The Georgetown Voice, Feb. 4 Issue

F E B R U A RY 4 , 2 0 2 2

IN THE FACE OF GENTRIFICATION, GO-GO PLAYS ON

By Annabella Hoge

SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS STRUGGLE TO KEEP NATIONAL TREASURES ABOVE WATER

By Paul James

GEORGETOWN NEEDS TO PROVIDE SEXUAL ASSAULT SUPPORT FOR STUDENTRUN CLUBS

By Natalie Gilbert

Contents

February 4, 2022 Volume 54 | Issue 9

4

Content warning:

editorial

Georgetown’s nonfaculty workers deserve better treatment

This article discusses multiple instances sexual assault, violence, and abuse by the clergy.

EDITORIAL BOARD

5

Establishing Asian American studies remains an uphill battle at Georgetown

feature

Fr. Theodore Dziak, a former Georgetown on-campus chaplain, accused of rape ABBY DONNELLY

JUPITER HUANG

8

14

15

16

West Side Story (2021) is an exceptional remake, despite problematic lead and box office failure

Club applications suck. Let's finally end them.

Georgetown needs to provide sexual assault support for student-run clubs

Being the Ricardos (2021) is emblematic of today's awards season. Here's why that needs to change.

voices

leisure

HAILEY WHARRAM

9

NATALIE GILBERT

on the cover

leisure

17

What goes up must come down: Men's basketball struggles after last year's triumph

ALEXANDRA LENEHAN

10

LUCIE PEYREBRUNE AND TIM TAN

feauture

18

In the face of gentrification, go-go plays on

voices

ANNABELLA HOGE

“underwater”

features

PAUL JAMES

OWEN POSNETT

sports

Disney's Encanto (2021) is a nuanced but incomplete take on family

Smithsonian museums struggle to keep national treasures above water

leisure

voices

ANTHONY BONAVITA

12

DEBORAH HAN

To the casting directors of Euphoria and other teen shows —grow up ANNETTE HASNAS

“Our spirit is in this music and we gotta fight. We gotta make sure Black people have a place in this city.”

PG. 10

contact us

editor@georgetownvoice.com Leavey 424 Box 571066 Georgetown University 3700 O St. NW Washington, DC 20057

2

internal resources Editor for RDI Darren Jian Editor for Sexual Sophie Tafazzoli Violence Coverage Service Chair Annemarie Cuccia Social Chair Alice Gao Executive Editor Features Editor News Editor Assistant News Editors

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news

Editor-In-Chief Sarah Watson Managing Editor Max Zhang

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 Georgetown Voice, unless otherwise indicated.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

graphic by max zhang

news Nora Scully Annabella Hoge Paul James Margaret Hartigan, Jupiter Huang, Graham Krewinghaus

opinion Executive Editor Annette Hasnas Voices Editor Sarah Craig Assistant Voices Editors James Garrow, Kulsum Gulamhusein, Lou Jacquin Editorial Board Chair Advait Arun Editorial Board Annemarie Cuccia, William Hammond, Annabella Hoge, Jupiter Huang, Paul James, Darren Jian, Allison O’Donnell, Sarah Watson, Alec Weiker, John Woolley, Max Zhang leisure Executive Editor Olivia Martin Leisure Editor Lucy Cook Assistant Editors Pierson Cohen, Maya Kominsky, Alexandra Lenehan Halftime Editor Chetan Dokku Assistant Halftime Editors Adora Adeyemi, Ajani Jones, Gokul Sivakumar sports Executive Editor Tim Tan Sports Editor Hayley Salvatore Assistant Editors Andrew Arnold, Lucie Peyrebrune, Thomas Fischbeck Halftime Editor Carlos Rueda Assistant Halftime Editors Langston Lee, Natalia Porras, Dylan Vasan design Executive Editor Allison DeRose Spread Editors Alex Giorno, Connor Martin Cover Editor Deborah Han Assistant Design Editors Insha Momin, Sabrina Shaffer, Dane Tedder, Sean Ye copy Copy Chief Maya Knepp Assistant Copy Editors Kenny Boggess, Maanasi Chintamani, Julia Rahimzadeh Editors Eimon Aung, Christopher Boose, Jennifer Guo, Alene Hanson, Ian Tracy, Anna Vernacchio multimedia Executive Editor John Woolley Podcast Editor Jillian Seitz Assistant Podcast Editor Alexes Merritt Photo Editor Annemarie Cuccia online Website Editor Tyler Salensky Social Media Editor Emma Chuck Assistant Social Media Editor Franzi Wild business General Manager Megan O’Malley Assistant Manager of Akshadha Lagisetti Accounts & Sales Assistant Manager of Abby Smith Alumni Outreach support Contributing Editors Sarina Dev, Ethan Greer, Caroline Hamilton, Josh Klein, Roman Peregrino, Orly Salik, Sophie Tafazzoli, Abby Webster Staff Contributors Andrew Arnold, Nathan Barber, Nicholas Budler, Maya Cassady, Natalie Chaudhuri, Erin Ducharme, Panna Gattyan, Andrea Ho, Julia Kelly, Steven Kingkeiner, Lily Kissinger, Ashley Kulberg, Amelia Myre, Anna Sofia Neil, Adam Pack, Owen Posnett, Omar Rahim, Ryan Samway, Fracesca Theofilou, Diego Ventero, Amelia Wanamaker, Katie Woodhouse

Page 3

An eclectic collection of jokes, puns, doodles, playlists, and news clips from the collective mind of the Voice staff.

→ LUCY’S QUIZ

→ OVERHEARD AT GEORGETOWN

What is wrong with you?

Yeah, that’s right. You heard me. You wanna know what it is about you that keeps the townsfolk up at night, clutching their rosaries and muttering about you under their breath? The oracle knows, dear reader, and in my great benevolence, I am prepared to share what the fuck is wrong with you.

uang,

mhusein,

ammond, Darren Watson, ax

1. Choose something unpolitical but truly insane that a US politician has done. a. Hunter S. Thompson shaving his head in order to call his crew cut-wearing Republican opposition, “my long-haired opponent.” * b. Ulysses S. Grant not actually having a middle name but being too awkward to correct anyone. c. Ted Cruz saying, verbatim, “Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.” d. LBJ accidentally pissing on a Secret Service agent’s shoe and, when questioned, claiming it was his “prerogative.”

3. You open your eyes. It seems that you have fainted. Where are you? a. In your bed, thank Christ. Your pet is curled up by your feet, and you can take a long breath.

None of it was real. b. In a field of tall grass. It smells like spring.

You’re not sure where home is, but you think you can settle for this. c. At your desk. You jerk up and unstick your face from your keyboard. It’s 4 a.m. and this is Georgetown. Ten more pages on Yugoslav food shortages to go. d. In more darkness. A cell? A womb? Only time will tell.

* To be clear, Thompson was never elected, but he is fascinating and this is my quiz so fuck off.

4. Select a cartoon from your youth. (This one says a lot.) a. Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends b. Adventure Time c. Spongebob d. Total Drama Island

2. Pick an unsettling tattoo a. Eyes on your clavicle. Eyes on your shoulders.

Eyes everywhere. b. “K-N-U-C-K-L-E-S” across your knuckles. c. A tasteful infinity symbol hidden somewhere under your crisp white shirt and blazer. This is the illusion of rebellion. d. A photo accurate depiction of your own baby teeth, right over your heart.

ky,

Gokul

une,

Dylan

5. Pick something to swig from a flask a. Mouthwash b. Chocolate milk c. Miso soup d. Straight whiskey Check your results at the bottom of this page!

→ ADVAIT’S CARTOON

Dane

line

Tafazzoli,

r, y, Natalie nna y, Steven ey fia Ryan iego atie

Mostly a’s: You are not completely human. There’s just something off about you. Maybe it’s the way your shadow keeps trying to detach itself from you and run away. You’re doing a pretty good job pretending, but you’re just a shade off. The smile is too wide. Frankly, you should embrace being a real weird little freak.

You’re pretty cool. Mostly b’s: You ate inedible things as a kid. Perhaps you gnawed on a wet washcloth, chewed on some paper, even. Chowed down on that salty delicacy—play-doh. Whatever it was, it left your mind mush. Mush is good. Mush is happy. Mostly c’s: You are studying government at Georgetown University. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually studying government or not. The point is that you are a corporate suit, hoping one day to be a real boy. Mostly d’s: Fell Deeds Have Come To Pass. I know what you’ve done, and it’s too late to wash your hands of it. Embrace evil, it’s all you’ve got left.

se, an Tracy,

cartoon by advait arun; photo courtesy of cody fry on youtube

tamani,

"We worry too much about hygeiene; you literally ate BOOTY yesterday." → PLAYLIST

Songs to listen to while you run from class in Reiss to Car Barn 1. Speed of Sound Coldplay 2. I Ran (So Far Away) A Flock of Seagulls 3. Runnng Up That Hill (A Deal With God) Kate Bush 4. Run Boy Run Woodkid 5. Born to Run Bruce Springsteen 6. Black Skinhead Kanye West 7. Forrest Gump Frank Ocean 8. Eleanor Rigby Cody Fry 9. Don’t Stop Me Now Queen 10. RUNNING OUT OF TIME Tyler, the Creator 11. Life is a Highway Rascal Flatts 12. Chariots of Fire Vangelis

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

3

EDITORIALS

Georgetown's non-faculty workers deserve better treatment

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

L

ast winter, two Georgetown students crowdsourced $17,000 for Stacey Walton, a Georgetown food service employee struggling with food and housing insecurity. In advocating for Walton, they acknowledged the simple fact that she, as a campus staff member, is part of the Georgetown community. But this crowdsourcing campaign also reveals a less pleasant truth about how the university treats non-faculty workers.

Student crowdsourcing, while laudable, would have been unnecessary if the university gave its non-faculty employees the privileges that faculty already have: not just the negotiating power necessary to protect their rights, but the COVID-19 safeguards, pay, and benefits they deserve.

The pandemic highlights how the university fails to treat these employees as equal members of our community. This January, at least 175 staff members tested positive for COVID-19, compared to just 41 faculty members who tested positive.

Faculty didn’t need to work on campus, but staff members put themselves at risk to be here.

Georgetown has actively endangered them, too. In January 2021, staff members protested the “Redeploy Georgetown” program, which not only forced regular staff members into public health roles but threatened them with unpaid leave and suspended benefits if they refused.

Redeploy disproportionately impacted women workers of color and exposed their families to increased risk from COVID-19, especially compared to faculty members.

Concurrently, Georgetown was ignoring the exploitation of its construction workers. In April 2021, construction workers Oscar Ramirez and Enoc Rodriguez filed a class-action lawsuit against Dynamic Contracting, Gilbane Building Company, and GSA Construction. They alleged these Georgetown-contracted companies illegally withheld wages and misclassified employees as “independent contractors” to avoid paying appropriate benefits during Georgetown dorm renovations from November 2020 through February 2021. The fact that Georgetown neglected these labor violations demonstrates its lack of concern for the working conditions of hundreds of construction workers.

In response, the university now requires future construction contractors to provide a weekly

4

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

certified payroll report, guarantee workers are being paid prevailing wages, and permit university investigations into workplace conditions. However, these proposals lack an independent verification mechanism and do not ensure that workers can speak candidly about their experiences without fear of retaliation.

In an email to the Voice, Professor Joseph McCartin, the director of Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, argued that an independent, worker-trusted entity familiar with the construction industry should serve as the university’s monitor for future contracts. He’s right: The university should select a group like CASA—an immigrant advocacy organization that provides legal services to DMVarea construction workers—to review potential Georgetown contractors’ labor practices. Workers will feel safer when reporting concerns to a group whose aim is to protect their rights. University officials, inexperienced in this specialized sector, will receive trustworthy information. Only after the university acts to understand workers’ needs can it further protect their rights.

Georgetown’s outsourcing of jobs to contractors is, in general, a worker’s rights issue.

Because the university doesn’t hire food service or health care workers—contracted by Aramark and Medstar, respectively—they aren’t afforded the benefits Georgetown provides its direct employees. For instance, while Georgetown faculty and staff received 13 paid days of winter vacation in 2021, Medstar only offered Student Health Center employees three paid winter vacation days.

Even unionized workers employed by university contractors have fewer protections than direct university employees do. Georgetown’s unionized food service workers, for example, have struggled against Aramark for over a decade to secure better wages, healthcare, and other protections. Yet even in the wake of a 2019 union contract renegotiation, employees like Stacey Walton still had to rely on students’ crowdsourcing efforts. She and other contracted workers are just as important to our university community as direct Georgetown employees are. The university ought to use its market power to pressure Aramark into treating its workers better, as well as subsidize benefits for all

contracted on-campus employees so that their benefits match those of direct employees.

Unionization provides workers with the crucial collective leverage they need to win greater protections from employers. Though Georgetown technically supports unionization on campus, it actively obstructs university employees from organizing. The negotiations between the university and the Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees (GAGE), one of the few unions on campus, exemplify Georgetown’s union-busting practices.

Former GAGE president Jewel Tomasula (Ph.D. '24) and her fellow graduate students spent three years creating lists of graduate workers from scratch because the university denies staff access to a directory of their coworkers. Only through tireless advocacy and negotiation did GAGE finally secure a union contract in 2020. Not six months later, however, Georgetown attempted to gut GAGE’s negotiating powers through claims that graduate workers had no right to bargain over COVID-19 policies. GAGE ultimately won that battle for better protections, but their treatment should raise eyebrows. If a recognized union had this much difficulty dealing with university administrators over pandemic safety guidelines, how can the majority of Georgetown workers— with no comparable institutional power or direct line to administrators—have their concerns heard?

The least Georgetown could do is create a workers’ committee that permits representatives from all campus labor groups to communicate regularly with the administration.

Georgetown, as D.C.’s largest private employer, sets a poor standard for labor conditions citywide when it undercompensates its non-faculty employees. Only through the willingness of these employees—not administrators—to put their and their families’ health at risk during an ongoing pandemic are we able to attend school in person.

The university should do more than just recognize their importance to the Georgetown community.

Administrators must redistribute university resources to ensure that supporting students and faculty doesn’t come at the cost of exploiting non-faculty workers. Equitable financial and social compensation—better pay, benefits, oversight, organizing privileges, and access to administration—would begin that reparative process. A school can’t exist without its students, and Georgetown can’t exist without its workers. G

design by allison derose

NEWS

Establishing Asian American studies remains an uphill battle at Georgetown

BY JUPITER HUANG

P

rofessor Christine So wants to know why English is the only department at Georgetown with an Asian American studies scholar in it. In the spring of 2019, two years after she started teaching at Georgetown, she created an Intro to Asian American Studies course that explores what it means to be Asian American, factoring in its connection to class, ethnicity, sexuality, and more.

But despite the apparent success of her classes—with dozens of students in waitlist spots and eager requests for higher-level courses—So is still the only full-time faculty member at Georgetown specializing in Asian American studies. This, according to So, is not just a detriment to the Asian student body, but Georgetown academia at large.

“Asian Americans in particular, have a particular history in the United States that not only explains how whiteness has been constituted in the United States, but also tells us something about U.S. imperialism abroad,” So said. “These people and their histories are valuable.”

Asian American studies first entered the public lexicon in 1968 through a five-month strike held by Third World Liberation Front demanding the creation of ethnic studies curriculums in universities, which led to the creation of the term “Asian American.” A year later, universities in California established the first Asian American studies curricula.

Traditionally, Asian American studies carries a highly interdisciplinary nature, allowing the field to incorporate the work of scholars in sociology, philosophy, history, English, and more. Yet over 50 years later, according to the Asian American Studies Association, only 32 higher education institutions in the country offer dedicated Asian American studies major or minor programs. A crowdsourced Google map created by Dr. Diane Wong at Rutgers University placed that number at 42, with an additional 77 institutions offering Asian American studies courses through different departments.

Since 2009, Georgetown has considered implementing its own Asian American studies program, establishing working groups to recommend changes to foster cross-cultural

changes in academics. President John J. DeGioia and former Provost James O’Donnell reaffirmed their commitment to exploring and developing new resources and programs for Asian American studies through public letters written in 2010 and again in 2015.

Four years later, the university still lacked an Asian American studies program. “If Georgetown’s goal is to educate its students to be responsible and active participants in civic life, its current lack of ethnic studies courses is wholly incompatible with this,” a description for Georgetown’s Asian Pacific Islander Leadership Forum’s (APILF) 2019 photo campaign titled “Georgetown Doesn’t Teach Me” reads. Modeled after similar efforts at schools including Yale, Duke, and Dartmouth, the movement called upon the administration to fulfill its commitment to Asian American studies curricula.

“APILF has allowed Asian American studies to make a significant amount of progress. Part of their work was to go around to departments asking if they would hire or teach Asian American Studies in the department,” So said.

“When they came to me with that [idea], I thought it never really occurred to me to teach a class in Asian American studies.”

According to a report from the Stop AAPI Hate coalition, over 140 hate crimes were committed against Asian Americans in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area between March 2020 and March 2021. During that same timeframe, San Francisco experienced a 567 percent increase in reported crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Between March 19, 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021, the coalition reported a total of 10,370 anti-Asian hate incidents nationwide.

Last April, after Georgetown failed to make sufficient headway, APILF held a three-part summit advocating for an Asian American studies program at Georgetown in response to the national surge in anti-Asian hate crimes.

Most recently, the George Washington University Asian American Student Association hosted a panel on Jan. 26, following the creation

graphic by dane tedder; layout by connor martin

of an Asian American Studies minor after three years of student advocacy, including a 2020 petition that garnered over 2,500 signatories. The minor was formed not only due to student advocacy, but GW faculty who expressed interest in creating courses for the new minor.

Georgetown, according to So, still lacks that resource base. “I would say that there has been a lack of interest in hiring scholars in Asian American studies, Latino studies, U.S. indigenous studies,” So said.

According to So, Georgetown currently only has five full-time faculty teaching race and U.S. ethnic studies outside of the African American Studies curriculum: Shelbi Meissner, a professor of philosophy and the only Indigenous studies specialist, three Latino studies professors, and So. She added that the lack of faculty threatens the stability of existing race and ethnic studies courses and makes it impossible to implement new programs.

According to Brian Hochman, the director of the American Studies Program, the program is currently working to strengthen offerings in Asian American, Latino, and Indigenous studies.

“Georgetown's support for the field— as well as allied fields, such as Indigenous Studies and Latinx Studies—has been lacking,” Hochman wrote in an email to the Voice. “We are currently working on a joint proposal to hire in this field. This is a major priority for us.”

Advocacy remains the most viable way for students to combat administrative barriers to expanding Asian American studies curricula, according to So. She suggests that students continue to petition for more lectures and discussions related to Asian American studies.

“Ask the departments and university to hire faculty and Asian American Studies,” she said. “Make it clear that Asian American issues, people, courses, fields of study are critically important.” G FEBRUARY 4, 2022

5

FEATURES

Fr. Theodore Dziak, a former Georgetown on-campus chaplain, accused of rape

BY ABBY DONNELLY

Content warning: this article discusses multiple instances of sexual assault, violence, and abuse by the clergy.

6

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

W

hen Dennis Heaphy met Fr. Theodore Dziak, S.J., Heaphy was a young student at Boston University, while Dziak was an influential spiritual leader to undergraduates. Dziak seemed committed to living a religious life out in the world and like a role model to Heaphy.

When Dennis Heaphy met Fr. Theodore Dziak, S.J., Heaphy was a young student at Boston University, while Dziak was an influential spiritual leader to undergraduates. Dziak was like a role model to Heaphy.

"I poured my heart out to Ted," Heaphy, a future Georgetown chaplain, later wrote in a 1999 letter to the Provincial of New England Jesuits.

But one night, Dziak came into Heaphy's room while traveling to a service trip in Central America, sat on his bed, and told Heaphy he loved him. Then, Dziak kissed Heaphy on the forehead.

Heaphy felt sick.

But Heaphy was not alone. Allegations of sexual assualt by Dziak, a on-campus chaplain at Georgetown University from 1984 to 1990, came to public attention in 2021, when he was accused of drugging and raping Tim Ballard, 41, a then-24-year-old DePaul University graduate. The allegations sparked Dziak’s removal from his chaplaincy at Le Moyne College in September 2020, before claims became public.

Though there are no confirmed cases of abuse while Dziak was an oncampus chaplain at Georgetown, the university granted Dziak the space, opportunities, and resources to begin a volunteer organization that gave him access to abuse and manipulate students for decades.

From the early 1980s to the late 2010s, Dziak moved across four college campuses and one secondary school—Georgetown University, Boston College, Loyola University New Orleans, Le Moyne College, and St. George’s College—leaving a trail of abuse behind. The Voice spoke with five survivors of Dziak’s abuse, as well as chaplains, lawyers, and faculty members from different universities. …

Dziak, now in his early 70s, was ordained in 1983 through the New England Province for the Society of Jesus and launched Jesuit Volunteers International (JVI) within Georgetown office space in November of that year. JVI acted as an independent and free-standing organization that was housed in Alumni Square. Dziak lived on campus at Georgetown from 1984 to 1990 and was the chaplain of an all-male residential hall.

JVI—which is now called Jesuit Volunteer Corps—brought students to Central America for emotionally-intensive, culturally-immersive service trips. In 1990, Dziak moved to Boston College where he continued service trips to Central America and the Caribbean through an organization similar to JVI called Ignacio Volunteers.

From 1998 to 2003, Dziak was president of St. George’s College, an allmale school in Jamaica, after departing from Boston College. It is unclear if there is similar documentation of allegations from Dziak's time there.

After graduating from DePaul, Ballard was accepted to be the director of religious education from 2004 to 2006 in southern Belize through JVI. “Within a couple weeks, my working relationship with Ted became very tumultuous. He was very hot and cold,” Ballard said.

In southern Belize, according to Ballard and documented in his diary entries, Dziak drugged, photographed, and raped Ballard on at least four distinct occasions in November and December of 2004 and again in July of 2005 when Dziak returned to Belize. According to Ballard, he reached out to Fr. Bill Oulvey, S.J., the in-country Jesuit Superior with concerns for his safety. Oulvey did not respond to Voice requests for comment. The last sexual assault left Ballard with a long-term injury.

“Before Belize and after Belize are two different books of my life,” Ballard said. He described severe anxiety and depression following his return back to the United States. “To say it nearly took my life is 100 percent true.”

“He is a predator. He is a monster. He is a serial rapist,” Ballard said of Dziak.

Although the alleged rapes took place in 2004 and 2005 after Dziak had left Georgetown’s campus, volunteers and faculty associated with JVI expressed concerns about Dziak’s patterns of abuse as early as the 1980s. …

photo courtesy of pensiero; spread by max zhang

Dennis Heaphy was JVI’s first-ever volunteer in the 1980s and eventually the program’s executive director from 2004 to 2006. At the time of their meeting, Heaphy was an undergraduate at Boston University, and Dziak was preaching at the university chapel.

“He accepted me as the first volunteer in the newly formed Jesuit Volunteer Corps. I hadn’t even filled out an application,” Heaphy said.

According to Heaphy, he faced continual emotional abuse by Dziak as he volunteered with JVI in Central America, all facilitated by an environment characterized by isolation.

Jose Tamayo, a volunteer under Dziak in 1997, described a vulnerable, insular dynamic.

“He forms this isolated group. He discourages any outside participation,” Tamayo said. “He is creating this very dependent community.”

Previous volunteers who spoke with the Voice commented on Dziak’s independent authority throughout the development and duration of his various programs. “With his position as a priest, as a leader of this organization, you just didn’t question it. You trusted the process.”

Before, during, and after the abroad programs, students participated in group reflections with Dziak to discuss heavy, sensitive topics. “I honestly think that those weekly reflections—that you could not miss and were held late at night—were a way for Ted to kind of groom the landscape of the kids mentally, emotionally, spiritually,” Beth Eilers, a former Boston College graduate student, said.

The Provincial of the New England Province of Jesuits did not respond to Voice inquiries about JVI volunteers’ reported concerns over Dziak’s behavior in the 1980s, when Dziak was still at Georgetown. …

Dziak’s pattern of behavior was well recorded. The Voice acquired documentation from members of the Boston College chaplaincy informing John Savard, S.J., a chaplain at the university, of complaints about Dziak in 1998, stating it would be “highly irresponsible for his religious superiors to permit him to function pastorally or professionally with young adults or college-aged students.” The Voice also obtained additional documentation of Boston College students, faculty, and staff sending letters and filing reports on Dziak’s abuses in 1998 and 1999.

Boston College President William Leahy did not respond to concerns at the time, according to Eilers. Twenty-two years later, Leahy wrote a letter to the campus community in April 2021, following scrutiny due to Ballard’s allegations as students called for Leahy’s resignation.

“First, after I learned of issues regarding Fr. Dziak and his social activities with students in the Ignacio Volunteer Program in the fall of 1997, I discussed them with him and raised concerns with his Jesuit superiors about the suitability of his working at Boston College,” Leahy wrote in the public statement. “I had no authority or administrative responsibility in regard to Fr. Dziak, and have had no contact with him since he left Boston College.” Leahy

continues to serve as president of Boston College as of January 2022.

Eilers sent letters to Robert Levens, S.J., provincial of the New England Province from 1998 to 1999, asking him to protect students from Dziak. Additionally, the Voice acquired a 1998 letter written by Heaphy, directed to Levens.

In his letter, Heaphy describes the emotional abuse, grooming, and trauma inflicted by Dziak throughout his time involved with JVI. Heaphy wrote, “Ted is a man in deep pain and a danger to himself and to others. He is of special danger to young people.” Levens now works in the retreat center where Dziak resides.

A Georgetown University spokesperson stated that they have no knowledge of Heaphy’s letter to the provincial.

In 2006, Dziak left Belize and went to serve as the director of the Jesuit Center at Loyola University, which was in the New Orleans Province, but is now the South Central Province. In July 2008, Dziak was made the vice president of mission and identity. Dziak continued to take students abroad, but again faced accusations of abuse documented by students and faculty at Loyola, driving a 2011 HR investigation. In the HR report obtained by the Voice, the investigation surrounded non-consensual advances and verbal inappropriateness perpetrated

by Dziak, as well as claims of hazardous driving.

Katrina Weschler, an employee at Loyola alongside Dziak, wrote a letter to the department of human resources that sparked the investigation in 2011. “I do not feel comfortable, nor is it my intention to imply that Fr. Ted has engaged in illegal behavior,” Weschler wrote in an HR complaint.

“That said, as an eyewitness I am adamant that there is a blatant abuse of power. Once again, I feel obligated by Loyola University’s code of conduct to report this behavior before it becomes criminal.”

Dziak remained at Loyola until he took another sabbatical in March 2019. In 2020, Dziak joined Le Moyne College as the College Chaplain for Ignatian Ministry. Dziak was indefinitely removed from his position only weeks after, when a reporter contacted the school regarding the rape allegations.

Requests for comment from Dziak went unreturned. …

Fr. Gerard J. McGlone, S.J., is a senior research fellow at Georgetown who has conducted extensive advocacy and research on clerical sexual abuse. “I want to see all of these former provincials, all of these former bishops, put in jail,” McGlone said. “The daily life of most Catholics these days is really one of repair.”

McGlone further detailed the systemic nature of clerical abuse, describing organized cover-up methods. McGlone did not discuss Dziak and was unable to comment on allegations against him.

Georgetown’s Jesuit identity is central to the university, but it has grappled with an extensive history of clerical sexual abuse, mirroring that of the Catholic church and other Jesuit colleges.

A 2019 investigation by The Hoya detailed the allegations against 14 Georgetown priests,

excluding Dziak, while the university has only publicly acknowledged four.

Fr. Stephen Sauer, S.J., a priest on staff alongside Dziak at Loyola New Orleans and a student at Georgetown while Dziak was oncampus, has been arrested for the alleged drugging and nonconsensual photographing of six men. This past spring of 2021, former Georgetown Provost and Executive President Fr. Donald J. Freeze, S.J., was credibly accused of sexual assault by numerous alumni, driving the university to publicly revoke his honorary degree and recognitions.

Dziak, pictured far right, with students in Belize.

“Over the years, we have implemented robust policies, reporting procedures and programs to safeguard our community,” a Georgetown University spokesperson wrote in response to the Voice. “We have also engaged extensively with the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus, which has committed to readdress and strengthen its policies and processes for sexual misconduct perpetrated against adults, and to more fully share with Georgetown information regarding sexual misconduct of any kind.”

Freeze and Dziak’s time at Georgetown overlapped throughout the entirety of Dziak’s residence on-campus (1984-1990), where Freeze oversaw Dziak in his role as provost. Despite Georgetown responding to the now-deceased Freeze’s accusations through a campus-wide email, the university has never publicly acknowledged the allegations against Dziak, who currently resides at a retreat center in Massachusetts.

“If their institution doesn’t get it, if the Jesuits don’t get it, then they’re inflicting more harm and more pain on us. And that is just unacceptable,” McGlone said. G Confidential Resources: Health Education Services (HES): sarp@ georgetown.edu Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS): (202) 687-6985; after hours, call (833) 9603006 to reach Fonemed, a telehealth service; individuals may ask for the on-call CAPS clinician DC Rape Crisis Center: (202) 333-RAPE (24/7 Hotline) Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN): 1-800-656-HOPE (24/7 hotline) National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

7

LEISURE

West Side Story (2021) is an exceptional remake, despite problematic lead and box office failure

BY HAILEY WHARRAM

Content warning: This article mentions sexual assault.

S

teven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021) provides its audience with one of the most delightful yet devastating movie-going experiences of the year, complete with kaleidoscopic, dancing-filled highs and grittier, melancholic lows. While some films might struggle to bridge the gap between polar tonal beats, West Side Story shifts between light and dark with efficiency and ease, thanks in large part to the cast’s superb acting chops.

Although the new film’s pure cinematic quality justifies its remake status, West Side Story also sets itself apart in a box office brimming with senseless sequels and remakes. From an equity standpoint, it is a necessary one: In the original 1961 film, many of the Puerto Rican characters were portrayed by white actors in brown face, rather than being played by Latino actors. The modern version aims to rectify the failures of its predecessor by casting a diverse array of Latin American actors and actresses that represent the diaspora of the Latino community. Although not all of the actors are actually Puerto Rican, which has sparked some controversy, this film seems to offer a step towards the right direction. Additionally, though there are many scenes predominantly spoken in Spanish, the lack of English subtitles challenges the notion that movies must cater to English speakers, further distinguishing the 2021 version from the original.

A modern interpretation of the Romeo and Juliet story, West Side Story also distinguishes itself from its predecessor by improving upon virtually all of the beloved musical numbers. The threepart “The Dance at The Gym” scene is the first truly outstanding number of the film. Bursting at the seams with vivacity, the scene is charged with the urge to get up and dance after watching Ariana DeBose command the floor so brilliantly as Anita.

Additionally, seeing Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria’s (Rachel Zegler) stories finally intertwine after the exchange of a piercing, tentative, and curious stare is an absolutely electric experience. The charming 8

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

awkwardness of their clandestine conversation and stolen slow dance behind the bleachers makes their dynamic all the more lovable. Our love for their relationship only deepens during “Balcony Scene (Tonight),” as they dreamily orbit around one another before sealing their forbidden romance with a kiss.

Though the choreography and production are stellar, Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose are the heart and soul of West Side Story. Zegler gives a remarkable performance in her breakout leading role. Her empowered, confident, and endlessly optimistic Maria is a welcome interpretation of the character, updating the more passive 1961 Maria with gusto while still retaining her heart. Zegler’s angelic, crystal clear voice soars across tunes like “I Feel Pretty” and “Tonight,” with, to quote the late Stephen Sondheim, the tone of a “nightingale.”

Meanwhile, Ariana DeBose of Hamilton (2015) and The Prom (2020) fame gives a commanding and compelling portrayal of Anita, complete with an effortless blend of strength and vulnerability.

In “America,” the musical’s love letter to “Latin joy,” DeBose’s energy is positively infectious, even surpassing the vibrancy of the scene’s bright and colorful costumes and sets. When these two musical powerhouses collide on “A Boy Like That/I Have A Love” (a number sung live no less!), the impact is bombastic and beautiful. If viewers weren’t blown away by their performances before, this number was sure to seal the deal. For all of these reasons, it was no surprise that Zegler and DeBose both managed to snag Golden Globes in the 2021 cycle.

Although carrying the heart of the film falls upon Zegler and DeBose’s shoulders, the rest of the cast does not disappoint. The return of Rita Moreno, the original Anita, as Valentina, was a joy to watch, especially when she has the opportunity to sing her breathtaking rendition of “Somewhere.”

Additionally, Mike Faist is delightfully devious as Riff, and David Alvarez is equally dynamic as Bernardo.

However, amidst discussions of the cast, there is, of course, the Ansel Elgort of it all. Nine months

after shooting for West Side Story had wrapped, Elgort was publicly accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in 2014 when he was 20.

Considering he is the male lead, Elgort’s role in the film is impossible to ignore. When prompted about the circumstances, the cast and Spielberg alike provided either vague or nonexistent responses, creating a dynamic that fails to support the survivor who came forward. Although Elgort denies these claims, some viewers may find it difficult to enjoy the acting of a potential perpetrator.

In addition to having to incentivize audiences to attend despite the problematic past of its male lead, West Side Story dealt with a myriad of other factors that led to its weak box office debut. The film grossed only $10.6 million, while needing $300 million to break even. Many sources blame the outbreak of the Omicron variant as a source of hesitancy for moviegoers. Others attribute the film’s competition with No Way Home (2021)’s massive debut weekend. Perhaps our newfound familiarity with home releases on streaming platforms is another reason getting back to theaters has become a difficult sell. Considering that this film was easily the best movie musical of the year, even alongside great releases such as tick, tick…BOOM! (2021) and In The Heights (2021), it is a shame to see this remake’s unfortunate flop at the box office.

West Side Story’s box office bombing is also unfortunate because of, in the words of DeBose, the lengths to which the creative team went to “celebrate the diaspora of the Hispanic community.”

Hopefully, the critical praise and accolades the film has received, notably West Side Story’s four Golden Globes wins, including the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture–Musical or Comedy, and its overall symbolic importance is enough to incentivize film companies to make more films with vibrant and authentic Latino representation in the future. G Refer to the online version at www. georgetownvoice.com for confidential resources regarding sexual assault.

design by alex giorno; photo courtesy of disney

LEISURE

Disney’s Encanto (2021) is a nuanced but incomplete take on family

BY ALEXANDRA LENEHAN

W

e need to talk about Encanto (2021). Or, so says everyone on Twitter the last few weeks. Disney’s new animated film Encanto is a creative sensation that examines the complexities and importance of family. Though its plot departs from its central message, the film presents a more culturally sensitive and elaborate interpretation of family that makes Encanto a must-see.

The film’s central characters are the Madrigal family, who live in an enchanted refuge nestled in a valley deep in Colombia’s tropical jungles.

For the last 50 years, the village has existed under the protective magic of a continuously burning candle owned by Madrigal matriarch Alma (María Cecilia Botero); this same candle bestows “gifts”— interspecies communication, precognition, and so on—to Madrigal descendants. When it is time for Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz), one of Alma’s granddaughters, to receive her gift, however, the candle’s flame dims, and she is left giftless. Shunned, Mirabel is left out of a family photograph—and the candle flickers. The family’s toxic perfectionism overrides their relationships, threatening the longevity of their shared magic. In order to save her family’s miracle, Mirabel must stumble through her own journey investigating the family’s past, without any magical skills of her own.

While Disney has received backlash due to the studio’s lack of BIPOC representation, Encanto is a wonderful recognition of the racial and ethnic diversity within Colombia. In 2021, Disney’s In the Heights received complaints from viewers that the film primarily cast light-skinned Latino actors to play the leading roles, giving an inaccurate portrayal of the Washington Heights community as well as of the Latino community at-large. Disney made representation more of a priority for Encanto—the diversity of its characters paints a fuller picture of Colombia and sends a clearer message that there is no “one type” of Colombian.

The attention to detail found in this film creates a sense of generational and cultural consistency for the Madrigal family—reflecting the time and care that the creators spent crafting Encanto. The family spans three generations, and the designers implemented a color scheme to visually distinguish between members of the expansive household.

Characters are adorned in cool tones from rich purples to calming blues, and warmer palettes of

vivid reds and festive yellows. In addition to details about the family’s clothing, the creators make culturally thoughtful choices about the application of the family’s gifts. For instance, Mirabel’s mother (Angie Cepeda) has the power to heal people with her food—and traditional Colombian dishes like arepas and buñuelos serve as her remedies.

These details not only draw connections between members of the Madrigal family, but also emphasize the context in which the movie takes place.

Similar care and attention is given to the symbolic elements of the film’s soundtrack, written

by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda noted that he incorporated Mirabel’s feelings of isolation into her solo song “Waiting on a Miracle” by making it rhythmically distinct with a beat of three. It’s a smart choice, as Mirabel is also emotionally on a separate beat from her family. Encanto’s soundtrack encompasses Miranda’s typical layering of upbeat melodies, but that doesn't make it any less impressive. His distinct musical ability shines through as he establishes distinct melodies and voices for each character and blends them all together to create a harmonious musical climax, emblematic of the Madrigal family. Miranda highlights this technique through the wildly popular “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” expertly weaving distinctive vocal personalities.

“Dos Oruguitas,” however, provides the audience with a moment of pause from the fun and catchy tunes of previous songs as Abuela Alma reflects on her past. Beautifully sung in Spanish, it boasts a sentimental melody and is overlaid over a particularly tender narrative, meaning even audiences who don’t know Spanish can intuit the underlying mood. The bittersweet essence of “Dos Oruguitas” serves as a contrast to the other songs in Encanto and enables us to empathize with Abuela Alma and her experiences.

Encanto represents a new direction for Disney, with a focus more on character development and less on a Manichaean battle between good and evil.

Families are complicated, people make mistakes despite their love for each other, and Disney’s decision to not have an explicit villain in Encanto demonstrates this intricacy. Each character’s complexity brings them to life and allows audience members to see individual struggles and triumphs as a point of contact. Viewers understand the unique

design by alex giorno; photo courtesy of disney

pressures each one experiences. Older siblings can relate to Luisa’s (Jessica Darrow) urge to be the person her family always relies on while paving the way for younger family members. Audiences can find solace with Pepa (Carolina Gaitan) if they have ever felt the urge to conceal feelings and be constantly happy. While the Madrigal family’s gifts are magical, their struggles are frighteningly real.

With a large ensemble cast and only about 90 minutes of screen time, it is difficult to fully invest in all of the relationships between the members of the Madrigal family. Early in the film, audiences briefly see the caring bond between the two youngest grandchildren, Mirabel and Antonio (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), and Antonio even asks Mirabel to accompany him as he receives his gift. After this moment, however, the relationship between Mirabel and Antonio gets little airtime, making it feel underdeveloped.

Disney tackles the theme of family in a new way, but the ending could have more closely reflected its overarching message that everyone has an innate talent that they can share with others. Though the film ends with the Madrigal family marked by a new closeness as they construct their new home together, it is difficult to tell if the importance of the candle has changed for the family from the beginning of the movie until the end. Where the movie should have ended is an assertion that the true gifts we have are found inside of us, not bestowed externally, and that the Madrigals’ unity as a family is not dictated by the magic they possess. This message, unfortunately, gets lost amid the spectacle of the return of the magic.

The creators of Encanto wanted to accentuate the idea of family, and their efforts are evident throughout the film. Through characters’ honest revelations, the audience can find resemblances between themselves and these multidimensional characters, creating a desire to be invested in the journey of these characters. With family being such an integral aspect of Encanto, the ending could have coincided with the growth each character experiences and better supported the idea that magic is not what binds the family together—their love for one another does. Nevertheless, Encanto’s authentic handling of culture and complex familial relationships combined with its electrifying musical flair make this film an instant Disney classic. G FEBRUARY 4, 2022

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FEATURE

In the face of gentrification, go-go plays on

BY ANNABELLA HOGE

R

onald Moten grew up on go-go music. When he was young, he would sneak out at night to see the go-go bands in Washington, D.C., despite knowing his grandmother would be waiting at the door when he got home. Decades later, the music that defined his childhood compelled him to action when his friend Donald Campbell called to tell him someone was trying to shut off the go-go.

Go-go has been described as D.C.’s indigenous musical genre, first surfacing in the 1970s with roots in funk, hip-hop, and Afro-Latin beats. Go-go originated primarily with Black D.C. artists, and its historical significance to D.C.’s Black community has endured. Fundamentally, go-go music is D.C. culture. And, like many staples of Black culture in the nation’s rapidly gentrifying capital, gogo is under threat of erasure.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

In 2019, Campbell’s phone call to Moten launched a movement. For almost 25 years, Campbell had been playing go-go music from the speakers outside his Metro PCS store in the historically Black U Street neighborhood.

When residents in a nearby luxury apartment complex threatened to sue, T-Mobile, the corporate owner of Metro PCS, ordered him to turn the music off.

“He was like, ‘Moe, I need your help,’'’ Moten said. “I was like, ‘What's going on?’ He's like, ‘They made me cut the music off.’”

Almost instantly, thousands of D.C. residents took to the streets. Except they didn’t just march. They danced, scored by go-go bands playing in front of the store at 7th Street and Florida Avenue NW. The hashtag #DontMuteDC evolved into a rallying cry against the policing of the sounds and spaces of D.C.’s Black culture, as well as the harms of rapid gentrification and resulting displacement. To draw national attention, Moten and public scholar Natalie Hopkinson launched an April 8 petition, “Don't Mute DC's Go-Go Music and Culture,” calling go-go the “soul and heartbeat of Washington.”

“When they actually suppressed it and took it away and silenced the music, it was sort of like a clarifying moment for people, especially for people in D.C., long-time native

Washingtonians, about what’s at stake and just how audacious the attack is on D.C. culture,” Hopkinson said in an interview with the Voice.

The protest represents a larger tension around the demographic and cultural overhaul of D.C.’s historically Black neighborhoods by whiter and wealthier residents. Gentrification involves the movement of wealthier (and often white) residents into neighborhoods with lower housing costs, forcing up costs of living and driving out low-income residents, who are disproportionately people of color. The District is one of the most intensely gentrified cities in the United States.

Over the past decade, D.C. lost its longheld status as one of the nation’s major majority-Black cities, as the city’s Black population fell by nearly 10,000 residents. A recent study showed that the neighborhoods most heavily impacted by gentrification include Marshall Heights and Anacostia, which are in the predominantly Black areas of Ward 7 (91.74 percent Black) and Ward 8 (91.84 percent Black). And Ward 1, where the U Street area is situated and Don’t Mute D.C. began, is following suit, now newly majority white. Once known as Black Broadway, the neighborhood around the 14th and U Street corridors has become notable as one of the most visibly gentrifying areas in the city.

design by sabrina shaffer; artwork by kaliq customs; photo courtesy of annabella hoge

What was once a center for Black arts, culture, and economic power has been gentrified to a breaking point, and nothing exemplifies that more than residents in new, expensive apartments threatening to sue their neighbors over go-go being played on the street.

More than 80,000 signatures later, with supporters from all 50 states and 94 countries, the music at Metro PCS returned.

And as go-go played on, the community who rallied behind Don’t Mute D.C. furthered the fight against gentrification.

Months after the go-go music returned to the corner of 7th Street and Florida Avenue, Ward 5 D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie introduced the “Go-Go Official Music of the District of Columbia Designation Act of 2019.”

The bill was signed into legislation by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in 2020, making go-go the official music of the nation’s capital. And, in 2019, Bowser declared the week of Nov. 17 to Nov. 23 “Go-Go Awareness Week.”

“Making [go-go] the official music of the District of Columbia was really a no-brainer, but it wouldn’t have happened if you all hadn’t pushed back and organized,” McDuffie said at a panel during the second annual GoGo Preservation Week in November of 2021.

“That organization was so powerful; imagine if it sustained?”

The silencing of go-go was never just about the music, and the movement has broadened its mission. Don’t Mute D.C. took their methodology of protest and petition to a plethora of raciallybased injustices in the District, expanding their influence into realms of public policy, preservation, and further activism. “We were able to activate the music around a bunch of other real serious issues,” Hopkinson said.

When D.C. City Council threatened United Medical Center, the only hospital serving Wards 7 and 8, with enormous budget cuts, Don’t Mute D.C. took to the streets to protest, and pushed for $22 million in funding to be restored. The movement also helped with a $53 million modernization of Banneker Academic High School, which serves mostly Black and Hispanic students, and its move to Shaw.

“Without our culture, this city is nothing,” Moten said at a panel discussion about the future of Go-go at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library during Go-Go Preservation Week 2021.

“Our spirit is in this music and we gotta fight. We gotta make sure Black people have a place in this city,” Moten said at the panel. The library also hosted a performance by iconic 1970s go-go band Rare Essence and presented self-guided tours of the D.C. Public Library gogo exhibit on Nov. 20.

Reasserting the relevance and necessity of Don’t Mute D.C.’s fight against Black erasure in the District, the speakers on the panel at the library made it clear: The syncopated rhythms and drum beats of go-go are the heartbeat of D.C. “Go-go is us. How we are doing is how go-go is doing,” Shanel O. Anthony, a member of the

Board of Trustees for the D.C. Public Library, said. “We’re still here, go-go is still here.”

But with waning publicity, the future of gogo is not as clear. The Go-Go Museum, located in Anacostia, serves a dual role of community hub and cultural education center, providing an introduction to go-go with hopes to cement its legacy. Moten and Hopkinson hope that the the cultural preservation work of activists and public scholars is institutionalized.

Asked what is needed for go-go to be preserved, panelists seated in the newly renovated auditorium pointed to their surroundings. “It’s essential that the library play a role in the archiving of that music, that’s what libraries do. You come here to learn, so why wouldn’t you come here to learn about our music?” Anthony said.

The D.C. Public Library has assisted in the archival preservation of go-go at an institutional level, and the hope is that the work happening there will contribute to a broader public education of the District’s cultural touchstone.

"It’s not just music.

It’s culture, it’s a way of life, it’s equity, it’s health equity, it’s all the things that we’ve been working on, education and policy, it’s everything."

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, a small go-go exhibit on the 4th floor has a collection of memorabilia and documents from the library’s go-go archive.

“It’s important because of its contribution to the narrative of the city,” archivist Derek Gray said. Gray has been archiving go-go for over a decade, and as one of the few archivists at the D.C. Public Library, is part of a centralized push to teach people about the importance of go-go in the nation’s capital through shared historical records.

The go-go archives were formally established in May of 2012, following the death of Chuck Brown, called the “Godfather of Go-Go.” While archival documentation can seem like an overly scholarly way to engage with material, Gray wants the go-go archives to be an interactive, low-barrier experience for anyone who visits the library, Washingtonian or not. “I want to make it accessible to all types of people,” he said.

As much as the archival work at the D.C. Public Library is an outward-facing quest to

educate, developing a collection is an inward service to the go-go diaspora. Drawing directly from D.C. locals, the archives are a work of community preservation and documenting the work of Don’t Mute D.C. activists.

Hopkinson, who also serves as an assistant professor at Howard University, has partnered with the D.C. Public Library to build out the archives through oral history, a cornerstone of gogo documentation. To develop similar projects like Traditional Arts D.C., a folklife center aspiring to highlight D.C.’s Black and Indigenous cultures, Hopkinson and her students have been equipping community members with the tools to cement their own history.

“We want to get as many people empowered as possible to be able to document this history,” Hopkinson said. “The impulse to preserve culture is not something that comes from me or from any institution. There are these cultural workers who have always been doing this work.”

Bryan Jenkins, a doctoral student at Howard who has worked with Hopkinson on many projects, pointed to the importance of folklife centers in their efforts to document the importance of cultural forms like go-go.

“D.C. is known as Chocolate City, known as a very Black city, and yet there’s a lot of culture here that you think would be front and center in some of our institutions,” Jenkins said, “but it’s not really and it really hasn’t been until recent years.” The popular narrative of the District is one that repeatedly ignores its Black residents, focusing instead on the bureaucratic activities on the Hill, he said. “I hear some of these conversations and it’s just completely missing the go-go and the Black history.”

According to Jenkins, it is critical that transplants moving into the District educate themselves on go-go. But more than that, new and long-term residents must value the place that D.C. culture, and Black culture, holds in the history and future of the city. “It’s respect, is the first thing I’d say when you come in,” Jenkins said.

Nearly three years since Don’t Mute D.C. rallied people in the fight against gentrification, the urgency remains, even if some can’t see it. “The fact that we have to tell people why it’s important is part of the reason why it’s so important,” Jenkins said. “I think it’s very easy for certain causes and certain issues, in particular with gentrification, to just be out of sight and out of mind for other people.”

And for the people who study it and celebrate it, the perseverance of go-go is more than a representation of D.C.’s fight against gentrification. To many like Hopkinson, go-go is a blessing.

“It’s not just music. It’s culture, it’s a way of life, it’s equity, it’s health equity, it’s all the things that we’ve been working on, education and policy, it’s everything,” she said. “The more people can get engaged, the better it’s going to be.” G FEBRUARY 4, 2022

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Sm ithson ian museums struggle to ke e p national treasures above wate r By Paul James “I

f you were to go out to FedEx Field to see the Washington Football Team, nearby is billions of dollars worth of art—and you would never know it,” Prof. Lisa Strong, director of Georgetown’s Art and Museum Studies Program, says.

A small plaque is the only signifier of the prized artifacts behind the doors of the nondescript building that houses a large part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection, as well as the collections of private owners.

The Maryland storage facility safeguards the collections against decay and weather, but the objects housed in the museums on the National Mall are at much greater risk.

Many of the museums built on the Mall have experienced major flooding events, threatening collections stored onsite below ground level and even galleries. As a warming climate is projected to cause further sea level rise and increase the incidence of extreme weather events—major floods have doubled in the past few decades—these institutions face new collection conservation and museum sustainability challenges.

The scale of the threat becomes apparent when considering the size of the 19 Smithsonian institutions and their combined collections of 155 million objects. The objects these museums collect and display attempt to tell the story of the United States, be it through the lens of art, historical documents, or cultural touchstones.

Even if those efforts fall short, as climate change shapes the nation’s present and future, its effects are also taking a toll on the nation’s past.

Storms in the last two decades have piled up to three feet of water onto Constitution Ave, resulting in floods that swept into museum galleries and storage levels. The National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History, built in 1964 and 1911 respectively, are the two most at-risk institutions on the Mall. A lack of funding for major infrastructure projects has led to ad hoc measures aimed at short-term protection of their onsite collections.

Climate projections predict extensive flooding along the Mall with a global temperature increase of 1.4 degrees Celsius; the same projections are even more catastrophic at two degrees.

“The Mall’s a tricky place to build because it’s reclaimed swamp,” Carlos Bustamante, associate director of project management and planning at the National Museum of African

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American History and Culture (NMAAHC), said. As the most recent addition to the Smithsonian, NMAAHC has taken measures to control its exposure to extreme weather events, including flooding.

With the benefit of hindsight to aid its construction in 2016, NMAAHC is better protected than most other buildings on the Mall. Bustamante described three cisterns built 60 feet below grade that collect incoming water and guide it away from the facility, as well as a pump system that handles thousands of gallons of water each day, protecting the building against ruinous flooding.

“These systems are designed to be hundred-year systems, to look at what’s happening and project forward and be robust enough to handle the cataclysmic extreme weather events,” he said.

Some of the older buildings have already shown signs of wear and tear due to rising sea levels and the high Potomac water table.

“Many of these museums, especially in D.C., were built before we saw the extreme weather events and temperature increases, and they’re not really meant to handle this type of extreme weather,” according to Rebecca Kennedy, who managed collections for the Smithsonian for more than a decade.

The severity of the issue is no secret. Even a 2021 Smithsonian climate vulnerability assessment reads, “Severe storm events causing flooding could outpace the Smithsonian’s current capacity to fund and execute projects to provide increased individual site and building resilience at its most vulnerable National Mall facilities.”

The report describes potential resiliency projects, such as flood walls at the National Museum of American History—which would cost $38.9 million—and a National Mall water pumping station shared among all the buildings in the space—with a price tag of $400 million.

The National Air & Space Museum installed flood walls during its recent renovation, but other projects have not come to fruition, both due to their prohibitive cost and the division of responsibility for climate response among numerous government agencies.

Although the problems they face are mounting, museums have always made climate integral to their operation. The standards for climate control in museum galleries are strict to ensure objects are not damaged, and

design by insha momin

HVAC systems carefully monitor temperature and humidity fluctuations. “You never think of museums as being on the cutting edge of anything, but in many ways, they were uniquely prepared for these challenges,” Strong said, adding that the advanced filtration systems in museums have also protected visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paradoxically, some museum practices contribute to the climate problems they face; Strong said discussions have increased in recent years around improving the sustainability of these institutions. “You do want to control it, but the environmental recommendations are so specific that museums have to use a lot of energy to meet them,” Strong said. As fluctuations in temperature and humidity increase, museum climate control systems will be working harder to maintain an environment that looks less and less like the one outside their walls.

Despite the prevailing adherence to strict guidelines, some museums and researchers are challenging those recommendations, according to Anne Kingery-Schwartz, who specializes in object conservation for museums and teaches in the art and museum studies program at Georgetown. “There’s been a lot of discussion recently about relaxing those standards and if those standards are really the right ones because they’re a little bit based on human comfort and then preventing fluctuations from there,” she said. The standards for gallery temperature and humidity also date back to the 1970s, before advancements in conservation science.

One way to use less energy in the process is allowing for greater variation in the humidity of museum climates. “There’s some research that the seasonal fluctuations from a humid summer to a dry winter are not so bad because they’re gradual, so the objects can acclimatize,” Kingery-Schwartz said.

Short-term fluctuations are dangerous for objects like oil paintings, which are often done on canvases stretched over wooden frames. If the wood expands or contracts too quickly, the paint cracks and flakes. But the dangers may be significantly reduced to objects if the fluctuations are more gradual, allowing museums to mirror the outside temperature and humidity more closely throughout the year and save energy.

Museum conservators are paying increasing attention to the ways their practices contribute to problems they ultimately try to fix. Airborne pollutants, including sulfur and carbon dioxide from industrial processes, can combine with other elements to leave deposits on museum objects. Museum waste, as well, can end up feeding plastic and hazardous pollution into landfills and oceans.

While part of the effort to make collection management more sustainable includes replacing old storage materials, such as wooden cabinets and foam packing, updating also creates new waste problems. “Especially if those cabinets cannot be reused because hazardous collections have been stored in

them, then you’re just creating a lot of trash when you replace your old storage cabinets with new,” Kingery-Schwartz said.

Traveling collections and loans to other institutions, which make up a large part of the Smithsonian’s effort to make its collection widely accessible, also face sustainability challenges.

“It’s a very important part of our coordination and helping out other museums, the museums that want to tell the stories but may not have the objects,” Bustamante said.

In order to receive loans, partner institutions must legally commit to the same standards of collection care as the Smithsonian.

Museums that allow for a broader range of temperature and humidity may not secure loan agreements, hurting their access to collections.

B l o c k b u s te r art shows that collect objects from institutions around the world are among the worst energy-abusers, according to Strong.

The energy cost of transporting large crates of artwork by plane or ship became especially apparent when shows were canceled during the pandemic.

Moving forward, she made a case for such largescale displays only when there is a clear benefit to collecting an artist’s works in one place and making them available to the public and researchers.

“I would hope there will be less frivolous blockbusters and that we would only expend the energy on a show like a van Eyck or a Vermeer where

"We can’t stay where we are and keep doing what we’re doing as climate change continues to get worse."

there’s a real value to seeing all the artworks together and we as art historians would get on a plane to go see that,” Strong said.

During the pandemic in particular, many museums began to expand their collections digitally, pointing to a future of widespread knowledge and culture sharing that doesn’t require the same energy-intensive methods.

NMAAHC took the opportunity to launch its searchable virtual museum collection in 2021. “As horrible as the pandemic has been, it has forced our hand to make sure that we create as robust a digital experience as possible while we were closed,” Bustamante said. “We dug deep into these projects, and the searchable museum is a beautiful example of what can be done in terms of lifting the physical out of the gallery and putting it into the hands of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who would never have seen it.” In its first few weeks public, the project reached audiences in more than a hundred different countries. The new NMAAHC digital collection is indicative of how the Smithsonian hopes to move forward in the pedagogic space.

To this end, the Smithsonian also offers learning labs to help teachers incorporate digital collections into their classrooms, and it is not going unnoticed. “The Smithsonian is doing a lot to try to make their collections accessible and relevant online,” Strong said.

While the importance of online museum integration cannot be understated, digital collections may never be a true substitute for the ability to see priceless artifacts and materials in person. So, the pursuit of collection preservation is continuing in earnest.

“We can’t stay where we are and keep doing what we’re doing as climate change continues to get worse,” Kennedy said. A former Smithsonian employee, Kennedy started her own business in 2018 to offer conservator services and consultation to museums in the U.S. and abroad. “I wanted to get ahead of the metaphorical and literal fires. I started it to take these small contracts around the world to help with collections care at museums,” she said.

Movement on these changes, however, requires a coordinated effort. “All these things are incredibly challenging from a diplomatic standpoint. It’s a big decision to make; you’re writing new policy,” Kingery-Schwartz said.

Kennedy also addressed the inertia of the museum world in making these changes, adding that the most significant resistance comes from securing administrator buy-in. In D.C., the issue is complicated by the Smithsonian’s partial reliance on federal funding, which is tightly earmarked for specific purposes and times, and the political connections of many of the people responsible for decision-making at the highest level.

“We turn to our heritage in times of crisis for comfort and support,” Kennedy said. “So it’s always interesting that we don’t take care of it when considering climate change.” G FEBRUARY 4, 2022

13

VOICES

Club applications suck. Let's finally end them.

BY ANTHONY BONAVITA

C

lubs drive Georgetown’s social culture.

From their first CAB Fair, students are bombarded with hundreds of showcases, pitches from enthusiastic upperclassmen, and a club application process that pulls us into the allure of exclusivity. For some clubs, there is no application process; signing your name is the only barrier keeping you from unexpected friendships, new opportunities, and a new skill.

For most organizations, however, this is far from true. For many of the most well-known clubs on campus, extensive application processes are routine. Blue & Gray (the unpaid tour guide society), The Hoya, consulting clubs like Innovo, and investment clubs like GU Student Investment Fund all require an application, as well as interviews with current members. The Corp has an extensive hiring and interview process. Even the Eating Society—which brands itself as a social space, not pre-professional development—has a staggered application process. Isn’t there some irony to having to demonstrate interest in eating?

This structural exclusivity, rather than warding off potential members, is often a greater enticement for students to partake in them. Students buy into the heuristic that an application implies a desirable club experience— suddenly membership is understood to be lucrative. This results in an artificial preference for application-based clubs, showcased by the organizational priority that is often given to application-based clubs at CAB Fair.

This closed-off nature of Georgetown’s clubs makes it challenging to excitedly engage. Rather than joining clubs to pursue passions, first years are not only overwhelmed by choice, but also burdened with applications and the fear of rejection.

They also must consider whether organizations they’re interested in require experience prior to college—experience that is too late to get. These steps functionally prevent many students from participating in certain organizations, often for completely unjust reasons such as the opportunities offered at their high school.

Virtual CAB Fair compounded these trends, making it hard to believe that Georgetown fosters a welcoming student social environment.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Organizations present during the fall 2021 CAB Fair were absent at online CAB this semester. It became a scavenger hunt to find clubs without strings attached, let alone find information about how to get involved.

Processes to “weed out” certain students are not merely annoying; the practice is divisive and problematic. It inserts Georgetown’s already career-focused and ultra-competitive culture into social life, the one place we should take a break. Students are forced into making panicked decisions about interests and career pursuits in the first few weeks of college. Good luck trying to get into one of these organizations if it was not during the cycle in freshman year, since many clubs only recruit underclassmen—and working up to any type of leadership position within many clubs without joining as a first year is even more tainted.

Another issue with Georgetown’s club culture is the ubiquity of unpaid labor.

Organizations such as Blue & Gray ask students to commit multiple hours of volunteer work. At many peer institutions—UCLA, Yale, Brown— tour guides are paid for their work. Because Blue & Gray doesn’t receive enough funding to pay guides, it excludes low-income students who must dedicate hours to other jobs, thereby losing out from the community’s benefit.

Since Blue & Gray often provides the initial presentation of the university, diversity among its tour guides are essential. When the social and demographic makeup of these guides is homogenous, the perspective they can provide to potential students is limited and the image it presents of the student body is narrowed.

Georgetown’s club culture can also pose barriers to students of color. It’s common for application-based clubs to be largely made up of white students, sending the often unintended but still obvious message to potential members of color that these organizations were not created for them. And even when students of color do join these organizations, they are often faced with club leaderships that are almost entirely white— an especially significant problem, since student

leaders represent not only who is welcome in an organization but also who is encouraged to thrive in that space. This is not to say all open membership groups are equal, either—the Voice has historically been a predominantly white organization, too— but the presence of applications exacerbates a club culture that may be hostile to students of color.

Is the solution to ban club applications? Not necessarily—organizations exist where a certain degree of selection is warranted, such as GERMS or GUASFCU, where students are responsible for others and must have a certain degree of professionalism and skill.

But for clubs with unnecessarily stringent requirements, it’s important to think about why these organizations choose to limit their acceptance and to analyze the consequences.

Regardless of these reasons, though, the sentiment must change: We must stop creating exclusivity within these organizations and instead encourage them to welcome students with genuine interest.

We’ve known this for years—student club culture is harmful. We could have made meaningful changes upon our in-person return to campus that showed us what matters. We still have time to change our club structures before exclusivity is reinstitutionalized in Georgetown social life.

If groups want more qualified and invested members, the best solution is to make students feel welcome to learn rather than expecting them to come in with necessary skills. If an organization is clearly open and has the resources to accept more people, it should work to create more opportunities for participation.

There’s no doubt that Georgetown’s club culture is divided and exclusionary—but it doesn’t have to be that way. It is essential that clubs and student leaders work to foster a more inviting and welcoming environment to all. They can end application processes and reassess the need to limit resources that should be open to all students who are willing to participate. Stop excluding students who cannot change their circumstances and create a more accepting environment. G

design by connor martin

VOICES

Georgetown needs to provide sexual assault support for student-run clubs

BY NATALIE GILBERT

Content warning: This article references sexual violence.

I

n fall 2021, I found myself in a situation for which I was wholly unprepared: I, a 19-yearold undergraduate student, needed to respond, in an official capacity, to the sexual assault of another student.

As a leader in a student-run organization, it made sense that when a club member came forward with a sexual assault allegation against someone formerly on the board, students turned to me and fellow club leaders for answers.

According to CSE policy, “student organizations should not attempt to investigate or sanction allegations of sexual misconduct on their own.” Our board waited for guidance from the university; days passed by without guidance, all while the accused perpetrator remained in our club.

As a member and leader, I was incredibly uncomfortable with the possibility that someone accused of sexual assault could stay in the club.

But without a formal system to support a group of 20-year-olds attempting to handle such a huge allegation, we had no authority to take action. More and more students began to feel uncomfortable. Eventually, with no help from the university and growing discontent within the club, the alleged perpetrator resigned.

Navigating this situation highlighted how remarkably ill-equipped students are to handle sexual assault allegations, a terrifying point considering the responsibilities Georgetown club leaders face in creating a safe environment for students within their organizations.

Sexual assault is not uncommon at Georgetown; in the 2019 Campus Climate Survey, over 70 percent of female undergraduates reported experiencing at least one type of offensive or inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature since entering Georgetown, a rate that is over 12 percent higher than other universities.

Georgetown’s club culture only exacerbates the problem of sexual assault. As of 2021, over 200 student-led groups and organizations exist on campus. The organizational structure often consists of a student board which makes the executive decisions regarding the club and sets a precedent for socially acceptable behavior and club culture.

Examining sexual assault between club members is especially important at Georgetown, where clubs function as a main source of community. Just like Greek life at other schools, clubs are more than

simply a group that meets once a week; rather, they constitute tight-knit support structures. In essence, poor club policy means a survivor’s entire support structure could disappear in a moment, especially if their abuser remains in the club.

Student life that relies on club leadership fosters serious power imbalances between peers and an environment void of adult guidance, which creates issues of consent and makes it difficult to address assault allegations against members.

Because of this imbalance, and the risk survivors run of disrupting or losing their central communities by coming forward, clubs become spaces where sexual assault is prevalent but ignored.

While the nature of application-based, hierarchical student organizations already fosters an environment where students can be taken advantage of, stark gender and racial imbalances within membership and leadership exacerbates this concern. Within the Georgetown University Student Association, for example, less than 20 percent of student presidents and vice presidents since 1969 have been women.

In 2017, GUASFCU’s acceptance rate for non-white applicants was 15 percent lower than that for white applicants. The result is an especially hostile, and potentially dangerous, environment for women of color, and even more so, trans students of color, who experience heightened club imbalances.

While these factors alone present difficulties for survivors, more glaring is the lack of university help for leaders addressing sexual assault between club members. When clubs receive allegations of sexual assault perpetrated by and against members, oftentimes the required course of action is to contact the Office of Student Conduct. However, this office—responsible for investigating and resolving filed complaints of sexual misconduct on campus— often fails to adequately take action in response to sexual assault allegations; in the 2019-20 school year, only 5 of the 201 cases of alleged sexual misconduct were adjudicated through a formal process by the Georgetown Office of Student Conduct.

In addition to their low efficacy rate, the Office of Student Conduct only offers general support; it does not provide training or support specifically dedicated to intra-club sexual assault allegations.

This inability—or, perhaps, unwillingness—to address sexual assault is especially disconcerting given that the university’s responses to sexual assault, once it has occurred, are convoluted and ineffective, and ultimately fail to provide adequate

graphic by sabrina shaffer; layout by alex giorno

support or resources for survivors. Moreover, simply asking students to defer to university services does not guide stopgap measures—what happens in the time between when allegations arise and when cases are finally adjudicated, if at all?

While Georgetown has made attempts to address sexual assault, they fail to effectively address the problem. Mandatory five-hour bystander training for incoming students has fallen through in the past two years as a result of the pandemic, leaving the majority of sophomores and all first-years without important knowledge. While Sexual Assault Peer Educators offer trainings to clubs, these trainings must be requested and don’t directly address intra-club sexual assault.

Requiring club-specific sexual assault prevention and awareness trainings, reinstituting and improving mandatory specialized trainings for people in leadership positions, and providing guidance for intra-club sexual assault are all important steps the university should be taking.

Without measures to help students foster welcoming club environments, instances of sexual assault, such as the one within my club, will continue to occur, and insufficient support will continue to fail students.

Providing assistance and educational services for clubs to handle sexual assault allegations will not stop on-campus sexual assault completely; however, it will be a step in ensuring that clubs foster a safe and supportive environment for survivors of sexual assault and prevent this intraclub abuse from continuing in the future. G Georgetown and D.C. Confidential Resources: - Health Education Services (HES): sarp@georgetown.edu - Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS): (202) 6876985; after hours, call (833) 960-3006 to reach Fonemed, a telehealth service; individuals may ask for the on-call CAPS clinician - DC Rape Crisis Center: (202) 333-RAPE (24/7 Hotline) - Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN): 1-800-656-HOPE (24/7 hotline)

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

15

Being the Ricardos (2021) is emblematic of today's awards season. Here's why that needs to change “L

ucy and Ricky go to an Italian vineyard, and they stomp grapes.” When Madelyn Pugh (played by Alia Shawkat), a writer for I Love Lucy, explains this premise to Lucille Ball (played by Nicole Kidman), the camera slowly zooms in on Ball, lost in thought about how to create her show, I Love Lucy. While the writers squabble about how to set up the slapstick sequence, Ball envisions herself stomping on the grapes and rolling through them, a black-andwhite recreation of one of the original show’s most famous scenes. Kidman delivers a rubberfaced imitation of Ball’s giant facial expressions and exaggerated movements.

But while the film’s studio audience laughs along, it isn’t funny at all.

Being the Ricardos (2021), writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s new film about the production of Ball’s 1960s hit television show, aims to take viewers behind the scenes about what it was like to be Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (played by Javier Bardem).

Kidman and Bardem have undeniable star presence, as they command a physicality (especially Bardem) that makes them entertaining to watch.

That said, neither Bardem or Kidman are comedy actors, and their interpretations of the scenes feel rote and by-the-numbers, with few of the performance quirks that make the original show hysterical. This may match Sorkin’s vision for the film, as he has said in interviews that he doesn’t think I Love Lucy, a show renowned for being funny, is actually humorous from a modern perspective.

Of course, it would be possible to successfully create a Lucille Ball movie where the character was completely serious, but Sorkin’s movie—and Kidman’s performance—feel rudderless.

Being the Ricardos is so fast-paced, so thematically unfocused, and so unconcerned with Lucy’s humor that it gives her no dimensional backstory or interiority for Kidman to play. As a result, her performance is mimicry without hitting at a deeper truth found within it.

The flatness of Kidman’s performance in Being the Ricardos and Sorkin’s disinterest in her character development is going largely

16

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

BY OWEN POSNETT

unrecognized by critics and members of awards groups. In fact, quite the opposite: Kidman has been nominated for several major awards and has won the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) for the film, making her an Oscar frontrunner.

Kidman’s frequent nominations are a sign of a dispiriting trend among awards bodies that begins to award impersonations over performances.

Over the past decade, Oscars voters have continued to nominate actors who play celebrities, frequently in biopics: In the past five years, Gary Oldman, Rami Malek, and Renee Zellweger have won for rote, by-the-numbers interpretations of Winston Churchill, Freddie Mercury, and Judy Garland, respectively. While some biopic performances can be compelling if they find an emotional truth or passion in the character, many of them are labeled as “Oscar bait”: meant to evoke a memory of another person rather than create a vibrant character of their own.

Some of this award season’s biopics are effective or have great performances, typically created by maximizing one element of the character. Andrew Garfield brings a fiery intensity to his portrayal of Jonathan Larson in tick… tick… BOOM! (2021), while Lady Gaga chews the scenery to an enjoyable degree in House of Gucci (2021). Jessica Chastain’s performance as televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) is so cartoonishly outsized that it quickly goes off the rails of humanity and begins to resemble a space alien (this is a compliment, as it’s never short of compelling).

Nevertheless, biopics and the performances they showcase can symbolize the opposite of quality for some critics and film fans; so many of the high-profile ones are mediocre drabs, more concerned with merely mimicking how a person really was rather than giving an individually passionate or outstanding performance. Critic Bilge Ebiri compares the biopic to “the comicbook movie of awards season,” both due to their unceasing ubiquity and predictable structures.

The biopic carries an indifferent quality that, at its most frequent, focuses so much on successive events rather than thematic feeling

that it resembles a bad history textbook. There are certainly good performances in Being the Ricardos— the film’s subplot about women’s perspectives in the television industry is thought-provoking, led by Nina Arianda and Alia Shawkat. But the film breezes through a mostly invented account, condensing historical and ahistorical events into a single week and turgidly flashing backwards and forwards to pad the runtime. The filmmakers could have picked one aspect of Lucy’s personality or life story and finetuned the performance around that. Instead, Sorkin follows the rule of biopics in trying to cover it all, leaving little room for Lucy as a character to grow in the way a person does.

The major awards bodies make many great choices, but the toxic quality of “Oscar buzz” locks voters into picking biopics that get talked about simply because they are biopics when they premiere. None of the Parasite (2019) performers were even nominated for Oscars, but predictable, boring biopics like Harriet (2019), The Two Popes (2019), and Bombshell (2019) were able to shove their way in among the good films in 2020.

Movies like King Richard (2021), a boring biopic about Richard Williams, played by Will Smith, and Belfast (2021), an admittedly entertaining historical movie that has Big Biopic Energy, in this year’s awards-season cycle are talked about for months and considered locks for major categories, even without box office success or rave reviews. It is true that most critics enjoy King Richard and Belfast and that award nominees don’t need to do well at the box office, but the constant nomination of these “safe” movies and performances generates a sameness that can make catching up on nominees feel like a chore.

Perhaps one year, the Academy should be forbidden from selecting biopics and “based on a true story” movies; actors would then be incentivized to make performance choices that are weirder, personal, daring, and above all, more entertaining. Instead of a restrained and muted Lucy and Desi, there should be more love for performances pushing boundaries, acting boldly, and inhabiting a personhood, whether real or fictional, that feels truly human. G

design by connor martin; image courtesy of cbs/getty images

SPORTS

What goes up must come down: Men’s basketball struggles after last year’s triumph

BY LUCIE PEYREBRUNE AND TIM TAN

T

here’s no sugarcoating it: We’re doing badly.

Really badly. In fact, the Hoyas’ 0-8 Big East record is their worst start to conference play since joining the Big East as a founding member in 1979. While the team shows potential to improve down the stretch, they must answer some serious questions heading into next season.

After Georgetown’s triumph in the 2021 Big East Tournament, Hoya fans had high expectations entering the season. Despite losing Jamorko Pickett, Jahvon Blair, and Chudier Bile to graduation, Georgetown had the number 16 recruiting class in the country, featuring freshman forward Aminu Mohammed, freshman center Ryan Mutombo, and graduate transfer Kaiden Rice. Mohammed is the program’s first five-star recruit since 2014, and Mutombo is both a four-star recruit in his own right and the son of Georgetown legend and NBA Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo. Rice was one of the best three-point shooters in Division I basketball last year. Despite their impressive roster, the Hoyas have yet to win a single game in conference play.

The biggest reasons for the Hoyas’ poor performance are easy to spot: defensive breakdowns, an inexperienced roster, and way too many turnovers. Georgetown has often been inefficient on defense this year, leading to tough losses to poorlyranked teams, including Dartmouth, St. Joseph’s, and Butler. These games should have been easy wins on paper, but something isn’t clicking. Sure, sophomore point guard Dante Harris and graduate guard Donald Carey have missed time due to injury and COVID-19 protocols. Head Coach Patrick Ewing even missed three games due to COVID-19 in January. However, other teams in the NCAA have dealt with the pandemic, and with the Hoyas now at full strength they are running out of excuses.

The Hoyas’ woes started before the season did. In April 2021, center Qudus Wahab, one of last season’s key performers, announced that he was transferring to Maryland. In October, the program announced that Tre King—a transfer center expected to fill Wahab’s spot—would be leaving the roster due to a failure to meet university conduct expectations.

These losses stretched the Hoyas’ roster, pushing junior Timothy Ighoefe, junior Malcolm Wilson, and freshman Mutombo off the bench to fill the gaps.

Those preseason blows showed in Georgetown’s season-opening loss to Dartmouth. The Hoyas overcame a huge first half deficit and pulled ahead 50-48 with 11 minutes to play in the second half.

However, they couldn’t keep up their momentum,

and lost 69-60 to a 16.5-point underdog. The Hoyas’ play against Dartmouth foreshadowed a trend that has continued throughout the season: a slow start, followed by a run to make things close, only to lose steam in the second half.

Weeks later, Georgetown’s home victory over its bitter rival Syracuse seemed to mark a turning point for the team. Mohammed had career-high stats across the board and the team finally seemed to be gelling. Despite being down 44-34 at halftime, the Hoyas pulled it together, tied things up with 14 minutes left to play, and fought their way to a 79-75 victory. It was the perfect time for the Hoyas to pick up a win over a quality team and build confidence.

Fast forward to today. The Hoyas are riding an eight game losing streak, are underdogs in their remaining 11 games, and are ranked dead last in the Big East.

Overall, the Hoyas’ struggles stem from a combination of weak offense and slow defense.

Although they lead the Big East in three-point field goal percentage at 37.8 percent, they have been uncharacteristically weak in scoring near the rim, ranking 10th out of 11 in Big East field goal percentage at a dismal 42 percent. Harris, struggling through several lower body injuries, has regressed on the offensive end of the floor this season. The freshman class has also been largely a disappointment. Tyler Beard, Jalin Billingsley, and Mutombo have lacked the consistency to remain rotation staples, and Jordan Riley was lost due to a torn labrum. Rice, while shooting well from behind the arc, has struggled to play Big East-caliber defense, costing him his spot in the starting line-up.

On the defensive end, the Hoyas have been unable to come up with stops or consistently rebound despite their height, allowing other teams many second chance point opportunities.

Georgetown has also been porous in guarding beyond the three-point line, allowing nine or more three-pointers in all but two of their conference matchups this season. If they hope to improve, it’s crucial that they lock down the perimeter.

However, there are some hopeful spots.

Mohammed is a budding star. Sophomore forward Collin Holloway has stepped up and is entrenched as the starting power forward. The Hoyas performed well in their recent game against Butler, losing by only three points to a team that blew them out 72-58 a few weeks previously. The Hoyas will also welcome junior transfer Wayne Bristol Jr., former

design by lou jacquin; photo courtesy of john picker

MEAC Freshman of the Year, to the Hilltop from Howard. Bristol will hopefully bring some new energy, experience, and defensive depth to the team.

Big offseason questions loom around Ewing and Mohammed. Ewing is in his fifth year as head coach and has brought experience and star power to the program. However, he has not achieved the Big East success many fans expected, attaining a Big East record of 2652 that is on par with his recent predecessors but disappointing nonetheless. Regardless of whether Ewing stays, the program will face some serious questions about its coaching methodology.

A second question centers around Mo h a m m e d ’ s future with the program.

Despite Georgetown’s performance, he has been a standout player and is a possible candidate for the 2022 NBA Draft.

If he moves on to play professionally or transfers, the program would be without its star player next year.

Coupled with Carey’s graduation, the program would lose two of its main contributors on offense.

There is still hope for Georgetown, but the next few weeks will be crucial. If the Hoyas can bounce back from their abysmal start and regain some confidence, the team will be poised to improve upon their performance next year. However, the outlook for this season is bleak.

While last spring was a watershed moment for the program, this season will likely be a disappointment.

However, only time will tell whether this season is one more step in a decline into irrelevance or the start of a rebuild on the Hilltop. G FEBRUARY 4, 2022

17

VOICES

To the casting directors of Euphoria and other teen shows — grow up

BY ANNETTE HASNAS

I

tend to avoid shows about teenagers. Even when I was a teen, they rarely appealed to me, and this distaste has only grown as I’ve entered young adulthood.

The teen shows I do watch, then, are carefully selected. The sort of recommendations I end up taking are those billed as “raw” and “real,” the kind that people rave about online for capturing the ‘true teen experience’—the way people talk about Euphoria, the second season of which is ongoing. The plots are supposedly driven by genuine interpersonal conflict, and the characters defined by nuance and depth. And, for the most part, I’ve been impressed. But, despite how real and groundbreaking these shows are supposed to be, they’re never quite able to overcome my aversion to teen shows. And that’s for one simple reason: the casting.

Invariably (at this point, it’s almost a staple of the genre in itself), the lead actors in shows meant for and focusing on teens are comically older than their characters, regardless of how valiantly the showrunners attempt to capture teen realism. This phenomenon isn’t new: The classic archetypical teenage character, Rebel Without a Cause’s Jim Stark, was played by a 24-year-old James Dean in 1955. But the trend has only become more prevalent as media for and about teenagers grows in popularity.

It’s overwhelmingly common for actors playing teens to range throughout their twenties.

Actors Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, and Jacob Elordi, among others playing older teenagers in Euphoria, ranged from 20 to 24 during the first season. And it isn’t as though casting directors take pains to select actors who look much younger than they are—in Euphoria, none of the actors could pass for a high school senior. Euphoria is merely one example of how teen shows have largely abandoned the idea of shaping their casts around realism for the characters’ ages. Instead, the image of a teenager has morphed into something more closely resembling a recent college graduate. Audiences have learned to accept it so much that they hardly notice at all; that’s just the way it is.

But it shouldn’t be. The tendency for visibly mature adults to be cast as teenagers is often written off as a mere annoyance for younger audiences, if that. Yet its potential effects mean it shouldn’t be discounted.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Watching Euphoria when it first came out, as an 18-year-old fresh high school graduate, I was older than the characters but still years younger than their actors. My body was long and somewhat lanky, with the slight awkwardness and angles that I’m still outgrowing. It was hard to ignore how much more physically developed the characters, supposedly two grades below me, were. I’ve always had a good deal of confidence in how I look, but it was hard not to wonder whether maybe what I was seeing on-screen was how I was supposed to look—or whether it was how I was supposed to have looked two years prior, putting me even further behind.

Anyone doubting the true difference between a 23-year-old and 16-year-old’s appearance need only watch Storm Reid—an actual 16-year-old—in Euphoria, who plays the main character’s younger, middle-school-aged sister. An actual teenage viewer will likely more closely resemble this young character—whose youth is a prominent plot point—than those who are supposedly their own age, a phenomenon which exacerbates the effects of aged-up casting.

Further issues are created because the mismatch between the age of actors and their characters are rarely at the forefront of viewers’ minds. The shows weren’t sending the message that I looked too young, but that I just looked bad—even characters much younger than I was had fully developed chests, large hip-to-waist ratios, and mature faces.

It’s always possible, as a teenager, to rationalize that any attractive features seen in adult characters but lacking in oneself are just things one needs to grow into; when these features are seen even in supposed teenagers, this possibility is removed. Though a careful awareness of the actual ages of the actors helped me avoid internalizing these messages, I found myself slightly affected by them. I can’t help but wonder if maybe, were I just slightly less attuned to the disconnect between the ages of the characters and of their actors, or a younger audience member, this effect would have been even greater.

The trouble with such casting practices doesn’t stop there, though; it also affects adult viewers.

For many adults, teenage characters in media represent the only contact they have with high schoolers. For those without younger siblings or children of their own, it’s not uncommon for their view of the contemporary teenager to be shaped by what they see on the screen. And when adults masquerading as children dominate on-screen representation, it’s not hard to see how the picture they can form of what a teenager truly is can easily be distorted.

Especially when it comes to sex.

The topic of sex is almost unavoidable when discussing the modern teen drama. Even as shows push the envelope on just how sexually explicit they can be, the more mild ones, too, tend to at least touch on it. Which makes perfect sense—teenage years are a time of change, and the discovery of a newfound sense of sexuality is a hallmark of that stage of life.

But, when portrayed by fully mature adults, even the most insightful and valuable explorations of the topic can present problems. When characters with

the faces and bodies of conventionally-attractive adults explore sexuality on screen, not only does it provide confusing signals to teenage viewers about what level of sexual maturity is expected of them, it creates a problematic dynamic wherein adult viewers are attracted to adult bodies inhabited by, narratively speaking, children.

Now, I don’t mean to say that the practice of casting adults to play minors is directly leading to an immoral sexual attraction to underage girls. Such a claim would be unsupportable. But mass sexualization of teenagers—especially teenage girls—is real. From a then-17-year-old Britney Spears dressed as a sexy schoolgirl to the phenomenon of “countdown clocks” to underage celebrities’ 18th birthdays, the view of teenagers as sexually appealing to adults is ubiquitous in modern pop culture. While the casting of adults as teens did not cause this trend, it enables audiences to view teenage characters as both attractive and old enough to validate that attraction, which does little to discourage their sexualization.

"THE IMAGE OF A TEENAGER HAS MORPHED INTO SOMETHING MORE CLOSELY RESEMBLING A RECENT COLLEGE GRADUATE." All of this is to say that, regardless of which segment of a show’s audience we consider, the trend of casting adults to play teens is more than merely annoying—it has the potential for significant harm.

But, of course, there are barriers to casting actual teenagers. One of the most obvious of these is that, with actors under 18, a showrunner’s freedom to portray explicit content is severely hampered.

This hampering is a genuine concern in terms of the artificial limitations it places on a showrunner’s ability to achieve an artistic vision, but we need to ask ourselves what we actually lose by placing these limitations. While scenes involving sexual content can hold genuine value—especially in the context of a show exploring the inner world of teenagers—a startlingly high proportion of the sexual content in shows about teens exists merely to exploit the supposedly teenage body.

Consider, for example, a particularly famous 2008 run of posters for the show Gossip Girl, which featured supposedly negative reviews such as one calling the show “mind-blowingly inappropriate” alongside highly suggestive, mostly nude stills

design by jina zhao; layout by graham krewinghaus

of the show’s teenage characters in intimate moments. Though Gossip Girl was strengthened by its exploration of sex, the way it took advantage of the actors’ statuses as mature adults clearly served as an exploitative advertising trick, coaxing viewers to watch the show with the promise of sexy—but underage—characters.

I don’t intend to claim that there could never occur an instance in which, in order to meaningfully explore something worth exploring, it would be necessary to shoot a sexual scene in such a way that an underage actor couldn’t be included. But the difference between a valuable scene in which a character explores their sexuality and an exploitative one that takes advantage of the supposedly teenage body can be as simple as how things are shot or how much skin is shown.

The very first shot of Netflix’s Sex Education, for example, ends with the camera focus squarely on the nude bodies of two teenage characters in the act of having sex. The show is, as the name suggests, very much concerned with its characters’ sex lives, but the total nudity of two underage characters was by no means neccessary and served only to tip the otherwise very good show in the direction of the sexualization of teenagers so common in the medium. Though there may be some cases in which the casting of adults is necessary in order to achieve an artistic goal that requires some level of explicitness, in many cases, working around the limitations of underage actors would actually improve the quality of the show by moving it away from the sexualization of young characters who are, in essence, children.

And there are, of course, purely logistical issues. Minors have school and are only permitted to work limited hours in many states. But these challenges are far from insurmountable, seeing as there are already examples of minors working in the television industry—the younger sister in Euphoria was played by a genuine teenager, as are the majority of characters in shows aimed at young kids, such as on Disney channel. And even if these logistical issues prove to be too much, the least casting directors could do is cast adult actors who look young for their age. It’s not ideal, but I’d rather see a Euphoria full of younglooking Zendayas than the one we have, full of adult actors good at their jobs but not teenage in the slightest.

It’s hard, noticing all this, to find teenagefocused shows I can truly and wholeheartedly enjoy. For all the cinematic beauty of Euphoria and the insightful emotional heart of Sex Education, I can’t watch them without the uncomfortable awareness of the mismatched age in the casting.

It’s annoying, sure, but it’s more than that; these shows have real, significant effects on the world around them, and the way directors make casting decisions does too.

So, no, shows for and about teenagers have never been overly appealing to me. But maybe, were the industry standard to shift to something a little more genuine and a little less harmful, I’d finally pick up those shows I’ve shunned for so long. G FEBRUARY 4, 2022

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