the response to the threat, an application for a Department of Education grant to improve school safety obtained by the Voice describe “a struggle with procedures regarding hierarchy, notification, and decision-making.” Eventually, the decision to post extra DPS officers around the ICC, which should have been made by Provost James O’Donnell, was made by University Registrar John Q. Pierce.

Although MPD eventually decided the threat wasn’t credible, the anonymous phone call exposed flaws in Georgetown’s emergency management system.

If Georgetown’s top leadership couldn’t be kept apprised of the threat, how would the University manage a threat that turned out to be real?  Georgetown can be many things: a home, a school, an open-air bar, and a vomitorium.

But according to a grant application that Georgetown prepared in 2007, it could also be a tempting target for a terrorist.

As the University is home to the intelligence archives of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, the largest collection of intelligence documents outside of the federal government, and at the time of the threat, host to former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, the application argued, Georgetown could be targeted in an attack and needed funds to remake its emergency response system.

Ultimately, the D.C. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools awarded Georgetown $549,302 for a security overhaul.

Through a federal Freedom of Information Act request, the Voice obtained 118 pages about the grant, including the appli-

cation and related e-mails. The documents illustrate what kinds of threats Georgetown feels it faces, from disease outbreaks to tornados.

Even before the 2007 scare, Georgetown higher-ups were aware of the school’s vulnerabilities to disasters and malicious attacks. A report produced in 2005 by a consultant for the University listed 150 different threats against the school and ranked them by severity and the probability that they would occur.

DelMonaco declined to name any specific threats, citing security concerns. But according to the grant application, Georgetown’s status as a research university in Washington makes it a special target for “terrorism, political protests, and civil disturbances.”

And a document from December 2007 describing Georgetown’s emergency management plan ranks a range of threats, from an isolated incident like a suicide or student misconduct, to regional or national emergencies, like a nuclear attack. In between these two extremes are “developing incidents,” “immediate incidents,” and “campus emergencies,” ranging from sniper attacks in the Washington area to hostagetaking scenarios.

In response to potential threats, documents about the grant reveal, Georgetown has considered any number of things—from a situation room right down to how the placement of trees could help muggers attack students.

One of the more intriguing proposals involves the School of Nursing and Health Studies. According to the application, the NHS intended to build a “situation room” for disaster response.

Modeled after situation rooms in the White House and the Center for Disease Control, it would have been the first situation room in higher education. Although the details of what would be in the room are unclear, if the room

Where did the money go?

100 2-way radios $31,500

5 N-95 Masks $55,000

200 1st Aid Kits $4,000

feature

georgetownvoice.com is based on federal situation rooms, it would probably contain communication links with other parts of Georgetown’s infrastructure. Administrators expected that the room could be used for NHS classes about infectious diseases during the school year, and double as a real situation room if a catastrophe occurred.

“That sort of room lends itself as an internal resource,” Director of Emergency Management Whit Chaiyabhat said.

The FOIA documents claim the proposed chamber wasn’t built by the September 2009 construction deadline predicated by the application, and the District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs records show no construction permits in 2008 or 2009 for the construction of a room at Georgetown like the one described in the grant application. The NHS claims it is still interested in building an emergency response room, but it is unclear whether the idea will ever come to fruition.

That doesn’t mean the Emergency Response Team will be homeless during a disaster, though. Chaiyabhat wrote in an e-mail that members of Georgetown’s Emergency Response Team have pre-determined locations to meet in case of a disaster.

As long as a disaster doesn’t take down electronics, the University could also use a virtual situation room, according to Chaiyabhat.

The team is made up of different parts of Georgetown’s administrative infrastructure, from public relations to University Information Services.

The school has also been conducting an internal assessment of how landscape can promote or deter crime or more serious attacks on campus. Using a technique called Crime Prevention

Through Environmental Design, Georgetown’s administration and a consultant could alter the face of campus.

“We have done some basic CPTED-related changes, including changes to landscaping and improved lighting, but we wish to take a more comprehensive approach,” the grant application says.

Part of the grant money went towards more consultant work on environmental analysis. In an e-mail, DelMonaco said the current process with a consultant is ongoing.

While Georgetown used CPTED environmental analysis before and after the grant, the University’s efforts to prepare for a major disaster are lined with other ideas that never materialized.

Recently, the University has practiced responding to more mundane threats. Instead of an attack on a high-profile faculty member or the University’s massive intelligence archives, these tabletop exercises, with names like “Hoya Shield” and “Fire in the Evening” simulated other dangers—a lab explosion, a fire in White-Gravenor Hall, and even an outbreak of norovirus at the School of Foreign Service’s Qatar campus with the prospect of the disease spreading back to D.C. “New Student Tornado” simulated the touchdown of a tornado on campus during New Student Orientation, a collision of events seemingly designed to drive long-time bureaucrats crazy. Pictures from the exercises show administrators gathered around rectangular tables in Riggs Library, responding to slideshows with, in one case, a graphic of fire billowing out of a building at SFS-Q. One of the exercises funded by the grant took on a grimmer

the georgetown voice 9

We didn’t start the fire: Fire trucks rush to the scene of the New North in April. topic: a missing student. During the exercise, the student’s body is discovered a week before Commencement, forcing Georgetown’s media relations staff to figure out how to handle the death during the run-up to graduation.  The application’s scope isn’t limited to secret rooms and landscape modification. The documents reveal that for particularly dire emergency scenarios, 90 resident assistants and members of the Reserve Officer Training Corps have been designated as marshals in the University’s Building and Floor Marshal Program. These student marshals, equipped with two-way radios and trained in evacuation and taking shelter, could handle supplies distribution or crowd con-

Infectious Disease Consultant $15,000

DPS DPS DPS EVERYBODY: DPS officers maintain a vigilant watch over the front gates.

HILARY NAKASONE

trol during a catastrophe.

The mock disasters presented to administrators were less outlandish than that, mostly consisting of hands-off abstractions which allowed officials to go over emergency plans but never forcing them to make tough decisions. The grant application makes clear, however, that an actual catastrophe on campus would be much darker, with University administrators forced to ration scarce, potentially lifesaving resources.

The difficulty of allocating resources at Georgetown after a disaster is clearest in the University’s plans to respond to a disease outbreak. According to the application, the infectious disease response would have to cover everything from maintaining massive supplies of hand soap to providing basic services to students if the University had to shut down campus entrances.

Using money from the Department of Education grant, the University has purchased 500 N-95 masks, which look similar to the ones construction workers wear to cover their noses and mouths. In the application, Phil Hagan, Georgetown’s Director of Safety and Environmental Management, identifies the 500 people who would receive the masks in the event of a disaster, “first responders and other critical personnel.” In case of emergency, it seems most of Georgetown’s student population would be left maskless.

“It depends on the situation,” Hagan said on the phone, when asked how he decides who would receive a mask.

KEATON BEDELL

According to DelMonaco, the distribution criteria vary based on the emergency. For the swine flu, the Centers for Disease Control specifically advised that first responders receive masks, so at Georgetown masks were given to GERMS. “In another situation, CDC guidelines might include others, such as DPS or someone providing food service to a sick individual,” DelMonaco wrote in an e-mail.

Of course, emergencies aren’t just hypothetical scenarios to be rehearsed or planned for. This year has seen quite a few minor ones, especially fires. After a blaze on the third floor of New South last semester and fires in New North and Harbin this semester, Chaiyabhat is happy with how Georgetown’s emergency teams responded.

“We were very pleased with the responses and decisions made by members of the Department of Public Safety, Safety & Environmental Management, Facilities Management, GERMS, and DC EMS,” Chaiyabhat wrote in an e-mail.

Georgetown is still working on improving its responses, though. After the New South Fire, displaced residents were polled to find out how to improve University services provided after an emergency.

The money from the grant is allocated through 2011, and Georgetown isn’t currently pursuing for more emergency management grants from the government.

“The primary responsibility of any response is, first and foremost, life safety,” Chaiyabhat wrote.

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

Banksy makes bank in Exit Through the Gift Shop

by Brendan Baumgardner There is a scene about halfway through Exit Through the Gift Shop in which notorious street artist Banksy shows filmmaker Thierry Guetta to the loft above his studio. He pulls a dusty cardboard box off of a shelf and pulls out a stack of bills–British pounds with Princess Diana’s head where the Queen’s should be. “We printed a million pounds worth,” he tells Guetta, motioning toward more boxes. He had planned to throw it all into the street, but decided against it when his funny money was used successfully to buy beer at a festival. Nobody even noticed the change. “So I thought, ‘Holy shit,’” Banksy tells Guetta. “We just forged a million pounds.”

This scene illustrates the essential paradox facing street art, one that Exit Through the Gift Shop movie is constantly grappling with. Even though the movement started as an underground means of illegal expression, it has reached such celebrity status in the art world that its top practitioners can, literally and figuratively, make money. And nobody appears very comfortable with that.

But Exit Through the Gift Shop doesn’t start here, at what may be the end. It starts somewhere in the middle of the movement. Billed as “The world’s first Street Art disaster movie,” Exit follows Thierry Guetta, a French born Los Angeles man obsessed with filming. Thierry has no particular goal other than to keep the camera rolling, until on a trip to France he discovers that his cousin is the prominent street artist Invader.

He becomes so enraptured with

street art—the creativity, the rebellion, the danger—that he seeks out other artists around the world, documenting the movement.

So Guetta finds himself embedded among the artists who are like streetwise superheroes climbing darkened urban rooftops, and is happy. Then Banksy explodes onto the scene and gives him a mission: Find Banksy, the enigma. The man who stenciled the wall in Gaza.

The man who snuck his own paintings into MoMA. Guetta sets out to find the notoriously secretive man who single handedly brought street art into the mainstream.

And he finds him. That’s no secret. What’s most interesting about this film is that, although it started as Guetta’s semi-conscious effort to record everything, the finished product is entirely Banksy’s. He appropriates the project and turns the camera back on Guetta, who loses himself to the world of street art and transitions from documentarian to participant.

But for all its focus on Guetta, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and a slew of other notable artists, the film is never meant to be about any of them. It’s about the art, and the perilous position it finds itself in today. The tension is strong, and the key figures feel it. How can they maintain integrity in a movement which was born from street graffiti, when Shepard Fairey is now most widely known for creating the Obama “Hope” image and Brad Pitt will show up at a “guerrilla” Banksy show? In the film’s final act, Exit takes a sort of cockeyed view of the state of street art today. It would be so easy

The real secret about Banksy’s identity? He’s a sith lord.

The guardian

to sneer at its popularization, if only it weren’t the genres biggest innovators who had popularized it.

Since its release, Exit has been surrounded by wild

speculation. Maybe Guetta is really just a character created

by Banksy. Maybe it’s a giant send-up of the art community. My answer: Who gives a shit? Approach it like a tag on

the wall or a message on the sidewalk. Enjoy it for what it is. Let it speak to you or don’t, and then move on. After all, it’s only a matter of time before it gets sprayed over.

These photos may be hot, but they don’t compare to the ones they keep in the back room.

Hilary nakasone

Not senioritis, senior-artists

by Leigh Finnegan To most, “springtime” means blooming flowers, warm sunshine, and an allaround appreciation for the beauty that winter has been hiding. For us jaded Georgetown students, though, our sunshine is blocked by the looming shadow of finals, and the cramming, writing, and preparation that they’ve foisted upon us. Because, let’s face it, nothing sucks the appreciation for art or beauty or life out of you quite like a few consecutive nights staring at the inside of a cubicle on Lau 4.

But if you do manage to extract yourself from the beacon of learning and need a respite to regain some perspective, go to Walsh’s Spagnuolo Gallery. From April 28 to May 21, the gallery and office across the hall are hosting the 2010 Senior Majors’ Art Exhibition, a collection of student artwork by a talented contingent of artsy Hoyas, the few Georgetown almost-grads who’ve maintained their appreciation for the finer things.

The showcase is diverse

and extensive, encompassing a few prized pieces from 11 art majors of all concentrations. Though small, the gallery’s space is very wellallocated, making each individual artist the main focus as the viewer moves around the room.

And as one moves from artist to artist, the talent and creativity that is often hidden at Georgetown shines through as bright as that May sun we all seem to forget about. Juliet Papantonio’s pair of large oil-on-canvas paintings, two portraits on pale green backgrounds embody both human emotion and artistic precision.

Though they shy away from the viewer, the eyes in Papantonio’s self-portrait contain the glossy, emphatic detail of an expert painter.

There are various other works on canvas too, but painting is by no means the only, or even central, type of artwork on display. There are photography collections, with understated black-andwhite images of people in settings from Denmark to Wyoming by Katie Hennessy, and a group of dark, sexual-

ly-charged photographs of models bearing with streaks of vibrant neon paint by Cady Gokey that contrast nicely.

The most striking works, however, are the most unconventional, like the sculptures by Kelly Carlson that are scattered throughout the exhibit. Her works are meticulously crafted artistic interpretations of fully functional clocks. “Healy” is a particularly striking, blackwire replica of the Hilltop’s iconic building, complete with an oversized pendulum swinging from the clock tower. She evokes a different emotion entirely with “Untitled,” where the timepiece’s black hands are set on a background of splintered glass, expertly tied together with silver wire.

So should you break away from the toil of schoolwork to check out the gallery, there will be plenty there to remind you of the beauty beyond the library. But remember, even though Carlson’s creations are particularly gorgeous and intriguing, you must be careful—staring at the clock will only slow your paper ’s progress.

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 11

“don’t pitch the bitch.”—Boiler room

lez’hur ledger

Get those kids off my lawn

by Nico Dodd Getting out of bed on a weekday is always hard for me, but this Sunday it was almost impossible. I was hung-over, sure, but with The Roots, John Legend, and Sting playing for the Climate Rally on the National Mall, I found my inner strength. Plus, it was free.

The last time I had gone to a rally on the mall was in 2005 for Operation: Ceasefire, an antiwar event MC-ed by the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, whose goofy antics reflected the subseriousness of the affair. Political events like these are pretty similar: come for the band, listen to the politics because you’re stuck here. Insincerity is an inexorable part at these sorts of rallies, leaving the promoters proud that so many “came out to support the cause.”

As we walked to Rosslyn, I realized that even though I was spending my afternoon ostensibly supporting the planet, Earth was actively trying to kill me. Allergy season was not being kind to me.

Why should I be nice to the planet if it won’t return the favor? I coughed and hacked all the way to the rally and all the way through it, too. People give you some pretty funny looks if you cough up phlegm

like I do, but hey, evicting slime is my passion.

Eventually, we made it to the Mall. Despite my mucusy melée, I was still overpowered by the aroma of hundreds of hippie types celebrating Earth Day in their own special way.

The kind of way that is still illegal in most states. But for every pair of tie-dye socks stinking of ganja there was a shirtless douche holding a sign that read something like “I Love Animals, They Taste Delicious!”

Now I’m not saying they don’t, but there was no reason to crash the party.

While bands’ equipment was being set up and broken down, the environmentalists had us right where they wanted us. For up to forty-five minutes at a time environmental experts like Jesse Jackson and Cincinatti Bengal Dhani Jones would introduce each other while telling us we had the power to change the world by texting donations to their respective organizations. The best speaker of all was James Cameron, who finally stated the obvious by discrediting the effectiveness of Twitter in stopping climate change. The Na’vi in attendance, wary of technology since having their unobtanium pillaged, agreed wholeheartedly.

As for the performances?

Can you hear me now?

Admit it: at some point you were seduced by an old iPod commercial. You danced along to The Fratellis, wishing you were a silouette with not a care in the world except looking good against your neon-colored background. Unfortunately, life doesn’t have minimalist scenery and society frowns upon black skintight bodysuits in public, so we’re left with a single component of our favorite commercial fantasy: a snazzy pair of white Apple earbuds.

Though music may be good for our souls, with the advent of the earbuds it may no longer be good for our ears. The problem with earbuds is that they get much closer to your eardrum than those earmuff-style of yore headphones ever could. They also are not typi-

cally padded with foam, so sound reaches your eardrum at full force.

The long-lasting battery life of iPods doesn’t help either, since we tend to take advantage of the ability to enjoy prolonged exposure to noise. And not just any kind of noise, either—loud noise. We are all guilty of cranking the volume up so high that the person sitting next to us knows exactly what song we’re playing.

And having the person on the next bike over at Yates know you’re a closet Justin Bieber fan is damaging to more than just your reputation. The combination of proximity and prolonged exposure frequently leads to hearing loss, something you might not even notice until it’s too late.

When it comes to your hear-

Among the best I’ve ever seen.

The Roots performed a onehour set, and then settled in as the house band for singers like Joss Stone, Mavis Staples, Patrick Stump (now a bona fide soul singer), and John Legend.

Finally, at 7 p.m. the tantric one arrived on stage in a beatific vision of social consciousness.

Sting delivered a short set that ended with “S.O.S.” “Is this song in Guitar Hero?” a nearby photographer asked me.

To be honest, the Climate Rally was giving me flashbacks of the Inauguration, what with the close contact with strangers, seemingly endless periods of waiting, and watching President Obama on a jumbotron.

The video they showed looked like a poorly dubbed attempt at proving that the big guy was on their side. The words projected over the loudspeakers did not match up with his lips. But the event still felt pretty epic.

I know that 150,000 people is nowhere close to the 1.8 million who attended the Inauguration, but when you’re squashed four feet from the front of the stage, it feels about the same.

Did we save the rainforests? No. The whales? Certainly not. But am I still going to take the elevator to my second floor Copley Hall suite? Only when no one’s watching.

ing, there is such a thing as too late. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and there isn’t much you can do to get it back. Your ear canal contains fine pieces of hair that are designed to pick up on sound vibrations and send them directly

rub some dirt on it

by Sadaf Qureshi

a bi-weekly column about health to the ear drum. Those hairs are extremely delicate. Jamming an earbud up against them and playing loud music can destroy those hairs, and little by little, they begin to disappear. The fewer there are, the less you will be able to hear, since there won’t be much left to pick up incoming sound waves.

Most audiologists recommend using earbuds for no more

Summer sequels

by Joe Mancino In 1975, Jaws mangled his first co-ed, terrified the nation, and gave birth to the summer blockbuster. Since then, Hollywood execs have always seen summer as the season to snatch up big bucks.

This year, sequels seem to be the key for making summer money.

But instead creating tired old retreads, this season’s sequels actually look quite good.

When it comes to summer film, animation juggernaut Disney-Pixar just can’t miss. This year, the studio returns to its original masterpiece, with the final installation of the Toy Story trilogy. And before it opens on June 18, Disney-Pixar is trying to win back its original viewers who are now—like the series, human lead—college kids.

Marketed as a “cliffhanger” edition, Pixar is screening the first 65 minutes of Toy Story 3 in hopes of generating buzz. And though the film revolves around toys being shipped off to a daycare center, the flick still has plenty to offer the bawdier college crowd. Pixar flirts with controversy as Barbie fawns lustily over Ken’s “ascot.” But Toy Story 3 remains a sweet, emotional film. Kids discovering the Toy Story franchise are sure to love the rowdy adventures, while old fans will revel in nostalgia.

Although Pixar was quick out of the gate with this unique than an hour a day, and at less than sixty percent of the maximum volume. Period of exposure and volume are the two factors that balance the equation, so if you cut down on one, you can have a bit more of the other, but you have to sacrifice somewhere.

Another option is to get a hold of sound-canceling headphones— without the distraction of background noise, there is no need to crank the volume all the way up.

Your hearing isn’t the only thing that earbud use puts in danger. While earbuds are great for sharing music with friends, they are also great for sharing and spreading bacterial infections, and for helping them build up in the first place. Snug-fitting earbuds cause the ear canal to become moist, which creates ideal conditions for bacterial growth. Ear-

marketing strategy, Toy Story 3 shouldn’t be the only summer movie on your radar. The next four months will see dozens of releases, including big namesequels which look surprisingly not awful.

In anticipation of the summer blockbuster, 150 AMC Theaters are setting up a double feature, screening of 2008’s Iron Man leading directly into the midnight release of Iron Man 2.

Though it remains to be seen if this high-tech superhero flick will match the success of its predecessor, director John Favreau is not concerned. In a press conference, he promised that the new installment will be “[as] fun or more fun” than the original. Throw in a Russian Mickey Rourke, and you just might have a recipe for success.

And what’s summer without a star-studded comedy?

Enter Get Him to the Greek (June 4), a spinoff of 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The film stars Russell Brand, reprising his role as the outlandish rock star Aldous Snow. Jonah Hill also returns, this time as an ambitious intern tasked with guiding Snow from London to L.A. P. Diddy, Aziz Ansari, and Georgetown alum Nick Kroll round out the cast.

So here’s hoping this year’s batch of sequels feel like a wild night with an old flame instead of just sloppy seconds.

buds can also pick up bacteria outside and around our ears and send it directly into the ear canal. Since our ear canals don’t get cleaned out on a regular basis, or perhaps ever, it is best to keep them as free of bacteria as possible.

Nobody wants to be that kid in the back of Leo’s with the huge headphones, so many see earbuds as a sleek, discrete alternative. And who wants to cut back on music?

For some, music is the primary form of distraction, and for others, it is a necessary study tool—so limiting ourselves to just an hour a day isn’t going to work. But if you care at all about your hearing, you need to make a change. Turn it down or turn it off—at least for a few hours of the day.

Crank up the volume with Sadaf at squreshi@georgetownvoice.com

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

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

The National, High Violet, 4AD I don’t envy what The National had to do on High Violet, its newest release.

After struggling through years of anonymity, the mainstream success of Boxer and Alligator anointed the band as the voice of the brooding everyman. To their fans, The National isn’t about creating individual songs—each track serves to build upon the previous one, transcending definite meaning to create a unified album. They create the kind of abstract feeling that you only have when you’re young, anguished, and confused.

Phew, that’s a lot to accomplish. But amazingly enough, High Violet is more than a worthy successor to The National’s past work—it’s their best yet.

The album opens with “Terrible Love,” a track that builds from lead singer Matt Ber-

ninger’s trademark baritone mumblings into a noisy, guitarand percussion-filled ode that decries separation. The track’s lyrics (“It takes an ocean not to break/This quiet company,”) suggest the sense of struggle theme that persists throughout High Violet: How can a person hold onto the past, present, and future simultaneously?

Fittingly, The National doesn’t seem to know how to answer its own question. Instead, the band creates unease and confusion on “Lemonworld,” one of the highlights of High Violet’s second half. As Berninger spouts nonsense (“I’m too tired to drive anyway/Anyway, right now, to care if I stay”), keyboardist Aaron Dessner and his twin-brother, guitarist Bryce Dessner, jump in and out of the melody to subtly throw “Lemonworld” into rhythmic disarray.

But, “Lemonworld” only succeeds because of the album’s centerpiece, “Bloodbuzz, Ohio.”

On the track, which helps to ground the album, High Violet shifts again—this time almost imperceptibly—towards an intense sound without abandoning Berninger’s cool restraint. Tying it all together are the lyrics on “Bloodbuzz,” which crystallize the album’s theme. When Berninger sings, “I never thought

Seriously, I am so damn Lost

I only need to be told to shut the hell up a couple of times before I get the message. That’s why I learned very quickly that when I come into my room on Tuesday nights, I need to sneak in inaudibly. I can’t even say hello to my roommate, who periodically breaks the silence with an emphatic gasp, an angry yell, or a puzzled expletive. Sometimes, I just leave and do my homework elsewhere. That’s right, I’m being Lost-iled.

I started watching Lost in its first season, at the suggestion of an enthusiastic friend. I, however, lacked the commitment and attention span the show demands of its viewers, and ended my brief affair with Lost before Season 2. But given the show’s premise of a group of people inescapably stranded together, I

should be able to see a later episode and still understand it the same way I would a Gilligan’s Island rerun, right?

Wrong. A show which by nature shouldn’t last more than a few weeks and should witness its cast of characters dwindling as situations grow more dire (seriously, why didn’t they just eat the fat guy?) has now survived multiple new characters, hundreds of plot twists, and a confusing ordeal involving numbers that nobody even pretends to understand. Not that anyone watches TV for realism (with the exception of Jersey Shore, of course), but shouldn’t there be at least some plot constraints?

The show was billed from the beginning as unrealistic-butwithin-the-realm-of-possibility, and if I were a devoted viewer

about love when I thought about home,” his frustration and loneliness hit the listener hard and linger for hours.

The National may not offer any solutions regarding youthful angst, but High Violet approaches the subject with such honesty, both lyrical and musical, that it hardly matters.

Voice’s Choices: “Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” “Lemonworld,” “Runaway” —Chris Heller

The Hold Steady, Heaven is Whenever, Vagrant Records Whenever The Hold Steady is brought up in conversation, someone almost always references their “authenticity” and “gritty realism.” It’s pretty accurate to say that tales of teenage punks and hoodrats drinking and drugI’d feel cheated, toyed-with, and used. I’ve witnessed it firsthand: my roommate is frequently confused and disconcerted after an episode. I tell her she should make a clean break. The writers are just making this up as they go along. They are not doing it because they love her. It’s an unhealthy relationship.

Warming glow

by Leigh Finnegan

a bi-weekly column about television But before I get too condescending, let me confess: My name is Leigh Finnegan, and I’m addicted to 24. That’s right, I love watching a middle-aged man who doesn’t eat or sleep kick major terrorist ass on a weekly basis.

Jack Bauer has been to Chinese prison camp, he’s kicked a heroin habit in under six hours, hell, he’s

ging at parties on the edge of the town is the leitmotif for just about every song they have ever sung.

The Hold Steady’s lead singer and primary songwriter, Craig Finn, is a sort of musical John Hughes to a generation of marginalized, alcohol-inclined adolescents looking for some rock stars. Hughes, director of The Breakfast Club, made such an indelible impression on a generation of ‘80s children because each of his main characters is an archetype with some light characterization thrown in for good measure.

The characters which populate Finn’s songs develop along the same lines.

And nothing really changes in their most recent effort, Heaven Is Whenever. This is their fifth album and there are plenty more songs of boozing, banging, and broken hearts.

Finn is a master of writing rock anthems with enough detail to put his hard-partying youth credentials beyond suspicion, but enough vagaries to allow the listeners to inject themselves in the stories. Save for a reference to Minneapolis here or to Ybor City there, the songs are generally free of a specific place or time.

The opening track of the album, “Sweet Part of the City,” begins with a bluesy guitar riff that makes you think that you died and been resuscitated in a single episode—twice!

So although Jack hasn’t found himself transcending time, yet his life has no grounding whatsoever in reality. Every government official is either inept or amoral (usually both), there are abandoned warehouses all over Los Angeles doubling as perfectly-wired terrorist centers, and the chain of insiders is so confusing I still don’t know whether Tony Almeida was good or bad. And frankly, I’m too engrossed to care. The first season got me hooked, and although the quality of the show has declined significally since then, I’m still hopelessly dedicated.

I think that’s why shows like Lost and 24, both in their final seasons, have had the seemingly impossible staying power that they have. They’re too confusing, frustrating, and stupid to

are about to hear something completely different from The Hold Steady. But Finn does what he does well—writing sing-along rock anthems—and before long, the album is ripping through guitar solos and telling tales of druginduced dalliances. At its best Heaven is Whenever certainly rivals the high point from any of The Hold Steady’s previous albums.

“Hurricane J,” the album’s first single, is perhaps the most quintessential Hold Steady song on the album, and probably the best.

The one difference between this and their previous efforts is the relative backgrounding of keyboards after the supposedly amicable departure of keyboardist Franz Nicolay. While his replacement is certainly passable, there are, sadly, no keyboarddriven songs, which were the hallmarks of previous albums.

While parts of the new album explore, Heaven Is Whenever is notable for its upholding of formula.

After four albums that carved out a comfortable niche for them to excel in, why change? Both The Hold Steady and their fans like what they do, and Finn is more than happy to oblige his base.

Voice’s Choices: “Hurricane J,” “The Weekenders,” “Barely Breathing” —Dan Newman be picked up in the middle, but if you’re one of the loyal few who were naïve enough to start out with one of these shows and stick with it, then you’re trapped like that guy Jack Bauer put into a leglock and then bit to death in Season 6. And as much as we may disdain the writers for stringing us along while they go in whatever direction their fickle hearts desire, we addicts are supplying them with a pretty nice paycheck.

The worst part is that my prediction for the end of both shows is the same: Jack Bauer put them all on the island in an attempt to harness its timetravel capabilities. How else could he get from one end of L.A. to the other in under 20 minutes every time?

Lock Leigh in a Chinese prison at lfinnegan@georgetownvoice.com

fiction

georgetownvoice.com

Reminded Stephano Medina

“It’s ‘April is the cruelest month,’ right?”

Twelve minutes. He stopped at the corner of park that Tyler and Donovan were sharing, the flat expanse of lawn, dotted by elms, stretching out from their feet, stopping at the dole of extras spattered about in their afternoons. They looked up, and Donovan, “Your area of expertise, not mine.” Pedestrians all noted the early afternoon’s pleasantness, even if their content breaths were covered by the glare between trees, inescapable on the lawns, their squinting eyes still happy, the taut smiles holding on. Sitting down on the dark mulch of an elm, writhing for seconds towards comfort against the roots and knots. He took something halfway there and stopped.

“Are you two going to be here in fifteen minutes?” ““I’ll be here I might have to leave.””

His fingers plunged for cigarettes, the pocket narrow and tight for the sitting. It’s something to do. The match lit at first try, a passing spite to the breeze. Part of today’s luck ration. Books resumed, and he sat back to watch them search for the remembered word in the middle of left paragraphs, half read, half unread. Ten minutes is time enough for two, the second one tucked behind an ear, waiting for him to finish watching Tyler ’s blank stare into his book, Donovan’s stern concentration. The afternoon was losing to the names and faces of dead poets, the heroes of his first education. Long tiled hallways, lockers rhyming on either wall, the fluorescent lights in the mornings every four steps on the ceiling, the din. Part II of the Portrait last night, at my desk, before and after dinner. Epiphanies gleaned, of course, passions fueled, of course, some stored for this morning’s sharing before class. James is on Bukowski, which he shouldn’t be, it’ll only inflate the louse in him. He is somewhere in this building, probably in the hall, tall and hooded, a lumped mass of cynicism making his way, tempted but not yet refusing to share. Bukowski doesn’t share.

Sprinklers burst off on the far side of the lawn, a corner just like theirs, lined by trees and shade.

Two people grabbed their blanket, embarrassed, and ran away with

their forearms covering their faces. Tyler and Donovan were such so new, and their voices toned of lives and worlds also not his. He half-expected to look down and see his name printed onto a sticker on his shirt. The sprinklers here were duds, and after a few seconds he stopped waiting for them to go off and began to worry about anything else. The beds of yellow flowers on the north side of Bolston Hall were dying, a shriveled orange so early in the spring. The smell of stale gases, piped through those green fuses from the center of the earth, hovered over their mouths. No Whitman–too many people, too little confidence, she’ll be waiting, time to go “I’ll be back.” He found another cigarette reflexively in his mouth, but it took four matches to light as he walked away. He loosened the straps of his bag to get the letter, her letter, the satchel collapsing doggedly against his strides. Envelop mouthed, he redid the latches between his next few steps, arriving at a dry gait, a bag latched, cigarette lit, mouth drying with every breath of smoke. One stop, another, those all-too-conscious strides that you’ll never see from any eyes other than your own. Past the park, the weaponized tulips, dank and poisonous, seemed to wave him by, the gallows humor.

The banner above the post office appeared behind a corner and past the street, its jovial font cheering ahead to the empty sidewalk. He crossed, praying for a handful of minutes to spend on a bench, holding his hands, before she came. Not too much to ask for, he muttered, possibly out loud.

She rounded the far corner just then, and he ignored her convincingly crossing the street, wondering how he must look again. She stepped in front of him, and if he really hadn’t seen her he would have knocked her to the ground. Her hand on his shoulder as she swung ahead, “Just wait a second, I’m gonna go in and grab the tickets. Donovan told you about our July? In Florence? The liner sent the tickets just last week!”

“No, I hadn’t heard. Ya but fine I’ll wait outside,” he crossed the street again and let his back fall against his wall, his hand clutching the letter inside his coat pocket. Donovan.

Donovan. Three syllables.

His drunk and sweat-ridden boy

had stretch across the table last night at Pearson’s, aiming for the neck and lips of one Molly Addington. We all had admired.

The three of us spying over our shoulders from the bar. My shock and jealousy–drowned out in two minutes by childhood memories, years of affection, objective glorification. But it took two minutes. The ceiling lights through the bottom of another glass, “Another round, on me, and send a bottle of your cheapest wine to the gentleman and lady at table four.”

Donovan. Three syllables.

How many minutes this time?

He doubted there were enough before she came back. A friend called her over months ago, sitting on the patio of a morning café. She sat down and took off her sunglasses in a swoop, not bothering to introduce herself or say anything at all. And now the loaded sight of her making her way out, crossing the street, a fresh pang always one step ahead of hers.

“Here, the letter you were promised. I know delivering it by hand is a bit ridiculous, but I’m going home for a few weeks tomorrow morning. I wanted you to have it before I left. Not sure why. For chrissakes Julie don’t read it now, you’ll make me self-conscious.”

“Fine fine fine, but this letter had had hype. I apologize for being ‘silly’ again.” She didn’t know, not yet. It was a very wellwritten letter.

He walked her back to her apartment. The streets would glisten tomorrow from the rain, and passersby will all be marked by the decision between being dry and being cool. He hadn’t decided yet. His grandpa’s trench coat hung unceremoniously in a cramped closet, retired from the Californian nights at the beach, the small shadows of teenagers, equally paired by sex, running from their parked cars to the ocean at two in the morning.

The rows of rolling foam stalking languorously towards the shore, a wide plane of dark sand climbing up the dunes–low tide just starting. Sitting at tide’s edge, a drizzle of sea-spray was rain, the best kind of rain. He grabbed her wrist in the dark, sitting on that line with the others, so thin, grains of sand between her skin and his.

He would decide to be dry tomorrow, and that trench coat will be pulled off the hanger, patches of sweat growing under his arms instantly. At night, the rain would trickle down from his hair, a few brave drops charging under his collar to his chest and back. Sperm swimming through an Olympic pool, each in its own lane, racing for the egg in a dress at the end … He tuned in.

“Why are you going home?”

“It’s not for the city, I know that much. I suppose my life here is beginning to feel a bit unfamiliar. As exciting as that should be, to be honest I’ve felt a bit fragile these past few days, and I just don’t need unfamiliar right now. I feel like I should be getting for myself more of what I need.”

“Maybe you just need to get laid.” Her steps were playing higher in the air, closer to his eyes.

“That might be waiting for me too. A girl, familiar enough.”

She glowered, surprised, but tomorrow in the rain his hands would find stowed grains of sand in his coat pocket. And just a few steps away from the others, they were already lost; there was no moon. Walking along the dark sand, their shoes got wet from one strong, inescapable wave.

She complained, even though.

Let’s dry up on the lifeguard tower, there’s nobody there now, and we’ll be able to see the others when we want to go back. The nearest one was an older one still wood, and the small door window had been broken by some homeless Malibu vandal months ago, somewhere to sleep in the winter. He reached in and grabbed the knob from the other side. A turn to see her follow him in, and at the doorway he could see the outline of her tressed hair, a dark shadow set against the Pacific. He kissed her, and soon they were on the table.

Kissed, kissing, being kissed.

“Do you think you’ll finish your novel there, when you’re home?”

“Maybe. I’ve kind of written it off though.”

A pause, and straight ahead she said, “Adam, but all that work– ” “I don’t want to talk about it. To be honest, there’s a good chance that you’re the only person left who’s actually looking forward to it.”

Coyly pouting, “Well then, don’t you think I deserve an explanation? As your biggest fan?”

“Trust me, you’re not alone in wanting an explanation. I’d love one.”

“Guess then.”

“Jesus, I guess, then, that the fuck has taken so long to write that, at this point, I don’t agree with any of the few things I can say well.”

“No surprise, you’ve changed.” They were fighting in front of her apartment now. He knew that if he kept indulging her there was no limit to how long they’d keep up. He would have enjoyed even this, yesterday, the yelling erotic and resplendent.

Fucking Donovan.

“Well that’s a dumb way

the georgetown voice 13 of putting it. You don’t like the ‘change’, I take it?”

“Do you? All I know for sure is that I can’t keep up with it.”

He laughed. “No one is asking you to Julie. Put that letter in a time capsule. I really need to go, I left Tyler at the park.”

He left with a slow turn. It was meant to be quicker, abrupt, dashing, defiant, but she had said his name as he turned away. He was trained to turn towards that word, sometimes even hearing it when no one had said it. This might have been the first time he had ever walked away from it.

He knew that she would spend a week without thinking it, without saying it, leaning on the edge of her suite balcony on the Star-Line Somefuck. Donovan inside watching television in his underwear, his hand on his chest, the postprandial. No hint of land, but oh how she wanted to be the first to spot it, reading land ahoy’s in her brother’s room, a nine-year-old-girl. The liner issued white robe unraveling in the wind, exposing her shoulders to the sunset, the dome of a lapis lazuli sky, her long golden hair, the bitch. Her tanned feet, red nail polish, scrunching on the coarse balcony floor. Waterresistant.

The train home tomorrow would be a lot like this walk.

A whole compartment alone, watching the disinterested bushes that lined the tracks. An easy hour leaning his forehead against the window in the morning when the glass was cold. He’d write ‘Julie’ on the steam he’d blown n the glass.

Fourteen years old and writing the name of that week’s crush on his steamed shower walls, in elegant and flowing cursive. But I’ve changed.

Tyler and Donovan were standing up when he arrived.

“You’re not staying?”

Tyler whined, “I’m already late for the barber. Mrs. Marion’s boy is too too something to shave himself, after all.”

Donovan rising, “That’s because the little shit never learned how. I’ll stay, I’ve got nothing better to do,” sitting back down against the tree, “Cigarette?”

“Sure,” he bent down and took one from the outstretched pack. After a few seconds’ writhing he even found another almost comfortable spot against the tree, Donovan having taken the first one. He sat there, not very close to Donovan, staring at the smoke. It was four minutes before he said, “I remembered.”

Donovan turned. “It is ‘April is the cruelest month’.”

“Awesome, did you look it up or something?”

“No, I didn’t have to.”

voices

14 the georgetown voice

april 29, 2010

Outdated data sweep poverty under the rug

by Tanya Gassenheimer Remember the 1960s? Hippies, free love, Vietnam, and civil rights? Our country’s current poverty measure was created during these distant and tumultuous years, with no adjustments since. Almost 50 years ago, economist Mollie Orshansky took the Department of Agriculture’s food plans and calculations of minimum need for different family types, and

calculated the poverty threshold by multiplying the lowest, or “economy,” food plan by three, since it was determined that families spent approximately one third of their income on food. Today, however, it is estimated that only one eighth of a family’s income goes towards food. That’s problematic, to say the least. If we were to multiply the economy food plan value by eight, it would give us a much higher poverty threshold,

P U S H. C O . U K

Any ECON 001 professor will tell you it all depends on your basket of goods

meaning millions more people would fall below our current definition of the poverty line.

Some, such as Nicholas Eberstadt of American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, believe that our current definition of poverty overestimates rather than underestimates poverty. In his book The Poverty of the “Poverty Rate:” The Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America, Eberstadt shows how traditional poverty indicators such as unemployment, per capita income, and educational attainment improved from 1973 to 2001, yet the poverty rate increased. But his analysis is extremely inconsistent. He uses indicators of relative poverty, or poverty specific to particular places and times, to critique an absolute poverty measure, a measure that does not vary from context to context, ignoring the fact that relative poverty can decrease while absolute poverty increases. In D.C., for example, 14.14 percent of families lived in poverty in 1990. That percentage decreased to 13.7 percent in 2000. That seems to be a positive change, on the surface, but that’s only in relative terms. If

you look more closely, however, you will find that from 1990 to 2000, the number of families with an income of under $10,000 increased from 42 to 50.

So while overall a smaller portion of the population is in poverty, more people are living in extreme poverty.

I believe that there needs to be an updated poverty measure that considers such factors as income, regional differences in cost of living, food, clothing, and shelter. Orshansky herself never intended her poverty threshold to be absolute or immutable. She rather envisioned it as a flexible indicator that could be updated as circumstances changed.

The question of how to define poverty has been a hot topic over the years. Under the first Bush Administration, the National Academy of Sciences published a report, “Measuring Poverty: A New Approach,” which made suggestions about how to change the poverty measure, touching on some of the more expansive factors mentioned above. The NAS also recommended reevaluating and updating the poverty measure every year.

So now, the $64,000 question: What can we do about it?

We need to hold our politicians accountable and push them to support the new “Supplemental Poverty Measure.” Part of Obama’s 2011 fiscal year budget, the measure is a new, alternative way to calculate poverty based largely on the NAS’s recommendations that will supplement the current measure.

While this administration’s budget makes marked improvements over its predecessors’, its caveat of being a solely supplemental measure doesn’t go far enough in correcting misinformation about poverty.

So make a phone call. Write a letter. People must come before politics. We as a public need to be aware if there are more people are in poverty than we think there are. We need to figure out how to accurately measure poverty so we can then better address it and find more appropriate solutions.

Tanya Gassenheimer is a senior in the College. She doesn’t want to get rid of all remnants from the 70s. TieDye ‘s definitely in.

Student solidarity in wake of recent sexual assaults

by Jared Watkins The recent cases of highprofile sexual assaults have once again reminded Georgetown students and administrators that sexual violence exists in our community. On a campus where approximately one in four women will experience sexual violence in their time on the Hilltop, it is truly unfortunate that it takes high-profile attacks for the community to pay attention to the problem of sexual assault. Sexual assault is a perpetual reality for many women on our campus, and assaults are happening weekly whether we wish to acknowledge them or not.

The truth is that most sexual assaults that occur at Georgetown are not made public to the larger community and are unfortunately overlooked. While attacks by strangers are traumatizing and rightly receive great attention, the more pervasive problem of acquaintance sexual assault remains unaddressed. And while images of sexual assault by a stranger saturate our cultural consciousness of sexual

violence, in reality about 73 percent of survivors of sexual assault know their attacker, according to a 2005 study by the U.S. Department of Justice. The unbearable and undeniable truth is that Georgetown students are sexually assaulting other Georgetown students at rates that would be alarming if they didn’t match the national average for sexual assault on college campuses.

Unfortunately, the answer to preventing acquaintance sexual assault is less clear cut than the fight against stranger sexual assault. No amount of security cameras, police presence, or locked doors can prevent a perpetrator from betraying his friend’s, partner ’s, or acquaintance’s trust. Even cases of stranger sexual assault can never be completely prevented by safety measures.

The answer has to come from Georgetown students, and it has to be sustained. Security problems must be addressed; that is certain. But we as a campus must move beyond our standard response to sexual assault which emphasizes women taking personal

responsibility for not getting raped. “Lock your doors!” does not prevent sexual assault and only works to further blame and stigmatize victims of sexual assault.

So what can we do? That is a question that cannot be answered in a single sentence or policy recommendation. The cause of sexual assault lies in a culture which condones sexual assault and can only be addressed through cultural changes. Men at Georgetown must start taking responsibility for this crime which is overwhelmingly committed by men. It starts with rhetoric about sexual assault moving from what women can do to reduce their risk to what men can do to prevent rape. Men and women must be supportive of gender equity on campus and call out friends who joke about rape or denigrate women. We should not only be looking to protect our female friends at parties, we should be intervening when others act inappropriately or violently and educating ourselves and others about the nuances of full consent.

Most of all, men and women must support survivors if they choose to disclose or report their experiences. This means listening to them, not blaming them, and supporting whatever legal or judicial decisions they make. If we don’t support survivors when they disclose, sexual assault will remain a hidden tragedy.

There are many different organizations in which both men and women can get involved in supporting survivors and fighting rape culture at Georgetown. Take Back the Night, GU Men Creating Change, United Feminists, and Sexual Assault Peer Educators are all student groups which deal with sexual assault issues in different ways.

You can also get involved with RU Ready, an event which occurs every September and aims to engage students on sexual assault issues. Sexual assault is happening all the time, and these groups work year-round to create a campus environment where women can feel safe.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, Georgetown has many resources available for

students. Health Education Services next to the Alumni Lounge and Counseling and Psychiatric Service in Darnall are both places where you can confidentially seek help as well as discuss your reporting options. Additionally, the Women’s Center in the Leavey Center has a wealth of resources. If you are sexually assaulted and need help immediately, you can contact Health Education Services at (202) 6870323 during the weekday or the D.C. Rape Crisis Center at (202) 333-7273 after hours.

Friday marks the last day of this year ’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Let’s not wait until the next Public Safety Alert to get serious about preventing sexual assault in our community. Stand up against sexism, speak up about violence against women, and support all the survivors of sexual assault.

Jared Watkins is a junior in the College.

Like his role model Aretha Franklin, Jared wants you to R-E-S-P-E-C-T women.

voices

georgetownvoice.com

Passed Out: Voice Staffers’ Unconscionable Georgetown Days A Squasher’s Remorse On Georgetown Day of my freshman year, I woke up early to the warm and sunny Friday, grabbed my racquet, and headed off to Yates to meet a friend for a few games of squash. No one ever kicked us off the court, and since time flies when you’re sealed off in a large white box, we didn’t emerge until a couple of hours later. At that point, I met up with my friends, who were as red as tomatoes and passed out on blankets on Copley Lawn.

“What’s going on guys?” I asked.

“We’re all so hungover!” they answered.

“Wait—people day drink on Georgetown Day? On the Front Lawn? With all these little kids and inflatable games around?” I

asked, slightly flabbergasted.

I clearly missed the point of the day altogether. On Georgetown Day, it doesn’t matter if you’re a little kid going down an inflatable slide or a drunk near-adult jumping on a bounce house, a super toked up Leo’s worker serving burnt hamburgers or a stickler university administrator smelling Solo cups for liquor. We’re all here on Georgetown Day to do anything but waste our day inside playing squash. Boy did I hit the sauce hard and early the next year.

—Keenan Timko (MSB ‘11)

Foaming at the Mouth I attended my first ever foam party Georgetown Day of my sophomore year, and it was the best 15 minutes of my life. In

Summer’s Calling Earlier this month, I had an interview for a summer job. Walking into the lobby of the building, I was apprehensive about what awaited me beyond the elevator doors. It wasn’t the interview itself that worried me—thanks to the experience I had last summer, I just wanted to see what the place looked like.

Considering I hadn’t started looking for a summer internship until April, I realized that I probably didn’t have the luxury of being too choosy. But after last summer, I was determined to be a little more selective when it came to a job. Everyone has their summer job horror stories, but when I settled for my “internship” last May, I never expected I was getting involved in something so absurd.

My first warning probably should have been that the job was advertised exclusively (and excessively) on Craigslist. The second was that the “office” I worked in

contained little more than half-assembled furniture and telephones.

The third, that my interview was really more of a speech to lower my expectations and disclaim the job posting. The fourth...

Okay, so really, I did have an inkling of what I was getting myself into. But I didn’t have any other options, so all I could do was give the place two weeks and hope the paycheck cleared.

I’ll eschew all the fancy language my employers used to explain my job—basically, I was a telemarketer. As for the company, an internet start-up, I can only describe it as a cross between a social networking site, the Yellow Pages, and a 900 number—a mix that just screams legitimate business.

I was prepared for the movie Boiler Room, minus the glamour of Wall Street and Vin Diesel. And while I was right about the former, my boss was actually even better than xXx—he was Arnold

Let The Voice be your voice. We accept opinions, letters to the editor, personal experiences and creative writing that are exclusive to the Voice. Submissions do not express the opinion of the board of the Voice. The Voice reserves the right to edit submissions for accuracy, length and clarity. To submit, e-mail voices@georgetownvoice.com or come to the Voice office Leavey 413.

a daze I danced, I slipped, and I slid through a sea of suds. I think I made out with the friend I didn’t really like because I couldn’t make out with the person I was really in love with.

Maybe?

But pretty soon the combination of a variety of mind-altering chemicals in my blood, sophomoric angst in my heart, and soap bubbles in my sensitive lungs turned into some sort of panic-and-asthma attack, and I was sitting on a very wet Copley lawn, clutching my friend Loretta’s hand, and staring manically into her eyes.

“Loretta. Stay here! Don’t let go of my hand!” I kept screaming. After a few minutes of that, Loretta decided someone else should take over—so by the time GERMS came, I was in complete hysteria. They started taking my pulse and asking me questions,

Schwarzenegger. That is, if Google Image Search is to be believed.

The founder of the company was a Russian-born chess grandmaster-cum-Internet millionaire who was built like the Governator.

Someone, apparently ignorant of the difference between Austrians and Russians, posted a picture of the Terminator, along with an online profile of my boss.

Carrying On

by Tim Shine A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

But I didn’t know that when I started. My first, uninformed impression of the man was one of bewilderment. Why was this Russian bodybuilder running a telemarketing company in suburban New Jersey? My confusion (not to mention suspicion) was heightened when, on my second day on the job, he started handing out hundred dollar bills to the week’s top performers. Maybe I was in for an exciting summer.

Reality soon proved to be much more mundane. My boss’s mystique wore off quickly—he was just the big guy with the accent who would berate us for not being good enough. And then there was the actual work.

the georgetown voice like where I lived and if I could say the alphabet backwards.

Having ascertained there was nothing wrong with me medically, the head GERM told me I could go.

“Is there anything else you want to ask us?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

I turned to the girl next to him—a girl who had given up her day of University-sponsored debauchery in order keep her idiotic classmates safe.

“What made you think glitter eye shadow tonight was a good idea?” I asked.

You guys, I am so excited for this year’s foam party.

—Shira Hecht (COL ‘10)

Post-Mortem Pornography I am about to graduate in less than a month—provided, for the sake of argument, that I don’t fail macroeconomics this semester—and I’ve never taken part in Georgetown Day. Yeah, I know, I’m lame. I have, however, been a victim of the Bacchanaliaesque holiday.

Almost a year ago to the day, I had just finished my first week as the Voice’s Editor-in-Chief, and was looking forward to my first post-mortem, the weekly

Telemarketing was exactly as soul-crushing as I always imagined it to be. I got cursed out more times than I could count, and only on those rare occasions when someone would stay on the phone for more than 15 seconds. Once I was done getting yelled at on the phone, there was always a supervisor there to do the same in person, imploring me to get my call volume up. Needless to say, there was a lot of burnout. Another college kid started the same day as me; he went out for a cigarette before noon and never came back.

The few of us who stuck around for any length of time fell into two groups. The first consisted of people like me, students who persevered thanks to the promise of paychecks (yes, they actually cleared) and the sweet escape back to college. The others were adults for whom this job was actually their livelihood.

Not surprisingly, considering the lax hiring requirements, a lot of them—like the twentysomething woman who aspired to direct porn and once asked if Delaware was two hours back or three—could have been characters on The Office.

But then there were those who I couldn’t help but feel sorry for, like the guy who had gotten laid

15

meeting in which the paper’s editors and writers sit around and critique that week’s issue with an outside professional journalist. I knew what went on at Georgetown Day—I was abstaining because I had work and I wanted to be lucid—but I wasn’t expecting all of my editors and writers to be shitfaced by the time they showed up to the office at 4 p.m. They were.

All of them, and none of them even tried to act sober. It was humiliating.

Worst of all, in the middle of the meeting, a former sports editor, who had been passed out on a couch up to this point, convinced another editor to pull up porn on the sports computer. All of the intoxicated idiots cracked up, and I cursed Georgetown Day. But this year is different. I no longer run the paper. And while I may have a thesis due in a week, I’m celebrating Georgetown Day. With its new rules, the University may be making it more difficult for students to get irresponsibly and publicly drunk before noon and ruin the new Voice current Editor-inChief’s first post-mortem. But I’ll find a way—as well as lots of porn to pull up on all of the office desktops.

—Kate Mays (COL ‘10)

off from his financial job and was forced to make phone calls eight hours a day until he could find something better. These were the people who kept me from writing the whole place off as a joke—a bad summer job is funny, but stay beyond three months and it becomes downright depressing.

Ultimately, I made it halfway through July before I couldn’t take it anymore. Normally I would feel bad about quitting, but by that point I was one of the longest-tenured employees. It felt more like retirement.

This year I was determined to avoid the same fate, but laziness still brought me dangerously close to the desperation of Craigslist. Thankfully, there were still a few legitimate offerings left in early April.

I breathed a sigh of a relief when I stepped off the elevator for my interview. The place was fully furnished, and there were even offices with names on the doors. I was safe.

I ended up getting the job.

Now all I hope is that they don’t put me on the phones.

Tim Shine is a sophomore in the MSB and Editor-atLarge for the Voice.

He describes his summer job very simply: “D’oh!”