The Georgetown Voice, October 21, 2010

VOICE the georgetown

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MICE IN MIDNIGHT MUG PAGE 4

DYNAMIC DUO STRIKES AGAIN: SOCCER STREAK HITS SIX PAGE 7

PHONE SEX ON STAGE PAGE 10

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969  October 21, 2010  Volume 43, Issue 10  georgetownvoice.com

Opening the gates of opportunity

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october 21, 2010

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“ Former Georgetown professor wins Nobel Prize in Literature”

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Voice Crossword “Midterm Madness’” by Scott Fligor 18. Lustful gaze 19. Poet friend of Sappho 21. ___ Mix (snack food) 23. Highlander 24. Couch 25. It may cause cancer 29. Graphics card brand 30. “Iliad” Author 31. Genetic material 32. Protein producer 34. Historic Virginia family 35. One of Columbus’ ships 36. Land of Ephesus 37. Puzzle type 40. “I’m working ___” (2 words) 41. Health nut’s berry 42. One of water’s properties 46. “Sesame Street” character 47. Thieve’s den 48. ___-la-la 49. Eye sore 50. Some varieties are figure-8’s and monkey’s fists 51. “Are we there ___?”

ACROSS 1. Dog’s command 4. Fermentation containers 8. Fencing weapon 12. ”___ you kidding?!”

13. Arch Type 14. Former Mass. governor ___ Romney 15. Plant cells have one, animal cells don’t 17. It circles the earth

DOWN 1. Campus grp. that controls club funding 2. Anger 3. Lie

answers at georgetownvoice.com 4. You can buy one in “Wheel of Fortune” 5. Culture medium 6. ___ Aviv 7. Chosen one 8. Hall of Fame rusher ___ Smith 9. Subatomic particle 10. School founded by Henry VI in 1440 11. Sicilian Spewer 16. Princess with a blaster 20. Lion’s caveat 21. Peter the Great, e.g.

22. Indian flatbread 23. Highest, in honors 25. Michael Jackson’s signature move 26. It may be stolen by a cyber-thief?

27. R.E.M.’s “The ___ Love” 28. Cape Canaveral org.

30. Pre-Shang dynasty in China

33. Like some inspections 34. Superman’s love interest ___ Lane 36. Noble gases, e.g.

37. Quick punches 38. “Law & Order: S.V.U.” actor of rap frame 39. Author of “Hatchet’, ___ Paulsen 40. The buckeye state 43. “The Da Vinci Code” author ___ Brown 44. Vein contents?

45. Turner famous for a slaveuprising

Are you a logophile?

Share your love of words and help us write crosswords.

E-mail crossword@georgetownvoice.com.

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 43.10 October 21, 2010 Editor-in-Chief: Juliana Brint Managing Editor: Molly Redden Editor-at-Large: Tim Shine Director of Technology: Alexander Pon Blog Editor: Chris Heller News Editor: Cole Stangler Sports Editor: Nick Berti Feature Editor: Sean Quigley Cover Editor: Holly Ormseth Leisure Editor: Brendan Baumgardner Voices Editor: Keaton Hoffman Photo Editor: Jackson Perry Design Editors: Megan Berard, Ishita Kohli Literary Editor: James McGrory Crossword Editor: Mary Cass Assistant Blog Editors: Geoffrey Bible, Julie Patterson Assistant News Editors: Emma Forster, Holly Tao Assistant Cover Editor: Marc Fichera Assistant Leisure Editors: Nico Dodd, Leigh Finnegan Assistant Photo Editors: Max Blodgett, Matthew Funk

Associate Editor: Iris Kim Staff Writers:

Thaddeus Bell, Cyrus Bordbar, Tom Bosco, Kara Brandeisky, Matthew Collins, Matthew Decker, Kate Imel, Satinder Kaur, Matt Kerwin, Scott Munro, Sadaf Qureshi, Rob Sapunor, Abby Sherburne, Keenan Timko, Imani Tate, Tim Wagner, J. Galen Weber

Staff Photographers:

Helen Burton, Julianne Deno, Lexie Herman, Hilary Nakasone, Seun Oyewole, Audrey Wilson

Staff Designers: Richa Goyal, Lauren MacGuidwin, Michelle Pliskin, Amber Ren

Copy Chief: Matt Kerwin

Copy Editors: Emily Hessler, Tori Jovanovski, Claire McDaniel, Kim Tay

Editorial Board Chair: Hunter Kaplan Editorial Board:

Gavin Bade, Kara Brandeisky, Ethan Chess, Jackson Perry, Eric Pilch, Molly Redden, J. Galen Weber

Head of Business: Eric Pilch The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday. If you would like to subscribe, make a check or money order payable to the Georgetown Voice and send it to the mailing address listed below. Subscription rates are as follows:

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Newsroom: (202) 687-6780 Fax: (202) 687-6763 E-Mail: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Web Site: georgetownvoice.com 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.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. 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. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Silver Communications. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover ... First-Generation College Students Cover Illustration: Marc Fichera

the georgetown voice 3

OUR PRIORITY IS DIVERSITY

Georgetown supports a community of scholars Every fall, over one million young Americans become the first person in their family to attend college. The first-generation college students who come to Georgetown do so through incredibly hard work, often overcoming huge obstacles on their own.

Once they arrive at Georgetown, students continue to face enormous financial, social, and academic pressures. Georgetown recognizes this and has done a commendable job of providing resources for these students. The Center for Multicultural Equity and Access in particular deserves praise for providing Georgetown’s first-generation college students with the support and resources they need for academic and personal success.

Recent studies from the University of California at Los Angeles have discovered worrying statistics about first-generation college students. For students enrolled in four-year programs, the average dropout rate is 45 percent—four times higher than higher-income, second-generation stu-

dents. Staying in school is a big problem for first-generation students, who usually have to deal with financial and social difficulties that their peers don’t. Georgetown deserves praise for proactively working to raise retention rates of first generation students.

Resources like the Community Scholars Program not only help to ease these tensions, they also help to create a community that can be invaluable for future support beyond freshmen year. Georgetown students chosen to participate in the Community Scholars Program are given the tools to excel while they are at Georgetown and in their future careers. The program’s summer immersion course, as well as its workshops on choosing a major, studying abroad, finding internships, applying to graduate school, and choosing a career, help to smooth the transition to collegiate life.

Many first generation college students feel insecure about their social and academic standing at Georgetown. They feel a step behind their more privileged peers, many

of whom have taken AP courses in high school and have visited campus several times along their way to enrollment. Many receive extensive financial aid, work several jobs and find committing to Georgetown’s social scene—where a dinner out with friends can easily cost $30 or more—a challenge. By being aware of these difficulties, Georgetown students who aren’t the first in their family to attend college can be more conscious of their advantages and more sensitive to the needs of their firstgeneration peers.

Diversity is an important strength of the Georgetown student body, and first-generation Hoyas are an essential part of campus diversity. They come from different places with different experiences and different points of view that can only improve the quality of campus conversations inside and outside the classroom. Georgetown should be applauded for supporting these students through their journey from commencement to convocation.

I DO WHAT WITH THE BANANA?

Hysteria stalls sex education at Hardy Middle

Last week, a seventh grade sex education survey at nearby Hardy Middle School caused so much hysteria that Principal Dana Nerenberg put any future sexual education programs on indefinite hold. A vocal minority of parents feel that the survey—which included questions about gender identity, sexual activity, pregnancy, drug use, and sexual orientation—was inappropriate for their 12-year-olds. Despite protests from squeamish parents, programs like these form a critical and necessary part of early sexual education.

One of the major problems with the survey was that Hardy administrators failed to send a letter offering parents an opportunity to pull their child out of the class before the survey was administered.

This is unacceptable, especially given how sensitive the topics covered by the survey are. But Nerenberg should not question

the value of sexual education programs because of her school’s clerical error.

Sexual education is necessary in the D.C. Public Schools system. Almost a fourth of D.C. students are sexually active by middle school. Cutting this sexual education program would leave Hardy students without critical information about STDs and pregnancy. D.C., with its extremely high HIV/AIDS rate, is an especially dangerous place for someone who is uneducated about safe sex.

Local media coverage of the survey’s fallout following last week’s survey was focused on anonymous parents railing against Hardy administrators for exposing students to topics like gender identity and sexual orientation. While parents have the right to decide how their children are educated about reproductive health, casting dialogue about sexual identity in a negative light only reinforces prejudices.

On the other hand, teaching students at an early age about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues promotes tolerance and acceptance in later life.

Topics like sexual orientation should not only be acceptable to talk about, they are in many ways necessary for middle school classrooms. Many students at this age already know that they are gay or transgender—even if they cannot yet define these terms. The confusion reportedly felt by some students during the survey only underlines their need for more information.

Hardy parents should wake up to the realities of society today, where middle school sex education is a necessity. Even at such an early age many students are already sexually active. Comprehensive sexual education programs can give students the tools and information they need to be sexually responsible.

WHAT A FIASCO

GPB brings fall concert to the worst venue in D.C. For the first time since Coolio came to campus in 2007, the Georgetown Programming Board will host a fall concert this year. GPB and the Senior Class Committee should be applauded for bringing Lupe Fiasco—students’ first choice in last year’s GPB artist survey. However, with so many concert venues in D.C., GPB and SCC should think critically about whether on-campus concerts are the most effective use of their funds.

Because our University is located in D.C., on any given weekend Georgetown students have access to great concerts. It doesn’t make sense for GPB to host a concert on Georgetown’s campus—with its poor concert venues and limited resources—unless their events can outdo these expensive local alternatives in pricing.

But tickets to see Lupe Fiasco are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. There is

nothing wrong with bringing artists to Georgetown, and while GPB concerts do not always go smoothly, they are always popular. But on-campus concerts are not worthwhile unless tickets are both subsidized and reasonably priced. Tickets for concerts being held at the 9:30 Club on the same weekend sell for either $20 or $25—the same price for a ticket at the McDonough parking lot. Unless GPB can make its concerts more affordable, they will be no different than the many that are already available in D.C., but with worse sound quality. If the SCC and GPB did not have the funds to adequately subsidize a fall concert, they should have saved their money for something else.

For example, many of the great concerts in the D.C. metropolitan area are difficult to get to from Georgetown. The easiest way to get to the Virgin Mobile

Freefest held at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD on Sept. 25— a free festival that included LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A., Ludacris, Pavement, Chromeo and Sleigh Bells—was by car.

If giving students access to great concerts is really their priority, GPB could spend their money on shuttle buses to take students to concerts at better venues in the area.

It’s great that GPB and SCC were able to bring Lupe Fiasco to Georgetown. But hosting on-campus concerts only makes sense when students either don’t have the opportunity to see shows elsewhere, or when the on-campus shows are significantly cheaper than local alternatives.

Without acceptable on-campus venues or the funding required for subsidized tickets, GPB’s fall concert is ultimately a waste of the University’s limited resources.

news

4 the georgetown voice

october 21, 2010

GUSA announces Student Activity Fee reform

by John Flanagan On Wednesday, the Georgetown University Student Association Financial and Appropriations Committee announced that it will now appropriate the entirety of the $100 yearly Student Activities Fee toward funding student clubs through the Advisory Boards.

Since 2001, half of the student activities fees paid by un-

dergraduates have gone to an endowment that was supposed to have accrued enough interest by now to be self-sustaining.

That endowment, now at roughly $1.9 million, is not expected to mature for some 15 years.

Using the full $100 fee toward club funding will effectively double the amount of money available for student groups.

“All the clubs should be supportive of this,” Colton Mal-

kerson (COL ’13) said. “There are no downsides to expanding funding for groups.”

As part of the reform, FinApp also plans to increase the Student Activities Fee on an annual basis at the current rate of inflation.

The increase, Greg Laverierre (COL ’12) explained, is necessary because even though the money now available to clubs has doubled, the prices

JACKSON PERRY

GUSA FinApp Committee members held a press conference on Wednesday to discuss Student Activity Fee reforms.

of the basic items that clubs must buy are rising at the rate of inflation.

The Committee also plans to divert the interest that is accruing on the $1.9 million endowment into the funds available for clubs, leaving enough so that the endowment continues to increase at the present rate of inflation.

The changes will need to be ratified by a two-thirds majority in the GUSA Senate and approved by a simple majority of undergraduates in a student body referendum.

The FinApp Committee will hold town hall meetings in the coming weeks to discuss the proposal, draft the referendum questions, and address other ideas for endowment reform.

The recent reforms do not address the $1.9 million currently in the endowment, which according to Laverierre, is “a separate issue that needs a lot more discussion.”

“There’s no question that over the past years, since the establishment of the endowment, it has been messy,” Malkerson said.

Members of the FinApp Committee said they remain open to student input on how to use the $1.9 million and they will discuss this at the town hall meetings, too.

“What it’s going to look like, we don’t know yet,” Chris Pigott (COL ’12) said.

The FinApp Committee is hoping to put all three reforms to a vote before next spring’s budget session at the end of February. The committee wants a maxium number of students to participate, so that, according to Laverierre, “there is no question that [this decision] will confer legitimacy.”

Malkerson said the FinApp Committee is already anticipating the consequences of effectively doubling funds available for student groups, but said that the funding boards will still be fiscally responsible.

“I’m sure there will be a tendency of the advisory boards at the budget summit to come and ask for a lot more money,” Malkerson said. “There is still going to be a very responsible funding process.”

Capital Bikeshare set to launch in Georgetown next week

by Rachel Calvert Students seeking a new way to escape the Georgetown bubble are in luck. Capital Bikeshare, a program that offers daily, monthly, and yearly access to communal bikes across the District of Columbia and Arlington Va., plans to install a new station at 37 and O Streets by early next week.

The station is being installed as an alternative to the originally proposed site in front of the Car Barn at Prospect and 36 Streets. John Lisle, spokesman for the District Department of Transportation, which sponsors the program, said that the new location is the result of compromises between DDOT and the Georgetown Advisory Neighborhood Commission. At its September meeting, the ANC passed a non-binding resolution against the Car Barn location 6-1, prompting DDOT to reconsider the location.

“We’re trying to work with

all the different communities to address concerns and find a spot that everyone finds acceptable,” Lisle said.

Although Georgetown’s station won’t be affected, future plans for expansion may face setbacks. Capital Bikeshare announced Wednesday that it failed to receive a federal stimulus grant to help fund an additional wave of installations.

Capital Bikeshare had applied for TIGER II Discretionary Grant funds for the purchase of 1,000 new bikes.

Lisle said DDOT will now be forced to pursue other sources of funding for an additional expansion of the program.

Vice President of University Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank said that Georgetown did not help select locations for any of the Bikeshare stations, or contribute any money to the project.

Frank also stressed that the University was not involved in any discussions between DDOT and the ANC.

“That’s between DDOT and the ANC. We’re not a part of that,” Frank said, referring to any compromises made after the ANC’s negative vote.

ANC commissioner Tom Birch said that his colleagues wanted the station to be in a location convenient for both students and neighbors. He said that a Bikeshare station at the Car Barn would have crowded the narrow sidewalks on that block of Prospect Street.

Birch, who commutes to work on his bike several times a week, said that the ANC would not be opposed to additional stations in Georgetown.

“We’ve been in favor of [Capital Bikeshare] from the beginning,” he said. He added that the ANC’s opposition to Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan was “totally unrelated” to the Bikeshare vote.

Lisle said that DDOT expects that college students are projected to be among Capital Bikeshares’ most frequent riders. DDOT hopes to add more

stations around the District in a second set of installations, including more stations on university campuses.

According to Frank, Georgetown will continue its discussions with DDOT about the program after the first round of

installations are completed. It remains unclear whether a station will be installed directly within Georgetown’s gates.

“We would like more stations close to campus and covering more of the campus than just one location,” Frank said.

sam brothers

Capital Bikeshare plans on opening a station at Georgetown’s front gates.

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the georgetown voice 5

Mice problem affects Midnight Mug GERMS alcohol calls steady

by Tori Jovanovski

by Stephen Hylas

Earlier this fall, Bill Nelson (COL ’11) began noticing some alarming signs in Midnight Mug, one of his favorite spots on Georgetown’s campus. Nelson says he witnessed evidence of mice—torn or gnawed packaging--about half the times he’d been in Midnight Mug this year.

Corp Chief Executive Officer Brad Glasser (COL ’11) has acknowledged that Midnight Mug had problems with mice, although he stressed that the coffee shop does not have an infestation.

John-Michael LaGray (COL ‘11), manager of Midnight MUG, did not respond to a request for comments.

“It doesn’t come as a surprise to any Georgetown student to know that there are issues with rodents around campus,” Glasser said. He added that the presence of mice and the delays in their extermination constitute “a misstep on our part.”

According to Glasser, the Corp is now instructing managers to inspect deliveries and products that are already stocked to make sure they are safe for consumption.

“We would not sell products if we were not confident in their safety,” Glasser said.

Derek Slater, Facilities Coordinator of Lauinger Library, said that he had not heard any complaints from Midnight Mug’s management. He added that any

Although the annual number of alcohol violations reported by the Department of Public Safety dropped by 31 percent from 2007 to 2009, the number of alcoholrelated calls, or EtOH calls, to the Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service has stayed roughly the same for the past two academic years.

The number of alcohol violations reported to DPS has been decreasing since 2005. In the Oct. 5 edition of the Hoya, Joseph Smith, associate director of DPS, attributed the drop to the heightened University regulations on party registration and keg limitations.

There has been roughly the same number of EtOH calls at this point in the semester as the last two academic years, according to data provided by GERMS Captain Brendan Maggiore

JACKSON PERRY

The Corp’s Midnight Mug recently experienced some rodent problems. existing rodent problems would be due to the fact that the space was unused for the duration of the summer, and leftover food would naturally have attracted pests.

“I’m not going to say that there are no mice,” Slater said. But he said that calling it an infestation is “an overstatement.”

Julie Green Bataille, Associate Vice President for Communications, echoed Slater’s words.

“There is no mice problem on campus more than normal activity at this time,” Green-Bataille wrote in an email.

In a post on the Corp’s website last Wednesday, Chief Operating Officer Josh Feller (COL ’11) stated that the “rumors” of mice in Midnight Mug are “largely misinformed and exaggerated.”

Slater, Green-Bataille, and Feller all stressed that pest extermination takes place in all on-campus buildings.

“I can personally assure that we are proactively, relentlessly, and aggressively working with the University to ensure that the small issues we’re currently [experiencing] do not escalate into a larger problem,” Feller wrote.

Nelson, though, remains unconvinced.

Nelson said he used to frequent Midnight Mug often, but that the lack of an adequate employee response to the rodent problem has changed his habits.

“The vibe I have gotten from almost every employee I have interacted with is that the mouse problem isn’t a big one if people don’t know about it,” he said.

D.C. loses a literary icon

in droves. In September 2008, the five locations of Olsson’s Books abruptly shut their doors. These closures were shortly followed by the shutdown of local shops Vertigo Books and Trover Books. At this point, Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle is the only independent bookseller in the area that

This past week, Carla Cohen passed away at age of 74. A Washington resident, Cohen became one of the most celebrated booksellers in America after she founded a bookstore 26 years ago. After the Reagan Administration eliminated her position at the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, she decided to establish a bookstore that she would like to spend time in—a comfortable store with a knowledgeable staff and a regular community of readers. That bookstore became Politics and Prose.

Home to a wonky and cerebral selection, Politics and Prose is not just an intellectual hub for Northwest D.C. It has cultivated a national reputation and serves as the primary location for top-notch authors who want to promote their books in the District. In the recent past, the store has attracted

literary giants such as John Updike and Alice Walker, President Bill Clinton, photographer Anne Leibowitz, and investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.

“I can’t imagine there’s a bookstore in the country with a more vibrant list of speakers, or with a more dedicated following in its community,” The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky wrote on his blog.

“Even if you’ve never been there, if you watch any C-SPAN books coverage, you have seen people speaking from P & P dozens of times.”

That may be, but the future of Politics and Prose, like that of many independent businesses in the District and across the nation, is uncertain—the store has been for sale since June. This is not surprising. During the current period of economic uncertainty, independent bookstores have been closing

City on a hill

by Eric Pilch

A bi-weekly column on D.C. news and politics rivals Politics and Prose in the size and diversity of its selection. The closure of small bookstores is due, in part, to the difficulty of running a small business.

“You have to have a lot of respect for anybody who is operating a small business for longer than the average lifespan of five years,” Mark Warmuth, owner of the iconic downtown coffee shop M.E. Swing Co., explained. “[Politics and Prose

(MSB ’11). Out of the roughly 1,000 calls GERMS receives annually, approximately 16 percent are EtOH calls.

Freshmen have received treatment from GERMS for cases involving alcohol almost twice as frequently as other students.

This semester, 16 calls have been made from Universityowned upperclassmen dorms and apartment complexes. Twenty-nine calls have been made from first year residence halls.

Freshmen students said the number of GERMS EtOH calls to first year residences is due to their lack of familiarity with the effects of alcohol.

“I think a lot of people go crazy once they leave their parents,” Martin Hussey (SFS ’14), a resident of New South Hall, said. “After freshman year, they realize this isn’t what you’re supposed to do.”

mEGAN bERARD

has] been around for a long time, and that tells you something about the person behind it, that they genuinely loved the business and created something impressive.”

It’s stores like Politics and Prose that make D.C. such a vibrant place and help us defy the stereotype that our city is overflowing with drab bureaucrats. These small businesses provide critical retail diversity and a high-quality customer service experience.

It is important to patronize these independent businesses, and local governments should do everything in their power to help them to thrive. According to statistics complied by CNN Money, D.C. is the most difficult state or territory in the nation to start a business.

Downtown rents are extremely high, and corporate and personal income taxes are very steep.

In the future, D.C. should prioritize small business needs and encourage developers to incor-

porate space specifically for small businesses into their plans. The city could also consider tax breaks for small businesses, which are nearly absent across broad swathes of downtown.

As the local literary scene mourns the loss of a remarkable individual, we can only hope that Politics and Prose will find a suitable new owner. But in addition to supporting that exceptional bookstore as it goes through a critical transition period, Washingtonians should remember to do their part and support all the local businesses that make D.C. a vibrant and interesting place to live, work, and study. Small businesses are what give cities their distinctive characters. Despite the District’s unique political status among our nation’s urban areas, D.C. is no exception.

Want to talk to a quirky fellow with some character? Email Eric at epilch@ georgetownvoice.com

sports

6 the georgetown voice

october 21, 2010

Football falls back to reality as QBs struggle

by Tim Shine After taking down league rival Holy Cross on Homecoming last month, the once-hapless Georgetown football team seemed to be in the midst of a renaissance.

The team’s record stood at 3-1, surpassing their win total for the past two seasons combined, and the Hoyas were just one last-second play away from being undefeated. The defense was firing on all cylinders, and the offense was anchored by quarterback Scott Darby, who earned his second Patriot League “Player of The Week” honor of the season for his play against Holy Cross.

Darby’s excellence was a pleasant surprise for a team that went through three quarterbacks the season before, especially because the starting spot was up for grabs between the junior and sophomore Isaiah Kempf for the entire preseason.

Nearly a month later, however, those good times almost seem further away than the trials and tribulations of last season. The Hoyas have lost three in a row, their most demoralizing defeat being a double overtime loss to Wagner, which was sealed by a Darby interception that the Seahawks returned for a touchdown.

Last week, against Bucknell, Darby still came out to start the game, but it was Kempf who took the majority of the snaps, suggesting the team’s recent slide may prompt a return to last year’s quarterback committee. It is a question that the team is unlikely to resolve until this weekend’s game against Sacred Heart.

“We’ll practice this week and we’ll find out on Saturday,” head coach Kevin Kelly said. “It’s a game time decision.”

Even if Kempf does replace Darby on the opening drive on Saturday, he’s unlikely to be an instant savior. The sophomore was impressive against Bucknell, passing for

252 yards and two touchdowns, but it was his fourth quarter interception for a touchdown that ultimately cost the Hoyas the game.

That demoralizing ending proves that the real question for the Hoyas isn’t who’s under center to start the game, but who finishes it.

And for the past two weeks, neither of the two quarterbacks have made a strong case that they deserve that responsibility.

Of course, two errant passes are hardly to blame for all of the Hoyas’ recent struggles. Against both Bucknell and Wagner, Georgetown held the lead in the fourth quarter. The same was true against Yale earlier in the season. This year’s squad is more than capable of competing with its opponents, but closing out games has become a concern.

“It’s all execution,” Kelly said of his team’s late game struggles.

“It’s little things that become big things. It’s not a big problem, it’s little things. You work on the details and the little things take care of themselves.”

Still, at least offensively, that execution begins with the guy receiving the snap. Both quarterbacks have been humbled by one little play gone wrong, as effective a lesson as any in the need for focus.

Perhaps the only thing that could interfere with that focus is a divisive quarterback controversy.

That doesn’t seem likely. In fact, the potential rivals hardly see themselves as such.

“Isaiah and I have a great relationship, and I think we both help the offense run efficiently,” Darby wrote in an email.

The two quarterbacks can even play complementary roles.

Darby, who has completed 55.6 percent of his passes this season for 956 yards, is described by Kelly as the better runner. He has lived up to his reputation, rushing for 209 yards and two touchdowns, good enough for second on the team. That yardage number is

JULIANNE DENO

Scott Darby has taken a step back after a blistering start to the season.

deflated too, dragged down each time Darby is sacked.

Kempf represents the more traditional pocket passer. Kelly praised him as the better thrower, and his big numbers against Bucknell seem to prove it. On the season Kempf has a 120.0 passer efficiency rating compared to 107.7 for Darby.

Whoever lines up under center on Saturday will likely make or break the Hoyas, at least if trends

from last week hold. Georgetown showed off a pass-dominated offense against Bucknell, throwing nearly 75 percent of the time while never facing a large deficit.

No matter how many pass attempts each quarterback throws this weekend, both will have the same goal: stop the Hoyas from taking themselves out of the game. Despite their recent skid, the Hoyas’ comeback season is

far from over, and neither quarterback wants to be the one to throw it all away.

“The way to get back on the winning track is pretty simple— execute basic assignments and minimize self-imposed mistakes,” Darby wrote. “It’s too hard to win college football games when you need to overcome your own mistakes and beat your opponent.”

the Sports Sermon “I wish all of you the best this season. Except, of course, when you play the Hoyas.”

—Austin Freeman after being named Big East pre-season player of the year.

Some fans were outraged.

They worried that the game would suffer if players weren’t allowed to tackle and hit without restrictions. Others were afraid the midseason adjustment would confuse players and unjustly affect game play moving forward.

There is no uniformity among referees’ opinions, and their definition of what is an illegal hit can vary widely; even a slight difference in judgment could have a huge impact on a team.

Yes, football’s physical aspect is very important, but at what cost do fans want to insist players’ rights to pummel each other?

weekend, it’s clear that penalties are simply not getting the The NFL has always been a players’ attention. Suspensport full of bone-crushing hits, a sions will make a bigger imsport only the toughest men can pact. Fines only hurt individendure. The physical nature of ual players, while suspensions the football is a huge reason why will affect the entire team. The so many fans are attracted to the fact that the league will not sport—the entertainment value give players warnings before of players crushing each other in suspensions will force players almost any way possible is too to be more conscious of their much to pass up for most Ameribehavior, and will ensure that can sports fans. Although baseball they will feel the effects of the has always been known as Amernew policy quickly. ica’s national pastime, I think it is Players have to be prosafe to say that football really detected on the field, especially serves the title—especially after when they are defenseless. Dethe regular season game between fenders shouldn’t hit a player the Tennessee Titans who is not part of and Jacksonville Jagthe play, especialPete Rose Central uars earned a betly if they don’t see Da bettin’ line ter television rating it coming. When a than the postseason player is involved Dookies Margin Hoyas matchup between the in a play, but can’t (underdogs) (duh!) (favorites) New York Yankees see a defender, the and Texas Rangers on Ripken Jr. Yankees Fans Beer shower defender should Monday night. be allowed to hit Harrison $$$ Goodell But last week, them with force, FOX Mute TBS a spate of vicious but not a helmet hits served as a to helmet hit. That wake-up call to league officials.

On Saturday, in a college tactic is both unfair and exAlthough most of them were football game between Rut- tremely dangerous. legal, some were cheap shots gers and Army, Rutgers junior Unsurprisingly, players and some resulted in concus- defensive tackle Eric LeGrand who rely on hitting hard as a sions, an injury that has attract- was paralyzed from the neck way to intimidate opponents ed more and more attention down after tackling a player were outraged. Pittsburgh in the last few years. All in all, head first. The hit wasn’t il- Steelers linebacker James Harthey forced football Commis- legal according to NFL or col- rison, who put a crushing blow sioner Roger Goodell to evalu- lege rules, but it serves as a re- on Cleveland Browns receiver ate player safety and things that minder of what can happen in Mohamed Massaquoi, threatwould help better protect them. football. Illegal hits in the NFL ened to retire after the league Very quickly, they proposed increase the chances of a severe announced the new policy. But stricter punishments for illegal brain, neck, or spinal cord inju- the policy is necessary to rid helmet-to-helmet hits and hits ry. These aren’t typical injuries the league of dirty hits. on defenseless players. There that will keep a player on the Protests over the new poliwould be no rule changes, just sidelines for months—these are cy will only get worse when the an increase in the punishments injuries that will affect them first player receives his suspenthe referees can dole out. They their entire lives. sion, especially if it has a large now have the ability to eject or The NFL is right to in- effect on his team. But time suspend players, instead of just stitute the new penalties for will show that the changes will giving their team a penalty or illegal hits. After watching improve player safety without individual fines. some of the action this past crippling the game.

by Nick Berti

sports

georgetownvoice.com

Hoyas on fire in Big East

by Adam Rosenfeld Just a few short weeks ago, the Georgetown men’s soccer team was in the midst of a five game winless streak, and seemed to be on track for another disappointing finish to the season. But, thanks to an unlikely duo, the Hoyas have turned the season around, capturing six straight victories.

While the entire team has stepped up to get the season back on track, senior captain Jose Colchao and freshman midfielder Steve Neumann have been the motor behind the machine. The combination of youth and experience has been on a tear; Colchao is second on the team with 10 points and Neumann is leading the Hoyas with an astounding 22 points for the season.

“They both offer different things,” head coach Brian Wiese said. “Steve fits well into everything on the field, and Jose gives us pace to get behind the defense … they’re a great combination.”

Perhaps no game exemplifies how hot Neumann and Colchao’s

performance has been like last Saturday’s huge victory over Big East rival Villanova.

The first half of the game was relatively quiet, and most of the play occurred in the midfield. Georgetown finally cracked the Villanova defense in the 38th minute when the ball found Colchao in the box. His shot ricocheted off Neumann and trickled slowly into the net, giving the Hoyas a 1-0 lead.

Emotions were running high when the second half started, with both teams going in hard for tackles. When one Villanova player apparently stomped on a fallen Hoya, Colchao pushed the Wildcat to the ground. The referee gave both players yellow cards.

Unfortunately, Villanova was next team to capitalize, when Dylan Renna sent an unassisted tally into the top corner to tie the match in the 56th minute.

Just six minutes later, Neumann and Colchao reclaimed the lead for the Hoyas. Colchao sent the ball to the top of the box to a charging Neumann. The freshman

JULIANNE DENO

The Hoyas have had a lot to celebrate about with their late season run.

Freddy Sez: Die-hards are dying breed First and foremost, he was a fan.

He would always thwack his pan loudly. His signs always bore encouraging messages and helpful tips.

For every Yankee fan, Freddy Schuman, better known as “Freddy Sez,” was a New York Yankee legend.

Since 1988, when he began walking around Yankee Stadium with his spoon and pan-sign combination, Freddy was the closest thing the Stadium had to a cheerleader. He banged on his rusty pan and brought his encouraging signs with him, rooting on the Yankees through good times and bad. He was as much of a staple at Yankee Stadium as hot dogs and beer.

Sadly, this past Sunday, Freddy Sez passed away at the age of 85 after suffering a heart attack.

Freddy’s death signifies much more than another loss for the Yankees this season—iconic owner George Steinbrenner and Stadium P.A. announcer Bob Sheppard both passed earlier this year. It signifies the loss of the die-hard fan.

I’m defining a die-hard fan as someone who puts his or her favorite team above anything else in his life except basic necessities like food, water, and air. With that said, it’s plainly evident that people aren’t as passionate about teams as they used to be.

one-timed the pass with force into the left corner of the net for his second goal of the game.

“I was proud of the way we responded to their goal,” Wiese said. “That was the difference in the game.”

As the minutes wound down, Colchao went down the left wing and after one skillful move found himself with a breakaway. Colchao smoothly sent the ball to the opposite post, sealing the victory for Georgetown, 3-1.

Colchao and Neumann both received Big East Player of the Week awards for their performances.

On Wednesday night, the Hoyas took their winning streak on the road to face the University of Pittsburgh.

The first half was uneventful, and ended with a 0-0 score. The second half got physical again, and the referee issued three yellow cards. Colchao made the difference in the game again, breaking the scoreless tie in the 77th minute off a feed from fellow senior Seth C’deBaca.

“It is a massive win any time you can get three points,” Wiese said. “It wasn’t a pretty win with the horrible field conditions, but it’s a win we’re happy to take.”

With the end of the regular season in sight, the Hoyas might be tempted to shift their focus toward the post-season, where the team has struggled mightily in recent years.

But Wiese said the rigorous Big East schedule is more than enough to keep his team’s focus.

“The postseason will take care of itself,” Wiese said. “Right now we’re focused on a much-improved Marquette team. … It’ll be a good test to see if we can hold serve at home.”

The Hoyas have a chance to continue their winning streak against the Golden Eagles this Saturday at home at 1 p.m.

Freddy Sez was a die-hard Yankees fan since 1988, and probably for a long time before that. But from 1988 through 1995, the Yankees never once made the playoffs. They were still one of the most storied franchises of all time, but Freddy found his fanaticism

Backdoor Cuts

by Tom Bosco

a rotating column on sports in the middle of the longest Yankee World Series drought since 1923.

He was no front-runner. He was no bandwagon fan. He was a die-hard fan.

Nowadays, the majority of sports fans that I know root for individual players

the georgetown voice 7

Soccer earns spot in tourney

by Melissa Sullivan This week, the Georgetown women’s soccer team concluded their four-game road trip with three wins, clinching not only a spot in the Big East tournament, but a bye to the quarterfinals. Before they get there the Hoyas will face a couple tough endof-the-season challenges.

With an unassisted firsthalf goal from freshman defender Kailey Blain, the team defeated the University of Pittsburgh (5-10-2) by a slim margin of 1-0. The Hoyas dominated the first half despite tough play and outshot the Panthers 6-0. In the second half, Georgetown faced many shots from Pitt, but senior goalkeeper Jackie DesJardin only had to make one save to preserve the shutout.

The team then played their last regular-season match against the West Virginia Mountaineers. After an evenly played first half with two goal attempts by junior forward Camille Trujillo, West Virginia took the lead with a goal in the 35th minute. The Mountaineers finished off the Hoyas with two more goals in the second half, at the 86th and 87th minutes, and won 3-0.

“West Virginia is a very strong physical team, and the game was always going to be about which team’s style took the advantage,” head coach Dave Nolan said.

After the long stretch of away games, the team has an impressive record of 12-5-0

or “their” fantasy players, or feel a tenuous connection to a team they claim to like.

Die-hards—while they do exist—are few and far between.

Unfortunately, they are a dying breed.

Look at the student attendance for the Georgetown’s men’s basketball team. You have Hoya Blue, students who dedicate their lives to attending Georgetown athletic events, and in games against Villanova, Syracuse, and Duke, the Verizon Center is packed, the crowd is rocking, and the Hoyas have a true home court advantage.

But what about games against Rutgers, Seton Hall, and Jacksonville? The student section is barely full. It’s not that the students do not care.

(6-3-0 Big East), good enough for second in the National division of the conference.

This Friday at North Kehoe Field, the Hoyas will play DePaul University (106-2 overall, 5-4-0 Big East), the team right below them in the Big East’s National division standings.

“Friday’s game is the focus,” Nolan said. “It’s a must-win game for both teams, as we are the two teams fighting for second in the division.”

The Blue Demons had a tough schedule that pitted them against a number of nationally-ranked teams.

But junior midfielder Ingrid Wells said that playing on the Hilltop will give the Hoyas an advantage.

“We are very excited to be playing at home this weekend,” Wells said. “It makes a big difference playing at home in an environment we are comfortable and practice daily in.”

On Sunday, the Hoyas will play No. 4 Notre Dame (14-1-1). The Hoyas’ final regular season game will be one of the hardest of the year, but they are looking forward to playing the Fighting Irish.

“Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to play one of the top teams in the country at home?” Wells said.

Regardless of the outcome of the next few games, Nolan is already proud of his team.

“Every year one of our primary goals is just to make the conference tournament,” Nolan said.

They do. But they have more important things going on and they can’t go to all the games.

In general, today’s fan isn’t a Hoya fan, a Yankee fan, or most importantly, a die-hard fan. The idea of the fan has changed dramatically, for the worse.

The demise of the die-hard changes the spectrum of fandom in sports. The average fan is more educated about a wide range of sports, teams, and players. But he’s also less passionate, less dedicated, and less fun.

The death of Freddy Sez is a loss. The death of the diehard is a bigger one.

If you value sports more than breathing and sleeping like Tom once did, seek help at tbosco@georgetownvoice.com

feature

8 the georgetown voice

october 21, 2010

feature

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the georgetown voice 9

Striking out on their own: First-generation college students at Georgetown

by Nico Dodd & Sean Quigley At the start of his first year at Georgetown, when most other freshmen were busy partying and meeting new people, Justin Pinn (COL ’13) wasn’t trying to make friends or socialize. Worried that he would fall behind in his schoolwork, he spent most weekends in his room studying furiously for his classes.

Pinn is not anti-social—he was anxious about succeeding in college. A student from a rural Ohio town, he is the first person in his family ever to attend college. When he got here, he didn’t know how he would handle the workload at a school like Georgetown.

“I had no idea what to expect,” Pinn said. “It was a tough transition.”

About eight percent of this year’s freshman class, approximately 120 students, are firstgeneration college students.

They come from families and, in some cases, communities where attending college is the exception, not the norm. These students often face a wide range of challenges before and during their time at Georgetown. Socially, academically, and financially, they face obstacles that the 89 percent of Georgetown undergraduates who have a parent with a bachelor’s degree are less likely to encounter.

The neighborhoods they hail from often do not resemble Georgetown or Washington, D.C. at all. To Pinn, Georgetown was a foreign place socially, and most of his peers came from a totally different socioeconomic class. Victor Fefelov (COL ’13) experienced a similar culture shock.

“I come from a small village in the middle of Alaska,” Fefelov said. “This is different. …

I’ve been amazed at just about every aspect of Georgetown.”

Because the difference between their backgrounds and their peers’ can be so vast, Georgetown offers several programs on campus designed to help first-generation students transition to college. Chief among them is the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access’s Community Scholars Program, which does every-

thing from assisting students with financial aid to helping them adjust to the Georgetown community and succeed academically.

Charlene Brown-McKenzie, director of the CMEA’s Meyers Institute for College Preparation, a program designed to encourage D.C. Public School students to go to college, said that introducing first-generation students to academic life before

semester as a part of the first-year English requirement.

Georgetown offers these programs in part because first-generation students often come from high schools that don’t adequately prepare them for the workload of a school like Georgetown.

“We know there are limits to what public schools can offer,” Professor Elizabeth Velez, the director of CSP, said. “We have quite a few s t u d e n t s

Since schools like these often have limited or overtaxed college counseling services, and their parents may not have an intimate knowledge of the application process, getting accepted is more difficult for first-generation students, too.

Their peers may have taken the PSAT or SAT prep courses, but these students typically study for their standardized tests and apply to Georgetown indepen-

is designed to help students adjust academically, Community Scholars students say that meeting others who’d had similar experiences in high school and were transitioning to a new culture as they were was helpful.

“The program allowed me to build a bond with students who have become like family to me, and that is a critical component to coming to a school,” Pinn said. “My suite-mate is a fellow Scholar and I regularly eat with my Scholar friends. We are family, and I know when we leave Georgetown we will stay family.”

***

JACKSON PERRY

Happy to be here: Professor Velez has worked with the Community Scholars Program for 30 years. they arrive at Georgetown or even enroll helps them get acclimated to academic life here.

According to Brown-McKenzie, it has also been shown to increase graduation rates.

So each year, CSP invites about 60 incoming freshman to come to campus before the school year begins for a series of seminars and classes that prepare them for their college experience. They have sessions with financial aid officers, a non-credit seminar that prepares students for courses like Accounting, Economics, Biology, or Theology, and a program designed to help students write at a collegiate level that continues into the fall

who do pre-med. They come from schools that don’t offer [Advanced Placement] Biology. If you have not taken an AP Biology class, Biology is definitely going to be a challenge for you.”

Vanessa Correa, the assistant director of CMEA, said that most first-generation students at Georgetown come from either very large urban schools or very small rural schools and make the most of those schools’ scarce resources.

“If their school only has three AP classes, they take all three,” she explained. “If their school doesn’t offer AP classes, they take all honors classes.”

dently.

Students who participated in Community Scholars largely agree that the program has been helpful to them—particularly because some of them were very nervous about making the transition to college life.

“I was expecting to be working non-stop,” Community Scholar Jaclyn Wright (COL ’12) said. “I was really worried how I was going to stack up.”

Gianfranco Nuchese (COL ’14), another Community Scholar, agreed. “The workload [at Georgetown] has multiplied.”

And although the program

The biggest obstacle for many first-generation students isn’t related to academics or culture—it’s money.

“There are students who have overcome huge obstacles to come to Georgetown.” Velez said. “We have kids who are figuring out how to send money from their work-studies back home to feed their families. Money is this constant issue.”

Even if students receive a federal scholarship like a Pell Grant or a Perkins Loan, navigating the complicated bureaucracy that delivers the money can be confusing.

“It became really difficult.

Where am I going to get money to pay for my books, how am I going to access the scholarship money I’ve received from outside sources?” Johnny Solis (COL ’11) said. “There are many different layers.”

Wright added that making sure she has enough money for school is incredibly time consuming.

Finding money to pay for any college is difficult, but at Georgetown, one of the most expensive schools in the country, it becomes even harder. The College Board estimates that the cost of attending Georgetown this year is over $56,000— more than the median family income in the United States.

Compounding the chal-

lenge of navigating the loan and scholarship system is the fact that Georgetown students have typically received relatively little federal money. In the fall of 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 22.6 percent of undergraduates nationwide received Pell Grants, federal grants that the U.S. Department of Education gives to students from low-income families. But at Georgetown, only 691 students received Pell Grants that year, roughly 10 percent of its undergraduate population.

The high cost of attending Georgetown combined with the insufficient aid packages has stopped many qualified but underprivileged applicants from attending. Schools with bigger endowments are able to offer better aid packages, which may make Georgetown a much less attractive option.

“It’s not that the students we’re admitting are getting into better schools, it’s just that we’re not making it affordable enough for them,” Melissa Foy, director of the Georgetown Scholarship Program, said. “The kids that we really want to come here sometimes don’t have the opportunity to choose us [because of tuition and other costs].”

The issue of money can in-

Justin Pinn (COL’13)

volve more than just paying for school tuition. When his grandmother died a month into his first year at school, Solis flew back home to Texas to attend the funeral. Three months later, his cousin and the deacon of his church passed away as well, but he didn’t have the money to go home again.

students with exceptional applications and financial need.

“To be competitive with our peer institutions we need to be offering the kind of aid that other schools are offering so that students who really want to come here will be able to come here,” Dean of the College Chester Gillis said.

A major factor in the program’s success has been GSP’s efforts to connect donors with the students who benefit from their contributions at lunches, meetups, and parties. Donors are often eager to help students however they can. One family picked a first-year student up at the airport when he arrived in D.C.;

“The program allowed me to build a bond with students

who have become like family to me, and that is a critical

component to coming to a school,” Pinn said. “My suitemate is a fellow Scholar and I regularly eat with my Scholar friends. We are family, and I know when we leave Georgetown we will stay family.”

“As much as I wanted to go back home, I couldn’t afford it,” he said.

By 2004, Foy said, Dean of Admissions Charles Deacon and several other administrators could see that Georgetown was becoming a place that was only accessible to those who could pay to attend. Later that year, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions started the Georgetown Scholarship Program, a “merit within need” scholarship which gives aid to

Georgetown expanded the program in 2009 when it founded the 1789 Scholarship Imperative. The University’s goal is to provide 1,789 students with annual $25,000 scholarships and raise $500 million in funds by 2014.

Partially thanks to the success of GSP-hosted alumni events, the program has been enormously successful in its first year. In previous years, GSP would award around 70 scholarships; this year, it gave out over 150.

Johnny Solis (COL’11)

another invited all 150 GSP scholarship recipients to her house for Thanksgiving.

“One donor last year gave me $300 to buy a suit,” Solis said.

Though the 1789 Initiative is still in its first year, Foy says Georgetown is already ahead of its peer institutions in creating a program that focuses on building bonds between students and donors.

“Georgetown is pioneering this idea of connecting students to alumni,” she said. “No college

campus is doing this to the extent that we are right now.”

Students like Solis, who would not have been able to attend Georgetown without a GSP scholarship, are grateful for the opportunity to be here. For him, college is just as much about helping his family as it is improving his own career prospects.

“A lot of our family members look to me because I’m the one who is in college. I’m the one who’s getting an education, so they look to me as this kind of educational leader,” he said.

“There’s this responsibility put on your shoulders. Not only is there this pressure to do well to survive, but there’s pressure to do exceptionally well.”

It seems that Georgetown programs like Community Scholars and GSP do a good job of helping students like Solis deal with that pressure and succeed at Georgetown.

“I will always be proud of Georgetown, because I could not have experienced any of this without CMEA and CSP being so supportive of me,” he said. “I come from a community where everyone knows I’m the first-generation college student. It’s not a burden, it’s just this whole new layer to live up to. … I have to work hard for my family.”

Jaclyn Wright (COL’12)

JACKSON PERRY

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

october 21, 2010

There’s no shame in being a Phone Whore Camryn Moore has a very nice speaking voice. It’s clear, articulate, and engaging, the kind that an acting coach tries to coax out of his aspiring thespians who just can’t sem to vocally grip their audience. So it makes sense that Moore is the star of her own one-woman show, which has won both audience and critical acclaim. It also makes sense that the writer/ actress based the show around her other occupation—phone sex operator.

Moore’s show, Phone Whore, is a one-act, semi-autobiographical play that chronicles a day in the life of a woman who earns her living by anonymously getting people off via telephone from the comfort of her own home. The show is currently touring North America, and is coming to D.C.’s Electric Maid Community Living Room on Oct. 22 and 23.

Moore has years of experience in performing arts, as she

worked as a journalist, playwright, director, and dancer before she made the unconventional career switch to the world of sex-work a year-anda-half ago.

“They say write about what you know,” Moore said. “When I started working on the phone lines, my world kind of shrunk.

I was spending 14 to 18 hours a day in my living room. … And when that’s the material life gives you, you run with it.”

That material is not for the faint of heart, the conservatively-minded, or anyone uncomfortable hearing a woman on her couch fulfilling her customers’ fantasies—which start out fairly vanilla but quickly work their way up the kink-o-meter.

But Moore is up front about her show’s vulgar and explicit nature. Her audiences know what they’re in for.

“Everyone has the right to draw their own boundaries,” she said. “It’s very graphic, but artistically so. There are parts that are funny, and

parts that you’ll want to scrub out of your mind with a toothbrush.”

Despite the occasional offended walkout, Moore has managed to find such open-minded audiences all over the United States and Canada. She started out largely at fringe festivals, and has been bringing her show to small, independ e n t venues across t h e

In May, three weeks before graduation, Rachel Shone (MSB ’10) and Laura Sortwell (COL ’10) decided to move to India to explore low-income housing and Bollywood filmmaking. Neither wanted to give up the plan when Rachel was unable to find a job in the country, so they talked Carlee Briglia (COL ’10) and Mary Clare Semler (COL ’10), both aspiring filmmakers, into filming a documentary. Briglia spoke to the Voice about the film, tentatively titled Three Indias, which is now in postproduction. Interview conducted and transcribed by Diana McCue.

How did you decide to make a documentary?

The reason that Laura [Sortwell] and Rachel [Shore] wanted to go to India in the first place was because Laura is interested in film production and Rachel was interested in green architecture, so what we wanted to do is make a documentary about them pursuing their interests. This all started because I thought it was sort of a strange thing that two Georgetown grads had this same unique idea to move to India and pursue completely different

interests. So we wanted to see if we could weave them together in some sort of narrative documentary.

Once we were over there, it evolved to be sort of self-reflexive, in that it’s about them and their pursuit of their different industries, but it’s also about us and the fact that we’re four amateur filmmakers, four recent college graduates who were just taking this crazy adventure trip and trying our best to make a documentary.

by Leigh Finnegan

continent. She even staged one show in a living room in Austin, Texas—which, given that the play is entirely set in a living room, was oddly appropriate. In fact, she liked the realistic setting so much that she plans on doing more in-home shows as the tour progresses. She’s also had surprisingly equal success in both red and blue states, and sold out more than half of her

shows in Alberta, even though, in her words, it’s “the Texas of Canada.”

So unless you’re a complete stud, don’t see Phone Whore for a first date. But, don’t rule it out either, just because it’s written about and performed by someone you could normally chat with for $3.95 a minute. Moore says the play is about owning up to your sexuality, and not being ashamed of what goes on in your own head. “Fantasies are wonderful,” she said.

The best part? Moore loves to get feedback from her audiences, and always makes herself available for questions after the show.

And if you’d like to speak with her in a different setting, let’s just say she hasn’t quit her day job.

Phone Whore is showing on October 22 and 23 at 8 p.m. at the Electric Maid Community Living Room. Tickets will be $12.

Documentarians explore life after Georgetown

THREE INDIAS

Waiting anxiously for the crowd to break into a Bollywood dance number.

What is the status of the project?

We’re all back at home. Because this is an independent project, we don’t have funding ... so we can’t really afford to only do this. We all have to go back to our lives and working jobs and making money, which makes it a little difficult for the post-production issues because we’re not with each other every day.

Right now we’re going over all the footage. We have hours and hours and hours of footage.

And I am in the process of looking at all the footage and compiling a script, which will be like a

transcript of what the video file will look like. That will take a couple of weeks, and then we’re figuring out when exactly we can all come back together to put it together. We still have a couple of more things to shoot on video.

What are your plans for distribution?

We’re definitely going to post it online. It’s hard to say right now. We still have so much work ahead of us. We just want as many people to see it as possible, because hopefully we’ll come out with something that we’re really proud of. If … we’re seeing people responding to it in a really big way … we could see it going further.

But as far as anything bigtime, going to distributors or making a movie and selling it, I don’t think it will be anything that will turn a profit for any of us. It’s just something that we can all look back on and say, “We were at a point in our lives when we all really didn’t know what was coming next for all of us, and so we just did this.”… So if people just see it and like what they see, I think that’s probably

enough—that’s enough for me and I think it’s enough for everyone else.

Would you encourage Georgetown students to take this kind of chance after graduation?

One of the focuses of this film is that feeling that young people have today when you come out of school and you feel like you’re supposed to be really filled with hope and idealism and you’re just going to fulfill your passion, but then you’re facing a reality where it’s really hard to connect those two. For some people it’s really easy, they know what they want to do and they just go and do it, but for me it wasn’t easy. I want to be a screenwriter. But for me getting from point A to point B is so difficult, I’m just starting to figure it out now.

I don’t know, because I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m hoping after all of this I’ll be able to find something that I love to do and be in a position where I can do the things that I like to do. So I don’t really have a lot of answers because I’m still in the same process [as graduating seniors], but I’m hoping.

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 11

“I just wanna get up to my shack and get drunk.”—The Thing

Acting like a Jackass still pays Reviews, Haiku’d

by Chris Heller

A lot can change in a decade.

In 2000, the highest-grossing movie in the country was Meet the Parents. Nobody knew the name Barack Obama. A “face book” was a printout with names attached to photos. And a group of drug-addled skaters became famous for filming stunts and pranks on MTV. Some things never change.

The Jackass crew, notorious for their reckless disregard for personal safety, is back—this time in 3D. But, nobody’s going to see Jackass 3D for the cutting-edge technology. (Not unless somebody out there yearns to see threedimensional poop volcanoes, dildo rockets, and an ass-powered party horn). Johnny Knoxville and company draw crowds for one reason: slapstick is universal.

The brand of slapstick in Jackass 3D may be the hyper-violent, gross-out variety, but judging by the movie’s $50 million opening weekend haul, it still attracts audiences in droves. Does this mean America wants to be disgusted?

Has our society devolved to the point that paint is our high comedy?

No. It’s just funny to see a man get hit in the testicles.

Jackass 3D shocks and awes, if only because it has no other aim. Look at that fat guy chase that midget! See the tuba-playing bearded man just got headbut-

ted by a ram! Watch that tattooed asshole from Pennsylvania pee on people! It’s an instinctive kind of humor that stands apart from the ironic, sarcastic wit that dominates mainstream comedy today.

The movie may not be subtle— and it’s certainly not for those with weak stomachs—but it is absolutely satisfying.

Of course, it isn’t without flaws.

The cast’s maniacal cackling is nonstop and will make you wince. Studio sound effects exaggerate the lamer stunts. And the immature pranks land a bit off-target, if only because every participant is ... well, old. Jackass 3D isn’t a movie about 20-year olds hurting themselves; it’s about adults who hurt themselves, professionally.

MegaMind We get it, Dreamworks, You make pretty 3D films But still won’t beat Up. Paranormal Activity 2 A bigger budget Translates to a lot more scares So you’ll jump like… twice.

Saw 3D Squish, rip, gurgle, tear, Bodies ripping limb from limb, Sounds like Halloween!

Life as We Know It Heigl cares for kids With a guy that she can’t stand.

I miss Seth Rogen.

Unstoppable Action! Drama! Bombs!

Guns! Public Transportation!

Pumped yet? Me neither.

Red Please, action icons, End your careers gracefully.

Mickey Rourke’s so sad.

This is exactly how most grown men make a living, right? Right?

Drug addled and dangerous

Counterculture is a dirty word. Instead of diluting the influence of social pressures on individuality, the counterculture imposes a new hegemony on those who don’t belong to the mainstream. It is composed of its own ideals and standards and, under the guise of rebellion, pushes for an even more rigid social structure than the one it opposes.

So, when modern-day hipsters buy a new pair of Levi’s 510s, countercultural pressures also try to influence their musical taste, their diet, and many other aspects of their life. On top of all that, they’re even being told how to read.

Drug authors are notorious for getting the endorsements

Beneath its surface, though, Jackass 3D reminds us that its roving gang of sadomasochists are indeed human. Steve-O nearly suffers a nervous breakdown before a stunt involving bungee cords and a porta-potty. Dave England cries after playing a game of “bee hive tetherball.” And while sitting atop a 60-foot pine tree in a Santa Claus costume, Johnny Knoxville admits that the stunts scare him. Every time.

A lot can change in a decade.

But, there is one constant: behind every man’s fear of roller skating with buffalo or attaching a remote-control helicopter to his penis, there’s always a crowd waiting to laugh.

from various contemporary counter-cultures. Some of the trendiest youths passionately stand behind the likes of William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and the whole Beat generation for their unique portrayal of and response to the human condition. But can contemporary readers genuinely relate to these authors’ struggles?

And why do they want to, exactly?

Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, which has literary significance for its obscene and often controversial depiction of the narrator ’s struggle with drug addiction, is an obligatory text for the Urban Outfitters crowd. But it’s not being mar-

IMDB

keted as a vivid portrayal of a broken man dealing with his individual struggle. And it’s not being explicitly marketed as a text with literary significance. It’s being a marketed as a t-shirt. Wear Naked Lunch.

Charles Bukowski wrote

Literary Tools

by James McGrory

a bi-weekly column about literature novels that more or less revolve around the character of Bukowski: an aggressive alcoholic and aggressive womanizer with an aggressive lack of work ethic (his gravestone reads “Don’t Try”).

Some readers may find that they can relate to the semi-autobiographical anti-hero from

—Leigh Finnegan and Brendan Baumgardner

Ham on Rye through their own struggles in adolescence, but others are likely to be taken in by his ideals. Alcoholism: it’s cool, it’s hip, it’s fine, try it out. As a matter of fact, buy Factotum and they may just throw in a free flask.

The authors themselves are not at fault for the movements that popularize their works.

Alcoholism apparently worked fine for Charles Bukowski, and he managed to write prose that did a hell of a job expressing the struggles that he faced. In a similar way, Burroughs and heroin go together like a small child and lollipops.

But when members of a culture market these authors’ works to consumers as if they describe an acceptable way of life—and glorify the authors

themselves rather than the literary merits of their texts— they are potentially influencing others to blindly indulge in negligent behaviors.

This is not an argument against the merits of drug authors, and this is not an argument against the use of drugs.

But we should acknowledge that today’s counterculture is all too capable of encouraging its members to adopt the lifestyle of the self-destructive authors it esteems. Go ahead, do drugs if you’d like, but please have a better justification than having read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

You can ask Jim about his favorite author’s substance of choice at jmcgrory@georgetownvoice.com

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

october 21, 2010

C r i t i c a l V o i ces Album opener “Armed for Peace” gives listeners a taste of what to expect. Its thick, throbbing percussion lays the groundwork for a jagged synth line that builds and flows into a comfortable groove. But this is only to create a deceiving sense of comfort—a minute and thirty seconds later, the guitar gets aggressive and takes on a sense of immediacy. The change is unexpected, yet it somehow feels inevitable.

The next nine tracks follow a similar trajectory. Each exceeds expectations and keeps you guessing. But since the tracks lack strong aesthetic cohesion, it’s difficult to label the album as having a specific style.

“Arena” borrows the arpeggiation of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” and throws it in a stylistic blender with elements of post-punk and dub to create an eerie and groovy calm. “Pie IX” breathes like a nightmarish whisper that dances continuously around a climax that it never realizes. “Up Past the Nursery,” without a doubt the album’s most listener-friendly track, invokes the subdued delicacy of early Clinic.

From a theoretical perspective, Suuns has created a con-

tender for album of the year.

They’ve shown that they have the capacity to articulate their style in a variety of ways that never sound forced, with each song carefully built within its individual framework. And while a couple tracks, namely “Marauder” and “Fear,” sound as if they aren’t fully realized ideas, Zeroes QC puts Suuns’ talent and capacity for exploration on full, impressive display.

I think he played music too

on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, as the clothes made no secret of Lennon’s proud experimentations with LSD at the time.

As the members of the Beatles grew apart, so did their personal styles. Lennon demonstrated his separation

Suuns, Zeroes QC, Secretly Canadian Modern indie music is too often composed of clichéd hooks and formulaic replications of once-original devices.

The genre’s progression towards artistic homogeneity makes new approaches all the more refreshing to hear. Montreal’s Suuns is one of those bands that surpasses expectations, and has attempted to redefine the limitations of the song as a means of expression.

On their debut album, Zeroes QC, Suuns mixes organic and electronic for a fresh effect.

Each song is structured so that its minimalist elements build upon themselves, either culminating in a satisfying stasis or collapsing upon their foundations in disharmony.

This month, on what would have been his 70th birthday, John Lennon’s friends, family, and fans gathered to celebrate the life of one of the world’s most admired, adored, and controversial musicians.

People placed flowers at the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park. The city of Liverpool, his hometown, unveiled a statue of him. Ecosse Films released Nowhere Boy, a feature-length film about his teenage years. Google even paid him homage by incorporating a bespectacled, cartoon Lennon into its logo for the day.

Although he is primarily remembered for his singing, songwriting, and politics, Lennon had an influence on fashion and strong personal style that we often overlook. While

Lennon pushed the envelope in the art and music world with songs like “Cold Turkey” and his nude “Bag One” honeymoon lithographs, he made another contribution in shaping what it meant to look and dress like a musician.

Lennon’s clothing was always another means of expression. He went through stages, alternatively fashioning himself a greaser and peacenik, and pioneered his trademark mop top hairstyle. In a brief stint at art school, Lennon dressed as a Teddy Boy, wearing frocks, drainpipe jeans, and pointed boots to complement his edgy and rebellious persona. Lennon embodied the clean-cut, boy band look when the Beatles wore matching suits, but he preferred the psychedelic getups they wore

Voice’s Choices: “Gaze,” “Pie IX,” “Organ Blues” —Jame McGrory

Stereolab, Not Music, 4AD Records Stereolab is a band that has long defied convention. The lovechild of England’s Tim

Suffer for Fashion

by Keenan Sheridan Timko a bi-weekly column about fashion from his band through his clothes. Shifting from the era of identical pressed shirts and suits seen in Please Please Me, they became the motley group lined up on the crosswalk for Abbey Road, with Lennon leading the charge in a stark white suit.

When the Beatles broke up, Lennon turned to activism, staging bed-ins and inviting

Gane and France’s Laetitia Sadier, the band has achieved great critical acclaim as one of the foremost members of the mid-90’s electronic indie music movement. Then, earlier this year, they decided to take an indefinite hiatus from their 20-year career. However, to appease disappointed fans, Stereolab have released one more LP, Not Music. The record is all new material compiled from songs they recorded during sessions for 2008’s Chemical Chords. Although it works as a memorial to the band, it does little in terms of originality or creativity.

To its credit, Not Music is actually a coherent record, rather than a jumbled patchwork of B-sides and throwaway tracks.

The album is full of swanky electronic grooves drenched in reverb and flanging, especially on the funky track “Two Finger Symphony.” It’s like Stereolab is setting the soundtrack for a 1960s French cocktail party that may or may not be taking place underwater.

Sparse French and English vocals accompany rock-steady drum machines, highlighted by bubbly synth lines and shimmering vibraphones. The al-

the public to see him in a more human light, while wearing pajamas (if anything). Lennon’s military surplus garb was yet another way he identified with the anti-Vietnam War counterculture of the era.

But Lennon’s most meaningful contribution to fashion was his glasses. Long before Harry Potter was known for circular, wire-rimmed glasses, they were trademark Lennon.

Ring-collared New York City shirts (especially with their sleeves cut off) are a direct reference to Lennon’s Walls and Bridges photo shoot with the Manhattan skyline in the background. And French, Spring Court white high tops will always be touted as the shoe that Lennon wore at his wedding and on the cover of Abbey Road.

Only a few musicians give us iconic fashion items. In do-

bum also features two extended-mix tracks, “Silver Sands” and “Neon Beanbag,” each surpassing the five-minute mark with techno-like crescendos of hypnotic repetitions. Stereolab takes full advantage of ProTools’s loop function.

The album is almost an hour long, yet most of the tracks are the same tempo, with few variations in dynamics or instrumentation. This homogeneity makes for a daunting listening experience, as the album often drags, with simple verse-chorus patterns repeated countless times in each song. The sugary, fun dance tracks serve best as background music. The music itself is not as important as the vibe it emits.

But even though Not Music lacks any standout material, it works well as a parting gift from the band. First-timers will immediately feel the lighthearted energy of the music, and long-time fans will have one last record to play at their indie-dance parties.

Voice’s Choices: “Two Finger Symphony,” “Neon Beanbag,” “Silver Sands” —Matthew Decker

ing so, Lennon joined the same ranks as Elvis and his rhinestone jumpsuit, Hendrix and his bellbottoms and bandana, and Michael Jackson and his diamond glove.

Some performers merely intend their outfits to be shocking, like Lady Gaga and her meat dress, but Lennon let his clothes tell a story—that of his transformation from a resident of the town of Liverpool to a seasoned and proud New Yorker. It’s safe to say that even now, over 30 years after his death, Lennon’s memory still lives on through the clothes he wore. Will we be able to say that about Kermithead dresses in 2040? Only time will tell.

Want to see Keenan dressed up as a “Teddy Boy?” Let him know at ktimko@georgetownvoice.com

fiction

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the georgetown voice 13

The Sound and The Mist

By Cole Stangler

Rugged, rugged knots that cover my eyes And the ferocious lust that barely hangs above the ground Sound through the bright billboard with paint – and form A telegram for all as they gather in the square.

I ride down below in my lightning drunken boat Red sky: This is what I see.

Blue face: This is who I am.

Green, Green Sea: Who am I to judge?

Pirates and flames and seafaring monks Preach and holler to the ignorant seals.

Away with ships and boats, I’m swimming now To the cloaked maelstroms that swallow sailors.

Pits of motion awaken sleeping monsters So that the great whales may penetrate virgin sea, Creating gaping holes so as to tempt othersOh, will someone save her before she is lost?

Mountains of angst extend their shadows Over the coffin-filled waves of early dusk, Yet the undefiled floor remains silent, Peeking like a child at the gruesome voyagers Washed to the shore so others may giggle Seaweed majesty echoes with the tide; Grains of me float yet grains of me slide Onto the backs of checkered beings, As I wander in lanes that point north and south As I grow and wither and grow and wither My shadow cries from bondage Oh, where was my youth? Where is my end?

The hymn of the sea fades and fades into limbo: Sound and mist.

Sound and mist.

Winter The mirrors have been smashed And the phantoms have cut themselves on the shards, So all my words evaporate into the air I listen every night to the dogs barking, Their cries are covered in silent snow, And icicles hang from the roofs of their mouths.

Lonesome politicians scribble notes on tablecloths Playing tic-tac-toe with their hearts And solitaire with their souls.

The streets are filled with burly gamblers, Betting on their mothers’ forgotten names And medieval histories from dusty library volumes.

The city froze in November and won’t wake up.

My words used to exist but now they don’t.

My philosophy unraveled under the indifferent moon, And my thoughts leaked under a boundless bridge…

So I clenched my fist under the pale, bright lights Watching sketches of trains and lonely women Pass every hour before my melting eyes And I told myself not to utter a sound.

Giggling schoolchildren in wool coats pass every morning, And I think of what I was, Bearded vagabonds in azure robes pass every night, And I think of what I may be.

Winter in town has suffocated me under its pillows: The harsh smell of the Sunday fishmarket, Soft stars that poke through the night sky, Blondes with snowflakes in their hair, Boiling cups of chocolate left on stairwells, Burnt rubber on the frigid morning railway…

It flashes by my open, waiting Heart that beats so slowly, But I cannot remember it all.

Birds I aim my arrows at the hesitant birds, Passing food and squeaking sounds, I aim my arrows at their idols, Who preach of morals on mossy rocks, Celebrating their little sacrifices, And praising the trees they cannot see, Demanding truth and praying for me, With the silver bow in my hand.

I’ve passed many towns like this – Where the red lights of the plains Are soaked of their wars and blood In the ornate windows of churches, Where our corpses by the riverside Become designs on white pillowcases A poor, crying woman is photographed Unsuspectingly by artists in overcoats, Her tears are dissected in museums, While she wanders and waits in cabins, Handsome men in gray make stories of lives, And films and bank accounts and slogans, Myths that celebrate dirty puddles of water While freaks clap and dance on great lakes The harlequins will lead you to those golden fields Where stories don’t exist, only the incessant Breathing of the windy air of big pines, And I wait and I stand and I shoot At the birds who dare enter…

voices

14 the georgetown voice

october 21, 2010

Incompetent chef craves Georgetown culinary institution

by Aodhan Beirne Once again, Leo’s has made me sick. But this time, it has nothing to do with undercooked chicken or unwashed forks. I’m homesick.

I went abroad ready to experience everything that a foreign country has to offer: the people, the history, and especially the food.

But then I went to Ireland, where high-end local cuisine is fairly hard to come by. Some of my favorite local fare includes the authentically Irish kebab place, a Mexican restaurant, and a Burger King.

Local cuisine options exhausted, I tried my hand at cooking. I found that I have neither a talent for it, nor a nose for realizing that my food has expired. Rice Krispies have become a staple of my diet and basic nutrients have become a privilege.

My woes are not Irelandspecific. In June, I spent a few

weeks taking a Pre-Session class at Georgetown. Leo’s was closed, and I figured three weeks was not long enough to merit a trip to Safeway, so I opted to eat out instead.

Going off campus for food would also ease the pain of living in Harbin as a rising junior, I figured. I really did try to make the most of my decision. I thought I’d finally get to the places around Georgetown I had never tried before.

But that was an ambitious plan, and, of course, it failed. I never made it past 36th Street, and I had a Burger Madness for what seemed like breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three weeks straight. I was like Super Size Me’s Morgan Spurlock, only I was motivated by convenience—not social commentary. I constantly felt like I had lead in my stomach, and the hike up to the second floor of Harbin became more strenuous than my crew practices freshman year.

Like a child, I couldn’t be trusted

with the responsibility of choosing what I would eat every day.

For these reasons, I’ve realized that it will be necessary for me to eat at Leo’s for the rest of my college career. Beyond Chicken Finger Thursdays and Hoya wraps, Leo’s has enough variety within its limited menu to accommodate my immature palate. I would even be willing to go on a post-graduate meal plan, if they have one. Leo’s has too much to offer for me to turn my back on it in favor of my own bland cooking. Leo’s may not be great, but I’m certainly no better.

I have accepted the fact that when I am a senior, with friends who are charging toward adulthood by cooking for themselves, I’ll still be eating at a place most freshman are sick of by Thanksgiving—probably alone. While that’s sad, I prefer it to scurvy.

Apparently, Cookie Crisp doesn’t have much Vitamin C.

I also understand that this will put me at a serious disadvantage when I’m no longer eligible for a meal plan. I’ll be exactly where I am now, eating peanut butter sandwiches and grilled cheeses, while my peers will all have a few years of culinary experience. But for the time being, I’ll deal with my culinary ignorance like many college students deal with their nascent alcoholism. I’ll ignore it, enjoy the benefits, and repress thoughts of how much reality will sting when my behavior is no longer socially acceptable.

I imagine that when I graduate, I’m going to miss many small things about Georgetown.

I don’t see the point in prematurely alienating something that has been so significant to my Georgetown experience, too. Leo’s is where we forged friendships early in our freshman year when we had to sit

with people we only vaguely knew because we didn’t recognize anyone else. It has fostered the physical and social growth of every Georgetown student.

I don’t want to miss it before I even graduate.

I have a recurring dream where I swipe into Leo’s and walk forward. As I’m walking, I can just barely make out the cookies and I can smell the stir-fry. But just as I’m about to walk into the main hall, I wake up. I’m comforted only by the fact that soon enough—and until I throw my cap in the air— I’ll be able to cross that barrier, because Norovirus doesn’t hold a candle to the hurt I’m feeling.

Aodhan Beirne is a junior in the College.

He doesn’t understand why chicken fingers are so big when chicken feet are so small.

The social network: Where business is all up in my business

by Kara Brandeisky I think I may have told Mark Zuckerberg too much.

First, on a sidebar, Facebook asked me, “Do you know this person?” and showed a picture of my father. Next Facebook started displaying “photo memories,” pictures of people I occasionally Facebook-stalk that were taken at events I didn’t attend. But recently, the site pulled its creepiest move yet: When I changed my relationship status to “in a relationship,” I began to see advertising for engagement rings. And wedding dresses.

And wedding venues.

“In a relationship?” one ad asked. “Northern Virginia’s top wedding venue is already half-

booked for the 2011 wedding season! Click here now to reserve your wedding day.”

“Shouldn’t that be tied to how long we’ve been together?” my boyfriend asked nervously.

Somehow, based on the demographic information I provided about myself—female, in a relationship, college sophomore, unspecified age, liberal, interested in “This Weekend in D.C.” and “PostSecret”—I fell into Potomac Bridal’s target audience.

My boyfriend and I aren’t the only ones uncomfortable about Facebook advertising. My mom complains that all she gets are advertisements for wrinkle creams, Botox treatment, and weight loss programs, which she finds insulting.

AMBER REN

Facebook is always telling me that I’m fat. Isn’t that what my real friends are for?

“What does Facebook advertise to you?” I asked my boyfriend. “Tuxedos for your big day?”

“Cars,” he said. “Mazdas.”

My mom was jealous. “I’m the one who needs those advertisements!” she said. “I’d buy a little red Mazda!”

While personally targeting potential consumers through data they’ve posted about themselves online is a relatively new phenomenon, our generation has been inundated with advertisements practically since birth.

A.C. Nielsen Co., a media research firm, found that the average child sees 20,000 30-second television ads a year. By age 65, most people have seen two million television advertisements.

That doesn’t even include ads on websites, billboards, or sides of buses.

We’re so immersed in advertisements that we hardly notice them. But these advertisements can have an undeniable influence on how we see the world. We can learn a lot about our society from the way advertisements are structured.

While some products fill a need, other advertisements create a need to fill.

Consider every infomercial you’ve ever seen. Is your stomach too flabby? Are your dishes not quite clean enough? Are your eyelashes too thin? Do you need a more exciting way to cut your apples? No problem! Just buy more crap. Good advertise-

ments exploit an anxiety and offer an easy way to alleviate it— buying a product—even if that anxiety is unfounded.

As a result, many advertisements take the easy way out and try to tap into our anxiousness about social acceptance, especially our anxieties about gender roles. Is your girlfriend emasculating you by making you carry her lip balm? Drive a Dodge Charger. Is your drink too girly? Man up—get a Miller Lite. Are you a young woman in a relationship? Book your wedding venue before you become an old maid.

We have the freedom to choose not to buy a product or accept a particular stereotype.

But if we don’t think critically, we incorporate the images we see on a regular basis into our understanding of what the world is “really like,” even if we ourselves don’t conform to the stereotype.

The problem with Facebook advertisements is that they’re determined based on biographical information you’ve provided. It’s no secret that advertisements are targeted towards specific audiences. For the most part, these tactics are effective— companies know who is most likely to buy their product, and they know how to reach them.

It’s fair to assume someone at a ballpark might want a beer, while someone watching television at home at 1 p.m. might want a Swiffer WetJet.

But Facebook advertisements merely bank on cultural assumptions about what individuals should want as a member of a certain demographic, which is often irrelevant to their actual desires. I’m a girl, so I’m supposed to be planning my wedding. My mom is older than 30, so she’s supposed to obsess about her appearance. My boyfriend, on the other hand, is the only one of us who would want a sports car. Unless we stop to think about how advertisers are benefiting from their outdated assumptions about us, we may end up buying into stereotypes we would otherwise reject— sometimes literally.

Do all women really have an intrinsic, biological need to fill their closets with uncomfortable shoes? Or is someone benefiting from the perpetuation of that assumption—perhaps, DSW? The next time you see an advertisement, ask yourself: In trying to make money, is this ad merely repeating a stereotype or gender “norm”?

In the meantime, leave me alone, Potomac Bridals. Check back in a decade. And when you do, take note that whoever my future husband is will be in the market for a tuxedo.

Kara Brandeisky is a sophomore in the College. She thinks that only Carl’s Junior’s ads are more sexist than Facebook’s.

voices

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the georgetown voice

15

Ugly edifice of evil or praiseworthy beacon of learning?

by Sean Quigley We are all lucky enough to attend a school with a truly beautiful campus. From the cosmopolitan agora that is Red Square to the quiet and pious symmetry of Dahlgren, there are few vistas on campus that aren’t postcard-worthy. And yet, tucked in the corner of our picturesque front lawn, beneath the austere and regal façade of Healy, lies the squat, angular Lauinger Library—a gloomy, gray structure that looks more like a decrepit Soviet housing project than a comfortable place to study. “Lauinger

sucks,” students moan constantly.

“I can never do any work there.”

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of hearing people whine about the library’s ugliness, about how useless it is, and about how they can’t study there. I cringed when the Voice’s blog, Vox Populi, called it “a hulking, concrete behemoth [that] visually assaults thousands of students every day,” or when Provost James O’Donnell, tongue just barely in cheek, mockingly dubbed it a “beacon of our commitment to learning and inquiry.”

So I want to explain, publicly, my affection for this grim little build-

MATTHEW FUNK

Going to Lau can be brutal, but then again the building was designed that way.

Teaching the teacher Not every Georgetown professor is perfect, and many Georgetown students have had serious problems with some of the teaching styles they have encountered during our college careers. I’m not talking about a complaint about the amount of homework on a particular night—I mean a fundamental problem with their professor’s teaching methods.

The primary way in which students raise questions about a professor’s methods is the endof-semester course evaluation forms. For most students, it is the only time they ever give their professor feedback. These forms, however, are not helpful to students who just went through an entire semester of soporific lectures or endured a teaching assistant who couldn’t lead a discussion section to save his life.

The lack of focus on collecting student input is a perennial problem at Georgetown, even in the most forward-thinking programs, like the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. Because there are weak mechanisms for improving classes through feedback, Georgetown should be looking for any opportunity it can find—but it doesn’t. Georgetown has continually missed opportunities to foster discussion about pedagogy or the methods professors use to teach courses.

CNDLS’s central mission seems to be bringing technological advancements in education to Georgetown’s academic community. The center manages efforts to increase technology use in class and encourage student innovation outside of class. Its “Teaching Handbook,” when not focusing on technology, encourages pro-

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ing in hopes of helping it with its image problem.

I will concede that Lauinger is not an attractive-looking building.

Its exterior is bleak and dreary, and the bizarre, angular offices that jut sharply and inexplicably out of its sides give it a peculiar and not entirely pleasing shape. Its unfortunate positioning next to the ornate and imperious silhouettes of Healy, Copley, and White-Gravenor only makes its unsightliness more painfully obvious.

Yet, night after night, I still find myself flashing my GoCard to the razor-tongued, gospel-singing Jamaican lady who guards the door and settling in for another long session with my schoolwork. I am very easily distracted, and my roommates are particularly loud and rambunctious, so doing work at home is really not an option. Lauinger, at least, is generally quiet, clean, and free of distractions. Early in my freshman year, it became my go-to study spot.

Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome, but all those nights spent sandwiched in the stacks and cramped into study carrels have given me a genuine fondness for the building, and even a totally undeserved sense of ownership. From the icy, silent tomb that is the basement lower level to the fifth floor

fessors to assess their teaching methods using a set of classroom assessment techniques. These strategies include testing students’ background knowledge before the beginning of a new unit in order to guide a professor’s lectures, and asking students to write down an unanswered question at the end of a lecture. However, none of the techniques suggested by the handbook encourage the solicitation of independent student input about how the course is taught.

Carrying On

by Jackson Perry A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

Because enhancing overall teaching methods is not the goal of CNDLS, it is not surprising that it has not emphasized the integration of student observations into the process of teaching. Ultimately, the responsibility for this lack of communication rests with the University as a whole.

The current system of assessment of teaching methods— or more accurately, the lack of one—does not help professors either. Georgetown doesn’t have the right mechanisms in place to help tenured professors assess

chairs that overlook the front lawn, I feel like the building is partially mine. I don’t mind the hospital linoleum floors, the occasionally eerie lighting, or the always-frigid air.

Those are the things that keep all of the noisy, obnoxious people away.

During midterms, when my usual spots are packed with lax bros pretending to cram for their Principles of Accounting exams while they flirt with whichever latte-clutching bimbo they brought with them, I am almost offended. Who invited these people here?

Lauinger’s appeal to me started out as purely practical—being inside such a joyless concrete crypt of a building would motivate me to work efficiently, I thought—but the library also provides ample opportunities for recreation and distraction. The lower level features electronic stacks of books that operate with the touch of a button, as well as a great collection of antique dictionaries and atlases. An afternoon spent reading and enjoying a hot coffee and bagel in the fourth floor window room, gazing absentmindedly at the sunlight in the trees across the river and the towering Rosslyn skyline beyond them, is wonderfully relaxing. The fifth floor has an impressive selection of Japanese graphic novels, and

and improve their performance in terms of student opinions.

Right now, all they can do is read Ratemyprofessors.com and scrutinize their students’ hastily written end-of-semester evaluations.

Without a more intense commitment to pedagogical improvement, successful teaching methods in some classrooms typically do not spread to others. This semester, one of my professors said team-teaching a course with another professor was a revelation because she, like most professors at Georgetown, largely did not know how other professors teach their courses.

Georgetown should encourage more revelatory moments like this one. A new emphasis on how both students and teachers can improve the practice of teaching, rather than the dominant focus on incorporating new technology, could reinvigorate underwhelming classes.

Fortunately for Georgetown students and faculty, many teachers and schools are testing new ideas about engaging students in the teaching process.

Recent advances at the K-12 level have begun to extend to the collegiate sphere. Since 2007, the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, published

by Georgia Southern University,

the Gelardin New Media Center’s huge catalog of DVDs look great on those big monitors. The special collections section even houses a 1776 broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence worth over $500,000. Take that, Hariri Building!

I realize that enjoying the time I spend in the library makes me an enormous nerd (I have friends, I promise). But I’m tired of people talking shit about a building I spend a good deal of time in. Lauinger is one of the few places on campus with reliable Internet access, and despite what you may have heard, it’s not that hard to find a power outlet. It contains an incredible number of interesting books. It has color printers, scanners, video cameras, and even high-quality audio recording equipment. I don’t care if its cheerless, monolithic exterior offends your haughty WASP sensibilities; it’s a great place to learn, and one of my favorite buildings on campus.

You don’t have to study there, but please, stop hating on my library.

Sean Quigley is a junior in the SFS. When he says friends, he’s referring to Shakespeare, Plato, and Foucault.

has been committed to encouraging fresh ideas about how to create optimal teaching situations.

One example is Bryn Mawr College’s “Students as Learners and Teachers” program, which pairs student consultants with professors for a semester. The consultants attend the professor’s class and have meetings with the professor weekly to address pedagogical questions that arise.

One professor in the program said, “The student successfully identified things that really did need to be improved upon, suggested ways in which they might be improved, and the next time I had a class it was better.” There’s no reason why Georgetown couldn’t establish a similar program through CNDLS. The bottom line is that there is certainly no one revolutionary method to hang our pedagogical hats on. Some will succeed, some will fail, and I’m certainly not suggesting we completely reinvent how professors teach.

But we could always use a little evolution.

Jackson Perry is a junior in the College. He knows that pedagogically, GU doesn’t hold CNDLS to other top-tier universities.