Georgetown Voice, August 31 2018 by The Georgetown Voice

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The Price of Going Cashless page 8

Fresh Places for Fresh Faces page 14

August 31, 2018

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE Volume 51 • Issue 1

staff editor-in-chief Jake Maher Managing editor Margaret Gach news

executive editor Alex Lewontin Features editor Emily Jaster assistant features editor Jack Townsend news editor Noah Telerski assistant news editors Katya Schwenk, Damian Garcia, Rachel Cohen

culture

executive editor Caitlin Mannering Leisure editor Brynn Furey assistant leisure editors Brynne Long, Ryan Mazalatis, Kayla Hewitt Sports editor Beth Cunniff Assistant sports editor Jorge DeNeve, Aaron Wolf

“Breaking the Bubble” by EGAN BARNITT

opinion

contents Editorials

Carrying On: A Little Love in My Mailbox Noah Telerski

Carrying On: Call Me By My Name Sienna Brancato

Remember Georgetown’s Immigrant Roots Ari Goldstein

Change in the District: The Price of Going Cashless Anne Paglia In His Comfort Zone: Omer Yurtseven Comes to Georgetown for Basketball, Community, and Religious Inclusivity Nick Gavio

8-9 10-11

Check Out Harriette Hemmasi, Georgetown’s New Dean of the Library Claire Goldberg

The Renwick’s No Spectators is Built to Burn, But Lacking Spark Emily Jaster

Fresh Places for Fresh Faces: The Voice’s Guide to Arts & Culture in D.C. Voice Staff

Executive editor CHRIS DUNN voices editor Lizz Pankova Assistant Voices editors Ava Rosato, Mica Bernhard EditoriaL board Chair Nick Gavio Editorial Board Chris Dunn, Emily Jaster, Alli Kaufman, Alex Lewontin, Jake Maher, Caitlin Mannering, Phillip Steuber, Noah Telerski, Jack Townsend

halftime

Leisure editor Dajour Evans assistant leisure editors Inès de Miranda, Juliana Vaccaro de Souza, Rachel Lock Sports editor Santul Nerkar Assistant sports editor Teddy Carey, Jake Gilstrap, Tristan Lee

design

Executive editor Margaux Fontaine Spread editor Jake Glass Photo Editor Rachel Zeide cover Editor Egan Barnitt assistant design editor Delaney Corcoran Staff designers Lindsay Reilly, Jacob Bilich

copy

copy chief Hannah Song assistant Copy editors Cade Shore, Neha Wasil editors Anna Gloor, Audrey Bischoff, Caroline Geithner, Claire Goldberg, Isabel Paret, Kate Clark, Kate Fin, Madison Scully, Maya Tenzer, Max Fredell, Mya Allen, Nancy Garrett

online

website editor Anne Freeman Assistant Website Editor Maggie Grubert Podcast editor Parker Houston assistant podcast editor Devon O’Dwyer Content Editor Claire Goldberg MULTIMEDIA editor Amy Guay

business

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general manager anna gloor assistant manager of accounts & sales Isabel Lord

support

associate editors Sienna Brancato, Gustav Honl-Stuenkel, Eman Rahman 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. 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. All materials copyright The Georgeton Voice, unless otherwise indicated.

editor@georgetownvoice.com Leavey 424 Box 571066 Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20057

Staff writers

Haley D’Alessio, Kent Adams, Rebecca Zaritsky, Dan Sheehan, Carlos Miranda, Luis Borrero, Laura Isaza, Errol French, Will Shanahan, Bradley Galvin, Zach Pulsifer, Umar Asif, Cam Smith, Jayan Hanson

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

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GEORGETOWNVOICE.COM sports

Leisure

Football Looks to Rebound After Disappointing 2017

Critical Voices: Ariana Grande, Sweetener

Sportswriter Will Shanahan previews the upcoming season for the men’s football team. Read more to learn about how the team hopes to bounce this year.

Sweetener, the latest album from Ariana Grande, shows an artist who has reinvented herself since her last release. Assistant Halftime leisure editor Juliana Vaccaro De Souza analyzes what makes the pop star’s music unique.

Halftime Sports Arsenal Fans Should Relax, For Now

On the Record with Bill Burr on Being Happy, Old, and a Man

Assistant Sports editor Jorge DeNeve tells Arsenal fans that even after a slow start from their club, they should see some promise from the team’s play.

Leisure writer Max Fredell interviewed comedian Bill Burr leading up to his performance at MGM National Harbor earlier this month. Read what the comedian had to say about getting older, mental health, and American society.

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EDITORIALS

AUGUST 31, 2018

Dear Incoming Students… Welcome to Georgetown. Here at the Voice, we have a yearly tradition of writing a letter to incoming students. In the past, we wrote of the need to “be flawed and weird” and that the values we strive to achieve here at the university “mean nothing if we do not bring them to life.” These words still ring true. This year, we’d like to remind you all that ours is a small section of the city, tucked away and easily isolated. So as you familiarize yourself with your new home here on campus, remember that your time at Georgetown does not have to be limited by the front gates, M Street, or even the National Mall. There’s a whole city out there that you are now a part of. So act like it; envision yourself as a part of the D.C. community. When you want to get around the city, ride the Metro. When you open up the Washington Post, don’t forget that there’s local coverage, too. While you’re at it, check out City Paper. It can be easy

to fall into the “Georgetown Bubble,” only leaving the neighborhood for tourist destinations or internships in Dupont Circle or on the Hill. Strive to push yourself beyond this bubble and to explore and understand the city you now call home. You’ll be glad you did. No doubt, you’ll also find some problems. In D.C. public housing, residents face dehumanizing and intolerable conditions. Our city is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, and gentrification and rising rents are causing more and more District residents to leave the city or face homelessness. Right now, there are 6,000 homeless students in D.C. public schools. Part of really becoming a member of the D.C. community means accepting that these problems are our problems. Many of you have probably come to Georgetown with the expectation of changing the world and our country. There’s nothing wrong with this, since we all know they both need changing, but think about the local level, too. We live in a city full of famous NGOs and think tanks that are part of a world in which

Georgetown students are eager to immerse themselves. But the city is also full of long-time activists and residents who are working hard to make D.C. a safer and more equitable place for all of the city’s residents. Learn from them. You may not be able to imagine it now, but your time here at Georgetown will go by faster than you think. For some of you, post-grad life will mean continuing to live in D.C., hopefully furthering the connection you built with the city as an undergrad. For others, graduation will mark the last time you spend as a permanent resident here in the District. Regardless, don’t spend your time here simply as a launching pad for the next step in your career. Challenge yourself to think, and go, beyond our gates and neighborhood. We’ll all be better off if you do. The first few weeks of college can be a lot, and meeting new people is perhaps the most daunting task of them all. As you get to know your fellow Hoyas on your floor, in your classes, and in your clubs, remember that you just made 600,000 new neighbors. Get to know them, too.

ICE Out of D.C. Of all of the issues that played out in the national news cycle this summer, perhaps none seemed as urgent as that of American immigration policy. While the border region gained much of the attention, D.C. was not immune to the effects of the national crackdown on undocumented immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested over a dozen D.C. residents in a July raid in Columbia Heights, using unjust and potentially illegal tactics, according to local immigrant advocates cited in DCist. The raid provided fresh proof that, even though D.C. officials have called the city a sanctuary city, the undocumented community faces risks absent from the lives of legal residents. We find ICE’s recent actions in the District to be extremely troubling and urge the D.C. government to do everything possible to protect the city’s undocumented community. According to an anonymous undocumented woman quoted in the Washington Post, ICE officers claiming to be police visited her home in Columbia Heights in July and said that they were investigating an assault on her husband which he had previously reported to D.C. police. She told them to come back later, as her husband was out playing soccer. Later that day, after trying to give the police the information he thought they had been seeking, the husband and his brother were arrested by ICE officers. The officers who had visited his wife earlier had actually been attempting to make an arrest. This case was one of several in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, an operation that included a roundup described by advocates as indiscriminate targeting of D.C. residents.

To create safe communities for everybody, the city’s undocumented population must feel comfortable cooperating with police forces without fear that it could result in their arrest. Amidst threats from Trump to pull federal funding from sanctuary cities, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser reaffirmed the District’s status as a sanctuary city last year. This means that the city’s police force, along with the rest of the District government, should not cooperate with federal immigration officials. In the wake of the 132 arrests made by ICE in the D.C. area in July, protesters accused D.C. police of providing information to ICE, something a D.C. police spokesperson denied. While these allegations have not been confirmed, they are still worrisome, and we call on the city and D.C. police forces to continue to enforce their ban on cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Following the July raids, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sent a letter asking ICE to “identify the individuals who were detained, give reasons for the detentions, and explain the agency’s immigration enforcement policies.” We applaud Racine for seeking answers regarding ICE’s actions within the District, but it is not enough. The allegations of D.C. police cooperation with ICE should be thoroughly investigated to confirm that city officials maintained the D.C. government’s sanctuary city policy. Bowser often cites the city’s Immigrant Justice Legal Services Grant Program, a fund the District has allocated to provide legal defense for certain undocumented immigrants, as an example of the city’s advocacy for its undocumented population. We have praised the fund in the past, specifically Bowser’s decision to allocate taxpayer money to the fund’s efforts. However, the mayor’s office redistributed $400,000 of funding approved by the D.C. city council for representation

of detained immigrants to other parts of the city’s budget in response to veto threats from the Republican Congress, which approves the District’s budgets. ICE’s misconduct has been well documented nationwide. ICE’s actions have caused physical, mental, and emotional damage to thousands of American residents, and a few of those arrested in D.C. in July have already been deported. In addition, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s built-in watchdog, ICE does not maintain enough safeguards or monitoring to provide sufficient oversight of detention facilities. The agency’s transgressions have caused activists and politicians to embrace efforts to abolish ICE, a movement that this editorial board supports. This would not be a one-step solution to this country’s immigration woes, but ICE’s abolition would merely be a first step in a much-needed larger reform of our country’s immigration system. ICE has previously detained a 10-year-old girl immediately after she received surgery, targeted victims of domestic violence for deportation, and illegally moved undocumented minors to detention centers on their 18th birthdays, in addition to countless other inhumane actions. Certainly the United States can maintain a functioning immigration system without an agency that has caused so much harm while only existing since 2003. We recognize that Bowser and the D.C. government are working within an already broken system, and that structural issues such as Congress’s control over the city budget make it difficult to act in defiance of federal policy. Still, it is up to the city government to make sure that the undocumented residents of the city, including our fellow students at Georgetown, can live in safety and peace.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

The whirlwind of the first few weeks of college can be a real trial by fire, and when you have to turn a relationship into a long-distance one, you realize just how hard communicating with people you care about can be when you are far away. You need to figure out when to call your mom so that it’s soon enough that she doesn’t worry about you, but not too soon that she thinks she should be worrying about you. On top of that you need to figure out when, how often, and for how long you should talk with your significant other. You might tell yourself you are doing just fine, but in those first weeks you may also find yourself crying on the sidewalk after a really bad haircut that feels like the physical embodiment of everything that has gone wrong since leaving home. I worked on this balance as my girlfriend and I settled into our routines on different campuses. One of the first things I discovered was how hard it can be to go from spending time with someone whenever I wanted to waiting three months to see them. We went from being able to do things together to having separate lives and needing to schedule time just to be able to talk to each other. Before we left, I wrote her a letter. I still have no idea what drove me to sit down and do it, and even while I was writing it felt somewhat strange. I realize now that it was because I had never felt so sure of my feelings for someone before. It was nothing fancy, just pen on plain white printer paper in my awful, scribbled cursive, but she loved it and wrote one back when she got to school. Soon, little hand written surprises started showing up in my mailbox every week. Letters are nothing new, of course, but it always feels special to receive one. Perhaps it is because no one writes them anymore. Anyone older than me will remember a past full of postcards and expensive long-distance calls. Today we have text messages, Snapchat, and Facetime. These tools have made long-distance relation-

ships easier, and being able to talk with someone whenever I want, for as long as I want, means we do not need to rely solely on letters to know how someone is doing. Hearing her voice, seeing her face, being able to tell jokes and stories just like I would if she were there with me is something letters cannot do. What letters can do, however, is give me something physical, something I can hold. Each one is a little piece of her, her thoughts and feelings frozen in words on the page, the way a picture freezes a smile in time. Reading about the details of her week or the fun plans she has gives me a look into her life at school. Sometimes I pick one and read it again, looking at the handwriting and seeing every word move from her brain, down her arm, and onto the page. Even though she is far away I still have her close by. As those first weeks of freshman year went by, I started measuring time in letters. I keep hers in a stack in my desk drawer, where they build up like sheets from a tear away calendar and the size of the stack shows how long we have been apart. We sometimes close our notes with how many letters we have to send until we get to go home and see each other again in place of days or weeks. Breaking the long wait into lots of shorter ones makes the separation easier. A long-distance relationship is a lot of hard work. Even when things are working and everything feels like it is going right, I still make mistakes. The hectic schedule of being a college student means letters can be forgotten. Valentine’s Day has snuck up on me when I forget that I need to get chocolates and a card ready to ship a few days beforehand. Finding the right balance between being present and making the most of my time at school and giving my relationship the attention it requires is challenging, and going too far in either direction means one of them is being neglected.

LIZZ PANK

Carrying On: Voice Staffers Speak

OVA

VOICES

A Little Love in My Mailbox

I cannot write love poems like Shakespeare, and I do not write everyday like I am in The Notebook. All it needs to be is the simple act of taking the time to write something down. Sending candy at Halloween or snacks, just because, are good ways to cheer each other up after a bad week. Right on top of those goodies is always another letter. Each package and carefully chosen word is a special reminder that I am important to her, reassuring me that she cares, that she takes time out of her day for me. The common thread for all of those challenges is the hardest to conquer, and that is just being far apart. To care enough for someone to want to try a long-distance relationship means that you will miss them everyday. And I do. But what I have found is that even more than I miss her, I want to see her again, and every day I choose to keep waiting until I do. For the last two years, writing the letters has been easy, even if everything else has not been. Starting another year apart means many more to write, which feels like a less daunting task now than it did when we started. It will not be easy, but I know now that a roll of stamps can go a long way in making the time go by faster. And I know that after just a few more letters I will get to see her again. She never feels too far away when I get a little bit of love in my mailbox every week.

Noah Telerski is a junior in the College studying government. He is the news editor for the Voice and is an aspiring banjoist.

August 31, 2018

VOICES

Call Me By My Name CARRYING ON: VOICE STAFFERS SPEAK

When I posted a column online entitled “Confessions of a Serial Orgasm Faker,” my first instinct was to publish it anonymously. I mean, “Serial Orgasm Faker” isn’t exactly what I’d want my business card to read. What if a future employer Googles my name? But the decision to claim the story as my own helped me to reach a critical understanding about anonymity. Shame has kept women silent on topics from sex to abuse to failure for too long. We don’t talk about the ugly things, the less-than-perfect things, the personal flaws, or the negative experiences we’ve had. And anonymity is a tool that enables us to continue this cycle of silence. Being anonymous also means giving up ownership of your work, allowing whatever you create to be interpreted and redefined by others. When you’re anonymous, your capacity to refute or retaliate is severely limited because to do so would mean claiming the work as your own. And even if you do decide to claim your work, you are then opened up to criticism for “hiding behind” anonymity. Taking ownership of our work, even when it’s personal, decreases the stigma around taboo topics and makes others feel more comfortable sharing their own experiences. Also, it combats shame in a way that can be very freeing. The first time I read a poem about faking orgasms and masturbation in front of a large crowd of people, I was terrified. I thought that no one would relate, that I would leave even more embarrassed about what I viewed as a personal defect than when I stepped on stage. I wrote the poem because it felt important for me to do so and had never intended to share it with anyone. But the theme of the open mic was “selflove,” so I decided to go for it. No one scoffed, and no one dismissed me. Instead, I was met with shouts of approval. It’s sad that negative experiences can be so relatable, though I felt bolstered by the support. Afterwards, a few friends told me they thought it was cool that I had been so honest. But choosing to identify yourself can be a tricky decision to make. I don’t want to hurt someone I care about by oversharing or by being brutally honest. Sometimes, an experience isn’t entirely mine to claim and share with an untold audience. As a writer, there’s a fine line to walk when deciding what I have the right to write about. When I wrote about my Aunt Susan’s debilitating Parkinson’s disease, I didn’t share it with anyone beyond my Intro to Creative Writing class. I knew it would hurt my family if they read it, not because it was insensitive or mean-spirited, but because it was so raw and painful to write. And my Aunt Susan’s story wasn’t mine to tell, particularly because she has lost verbal capabilities and can’t even grant me permission to tell it if I asked. I would probably never want family or a romantic partner to read my characterizations of them. If I write a true depiction

of a person, odds are it won’t be entirely flattering because no one is perfect in every aspect. I can’t imagine I’d be comfortable seeing someone’s perceptions of me splayed out on a page for anyone to read either, which is why I try to understand both sides, the benefits and detriments of anonymity.

In today’s world of digital networking, anonymity is easy, and it’s easy to use it to harm others. Anyone with access to a computer can make themselves anonymous at a surface level. Of course, with some digging, IP addresses can be traced, but anonymous comments plague YouTube videos and troll social media postings. Cyberbullying runs rampant due to our new capacity to dodge culpability with anonymity. But then there are situations in which someone could be in real danger if they’re not anonymous. For example, if a North Korean refugee decides to come forward and tell their story, nobody would tell them, “Hey, you should use your real name. Claim your narrative!” And sometimes it’s dangerous for an abuse victim to share their story. Speaking the truth could mean violent retaliation from an abuser. So is the option to choose anonymity a privileged position? I have the platform to share my voice. I can decide whether to attach my name to something. At worst, I could face some social consequences or disapproval from family, but I wouldn’t be in real danger.

The flawed perception regarding anonymity is that it makes an author less trustworthy. If an author chooses anonymity, audiences can question the origins of their facts or sources, or even the validity of the experience itself. But anonymity is not equivalent to cowardice. Marginalized groups often don’t feel comfortable with non-anonymity, not because of any inherent untrustworthiness, but rather because of the history of disbelief with which their experiences are met. Belief is a privilege afforded only to some and not others, often on the basis of physical appearance, class, and education, among other factors. But claiming that anonymity is a purely privileged position minimizes the severe impact that shame can have. Shame shapes lives for the worse. Shame prevents authenticity. It stops us from pursuing our desires or expressing our truest personalities. So if you can, if you feel safe to do so, call yourself by your own name. I like writing about sex. It feels important for me to tell honest stories about sex from a young feminist’s angle that don’t glorify or sensationalize any of the details. I realized that my desire to do so has outweighed my concerns about anonymity. I want my friends to know about my good experiences and my bad ones, about the sexual ups and downs, so they feel more comfortable talking about their own. I recently discovered a privacy setting on Facebook that allows me to block certain friends from seeing particular posts. So what if I’m not ready for uncles, aunts, and cousins to read some of my work yet? The decision Camilla Aitbayev to attach my name to my work doesn’t automatically mean sharing it with every single person in my life. It just means that I’m open to the possibility of people reading it, friends (Facebook or otherwise) or even strangers. If and when I’m comfortable sharing it with family, I’ll have the option to do so. Baby steps, baby steps.

Sienna Brancato is a junior in the College and an associate editor for the Voice.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

VOICES

Remember Georgetown’s Immigrant Roots Camilla Aitbayev

Georgetown University, like many American institutions of its age, was built by immigrants. In a contemporary political climate defined by xenophobia, it is more important than ever to understand and spread this historical truth. The story begins with the English Jesuits who established a colony at St. Mary’s, Maryland in 1634. These men, all of whom were immigrants, were the first to articulate the vision for American Catholic education that John Carroll would bring to fruition when he founded Georgetown in 1789. They are so central to the university’s identity that five of them––Andrew White, John Gravenor, Thomas Copley, Thomas Gervase, and Ferdinand Poulton––are memorialized through buildings on the Hilltop today. The buildings that carry their names are brick and stone reminders that the very idea of Georgetown came from immigrants. The idea’s execution did, too. John Carroll’s great-uncle Charles Carroll was the first in his family to leave their home in Ireland, where civil wars had destroyed their wealth and oppressive laws had restricted their Catholic faith. When he set sail for Maryland in 1688, Charles Carroll changed the Carroll family motto from in fide et in bello forte (“strong in faith and war”) to ubicumque cum libertate (“anywhere so long as there be freedom”). Over the next few decades, three-quarters of Charles Carroll’s young relatives followed him from Ireland to Maryland, including John Carroll’s father, Daniel. Georgetown’s founder was thus the progeny of a family with a quintessential immigrant story––one defined by many of the same hopes, fears, and sacrifices as those of immigrant families today. To the beleaguered Carrolls, as to my own immigrant great-grandparents, America held an extraordinary promise: the ability to live on one’s own terms, free from the oppressive social and economic divisions of the Old World. After the English Jesuits inspired Georgetown and the Irish Carrolls founded it, a group of French priests ran the university

in its first decade. The group included Jean Edouard de Mondesir, a French emigré who became Georgetown’s first professor in 1791, and Louis Guillaume Valentin DuBourg, another French emigré who became Georgetown’s president in 1796. After DuBourg, at least four more immigrants served as presidents during the university’s first century. There is a myriad of other immigrants whose contributions to Georgetown deserve mention. Charles Liebermann, a Jewish emigré from Russia, founded Georgetown’s medical school in 1849. George Kober, an emigré from Germany who arrived in this country as an unaccompanied minor, served as dean of the medical school for three decades in the early 20th century. Léon Dostert, another unaccompanied minor who came to the United States as a French refugee from World War I, founded the institute that would become Georgetown’s School of Languages and Linguistics in 1949. These men were only able to serve and lead Georgetown so nobly because they were first able to become Americans. But Liebermann, who was a member of a feared religious minority, and Dostert, who was a refugee from a foreign war, are precisely the types of immigrants now targeted by Donald Trump and his xenophobic rhetoric. If Trump’s desired policies had been in place in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is very possible that both men would never have made it to Georgetown at all. The same is true of John Carroll, a member of another religious minority whose father came to this land through chain migration. Trump and his supporters might point out that they are not opposed to immigration from the places in which Georgetown’s founders originated, all of which are in Europe. But history makes clear that xenophobia evolves to find new targets in each generation. Irish Catholics like Carroll and Russian Jews like Liebermann were the Muslims and Mexicans of past generations, feared and reviled for their otherness. Their success in becoming

fully American and contributing to this country’s institutions was achieved in spite of the obstacles that Trump’s ideological ancestors placed in their way. The university’s recent efforts to support undocumented immigrants, which have included a statement of solidarity by President DeGioia, the creation of the Undocumented Student Task Force, and extensive lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill, are noble in their own right. But they possess even greater moral potency when considered against the backdrop of Georgetown’s history, which reminds us that immigrants have always brought with them an ingenuity, a unique perspective, and an abiding commitment to the American project that has made our society incalculably richer. DeGioia should talk about that history when he talks about immigration because the story of the Carroll family, like that of Liebermann, Dostert, and all the immigrants who built Georgetown, is a powerful rebuttal to those who so wrongly and loudly claim that immigrants threaten us. As we consider what it means to be part of the Georgetown community, as we consider what it means to be American, and as we enter the voting booth this November, every Hoya should remember Georgetown’s immigrant roots. They powerfully define who we are and who we are called to be.

Ari Goldstein is an alumnus of Georgetown College from the class of 2018. He served as GUSA historian from 2017 to 2018.

AUGUST 31, 2018

CHANGE IN THE DISTRICT

The Price of Going Cashless By Anne Paglia

Jake Glass

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

“No Cashew Money,” reads a sign in the window of the fast-casual salad chain Sweetgreen. At Sweetgreen’s 12 D.C. locations, as well as many of their national storefronts, cash is no longer accepted as a form of payment. Sweetgreen is among a number of D.C. businesses to go cashless, including JRINK, Menchie’s, and select Surfside and Jetties locations. At Georgetown University, The Corp officially made the shift on Feb. 1. Now, their six on-campus locations exclusively accept cashless payments. “The decision to go cashless was mostly financially and operationally motivated,” said Jared D’Sa (COL ’09), CFO of The Corp from February 2017 to February 2018 who oversaw the cashless transition. “It saves us a ton of money on the backend, and on-shift managers don’t have to deal with cash or the general lack of security with cash as a whole. It’s a lot more secure to have all our payments online.” According to Joelle Wiese, associate vice president of auxiliary services, the university was not involved in The Corp’s decision to go cashless. “Most of Georgetown’s dining, retail, and merchandising locations accept both cash and cashless payments, and will continue to do so,” Wiese wrote in an email to the Voice. “We are committed to ensure our community members can continue using a variety of payment methods, including both cash and cashless payments.” Theft prevention is a predominant factor in this industry-wide shift, as are expedited transaction times and rising labor costs. For many businesses and patrons, phasing out cash seems to be a natural move. Naomi Kasbekar, a 21-year-old Sweetgreen customer, doesn’t mind the lack of payment options at the store. “Everyone has a card nowadays so it doesn’t matter,” said Kasbekar. For over 90 percent of both The Corp’s and Sweetgreen’s diners, it doesn’t matter; less than 10 percent of their transactions involved cash prior to their switch to cashless payment systems. But for those within the 10 percent who lack access to electronic banking, these businesses are now inaccessible. “It is kind of discriminatory practice,” said Jennifer McLaughlin, outreach director of People for Fairness Coalition, a group which advocates on behalf of District residents facing housing insecurity. McLaughlin fears the consequences of an increasing number of vendors refusing to accept cash. “We deal with a lot of people who are homeless and some panhandle,” she said. “If they want to go and get a drink, they’re not going to be able to do that. It’s a hindrance against the communities we serve.” An increase in cashless businesses would not only affect the estimated 7,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in the District who may not have a bank account. According to a 2015 Prosperity Now report, 12 percent of D.C. households are unbanked, meaning no resident in the household holds a banking account. The FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households cites individuals not having enough money to maintain account minimums and distrust of banks as the most common factors deterring people from keeping their money in banks. Not accounted for in the statistic are young patrons who may not yet have a credit or debit card, or the 25 percent of D.C. households which are underbanked, often lacking the financial stability for consistent credit payments. In D.C. in particular, the issue is connected to the physical locations of banks. A study conducted by a

University of Wisconsin professor found that the District ranked third for metro areas with the highest number of bank deserts, or areas without sufficient access to FDICinsured banks. In Wards 7 and 8, the wards with the lowest median household income, banks are particularly sparse. Ward 8 has one branch per 13,000 residents, compared with the U.S. urban average of one branch per 2,000 residents. D.C. At-Large Councilmember David Grosso said there is “blatant discrimination” within the D.C. banking system which contributes the difficulties some face in securing cards. “There are banks that are unwilling to establish brick and mortar locations in Wards 7 and 8, and when someone from Wards 7 or 8 want to open a bank account, it’s usually more expensive or there are more fees,” Grosso said. “There are higher interest rates, which makes it cost prohibitive to open an account. It is a little insensitive of the establishments to think that everyone has access to a credit card.” Like this handful of restaurants, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has indicated interest in removing cash payment options from its Metrobuses. In a statement issued by WMATA general manager Paul Wiedefeld to Grosso, 10 percent of riders use cash when boarding, demonstrating a statistic similar to that of other businesses. On June 24, WMATA began a six-month pilot period on Metro Extra Route 79 during which riders can only pay with SmarTrip cards. The objective of the pilot is to speed up notoriously slow Metrobus rides. While the switch could particularly benefit residents of Ward 7 and 8, who face the longest average commute times in the District according to the DC Economic Strategy website, the preparation required to pre-fill SmarTrip cards could create another hurdle for residents. Because Wards 7 and 8 contain 75 percent of D.C. regions designated as food deserts, according to a report by Randy Smith of the DC Policy Center, many residents rely on public transportation to buy groceries. Barring access to transport could exacerbate inequities in food access for non-cardholding residents, within ward lines and the city as a whole. On June 26, Grosso introduced the “Cashless Retailers Prohibition Act of 2018” alongside Councilmembers Anita Bonds, Brianne Nadeau, Vincent Gray, Trayon White, and Chairman Phil Mendelson. The legislation intends to reverse the trend of cash phaseouts and, if passed, would amend Title 28 of the District of Columbia Official Code, making it discriminatory to deny patrons a product or service due to payment preference. The bill is currently under council review. “The introduction of the legislation was prompted by more and more restaurants going cashless,” Grosso said. “It’s basically businesses telling low-income people, undocumented people, and young patrons that they’re not welcome in their establishments. I think that this is a way for us to say to the restaurant industry that we haven’t completely switched over.” Chaia, a fast-casual Georgetown restaurant, is not exclusively cashless, although some of its competitors are. Co-owner Bettina Stern finds the prospect appealing for its efficiency and safety, but said Chaia has not yet switched due to costly credit card fees and reluctance to contribute to an economy of consumer debt. Despite concerns over cashless policies, Stern does not believe Grosso’s legislation would be constructive.

“Grosso’s proposed bill would substitute the judgement of a few city councilmembers (6 out of 13) for that of businesses like ours who are far more in tune with our customers’ payment preferences,” Stern wrote in an email to the Voice. “These businesses, not the government, should be the ones making minute decisions about our work.” Restaurants have yet to incorporate alternative payment methods for residents who are unable or unwilling to open a bank account. In the case of The Corp, continuing to accept cash would sacrifice more than convenience. “I think it’s no secret that The Corp has kind of been struggling financially within the last five to seven years,” said D’Sa. “This [change] enables us to give back to the community. The year before last, we gave around $80,000 in scholarship and this year we gave around $100,000. A lot of that was due to the money we saved in going cashless.” Corp leadership held a town hall for students to voice concerns about cashless stores, and created an email account to address other issues during the transition, according to D’Sa. Undocumented students, high schoolers, and campus workers were taken into consideration during the decision. “The Corp actually consulted me in this process last year before they went cashless and I was very grateful for that,” wrote Arelis Palacios, associate director of undocumented services on Georgetown’s campus, in an email to the Voice. “It was a very courteous inquiry that showed awareness and sensitivities to this issue.” Undocumented residents comprise an estimated 3.9 percent of the D.C. population, according to Pew Research Center, and many of them may face added hurdles in opening bank accounts. Lizzette Arias is the executive director of the Dream Project in Virginia, a non-profit which supports undocumented students pursuing college degrees. She believes no-cash policies mostly impact newly-arrived and elderly members of the undocumented population. “There’s a lot of misinformation in the community,” Arias said. “I know a lot of people don’t think they’re even eligible to open a bank account because they don’t have a social security number. That’s not true and that myth has been waning, but it’s still out there. I’m sure there’s a lot of fear over stepping into a bank and saying, ‘I don’t have the right documents, but would you keep my money?’ ” While the trend could cause immediate economic repercussions on the individual level, Arias suspects that there could be long-term social consequences to follow. “If we have certain restaurants and shops that only take cards, then there’s going to be a new market for restaurants that only take cash. I think there will be kind of a selfsegregation,” said Arias. “Once you’re splitting experiences in the same community, you’re segregating it.” Grosso also sees how eliminating payment options could entrench divisions within the District, believing racial bias exaggerates the security issues associated with cash. Some business owners have told him they will not locate east of the Anacostia River, a primarily black area, unless permitted to go cashless. “But I think that statement alone points to the problems that we have with this kind of approach to paying for food,” said Grosso. “I just worry that if we go down this path, you’re going to see more and more of a division in our city between the haves and the have-nots, and ultimately that’s not good for anybody.”

August 31, 2018

Jacob Bilich

Omer Yurtseven Comes to Georgetown for Basketball, Community, and Religious Inclusivity By Nicholas Gavio Junior men’s basketball player Omer Yurtseven has taken an unusual path to Georgetown. He mentioned Georgetown’s top-tier academics, the Hoyas’ team culture, and the presence and experience of head men’s basketball coach Patrick Ewing as key reasons for transferring to the Hilltop. But Yurtseven, a practicing Muslim, had another priority—the diversity of Washington, D.C., and Georgetown’s reputation for religious tolerance. Three years ago, Yurtseven, who is Turkish, was playing professionally for the EuroLeague club Fenerbahçe in Istanbul, Turkey. He started playing basketball at age eight, became more serious in his teenage years, and was signed to Fenerbahçe’s senior squad at 15. In May 2016, Yurtseven made international headlines after scoring 91 points and grabbing 28 rebounds in a U18 game for Fenerbahçe. Unlike the large majority of elite European basketball prospects, Yurtseven decided to play collegiate basketball instead of entering the NBA straight from his Turkish professional team. Just one day after his record performance, he turned down a

multi-year contract from Fenerbahçe and scholarship offers from other U.S. universities to commit to North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Everybody said I could have [played professionally], and I was offered a contract, but I decided to get a better education by coming to the States,” Yurtseven said. Due to NCAA eligibility rules, Yurtseven was suspended for the first nine games of the 2016-17 season, his freshman year. He struggled in his first year at NC State, averaging just 5.9 points per game. But he thrived under a new pick-and-roll style offense in the 2017-18 campaign, following the arrival of a new head coach, Kevin Keatts. That year, as a sophomore, Yurtseven averaged 13.5 points per game. NCAA basketball experts suggested that he would have been a first-round pick if he left for the NBA draft in 2018. Yurtseven did end up leaving Raleigh; however, instead of going to the NBA, he opted to transfer to a different university to continue his academic and athletic careers. He decided on Georgetown.

Yurtseven’s decision to relocate to Washington comes during a nationwide rise in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crimes. According to Yurtseven, there were “a few events” that caused him to feel uncomfortable in Raleigh. He declined to elaborate with more specific details, but the Raleigh area has recently seen several high-profile acts of Islamophobia, some violent. In 2013, the North Carolina Legislature passed a law, colloquially known as the “anti-Sharia” bill, that banned state courts from applying foreign laws. The North Carolina Bar Association, an independent organization of legal professionals, said the bill was unnecessary, and critics argued that its only purpose is to foment anti-Muslim sentiments. Then, in 2015, three Muslim students were murdered by a neighbor in their Chapel Hill, North Carolina apartment. While media outlets appeared to conclude that the motive behind the homicide was a parking dispute, the killer’s Facebook page was littered with anti-Christian and anti-Muslim posts, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Yurtseven (23) fights for a rebound during a summer league game.

“It makes Georgetown University a welcoming home and a welcoming community,” said Hendi. “I attribute this to the Jesuit values and the way we do business at Georgetown University.” The school offers a Muslim prayer room, five daily prayers, Friday services, and Muslim retreats. University President John DeGioia holds an annual dinner for Muslim students. Hendi frequently gives benedictions and invocations at commencement ceremonies and argues that Georgetown is the “only university in the country” to offer such a robust number of services directed at Muslim students.

For a transfer student like Yurtseven, or any incoming Muslim student, Georgetown’s efforts demonstrate the university’s commitment to creating a welcoming community for all races and religions on its campus. “The anti-Muslim hate crimes in D.C. and across the country make some people think, ‘Where can I go and feel safe?’ It is Georgetown University,” Hendi said. Campus Ministry at Georgetown factors into the school’s strong reputation as a global and diverse college community. The school’s campus ministry is the largest at any university in the country and caters to a diverse array of faiths. “I have been told by so many Muslim students that they come to Georgetown because of the inclusive nature of the university. Not just because there is a Muslim chaplain, but because there is a Jewish chaplain, an Orthodox Christian chaplain, a Hindu chaplain. They can tell that we care,” Hendi said. The school’s religious community and accepting atmosphere played a role in how Ewing approached Yurtseven’s recruitment. “I was able to tell Omer first hand about the diversity of Georgetown and D.C. in general,” Ewing wrote in an email to the Voice. “The university has many resources available to all ethnicities and religions to make students feel at home. I want all my players to feel comfortable and be happy on campus. I am very pleased that Omer is adjusting so well.” Unlike many incoming students who enter college with few prior connections on campus, a student-athlete like Yurtseven also has the community of his team to fall back on as a support system. “The people here, they embrace me pretty well and are helping me with the transition. The coaches, the staff, the environment, everything,” he said. Yurtseven will have plenty of time to adjust to his new home on the Hilltop, as he is athletically ineligible for the upcoming season due to NCAA transfer regulations. He can practice with

the team but will not appear in official games until the 201920 season. After joining the Hoyas in the spring, Yurtseven began working on his on-court game throughout the summer. He credited Georgetown’s assistant coaches with leading him through a two-month training program designed to expand his all-around skillset. Yurtseven said that he likes that Ewing spends a lot of time in the gym with the team. “[Ewing] has been there, he has done that. I’m hoping he can teach me, as a big man,” Yurtseven said in an interview with The News & Observer shortly after committing to Georgetown. “Omer is already a very good player and will be a valuable addition to our team,” Ewing wrote. “I want him to add a few more things to his game, but I want him to get the joy back into playing basketball again.” Yurtseven, who often describes his decision to transfer to Georgetown in terms of feeling more comfortable on the Hilltop, has demonstrated that newfound comfort in his on-court play. His first competitive game experience as a Hoya during the Nike Jabbo Kenner Summer League was on campus in McDonough Arena. Playing in the Kenner League, Yurtseven appeared to regain some of that joy. His team, Symond’s All Stars, reached the league’s final, in large part due to Yurtseven’s contributions. But comfort goes beyond basketball—it spans a spectrum that includes community, environment, and identity. Yurtseven says he is happy at Georgetown. But he still must deal with the difficulties that come with living as a Muslim in today’s America. While it may be a different story in other parts of the country or even in other parts of D.C., it’s no coincidence that he chose to navigate these challenges under the shadow of Healy Hall and with the full support of a unique interfaith collegiate community. “Knowing that a place respects my religion is definitely important,” Yurtseven said. “It just comforts you.” All Photos: Margaux FOntaine

During a 2017 Raleigh city council race, a Muslim candidate’s campaign sign was vandalized with racist text, a swastika, and the name “Trump.” Acts of Islamophobia are not limited to Raleigh, nor to recent years. The rate of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States increased five-fold following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. According to data from the Pew Research Center, the total number of documented assaults against Muslims in 2016 eclipsed 2001 levels, their previous peak, and a ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries is the official policy of the United States. “Anyone who tells you that Islamophobia has not risen since the election of Trump does not understand what America is going through,” said Imam Yahya Hendi, one of Georgetown’s Muslim chaplains and the school’s director for Muslim life. “This administration has contributed to more division, more fear, and more anxiety than I could have ever expected.” Since Yurtseven moved to the District, he has become a part of the city’s relatively large Muslim community: The Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study estimates that Muslims represent about two percent of D.C.’s total population, one of the highest proportions of any major American city. At Georgetown, he attends mosque every Friday and spends a lot of free time with family members who live nearby. “You’re supposed to [pray] five times a day, but it’s hard to keep up,” Yurtseven said. “I try my best. I’m not perfect.” Nor, as Hendi is well aware, is D.C.’s relationship with Muslims perfect. “Do I know of anti-Muslim instances in D.C.? Of course. I don’t know of any metropolitan area that doesn’t have that,” Hendi said. There have been plenty of documented cases of anti-Muslim hostility in the District. In 2016, Ilhan Omar, a Muslim-American state legislator from Minnesota who was visiting the city on official business was accosted by a cab driver who called her “ISIS” and told her to remove her hijab. That same year, a woman wearing a hijab was called a “worthless piece of Muslim trash” while visiting a Starbucks in Northwest Washington. But within the gates of Georgetown University, Hendi describes a different atmosphere. As a Jesuit school, Georgetown maintains deep traditions of interreligious dialogue and understanding. The concept is one of the university’s “Spirit of Georgetown Values,” and in 1999, the university hired Hendi as the first-ever full-time Muslim chaplain at any American university. Two years ago, Georgetown broke new barriers and became the first American college to employ a Hindu priest as a full-time chaplain.

Yurtseven takes on a defender.

August 31, 2018 COURTESY OF HARRIETTE HEMMASI

Check Out Harriette Hemmasi, Georgetown’s New Dean of the Library By Claire Goldberg

The new dean of the library, Harriette Hemmasi, has been working in and around libraries for nearly her entire career, but her first love was music. “I loved being around all the music books,” Hemmasi said. “I also realized how critical being able to use the library and being able to understand what was in the library was so important to my ability to succeed as a student, especially as a music student, because at that time you had to actually go to the library to listen to recordings, to look at scores, and all that kind of stuff.” Hemmasi, having formerly worked at Brown University, is taking the role following the retirement of Artemis Kirk, the former Georgetown dean of the library of 16 years. She studied music at Indiana University, Bloomington and Baylor University, earning master’s and bachelor’s degrees, respectively. Her first job out of college was as a music librarian at Rutgers, and she later taught music at a university in Iran. She then attended the University of California, Berkeley for graduate school, where she earned her degree in library studies, specifically in library and information science. It was the combination of education and music that brought her closer to libraries. “When I was a child, you know quite young, I actually had trouble learning things,” Hemmasi said. A turning point was taking piano lessons as a 10-year-old; the one-on-one interaction with her instructor helped her realize that learning could come naturally to her. “Music was transformative for me; taking lessons and being focused, it made me see myself differently, which was really essential.” She was originally drawn to the profession by the books, but one of her favorite parts of being a librarian now is the role of technology, a part of library science which has changed dramatically since she became a librarian in 1989. “I love the way in which technology has really made the library something entirely different than it was,” she said. At Brown, for instance, one of her favorite pieces of technology

was a 16-foot tall interactive video wall, which she said helped draw students to the library. But technology is a functional part of libraries, not just an attraction. “It’s not just that technology is changing libraries,” she said. “It’s changed the way research is done, how teaching is done, how we interact with information, and even interact with each other.” °°° Now, Hemmasi’s target for improvement is Lauinger, which she believes is in need of an upgrade. “The library needs a major facelift,” Hemmasi said. “And I think the university is well aware of that and wants that to happen.” Though she has only been on campus in her new role for less than a month, she is well aware of the complaints about Georgetown’s main library. “It’s not a welcoming place, and it really ought to be more comfortable, more functional, and just generally more inviting,” she said. “It certainly has the potential, and I’ve done a lot of work in other places on improving the library environment, programs, services, and so on, and I really hope that is something that can happen here. I more than hope, I’m committed to that.” When Hemmasi was appointed the Joukowsky Family University Librarian at Brown in 2005, she was responsible for overhauling the university library system. The first step was to fundraise. “When I went to Brown, the libraries were in dire need of upgrading, not unlike here, and it took some time to do that, to get buy-in on campus, of course to get money, and make the plans,” she said. Hemmasi’s fundraising efforts at Brown will be put to the test at Georgetown, which has recently cut funding for its libraries. “There’s always a need for more money,” she said. “And especially if we want to do capital work and improvements to library spaces, we will definitely need external funding and

support from alumni and other sources. So the answer to, ‘Will I be looking to raise more money?’ You bet. That has to happen.” And she already has tangible goals. She is focused on implementing new programming, interior remodeling, and increasing library connections with the greater D.C. community, among other plans. “How might the library space change? Not just pretty furniture but really making it more useful and more dedicated to the emerging and evolving needs of the campus,” she said. “What will be the program and how will that be designed?” Beyond reimagining Georgetown’s system, Hemassi is looking to expand the library’s connection to other institutions across the District. “One of the big changes for not just academic libraries but also for higher education in general is how we relate to other institutions of higher ed and also other scholarly institutions and cultural institutions, what we can learn from them and [try to] take advantage of what exists elsewhere,” Hemmasi said. “And that’s particularly important in this very rich cultural and scholarly environment in the D.C. area. So, you know, figuring out what’s here, and then figuring out what is around us, and how to maximize those two things and blend them.” Hemmasi envisions the library as a place where students are able to come to study, but also to hang out with friends and experience a “blended approach to campus life.” “It shouldn’t be punishment to come here,” Hemmasi said. “They should want to come.” Hemmasi comes to Georgetown with a depth of knowledge and experience. She was able to talk about all things library-related. Well, almost everything. When it came to talking about books, Hemmasi was stumped. Asked what her favorite book is, she responded, “Oh, I don’t know…I suppose I’m supposed to have an answer.”

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE All photos: Emily Jaster

LEISURE

The Renwick’s No Spectators is Built to Burn, but Lacking Spark By Emily Jaster In the era of “participatory” art galleries, the title No Spectators is bold, yet unsurprising. The Renwick Gallery’s current display runs until Sept. 16 and takes its name from a slogan of Burning Man, based on two of its tenets: “radical participation” and “radical inclusivity.” The exhibit in and around the Renwick is an attempt to share such practices with the world outside Black Rock City, the utopian civilization both constructed and destroyed within a week by the event’s denizens who have come to burn the Man. The burning of the Man did not begin as an exhibition. The secular ritual was born in 1986 when its late founder Larry Harvey and his friend Jerry James gathered a small group to burn a wooden effigy—the Man—a practice that stood for freedom from societal standards through the creation of a world separate from civilization as we know it. Over the course of decades, more and more artists have flocked to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert annually to build and burn the Man, filling the wasteland with a city of art to destroy it in a flash, leaving a blank canvas for the next year. The unfortunate circumstance of reality is that nothing—neither Burning Man nor its gallery echo—can exist as quite the ideal we’d like it to. No Spectators is most successful when it offers commentary on Burning Man, or an analysis of what Burning Man might mean in the context of the world and what the world might mean in the context of Burning Man. When No Spectators attempts to emulate Burning Man, it fails. As the exhibit reveals, Burning Man is ripe with irony. Black Rock City is structured to be anti-materialistic, banning monetary sales of anything but coffee and encouraging residents to give freely to one another, yet attendees often spend hundreds or thousands of dollars preparing for and getting to Burning Man. Black Rock City is a utopia disconnected from modern society, but the city and the art within are echoes of, and often responses to, real world issues. In one of its most lovely displays, the Renwick features a one-third-scale replica of sculptor Marco Cochrane’s 55-foottall statue of a twirling dancer, “Truth is Beauty,” that he

debuted at Burning Man in 2013. As quoted in the gallery, his intention was to display the “feminine energy and power that results when women feel free and safe,” a liberating reaction to rampant global sexual assault. Tragically, Burning Man is as much a part of this problem as it is a voice of the resistance: The event still struggles to impress a culture of consent among participants, as it faces reports of sexual harassment and rape. Beneath a colossal empowered woman, women who have come to seek freedom remain in danger. Burning Man’s uncanny development is part of what makes it difficult to translate into a gallery exhibit. It is idealist and escapist and, like most wild things, it does not breed in captivity. The phrase “no spectators” is befitting to a city that literally could not exist without each of its brief citizens taking part in its construction, and so every individual—whether through building, donning avant garde costumes, erecting towering art displays, or taking part in the city’s “radical gifting”—becomes a part of the creation. By comparison, the term is uncomfortable to serve as the title of an art gallery where most viewers “participate” by snapping portraits by the artwork for the ’gram. But to be fair, Black Rock City, too, has fallen victim to the social media frenzy. But the art pushes back and demands to live among us, so it spills beyond the gallery’s walls and into the city. Dispersed amid the Golden Triangle—D.C.’s cosmopolitan business district near the Renwick—are six otherworldly installations born from Burning Man and juxtaposed against the painfully real world of American commerce. In Black Rock City, the installations are connected to the real word in how they echo its challenges—loss, death, discrimination—but their new placement amidst the capital metropolis has transformed them, as the statues have come to reveal the inspirational power of our mundane experiences. An enormous grizzly bear with fur made from pennies, a pair of six-foot-tall bronze crows in the park, are both constructed to symbolize difficult or heart-warming life experiences, each strangely familiar enough to make one question their reality.

And the art speaks, sometimes literally. Mischell Riley’s 20-foot-tall bust of Maya Angelou, “Maya’s Mind,” invites audiences to stand between her gigantic ears and listen to a recording of Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” part of Riley’s larger project to amplify women’s voices and build their representation in sculpture. It’s an alien artform that wouldn’t feel so strange, if only the world welcomed more of it. I cannot bring myself to be comfortable with No Spectators. My passions for performing arts, savoring moments, and attempting to write about those moments force me to believe that there is something valuable, perhaps magical, in the simple state of the ephemeral being just that: completely temporary. The gallery representation of No Spectators departs dramatically from the ethos with which the art was created and lacks the power to match what Burning Man—or at least the ideal concept of Burning Man—offers to the world. Currently, inside the Renwick, a room has been transformed to a wooden temple designed in the likeness of the sacred temple built every year at Burning Man, but the difference is that this replica temple will remain intact after the temple at Burning Man has been burned to the ground in the cathartic ritual that gives the temple its purpose. But the art itself is breathtaking, and the art deserves to be seen by the enormous portion of the public that cannot devote the time or money to an extravagant sojourn in the desert. In a room of enormous, luminous, mechanicallyanimated mushrooms, I watched an elderly woman’s joy as a mushroom grew in her presence, and I want to believe that her joy makes the gallery worthwhile. Art is not a design, a structure, or an image, but a living and breathing imprint on a society that gives and takes and becomes art through the exchange between the artist and ideas and the world. Burning Man is an imperfect container of art, as is No Spectators, but each is an artform in itself because each manages to contort the viewer’s mind and perplex attempts to explain it.

AUGUST 31, 2018

fresh places for Fresh Faces

The Voice’s Guide to Arts & Culture in D.C. The Dupont Underground

Sofar Sounds

The Dupont Underground is cool, so let’s get that out of the way. This arts and cultural platform occupies the old (built in 1949, to be exact) trolley station underneath Dupont Circle. In 1962, the D.C. government swapped the streetcar system for buses, abandoning the tunnels. Even a brief stint as fallout shelters in the ’60s and a short-lived gig as a food court in the ’90s could not save them (to no one’s surprise, a subterranean grub buffet did not go over well). In 2017, taggers revamped the wall decor (graffiti), and recently the tunnels have housed cocktail hours, a New York Times fashion and politics panel, an exhibit of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalism, and will host the upcoming “Art in Revolution: A Discussion on the State of Artistic Freedom” event on Sept. 6. Like street style, it’s a hodgepodge of grunge and bohemian—high and low.

Want an easy way to discover new bands and enjoy live music? Look no further than Sofar Sounds, a company that specializes in organizing hidden gigs around the city (and the globe!). Sofar distinguishes itself from traditional concerts by providing an intimate atmosphere for artists. At a Sofar show, you bring your own blankets and pillows to lounge on the floor, and you are encouraged to go phone-free for the duration of the concert. To attend, apply for a ticket online each month. If you’re chosen for a ticket via lottery, you’ll be able to bring a few friends and see three mystery artists at a secret location that could be anywhere from a roof to an attic or office space (the address is delivered to your inbox the day before the show) for about $20 per ticket. The next time you want to forgo one of the major venues for a more intimate concert, consider this hidden gem.

Busboys & Poets

DC Improv Comedy Club

With six locations in the DMV area and an array of brunch, books, and live performances, Busboys and Poets is the perfect place to get a break from the routine of life at Georgetown. Founded by Iraqi-American artist Andy Shallal, the chain was named after Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy before finding fame as a poet. Each location hosts a variety of events, from youth open mics to American Sign Language poetry events to jazz hours. There’s even a $5 open mic night for musicians and spoken word poets every Tuesday at the 14th and V Street store. Busboys and Poets’ commitment to diversity makes it an excellent destination for a night out or a cup of coffee as you begin to find your way around D.C.

Despite the fact that Netflix comedy specials have created wider audiences for comedians, I think that stand-up comedy is still underrated as a form of entertainment. DC Improv offers a wide variety of performers that range from exclusively stand-up comics to actors, live podcasters, and everything in between. It’s not only a fun way to spend a night out, but it is also usually pretty cheap (often around $20). The club features both up-and-coming comedians and some heavy hitters—this September, Craig Robinson, best-known for playing Darryl in The Office, is performing from the 27th to the 30th. The setting of this comedy club has an intimate vibe, partly because it isn’t huge, so everyone is fairly close to the performer. It creates an opportunity for interactions between the comedian and the audience that deviate from the scripted show. It’s a fun way to leave the “Georgetown Bubble” behind and spend the night laughing with a couple of friends.

Emma Francois

Katie Randolph

Devon O’Dwyer

Inès De Miranda

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

9:30 Club Claire Goldberg

The District has a wealth of concert venues, but only one manages to be the perfect fit for nearly every artist that comes its way: the 9:30 Club. The first concert I saw there was Tennis, by myself, on my birthday. I was so in love with every part of that performance, but what I loved most was the venue itself. It’s large enough to host big-name bands and singers, but small enough to make every concert feel beautifully intimate. Seeing anyone at the 9:30 Club is one of the best ways to spend a night, whether it’s hard rock, punk, pop, or anything in between. Upcoming shows include Car Seat Headrest on Sept. 20, Owl City on Sept. 22, and Kali Uchis on Oct. 10. Tickets are usually $20-30, and they’re tough on IDs, so don’t even try to bring a fake. I’m looking at you, overconfident freshmen.

Kennedy Center Terrace Timmy Sutton

Some of the most lauded artists in the world perform at the Kennedy Center, and there are also regular, free shows at the Millennium Stage every night at 6 p.m. However, I’ve found a different charm in there—I go to the Kennedy Center Terrace when I’m looking not to be found. It is just far enough away for you to be anonymous. Bring a book, or a new podcast, or nothing at all. Watch the sun be swallowed or spat out by the earth. Don’t study. There is value in going someplace specifically to escape the feeling that you’re supposed to be doing something. So many people have stood where you’re standing: some of the most successful people in the world, some nobodies. Now it’s you. Experience that escape in all its alone-not-lonely glory. Then come home and say hello to all the people who love you.

Landmark E Street Cinema

Songbyrd Record Cafe

Landmark E Street Cinema remains my favorite movie theater in D.C. for many reasons. I could tell you about the time I saw Call Me By Your Name there in a tiny theater with only five other people and was transported into director Luca Guadagnino’s vibrant, slow-moving Italian summer of 1983. Or another time when I attended Dave McCary’s whimsical Brigsby Bear and stumbled into a Q&A with him and the star of the film, Saturday Night Live’s Kyle Mooney. E Street, unlike other theaters, hosts a variety of events with directors, screenwriters, and other creative minds, providing viewers with different perspectives behind a film’s making. The theater holds screenings for indie and foreign films that often cannot be found elsewhere in the city. It possesses an old-school charm, somehow maintaining a grand yet intimate aura all at once. So, when you’re trying to ditch the crowds and the latest blockbuster at the AMC, retreat to E Street’s more subdued magic instead.

I first stumbled into Songbyrd Record Cafe for brunch in the wake of a too-long wait at Tryst, a popular Adams Morgan cafe, but it was a discovery to define my Georgetown experience. Upstairs, Songbyrd has two rooms: a restaurant-bar in one and a combined cafe-record store in the other. The basement is a concert hall, home to $10 concerts, free open mics, and performances by Georgetown’s own Creative Collective. It’s a place to discover new music in an intimate, energetic setting and take a piece of it home with you in vinyl. It’s also a place to study with a delicious brew and still feel immersed in D.C. culture. Even if you’re trapped in Lau all week, Songbyrd offers an online radio featuring local musicians—perhaps to beckon you back to the District concert scene.

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Nationals Park

If you’re hoping to see one of your favorite artists in the area without breaking the bank, Merriweather Post Pavilion is the perfect outdoor concert venue. Located in Columbia, Maryland, about an hour-long drive away from campus, Merriweather is something of a hike, but worth the distance. It boasts a large, green yard that offers both space for picnicking and a good view of the stage, no matter where you’re sitting. The acoustics of the pavilion suit every genre of music, and their amplification system makes every seat a good one. From large-scale techno-pop concerts with artists like the Chainsmokers to intimate acoustic performances by musicians like Jason Isbell and Ryan Adams, all of my experiences there have been fantastic. It’s a popular venue that attracts well-known artists, so if you’re hoping to catch a show there, be sure to follow their social media closely so that you get your tickets on time!

Whether you are an avid sports fan or just want to see the city, Nationals Park should definitely be on your D.C. checklist. With the Nationals vying for a playoff spot this season, the beginning of the school year is the perfect time to visit this beautiful ballpark. Nats fans almost always pack the stadium, providing an electric atmosphere. Nats Park is located in southeast D.C., an easy Uber ride from campus, and just off the Navy Yard station on the Green Line. Ballpark food is a bit pricey, as always, but the Chesapeake crab cake sandwiches are a must-have; there’s even a Shake Shack in the Right Field Pavilion. There are also some cool places to visit in the surrounding area, like the Bullpen, a bar just outside the Center Field Gates. Check out StubHub or Gametime for tickets to make sure you don’t miss out on an incredible experience.

Caitlin Mannering

Brynne Long

Emily Jaster

Tristan Lee

Egan Barnitt and Delaney Corcoran

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