The Georgetown Voice, February 16, 2018

VOICE The Georgetown

February 16, 2018

Women Underrepresented on the Hilltop page 8 Friday Music Series Focuses on Intercultural Understanding page 10

February 16, 2018

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE Volume 50 • Issue 12

staff editor-in-chief Alex Boyd Managing editor JAKE MAHER news

executive editor lilah burke Features editor ALEX LEWONTIN assistant features editor EMILY JASTER news editor MARGaRET gach assistant news editors noah telerski, katya schwenk

culture

executive editor mike bergin Leisure editor Amy GUAY assistant leisure editors brynn furey, Mary Mei, Xavier Ruffin Sports editor jorge deneve Assistant sports editor Santul Nerkar, Aaron Wolf

“Untitled” by EGAN BARNITT

contents Editorials Carrying On: God’s Work, My Hands Beth Cunniff What’s in a Diss?

Ava Rosato When Terrorism Hits Close to Home Inès de Miranda Underrepresented on the Hilltop: Georgetown’s Women Fight for Equality Claire Goldberg Travel Ban(d)s: Friday Music Series Focuses on Intercultural Understanding Jon Block Georgetown Students Explore the Convergence of Finance and Technology Santul Nerkar Love Saxa Claims That University Diverted Donations Katya Schwenk

opinion

4 5 6 7 8-9 10-11 12 13

How I Got Over: A Journey from the Depths of Trauma Emily Jaster

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Deep Dive into Parallel Universe Nancy Garrett

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Correction to “Stressed and Silent” run in the 2/9/18 issue: A previous version of the article misidentified Leanna Syrimis’ school and graduation year. She is SFS ’18, not COL ’19.

The opinions expressed in The Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of The Georgetown Voice. The university subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. All materials copyright The Georgeton Voice, unless otherwise indicated.

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

Executive editor CHRIS DUNN voices editor SIENNA BRANCATO Assistant Voices editors Lizz Pankova, Julia Pinney Editorial Board jon block, Alex Boyd, CHris Dunn, Nick Gavio, Emily Jaster, Alli Kaufman, Alex Lewontin, Jake Maher, Caitlin Mannering, GRAHAM PIRO, Isaiah seibert, PHillip Steuber, Jack Townsend

halftime

Leisure editor Claire goldberg assistant leisure editors Dajour Evans, Rachel Lock, Eman Rahman Sports editor Beth Cunniff Assistant sports editor Teddy Carey, Jake Gilstrap, Tristan Lee

design

Executive editor Jack Townsend Spread editor Jake Glass Photo Editor Rachel Zeide cover Editor aicha nzie assistant design editors Delaney Corcoran, Margaux Fontaine, Egan Barnitt, Lindsay Reilly Staff designers Matt Buckwald, Rachel Corbally, Alexandra Falkner, Samantha Lee, Sarah Martin, Janis Park, Max Thomas

copy

copy chief audrey bischoff assistant Copy editors Cade Shore, Hannah Song editors Mya Allen, Leanne Almeida, Mica Bernhard, Brendan Clark, Kate Clark, Nancy Garrett, Caroline Geithner, Isabel Paret, Madison Scully, Maya Tenzer, Neha Wasil

online

website editor Anne Freeman Podcast editor Gustav Honl-Stuenkel assistant podcast editor Parker houston social media editor isaiah seibert MULTIMEDIA editor DANIELLE HEWITT

business

general manager naiara parker assistant manager of alumni outreach anna gloor assistant manager of accounts & sales karis hawkins

support

contributing editors Cassidy Jensen, Kaei Li, Graham Piro, Rebecca Zaritsky associate editors Jonny Amon, Emma Francois, Nicholas Gavio, Allison Kaufman, Isabel Lord, Caitlin Mannering, Devon O’Dwyer

Staff writers

Umar asif, MOnica Cho, Rachel Cohen, Annie Coyne, Errol French, DamiAn Garcia, jayan hanson, tristan lee, Brynne Long, Shadia Milon, Brice russo, Will Shanahan, cam smith

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Read & Listen on georgetownvoice.com SPORTS

Top Dogs: Hoyas Outlast Butler on the Road Assistant sports editor Santul Nerkar recaps the men’s basketball team’s upset of the Butler Bulldogs. Read more to learn about junior forward Marcus Derrickson’s big game.

News

Clinton Presents Peace Awards at Georgetown Hillary Clinton spoke at Gaston Hall last week to present the 2018 Hillary R. Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security. Read up on assistant news editor Katya Schwenk’s coverage to learn about award recipients Lyse Doucet, Nadia Murad, and Wai Wai Nu.

Voices

Roses and Chocolate on the Brain Assistant Voices editor Elizabeth Pankova devotes her latest column to the neuroscience and philosophy of Valentine’s Day. Pankova explains the holiday’s psychological impacts on single people.

She Runs the World

Podcasts

In “Episode 5: Kathy Powers on Restorative Justice,” Kathy Powers discusses growing up in a working-class family, being a female African-American tenured professor, and working on restorative justice in colleges.

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February 16, 2018

EDITORIALS

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Georgetown Should Pay Reparations to the Descendants of the GU272

In 1838, Maryland Jesuits sold 272 slaves to plantations in Louisiana to keep Georgetown financially afloat. In recent years, the university administration has attempted to make amends with the descendants of the 272. In September 2016, the university’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation released its recommendations that the university formally apologize and offer preference in admissions to descendants.

At that time, this editorial board praised the recommendations as a good first step toward reconciling Georgetown’s history with slavery. Still, we believed much more needed to be done. We wrote that the university’s decisions, “ultimately do not do enough to benefit the descendants of enslaved people who worked for the Jesuits.”

This editorial board believes that it is the university’s responsibility to come to terms with its past and right its wrongs by doing what it can to support the descendants of the 272 human beings whose sale allowed it to survive. This includes monetary reparations.

GU272 Isaac Hawkins Legacy Group, an organization which represents the descendants of Isaac Hawkins, the first slave listed on the bill of sale, has recently renewed calls for the university to pay monetary reparations to the descendants. The group acknowledges that the university has taken strides in the right direction by apologizing for its past actions. This includes renaming buildings that formerly bore the names of those involved in the sale to honor Hawkins and Anne Marie Becraft, a free woman of color who established schools in the Georgetown

neighborhood. But the group argues that these actions, especially admissions preference, still fall short of the mark.

Renaming buildings might alleviate some of the pain of the past by recognizing that while we should not forget our missteps, we cannot honor those who commited them. An apology shows that the university wants to try and address how its past actions have impacted the lives of generations of people. Likewise, the creation of the Institute for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies as well as the creation and expansion of the Georgetown Slavery Archive are all positive steps undertaken by the university. But, while admissions preference does offer an opportunity to receive an education for some, it does not provide support to the many who do not want to or cannot attend college.

Beyond the actions the university has already taken, reparations allow the university to reach a broader group and make a greater impact on their lives. The university has shown that it wants to make amends, but so far, it has done this on its own terms. Expanding reconciliation to include reparations allows the descendants of the 272, who were sold on Georgetown’s terms, to decide what to do with the money. Empowering the descendants to make their own choices in this process should be the goal of reconciliation.

Monetary reparations would take the university down a necessary new path by including descendants in the decision-making process. Reparations would allow for descendants to make their own choices regarding the money, whether it be put toward a Georgetown education, tuition at another institution, or anything else they might decide. The importance of the act does not lie in how the money is used. Rather, this act is necessary in or-

der to forgive a debt that the university owes to the descendants of the 272. The very existence of this institution rests upon the backs of the men, women, and children whose lives were uprooted so that the university might continue to operate. Because Georgetown has continued to benefit from their ancestors’ sale, it should repay that debt to the descendants.

This editorial board will not make recommendations as to how that should be done, including how much should be paid out, or for how long. We lack the necessary understanding of the university’s finances and the legal ramifications involved in such a transaction. More importantly, it is not the place of a student newsmagazine to put a price on a human life. But we do believe that whatever route the university might take in this endeavor, it should involve the direct participation of the descendants in making these important decisions. Empowering those whose lives have been affected by our history would make the process more healing and restorative.

While the university continues to work towards this goal of healing its past, it must take that final step to repay its debt. We recognize that the steps the university has taken have been in the right direction, and have at the very least helped to create a dialogue about these issues for universities across the country grappling with similarly dark histories. Monetary reparations would be a sign that the university values both the 272 human beings that suffered to maintain our school and also their descendants.

The choices Georgetown made have echoed through history to impact their lives as well. To make things right, Georgetown should heed the call by descendants for reparations, and make sure to involve them in every step along the way.

Fin/App Must Not Repeat Media Funding Mistakes This is the most important month of the year for most campus organizations. For two hectic weeks, tickets for GUSA executive compete in a campaign full of profile-picture advertisements, nearly life-size posters, and candidate debates. But there are also other important decisions for the 2018-2019 academic year that will not occur on election day.

This week, Media Board, which represents student publications and media organizations, submitted its budget request for the 2018 fiscal year. Last year, the GUSA Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee (Fin/ App) cut Media Board’s funding by 39.5 percent despite an overall increase in allocations for campus clubs. Fin/App will hold its annual summit on Feb. 24 and then deliberate on Feb. 27.

This editorial board urges all members of the Georgetown community to keep campus media in mind during these pivotal few weeks. We call on students to make it clear

to all candidates and GUSA senators that campus media is valued. The GUSA executive may not participate directly in the budgeting process, but the executive can and should set a tone for the entire campus.

Fortunately, the Voice has survived despite the budget cuts, but it has not been easy. Despite submitting a budget that already reflected minimum operating costs, we were forced to make further sacrifices. This year, we decreased our circulation by 75 percent and cut one full issue (of only 16) to remain within our budget, all despite having our most successful year in advertising revenue to date.

The Voice is big enough to weather the storm, but many of the smaller media organizations are more vulnerable. As the editorial board wrote last year, “The needs of publications like the Caravel, The Georgetown Independent, and Triple Helix, among others, and non-print organizations like GUTV are all essentially disregarded by the budget cut.”

To justify the cuts, Fin/App called on campus media to decrease printing costs and shift towards an increasing online presence. Many of these smaller organizations only have a handful of issues a year. Some, like GUTV or WGTB, do not publish in print at all. The Voice has and will continue to increase its online presence to adapt to an increasingly digital age. However, it is not the role of Fin/App to dictate how Media Board spends its funds. Just as Fin/App does not pressure club sports to spend on specific tournaments or equipment, Fin/App must respect the sovereignty of media organizations.

There is no onus on other organizations to do anything other than provide skills and experiences to their members. For campus media, the bar is set unjustly higher. Our representatives claim to serve all members of the Georgetown community. This February, we ask you to hold them to do just that. Our campus cannot become a community unless we are all represented, and we are all informed.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

VOICES

God’s Work, My Hands CARRYING ON: VOICE STAFFERS SPEAK “Let us mourn black and brown men and women, those killed extrajudicially every 28 hours. Let us lament the loss of a teenager, dead at the hands of a police officer who described him as a demon.

“Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor just. Let us call for the mourning men and the wailing women, those willing to rend their garments of privilege and ease, and sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin.”

Beth Cunniff is a junior in the College majoring in government. She is the Halftime sports editor of the Voice and enjoys losing her voice at Georgetown basketball games.

MARGAUX FONTAINE and Beth Cunniff

The words echo solemnly through the chapel on the ground floor of the churchwide office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). It is the Monday after Neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, killing Heather Heyer.

In the final week of my internship at the ELCA, I was overwhelmed by the solidarity of the churchwide staff. After a weekend of feeling helpless and hopeless about the insensible violence and hatred, I was incredibly grateful to be a part of a church that sees itself as an agent for change and social justice. I was grateful to be surrounded by people who have dedicated their lives to the work of the church. I was proud to be Lutheran.

My life has revolved around the Lutheran church since before I can remember. My parents found it to be the perfect mix of my dad’s Catholicism and my mom’s Presbyterianism. At our first church in Ohio, my parents ran the youth group, and my dad organized the men’s softball team. But for my mom, the youth group wasn’t enough, and after years of being a high school history teacher, she decided to make a career change.

The summer before I started kindergarten, we moved to New Jersey so my mom could attend seminary.

After five years, my mom graduated from seminary, and when I was in fifth grade, she was called to a congregation. It was there that I cultivated many of my strongest relationships, grew in my faith, and developed an understanding of the link between church and God’s work in the world.

My first run-in with the intersection of faith and social justice came through LGBTQ issues. Over the course of my mom’s time as a pastor, she performed numerous civil unions for gay and lesbian couples before the legalization of samesex marriage, and performed baptisms for their children and grandchildren. At a time when issues of marriage and civil rights for members of the LGBTQ community were hotly debated, especially among Christians, my church never wavered in its commitment to LGBTQ people. Speaking to my mom about an LGBTQ member of the congregation, I remember saying, “Well if she’s not going to heaven, then the rest of us are screwed.”

In 2011, at the ELCA churchwide assembly, which meets every few years to make governing decisions, the church voted to allow openly LGBTQ people to be ordained and called.

It was a contentious decision, and many churches around the country left the ELCA, but the church stood steadfast in its belief that who you love is not indicative of your worth or favor in God’s eyes.

I personally attended the churchwide assembly in 2013, when the church was passing a social statement on community violence. Less than a year after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the statement lacked a section on gun violence.

The memorials committee had removed it for fear that it would cause the statement to fail. I spoke, along with others, on the floor of the convention, urging voters to adopt an amendment that called for advocating for stronger and stricter gun laws. I said that while many people in this country only think about guns after events like mass shootings, people in my community are at risk of gun violence every day. A young man from Milwaukee spoke after me. He said that the church cannot claim it is committed to diverse youth if diverse youth are dying. The amendment passed. The church showed its commitment to justice and promised to strive for it.

Christianity can be a dirty word in progressive politics, as the Christian Right has capitalized on anti-LGBTQ, pro-life, anti-government assistance policies. But it doesn’t have to be a dirty word. I want to work in progressive politics because of my faith. I believe that fighting for progressive issues advances the work of Christ in our world. I get funny looks when I tell people this. But Jesus called for caring for the poor and the sick, not the one percent. He called for us to love one another, not to exclude someone because of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. He broke bread with people on the fringes of society and called out those who used their faith to take a moral high ground. Jesus was pretty progressive. It makes sense that the church should be, too.

This year has included its fair share of regressive policies, hateful ideas, and harmful rhetoric. I’ve often found myself feeling hopeless about the state of our country and our world.

As a college student, it’s easy to feel like there’s nothing I can do. But a talk with my mom or a sermon from the pastor of my church on 14th and N streets reminds me: This church is striving for justice. I’m a part of a community that is fighting for DREAMers, supporting Native Americans at Standing Rock, providing opportunities for women in developing countries, and combating racial inequality. In the ELCA we like to say, “God’s Work. Our Hands.” God’s work is to lift up the lowliest among us. Our hands are our community. My mom’s job as a pastor and my dad’s choice to leave corporate law to work as counsel to the ELCA embody this principle. Hopefully my work can, and will, too.

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

VOICES

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Delaney Corcoran

What’s in a Diss?

Listen to the accompanying podcast, Fresh Voices, on georgetownvoice.com Dissing yourself is a form of humor familiar to most. Moments of vulnerability and confidence alike often oblige us to defer to joking about everyone’s easiest target—themselves. But in what sense should devaluing yourself ever be a source of humor?

All too often, attempts to jokingly self-deprecate come across as either attention-seeking or pity-inducing. Personally, my own shots at self-defeat regularly end in impromptu pep talks when I was simply after a few laughs. In these moments, my friends are quick to assure me that I’m not a complete idiot for thinking econ courses would help me strategize in Monopoly, or that it’s not that weird that I often try to extract meaningful life lessons from Spongebob episodes. Somehow, these efforts to lift me up leave me feeling just a little worse, since I wasn’t really looking for consolation in the first place. Still, the art of the self-diss holds great potential given the right intention and delivery.

Psychologists studying humor have noted that self-deprecation is one of several styles of humor which are distinguished as being either positive and adaptive, or negative and maladaptive.

Self-deprecation is easily classified as a negative humor when compared to self-enhancing and affiliative humor, which use an optimistic outlook and the ability to enjoy humor in a group setting, like in the case of banter.

The self-deprecator is, conversely, the cynical humorist. The psychologist cautions against self-defeating tendencies, but the comedian campaigns for them. For example, late comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s signature phrase, “I don’t get no respect,” became a theme for his stand-up sets that brought self-deprecation to the forefront of American comedy. Suddenly, self-defeat became a type of endearing cynicism of which comedy approved.

Dangerfield landed laughs with jokes like: “When I was born, I got no respect. The doctor told my mother, ‘I did all I could, but he pulled through anyway,’” and “I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”

With Dangerfield, it’s obvious that self-deprecation has a certain charm, which he and others in comedy have perfected.

And the formula for delivery seems simple enough: Take a stab at yourself, at anything from your physical appearance and relationships to your behaviors and beliefs. So why is self-deprecation sometimes still considered taboo in social settings? When does self-dissing go from feeling funny to falling flat?

Some anthropological studies suggest that humor is much more complicated than daring jokes and simple laughs. Humor can be a way to express worldviews or cope with tragedies. It might be a mechanism of self-defense, a tool for bonding, or a way to reduce or escalate situational tension, depending on timing. For cultural anthropologist Gil Greengross, self-deprecating humor can be an indicator not only of general intelligence and verbal creativity, but also of moral virtues such as humility.

Greengross came to this conclusion about the truer functions behind self-deprecation after conducting a study that tested how personality and sexual attraction influenced the use of self-deprecating humor.

In his study, Greengross took college-aged participants and examined how their personalities affected the kind of humor they enjoyed. Greengross found that, on average, a person preferring self-deprecating humor may be highly affected by their own emotions, more spontaneous than planned, more reserved than sociable, and more suspicious than cooperative. A person who relates to such qualities as introversion, incredulity, and emotional intensity will reasonably look inwards in unpacking these traits through humor, likely victimizing themselves as opposed to mocking others.

In incorporating these results into conclusions related to attractiveness, Greengross had participants listen to opposite-sex voice recordings of people who were described as having different levels of social and professional status and who produced

different types of humor. Afterwards, participants rated each presenter’s attractiveness as a potential long-term partner. Self-deprecating humor was considered attractive when it came from a high status-level presenter, despite its personality correlation with less favorable traits. Conversely, low-status presenters who used self-deprecating humor were associated with defeatism, subordination, and other traits that made them less likely to be considered an attractive long-term partner.

In light of these results, there’s reason to ponder whether self-deprecation is a universal tool for experts and amateurs alike or whether it’s a resource that only some can afford to use. Professional comedians like Dangerfield who have established their comedic careers might have achieved the “high status” necessary to use self-deprecation in an attractive way. Others without such a settled status might be more prone to the uncomfortable reactions and pity that many of us have experienced when trying to target ourselves.

Despite any concept of status however, humor is a universal experience that transcends cultures and careers. Whether or not self-deprecating humor is better off used by professional comedians or your cringingly un-funny father, there’s something about it that speaks to a humility and sensibility that is admirable in anyone, so long as its intention is playful. Self-deprecation, in this sense, is a way to refrain from ever taking yourself too seriously.

Personally, it’s also nice to be reminded that, at the very least, my flaws can be funny.

Ava Rosato is a sophomore in the College majoring in justice & peace studies. She enjoys naps and nature and sometimes even takes naps in nature.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

I remember when the news broke about the shooter at the Bataclan concert venue and the explosions at the Stade de France. I didn’t handle it well. I’m French, and most of my family lives in Paris. For hours, I was shaking and checking the news and my phone every other minute—even after I had reached out to all of my friends and family.

There have been four major terrorist attacks in France since the January 2015 attack at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, as well as many more with fewer casualties. Most people have heard of them and remember things like #JeSuisCharlie and Facebook’s translucent French flag photo filter. Although I don’t know anyone who was hurt in the attacks, I connect to them through their familiar locations and my friends who were affected more directly. There is an almost physical pain that comes with knowing that a place and people with whom I identify were intentionally hurt.

After the attack at the Bataclan, followed by another in Nice during a celebration of Bastille Day the next July, France had a drop in tourism. I’ve had people tell me that while they’d love to go to France, they just don’t feel it’s “safe these days.”

I almost find it ironic, given that before Jan. 7, 2015, France hadn’t experienced an attack with 12 fatalities in over 50 years.

This means France has rarely ever been the target of such extremist anger. The substantial spike in attacks is heartbreaking. Paris is one of the most beautiful and interesting places I’ve ever been. It’s both a maze of historical layers and a vibrant metropolis, and for potential visitors to feel unsafe there is unfortunate.

Over the past few years, I have noticed an increase in security measures and armed forces in Paris. This seems like it would create a gloomy atmosphere, but it has become a regular feature. What is noticeable to locals is the change in people’s attitudes toward one another. Anyone can tell you that the classic Parisian stereotype is one of rudeness. I never believed that was entirely true, but there is a general tendency among Parisians to mind their own business and not go out of their way to be friendly. Today, people seem more connected. People are apologetic rather than angry when something goes wrong on the subway or at a store. During the Nice attacks, when a truck barreled into a crowd watching fireworks, killing 84 people, the trending hashtag was #PorteOuverte, or “open door.” People tried to help each other, welcoming strangers into their homes to protect them.

I happened to go to Nice for the first time ever a week after the attack. My best friend and I were driving into town, and I was pointing out things that looked interesting from the backseat. When I remarked that the beach on the edge of the city looked spectacular, my friend told me in a subdued and reproachful tone that we were on the Promenade des Anglais, the exact location of the tragedy. A few days later, as we were walking home from a night out, we came upon a massive area covered in flowers, cards, stuffed animals, posters, and candles.

We stopped for what was supposed to be a few minutes, and I kneeled to read what was written. Surprising no one more than myself, I broke down crying for half an hour. It was awful to read personal notes and messages of support written by

VOICES

When Terrorism Hits Close to Home

children and adults alike. I have never been more confronted by my inability to understand how someone could do this. Rationally, I know that terrorism is an awful and misguided pursuit born out of frustration and bad influences. But to stand there, looking at both the waves and the candles, on top of pavement that I knew had been bloodied, was to see the wreckage left behind.

On the way home, I came the closest I’ve ever gotten to fighting with my best friend. I think she saw my crying almost as a performance because I hadn’t even noticed a few days prior when we were in the same spot, and I had reacted less than she had when we found out it had happened 10 days earlier. I still don’t understand why we were upset with one another. Collective grief is a hard thing to explain, because while we all feel it, we also watch and judge each other. It’s why the hashtags and flag filters leave a bad aftertaste, since even though it comes from a good place, we are also making a conscious effort to publicly show that we care. I worry that we confuse actual empathy with public shows of support that are more about us than the victims.

Terrorism is designed to affect us. Terrorists intentionally choose to show that they can hurt us even without choosing a victim. We are afraid of the invisible danger of a stranger’s hatred. But most would say that, as awful as terrorism is, facing the tragedy also brings people together. We are never as close as when we find compassion for one another. Not only has tourism bounced back in France since the first half of 2016, with an increase of over 20 percent in Paris, but also the attacks meant to scare people away have instead improved the way that people interact. Instead of being frightened of who their neighbors could be, people empathize more with one another.

We’ve grown used to seeing and hearing about attacks. But we only really measure the significance of their trauma when we are physically affected or emotionally attached. I choose not to live in constant apprehension of something that could happen but likely won’t. France hasn’t visibly changed in the aftermath of these series of attacks, but I feel that grief is closer to the surface and makes me more aware of my surroundings. It seems the only thing we can do in the wake of tragedy is to appreciate what we have and be there for one another when things go wrong.

Delaney Corcoran

Inès de Miranda is a sophomore in the College majoring in political economy.

She participates in DC Reads and is a member of the Voice.

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

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Underrepresented on the Hilltop Georgetown’s Women Fight for Equality

By Claire Goldberg Margaux Fontaine

Georgetown University’s Board of Directors—which governs the university and makes decisions regarding tuition, academic programs, and other university policies along with President John DeGioia—is composed of nine women and 32 men. The board’s executive committee has 12 men and two women. The executive committee’s compensation subcommittee has four members, all of whom are men. The board’s faculty relations subcommittee has six members, all of whom are men.

The athletics committee has one female member, Kathleen Hugin (COL ’82), out of seven. The Law Center affairs committee has seven members, all of whom are men, though the majority of law students nationwide and at Georgetown University are women.

Georgetown University only has one administrative committee with near-equal numbers of men and women: the Committee on Strategic Development and Advancement, chaired by Laurie Hodges Lapeyre. There is one more man than woman on the membership list.

Of Georgetown’s 12 deans, one for each school and three for the Medical Center, 10 are men. According to U.S. News & World Report, Georgetown’s undergraduate population is 56 percent female.

The Office of Assessment and Decision Support provides data from 2011-2015 regarding the racial and gender makeup of faculty and staff but does not break them down by department or type of faculty. According to this data, as of fall 2015, there were 955 female faculty members, 1,238 male faculty members, and 261 faculty members of unknown gender. The data also shows that there were 156 Asian faculty members, 90 black faculty members, 609 faculty of unknown race, and 1,360 white faculty members.

Although women at Georgetown have some distance to go before they see equal gender representation in faculty and administration, they have not stopped striving. Female students and university leaders have shown concern for representation and have begun the work of tipping the scales toward equality.

Professor Marcia Chatelain teaches in the history department, where there are 27 male and 15 female professors, and in the African-American studies department, where there are 16 male and 11 female professors. She says she came to Georgetown in part because she felt it was a place female employees could thrive. But she acknowledges that Georgetown is not as diverse as it could be.

“Georgetown is not immune to the structural and social issues that get in the way of achieving a diverse faculty, staff, and student body across units and disciplines,” Chatelain wrote in an email to the Voice. “Every college and university in this country has a long way to go in terms of true and meaningful diversity.”

University spokesperson Rachel Pugh said the university is working toward gender equality in upper-level hiring practices.

“Georgetown is deeply committed to gender equity and is preparing to launch a Presidential Task Force on Gender Equity with a focus on faculty and senior administrators,” Pugh wrote in an email to the Voice. “We are committed to continuing to

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

recruit the very best and most talented students, faculty and staff and to ensuring that our faculty and senior administrators reflect the diversity of our community.”

Some of Georgetown’s academic departments are also individually pursuing the practice of hiring more women and minorities. This year, the government department hired Jamil Scott, an African-American woman who recently received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. As of now, there are 51 male professors and 20 female professors in the department, not including Scott. She’s slated to start in the fall.

“

Black and qualified women exist who can fulfill those roles, so the most logical next step is to hire them.”

Some students have noticed a lack of representation in faculty and administration. “One of the spaces where I see a little bit of gender inequality is just in the range of the professors I have,” said Nicole Heitsenrether (SFS ’19), a deputy co-chair of the Own It Summit, a day-long event focused on women’s empowerment. “Especially kind of being in the SFS, a lot of my professors have been male. Even this semester four out of five of my professors are male. It doesn’t necessarily say anything about the hiring practices here, but I have seen a lack of women professors throughout my time here.”

Isatou Bah (COL ’20), who is the operations chair of the student club Georgetown University Women in Leadership (GUWIL), also spoke to the need to hire women and people of color, explaining that improved gender and racial diversity helps students feel more connected to staff and faculty.

“Black and qualified women exist who can fulfill those roles, so the most logical next step is to hire them,” Bah said.

“I know women out there with the experience who want to be deans. So let’s just hire them.”

Laura Kovach, director of the Women’s Center, noted the importance of thoughtful hiring practices at Georgetown.

“Like any organization, it’s imperative that we review our recruiting and hiring practices to make sure they are equitable and diverse,” Kovach said. “The next step is to put into practice the hiring of diverse women into leadership and faculty roles. I hope Georgetown continues to reflect upon and pursue this practice.”

In student life at Georgetown, many organizations are working to diversify their membership. The Corp has altered its application process in a move to hire more students of color, while Blue & Gray is working to include students of a variety

of backgrounds, including religious and gender identification.

There are also various groups that exist for the purpose of furthering gender and racial equality, such as the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access and the Women’s Center.

Pugh noted that several university organizations exist to help promote gender equality and diversity, including the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security, as well as the Georgetown Women’s Alliance. Lisa Krim, a senior advisor to President DeGioia and chair of the Georgetown Women’s Alliance steering committee, said that the alliance was formed from an energy in the community and a need for more organized communication within already-existing women’s organizations.

C.C. Borzilleri (COL ’18) is a fellow for the alliance, where she works on programming and offers student input in faculty decision-making. The purpose of the alliance is to promote dialogue, create a network for women on campus, including faculty and staff, and, as Borzilleri wrote in an email to the Voice, promote gender equality.

“Gender issues at Georgetown are a work in progress, and there is certainly room for lots of improvement,” Borzilleri said.

“But [campus] resources are a band-aid to the symptoms of the problem of gender inequality on campus. What we need is a permanent solution to address the underlying causes of this inequality. There is a pervasive culture of tendencies across campus that put women at a disadvantage, and it requires active management by the whole community to change this situation for women.”

Borzilleri sees hope for women both on campus and throughout the country.

“Though the situation is unfortunate that there is a culture of unequal treatment between women and men, I am inspired by the energy across campus and the nation from women ready to make a difference,” Borzilleri said.

The Own It Summit is one example of a campus initiative to combat gender inequality, founded for women and by women. The summit staff has pushed to include a more diverse group of women in the past few years. Heitsenrether, one of Own It’s deputy co-chairs, said that though the board of the summit is open to people of all genders, this year it is made up entirely of women. The summit also has a “manbassador” program to encourage men to make efforts for female empowerment.

“I think it’s very helpful to have spaces and groups that are putting women’s issues at the forefront of what they’re doing,” Heitsenrether said.

GUWIL, which works to promote professional development for women, recently made an effort to include more women of color. Bah said she gained her role on the executive board in part due to this effort.

“What GUWIL is doing is great because they’re actually making an effort to reach out to other people, starting with me and other black girls on campus,” Bah said.

Lauren Stricker (SFS ’18), who is GUWIL’s executive president, admits that the organization has a history of lacking diversity. She also discussed the reasoning for choosing Bah as a member of the board.

“As a board we have been fully aware of the reality that GUWIL remains a predominantly white organization,” Stricker

said. “[Bah] acknowledged GUWIL’s problems in a lack of diversity and had impressive ideas about how to improve GUWIL so it is accessible to all members of Georgetown.

We also talked openly about how important representation in leadership is to creating a positive image of the organization as a whole. We cannot expect our membership to become more representative if our board is not, too.”

But even though student clubs and some academic departments are working toward diversifying staff, Chatelain believes it must be reflected on a larger scale.

“I appreciate that my colleagues and the administration are devoting time and resources into investigating this problem here,” Chatelain said. “And hopefully we can become leaders in helping our peers not only reduce discrimination but also work toward a world that eradicates gender-based discrimination.”

Anne Paglia contributed reporting.

Margaux Fontaine

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

10

Travel Ban(d)s Friday Music Series Focuses on Intercultural Understanding

By Jon Block

Jake Glass After the election of Donald Trump, Benjamin Harbert, a professor in the Georgetown University music program, began to hear lots of the same questions from his students. They wanted to know how they could become more involved politically, and how they could combine their newfound interest in politics with their passion for music.

“I was at a bit of a loss for telling somebody what to do with that,” Harbert said. He decided to try and bring the people most affected to campus to have their voices heard.

This idea further solidified for Harbert in January 2017 when Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens from seven majority Muslim countries—Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Libya—from entering the United States. Harbert now had a specific group in mind and decided to try and bring musicians from countries listed on the travel ban to play at Georgetown. More than a year after the initial ban, that idea has become reality, with a half dozen artists from travel ban countries performing at the university this semester as part of the Friday Music Series.

Organized by Harbert and professor David Molk, the Friday Music Series is a concert program that takes place every semester on Fridays at 1:15 p.m. in McNeir Hall. A broader theme like the one for this semester is new for the series, which normally features performances from Washington artists and Georgetown faculty in part because of financial constraints.

Harbert partnered with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) in order to better recruit and afford musicians from across the country and around the world. CCAS was able to provide additional funding through a Department of Education Title VI grant that supports programming around the Middle East and North Africa.

“We’re hoping that this is just part of bringing awareness to these places and countries and cultures and showing how they

aren’t frightening and scary and something to keep away from, but instead there’s something to embrace,” said Rochelle Davis, a professor in CCAS who helped Harbert put together the series.

Many of the artists coming to perform believe the series can bring benefits to the Georgetown community.

“I think that this concert series, with the title of the ‘travel ban music series,’ is something where we all just have a conversation and I think it brings people together,” said Kamyar Arsani, an Iranian musician based in Washington who performed as part of the series on Feb. 9.

“There's a Palestinian oud player, Iranian daf player. There's a Syrian singer next door. There's a flamenco dancer next door. And it might sound very surreal, yet we all live right next to each other.”

Kareem Roustom, a Syrian-American composer coming to Georgetown on April 20, echoed Arsani. “I think any kind of public performance, if nothing else, it’s a symbol of understanding the other,” Roustom said.

The ideas of unification and understanding were ubiquitous, as Betsayda Machado, a Venezuelan Afro-soul musician

performing on April 6, wrote to the Voice via her manager. She wrotev that her concert was an opportunity to, “understand a little more about each other.”

Not all of the artists playing in the Friday Music Series are from travel ban countries. This is partly because during the process of organizing the series, the list of banned countries and the legal status of the ban kept changing. After federal courts blocked the initial travel ban, President Trump issued a new ban on March 6. Then, on Sept. 24, he revised the ban via Presidential Proclamation 9645. Currently, travel is restricted from eight countries: Iran, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, North Korea, Venezuela, Chad, and Libya. Venezuela, North Korea, and Chad were added and Sudan and Iraq removed from the initial ban. The current ban is still facing legal challenges.

Because of the confusion, Harbert and Molk expanded their search to include musicians from nations with which the United States has, as Harbert put it, “awkward relations.” Turkish artist Ozan Aksoy is playing a show on music from Anatolia on April 13, and Palestinian musician Huda Asfour performed with Arsani. Asfour also does biomedical and electrical engineering research at George Washington University, where she received her Ph.D. Given the broader scope of this semester’s Friday Music Series, Harbert hopes to expand the impact that the program has on campus.

“Somebody who’s reading in the news about whether or not we should block people from Syria coming in should get a chance to experience Kareem Roustom’s contribution to the arts in the United States and are able to hear his negotiation of his Arab and his American identity in his music,” Harbert said.

“That’s an intimate experience and that’s a social experience.”

Past performers have visited classes and given lectures, a trend that will continue this semester, with Roustom even

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Huda Asfour, left, and Kamyar Arsani perform in McNeir Hall. staying for a short residency. He will visit Arabic studies and film studies classes—Roustom has scored several movies—as well as talk to the wider Washington community.

The series also provides a space for musicians to do more than just perform during their concerts. Harbert believes a political message becomes stronger when music creates a connection with the audience. He has planned talks by the Friday Music Series performers at the end of their concerts to further expand the public conversation.

“I think [the series] has the benefit of giving a platform for musicians who are forced into having a political awareness so they can speak,” Harbert said. “And we’re trying to create as much of a spoken dialogue after the concerts as we can so that we can discuss issues.”

Arsani plays the daf in a performance for the Friday Music Series.

Photos Tithi Patel “It brings all the music that we might not hear as often in D.C.,” Arsani added. He noted that music from other parts of the world is often treated as a once a year experience at a place like the Kennedy Center, when in reality this music exists much closer to home.

“There’s a Palestinian oud player, Iranian daf player. There’s a Syrian singer next door. There’s a flamenco dancer next door.

And it might sound very surreal, yet we all live right next to each other,” Arsani said.

Harbert said that the benefits of this semester’s Friday Music Series would not be as strong without the partnership between the music program and CCAS, which allowed many of these prominent, talented, and diverse artists to come to Georgetown.

“What I would like to see happen extend from this is for us to be in dialogue with other departments. I think that our relationship with CCAS has the potential to grow and maybe we could replicate that with other departments, because I think we have such a great audience on campus, and those are the [kinds of musicians] I want to bring in to benefit people in here,” Harbert said.

More than anything else, though, the Friday Music Series is about the music itself. Both the organizers and performers of the series feel that music is a powerful tool in creating cultural empathy and understanding.

“Music is not really a universal language, but I think the act of making music is a universal language. And I think it’s one of those things that very very clearly defines us as humans and as compassionate empathetic creatures,” Roustom said. He and Arsani both expressed their frustrations with the travel ban and the politics behind it but recognized the role music could play in overcoming those challenges.

“Music and art come into place and break the walls that we have imagined between us,” Arsani said.

Machado’s rhythm-heavy, Afro-Latin music may offer a stark contrast to the Middle Eastern and Persian inspirations of the other artists, but the underlying message is the same. “This is what music does, it unites people. When you dance you are not white or black, American or Venezuelan,” she wrote.

If music’s role is indeed as important as these musicians make it out to be, then it makes sense that they want programs like the Friday Music Series, where people can experience new music and connect to the culture behind that music.

“I am hoping that these kinds of programs will happen more often and we don’t wait for nations to be banned or people to be banned or any dramatic change,” Arsani said.

Roustom agreed. “I think any step where we’re exposed to the unfamiliar in an environment that’s open and about learning and sharing ideas I think is always a great thing,” he said. “Not only is it a great thing, I think it’s a vital thing. We are putting ourselves in a very dangerous situation when we don’t do that.”

It’s a new and evolving environment for the Friday Music Series. But for Harbert’s inquisitive students, they may now have their answer for how a musical life and a political one can coexist.

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February 16, 2018

Georgetown Students Explore the Convergence of Finance and Technology The ascent of cryptocurrencies, digital currencies that rely on mathematical algorithms to verify transactions, has revealed a growing intersection between two major sectors: finance and technology, together commonly referred to as FinTech. Bitcoin is just one of the components of the volatile cryptocurrency market, which is projected to reach a valuation of over $1 trillion by the end of 2018. Against this backdrop, one club, Georgetown FinTech, has taken on the challenge of exploring and addressing the implications of the current junction between the two industries. “[FinTech] can refer to anything from blockchain, to cryptocurrency, to A.I. [Artificial Intelligence],” said William Moore (MSB ’19), co-founder and president of Georgetown FinTech. Georgetown FinTech’s stated mission is “to foster a community passionate about startups, venture capital, and organizations leveraging technology to transform the financial services industry.”

A growing number of institutions, including banks and governments, are moving toward using the technology employed by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies: blockchain, a system that allows market participants to keep an eye on digital currency exchanges. Blockchain consists of a series of individual “blocks,” which are lists of records secured using cryptography. Thus, blockchains have the potential to secure key records and institutions.

Moore believes FinTech and the technology in the industry have the potential to foster more trust among people, institutions, and governments. “[Blockchain] has a chance to create integrity throughout all of our institutions, which includes business and government,” Moore said. “That addresses the concerns that you might see in society today, whether it’s a backlash to the financial crisis or negative reactions to politics in general. This technology has the potential to create trust and transparency, specifically transparency to voters in terms of government, stakeholders when it comes to business.”

In addition to increasing trust and transparency, Moore argues FinTech will allow increased access to the market for individuals previously left out, including people with bad credit or those who have been historically neglected by financial institutions. “[FinTech] also has the potential to create opportunities toward people who may be financially underserved,” Moore said. “People normally regarded as ‘risky’ may have the chance to participate in the economy worldwide.”

Georgetown FinTech member Harsh Thakker (MSB ’18) takes an even stronger stance on FinTech’s potential.

“The rise of crypto[currency] signals a shift in economic faith and power from the state to the firm—and that’s what has so many governments running scared,” Thakker said.

There have been setbacks in the burgeoning confluence of finance and technology. A number of start-up cryptocurrencies, including LoopX and Prodeum, have run scams on their investors. Typically, these scams promise money to investors, raise a large sum of money off of initial coin offerings, and then disappear, along with the crowdsourced funds. While Moore sees the infancy of FinTech as a reason for caution, he is bullish on its prospects for the future.

“It’s a very nascent field,” Moore said. “The bigger point to me, is the underlying technology, which is blockchain technology. I don’t think those [scams] are representative of what cryptocurrencies are going to be about.”

For Moore, the upside of blockchain technology is that it’s a distributive trust network, and thus would bring an unprecedented level of societal transparency. And while cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin remain relatively non-liquid assets, large companies such as Microsoft and Expedia have started accepting them as payment.

David Rapp (SFS ’18), chief operating officer of NextEra Capital, a Georgetown club that focuses on cryptocurrency investment and training, also spoke of the volatility of the digital asset as a reason to tread carefully.

“Cryptocurrency is certainly a risky asset class. It is not uncommon to see a 10-20 percent change in the valuation of a particular currency in the space of just a few hours,” Rapp said. However, Rapp added that the uncertainty presents the opportunity for investors to make significant returns on their speculation.

Moore laid out several short- and long-term initiatives that Georgetown FinTech hopes to accomplish with three departments: research, outreach, and projects.

“With research, we really want to get people from all different backgrounds, so we have three different areas: business, tech, and policy.” Club members will do primary research on their topics and subsequently write articles, Moore said. An example of recent student-led research is a report titled “The Complex Regulatory Landscape for FinTech,” which was published by the World Economic Forum.

When it comes to outreach, Moore stresses that FinTech’s collaboration with graduate business students gives the

club unique access to industry insiders and connections with jobs and internships.

“Having access to people already in the industry was a really cool thing for us, but also having access to the resources they [MBAs] have,” Moore said. Moore also hopes to create an external executive board with people from the industry, who can further foster the formation of the club and serve as advisors.

Moore sees the final component of Georgetown FinTech, projects, as the biggest key to the club’s expansion.

“Expanding the club through projects is our entrepreneurial segment. We’re currently partnering with NextEra. Any general member of our club will be able to go through that [cryptocurrency investment] training program.” Moore also said that Georgetown FinTech is aiming to partner with consulting firms in order to work on case-to-case projects relevant to the industry.

Georgetown FinTech is working alongside an MBA faculty member who is conducting workshops with people involved in the industry at large, Moore said. As part of the partnership, Georgetown FinTech teaches about blockchain technology.

Moore is also taking a FinTech class, one of only five of its kind in the country, offered by the McDonough School of Business. John Jacobs, director of the MSB’s Center for Financial Markets and Policy, is teaching the class along with Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Moore himself is auditing the course, as he was unable to secure a spot in the highly sought-after class.

“One of the things they’re doing is cryptocurrency training, showing you what is a scam and what is not,” Moore said.

Moore added that the class will also address other imminent topics in FinTech, including artificial intelligence and its implications. Additionally, the course will primarily feature case studies that inform students about how companies employ technology-based solutions.

As FinTech takes on a greater role in the global economy, perhaps even bringing about a seismic alteration, a new generation seeks to gauge its impact. Organizations like Georgetown FinTech reflect the race among students and investors to be on the front lines of the industry’s future.

By Santul Nerkar

13

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

Love Saxa Claims That University Diverted Donations

By Katya Schwenk

Love Saxa, a student group that advocates for traditional relationships, has accused the university of deliberately misappropriating at least $400 in donations meant for their organization. The club’s legal counsel, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), described a sustained campaign against the organization on campus in a Feb.1 letter to President DeGioia.

The ADF claimed in the letter that the Center for Student Engagement allocated donations meant for Love Saxa to the LGBTQ Resource Center and the acapella group the Saxatones, and withheld the group’s proceeds from a November phonathon.

The ADF is a Christian nonprofit that provides legal advocacy on conservative issues. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the organization an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

Love Saxa describes its mission on its website as “promoting healthy relationships and sexual integrity at Georgetown University.” Last semester, students petitioned for the university to defund Love Saxa due to the group’s opposition to samesex marriage, which they said violated university tolerance standards. The Student Activities Commission declined to sanction the organization in an 8-4 vote in a Nov. 3 hearing.

The first claims of misappropriation of funds came on Jan. 27, when Love Saxa posted a screenshot of an email from a donor on its Facebook page. The donor, whose name was redacted, wrote that he received an incorrect gift receipt from the university after giving money to Love Saxa.

“It says I gave $50.00 to LGBTQ Resource Center Reserve,” the donor wrote. “I thought my donation was going to your organization. Do you know anything about this?”

Love Saxa asked other donors to inform the group of their donations so students could follow up with the university. They also contacted the ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom. A Feb. 1 press release by the ADF includes photographs of the donor’s original check for Love Saxa, and the gift receipt issued by the university showing an allocation of the $50 to the LGBTQ Resource Center.

“I’m not even surprised anymore about Georgetown’s antics,” wrote Amelia Irvine (COL ’19), president of Love Saxa, in a Jan. 27 Facebook post about the donor’s email.

University spokeswoman Rachel Pugh wrote in an email to the Voice that as of Feb. 2, Love Saxa had received all donations sent to the group.

“When the university receives a gift designated by donor for a student group with access to benefits, the gifts are allocated with a designated worktag that ensures they reach the intended recipient,” Pugh wrote.

According to Pugh, because Love Saxa had not received a donation before the fall of 2017, this pathway was not yet complete for the group, leading to the errors.

“As always in these cases, we corrected the mistakes,” she wrote. “[We] have developed a path to ensure that funds are routed properly in the future, and have communicated to the student group and the donors that the gifts have been properly allocated.”

“It says I gave $50.00 to LGBTQ Resource Center Reserve. I thought my donation was going to your organization.”

Travis Barham, Love Saxa’s ADF attorney, said he took issue with university’s explanation for the misallocations.

“I personally find that very hard to believe,” he said of Pugh’s statement. “Love Saxa has been fully operating for over a year, with a fully functioning set of accounting codes.”

Moreover, Barham said that as of Feb. 5, the organization had not received any additional funds from the university.

“None of the donations identified in our letter have been restored,” he said. “The university has not responded at all.”

Staff at the LGBTQ Resource Center, the Center for Student Engagement, and Georgetown Gift Processing did not return the Voice’s requests for comment.

Love Saxa and the ADF say that the misallocations were deliberate. Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF’s Center

for Academic Freedom, wrote in the letter to DeGioia that these events were part of a larger university campaign against Love Saxa.

“Georgetown officials have found a more secretive way of expressing their animosity towards Love Saxa and of punishing the group for its traditional views,” he wrote.

Barham echoed these sentiments. “The university investigated the organization for weeks, interrogated our client for hours,” he said, referring to the November hearing process. “Our concern is that there’s an overall effort to punish Love Saxa.”

Langhofer wrote in the letter that after the Student Activities Commission confirmed Love Saxa’s official university status, funds intended for Love Saxa were funneled towards other campus groups, including Love Saxa’s “ideological opponents,” referring to the LGBTQ Center.

“Almost immediately [after the hearing], Georgetown officials began mistreating Love Saxa in a different, more insidious way: by misappropriating donations,” Langhofer wrote in the letter. “[T]his sort of continued misappropriation can hardly be dismissed as a coincidence and appears to be just another form of theft.”

Chad Gasman (COL ’20), president of GU Pride, who in October requested along with Jasmin Ouseph (SFS ’19) that the commission recommend defunding Love Saxa, disagrees with this narrative of a wider university push against the group.

“For Amelia Irvine and the Alliance Defending ‘Freedom’ to imply that the reason their money is being mishandled has anything to do with Jasmin’s complaint last semester is preposterous,” Gasman wrote in an email to the Voice, noting that the university had not supported their and Ouseph’s petition. “[T]he Student Activities Commission, the Center for Student Engagement, and the Vice President for Student Affairs all chose to summarily reject the complaint and continue funding Love Saxa,” they wrote.

Barham and the ADF set a deadline of Feb. 9 for a response from the university, warning that they will take further steps if there is no university action.

“A lot will depend on what the university says,” Barham said. “We will see what our response is based on how they act.”

As of Feb. 14, neither the university nor the ADF have issued further public comment.

February 16, 2018

LEISURE

14

How I Got Over: A Journey from the Depths of Trauma

By Emily Jaster

Trauma cuts through lives, tearing them apart and leaving individuals struggling to put the pieces back together. For Washington-based artist Adrienne Gaither, recovery from trauma is like art: both are “time based processes.” Her latest collection and first solo exhibition, How I Got Over, visualizes her journey toward recovery in a series of geometric paintings and craggy paper collages, and will remain on display at the Transformer Gallery until Feb. 24.

How I Got Over is Gaither’s second introspective work.

The first was Levels, a 2016 site-specific installation of an explorative set of objects from Gaither’s own home: African masks, books, and post-its bearing motivational messages.

This level of warmth, comfort, and humanity does not appear in How I Got Over.

Gaither’s paintings are bold. The untextured, bright polygons end in sharp, precise edges. The painted shapes dominate each canvas and violently compete for attention. In the sub-collection Remembrance & Mourning, each image is a battleground, a freeze-frame action shot.

The shapes are layered, and the naturally recessive blues and whites are often pushed to the background while oranges, yellows, and blood-reds slice through the foreground. In “Kill Shots,” a jagged bolt of yellow traverses the nearly 5-foot tall canvas like lighting, slashing through jewel-toned blocks of red and blue and flooding the lower half of the canvas with

gold. Likewise, trauma thunderously strikes and slashes a oncepeaceful world, demanding unbroken attention.

The shapes, like fragmented shards of glass, divide and interlock. The paintings are mosaics built from the ruins.

Gaither’s pieces evoke a step on the journey to peace. They are like a life coming together again.

The shapeshifting cycle from destruction to creation permeates nearly all of Gaither’s work, each collection showcasing a different rhetorical purpose for her cuttingand-assembling motif. Memoirs of Permanence: A Winning Hand divides images to a pixelated, digital effect. Gaither cuts and pastes images of her relatives to mimic playing cards, imposing rank and prominence, but also hinting at dehumanization.

IDSC (I Don’t See Color) juxtaposes spectrums of skin tones with palettes inspired by clinical color blindness, calling into question the meaning of “color blindness” in a social context. In her most outwardly political collection, ... And Now the World Knows, Gaither paints familiar historical and political images over pages of famous dystopian novels—1984 and The Hunger Games—leaving exposed lines and phrases that contextualize and comment on the visuals. The natural integration of dystopian quotes with real-world events draws a foreboding parallelism.

Compared to the first set of paintings, the shapes of the sub-collection Reconnection & Integration are meek and

timid. Unlike the acrylic polygons, the colored paper cut-outs cluster at the center of their respective collages, engulfed in the white background. Rather than join along clean borderlines, white gaps peek out between cut-outs. They fit together almost perfectly, but not quite; there is frustration in the reassembly. “And I Can Change” introduces organic shapes and curves in turquoise and earthy green, welcoming life into the image. Reconnection is the process of revival.

Amid the chaos, four of the acrylic paintings seem outwardly orderly. The sub-collection Safety and Stability, is composed exclusively of right-angled polygons. But even these shapes do not depict a resolution. The long rectangles of “An Absence of Clarity” orbit around the center, coming together but refusing perfect alignment. At the core, concentric squares deepen in color, like a darkening tunnel with no visible outlet. “The Step Between” appears pixelated—an image in the making. Bars align vertically in “Stonewalling,” as their order imposes a new barrier. Each stage of recovery from trauma introduces new and unique challenges, and the journey is never steady.

“Synthesize” is the largest painting, and the plainest. A pale pink and orange frame surrounds a pale beige rectangle, bisected by a bright red bar, like a scar. The muted colors convey calmness, and the frame conveys unity, but the memory of the traumatic Remembrance & Mourning remains.

All PHOTOS Emily Jaster

15

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

LEISURE

Deep Dive into Parallel Universe

By Nancy Garrett Parallel Universe, ARTECHOUSE’s most recent exhibit presented in partnership with the Turkish art group Ouchhh, is a hypnotic fusion of art and technology defined by its endless dichotomies. Black and white, dark and light, full and empty, everywhere and nowhere—these are the contradictions that give Parallel Universe its untiring dynamism. The exhibit envelops visitors, wrapping them in sound and noise, and releases them about an hour later, unaware how much time has passed.

When visitors arrive at ARTECHOUSE, a docent greets them and leads the group down a winding stairwell deep into the belly of the building. As the group descends, visitors will begin to hear the rumble of deep bass, growing louder and louder with every step, until the curator stops to deliver the necessary epilepsy warning. Her speech is meaningfully punctuated by the thumps of bass, which visitors can feel as well as hear from behind the exhibit entrance door. When the doors open, the explosion of flashing lights and throbbing music makes it feel like walking into the maw of a monster.

The main exhibit space is about the size of a basketball court and has dozens of bean bag chairs scattered under three towering white walls that stretch to high ceilings. Mesmerizing projections of geometric designs fill the wrap-around walls, creating an immersive image that swirls around the viewers as they sink into bean bags. This is “Iota,” the centerpiece of Parallel Universe.

“Iota” takes minimalism to a grand scale, painting the walls in black and white patterns that are perfectly in sync with the pounding music. The first step in creating “Iota” was making the soundtrack, a docent explained. The sounds, an otherworldly combination of pounding bass and electronic beats, recall deep space exploration films and horror thrillers, instilling an alternating sense of unease and wonder. Ouchhh creators used this score as raw data for the visuals, running it through a number of sound visualization algorithms which, after being edited and curated, produced the projections on the walls.

These projections are dynamic to an extreme, constantly moving, transforming, and transitioning between designs all cast in stark monochrome. One second viewers are saturated in sliding geometric line patterns repeated a hundred times over, the next moment they are caught in a tangled web of curves that pulse to the music and wiggle with energy. Throughout the progression of images, the screen intermittently flashes pure white, creating a frenetic strobe light effect that is undoubtedly to blame for the epilepsy warning. “Iota” is a deep dive into a world of shapes and lines that smoothly meshes geometric and organic shapes to create a new world.

“Iota” peers into a new universe that runs parallel to ours, one that straddles the line between math and nature, between order and disorder. Despite sitting in the bean bag, the viewers’ sense of direction deteriorates as they are blasted with not only a series of different images, but also a series of different settings, all of which are imbued with manic energy and movement. One setting looks out at a bright white horizon that quickly zooms toward the viewer. Another is a mass of tentacle-like strands that reach toward the viewers until they are moving through the tendrils like a field of tall grass. Not only are the images themselves engrossing, but also the pacing gives viewers just enough time to absorb what they are seeing before snapping to a new segment. To avoid complete sensory overload, Ouchhh chose the simple black and white color scheme to allow each image, whether shown in minute detail or on a grand scale, to be digestible for viewers—at least visually.

After visitors are immersed in “Iota” for long enough, eyes wide and bodies shaking from the bass, they may need to steady themselves before moving into the next piece. “Portal” is a set of projections made especially for ARTECHOUSE’s hallway space. The exhibit is a transitional piece that simulates movement through space and time, quite literally paralleling the motion of visitors as they pass from one piece to the next. Walking through the dimly lit hallway is like bracing a tornado wind. Vi-

sual debris and messy shapes fly across the ground, walls, and visitors themselves.

Once museum-goers enter “Orion,” they are directed to one of the eight strategically placed bean bags that lay within a grid of swiveling spotlights mounted on iron poles. A large pyramid edged with bright LED lights hangs upside down from the center and lights the room. The pyramid, a reference to the pyramids of Giza, is the focus of the performance, highlighted by the many mobile spotlights that illuminate the apex. The performance begins with almost a dozen swiveling spotlights lining up—some viewers must turn around to see them—and forming the constellation Orion on one of the walls. The lights recall the theory that the ancient Egyptians made the pyramids of Giza line up with Orion, and after assembling on the wall they begin to scatter all over the room.

“Orion” is seven minutes long, and the full duration is underpinned by bass tones that are perhaps even louder than those in “Iota,” heightening the intensity of the piece. As each group experiences “Orion,” it is surrounded and targeted by the many spotlights that fly around them like foreign creatures made of pure light. Sometimes moving slowly, methodically, and geometrically within the grid, at other times darting between bean bags to land on viewers, the lights of “Orion” thrill with their sprightly dance. Each round of “Orion,” viewers are thrust into a world of living light and sound that feels both intimate and foreign.

Intimate and foreign is the essence of Parallel Universe, which creates an unreachable alien world that touches viewers in ways that they can understand: through sounds and images produced in the universal black and white. Through intense visual and audio simulation, viewers take a journey that seems to go everywhere and nowhere, deep into a void that is somehow full of life. Not for the faint of heart, Parallel Universe swallows visitors and spits them out again, a hauntingly beautiful beast of an exhibit.

All Photos Artechouse

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