The Georgetown Voice, January 23, 2017

VOICE The Georgetown

The Way to San Jose Recapping the Hoya’s Historic College Cup Run

January 23, 2017

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JANUARY 23, 2017

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

staff editor-in-chief Graham Piro Managing editor Caitlyn Cobb

Volume 49 • Issue 9

news

executive editor Ryan miller Features editor Alex bOyd assistant features editor jonny amon news editor isaiah seibert assistant news editors Jake maher, margaret gach

culture

executive editor Brian Mcmahon Leisure editor caitlin mannering assistant leisure editors Gustav Honl-stuenkel, Devon O’Dwyer, ryan mazaltis Sports editor tyler pearre Assistant sports editor alex lewontin

by Emma Francois and alli kaufman Photo by georgetown sports information

contents

opinion

Editorials

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Carrying On: The Privilege of Forgetting Amy Guay

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Hidden Hegemony: Progress and Regression, Juxtaposed Isaiah Fleming-Klink

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Beyond Thoughts and Prayers: Choose Love with Action Sarah Clements

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The Way to San Jose: Recapping the Hoya’s Historic College Cup Run Jorge DeNeve

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Executive editor kevin huggard voices editor emma Francois Assistant Voices editors kaei lee, rebecca zaritsky Editorial Board Chair chris dunn Editorial Board jon block, caitlyn cobb, kenneth lee, kevin Huggard, GRAHAM PIRO, PHillip Steuber, ryan miller

halftime

Leisure editor amy guay assistant leisure editors brynn furey, emily jaster anne paglia Sports editor Jorge DeNeve Assistant sports editor parker houston

design

Executive editor alli kaufman Spread editor lindsay reilly assistant design editors jake glass, lizz pankova, jack townsend Staff Designers Rachel Corbally, Alexandra Falkner, Sam Lee, Cecilia li, Sarah martin, Aicha nzie, max thomas, rachel zeide

GUerrilla Warfare: The Fight for Laughter on the Hilltop Daniel Varghese

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Latinx Identity in the Georgetown Classroom Cassidy Jensen

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Toni Erdmann Explores the Touching, Quirky Relationship Between Father and Daughter Brice Russo

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podcast editor danielle hewitt assistant podcast editor nick gavio social media editor Claire Goldberg

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madelyn rice, Noah Telerski, Rebecca Zaritsky

Evenings at the Edge Offers an Exciting New Spin to the National Gallery Caitlin Mannering 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.

copy

copy chief Anna Gloor assistant Copy editors audrey bischoff, julia pinney editors Sienna Brancato, Jack Cashmere, Clara Cecil, Claire Goldberg, Isabel Lord, Isabel Paret, Greer Richey, Jack Townsend, Gabriella Wan

online

Staff writers

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

Correction to “Weathering the Storm: Climate Policy in D.C.” feature story run in the 12/2/16 issue. Professor Sara Colangelo clarified that her statements regarding powers reserved to the states were in reference to federalism, not separation of powers.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

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READ MORE ON GEORGETOWNVOICE.COM The Voice covers the Inauguration and the Women’s March on Washington.

Sam Lee

EDITOIRALS

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JANUARY 23, 2017

Academic Freedom Exists Past the Classroom Georgetown’s policy on academic freedom states that, “Faculty enjoy academic freedom in the classroom, the laboratory, the studio, the library, and all the domains of their academic activity. Academic freedom promotes intellectual honesty and requires respect for the academic rights of others.” The policy further clarifies that, as with free speech in general, there are reasonable limits to what university faculty can say or do.

This editorial board believes that academic freedom is paramount to a liberal education and that a professor’s right to free expression should extend to social media. When universities limit themselves to more traditional methods of discourse like the journal and classroom, they risk missing out on new avenues through which their professors can join public discourse. With this larger audience, however, professors can find themselves coming under greater scrutiny for any inflammatory statements they may make.

When Drexel University professor George CiccarielloMaher’s tweet “All I want for Christmas is white genocide,” began to go viral, it started a heated debate over the limits of academic expression. Ciccariello-Maher further clarified that the killings of white slave-owners by their black slaves during the Haitian Revolution was justified, but that his original tweet was meant to be taken as satire. Drexel condemned the professor’s tweets in a university statement.

The debate surrounding academic freedom on the internet has also raged here on Georgetown’s campus.

The American Conservative reported that philosophy

professor Rebecca Kukla wrote a vulgar Facebook comment on a post about traditional Catholic marriage doctrine. The Georgetown Academy published a piece in which they called the administration’s silence towards Kukla hypocritical, since the author believed that had a conservative professor made such a comment, they would have faced repercussions.

In a more recent incident that garnered the attention of The Washington Post, Asra Nomani, a former journalism professor at Georgetown, requested that the university make Professor Christine Fair undergo training and apologize for her comments on social media about Nomani. Nomani wrote an opinion piece in The Post stating that she voted for Donald Trump. Among other things, Fair wrote “F**K YOU. GO TO HELL” in a Facebook comment about Nomani, and wrote on Twitter that she “pimped herself out to all media outlets because she was a ‘Muslim woman who voted for Trump.’”

While Nomani made it clear that she simply wished for an apology from Fair, and for Fair to undergo training, many conservative outlets called for Fair to be fired or to be denied tenure. This has been a common theme among recent incidents, with critics of the professors calling for harsh repercussions.

As social media like Twitter and Facebook increasingly become a forum for serious discussion, academia should not shy away from these new methods of communication.

Legitimate academic conversations take place on Twitter,

and this editorial board believes that professors should have the right to engage in these discussions without fear of professional retaliation.

As the saying goes, however, with freedom comes responsibility. Professors are expected to maintain a certain level of professionalism in the classroom and in their journals, and if a professor wishes to claim academic freedom for their interactions online, they must continue to hold themselves to high standards of conduct.

If a professor were to shout profanities to a colleague during a lecture, they would probably be sent to HR to deal with the fallout, and an article in which a professor insinuated that a colleague had “pimped herself ” would likely not make it past peer review.

Similarly, a professor on Twitter or Facebook should maintain the level of professional conduct necessary for academic conversations. To shrink below these levels of conduct weakens the seriousness of the discourse, therefore making it harder to justify granting academic freedoms.

As public discourse increasingly shifts online, this editorial board stands against any attempts to weaken academic freedoms. The freedom for academics to discuss difficult ideas will only become more important in the coming years, and for the sake of scholarly discourse and the idea of the university itself, professors must be free to publish, debate, and promote their ideas on any medium.

Bowser’s Plan Provides Needed Aid On Jan. 9, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the city’s intention to allocate taxpayer money to form the Immigrant Justice Legal Services Grant Program, a fund designed to support the legal defense of undocumented residents residing in the city. The plan follows similar moves recently taken by other American cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

This editorial board endorses the actions taken by the District of Columbia that further strengthen the city’s commitment to defend the safety of its undocumented residents. Mayor Bowser’s policy will help to protect the estimated 25,000 undocumented immigrants currently residing in Washington, D.C. The city reappropriated $500,000 from D.C.’s Office of Latino Affairs to create this program. It will provide nonprofit organizations, private companies, and defense lawyers the opportunity to apply for grant money and resources intended to cover the legal representation of undocumented immigrants living in D.C. The funding will help support applications for asylum, provide assistance for residents currently holding green cards to petition for permanent United States citizenship, and represent residents in deportation proceedings.

The program will also fund classes that apprise undocumented immigrants of their rights and assist in filing lawsuits which challenge the constitutionality of

using Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications to locate and deport undocumented immigrants. We support DACA, which allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors a renewable two-year deferral from deportation, and we fully endorse the policy provisions in the Immigrant Justice Legal Services Grant Program designed to defend it. We commend the city’s overall effort to protect the constitutional rights of undocumented D.C. residents, who are among its most vulnerable citizens.

Washington, D.C.’s plan has been labeled as taking the city “beyond” sanctuary city status. President-elect Donald Trump pledged to cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities during his campaign and promised to immediately deport 2 to 3 million undocumented residents upon taking office. Since Trump’s election, not one of the 37 sanctuary cities in the United States, among them New York and San Francisco, has changed its policy regarding undocumented immigrants.

However, unlike other American cities, D.C.’s budget is drafted and passed by the federal House of Representatives, making the risk of retaliation from the Trump administration greater than in other areas of the country that possess democratically-controlled state legislatures. D.C. must be prepared for potential repercussions in response to its actions and should have a clear plan in dealing with these potential consequences.

Given the possibility of such consequences, we believe that the city must display caution. If potential

retribution from the federal government consists of cutbacks in other vital city-funded policies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or resources provided to the homeless, the city government should consider this fallout. More information on Trump’s commitment to remove federal funding from sanctuary cities is necessary, and as his policies become clearer, so should the District of Columbia’s.

Additionally, we are unsure of how far the allocated money can go in providing the proposed resources to the city’s 25,000 undocumented immigrants. For a large city, $500,000 is not a large amount of money, and D.C. must work to ensure that this program is funded adequately into the future.

On top of the original sum budgeted by the mayor, the plan allows for private contributions coming from residents and organizations within the city. Such donations could propel this program far beyond its initial allocation. We see these donations as a positive means for concerned residents to push back on the proposed policies of the incoming Trump administration.

The District of Columbia must be vigilant in continuing to fund this program and to communicate its existence to the undocumented community. Like any government initiative, it is not enough to simply create the program. To have an impact, the city and its residents must ensure that as time goes on, the new fund continues to help those who face deportation.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

The Privilege of Forgetting I am nine months old when I fly first class for the first—and, at the time of this writing—only time in my life. My commuter dad amassed enough frequent flier points to score three deluxe seats on the second floor of a double-decker plane flying from Hong Kong International to JFK. Tragically, my paid-for seat is for naught as I sleep and whine in a Korean Air complementary bassinet for the flight’s 13 hour duration. In this way, I enter the padded world of privilege in style.

I am days—or possibly even hours—old when someone leaves me with a note in a marketplace in Yangzhou, China. (I grow into my place of abandonment; I’m a notoriously voracious eater.) A product of China’s infamous (and recently relaxed) one-child policy, I am scooped up and transported to an orphanage where I will babble and learn to crawl until my parents adopt me roughly nine months later.

After I overcome the initial shock of my mom’s blonde hair—I couldn’t keep my hands off her curls— and once my parents navigate the strange bureaucratic necessity that wrongly labels me deaf—my mom was just shy of China’s required age minimum and thus was given a supposedly disabled baby—my parents whisk me onto that mammoth plane where I will blow my chance at experiencing unadulterated luxury. Four months later, I am “eating” cake at my first birthday party as my three new brothers (dogs) wait patiently for inevitable scraps.

Flash-forward another four and a half years, and I am back in China with my parents to adopt my younger (human) sister. (And no, we are not blood-related, but we have loudly fought over a Tinkerbell pencil and together possess a mental compendium of Spongebob quotes, so I think that’s proof enough of sisterhood.) I am five and a half at the time and think that my parents and I will get some face time with each baby in this room, deliberate, and then go home with the baby of our choice. I am assured that this transaction is non-negotiable, so we leave with the large-headed oneyear-old that matches the picture stamped onto piles of paperwork. That night, we take lots of cutesy pictures, and I read her a book called Dinner at the Panda Palace. Later we both get raging ear infections.

Growing up, harmlessly inquisitive friends would ask when my parents told me I was adopted, to which I would respond that “I always knew.” As precociously perceptive as that sounds, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that a blue-eyed Missourian plus a greeneyed New Yorker does not a Chinese daughter make. There was no concrete event wherein my parents drew a dotted line from China to America and lectured me on my origin story. I absorbed the details naturally as they came and to this day they linger somewhere in the back of my head, often with no tangible import on my life. When I’m not actively engaged in a conversation about being adopted, the fact usually slips my mind.

I think about my race—my Chinese-ness—in the same way: I don’t think much about it at all. I have no connection to Chinese culture—even saying “my” culture feels fake; it’s never belonged to me—and I never felt any instinctive pull toward learning Mandarin or visiting China again (at least not more than any other language or country). I grew up with white parents, lived in a predominately white hometown, and learned in largely white

Carrying On: Voice Staffers Speak

classrooms. My closest friends throughout school were (and are) usually white. Demographics play a role, but so too does the fact that I usually find more similarity in experience with my white peers as opposed to, say, a second-generation Chinese-American. In other words, I am privileged in a way that other Chinese-Americans and people of color are not. Never have I felt ostracized or limited because of my race, because I usually forget it’s a factor. I am well-versed in “Asian” stereotypes but still sometimes forget that people might apply them to me. Only recently have I consistently registered the cause of people’s not-unkind glances when I’m out and about with my parents and sister: oh, it’s probably because we’re Chinese, and they are white. Of course, I know I am Chinese—in middle school I began happily flexing my self-deprecatory humor by cracking jokes about my “squinty” eyes—but I am privileged because I grew up effortlessly in the mode of white America.

I am now almost twenty, and my sister is fifteen. We are wildly different people to the point of caricature. We joke that a combination of our personalities would result in a perfectly neutral state of being: my passivity would get a jolt from her fiery passion; her mercurial nature would benefit from a dose of my general zen. The list goes on.

She is happiest front row at concerts, jumping up and down, and blowing out her eardrums. Her hair reaches the small of her back, and she stomps around in black Dr. Martens. Her wit is exact and sometimes biting. She is ambitious about her goals and fiercely passionate about her interests. She has mostly grown into her large head.

But my sister is never granted the privilege of forgetting that she is adopted from China. She attends a different, smaller, and whiter high school where she faces prideful ignorance and casual bigotry from her peers. The great majority of the school’s diversity is due to the influx of Chinese students from a foreign exchange program, which logically meant that my sister endured two weeks of “Your accent is so good!” before people began to realize that any Mandarin she knew was thanks to her own initiative.

To make a humiliating situation worse, the faction of white boys who label her as “fake Chinese” is often joined by a few Chinese foreign exchange students who accuse her of “being too American.” She usually delivers scathing comebacks before retreating to the classroom of an understanding and woke teacher.

Although sometimes, she tells me, she is too tired to fight back.

I am enraged and near tears when she tells me someone called her “chink.” Yet, I still bristle reflexively when she makes (understandably) bitter comments about white people. I struggle to identify with the new zeal with which she embraces Asian dramas, Chinese beauty standards, and rice at every meal. (She owns two sets of porcelain chopsticks, while I sheepishly ask for forks at sushi restaurants.)

My sister is wholly American but now reasserts her Chinese-ness in a kind of metaphorical middle finger to those who would stuff her into a box. I never felt compelled to do this because no one ever questioned my right to exist the way I pleased.

It is strange to see someone with whom I have shared my biggest life experiences grapple with her identity in a way that is so different from how I understand my own. My sister’s experience shocked me out of that unproductive pattern of projection. Slowly, I began the uncomfortable, messy process of unpacking a privilege I hadn’t recognized before. My sister helped me realize that though we are both adopted Chinese-Americans with the same white parents and the same hometown with the same class distinction, my ability to forget about my race is a significant privilege.

My sister and I don’t talk as much as we should. Life is busy, our age difference yawns, and our temperaments do not mix naturally without a conscious effort. But lately, my sister has expressed a vague interest in moving to China as an adult. If that happens, I would be the first to board another doubledecker to visit her, although I think my first-class days are behind me.

By Amy Guay She is a sophomore in the College.

Emma francois

VOICES

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JANUARY 23, 2017

Hidden Hegemony

Progress and Regression, Juxtaposed

ELIZABETH PANKOVA AND AIcha Nzie Last week, we at Georgetown celebrated—insofar as cancelling classes on Monday and Friday serves as a barometer for celebration—a juxtaposition of historical forces personified in two men.

This is a reality of the stagnation, perhaps even regression, of racial politics in this country.

The symbolism of this celebratory nexus—Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarkable contribution to American justice on MLK Day and Donald Trump’s breathtaking election to the highest office in American politics on Inauguration Day—cannot be understated. Even within the narrower realm of racial discourse, the tonal dissonance between King’s message of love and Trump’s rhetoric toward Muslim-Americans and Mexican immigrants is hard to ignore.

But, more pointedly, the differences in the work of the two men, of their actions, and of their characters point to something more troubling.

As reported earlier this year by The New York Times, the management arm of Trump’s real estate company (Trump Management) racially discriminated against African Americans ubiquitously and at almost every stage of the transactional process. A mere seven African American families occupied the more than 3,700 apartments in Trump Village. Irving Wolper, a Trump Management agent responsible for selling apartments to potential tenants and who Trump described as “a fabulous man,” “an amazing manager,” and “a classic,” referred to a federal investigator, Maggie Durham, as a “n****r lover.”

In Norfolk too, where Trump’s father built complexes his son would later manage, complaints of racial discrimination emerged: “a former Trump [Management] superintendent named Thomas Miranda testified that multiple Trump Management employees had instructed him to attach a separate piece of paper with a big letter ‘C’ on it—for ‘colored’—to any application filed by a black apartment-seeker,” as reported by The New York Times.

Even after Trump and Trump Management signed a consent agreement in 1978 that stipulated an immediate abandonment of discriminatory practices, the federal government charged Trump Management with breaking the agreement. By 1982, the case had fizzled out and Trump launched the construction not only of the prized Trump Tower, but of a new Trump brand. Clearly, then, Trump and his family’s success was predicated on practices that, put simply, sought to increase the economic and social well-being of one racial group at the direct cost of another.

Most recently, Trump’s comments about Georgia Rep. and civil rights’ icon John Lewis point to something similarly troubling, at least rhetorically. Trump tweeted that Rep. Lewis should “spend more time fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)” and “finally focus on the bruning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S.” For Trump to flippantly dismiss the work and character of a man who, just as one

example, sacrificed his physical well-being during the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge is disgraceful, but unsurprising.

By contrast, King’s work in the period directly preceding Trump’s ascent culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Many credit King too with momentum that led to the creation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which passed in the same year of King’s death and solidified legal mechanisms through which the federal government could punish unequal access to housing opportunity on the basis of race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, familial status, or national origin.

Even 47 years later, on July 16, 2015, many saw the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, implemented by President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as a continuation and strengthening of King’s legacy. The rule requires HUD funds-receiving cities and municipalities to look for, assess, and measure instances of racial discrimination in their housing practices and subsequently propose locally driven policy solutions to any such discrimination.

As I’ve thought about the celebration of King’s life and work a mere four days before the celebration and solidification of Trump’s swift ascent to political zenith, four days before the end of our first black President’s tenure, I’ve been struck by the historical symbolism at work.

If one accepts the widely researched and accepted notion that housing, whether ownership or rental, not only determines and is determined by the accumulation of wealth, but also acts as a gateway to employment, education, healthcare, and social benefits access, Trump represents the very nature of institutionalized white supremacy. A scion of opulent, unearned inheritance, Trump and his company obtained their success by maiming access to housing—to opportunity and equality—for black America. Trump built his success on the repudiation of King’s work.

After the week of King’s Monday and Trump’s Friday, I wonder just how far this country has really come since King’s death. Perhaps our current moral arc—the moral arc of this America, of this moment, and of this universe—shows a bend not toward justice, but toward something much darker indeed.

By Isaiah Fleming-Klink He is a sophomore in the SFS.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

VOICES

Beyond Thoughts and Prayers

Choose Love With Action AIcha Nzie On Jan. 13, Jewish Life through Campus Ministry hosted a Civil Rights Shabbat. The powerful messages discussed by Rabbi Rachel Gartner, Professor Terrence Johnson, and Professor Jacques Berlinerblau culminated in the urgency for our communities to come together and have one another’s backs. One reading from the Jewish prayerbook, which draws from the Exodus story, stood out to me for its embodiment of the Jewish tradition of deciding at every moment whether to discern, engage, or take action. It is read each Shabbat evening to signify the shift from day to night, from the hustle of the week to the peaceful utopia of the sabbath.

“This is an hour of change.

Within it we stand uncertain on the border of light.

Shall we draw back or cross over?

Whether shall our hearts turn?

Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister, or cross over?

This is the hour of change, and within it, we stand quietly on the border of light.

What lies before us?

Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister, or cross over?”

Right now is indeed an hour of change—for our country, our communities, and our world. And perhaps this transition from the Obama administration to the era of Trump is how we stand, teetering on the border of light.

We have options: for what do we stand? For whom will we fight? How will we take care of ourselves and those most vulnerable?

After tragedies such as the shootings on Dec. 14, 2012 in my hometown of Newtown, Conn., the tradition in the U.S. has become to send “thoughts and prayers.”

After shootings, Americans might buckle at the knees and cry for the victims. Elected officials often tweet their #ThoughtsAndPrayers. But most of those people will not join a local organization fighting for gun reform, and most of those elected officials will accept checks from the National Rifle Association in their next election. How is it that we accept their “good intent” as a legitimate response to horrifying events that are so clearly the effect of their inaction?

While those affected appreciate their message of love and kindness, it is not enough. This rhetoric does not address what the community will face when the cameras leave, and it does not commit to taking steps to make the changes necessary to ensure that what happened in places like my hometown never happen again.

On the heels of Inauguration Day, we must all individually commit to putting that love and intent we hold in our hearts into action. All too often, tropes are used— especially by the left—as a mask and an excuse not to do the hard work; let’s make 2017 the year of buckling down and walking the walk.

In many ways, I fear that liberals of our generation have been spoiled by President Obama’s tenure. For the past eight years, the First Family has represented the idealism, hard work, and inspiration of millennials. Barack and Michelle are not just cool; they’re approachable and smooth; they’re complex yet accessible. They seemingly embody so much of what our generation—the most diverse, tolerant, and revolutionary of any generation before—holds dear. President Obama inspired the next wave of organizers and advocates, and he gave us a glimmer of hope, even through stalled progress in Congress and often in state legislatures. He taught us that change and hope were possible and worthy pursuits. While there are always challenges, there is something to be said about taking solace in the fact that the person at the top has your back.

Now, our generation of movers and shakers, activists, organizers, and informed individuals must reconcile moving into an era where we have a diminished system of checks and balances protecting us, with a Republican majority in Congress and a (likely) conservative Supreme Court. Moreover, there are only four states in the union with both a blue legislature and governorship.

We should not mince words: there is no need for the right to compromise with the left because it has full control over every arm of government. And so, we remain with a government that wants to undo the last eight years. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and ex-chair of Breitbart said once in a conversation with The Daily Beast, “I’m a Leninist ...

Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

We are heading into an uncertain storm. How do we weather it? Zadie Smith, one of our most important literary and activist voices today, recently wrote, “At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind ... But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.”

How do we play a finer tune and all sing along?

Join the Women’s March. Do not downplay the power of students. Find the organizations, student leaders, and

active professors with whom to join and get involved. Now is the time for radical thought, radical restructuring, and radical exploration. We must adapt and act in order to safeguard what we hold dear in an era of political and social uncertainty. Next, we know very well from the campaign season that President-elect Trump and those surrounding him have no qualms about targeting Muslims, immigrants, undocumented individuals, people of color, and “the other” in general. It is our duty to protect those neighbors who are most directly impacted by the dangerous rhetoric and actions of Trumpism.

Write down your biography: who you are, what you love, what you fear, and the things you’d never do or say. We have no idea what is to come, and those things might be tested. Additionally, learn how to discern truth, because Trump’s tactics of confusing the press and the Twittersphere are ways with which he seeks to discredit all sources of information, muddle the truth, and cause utter distrust in government and civil society. Self-education is critical and will ground us in whatever direction we go, while also providing perspective. Most importantly, be in constant contact with a set of people who will check on you and keep you afloat.

This moment will require all of us to chip in both in big ways and small. #ThoughtsAndPrayers are not enough.

Will we draw back or cross over?

This is the work of our ancestors and those who came before us. It rests on the shoulders of activists and organizers, union reps, and academics of the past, and has been passed to us like a baton. It is the work of which civil rights advocate Rabbi Abraham Heschel spoke when he famously said, “When I march, my feet are praying.” It is enduring and spiraling; the arc of justice is not a straight line. Sometimes it feels as though we take two steps forward and three back.

Maybe that’s what we’re experiencing now, as we conclude a week bookended by Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. So we will persevere and choose love, but with all the actions, progress, hardship, and battles that entails.

By Sarah Clements She is a junior in the College.

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JANUARY 23, 2017

GUerrilla Warfare The Fight for Laughter on the Hilltop

By Daniel Varghese Aside from the occasional snide remark in Matthew Kroenig’s Introduction to International Relations lecture, the Reiss 103 auditorium is not usually a space for comedy.

Half of the “stage” is occupied by a large lab bench. Yet on Wednesday Dec. 7, the final night of the fall semester, underneath two imposing prints of the periodic table of elements and in front of a professor’s lectern, GUerrilla Improv defied the conventions of their performance space.

The show featured both long- and short-form improvisational comedy over four acts. Scenes varied widely in setting and topic. Skiers grumbled about the expensive fares on “Mt. Pricey,” Hannah Montana led a press conference about maple syrup, an unusual student impressed at his college admissions interview with his bubble-blowing skills, and former lovers bickered in a series of court cases over instances of unwanted food sharing.

The group’s referential style and willingness to abandon convention charmed their relatively small audience, who filled about half of the seats in the large auditorium, largely by simply acknowledging that the members were improvising.

The show, whimsically titled “All Day Breakfast” with the disclaimer that breakfast would not be provided, was only the group’s second public performance, and the first since the group became an official Georgetown student group with access to benefits early last month. But while this performance, the culmination of eighteen months of hard work, succeeded, its catalyst was painful, persistent failure.

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Origins in Failure

Before founding GUerrilla Improv, Lexie Hoeglmeier (COL ’17) auditioned unsuccessfully for the Georgetown Improv Association (GIA) three times. The drive to continue auditioning, despite her persistent failure, came from Hoeglmeier’s relentless desire to pursue comedy as a career.

“As long as I can remember I’ve wanted to do comedy,” Hoeglmeier said. “Each year after I didn’t make it, I felt like I was missing out on something ...I felt like there was a part of me and what I wanted to do that I was neglecting.”

In the fall of 2015, Hoeglmeier’s sophomore year, she estimates approximately 60 people auditioned for the GIA.

Only two were offered a spot on the team. Hoeglmeier saw this disparity as an opportunity.

“There’s always like 20 people at callbacks,” she said.

“That’s enough for two whole teams.”

The Idea

Each of the ten original members of GUerrilla Improv have auditioned unsuccessfully for the GIA at least once.

In fact, the first meeting of what would later develop into GUerrilla Improv took place at the end of the first round of auditions under the fluorescent lights of Hoya Court.

The idea Hoeglmeier presented to the four other auditionees had been brewing in her mind as early as a year before that day in the Leavey Center. Initially, she thought she could organize what is referred to in improv as a “jam,” which would involve getting people together in a casual setting to play improv games and hold practice scenes.

With this in mind, Hoeglmeier enrolled in an improv class with the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City the summer before her final audition for the GIA. After class one day, Hoeglmeier asked her instructor for advice.

After assuring her that she had the necessary technical skills, Hoeglmeier’s instructor warned her that she should still be prepared for the worst.

“If this is something that you really want to do,” he told her, “and you don’t make it on that team, start your own team.”

“I had never really thought of it like that concretely before,” Hoeglmeier explained. “I didn’t think that I had the means personally, I didn’t think that I had the skills.”

Following her third rejection from the GIA, Hoeglmeier began to run jams for anyone interested in improv. What had started as one jam per week in September quickly turned into two, and the small informal group continued to grow.

The jams soon became formalized as weekly, open practices. Each Saturday from 2-4 p.m., members of GUerrilla Improv hold a session focused on basic improv techniques taken from improv classes at UCB or Dojo Comedy, in Washington D.C., the UCB Comedy Improvisation Manual, or personal experience.

These weekly meetings are designed specifically for beginners. For Hoeglmeier, everyone is welcome.

As the group ballooned, the second weekly practice spawned for those more serious about improv, those who might be interested in performing for a public audience.

During these practices, members of the more exclusive performance team learn and practice advanced improv techniques, including more complicated scene structures and specific terminology.

When Hoeglmeier, Rieve Bule (NHS ’19), and Ryan Yoch (COL ’19) began the process to give GUerrilla Improv access to benefits and official club status, this practice structure became the foundation of the club’s pitch to the Council of Advisory Boards (CAB).

Membership in GUerrilla Improv is not earned through an audition. Instead, Hoeglmeier and Bule developed a tiered membership system based on attendance at open practices.

To join “the back line,” the first level of membership, you must come to three open practices in one semester.

If you attend seven, you are invited to join “the front line,” attend the second practice of the week, and can be considered to act in any of GUerrilla’s public performances.

The group’s name, GUerrilla Improv, is a reference to warfare involving small mobile groups of combatants with varied training. The idea came about organically during one of the group’s first practices in an ICC classroom.

The phrase slipped out of Hoeglmeier as she was addressing the group, which at the time included several students who had never previously attended an open practice, explaining why she had been scrambling to find a classroom for the rehearsal.

“I said, ‘Yeah, we’re doing a pretty guerrilla thing.’”

The name caught on immediately. “[Our team] is something that came out of nowhere and that people weren’t expecting,” Hoeglmeier said.

Initially, the group eyed acceptance as a group within the Performing Arts Department, which would have meant funding through the Performing Arts Advisory Council (PAAC). But according to Hoeglmeier, they didn’t believe there was money in the performing arts budget to support new groups, especially when the group would not be bringing in money itself.

Eventually, GUerilla was granted access to benefits through the Student Activities Commission (SAC). In a unanimous vote, citing the group’s five year plan and

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

awareness of their needs, the SAC agreed that GUerrilla should be considered a Georgetown group.

“The reason SAC took us is because so much of our mission is based on fostering a space for people interested in comedy, interested in improv,” Hoeglmeier explained.

“Because so much of it is…building a community and focused on the teaching, the learning, the practicing, that made it fall comfortably under SAC.” “More than any sort of financial help we got from it, what it represents helps us more than anything else … the fact we’ve been granted club status means that we are a legitimate source of comedy on campus,” Bule added.

“It feels really validating,” Hoeglmeier continued.

“It feels good knowing that it’s not just us convincing ourselves that people want us. We pitched our group and people wanted us.”

***

Learning to Laugh

While the ensemble’s talent was immediately evident to those who populated the seats of Reiss 103 during “All Day Breakfast,” unlike Hoeglmeier, many of the now official group’s members had never seriously studied or practiced improv comedy before joining GUerrilla.

Some, like new cast member Logan Arkema (COL ’20), had previous experience on the stage.

“I did community theater a lot like elementary, middle school, some stuff in high school,” he said. “With improv, I just did improv club…which was very low key.”

Others had even less exposure to improv.

“My primary improv experience was watching “Who’s Line” between the ages of four and seven, not understanding a single joke, but loving it anyway,” said Angela Caprio (COL ’19), who also joined GUerrilla in the fall.

For many in the club, the desire to join GUerrilla came out of a frustration with the culture at Georgetown. As early as his New Student Orientation, Arkema realized that the existing culture might pose an issue for him.

“At this place, people take themselves pretty seriously, and I think people take themselves a little too seriously,” he said. “I’m going to need some time to get out of this.”

For others, the desire to try improv and join GUerrilla came out of the need for a creative outlet.

“I came into college still feeling like I was a theater kid…I felt like I still needed an acting outlet,” Bule said.

The sentiment was echoed by Caprio. “I realized, hey, I don’t have a creative outlet at Georgetown because I’m always doing my German homework.”

Rob Kem (COL ’20) joined for a mixture of these reasons, to build on his experience with improv in high school, out of frustration with other Georgetown groups, and because he needed another space.

“ The fact we’ve been

granted club status means that we are a legitimate source of comedy on campus.”

“Once I realized that I couldn’t stand to be inside the Philodemic Room, I realized that I need to have some other club and there was nothing else to do,” he said.

Hoeglmeier wants the group to be even more inclusive towards members of underrepresented groups. GUerilla hopes to co-sponsor some of their open practices with organizations like Black House, Casa Latina, and the LGBTQ Center, to encourage students who participate in events in those spaces who might be interested in improv to try it out.

“Comedy is super straight white male … [doing this] is a way to say that if you want to try this, but you also don’t want to not know anyone there, there will be other people from an organization there, other people that you

Daniel Varghese

know, that have the same experience as you … at least in one realm,” Hoeglmeier said.

***

Comedy is Hard Work

For the fourteen members of GUerrilla’s performing team, mastering the art of comedy has required much more than fun and games.

“I had expected that it would be a little more chill than what it turned into,” Kem admitted.

“We have buckled down a lot more since last year,” Bule added.

Despite the fact that improv comedy is performed without pre-determined scripts, props, or costumes, preparing for each show has still required hours of preparation from each member of the team. Despite being in existence for a year and a half, the team has only performed two public shows.

“Last year, [GUerrilla] was a small, but scrappy group,” Hoeglmeier explained. “At the beginning of the year … I was the only one who had been formally trained in improv.”

That limitation made preparing to actually perform difficult, so the group decided to wait until the end of the year Since then, as several members of the group have become more involved and knowledgeable about improv, the team’s preparation has become more focused and efficient.

Still, Hoeglmeier believes that the group has more work to be done to earn its place within the Georgetown community. The team has tried to make membership within the organization free and accessible, and the group does not charge for any of its shows.

“For a lot of people, not only would it be scary to try improv, but to try improv with a lot of strangers … it just heightens the issue.”

But even as the team takes their craft and mission more seriously and prepares for more shows and rehearsals in the coming semester, being a part of GUerrilla Improv has remained a rare and rewarding creative outlet for all its members.

“This is the first thing I’ve really felt a part of at Georgetown,” Caprio said.

Daniel Varghese

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JANUARY 23, 2017

THE WAY TO SAN JOSE RECAPPING THE HOYA’S HISTORIC COLLEGE CUP RUN

The Georgetown women’s soccer team (20-3-3, 6-1-2 Big East) made history in 2016. After a 2015 that ended in a disappointing exit from both the Big East Tournament and the NCAA tournament on penalties, the team began the season with six returning starters from 2015 in its starting lineup, along with a seventh bench player, graduate student forward Crystal Thomas.

Three months after a disappointing start to the beginning of the season, the Hoyas were playing in their first College Cup at Avaya Stadium in San Jose against eventual National Champion Southern California (19-4-2, 8-2-1 Pac-12). The season became something of a fairytale story, capped with the Hoyas’ first Big East Tournament victory in program history, won in front of a home crowd at Georgetown’s very own Shaw Field.

A 3-0 loss to Stanford in the second game of the year did nothing to shake the Hoyas’ confidence, and less than two weeks later, the team grabbed a 2-1 overtime win in Piscataway, New Jersey against then No. 12 Rutgers (12-5-6, 4-2-5 Big 10) behind two goals from junior midfielder Rachel Corboz, the 2015 Big East Midfielder of the Year. Nine days later, the Hoyas downed then-No. 3 Virginia (15-2-2, 6-2-2 ACC) in a come from behind, 3-2 thriller at home. As if that wasn’t enough, Georgetown went on the road and handed then-No. 2 West Virginia (23-2-2, 8-0 Big 12) its first loss after a 1-0 win in double overtime a week later. The Mountaineers would not lose another game until the national championship game against USC. For Head Coach Dave Nolan, those early wins were crucial in setting the tone for the rest of the season.“Beating Rutgers on the road after they had been to final four the previous year had given our kids the belief that we could beat a good team, and that we could beat them on the road, and that we could beat them well,” Nolan said. “And then obviously when you go and pick up wins against West Virginia and Virginia, now all of a sudden you feel like, ‘Wow, we really can play with anybody.’”

BY JORGE DENEVE

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Nolan also emphasized the importance of these out of conference games for the team’s Rating Percentage Index (RPI) ranking, a measure of strength of schedule, guaranteeing more home games for the NCAA tournament.

“Dave always stresses having good out of conference play, and I think he did a good job scheduling these tough games because they really help us in the RPIs and later on getting a bid to the NCAA [tournament],” Corboz said. “I think it’s really helpful that we play those tough games.”

A large part of Georgetown’s success throughout the year came from its dominant defense.

Graduate student defender Marina Paul returned from an ACL injury to lead the Hoyas’ defensive group. Fellow graduate student Corey Delaney, who previously played at Dartmouth, and juniors Drew Topor and Elizabeth Wenger rounded out the rest of the starting back four. Along with sophomore goalkeeper Arielle Schechtman, a transfer from UCLA, the team’s defensive unit allowed only 15 goals on the year. The team conceded multiple goals only three times this season, against Stanford (3), DePaul (4), and Virginia (2). The Hoyas also recorded 17 shutouts in their 26 games, a vast improvement from five in 2015.

While only four starting players are nominally listed as “defender,” Nolan considers defending as something done by all 11 players on the field.

“Defending, for me, is always a mentality, and it starts up front,” Nolan said. “If your forwards and your midfielders aren’t willing to work hard to defend, it puts a lot of pressure on your back four.”

Defending from the front was a trademark for the Hoyas all season long, and the team

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

looked more fluid playing together than in 2015, turning defense into attack seamlessly to keep the pressure on the opposing team.

“I just saw this sort of cohesiveness that I have never seen with a Georgetown team before,” Paul added. “We’re all on the same page; we all have the same goals; we all genuinely want to play for each other.”

This cohesiveness led to seamless transitions from defense to offense. Senior forward Grace Damaska and graduate student forward Crystal Thomas led the attack with their experience, while sophomore forward Caitlin Farrell and redshirt freshman forward Amanda Carolan added an extra spark to a front line that didn’t have any players with double digit goals in 2015. Corboz anchored the midfield, with fellow juniors Taylor Pak and Chloe Knott controlling the tempo of the game. In all, the Hoyas outscored their opponents 61-15 in 2016, improving drastically from the 44-25 margin from the year before.

The Hoyas’ attack was defined by several different types of players. From Farrell’s speed and strength down the right wing to Thomas’ quick feet crafting chances in tight spaces, the diversity of players’ strengths made Georgetown unpredictable and put opposing defenses on their heels.

“It wasn’t always the same type of goal,” Nolan said. “It was a set piece, it was a build up, it was a cross, it was a shot; we could score goals in a variety of ways.”

Big East play witnessed the Hoyas playing at their best and worst. They dominated most of their conference opponents, highlighted by 5-0 and 5-1 wins against Butler (11-7-2, 4-4-1 Big East) and Villanova (4-14, 2-7 Big East) respectively, and a 4-0 win at Seton Hall (5-11-1, 1-8 Big East). The Hoyas also suffered the team’s most crushing loss of the campaign during conference play, a 4-1 defeat at home against DePaul (10-6-3, 7-2 Big East) on Oct. 23. Four first half shots for the Blue Demons translated into four first half goals, and the Hoyas never recovered.

“I think that that game wasn’t really a testament to our whole season,” Paul said. “It was just a matter of every day in practice denying goals as much as possible and then translating that into the game.”

The Hoyas did well to deny goals moving forward, allowing only two over the remainder of the season. The team immediately rebounded with a 3-0 win at Creighton (9-6-2, 4-5 Big East) to secure the third seed in the Big East Tournament hosted at Shaw Field.

The Hoyas handily dealt with Butler 4-0 in the quarterfinals before going to penalty kicks after a 1-1 stalemate with DePaul, the same team that had trounced them 10 days earlier. Unlike the shootout failures that plagued the team in 2015, Georgetown was perfect from the spot and propelled themselves into the Big East Championship against Marquette (12-8-2, 7-2 Big East).

A 2-0 final score does not tell the story of a game that the Hoyas controlled from start to finish to finally hoist their first Big East trophy. Following this impressive victory, the Hoyas earned a two-seed for the NCAA Tournament.

The Hoyas began their tournament run with a 2-0 victory over St. Francis (Pa.) (10-12, 6-2 Northeast) before winning rematches against Rutgers and Virginia by the same score. They outperformed their 2010 Elite Eight run, the program’s previous tournament best, with a 1-0 win over Santa Clara (12-7-4, 6-2-1 West Coast), clinching their first ever trip to the College Cup in front of a joyous home crowd.

Women’s soccer team celebrates first ever Big East Championship

“I think we were just really comfortable at home. We love playing at home, we love winning at home; we love our environment,” Paul explained. “They were big games, but it felt like just another game we needed to win at home.”

Despite the 1-0 loss to USC in the national semifinal, Georgetown welcomed the team home with a victory rally on Monday, Dec. 5, a gesture that both coach and players appreciated.

“I thought it was a beautiful gesture,” Nolan said. “I think that particular event was a nice way for them [the players] to kind of see, ‘Wow, other people think what we did was pretty cool, so maybe it’s time we start thinking that it’s pretty cool too.”

“We haven’t really had that in the past, and it’s nice to know that our fellow classmates and the university are behind us through it all,” Corboz added.

Paul earned third-team all-American honors for her performances throughout the season, as well as Big East Championship Most Outstanding Defensive Player and first-team all-Big East awards. Wenger and Schechtman made the all-Big East second team.

Offensively, Damaska led the team with 14 goals, Corboz and Thomas tallied 11 each, and Carolan added 10. Hermann Trophy semifinalist Corboz also led the nation in assists with 16 and was named to the first-team all-American and all-Big East squads. Damaska won the Big East Championship Most Outstanding Offensive Player and joined Corboz and Paul in the all-Big East first team.

Thomas joined Wenger and Schechtman in the all-Big East second team, while Carolan earned Big East Freshman of the Year and a spot on the Big East all-freshman team. Nolan and the coaching staff, meanwhile, were voted National Coaching staff of the Year.

Unlike past seasons, when the 2017 season arrives, this Georgetown team won’t catch anyone by surprise, but instead will have a target on its back.

“I think our mentality is going to be the same,” Corboz said. “Just work super hard and train a lot and try to have a better season next year.”

“This team was brave enough to set itself up for a lofty goal. A lot of teams won’t aim that high because they don’t want to risk falling short, and this group was willing to put its neck on the line and say, ‘This is what we want to do, and we’re going to go for it,’” Nolan explained. “And I challenged them, I said, ‘Now the question becomes, do you want to go for it again?’”

It would be a mistake to assume, however, that this program is an overnight sensation. Nolan has been at the helm for 13 years and drew attention to the former stars of the program after the Elite Eight victory against Santa Clara.

“People like Ingrid Wells (‘11), people like Daphne [Corboz] (‘14), Emily Menges (‘13), Alexa St. Martin (‘13), all these great players we’ve had come through the program over the years, they’ve got us to this point, not just this particular team,” Nolan said. “All of those kids who came and believed in what we were going to do, they got us to this point.”

Eight starters will return for next season to try to push the Hoyas further in the NCAA tournament, along with younger players such as freshman forward Paula Germino-Watnick and freshman defender Meaghan Nally who have already seen significant minutes this season. The Hoyas now play under the shadow of daunting expectations, but they also benefit from invaluable experience.

Should the Hoyas carry on their winning ways despite the wealth of talent that is due to graduate over the next couple of years, 2016 could be the start of a long-term powerhouse.

Georgetown Sports Information

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JANUARY 23, 2017

Latinx Identity in the Georgetown Classroom

By Cassidy Jensen Chris Wager (SFS ’17) thought he could learn all he wanted to know in Georgetown’s classrooms. But when he developed an interest in Chicano studies, the academic field of Mexican-American culture and history, he found scant opportunities to study his own heritage through his Georgetown coursework. Although a flexible major and supportive professors allowed him to explore his interests, it was only when Wager took a semester off his junior year and returned home to Texas that he finally learned about Mexican-American literature and history in a classroom setting at a local community college. Wager did not take a class at Georgetown with a tenured Latinx professor until this spring semester, the last semester of his senior year.

Realizing what they miss because they are unable to engage with their Latin-American heritage in a classroom setting, Wager and his fellow Latinx students now seek an ethnic studies department, along with more professors of color. For Wager, classes focused on the Latinx experience and population within the U.S. represent a chance for Latinx students to see their own ethnic identity reflected in Georgetown classrooms.

Georgetown’s Main Campus Executive Faculty approved the addition of a diversity requirement to the core curriculum in the spring 2014, and in the fall 2016, University President John DeGioia announced the creation of an African-American studies major. However, there are few curricular offerings on the study of Latinx history, culture, and role as a population within the United States, and neither faculty nor the Provost’s Office are aware of plans to increase the number of classes or professors specializing in these topics.

For some students and faculty, this gap in Georgetown’s curriculum is a lost opportunity for students to learn about both their heritage and a demographic whose size and importance are growing rapidly in the United States.

Monica Valle (COL ’18) and Rosa Alcazar (COL ’19), cochairs of Mexican-American student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán de Georgetown (MEChA), said that many of their high school friends on the West Coast have the opportunity to learn about Latinx history and experiences at their colleges. According to Valle, the MEChA constitution includes as one of its goals the establishment of a Latinx Studies program at Georgetown, although students have not actively pursued this in recent years.

“When I talk to my friends [at other schools] and I hear about these classes I get a little sad because I always thought I’d be taking these classes,” Valle said. “I get here and I see there’s this hole and it’s kind of disappointing.”

Many peer universities offer Latinx studies courses for undergraduates. Notre Dame, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern, Harvard, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of California at Berkeley all offer major courses of study in ethnic studies that encompass the Latinx experience, while San Francisco State University has an entire College of Ethnic Studies with a Latino/Latina Studies Department.

Proponents of Latinx Studies view Georgetown’s lack of a specific focus on the U.S. Latinx experience as a dangerous omission.

“

Competitor schools like Notre Dame have Latin theology, politics, sociology, but the other major Catholic institution whose big claim to fame is politics doesn’t have anyone studying the exploding demographic of the country.

”

“Competitor schools like Notre Dame have Latin theology, politics, sociology, but the other major Catholic institution whose big claim to fame is politics doesn’t have anyone studying the exploding demographic of the country,” said student organizer Kevin Magana (COL ’15). Thirty-four percent of American Catholics are Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Center.

Ricardo Ortiz, chair of the English Department, is one of the few undergraduate professors at Georgetown who teaches about the Latinx experience within the United States. He says

that his class, “US Latin@ Literature & Culture,” is always near or over capacity, and is never dominated by English majors.

“There are always students who just want it because it’s finally a class about their own culture,” Ortiz explained. “There are students from other departments in the College, but definitely from SFS and definitely from MSB who know that if part of the career they want to is to have any relationship to anything about Latino culture in this country, they’re not likely to get it anywhere else at Georgetown.”

Ortiz wants more comprehensive course offerings covering the history, culture, and social and economic experiences of U.S. Latinxs and believes that when it comes to Latinx studies, Georgetown is not leading the pack. “I think depending on who you compare us to, we are either just within the curve or behind the curve,” he said.

As of fall 2016, 7.7 percent of Georgetown’s domestic undergraduates identified themselves as Hispanic or Latinx according to the Office of Assessment and Decision Support.

The university does not collect data on the race and ethnicity of international students, who make up 13.5 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Furthermore, as the Latinx vote becomes increasingly important in the United States, some students and faculty feel that one of the most political universities in the country lacks classes that explore a growing population, according to Magana.

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2060, Hispanic people will make up 28 percent of the population, 119 million people, a significant increase from 17 percent of the U.S. population and 56 million people in 2015. Hispanic refers to people of Spanish-speaking origin, including Spain, while Latinx encompasses people of Latin American origin, including Brazil, so while there is overlap between the two terms, they are not identical.

While the reasoning behind other ethnic studies programs revolves around minorities’ exclusion from the historical record, the argument for Latinx studies is built looking towards the future. “Our compelling rationale for why there needs to be more of this isn’t because of a lack of attention on a past that needs more attention, but our ability to be prepared for a future that’s coming,” Ortiz added.

For Ortiz, Latinx studies is an academic discipline that could cost the university the enrollment of talented Latinx

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

students in the future. College students specifically are expected to be less white and more Latinx in the near future than previous generations, according to Ortiz.

For Latinxs, the distinction between U.S. Latinxs and Latin Americans has implications for curricular richness, faculty representation, and the unity of Latinx student activism. Some Latinxs see these communities as having divergent experiences, meaning that the presence of solely Latin American faculty or classes can be insufficient.

Georgetown does offer a Latin American Studies certificate for students in the College and also regional studies options for students in the School of Foreign Service, but no ethnic studies or major course of study focused specifically on Latinxs.

Wager views the current Latin American course offerings as ill suited for studying Latinx culture and history within the United States. “The Latin American Studies Certificate has such an international affairs focus that it doesn’t lend itself to the study of U.S. Latinos outside of a very international affairs lens but a white colonizing lens as well,” he said.

Valle and Alcazar see a divide between the international students and Latinx students with immigrant backgrounds in the United States, both socioeconomically and racially. These divisions can limit the unity and impact of Latinx students pushing for changes at Georgetown.

The presence of Latinx faculty is an issue distinct from Latinx studies but one that affects the experience of Latinx students in the classroom as well.

Gwen Lochman, the chair of the Spanish department, expressed frustration with the lack of hiring of U.S. Latinxs in particular. “We had a position that would have more than likely attracted a U.S. Latino and it wasn’t filled,” she said. Lochman is still waiting for the position to be filled. Vice Provost of Education Randall Bass did not have information on the specific position and therefore did not comment on the opening.

“If you’re talking about U.S. Latinos, the university counts Spaniards and foreigners,” she continued. That brand of diversity,

From left to right, Rosa Alcazar and Monica Valle

Lochman says, does not attract disadvantaged students in the same way as hiring U.S. Latinx faculty might. While she sees the number of Latinx students and spaces for those students on campus growing, there are still too few U.S. Latinx professors.

“I just want Georgetown to look like America,” Ortiz said, “I want it to look like the world.”

According to self-reported faculty demographic data from 2015, there were 65 Hispanic or Latinx faculty out of 2,454 total faculty; just under 3 percent percent of professors describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino, compared to 55 percent who identify as white. Of those professors, 43 are full time faculty. While this data is not entirely complete or comprehensive since faculty must voluntarily report their racial identity, these numbers show Georgetown just below the national average for Hispanic faculty, which was 5 percent in 2013.

According to Ortiz, U.S. Latinx faculty can have different identities and experiences than Latin Americans from other countries. “On some level they may seem to register in the world as Latino-American, but they don’t necessarily touch that history of marginalization or oppression in the same way,” he explained. Although Ortiz is Cuban-American, the immigrant culture of Los Angeles and its history has shaped his identity as a U.S. Latino, including his role in power dynamics that are not consistently present throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Antony Lopez (COL ’14), a student activist involved in the Cura Personalis Initiative (CPI), a student movement for diversity initiatives at Georgetown, felt that he could not identify with his non-Latinx Georgetown professors during his time in college.

“I think it’s really important to see people who look like you or have similar backgrounds in these positions,” Valle said.

Having Latinx teachers throughout her pre-college education made Valle consider college as a real possibility, though she has never been taught by tenure-track Latinx faculty at Georgetown.

Alcazar also said that she has never had a Latinx professor, a

Cassidy Jensen

problem amplified by her computer science major, a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field historically bereft of Latinx representation.

Bass said that the Provost’s office continues to focus on diversity in hiring faculty.

According to Bass, a Latinx Studies initiative would most likely emerge from a faculty proposal, as other interdisciplinary major and minor programs have done in the past, often spurred by student interest. While student organizing tied to other diversity initiatives, like the recent core curriculum requirement, has been present in the past, efforts to increase Latinx faculty representation or achieve a Latinx Studies program have failed.

“I just want Georgetown to

look like America. I want it to look like the world.

”

The movement for the Engaging Diversity requirement, a two-course diversity requirement for all incoming Georgetown students, involved Latinx student activists, especially when the CPI formed in 2012 with leaders from student groups, including MEChA, the Black Student Alliance, Georgetown Solidarity Committee [Full disclosure: Jensen is a current GSC member but was not involved with the group at the time], Hilltop Tacos, and Phi Alpha Iota. According to Lopez, their initial goals included a permanent Latinx house, Chicano studies, and more U.S. Latinx-tenured professors, as well as the diversity requirement.

The Main Campus Executive Faculty approved the diversity requirement following the student campaign the Last Campaign for Academic Reform (LCAR) [Full disclosure: Jensen was a member of LCAR]. In spring 2014, CPI surveyed students on their knowledge and desire for ethnic studies at Georgetown. Of the 234 respondents, a majority “strongly agreed” that “Georgetown ought to have a program in American Ethnic Studies,” and that “American Ethnic issues will become an important topic in the coming decade.”

Despite the potential for support, significant challenges face Latinx studies proponents. Some Latinx activists see their community as lacking the cohesiveness of other ethnic or racial groups. “The African-American students have been very united for a while,” Magana said of his experience organizing Latinx students. “We are close to 50 years behind their movement. The community is so diverse socioeconomically, ethnically, racially that it’s hard to have a united front.”

Even during Magana and Lopez’s time at Georgetown, they said it was difficult to unite Latinx students behind one single issue or platform. After activists like Lopez and Magana graduated, the Latinx-focused academic and faculty changes they hoped to see did not materialize.

Valle and Alcazar see the one-year-old La Casa Latina, a house primarily for Latinx students, as an opportunity for Latinx students to come together to discuss issues like academic offerings on their history. “We just need to organize,” Valle said.

“I know for sure that people are interested, a lot of us have talked about it.”

Latinx students describe Latinx studies as a means for liberation and self-knowledge.

“There’s a lot of power in knowing your history,” Valle said.

“A lot of us come from disadvantaged backgrounds to these institutions that aren’t meant for us. There’s power in knowing where you stand in something.”

JANUARY 23, 2017

LEISURE

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Toni Erdmann Explores the Touching, Quirky Relationship Between Father and Daughter IMDB

German director Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann is one of the boldest films of the year.

Built on witty dialogue, bombastic set pieces, and great performances by its lead actors, it is a truly unique film. Toni Erdmann is a comedy/drama focusing on the relationship of a father trying to reconnect with his daughter. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes, and it proves worthy of that distinction. Ade does an excellent job of creating an absurdity in the pedestrian setting of a white-collar workplace. The film is weird and wonderful, equal parts hilarious and touching.

Winfried (Peter Simonischek), a music teacher, lives alone with only his dog, his mother, and his sardonic sense of humor to keep him company. He harasses delivery men by telling them that he’s put a bomb in the package, and jokes that he’s been hired by an oldfolks home to scare the patients to death. The jokes cover up a lonely interior that longs for his distant daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller). Winfried’s daughter is the polar opposite of her father: ambitious, pragmatic and sober. Ines works far from Winfried in Bucharest, and her absence is so conspicuous that Winfried boasts that he has taken to hiring a substitute daughter. His loneliness compounds when his dog dies and his music student cancels lessons. Fed up with never seeing Ines, Winfried concocts a plan to spend more time with her that involves posing as a life coach named Toni Erdmann for one of her clients.

Maren Ade, Simonischek, and Hüller all do a great job shifting between comedy and drama. In a particular scene, Ines is forced to sing “The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston in front of a room of strangers. The lyrics “the children are our future” are so on-the-nose and the singing by Ines so over the top that one can’t help but laugh. But when Ines fails to acquiesce to her father’s silly lifestyle, Winfried’s disappointment is palpable. Ade deserves immense credit for being able to so seamlessly marry such conflicting themes. Winfried and Ines serve as great foils to each other. They approach the same problem in radically different ways: Ines is always businesslike while Winfried is joking

at every turn. Ines seems incapable or unwilling to see that her career is draining her of happiness while Winfried is oblivious to how upsetting his antics can be. This disconnect between Ines and Winfried is painfully apparent at times. At one point, Ines plans to show Winfried a palace in Bucharest but takes him to the mall instead when one of her clients needs help shopping. Winfried’s forlorn expression perfectly encapsulates the central theme of two characters who need to save each other from the loneliness of ordinary life.

Toni Erdmann is ultimately about a father teaching his daughter to take life a bit less seriously. Ines is in a world that only values facts and figures. She sees the potential layoff of hundreds of workers as the cost of doing business. Hüller portrays the character as one that does actually care but has been forced not to. She always appears to be a bit uncomfortable and uneasy. It is up to Winfried to show her a happier way of being. He himself is truly unhappy, but he covers it up with constant joking. Simonischek lets the audience see the unhappiness with an expression as grave as the jokes are lively. His daughter’s unhappiness bothers him immensely, and it leaves him with no option but to teach her how to be happy again.

It’s a testament to Simonischek and Hüller that they manage to make this relationship work so well. Simonischek in particular does a tremendous job of injecting every scene with a zaniness that elevates the mundane setting. His crazy costumes and absurd accents are so off the cuff and unexpected that every gag lands with hilarious results. The viewer is left on the edge of their seat wondering what stunt he will pull next. However when he is absent, the film suffers. Another weakness is the movie’s length. At 2 hours, 42 minutes, watching this movie should not be a spontaneous decision. Toni Erdmann often finds itself caught up in a fairly extraneous plotline regarding the details of Ines’ consulting job–a plot somehow more boring than it sounds. Too many scenes focus their attention here, and it causes the film to drag. Getting past the length may be difficult for some, but it is well worth the time. Toni Erdmann is not a film to be missed.

By Brice Russo

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

15

LEISURE

Evenings at the Edge Offers an Exciting New Spin to the National Gallery

By Caitlin Mannering On Jan. 12 from 6-9 pm, the National Gallery of Art buzzed with an energy imperceptible during its regular hours. Glowing tables, thumping music, and dim lighting all added to an aura of intrigue and excitement. This popular after-hours program, aptly named Evenings at the Edge, takes place the second Thursday of each month through April in the Gallery’s East Building.

The Gallery hosts a variety of different entertainers to complement the already stunning exhibits during the Evenings at the Edge. The event on Jan. 12 included short pop-talks on certain pieces of art, a DJ, and a performance from Story District, a contemporary storytelling organization based in D.C. The East Building is home to the National Gallery’s modern collection and several rotating temporary exhibitions. The building reopened this past September after being closed for three years due to renovations. Exciting new additions to the East Building include a Roof Terrace and two skylit indoor tower galleries. One of the current exhibitions is Photography Reinvented: The Collection of Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. This exhibition, running until March 5th, includes artists that have changed the scope of photography such as Thomas Demand, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Jeff Wall. Thomas Demand’s “Clearing” (2003) is a beautiful, massive chromogenic print of sunlight streaming through a dense forest and immerses the viewer in its vivid portrayal of nature. Vik Muniz’s “Marilyn Monroe, Actress, NY City, May 6, 1957, After Avedon (Gordian Puzzle)” (2007) is a reworked masterpiece of the famous photograph of the actress taken in 1957. Although beautiful, Monroe looks noticeably forlorn in the photograph. Muniz has reconstructed the photograph in his piece with hundreds of puzzle pieces, giving Monroe a pockmarked look. The piece depicts how the press picked apart Monroe’s life before and after her death. The exhibit is a fascinating look into how photography has evolved and is just one of the amazing aspects of the East Building to explore.

The pop-up talks took place throughout the different exhibits in the East Building, and they sought to give museum-goers a fresh perspective on the Gallery’s collection. Museum guides led the talks to facilitate conversation rather than giving lengthy lectures about the artwork. Visitors were encouraged to voice their opinions of the art, namely what emotions it evoked and what techniques the artist used to provoke that reaction. In the pop-up talk on Max Weber’s “Rush Hour, New York” (1915), visitors described their sense of claustrophobia and the frenetic nature of Weber’s early modernist work. They observed underground subway rails and elevated railroad tracks in Weber’s interpretation of cubism and futurism. One Gallery visitor even described the fragmented pieces of blue as flashes of the sky in between the skyscrapers of the city. Another visitor noticed music notes in the piece and felt as if she were in the raucous cacophony of rush hour herself. Overall, the experience gave visitors a unique opportunity to interact with strangers’ opinions regarding the art in the gallery, allowing them to be exposed to new ideas and to bounce their thoughts off of one another.

The contemporary storytelling organization, Story District, also presented “The Living Canvas: True stories where life imitates art.” Story District, known as SpeakeasyDC from 20052015, aims to be a platform for the expression of diverse perspectives and allows newcomers to storytelling the chance to train and have their stories heard by a large audience. The organization performs for about 10,000 people annually and puts on shows in famous D.C. venues such as the 9:30 Club and The Lincoln Theater. The show at the National Gallery this past week

Nighttime image of East Building’s 19 angle with The U.S. Capitol in the rear.

Rob Shelley, National Gallery of Art

took place in the Gallery’s auditorium and featured five storytellers who each told a unique, humorous story from their own life. Each story was paired with several photographs of artwork from the Gallery’s collection. The photographs were projected on a huge screen behind the storyteller, and the image switched at the appropriate time in the story.

Meredith Maslich’s story of conquering her fear of swimming in the ocean featured paintings of old 17th century ships during a storm as she described what she thought of as “angry” breakers. Mitch Belkin told visitors of his decision to meet women in an intro to drawing course in college and his embarrassing full-body nude self-portrait. Jenny Splitter described her successful diet after having her first child, but the diet’s eventual tragic end in which she ate wedding cake out of a trashcan at the reception. Perhaps the most dynamic story was Nuphur Mehta’s. He described the introduction of his Jewish girlfriend from New Jersey to his Indian immigrant parents and periodically lapsed into a hilarious impression of his mother’s scolding.

The storytellers performed in front of a packed auditorium and continuously had the audience in hysterics. Overall, the storytelling offered a refreshing and fun perspective on what can often be perceived as static artwork.

The National Gallery’s Evenings at the Edge program is a clear success. Hundreds of guests roamed the East Building, and the art seemed to come alive in between the soft glow of the lights, the music, and the constant hum of voices eager to share their views on the artwork.

The air of excitement and energy was palpable throughout the event. Evenings at the Edge is sure to be an enthralling, after-hours adventure for Thursdays to come.