Georgetown Voice, September 14 2018

VOICE The Georgetown

September 14, 2018

A Star Is Born Crystallizes the Transcendent and Timeless

page 10

Brian Wiese Lifts Men’s Soccer into National Prominence

page 15

September 14, 2018

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE Volume 51 • Issue 2

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

“hoya beat” by EGAN BARNITT

contents

opinion

Carrying On: The Cost of Fitting In Alli Kaufman

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For Fear of Ignorance Emilio Joubert and Chelsea Hernandez

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Reflections on a Catholic Crisis Knights of Columbus

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Editorials

As HIV Rates Fall, Inequalities Persist Santul Nerkar Wired for Success: Brian Wiese Lifts Men’s Soccer into National Prominence Tyler Pearre

8-9 10-11

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, Sienna Brancato

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, Camilla Aitbayev

copy

copy chief Hannah Song assistant Copy editors Cade Shore, Neha Wasil editors Audrey Bischoff, Kate Fin, Madison Scully, Maya Tenzer, Max Fredell, Mya Allen, Nancy Garrett

Students Raise Concerns about Title IX Office Vacancy Inès de Miranda

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Community Scholars Program Celebrates 50 Years on the Hilltop Rachel Cohen

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Sights Unseen Exposes the Cracks in the Surveillance State Ryan Mazalatis

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

A Star Is Born Crystallizes the Transcendent and Timeless Amy Guay and Caitlin Mannering

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

Correction to “Change in the District” run in the 8/31/18 issue: The article misidentified Jared D’Sa’s graduation year. He is COL ’19, not COL ’09.

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.

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associate editors Sienna Brancato, Gustav Honl-Stuenkel, Eman Rahman

Staff writers

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

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, Emma Francois

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GUSA President Resigns

Golf Begins Season at Rainy Tournaments

Editor-in-chief Jake Maher and news editor Noah Telerski report on GUSA president Sahil Nair’s resignation and the rescinded resignations of vice president Naba Rahman and the executive senior staff.

Content manager Claire Goldberg recaps the men’s and women’s golf teams’ opening tournaments. Read how both reigning Big East champs started their seasons.

Halftime Leisure

Halftime Sports

Unshelved: The Not-So-Casual Vacancy

Out West, A Mixed Bag for New Hires

J.K. Rowling’s follow up to the Harry Potter series faced a challenging legacy to live up to— associate editor Sienna Brancato writes about the ways the book succeeded.

Read staff writer Will Shanahan’s take on the five coaches hired this year in the Pac-12 and the (mostly) rocky starts to their seasons.

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EDITORIALS

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2018

A Call for Reckoning over Sexual Assault Content Warning: Sexual Assault

This Tuesday, Sahil Nair (SFS ’19) resigned from his position as president of the GUSA Executive, after Vice President Naba Rahman (SFS ’19), chief of staff Aaron Bennett (COL ’19), and a number of other members of the executive resigned their positions (resignations which all but Nair have since rescinded). While Nair has made no comment regarding his resignation, the members of his administration cited “the present environment within the organization.” In a public meeting Tuesday night, multiple GUSA senators referenced allegations of sexual assault against Nair. The Voice cannot confirm the allegations made during the meeting. Nair and Rahman appeared on the Voice’s masthead during the 2015-2016 academic year, and the Voice endorsed their campaign in the 2018 GUSA executive election.

At the same meeting, multiple senators alleged that Bennett admitted that he was informed of “stories,” in his words, of sexual misconduct by Nair in February. These revelations create an environment of distrust surrounding the current GUSA Executive and exemplify the staff’s inability to effectively lead the student body. In light of this, this editorial board calls for the resignation of the entire GUSA Executive and for the university to devote the proper amount of resources to combating sexual assault on campus.

While failing to effectively deal with allegations of sexual assault is much more serious than the general insularity of our student government, which we have noted in the past, this scandal further exacerbates a growing rift between GUSA and the student body it professes to represent. The Georgetown community deserves better representation in student government than those who may be complicit in the administration of a leader accused by GUSA senators of sexual assault.

For members of the campaign to have known of the “stories” about Nair in February and have done nothing is

a disgrace. In February, the month Bennett said that he and Rahman were informed of the allegations against Nair, the campaign published a widely-circulated video. Titled “It’s On Us,” it claimed that the incoming administration would champion issues of sexual consent if elected to office. Coming from the campaign, the video is clearly hypocritical, although its message remains true: We students must hold ourselves and our peers accountable in creating a campus environment free of sexual assault and misconduct.

Holding our peers accountable for their actions is necessary to improve the atmosphere surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct, both on campus and in society. But the primary consideration in these situations should always be the concerns of the survivors of such allegations. The university’s resources are insufficient to guarantee this, and so we call on the university to hire a full-time Title IX Coordinator.

Before holding Tuesday night’s emergency meeting, organizers did not consult a single survivor and were not in contact with any survivors. In a meeting streamed online by multiple publications, including the Voice, and therefore viewed by students throughout the campus community, GUSA senators repeatedly claimed to care about the privacy and concerns of survivors above all else. But holding the meeting in a public forum without proper consultation was misguided and inappropriate, and in the future, such discussions should take into account the wishes of those affected most.

While its high-profile nature ensures that it will gain attention on campus, the issue should force a reckoning over the broader issue of sexual assault on campus. On Aug. 31, a group of club leaders and individual students penned an open letter to the university which raises serious problems in the university’s Title IX Office. In June, the university’s first full-time Title IX Coordinator, Laura Cutway, left the position in a move that

was not announced to students. Since then, the position has been filled in the interim by Samantha Berner, who is also the university’s Title IX investigator. This shows a troubling lack of transparency by the university and calls into question Georgetown’s commitment to combating sexual assault on campus.

By failing to fill the role in a timely manner and having one person hold two different full-time jobs in the same office, the university is failing in this commitment, made worse by the fact that the first few weeks of school are a time of increased risk for campus sexual assault. Indeed, reports of sexual assault on campus and in the city have been on the rise. If there was ever a time for a fully-equipped and staffed Title IX office, it is certainly now.

If Georgetown is committed to the safety of its students, then the university must be equipped with the resources to combat sexual assault, investigate allegations, and support survivors. The university’s current lack of a full-time Title IX Coordinator means that it is failing this commitment. Filling this role wouldn’t entirely solve the issue of sexual assault at Georgetown, but it is an essential first step in creating an environment where students can live and study safely.

Confidential Resources Health Education Services (HES) sarp@georgetown.edu Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) 202-687-6985 D.C. Rape Crisis Center Hotline 202-333-RAPE (7273) Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) online.rainn.org National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255

Remove Power Design from D.C. Apprenticeship Program The D.C. attorney general’s office recently filed a lawsuit against Power Design, a Florida-based electrical contractor.

The lawsuit alleges that Power Design, known for its work on D.C. buildings, is at the nexus of one of the largest wage-theft scandals in the city’s history.

Construction companies are required to employ a certain number of apprentices in order to bid on major contracts within the District. Construction companies need approval by the Apprenticeship Council to hire apprentices and comply with this requirement to bid on contracts in the District. This editorial board calls on the D.C. Apprenticeship Council to renounce apprenticeship eligibility status from Power Design due to the company’s egregious violations of workers’ rights.

The D.C. attorney general’s lawsuit alleges that Power Design misclassified electrical workers as independent contractors instead of employees, allowing Power Design to avoid payroll taxes and keeping the workers from receiving benefits such as sick leave. In addition, the lawsuit claims that some workers weren’t paid the appropriate overtime rate and others weren’t even paid the D.C. minimum wage. Over 500 Power Design workers were mischaracterized as independent contractors, 180 were not paid the required overtime rate, and 63 were not paid minimum wage, which demonstrates a codified company culture of mistreatment and abuse.

This isn’t the first time Power Design has been accused of shortchanging its workers. When the company first applied for

the D.C. apprenticeship program last year, Attorney General Karl Racine and D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman urged the Apprenticeship Council to deny Power Design’s bid. Racine and Silverman referenced lawsuits filed against Power Design claiming that the company did not pay for overtime work and purposefully misclassified workers.

Because of Power Design’s work on landmark projects such as the Line Hotel in Adams Morgan and Waterfront Station in Southwest D.C., it is obvious why the Apprenticeship Council would be hesitant to strip the company of its access to apprentices. However, the council has a duty to protect the apprentices placed into the program and ensure that they are paid fairly for their work. In addition, a company accused of such intolerable treatment of workers should not receive official promotion from the D.C. government. It is unjust to continue to allow Power Design to reap benefits from the Apprenticeship Council and the D.C. apprenticeship program when there are other companies that follow the law and pay their workers accordingly.

Although it is generally undercovered in the mainstream news, wage theft is a rampant problem across the United States. In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute released a report stating that the Department of Labor recovered over $2 billion for workers in 2015 and 2016. Wage theft disproportionally affects the most vulnerable workers in the United States and targets those who are the least likely to file complaints and

take legal action. The same report states that low-wage workers likely lose over $50 billion annually due to wage theft. In the District, Power Design is not the only company to be accused of stealing wages from its workers. Just this summer, Founding Farmers, an ownership group that owns a number of popular restaurants in the city, settled a class-action lawsuit with workers for $1.49 million in unpaid wages, and the D.A.’s office has pressed charges against Turning Natural, a juice bar in the city.

Power Design is just one of many companies that have profited from the massive development and construction wave that the city has undergone in the last few years. By consistently failing to pay their workers their proper wages and benefits, the company has ensured that regular city residents don’t benefit from this development. Rather than allowing Power Design to continue their abuse of the city’s workers, the Apprenticeship Council should follow the lead of their colleagues in the attorney general’s office and demand real changes from Power Design. Doing so would ensure that all of the city’s residents get to benefit from its growth.

While Racine’s thorough investigation into Power Design is vitally important, other branches of the District government must form a united front in combating wage theft in the city.

A so-called progressive city government should not be aligning itself with a company that mistreats its workers so egregiously.

The government can begin by taking a stand against companies that have abused the rights of D.C. workers.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

VOICES

The Cost of Fitting In Carrying On: Voice Staffers Speak n

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B dra

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Ale

I hear the phrase “I’m broke” a lot at Georgetown.

But it’s not “I’m broke and don’t have money to pay my bills.”

“I’m broke” is usually used to express the inability to spend more money on a parent’s credit card because it will result in a lecture on responsible spending.

I hear the phrase “I’m so poor” a lot, too.

But it’s not “I’m poor because I’m actually living below the poverty line and am making a wage that keeps me from purchasing basic necessities.” “I’m so poor” is usually said after spending $75 on a random Thursday night dinner on M Street that included appetizers and drinks.

••• The wealth at Georgetown is nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I had never seen a pair of Tory Burch flip flops or a Canada Goose jacket before I came to Georgetown. I didn’t know that it was common to travel around Europe during school breaks or ski at the same resorts as the Kardashians. I never thought there were people who just didn’t bother applying for financial aid at a school that costs over $70,000 a year.

My parents make well above the median income in the U.S. which in 2016 was just over $55,000 per household. Of course, they still stress about paying bills, and yes, it would be nice if we could take vacations more often. But at the end of the day, my siblings and I still get presents for our birthdays, we have a car to drive ourselves around, and we go to great schools—things that might seem simple, but that many people don’t have access to.

Yet at Georgetown, it oftentimes feels like I’m living well below the average. That’s because here, I am.

In January 2017, The New York Times published an article about the massive income inequality at elite universities in the United States. The report found that at Georgetown, 20.8 percent of the student population comes from the top 1 percent, meaning their families make more than $630,000 annually. In comparison, only 13.5 percent of the student population comes from the bottom 60 percent of U.S. families, making less than $65,000 annually.

For many Americans, $630,000 isn’t an amount of money they can even conceptualize. $630,000 is more money than they’ll see in their lifetime. But here, one in five students has at least that much.

The result is an extreme disconnect from reality. The majority of Georgetown students have no understanding of how an av-

erage American family lives. This doesn’t just separate them from the Americans who live outside this bubble of wealth­—it separates them from their fellow, lesser-earning students.

At Georgetown, you quickly learn that in order to participate in social life, you have to spend a lot of money. To keep up with the new friends you make on your freshman floor, you’ll have to spend $100 on a fake ID and then a subsequent $20 to $30 each weekend on drinks. If you want to go on spring break with your friends, you’ll be expected to spend far more than you would on a typical college trip to Daytona Beach—you’ll spend thousands to fly to Cancun or Punta Cana and stay in a 5-star resort.

For wealthy students, this is their lifestyle, so why should they change it if they can afford it? The problem is that by maintaining this spending and social life, students are, unintentionally, reinforcing a class separation. Students with less money are alienated because they can’t afford the cover at Flash, while students who can afford it only associate with other students who can. We end up with clear distinctions of income and class, not only in clubs but in friend groups as well.

••• We compare ourselves to others a lot at this school which is natural at an elite university. I’m used to comparing myself to others. In high school, I compared what I looked like, what I wore, and what my grades were to other kids in my class.

But at Georgetown, I’m comparing myself to my friends on different levels. Besides the obvious material differences I see between myself and my classmates, I am constantly reminded of the differences between myself and students who were seemingly born to go here.

Neither of my parents graduated from college. Of my three siblings, I’m the first to have gone away to school. My parents helped me as much as they could when I was applying to colleges, but for the most part I was on my own. My public school just wanted me to get in somewhere and had no college counselor to support me. And then, once I figured out the application process, I had to navigate the complex process of applying for financial aid myself.

After what seemed like a fight just to get here, I spent most of freshman year comparing myself in the classroom to students infinitely more prepared for Georgetown’s academics than I was. I compared my five-page papers—the longest I had ever been asked to write—to the students from schools with writing tutors and rig-

orous English classes well above the level of AP Literature at Neshaminy High School. I compared my ability to understand and discuss Plato and Aristotle to everyone else in my discussion section who “already had to read this in high school.”

Sophomore and junior year, when it was time to start applying for summer internships, I compared my friends’ abilities to accept unpaid internships in New York to my job at the RHO. And now as a senior, I compare my stressful job hunt for something that can pay back my tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to my friends’ seemingly endless opportunities after graduation.

••• At one point or another, everyone at Georgetown feels like they don’t belong—usually because they don’t fit in with their freshman floor or because they didn’t get accepted into the handful of “exclusive clubs” on campus.

But there’s a much smaller group of students that feel like they don’t belong because they don’t have the money or the connections to keep up with the lifestyle that average Georgetown students live.

Exclusivity on this campus is a problem we talk about a lot, but exclusivity extends well beyond rejection from the Eating Society or the Corp. When we talk about exclusivity at Georgetown only in terms of our campus clubs and culture, we miss an important point: Georgetown is exclusive to the vast majority of this country—the majority that is making only $55,000 a year or less.

••• The whole point of this isn’t to simply say that I wish I had as much as other Georgetown students.

It’s that I wish more Georgetown students were like me. I wish more students came from similar backgrounds, had similar doubts and problems, and had similar levels of income.

I wish I hadn’t spent a majority of my time at this school stressing about how to keep up with everyone else.

Alli Kaufman is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and is the former executive design editor of theVoice.

VOICES

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2018

For Fear of Ignorance

Kathryn Crager

Social media has forever changed the nature of social justice activism. Internet activism has taken off, allowing people from across the world to share their opinions in a second or promote a rally that may have previously gone unnoticed. Movements don’t necessarily have individual leaders like they did during the civil rights era or the initial waves of feminism. Instead, there are spaces that are “leaderfull”—movements that run through a conglomeration of people who share disparate opinions but must work together for a common goal.

This new generation of activism has revolutionized how we view social justice. More voices are being heard and there is a greater sense of collaboration within social justice spaces. Terms such as “intersectionality”—recognizing how different social identities connect to create a unique experience and position of power or privilege compared to someone with only one of those same identities—or the “D7+”—a term referring but not limited to the social identities of race, social class, religion, sexual orientation, gender, ability and age—are becoming more and more common.

On one hand, this is an excellent development. These terms allow us to talk efficiently about identities. However, the growing list of vocabulary words that accompanies modern social justice movements can also contribute to their inaccessibility— “access” is used here to describe how easily a theme or word can be conceptualized in the context of one’s pre-existing knowledge or experience. An example of this outside of the realm of social justice could be a person bringing up the writing of Kant without describing the specific points of his work or the background.

There are many individuals who are interested in social justice but do not have the language or the education to effectively engage in activist spaces. They may not know how to properly refer to LGBTQ individuals, speak about racial identities, or discuss disability.

A common but unfortunate response to these individuals is shaming. For any number of reasons, these people have not learned how to properly utilize the language of social justice spaces, and they suffer as a result of their lack of familiarity with the space. What has formed instead of healthy discussion is a “call-out culture.” Instead of bringing people back into discussion and challenging their beliefs, we roast them on social media or ostracize them from our social groups.

While challenging others is a key to growth, it is critical to do so without alienating them or stripping away their capacity to engage in self-reflection. Self-reflection can be helpful in the process of becoming engaged in topics or spaces that at first seem daunting or uncomfortable. Often, we are not given the chance to reflect. Why do we say what we say the way we say it? Why do we think about things the way we do? How do our words and actions affect other people? How can someone reflect and re-evaluate their beliefs when they’re immediately shut down or told they’re wrong? Navigating this line between irrevocable exclusion and an invitation can be difficult. Here, a call-out can be a shutdown and a call-in can be what is needed to grow. A call-in can look like a lot of things: nodding and sharing a contrary experience, giving an appropriate word to use instead of a derogatory term, or sharing a resource or a definition.

In between “woke” and “ignorant,” there’s an infinite amount of experiences and definitions. Most importantly, there is infinite room for growth. No matter your starting point, growth is always possible, and with the right support and access to resources, it is inevitable.

For people involved in social justice activism, acceptance is hard when you see hate-filled people who don’t seem to want to grow in the first place. For people not in the social justice community, accepting growth is hard to do when you feel alienated or like you don’t have the tools to get started.

It’s hard to have hope in others’ capacity to grow and sometimes even harder to have hope in your own capacity to do so.

It’s easier to be critical, to acknowledge something is wrong or unproductive, or to just recognize ignorance. Instead, it is critical to find ways to remain hopeful in our pursuit of understanding and change, keeping in mind that that social justice is, in its essence, inclusive. Just because someone doesn’t know the words doesn’t mean they can’t express feelings and experiences, and just because they may feel challenged in a space doesn’t mean they can’t use it to grow.

Chelsea Hernandez is a junior in the SFS studying Culture and Politics.

Emilio Joubert is a senior in the College studying Italian and a proud member of GSP.

7

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Jon Furl

Reflections on a Catholic Crisis In light of recent news regarding continued allegations of sexual assault and cover-ups by leaders in the Catholic Church, members of Georgetown’s chapter of the Knights of Columbus call for concrete action.

This summer has been quite a difficult one for Catholics in America. From the exposure of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s heinous actions to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report that uncovered that approximately 300 Catholic priests had sexually abused over 1,000 minors, to former Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Vigano’s letter that alleges Pope Francis helped cover up McCarrick’s abuses, there is much to feel heartbroken and betrayed over. At the moment, six states have begun investigations into sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy: Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York. In all honesty, I am terrified to find out what horrors these investigations will uncover. But these investigations, as well as more in other states, undoubtedly must happen. The clergy must be held accountable. We must pursue justice for the sake of all the victims. We must know the truth.

The list of historical grievances against the Catholic Church is long: the ruthless behavior of patriarchs in the early centuries of Christianity, the corrupt practice of lay investiture, the sacrilegious sale of indulgences, the inhumanity of the Spanish Inquisition, the modern clergy sex abuse scandal, and more. Amidst all of the stains in the Church’s history, one would not be foolish to ask, “Why? Why would anyone remain Catholic?” At the end of the day, this troubling question has a relatively simple answer: We’re Catholics because no scandal can overcome God’s ever-abundant, ever-merciful love. We’re Catholics because no scandal can undo the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who was crucified and rose from the dead for humanity and its salvation. We’re Catholics because Christ established his Church, and no scandal, not even “the gates of the netherworld [can] prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

Melvin Thomas graduated from the College in 2018 and was a trustee for the Knights of Columbus.

VOICES

ong

Resources

The word “crisis” entails a difficulty or calamity that has reached an existential pitch. The word “crisis,” however, has its origin in the Greek kritein, which means “to judge” or “to make a decision.” Both the recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury report and the news of a possible similar investigation in New York shows that there is something wrong with the way the Church has conducted itself. In this crisis, the signs of the times point toward the need for Catholics to be both judicious and decisive in the way we respond to the news of atrocities perpetrated in our diocese and seminaries.

We should be decisive in our concern for the victims of abuse above all. In harmony with the teaching of the preferential option of the poor, we must never lose sight of those who have been scarred for life by those whom we expect to be trustworthy moral figures. Amid the flurry of news reports and opinion pieces, it is easy to lose sight of the wounded and become caught up with different agendas that claim to have the answer to all of the Church’s woes.

Nevertheless, concrete steps need to be taken, and any agenda worth pushing ought never lose sight of the victims.

We also need to be more judicious in how we think about the Church. There is a temptation to think of the Church as an NGO or a business. When I heard about the atrocities that McCarrick had committed and the cover-ups revealed by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, I couldn’t help but think the Church had abandoned its theological understanding of itself in favor of a “public relations” mindset that is more characteristic of an oil company after a spill. This mindset puts its hope in covering up, silencing, and keeping skeletons in the closet. The Church, however, is not a business or an NGO. The Church is best understood through its own teachings and traditions, which includes images like the city of God, the vineyard, and the pilgrim people. Any plan for reconciliation and repentance that does not take into account the Church’s theological reality is incomplete.

Michael DeFelice is a junior in the College and trustee for the Knights of Columbus.

Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) online.rainn.org Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) snapnetwork.org Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)

In 1973, a cult-classic horror film was released that filmed many of its scenes at our university and in our neighborhood. The terror invoked by the film is due to both its great cinematography as well as its presentation of tangible evil having entered our world.

Today, evil has entered Christ’s Church just like evil entered Regan’s world in The Exorcist. Priests are entrusted as shepherds, called by God to herald the flock towards spiritual fulfillment and protect the sheep from the wolves which lay in waiting. Yet, rather than protect the sheep from the evils of the world, so many “shepherds” have become wolves themselves. Instead of exorcising the demons which have corrupted the institution, instead of standing firmly by the children who were victimized, instead of seeking forgiveness for the intense evil which has been committed, Church leaders covered it up and hid the abuse. However, while evil can be hidden from people on Earth, nothing can be hidden from the watching eyes of God, and the truth shall always be revealed.

I weep for the Church, and more importantly, I weep for those who were abused. But I want to do more than weep.

If we are to cleanse our organization of evil, then the laity must be deeply involved. Now more than ever, we need all Catholics to stand together and exorcise the demons which have become pervasive in our institution. One of the clearest ways the devil has shown his face to the world is through the sexual abuse of children. One of the clearest ways the face of the Lord can be shown to the world is through justice for the victims of this abuse and the destruction of all evil which allowed it to fester.

Hunter Estes is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and is the Immediate Past Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2018

8

As HIV Rates Fall,

Inequalities Persist

By Santul Nerkar

Residents of Joseph’s House, a home for people with HIV and other serious illnesses who have experienced homelessness, gathered downstairs for a birthday celebration. Between bites of carrot cake and dancing to Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” Robert Ramsey, a resident of the house, described how he came to terms with his diagnosis. An elderly black man who contracted HIV over 30 years ago, Ramsey seemed cheerful as he talked about his struggle with accepting his identity as others cast a judgmental eye.

“I didn’t want to face the fact that I had it,” Ramsey said. “I kept saying, ‘No, this ain’t true, this ain’t true. This ain’t true.’”

Even today, Ramsey said, many people get nervous when an HIV patient coughs near them.

“There’s a lot of embarrassment,” he continued. “You don’t want nobody to know that you got this thing. Because you’re afraid of being mistreated.”

Ramsey is one of thousands of D.C. residents who live with HIV. Washington’s HIV rate is considered an epidemic.

LaShawn, a middle-aged black woman who declined to give her last name, is an established member of the Joseph’s House community who has also experienced the shame firsthand. And while the stigma surrounding the disease has lessened in recent years, she said that more needs to be done to erase the ostracism of HIV patients.

“We deserve a chance just like anybody else; we don’t need to be looked at differently,” she said.

If it were a state, the District would claim the second-highest average income in the U.S. but would also have nearly the highest poverty rate, with almost 20 percent of residents under the federal poverty line. As housing prices continue to climb, the number of homeless residents has increased by nearly 28 percent since 2010. And despite having the second-highest rate of health insurance in the nation, D.C residents are nearly eight times more likely than the average U.S. resident to contract HIV in their lifetimes. Organizations like Joseph’s House, which assist HIV patients with taking their daily treatments, creating a sense of self, and finding a welcoming community, provide an important service in Washington.

LaShawn said that the strength of these organizations lies in their patient communities. Fellow HIV patients are often the first point of contact for those navigating a new condition and identity. LaShawn values assisting new residents because when she was diagnosed with HIV, others stepped in to mentor her on living with the condition.

“With the residents here, if they’re feeling some type of way, if they might have a rash or something, they come to me and ask me questions, and I give them advice and tell them what medication they should ask their doctor for,” LaShawn said.

••• In 2007, the District had reached a dubious mark: 3 percent of residents were HIV-positive. In 2009, Shannon Hader, the director of the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration, told The Washington Post: “Our rates are higher than [those of ] West Africa.”

From 1998 to 2007, Congress had blocked use of local tax dollars for needle-exchange programs, but after Congress lifted the ban, the return of the program had extraordinary results, said Jennifer Huang Bouey, an epidemiologist at Georgetown.

Her research has focused on the determinants of health and health disparities among marginalized populations; she has also worked as a consultant for the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative.

“In 2007, 95 percent of the HIV-positive in D.C. were associated with contaminated needles. So it’s mostly IDU [injection drug users],” Bouey said. “After D.C. government implemented a needle exchange, that really eliminated, or at least dramatically decreased, one of the highest risks.”

Now, even though the District’s infection rates have fallen a percentage point since 2007, many disparities still exist in terms of the populations affected by HIV. Blacks continue to be disproportionately at risk for contracting the virus, and individuals with intersectional minority identities are most at risk of contracting HIV.

“

We deserve a chance just like anybody else; we don’t need to be looked at differently.

”

“It’s a well-known fact that there are all sorts of barriers across racial groups [to protection from HIV], but particularly among African-American men that prevent that from happening, and there’s well known data out there that it’s really about social class and stigma and poverty,” said Michael Plankey, an epidemiologist at Georgetown University Medical School and a researcher at the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study.

The data Plankey cited showed wide inequalities in the distribution of HIV among various groups. The two groups with the highest rates of infection in D.C. are black men who have sex with other men (MSM), accounting for 27 percent of all HIV-infected residents, and black heterosexual women, at 16 percent, according to the Department of Health HIV/ AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB Administration’s 2017 report.

Of new cases diagnosed between 2013 and 2017, those two groups combined make up 40 percent of HIV-positive residents, and 4.4 percent of black men in D.C. live with the disease.

White MSM make up 14 percent of District residents living with HIV and 12 percent of the new HIV cases reported over those four years.

••• Human immunodeficiency virus is transmitted through body fluids during sexual intercourse, contact with blood, or from mother to child during pregnancy or childbirth.

Over time, if the infected individual does not receive treatment, HIV will progress into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. Without treatment, an HIV-infected individual has an average life expectancy of 11 years from the time of infection; an untreated AIDS diagnosis has a prognosis of several months to two years. There is no cure or HIV vaccine, but a person with the condition can live a near-normal lifespan if they start

antiretroviral treatment in the early stages and continue for the rest of their life.

“Now we’ve got evidence that if you take your medications and you’re virally suppressed, the likelihood that you’re going to transmit to anybody is nearly zero,” Plankey said. “This whole thing of U equals U, undetectable is un-transmissible, is really where we’re going.”

“U equals U” has been a central tenet of the D.C. government’s approach to fighting HIV/AIDS, highlighted by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration’s ‘90-90-90-50’ plan, announced in 2015 and orchestrated in conjunction with DC Appleseed and the Washington AIDS Partnership. The goals of the scheme are that, by 2020, 90 percent of HIV-positive District residents know their status, 90 percent of residents living with HIV are in treatment, 90 percent of residents with HIV in treatment reach viral load suppression, and there is a 50 percent overall reduction in new HIV cases from 2015’s mark of 371.

Importantly, improving access to treatment is just a component of the fight against HIV/AIDS; the other component is prevention of HIV. Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is the use of drugs to protect individuals who may participate in “high-risk” behavior. PrEP has been shown to be clinically effective in reducing rates of HIV. According to the CDC, PrEP reduces the chance of HIV infection by up to 92 percent. But PrEP has unequal distributional outcomes, as black men are less likely to get this service, Plankey said. Several studies support his claim, including a 2018 report by the CDC that found “while two-thirds of people who could potentially benefit from PrEP are African-American or Latino, they account for the smallest percentage of prescriptions to date.” LaShawn believes that a lack of education, spurred by inadequate advertising, drives low uses of PrEP among high-risk communities, but also that the problem goes beyond education. Once again, stigma plays a role, though many try to overcome it.

“They don’t know about it, that’s true, and then when they do know about it, and they want it, it’s kind of hard for them to get it,” LaShawn said. “Even if people might not want to say ‘yo, I’m going to go get that,’ on the low-low people will go get it.

You know, you’d never know if they’re taking it or not.”

Nationwide, these trends in the District fit into a larger picture of racial disparities in HIV cases. A recent CDC report, based on data from 2014-15, found that blacks accounted for 39 percent of new cases in the Northeast, 50 percent in the Midwest, and 54 percent in the South.

The western United States was the only region where blacks were not the group most at-risk for contracting HIV (Latinx people were, at 39 percent).

Bouey’s research into HIV has centered on the second most at-risk group, black heterosexual women. A systematic problem with HIV intervention in D.C. and the United States, says Bouey, is the refusal to recognize the presence of sex work and its connection to HIV. In fact, the United States is one of the only countries that doesn’t have proper HIV surveillance of female sex workers, she said. Though heterosexual women are ordinarily not high-risk for HIV, the lack of surveillance in the U.S. and the District has led black heterosexual women to be more vulnerable.

9

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

“In D.C., part of the problem is people don’t want to face the issue that many of these low-income, black women are in and out of the commerical sex transaction,” Bouey said.

LaShawn interjected when asked whether she knew any sex workers with HIV. “Me, me,” she said, and later added, “I was homeless so I was doing it to eat, to put clothes on my back, you know.”

Bouey worked with D.C. Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), a harm-reduction organization, to conduct a study of 32 black heterosexual women, both cisgender and transgender, who had been street-based sex workers. Specifically, Bouey was interested in finding out about PrEP and HIV testing among these women. With regard to the latter, they found that most women knew their status, which was HIV-positive for about 30 percent of the respondents.

“Quite consistent with the report from D.C., we found that they have very good HIV testing records,” Bouey said. “Almost 90 percent have been tested for HIV, and we’ve found that they have a very high HIV prevalence, over 30 percent.”

The findings also revealed that few of the HIV-positive women were undergoing any treatment. Hardly any of the women knew about PrEP, which would have served a logical purpose given their profession, said Bouey.

“We asked them about whether they have treatment, and less than half are enrolled in treatment,” Bouey said. “That’s a problem.”

“We found that not many of them have heard of PrEP, even though D.C. has done a mass media campaign to promote PrEP

among women,” she continued. “Some of them are like, ‘I have heard of it, or seen the signs for it on the bus, but I don’t know what it is. Is it a job training program?’”

What remains unclear are the root causes of under-treatment and lack of knowledge about PrEP, consistent with both Plankey’s and Bouey’s findings. It’s not insurance, as the District has a high rate of coverage and these women’s insurance would cover the treatment, nor is it eligibility for these programs. A little over 10 percent of the survey’s respondents believed they were eligible for PrEP, said Bouey, but in fact, all of them were covered for it. Bouey inferred from her findings that primarycare physicians don’t do an adequate job of referring their patients to the correct outlets.

“The problem is, these primary care physicians don’t know these women are high-risk,” Bouey said. “They don’t talk about their lifestyle on the street.”

“There’s a fear from both sides,” Bouey said. “The women have really internalized the stigma—first of all it’s illegal, and then they feel a lot of shame. From the physician side, they don’t know what to ask.”

••• On one hand, Washington’s falling HIV rates constitute a success story, the result of an effective public health campaign and heightened awareness. Yet the District is not on track to accomplish its prescribed goals by 2020; in particular, reducing the number of new cases. The goal of a 50 percent reduction seems a long way off, as the

number of new cases has stayed around 370 per year, the same as in 2015.

The challenge now for policymakers and advocates is to address the undeniable imbalance in not only HIV infection rates, but access to vital pre- and post-diagnosis treatment.

Combating HIV’s stigma is connected to the solution, says Bouey, citing the women she encountered in her research.

“When you talk to these women, they’re not monsters, lazy women,” Bouey said. “We’ll continue to battle the stigma these women face every day and try to humanize these women, to let more people understand the challenges they face.”

LaShawn recalled others’ reactions when she first learned her diagnosis, almost 30 years ago. She said that she got the virus from her ex-husband.

“People didn’t even want to touch you,” LaShawn said.

“They thought they was going to get it, they weren’t educated, they didn’t know.”

Ramsey offered advice for both people unfamiliar with HIV patients and those living with the disease. “[What] I want them to know is that when a person have HIV, he is not a threat to you,” he said. “And that people that have HIV must definitely know there is life after HIV.” LaShawn said that she no longer hides her diagnosis; it is a part of who she is.

“I’m not ashamed that I have it,” she said. “It’s like a stray bullet, it has nobody’s name on it.”

10

September 14, 2018

jacob bilich photo: GEORGETOWN SPORTS INFORMATION

Brian Wiese Lifts Men’s Soccer into National Prominence

By Tyler Pearre The Georgetown men’s soccer program’s rise to the highest tier of the collegiate ranks is almost entirely the product of coincidence. The man responsible for the Hoyas’ rise, head coach Brian Wiese, was never supposed to become a soccer coach; he was supposed to be an engineer. If not for an unexpected opportunity during his postgraduate education, the Blue & Gray might still be staving off mediocrity.

Wiese was well on his way to the professional world after graduating in 1995 from Dartmouth College, where he had compiled an impressive list of academic and athletic accomplishments as goalkeeper for the men’s soccer team. Wiese was a three-time All-Ivy League selection, two-time Academic All-Ivy League honoree, and team 1993 Most Valuable Player selection. In his senior year, he served as head coach of the Upper Valley Lightning boys U-15 club team in his free time.

This continued a coaching tradition that began in high school,

when he coached his physics teacher’s child’s U-10 soccer team while recovering from injuries that sidelined him for nearly 18 months. Wiese left Dartmouth with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mechanical engineering and moved to San Diego to take a job in the field.

But his love for the game made it impossible to escape the coaching world. He started coaching a girls U-17 team that practiced in a park behind his apartment complex, but he never intended to pursue coaching professionally.

“Every time there was an opportunity I was very excited to do it, and I was never once like, ‘Well, this is what I want to do with my life as a career.’ But I just liked it,” Wiese said. “I had a degree in engineering and thought, ‘I should probably do that since that’s what I just spent this money on.’ I knew I was trying to get into this master’s program at Stanford. I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

In the spring of 1996, knowing he would be attending Stanford in the fall, Wiese began searching for opportunities to continue coaching. He wrote letters to college coaches in and around the Palo Alto area, offering to help them coach for free. He didn’t receive a single reply, but he did get a message from his former coach at Dartmouth, Bobby Clark, who had just been named the new men’s soccer head coach at Stanford. Clark knew Wiese would be arriving on campus at the same time as him, and Wiese quickly accepted Clark’s offer of an unpaid assistant position.

“I did two years of this [engineering] program and I coached for two years. It was the same thing. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this as a career.’ But I loved to help,” Wiese said.

In Clark’s debut season at the helm, the Cardinal posted their first winning record in four years. Fortunate timing kept Wiese at Stanford upon completion of his master’s degree.

Clark’s paid assistant left the program as Wiese was set to grad-

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

uate, forcing Wiese to decide between an engineering job in San Francisco and a paid assistant coach position at Stanford.

“Bobby called and said, ‘What do you want to do? Do you wanna be a coach or an engineer?’ It was one of those things where it was like, ‘okay.’ It wasn’t even a thought. It was like, ‘I want to do that, which makes sense,’” Wiese said.

In 1998, during Wiese’s first season as a paid assistant, Stanford enjoyed a run of success that culminated in a 1998 national championship game appearance. After five successful seasons at Stanford, Clark accepted the head coach position with Notre Dame, and Wiese followed his mentor to South Bend. There, he was named to CollegeSoccerNews.com’s Top Assistant Coaches list in 2001 and was part of the Big East Coaching Staff of the Year in both 2001 and 2003. In 2005, Wiese was promoted to associate head coach in what would be his final season under Clark’s wing. Together, the duo posted a record of 136-48-25. “[Clark’s] the best in the business. I was really lucky to be mentored by him,” Wiese said. “A lot of my habits have come just from being around him and with him.

We’re a little different, obviously.

But at the end of the day, how he thinks about running a full year and how he thinks about preparing for practice and how he thinks about putting a game together and a team together—my roots are 100 percent from absorbing everything he really was giving.”

Georgetown, which had previously struggled to find consistency and break out of the middle of the Big East pack, hired Wiese as head coach in March 2006. In his first season at the helm, the Blue & Gray posted a modest 6-11 record. While Georgetown steadily improved year after year, they still failed to generate a breakthrough moment to catapult themselves onto the national stage. That changed in 2012, when Wiese guided the Hoyas to the national championship game after accruing a school-record 19 wins. Though the team lost that game in penalty kicks to the University of Maryland, Georgetown proved it could no longer be overlooked.

Since that momentous 2012 campaign, the Hoyas have consistently been at the forefront of national rankings, Big East standings, and NCAA Tournament fields. The team has earned six NCAA Tournament bids in an eight-year span (in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017) and won its first-ever Big East Tournament championship in 2015, defeating Creighton in double overtime at Shaw Field. Wiese and the Hoyas added a second Big East Tournament crown in 2017.

“I think [the team’s progression since 2006] says everything,” senior defender Brendan McDonough said. “I mean, he took a program that wasn’t nationally recognized, and he took them to the national championship. We’ve won multiple Big East titles since I’ve been here. We’ve always been in the national rankings, and that starts with him. He’s the figurehead, he’s the leader of the team, and if we didn’t have him to guide us in the right way, then there’s no way we would be where we are now with the success we’re having.”

Wiese’s players say he has a knack for fostering team cohesion and getting the most out of each of his players; just as every piece of a product’s engineering is important to its functioning at a high level, every player’s training is important to a team operating at its fullest potential.

“He’s very good at putting himself in other people’s shoes,” said former goalkeeper JT Marcinkowski, who now plays professionally for the San Jose Quakes in Major League Soccer

11

(MLS). “I think with that kind of attribute, he really does a learning just as much from practicing with those guys. So now good job of relating to every player. It doesn’t matter if you’re that I’m a senior, I can help out the younger guys, and the cycle the starting center-mid or you’re the last person on the bench— just keeps on going.” everyone really feels like part of the team. He really does a good Wiese has constructed a sustainable program on the field, job of knowing how to push people and get them to reach their yet he hasn’t forgotten about the importance of life off of it. He best potential.” offers players advice when asked, places trust in them to conduct Wiese provides his players a space to compete in a way themselves appropriately, and provides a laugh when needed. that fosters development, aiding both individual and team His resourcefulness isn’t reserved for his current team, however. success.

Wiese has seen 19 former Hoyas sign for MLS teams in his 13 “It’s just how the training sessions are run,” said former de- seasons on the Hilltop. Those players know they can rely on him fender and current Philadelphia Union (MLS) player Keegan now just as much as before.

Rosenberry. “The way he sets up training everyday, it forces “He’s seen so much and put so many players in the pros that everyone to interact. By that I mean, they need to play well there isn’t really a situation that he hasn’t come across,” Martogether, need to communicate cinkowski said. “Whenever I feel like I need a helping hand, I well together. Coach Wiese knew always give Coach Wiese a call. He’s a very good mentor and how to take advantage of that co- he’s a very good friend of mine, I would say, which is something hesiveness.” that is very special to me, and I’m lucky he’s been so kind and so That harmony also stems from willing to help with my career so far.” the special emphasis Wiese places While Wiese declined an engineering career in favor of on the importance of each year’s coaching more than 20 years ago, his academic background persenior class. The seniors act as an vades his leadership style. extension of Wiese both on and “Something I appreciated about him the most was that he off the pitch, teaching new play- was a scholar first,” Rosenberry said. “He has all of these degrees, ers proper training techniques, and you know [he] almost wanted to be a thinker first. That communicating Wiese’s demands comes through in a lot of his coaching philosophies, in the way to the team, and demonstrating he interacts with people, his players, his coaches.” how to play Georgetown’s brand The game that Wiese grew up playing continues to provide of soccer. him with an ample dose of joy nearly a quarter-century after begin“For all the years that I’ve ning his coaching career. But his engineering background is never been coaching and playing, every team is only as good as its se- far from sight; last summer, he converted an entire wall in his office nior group,” Wiese said. “If you have this great group of players, into a display for the professional jerseys of his former players. For but your leadership group and your senior group doesn’t quite weeks, Wiese labored meticulously, searching for the best way to have it right, you’re going to underachieve as a team. And if you hang each jersey in a dignified way. Ultimately, he settled on adjusthave a senior group that’s really got it right—they’re pushing able hangers and neatly aligned each jersey, complete with custom and they’re driven and they’re doing the right things—they’ll nameplates, on his wall—a clear demonstration of his pride in the overachieve, whatever that is.” program he has crafted.

The Hoyas’ historic 2015 season perfectly encapsulated this “What’s not to love? Everyone around the place is really what philosophy. That team, anchored by seniors Brandon Allen—the makes it special at the end of the day. I’ve got a great staff that program’s all-time leading goal-scorer and eventual MAC Hermann National Player of the Year finalist—Cole Seiler, Josh Turnley, and Rosenberry, played 18 consecutive games without defeat, including six straight shutouts, and won the first Big East Tournament championship in Georgetown’s history.

“Me personally, but also my senior class, we tried to be leaders,” Rosenberry said. “That was imperative for us just to have that responsibility, to have the trust of the coaching staff to then go and try to lead the group of guys. I think something that Coach Wiese and the staff did was letting us be independent in how we figure the game out.”

That type of success and team leadership has ripple effects that allow Wiese and the Hoyas to PHOTO: Georgetown Sports Information maintain a consistently high level Wiese leads the team on Shaw Field. of play. For McDonough, a freshman on the 2015 squad, that makes it fun to show up to work everyday, and we’ve got players much is clear. that love to show up and play,” Wiese said. “[Wiese] always told you to learn from the older guys above “I’m really lucky that I’m able to do something that’s always you,” McDonough said. “I had guys like Cole Seiler and Josh kind of been, since age 14-15, that’s really fun. So, you just try Yaro to learn from. And even though I wasn’t playing, I was not to get fired along the way.”

September 14, 2018

12

Students Raise Concerns about Title IX Office Vacancy

By Inès de Miranda When five Georgetown students learned that Georgetown’s first full-time Title IX coordinator had left her position in June, they demanded answers from the university. The students claimed in an open letter addressed to university administrators that Georgetown had failed to share the update with the student body.

Daria Crawford (COL ’20), Avery Moje (COL ’19), Kory Stuer (COL ’19), Andy Turner (SFS ’20), and Susu Zhao (COL ’19) published the letter on Aug. 31 as a response to the university’s failure to hire a new Title IX Office Coordinator. Laura Cutway’s position has been filled by interim coordinator Samantha Berner, who also serves as the Title IX Investigator in the same office.

Part of what concerned Stuer about the university’s current lack of a full-time coordinator is tied to a concept called the “Red Zone,” the six-week period at the start of the school year in which sexual assaults occur at a higher frequency compared to the rest of the year.

“Georgetown really isn’t treating this issue as a priority,” Stuer said.

Stuer’s sentiment was echoed by other authors of the letter.

“The administration needs to know that sexual assault prevention is a priority for the students,” Zhao said. “I’m hoping that this campaign will help to emphasize that to them.”

The letter also asked the university to explain how the same person serving as Title IX investigator and interim coordinator is not a conflict of interest.

According to a university spokesperson, the investigator is responsible for conducting investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct once a complaint is submitted. They gather accounts and compile documentation to provide a report to the Office of Student Conduct.

The Office of Title IX Compliance is neutral to all parties throughout the process of reporting sexual misconduct. Once it has guided the parties through the process and compiled a file on the reported incident, only the Office of Student Conduct is responsible for overseeing and conducting the adjudication process, including the hearing.

A university spokesperson said that when both positions are filled, the investigator normally reports to the coordinator, meaning they are complementary to one another rather than conflicting.

Rosemary Kilkenny, vice president for Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action, and one of the three addressees of the letter, responded to concerns about the vacant position in the Title IX office with a statement that underlined that the university is not required to have a full-time coordinator, but rather chose to do so.

“Georgetown had demonstrated its commitment to this position by hiring its first full-time Title IX Coordinator in 2016,” the statement read. “We’ve also taken the extra step of hiring a separate full-time Title IX investigator.”

The letter also asked why the student body had not been updated on the progress made by the university on the 11 recommendations of the Sexual Assault and Misconduct Task Force based on the results of the 2016 Campus Climate Survey.

The survey revealed that one in three women, one in nine men, and around one in three students who identify as transgender, genderqueer, and/or gender non-conforming have experienced a form of non-consensual sexual contact while at Georgetown.

Stuer told the Voice that he does not understand how the university could expect the student body to be aware of what recommendations have been implemented if the university does not publicize the steps it is taking to implement them.

“There is a lack of transparency, I think thematically, when it comes to the way the university deals with sexual assault policy,” Stuer said.

“Georgetown really isn’t treating this issue as a priority.”

Of the 11 recommendations made a year after the original survey, the authors of the letter wrote they were only aware of two being implemented. With a new survey scheduled for 2019, they are concerned that an insufficient response to the 2016 survey shows a weak commitment to campus safety on the part of the university.

“I realize that some of these things are going to take time, take resources, but nonetheless there should be timelines given out,” Moje said. “There should be a way for students to know the university hasn’t just set these recommendations forth and then not done anything, but rather they’ve set them forth and they’re making progress, albeit it might be slow progress.”

A university spokesperson said that many of the 11 recommendations have been implemented, including requiring all first-year students and undergraduate transfer students to complete a five-hour, in-person bystander intervention training, and placing a hold on course registration for those who do not complete the training.

The university also hired a staff clinician and sexual assault specialist in Health Education Services in spring 2018, and launched an online resource center and an online reporting form to increase access to a wide variety of resources for students seeking them.

The letter specifically asked why a Coordinated Community Response Team (CCRT) has not yet been created. A university spokesperson said that the Sexual Assault and Misconduct Advisory Committee (SAMAC), the group currently tasked with responding to issues of sexual misconduct, is still working on how to create the CCRT without losing any efficiency.

“A CCRT is important because it brings all of the relevant stakeholders from both campus and the community together into one room to address what’s necessary to support survivors,” Stuer

said. “It was recommended because it’s best practice, but the SAMAC is not that.”

On Sept. 4, GUSA released a statement on upcoming Title IX changes proposed by Betsy DeVos and detailed why they believe the departure from the previous administration’s Title IX guidelines will require a reaction from the university.

“These changes, which are mostly designed to favor perpetrators of sexual assault are extremely concerning,” the statement read.

“We, the undersigned, urge Georgetown University President John DeGioia and University administrators to recommit to their statement released last September in response to the interim guidance.”

Grace Perret (COL ’20), the sexual assault and student safety policy chair for GUSA, whose signature is the first at the bottom of the statement, spoke about the importance of the topic.

“We want to make sure that [the university] knows that students are concerned about this, this is something that GUSA is concerned about, and we hope that [the university] will be prepared to act when this comes out. We’re paying attention to this, and we hope that [the university is] paying attention too.”

According to Perret, the main objective of the letter is to create awareness of the change in policy and inform people about the 30-day notice and comment period that will follow the release of the new Title IX guidelines. The Department of Education must respond to public comment submitted during the period.

Casey Doherty (COL ’20), who is a student representative to the Georgetown University Board of Directors and also signed the statement, stressed the importance of getting Georgetown to make an official comment and preparing students to submit their own comments when the time comes.

“I hope that with increased education and awareness, people will get angry and get inspired to act, and that’s really what we’re trying to do,” Doherty said. “We just want people to understand as much as possible.”

That these issues extend beyond Georgetown’s campus has not escaped the attention of the authors of the open letter either.

“Especially in the context of this national moment, where any day now Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is expected to release an overhaul on Title IX that we haven’t seen in a generation,” Stuer said, “Georgetown is asleep at the wheel.”

Confidential Resources Health Education Services (HES) sarp@georgetown.edu Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) 202-687-6985 D.C. Rape Crisis Center Hotline 202-333-RAPE (7273) Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) online.rainn.org National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255

13

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Community Scholars Program Celebrates 50 Years on the Hilltop The Community Scholars Program (CSP)—a university program that provides first-generation students with resources, both academic and financial, throughout their four years at Georgetown—celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

The program helps new students, especially first-generation students, adjust to what can be a radical change. For Roberto Cabrera (COL ’19), Georgetown was unlike any community he had been a part of before. “Coming as a first year, I experienced all kinds of culture shock. I experienced financial shock, racial shock,” he said. “I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like an outsider.”

Community Scholars spend five weeks of the summer before their first year enrolled in two classes. Students take one English course and another related to their major to help them acclimate to a collegiate environment.

CSP is a part of the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access (CMEA) and is affiliated with the Georgetown Scholarship Program, an organization which offers support to first-generation and low income students; students in CSP utilize resources from both programs.

Apart from the summer courses, the CMEA and CSP provide resources that extend beyond the confines of the classroom.

Dalila Cuevas Rodriguez (SFS ’21) benefited from CSP’s emphasis on institutional guidance, noting specifically the “strong relationship” she has established with her dean through the program. During its existence, the program has demonstrated this dedication to establishing a network for its students to use throughout their time on campus and beyond.

Charlene Brown-McKenzie (COL ’95), director of the CMEA and alumna of CSP, attributes her college successes to the assistance provided by the program. “I would say the close advising from our deans in the college and advisors in the program really was the tool that helped me to persist and graduate,” she said, “because I was coming in with different skill sets and recognizing that I would need to have a system of support to feel like I could be successful here.”

For some students, starting at Georgetown is challenging, even with the help of CSP. Originally from a majority Latinx community, Briseyda Neri (SFS ’22) felt out of place when she first arrived at Georgetown. “I would describe CSP as dipping my toe in the water in a sense because it didn’t really represent the entire population of the school,” she said. “I say it’s like a dip in the water because once I got

From left to right: Briseyda Neri (SFS ’22), Marah Rosales (COL ’22)

here for actual NSO, it was predominately white. I’ve never been in a situation where I am actually the minority.”

Twenty years after graduating, Brown-McKenzie said the program has evolved into one that allows scholars to feel even more welcomed into Georgetown’s community.

“As the program has gotten more robust, we hope students navigate those multiple spaces so that Georgetown is truly a community in diversity and that the fullness of the Georgetown experience can be theirs,” Brown-McKenzie said.

Cabrera believes the shared life experiences, similar backgrounds, and a shared introduction to the Georgetown community has helped Community Scholars foster close bonds.

“The Community Scholars Program definitely provided me with my closest friends here on campus, and that is something that I will take with me after Georgetown,” he said.

“Those will be my best friends for the years to come.”

The strength of community and of the resources provided by the program is illustrated by the success enjoyed by scholars. The national graduation rate for first-time college students at private universities is 62 percent. Students in CSP outperform their peers, with 91 percent of enrollees in the program graduating.

CSP originated in 1968 during a time of heightened racial tensions in the city and the country. That year saw the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., sparking civil unrest across the U.S. in the wake of his death.

In Washington, D.C., protests lasted for days as the city’s black community demanded social equity and improved living conditions and brought their anger with the status quo to the forefront of the District’s consciousness.

Recognizing the university’s need to better engage with its community, the program initially welcomed students from underserved areas in the District. CSP has expanded over the decades and now attracts students from all over the nation, including U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam.

Even though she is far from her native Guam, Marah Rosales (COL ’22) has found that CSP cultivated a welcoming environment as she transitions to her new home at Georgetown. “Even if I wasn’t able to talk to everyone in CSP, I know that if I see their face in the hallway, or outside

Photo: Rachel Cohen

in the campus, I feel a sense of community,” she said. “I know that they’re always going to be there to support me because we are all going through the same things.”

As another first year, Neri acknowledges the significance CSP has played in her life as well, and it is something she wants to preserve at Georgetown.

“CSP provides that community that we talk about. It’s not something that can be written down on paper—it’s something that’s felt,” she said. “Just being part of this community makes me want to give back, keep this program alive because it has done so much for me.”

Faculty members, as well as students, find the program rewarding.

Academic Director of CSP Elizabeth Velez (GSAS ’83) has worked with the program for 38 years. She is also a professor in the Women and Gender Studies program and fell in love with CSP during her first years at Georgetown. “If I could have just made up a job that would have been the best job of my life, it’s this one,” she said. “Working with these students is just a joyful experience, in the classroom, out of the classroom” Devita Bishundat, director of CSP, views it as a major asset to the Georgetown community as a whole. “The Community Scholars Program is Georgetown at its best. It lives out many of the Jesuit values including academic excellence, cura personalis, and community in diversity,” she wrote in an email to the Voice. “It truly is the soul of Georgetown.”

With the commemoration of its 50th anniversary, the CSP community hopes there will be plenty more scholars to walk through its door.

“The care they pour into one another is nothing short of beautiful,” Bishundat wrote. “The Scholars go on to be change makers on campus and beyond the front gates, and to say we’ve been doing this for 50 years now is a gift—one worth celebrating.”

By Rachel Cohen

LEISURE

14

September 14, 2018

Sights Unseen Exposes the Cracks in the Surveillance State

Trevor Paglen, Trinity Cube, 2016, irradiated glass from the Fukushima Exclusion Zone and Trinitite. Installation view at Fukushima Exclusion Zone, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York. © Trevor Paglen, photo by Kenji Morita

By Ryan Mazalatis The information age has revolutionized the ways that humans connect with each other. Most Georgetown students do not remember a time before the emergence of cell phones or the internet and are accustomed to having access to seemingly limitless information in the palms of their hands at all times.

While the technological revolution has certainly had its benefits, the ways in which governments and corporations utilize communication technologies to spy on civilians everywhere has cast a long shadow on this new phase in human history. It is in this shadow that artist Trevor Paglen finds his inspiration.

Paglen’s exhibition Sights Unseen explores the ways in which modern technologies are used and abused in the name of security, often compromising the freedoms of entire societies. Sights Unseen will be featured at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through Jan. 6.

All of Paglen’s pieces incorporate his dual knowledge of science and military culture, allowing the audience to examine the hidden world of covert operations and the manipulation and perversion of the modern tech boom for the purpose of espionage. Paglen was born to a family with a strong military tradition in Camp Springs, Maryland in 1974, and from an early age, he was deeply immersed in military culture and exposed to the air of secrecy that clouds espionage, mass data gathering, and the government’s more morally ambiguous operations. He is now based in Berlin, Germany and holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. While this exhibition is shocking in what it says about the abhorrent lack of privacy and freedom in the 21st century, Paglen manages to strike a tone of hope where his pieces reflect a vision of a world in which science and technology enhance, rather than detract from, our liberties and democratic systems.

The first, and perhaps most striking, piece in Paglen’s exhibition is a replica of the “Trinity Cube.” The original cube, a brilliant light blue with white and gray streaks, is built using two kinds of tempered glass. The outer layer is constructed from glass found in the Fukushima exclusion zone, the site of the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster, while the inner core is built

Trevor Paglen, Vampire (Corpus: Monsters of Capitalism) Adversarially Evolved Hallucination, 2017, dye sublimation print.

Collection of mark sanford gross & billy ocallaghan. Image courtesy of the artist; Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco. © and photo by Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen, Bahamas Internet Cable System (BICS-1) NSA/GCHQ-Tapped Undersea Cable Atlantic Ocean, 2015, C-print. Collection Lannan Foundation. Image courtesy of the artist; Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco. © and photo by Trevor Paglen

from Trinitite, glass created at the Trinity test site in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945. The “Trinity Cube” was placed by Paglen in the Fukushima exclusion zone, closed off to the public until the Japanese government declares the area safe to open. The beauty of the piece is starkly juxtaposed against its dark history and serves as a reminder of our technology’s capacity to destroy us.

Another highlight of the exhibition is “Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations,” images Paglen created by training two separate sets of artificial intelligence to recognize and paint depictions of key words. In one piece, the AI generates an image that it associated with the keyword “vampire,” providing the viewer with a haunting glimpse at a vision completely contrived by our technology. Using this digital method, Paglen presents the viewer with a series of images created entirely artificially, reflections of our world from the perspective of artificial intelligence. In this way, Paglen challenges the viewer to consider what art is without a living creator and how the modern age can manipulate our perceptions of the world, particularly as computers and AI become an ever-present part of our existence.

Undoubtedly, the most relevant section of Sights Unseen to modern American viewers is a collection of pieces that deal with individual privacy in the 21st century. In the photographic series “Untitled (Drones),” Paglen presents images of idyllic sunsets and night skies—that is, until the audience notices that military drones are present in the background of each photograph. Paglen reinforces this uneasy tone in two similar series,

“Cable Landing Sites” and “Undersea Cables,” which contrast pictures of beaches and oceans with military charts of the hidden cables underneath—the cables serving as the foundation of both the internet and large-scale data gathering. Data misuse by governments and big corporations, Paglen implies in his works, is hiding right beneath our noses and is reinforced by a culture of secrecy in the agencies meant to protect us.

The internet and the invention of the smartphone have revolutionized the way Americans live their lives. While young people may use their tech on a regular, day-to-day basis, it’s important to remember that it can be harnessed to undermine our basic freedoms. Paglen’s pieces force us to confront this dark side of modernity and the potential for a new age of covert, digital totalitarianism.

While the subject matter of the exhibition is incredibly somber, it is also a reminder of our responsibility to use science ethically and avoid the pitfalls of becoming a surveillance state. If this can be accomplished, Paglen suggests, modern technology can be utilized to better our lives and our governments. Sights Unseen is a force to be reckoned with and is ironically on display in the heart of our nation’s capital in a museum owned and operated by the government. In an age in which phones and laptops have become essential parts of our lives, Sights Unseen challenges us to consider whether these technologies have enabled our governments to become better guardians of our collective safety, or the greatest existential threat to human freedom.

15

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

A Star is Born

Crystallizes the Transcendent and Timeless Late into the final act of A Star Is Born, a character observes, “There’s only 12 notes, and the octave repeats. All an artist can do is offer the world how he sees those 12 notes.” That’s exactly what Bradley Cooper does in his directorial debut—the third remake of the 1937 film following the arcs of two lovers (one tragic and one triumphant) as they chase immortality. Though the plot hews closely to the iterations that came before it, especially the 1976 version starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand, Cooper’s take revitalizes this enduring fable, grounding it in two stunning performances.

We hear the frenetic world of Cooper’s country rockstar Jackson Maine before we see it. The opening credits roll, and we are flung into the heat of a raucous concert venue, cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s camera moving with the same restless energy as its subject. (His style matches Cooper’s blending of classic Hollywood grandeur with a feverish contemporary energy.) Despite the crowd’s roars, post-concert finds Jackson rummaging for another bottle to ease his journey to the next tour stop. Emerging empty-handed, he instructs his driver to pull over at the nearest bar. It is here that he encounters Ally (a sublime Lady Gaga in her feature film debut), a server who moonlights as a performer and mesmerizes Jackson with her magnetic rendition of “La Vie en Rose.” They drink and flirt and wander, the convergence of their paths inevitable by the end of the night.

Hat pulled low over his bearded face, Jackson is a seasoned veteran of an industry that is as suffocating as it is transcendent.

Cooper plays a grizzled and weary Jackson, providing nuance to the familiar story of the celebrity substance abuser with moments of naked vulnerability. Arguably the best performance of Cooper’s career, his Oscar hopes are boosted by the fact that he produces, directs, writes, and sings—an auteur in the making.

In an interview with The Georgetown Voice, Cooper spoke about his transition from actor to director: “I had the technology and the lenses and the lighting and coloring at my disposal to tell a story. I always loved directors that [adhere to] ‘form follows function’; there are no arbitrary moves. What I try to do with this movie is compose shots and have the camera move in a certain way or shoot a character in a very specific way that you

feel something from that point of view without really knowing how you’re being manipulated.”

As both the film’s titular star and the steadying center in Jackson’s chaotic life, Ally’s face is often filmed reverently, especially when we see her through his eyes. In a Q&A with university President John DeGioia, Cooper explained how he pursued Gaga for the role after seeing her perform Edith Piaf ’s signature song at a cancer benefit. Their real-life meet-cute in Gaga’s home—when, Cooper quipped, he discovered what Gaga actually looked like—confirmed their immediate connection.

Inhabiting the wide-eyed ingenue and mouthy firebrand within the same breath, Gaga delivers an expressive and honest performance. In her hands, Ally is no mere casualty of Jackson’s downward spiral; though Cooper’s character opens the film, the title card—emblazoned across a shot of Ally twirling away from a restaurant shift—signals the story’s true protagonist.

“It was exciting cinematically to acknowledge the other films, and I wanted to do that and pay respect to them,” said Cooper. “There’s little things: She [Ally] walks up the ramp, and she’s singing the preamble to ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ which is what Judy Garland sang in The Wizard of Oz—although she never sang the preamble [in A Star Is Born (1954)].”

Cooper and Gaga’s easy chemistry carries throughout the first act of the film—from their impromptu first duet in the supermarket parking lot to their electric first performance on Jackson’s tour. Some interactions—like when Jackson peels off Ally’s taped-on eyebrow or he shows up unannounced in her bedroom—suggest the beginnings of a lopsided power dynamic. Yet this is a relationship born out of genuine love between characters who need each other (and Gaga’s Ally is too feisty to allow a jaded bigshot to dictate her life). It’s fascinating, and devastating, to watch their relationship grow brittle as the pair grapples with their shifting roles in the life they have made together.

When asked what he wanted audiences to take away from A Star Is Born, Cooper said, “I wanted to tell a story about how hard it is, even when two people love each other. There’s no infidelity, there’s no looking at other people,

Design: Egan Barnitt Photo: Ian Smith

By Amy Guay and Caitlin Mannering

these two people are completely committed to each other and even with that it’s hard, and why is it hard? I also love music, and I thought the best way to communicate—the purest way one can communicate—is through song and voice, because you can’t hide.”

At the dawn of their romance, as Ally turns her back to leave, Jackson calls out to her: “I just wanted to get one last look at you.” In many ways, A Star Is Born ends where it begins.

Lifting her face, our protagonist permits one last look before she becomes myth, marking an addition to the American canon that is near perfect.