The Georgetown Voice, October 7, 2010

VOICE the georgetown

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NO DIVERSITY REQUIREMENT UNTIL 2012 PAGE 4

MEN’S SOCCER SETS NETS ON FIRE PAGE 6

STAND-UP HOYA Q&A PAGE 14

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969  October 7, 2010  Volume 43, Issue 8  georgetownvoice.com

Fall Fashion

2 the georgetown voice

october 7, 2010

A little birdie told me...

hot off the blog “Georgetown is ninth most expensive college in the country”

...is trending campuswide trend

ing to

midn #mid ight madn t e map of th ermsalrea ss hallo e mode dy #chic ween co rn world s kenfi nger t tumes hursd ay

pics

“ANC Wrap-up: A night of bonds, crime, booze, and table tennis” “VFT Mailbag: Will she hook-up with me if I don’t date her?”

“Free Food-for-All: Shaken, not stirred” “CBS Radio reporter and Burleith resident arrested in drug bust”

Vox Populi

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correction In the Sept. 30 article “Georgetown faculty salary growth stalled,” the Voice quoted Professor Julia Lamm as saying President John DeGioia’s salary had increased by two percent. In fact, his salary did not increase, but his total compensation package increased 42 percent from the previous year.

Voice Crossword “Words on the Street’” by Mary Cass 15. “Odyssey” mountain 16. “Fountainhead” author Rand 17. Heidi Klum’s husband 18. ‘80s actress Ringwald 20. Eco-friendly 22. A squeal 23. Computer linkup system 24. Closer 27. Whole 31. Parisian pal 32. Barbie’s beau 33. Cross-legged religious figure 37. Evaluate 40. Flightless Australian bird 41. Allow 42. What Astroturf replaces 44. Singer Blige 47. Avocado dip (abbr.)

48. ___-cone 50. Waters of France 52. British greeting 53. Charged particle 54. Earth, to Germans 55. Area-coded website 56. Wrap up 57. Very

ACROSS 1. Ascerbic or hydrochloric 5. Hip home 8. Shaving lotion brand

12. Idiot 13. Genetic letters 14. Severe setback

!

X VO

DOWN 1. Much ___ About Nothing 2. Suffix with micro or macro

answers at georgetownvoice.com 3. ___ facto 4. Casino position 5. Madonna hit “Like A ___” 6. Whichever 7. Hang loosely 8. Missing 9. Run away 10. Means ___ end (2 words) 11. Tool for making holes in leather 19. Gettysburg general 21. Sprinted 24. Arrest 25. Big bird 26. Help 28. ‘50s presidential campaign nickname 29. Hi-___ television 30. Naval graduate’s rank 34. Electronic musician Dan

35. Letters on British ships 36. Sydney resident 37. Amaretto flavor 38. Sailor’s realm 39. Address part, or a place to find 12-, 14-, 18-, 20-, 42-, and 44-across 42. Waters south of the South 43. Political cartoonist Ted 45. Pirate’s cry 46. The Beatle’s “Hey ___” 47. Acquire 49. Oui’s opposite 51. Crosses out

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 43.8 October 7, 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: Matthew Funk, Max Blodgett

Associate Editor: Iris Kim Staff Writers:

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

Staff Photographers:

Helen Burton, Julianne Deno, Lexie Herman, Hilary Nakasone

Staff Designers: Richa Goyal, Lauren MacGuidwin, Amber Ren

Copy Chief: Matt Kerwin Copy Editors: Kim Tay, Claire McDaniel Editorial Board Chair: Hunter Kaplan Editorial Board:

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

Head of Business: Eric Pilch The Georgetown Voice

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On this week’s cover ... Fall Fashion Cover Photo: Lexie Herman

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NO NOOSE IS GOOD NEWS

GU finds just enough rope to hang themselves The University’s false announcement last Thursday that a noose had been found in the basement of Healy Hall was foolish and careless. Administrators were rash in announcing that a troubling crime had occurred on campus before they knew the facts of the case. But just as troubling was how the administrators responded to what they believed was yet another hate crime on campus. Their knee-jerk decision to send out a campus-wide email and hold a community meeting sent a clear signal: the University doesn’t understand how to react when they encounter a hate crime.

Georgetown administrators should be embarrassed that they invited students to comment on and learn more about these alleged crimes before they had all the facts.

Now that we know that they acted without being fully informed, their community meeting and campus-wide email seem like

transparent stop-gap measures to preempt bad publicity and placate students who may have been upset by the news. After all, a community meeting is a way for the University to seem responsive to a bias incident with the least amount of effort.

If Georgetown really wants to respond to racial bias on campus in a meaningful way, it needs to get serious about implementing the recommendations of the diversity working groups. Those recommendations were thoughtful, actionable responses to Georgetown’s diversity problems. So far this semester, however, the administration has not announced one concrete deadline for testing or implementing the three groups’ recommendations, such as the proposals to add two diversity-related courses to students’ core curriculum and hire more diverse faculty and staff. The University should articulate when and how they expect to enact these recommendations.

Forums on racial bias at Georgetown can be productive, but only if they are more than just an airing of grievances. The forum on the Hoya’s offensive 2009 April Fools’ Issue, for example, was worthwhile because it led the University to seek student input on campus racial problems. But community meetings are not the answer to everything—and they’re certainly not the answer when they’re intended to merely mollify upset students.

If a hate crime had taken place last week, it should have been a cue for the University to ramp up efforts to implement the diversity working groups’ well-researched recommendations, not start the conversation over again from the beginning. Administrators already has the tools at hand to create a more inclusive campus environment that will discourage further bias incidents—it remains to be seen, though, whether they will ever actually use them.

MORALITY OF PLURALITY

Low voter turnout signals loss of faith in GUSA

Even though there was no scandal or recount, last week’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate elections were a disappointment. With just 1,006 students voting, this year’s senate elections had a 14 percent voter turnout. Only eight out of the 20 elections were contested. Three of the candidates who ran unchallenged didn’t even win with a majority of votes—more people voted for write-in candidates.

Sometime this year, you’ll probably hear a senator say that he or she represents the students’ will, but such statements won’t be true until GUSA conducts more competitive elections. Most races aren’t contested, and it is far too easy for a candidate to win by a small plurality, like Brendhan Haas (COL ’12), who won the right to represent Henle 1-48 with 4 out of the 16 votes cast in his district. Voter turnout is embarrassingly low, and many of those who vote write in friends as a joke.

What’s more, far too many candidates’ platforms say, in effect, “My friends and I don’t know anything about GUSA, so

therefore GUSA must not do anything, and I’m going to change the system.” This is more untrue than ever, now that GUSA has full control of the Student Activity Fee and its Finance and Appropriations Committee is fighting for power over the $1.8 million in the student activities endowment. It’s clear these candidates didn’t do basic research before running. GUSA leaders may feel there’s not much they can do about apathetic voters, but it does not help that their candidates are so dissappointing.

Some of the structural problems with the election can be easily fixed. If elections for everyone but freshmen were held in the spring, campus issues would be fresh in people’s minds and GUSA wouldn’t lose a month every fall waiting for senators to get elected.

GUSA could also do more to advertise the election, including running a physical voting booth in Red Square. So that potential senators have to take their candidacies seriously, the election commission should require candidates to submit a 250-word platform to be included on the ballot under their names.

For the future, GUSA should consider restructuring the election districts to promote more competitive races.

Class-based representatives would better represent actual student needs than districts based on housing. Sophomores and seniors have radically different priorities and perspectives, yet may live in the same residence hall and thus have to be represented by the same GUSA senator under the current system.

The next time GUSA senators want to do something controversial and they point to their democratic elections as evidence of their authority, we should remind them that 14 percent voter turnout is not a mandate. Representative governments can only function when elected officials have the confidence of their constituents. It is a sad reflection of GUSA’s position that some students would trust their futures to “Chicken Madness” before actual GUSA candidates. If GUSA wants true power, it must convince students to take its elections seriously.

RESIDENSE LIFE

RJC receives suspension, possible work hours Founded during the 1999-2000 academic year, the Residential Judicial Council was created as a way for students encourage their peers to uphold community standards. However, for the past decade, the council has been a weak and poorly publicized disciplinary body adjudicating only the Code of Conduct violations that hall directors chose to forward to it. Last summer, Residential Life suspended the RJC, without student input, in order to reassess the program. When it does return next year, the council should be independent of hall directors and have a broader purview.

The RJC suffered from two fundamental problems that must be addressed during the re-assessment pe-

riod: Residence Life did not dedicate itself to recruiting council members each year, and the body was entirely dependent on hall directors for cases.

In recent years, they have blatantly neglected the program—the front page of the RJC’s website still invites students to apply to be a Fall 2008 council member—and as a result, very few students or residential advisers even knew that the RJC even existed.

Beyond a lack of institutional support, the RJC also suffered from a lack of independent authority. Because council members only ruled on cases that hall directors decided to forward to them, the RJC offered a façade of student involvement that was in reality wholly dependent on the whim of Residence

Life’s hall directors. Hall directors often did not want to forward cases to the council because it meant more work for them, even though the RJC had the staff available to rule on the case. In the future, hall directors must commit to forwarding all appropriate cases, such as Category A violations and certain Category B violations, to the RJC, or they should no longer have the sole authority to decide what cases the RJC sees.

When the RJC reemerges, its authority must be transformed. There has never been a shortage of students ready to serve on the RJC, despite the lack of campus awareness of its existence. However, students can’t really hold each other responsible for Code of Conduct violations until they are empowered by the University to do so.

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october 7, 2010

Reaccreditation delays Diversity Initiative

by Cole Stangler Every ten years, Georgetown needs to be reaccredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Although the University must meet all of Middle States’ 14 “characteristics of excellence,” Georgetown is never really in danger of losing its accreditation. With that in mind, this time, Georgetown’s Middle States Steering Committee has chosen to focus on four of the criteria, not all 14.

“This selective topics option, which is increasingly chosen by institutions like Georgetown, gives you an opportunity to say, look, we know for the most part, we don’t have to defend stuff we’re doing well,” Professor Randall Bass, co-chair of the Steering Committee, said. “We’re going to take a couple of things we think the time is right for the institution to particularly focus on.”

Although the Middle States Commission will not issue its verdict on any of Georgetown’s proposals until late 2012, the reaccreditation process will have a concrete impact on the University’s Diversity and Inclusiveness Initiative.

The work of the Academic Working Group, which proposed requiring all Georgetown students to take two classes related to diversity, will likely be delayed and integrated into the larger reaccreditation process. Concrete changes, such as the establishment of a diversity requirement, will most likely not occur until after the University is reaccredited, according to Marjory Blumenthal, associate provost for academic affairs and the other co-chair of the Steering Committee.

This may frustrate student leaders who were already annoyed by a Sept. 21 email from the Office of the President which suggested that the school has

made very little progress on the Diversity Initiative.

“There have been steps in the right direction, but the University response is not adequate,” Samara Jinks, president of the Black Students Association, said. “I’ve seen a lot of this before. I’m not gonna get my hopes up.”

Cristina Gil, the head of public relations for MEChA, agreed.

“It comes to the point, as a student, you want to see action,” Gil said.

That very well could change as part of the Steering Committee’s ongoing self-study, but not until those final plans are approved in fall 2012.

“We don’t want to introduce something new and have a new framework emerge and be lost,” Blumenthal said. “We want the new framework, which is the larger set of concerns, to incorporate this.”

In 2002, when Georgetown sought to defend each of the 14 categories, Bass said the Univer-

sity did not have the opportunity to engage in a deeper selfexamination.

Georgetown’s Steering Committee held a town hall meeting on Monday to discuss the University’s approach to the process.

At the meeting, the committee announced that the self-study will focus on general education, an assessment of student learning, how the University engages in strategic planning and an assessment of the school’s overall performance through five different working groups.

“I don’t think there’s any question that we would never get accredited because of this analysis,” said Artemis Kirk, University Librarian. “We’re merely here to say we’re doing this, we think we’re doing it really well and we want to do it better so that we’re a better institution and thinking forward.”

The committee has already constructed a proposal, and will

continue to hold town hall meetings throughout the year in preparation for the Middle States visit in spring 2012.

Bass said that the committee will “build momentum during the year” by launching a website and sending out an email survey asking for student input.

He said students should expect an email about general education and curriculum pedagogy in about a month.

Blumenthal said that the committee will be paying special attention to general education because Georgetown lacks an explanation for why students in each of the four undergraduate schools must take the core requirements, even if the individual schools relate the classes to their respective missions.

“We haven’t really ever had a campus-wide look that’s greater than just the smaller parts,” Bass said. “Liberal arts education for the sake of it doesn’t fly.”

One Nation rally brings out GU progressives

by J. Galen Weber On Saturday, approximately 60 Georgetown students joined the tens of thousands of protestors gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the One Nation Working Together rally.

The event, whose organizers included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and an array of unions, environmental groups, student groups, and peace advocates, comes a month after the Tea Party rally and one month before key midterm elections.

The Georgetown students at the rally were members of the university’s chapter of NAACP, the GU College Democrats, Women Advancing Gender Equity, MEChA, and the Georgetown University Solidarity Committee.

Many of the Georgetown students who attended the protest said it was not about one particular political issue as much as it was about sending a message.

“It was a chance for us to say, we as progressives can also have a march, we can also gather people together in large num-

bers,” Carolyn Chambers (COL ’11), the president of Georgetown’s NAACP chapter, said.

Melissa Miller (COL ’12), a member of WAGE, agreed that there was no one central political cause. At one point during the rally, a participant yelled, “What do we want?” and a handful of protesters shouted out a dozen different demands, according to Miller.

Many students from other colleges were drawn to the rally’s call for job creation, especially given rising unemployment among recent college graduates.

Lauren McEntree came to the rally from Emmanuel College in Boston with the group Jobs for Justice. Students in her group were split on many issues, she said, but they all agreed with the protest’s call for job growth.

Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, also spoke about job growth in an interview with the Voice.

“If you want to get out of this great recession, you got to invest in the country you want to be. That means you have to invest in jobs and you have to invest in schools,” Jealous said.

Lindsay McCluskey, the president of the United States Student Association, who helped organize student presence at the rally and spoke alongside Al Sharpton during the event, said that from her talks with college students, she had come to see rising tuition costs as a huge concern.

“I think that jobs are a reason why a lot of young people turned out,” she said. “But I also think that the cost of college is something that’s really important to the young people.”

Other speakers included musician and social activist Harry Belafonte, who criticized the war in Afghanistan extensively, and Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, who urged attendees to carry the energy of the rally into the polls.

Georgetown College Democrats President Brian Woll (COL ‘12) felt the speeches contrasted well with those at the Glenn Beck rally, which he described as fear mongering and doomsday talk.

“There were inspirational speeches, and that was good to hear,” Woll said. “People are realizing that this is for real, you can’t sit out this election.”

cole stangler

One Nation Working Together drew a wide array of progressive groups.

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the georgetown voice 5

GUSA Senate talks student rights, GUTS buses

by Mark Waterman Newly elected Georgetown University Student Association senators mapped out potential initiatives for defending students rights, and increasing funding for student clubs, and intiatives at their inaugural GUSA Senate meeting on Sept. 30.

GUSA Senator Josh Mogil (SFS ’11) hopes to restart and head a student advocacy committee. GUSA formed the committee last fall, but it stalled when Mogil left to study abroad in the spring.

According to Mogil, GUSA and the Corp used to publish a pamphlet on students’ rights, but it hasn’t been updated or distributed in years.

Mogil is currently in the process of updating the pamphlet and will soon be seeking input from the Department of Public Safety, the Metropolitan Police Department, lawyers, and other University offices. Ideally, the pamphlet will contain information about students’ rights as D.C. residents and Georgetown students, and advice on how to deal with officers from DPS and MPD. Mogil also hopes to train a group of volunteers to counsel individual students about their rights in the University’s disciplinary system.

For advice on developing a program, Mogil will speak with the leaders of similar student advocacy programs at American University and George Washington University.

At AU, the student body president appoints the Director of the Student Advocacy Center, which receives funding directly from the University. Aleksandra Kocelko, the current director, said that she and 17 other volunteers advise students when they go through the University’s disciplinary process to make sure they know their rights.

“We talk them through the process, very carefully, step by step,” Kocelko said.

In addition to advising students, AU’s Student Advocacy Center also has a policy committee that works with the university to make additions and modifications to the Student Code of Conduct.

Kocelko herself meets weekly with the Director of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution Services to discuss any major issues.

As student-neighbor relations rise to their most contentious level in years, Mogil said, an advocacy committee, may prove especially helpful.

“The police and our neighbors seem to have taken a great interest in making our lives more

Republican hypocrisy

Democrats across the country are scared of what will happen on Nov. 4, but District of Columbia residents have good reason to be especially worried. With Republicans poised to take control of the House of Representatives, this year ’s midterm elections will likely put the GOP in a position to meddle in the District’s affairs and reverse laws passed by the D.C. Council. This is worrisome in and of itself, given the gulf between the policies that the heavily Democratic District favors and the Republicans’ social conservatism.

But it’s even more disturbing that their convenient embrace of federal intervention comes at a time when many Republicans continue to tout their dedication to states’ rights and local government.

Congress granted D.C.

home rule in 1973, giving local politicians greater latitude to enact policy without federal oversight, but Congress still has the power to intervene in the District. Even in the era of home rule, the District’s local government serves at the pleasure of Congress.

In a few months, a new activist crop of Republican politicians will probably control the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The committee is the mechanism Congress uses to oversee and control the District’s local government. As the continued failure to achieve full congressional representation shows, the District does not get everything it wants when this committee is under Democratic control—but

difficult, so we should fight back intellectually,” Mogil said.

Another major project for GUSA this year will be changing the way they use the Student Activities Fee, the $100 fee that all undergraduates pay at the start of every academic year. Currently, GUSA distributes half of the money collected to student clubs through Advisory Boards like Club Sports and the Student Activities Commission, while the other half is invested in an endowment. The endowment was started in 2001 and was supposed to have accrued enough interest by now to be self-sustaining.

According to Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), a poor economy and poor management of the larger University endowment have kept the invested dollars from appreciating to a sufficient level. Malkerson said that GUSA will not release an official plan until Senate committees are formed, but that going forward, senators will probably scale back deposits into the endowment and allocate more to campus groups.

“At the end of the day there will be substantially more money [for GUSA] to allocate,” Malkerson said.

Any change in the way the fee is handled will require apit certainly helps. When the D.C. Council recently passed controversial gay marriage and medical marijuana legislation, for example, Congress did not intervene.

That will not be the case if the GOP gains control of the House and Representatives and Jason Chaffetz (RUtah) becomes the chair of

city on a Hill

by Eric Pilch

A bi-weekly column on D.C. news and politics that committee. In the past, Chaffetz has argued that local autonomy is not in line with the Constitution and that Congress should roll back gay marriage in D.C. Chaffetz has also said that order to obtain congressional representation, the city—with the exception of a few federal buildings—should become a part of Maryland.

Conservatives like him are

MarK WaterMan

New GUSA Senators sworn in Sunday aim to tackle a number of issues. proval in a referendum by the student body, Malkerson said.

GUSA would hold two town hall meetings before any referendum to discuss the issue with students. Though the University has no official say in the matter, Malkerson said it was very supportive of changing the fee.

GUSA will also debate what to do with $1.9 million dollars remaining in the endowment and whether or not they want to increase the fee to keep pace with inflation. fond of explaining that the Constitution grants Congress control over D.C. policy because it is not a state. Recently, Chaffetz told Washington City Paper that Vincent Gray, who won the Democratic mayoral primary, should not seek more autonomy because it is unconstitutional. Every bill that the D.C. Council passes is given a 30-day hold in Congress so that members can review— and if they like, gut—that legislation.

But he and other meddling conservatives ignore the fact that the founders fully intended for D.C. to have local autonomy. In Federalist 43, James Madison wrote, “a municipal legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed [for residents of the federal District].” Worse yet, they are hypocritically ignoring their own small government principles in order

“Everything is on the table,” he said.

GUSA will also be looking to redirect expenditures in its funding of the weekend GUTS buses.

Currently, GUSA uses money from the Student Activities Fee to help fund weekend GUTS buses.

The University only contributes to weekday GUTS bus service.

“I think that should be a University expenditure,” said GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11). “We’re going to find a way to make sure [the University funds the buses].” to secure social policies they favor. Chaffetz’s past statements and his campaign website shamelessly flaunt his commitment to “limited government.” On his campaign website, he writes, “many programs currently run by the federal government—such as the Department of Education—should be left to state and local governments. I will seek to restrict the role of the federal government.”

Despite those anti-federalist sentiments, if they control the House, Republican interventionists will soon be abandoning their own rhetoric to keep the District from pursuing liberal policy. Unfortunately, it might be time to stock up on those “Don’t Tread on Me” banners that are so popular with the Tea Party.

Want some real talk without the hypocrisy? Email Eric at epilch@georgetownvoice.com

sports

6 the georgetown voice

october 7, 2010

Hoyas blank Mountaineers, start new streak

by Adam Rosenfeld After a solid win over a tough Adelphi squad, the Georgetown mens soccer team looked to last weekend’s matchup against West Virginia to secure their first winning streak since opening weekend. The No. 21/19 Mountaineers fought hard but ultimately fell to the Hoyas on North Kehoe Field 1-0.

“WV is one of the better teams in the league because they’re well organized, well coached, and athletic,” head coach Brian Wiese said. “We knew we had our work cut out for us.”

Although both squads were looking for chances early in the game, most of the play took place in the midfield and the first half featured no real breakthroughs.

The Hoyas were persistent, though, and were finally able to break down the tough Mountaineer defense late in the half. Senior Seth C’deBaca showed some great skill in dribbling into the box, and the West Virginia defenders had no choice but to take him down with a foul.

Wiese chose sophomore standout Ian Christianson to take the penalty kick, and he did not disappoint. Christianson calmly converted his second penalty kick of the season, giving the Hoyas the lead at halftime.

The Georgetown offense looked potent and organized in the second half and continued to look especially dangerous off of set pieces. Nevertheless, it was the Hoya defense and senior goalkeeper Matthew Brutto that would deliver the victory for the team.

“Brutto was great, and we kept some of their best players at bay … it was a huge win for us,” Wiese said.

Brutto came up huge for the Hoyas, posting his second straight shutout, his third of the year. His best moment of the game came when a defensive miscommunication allowed West Virginia a clean look at the net.

Brutto saved the shot and ended the Mountaineer’s hopes for the equalizer.

His strong performance during the week earned him conference and national honors. He was named to TopDrawerSoccer.com’s team of the week and earned a spot on the Big East Conference Honor Roll along with Christianson.

The Hoyas wanted to continue their winning streak on Wednesday against American University. Historically, the Eagles have not been kind to the Hoyas. Georgetown has an overall record 21-28-3 against American, including losses in each of the past two seasons.

But this time the Hoyas got the best of their cross-town rival, winning 3-2.

The Hoyas controlled the pace early. Sophomore Andy Reimer was extremely active in the early minutes and drew a lot of contact from the American defenders. After Reimer committed a foul, the Hoyas intercepted the ball and countered in the 10th minute.

C’deBaca took the ball toward the American net and was able to find teammate Jose Colchao on the right side of the box.

Colchao had a smart finish as he shot the ball across the face of the net, finding the far left corner.

Georgetown’s offense continued to look potent after the goal, but it was a double substitution by coach Wiese that gave his team the spark they needed.

After the freshman duo of

JACKSON PERRY

The Hoyas got back to their winning ways against West Virginia.

Gabe Padilla and Steve Neumann entered for Colchao and Reimer, the Hoyas were able to increase their lead.

Ian Christianson showed serious skill and footwork in setting Padilla free on the left side while sucking in an Eagle defender. Padilla fired and Neumann was able to redirect the shot into the twine, giving Georgetown the 2-0 lead.

As the Georgetown teams of the past have discovered, no matter the score the Eagles do not quit. They finally cracked the Brutto code with just under 10 minutes left in the half.

In the second half, the Hoyas definitely did not stay back, and Georgetown jumped on the Eagles to dominate play at the start the period. The best chance came when C’deBaca ripped a shot off the post in the 59th minute.

Unfortunately, the Eagles were able to tie the game after a shot hit the post behind Brutto and ended at the feet of American’s top scorer, Alassane Kane, who put it back for the goal.

The intensity of the game was palpable after the equalizer, and both teams were assessed yellow cards for tough challenges.

After some great saves from Brutto, Georgetown was able to break through for the game winner with five minutes left in regulation.

Andy Reimer put a cross into the box and Neumann was again able to find possession before depositing the ball into the net.

“During our skid we were playing well with no results,” Wiese said.

“Winning is a habit, and we’ve been working like crazy to get winning results, and the work has paid off.”

Georgetown will look to extend their winning streak to four this weekend at Providence.

Game time is scheduled for Saturday at 1 p.m.

the Sports Sermon “Are you ready for your champagne shower?”—Reporter “Fuck Yeah.”—San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum

Making his accomplishment even more impressive, he did it against the Cincinnati Reds who scored the most runs in the National League this past season. It is scary that the league’s best pitcher might even be better in the postseason, when it really matters.

The playoffs this year are full of great pitchers, all of whom are in a class of their own. So is it too

The Texas Rangers, who are looking to win their first postWhen Matt Garza threw the season series in franchise hisfifth no-hitter of the season on tory, have the right ace to do it July 26 (which would’ve been the in Cliff Lee. Lee was dominant sixth had Jim Joyce not blown a in last season’s playoffs but fell call that cost Armando Galartwo victories short of claiming raga his perfect game) it became a ring. This year, he will look to apparent that the 2010 Major lead a staff of young pitchers to League Baseball season was the the Promised Land, but standing year of the pitcher. For years, in his way are the young, excitjuiced sluggers have been crushing Rays, who have a lefty ace ing home runs and of their own. The inflating pitchers young David Price Pete Rose Central ERA’s bigger than is hoping that he Da bettin’ line Barry Bonds’s head. can be the strong Now pitchers were pitcher the young Dookies Margin Hoyas finally in charge. team needs, and (underdogs) (duh!) (favorites) And the way the their offense is po2010 playoffs began tent enough to give Jets Uh-oh Favre Wednesday, it looks him support.

Moss Rematch Revis as if the year of the In what might Umps No chance Cox pitcher will conbe the most undertinue into October. rated series of the Under the bright lights of the soon to put Halladay in a class first round, the San Francisco postseason, Roy Halladay made of his own? Was Wednesday just Giants and Atlanta Braves are the greatest playoff debut in his- a warm up for his perfect game another pair of newcomers with tory. This was his first taste of in the National League Champi- plenty of young talent. The GiOctober baseball in his 12 years onship Series? ants may be the team that will in the Major Leagues and when Let’s reassess the Phillies rely on their pitching the most, he finally stepped on the mound, rotation now that we know with the one-two punch of Tim he didn’t take it for granted. And about Halladay’s super-human Lincecum and Matt Cain. Their once catcher Carlos Ruiz threw skills and ability to focus when third starter, Jonathan Sanchez, out the final batter of the game, it matters most. isn’t too shabby either, posting a Halladay had done the unthinkThe defending champions, 3.07 ERA during the regular seaable—he threw a no-hitter in the the New York Yankees, have son. The Braves will hope that postseason. It was only the sec- ace CC Sabathia, but the rest veteran pitchers Derek Lowe and ond time in history and the first of their rotation is question- Tim Hudson have enough left in time in over 50 years that it had able, with an old Andy Pettitte the tank to carry them past the been done. Before Halladay’s and an unproven, tired Phil Giant’s young guns. feat, Don Larsen’s perfect game Hughes. Meanwhile, the unThe league was put on notice in the 1956 World Series was the derdog Twins have the 2010 AL Wednesday, after Halladay’s hisonly other example. comeback player of the year, toric night. The year of the pitchHalladay also became the Francisco Liriano. After Liriano, er may soon become the year of only pitcher ever to throw a no- they have several quality pitch- Halladay, with the pitcher not hitter in the regular season and ers, but no one who is capable of just carving out a spot in the hispostseason in the same year. completely dominating a game. tory books, but rewriting them.

by Nick Berti

sports

georgetownvoice.com

Hoyas fall, look to get up

by Daniel Kellner It was there for the taking. After years of scraping by at the bottom of Patriot League, the Georgetown Football team had a chance to grab a commanding lead in the standings when they faced conference rival Colgate University. But the Raiders, who came into the game as the preseason favorites to win the league, proved to be too much for the Hoyas. On Saturday in Hamilton, N.Y., Georgetown fell 34-3 in their worst performance of the season.

The Hoyas looked like a real match for Colgate in the opening period. Georgetown responded quickly to an eightminute drive that gave Colgate a 3-0 lead, with a 34-yard kickoff return from sophomore Jeremy Moore that allowed the Hoyas to start their drive at the 50 yard line. Brett Weiss capped off the ensuing drive with a 38 yard field goal, a career long for

the Georgetown kicker.

But Georgetown’s early efforts proved insufficient in holding off Colgate’s dynamic rushing attack. Junior Nate Eachus, one of the nation’s leading rushers, had 220 yards on 44 carries with four touchdowns in a truly dominant performance.

The defeat has not diminished the Hoyas’ spirits. They showed up in practice this week eager to learn from this weekend’s game and prove that it was a blip on the radar rather than a sign of things to come.

“Everybody has a bad day at the office,” said head coach Kevin Kelly, who maintained a positive outlook after the defeat. “Part of it was us, part of it was Colgate, and you learn from that.”

The players have dismissed the idea that defeat is an omen for the rest of the season. Cocaptain and senior left tackle Dan Semler said the loss was an aberration, and even relished the chance for a rematch.

JULIANNE DENO

Georgetown came back down to earth after getting crushed by Colgate.

Welcome to the show, Monroe

You could be forgiven for thinking Greg Monroe never declared for the NBA Draft, was never picked by the Detroit Pistons, and never became a multimillionaire professional basketball player. After all, if he did all that, why would he hang around at Club Lau? The big man has been around campus plenty since the end of last semester, backing up all the reports about how much he loved college we heard over the past two years. Unfortunately for Hoya fans, he realized he could play pro ball and still find some time to hang out on the Hilltop.

But on Tuesday, as every one of his teammates from last season prepared for Midnight Madness, it has become impossible to ignore

the fact that Greg Monroe is a professional basketball player. Specifically, it happened when LeBron James swatted his last-second, three-point attempt at the end of the first quarter.

Monroe’s played on a big stage many times before, obviously, in front of 30,000 Syracuse fans in the Carrier Dome or at a soldout Madison Square Garden in the Big East Tournament. But posting up Arinze Onuaku or a Plumlee brother isn’t quite the same as trying to score on Chris Bosh.

That’s the task Monroe briefly faced in the first quarter of Tuesday’s game, and it didn’t go great. Monroe didn’t embarrass himself—there’s a reason he was drafted seventh overall—but it didn’t look like Mon-

“We’re a lot better offense than what happened out there,” Semler said. “I wish he had a shot to play them again because we would do some work on them.”

Ironically, the difficult seasons the Hoyas’ have played in the past give them a distinct advantage heading into next week.

“We’ve been here before,” senior co-captain Nick Parrish said. “We know what it’s like to have to bounce back from a loss, and we know what we did wrong. So it’s not like a situation where we are unaware of what we need to fix. It’s all in our control.”

The loss was the Hoyas’ first in the Patriot League this season and it will leave them chasing Colgate in the remaining weeks to finish atop the conference standings. The Blue and Gray will need to win their remaining conference games and Colgate must drop two games if they are to have any chance of attaining their first Patriot League title. But that has not deterred the Hoyas as they look forward to a tough non-conference game this weekend against Wagner and their next conference match against Bucknell in two weeks.

The Hoyas last played Wagner in 2000 with the Hoyas coming out on top 28-21 on the road, but Kelly admits the team won’t know what to expect until kickoff on Saturday.

Despite the uncertainty, the players are excited to show the home crowd what they’re all about.

“I’m really confident in our offense and I think we’ll come out against Wagner and put up a lot of points,” declared Semler. “We have confidence because of the early wins. … We know we can do it again. roe brought much of his talent to South Beach during his initial foray on the court. Checking in with four minutes to go in the first quarter, he was gone eight minutes later, with zero points but four personal fouls.

Backdoor Cuts

by Tim Shine

a rotating column on sports It was a stark reminder that as much Monroe could have dominated in the Big East this season, he’ll probably be little more than a role player this year in the NBA. That isn’t a reflection on Monroe’s talent or decision—he’s more than good enough for the pros, and probably wasn’t going to get much better in college—

the georgetown voice 7

Field hockey sees success

by Abby Sherburne After winning just two of their 20 games last year, the Georgetown Field Hockey team is finally hitting their stride. So far this season, the team (6-6) is truly having a turnaround year.

“We’re putting it all together,” head coach Tiffany Marsh said. “We brought in a lot of freshmen last year, and just with that year of experience under their belts [we’ve made that turnaround].”

Sophomore forward Catherine Shugrue, who is in only her second year at Georgetown, has built up a lot of experience. She leads the team in scoring with 11 goals. But even though the sophomore crew brought a lot of spark, Marsh said that the leadership from the upperclassmen has been valuable, even though there are only three of them.

After last year ’s disappointing season, the Hoyas have really stepped up their game to garner serious Big East attention. Annika Bannon, the team’s lone senior, has gained Big East accolades for her exemplary performance on defense, earning Big East weekly honors twice this season. Joining her on the list this season have been goalkeeper Briana Pereira and forwards Shugrue, Annie Wilson, and Charlotte Tierney.

However, the women have had their fair share of trouble in their Big East matchups. They lost to Louisville by five goals in mid-

but it reminds us that people who are paid millions upon millions of dollars to play basketball are ridiculously good.

But as much as Hoya fans, myself included, may wish Monroe had taken the easy way out and come back to school, the NBA is going to be a much more rewarding experience for him—and, in all likelihood, for us. For better or worse, everyone knew what Greg Monroe the college player could do. There are a lot more questions for him in Detroit, and if he can answer them all, it will be a lot of fun for those of us who were following him from the beginning.

Monroe faced his first real test Tuesday night, and he responded well after the initial adversity.

Checking back in during the second half, Monroe looked a little more like his old self, working in-

September, and only narrowly defeated Rutgers last weekend. These losses show that the team isn’t quite there yet, but as the team earns more victories against competitive Big East opponents, it is apparent that they are headed in the right direction. To get their first Big East victory, the girls beat the Scarlet Knights in overtime.

“Rutgers was a big win,” Marsh said. “We beat Rutgers last year for our first in-conference Big East win in school history, so this was just our step number two.”

Substantial wins, like the one against the Scarlet Knights, will play a huge role in the confidence and success of the team for the rest of the season.

Although some players have been singled out and recognized, Marsh is quick to attribute this year ’s success to the entire team.

“It’s unique this year. I don’t think we have one person who is stealing the spotlight,” Marsh said. “It’s nice to have such an even group of contributors.”

With a number of Big East matchups in the coming weeks, the Hoyas will need to continue to work as a team to keep improving. The women will face off against Connecticut and Fairfield this weekend, both teams that come in boasting better records than the Hoyas. For now, Georgetown is happy with its improvement—but the team isn’t ready to stop working to get to the top.

side with his left hand to put up 10 points and dishing out a few of the trademark passes that made him such a highly-touted prospect.

Of course, that performance came against the likes of Shavlik Randolph, not Bosh. And it was a meaningless preseason game.

Nevertheless, it was the start of a career that hopefully will be many times longer than his one on the Hilltop. It may be strange to think of Monroe spending more time wearing blue and red than blue and gray, but that day is all but guaranteed to come. The time has come to let Monroe the Hoya go.

Because like Jeff Green, Roy Hibbert, and all the others before him, there is still plenty of basketball left for us to get from him.

Need help letting Monroe go? Email Tim at tshine@georgetownvoice.com

8 the georgetown voice

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october 7, 2010

Breakin g This year, to up the ante for our annual Fall Fashion issue, we returned to the simplicity of the early ‘90s with modern touches and more attitude.

The looks feature more raw materials: cotton, wool, denim, and leather.

You won’t find many logos on the clothes. It’s not about being conspicuous; it’s about being comfortable and confident. You don’t need to look glam to look great.

There is enough deconstruction (rolled up cutoffs, ripped off sleeves, upside down jean jackets) in these garments that instead of simply wearing them, you make them work for you. It’s about beauty through function.

So this season, instead of “dressing for success,” dress for yourself.

Produced by Nico Dodd Directed by Antwaun Sargent Photographed by Lexie Herman Modeled by Alana Blaylock, Alison Jordan & Arthur Colker Styled by Lauren D’Souza, Sooji Kim, Katherine Shabalov & Stefane Victor Makeup By Neha Ghanshamdas

georgetownvoice.com

feature

the fall

On Alana (left), sweater, model’s own, shorts by Forever 21, socks by American Apparel, boots by Steve Madden.

On Arthur (right): sweater, thrift, shirt and shorts by Levi’s, , shoes by Sperry.

On Alison (bottom right), vest and shorts

by Levi’s.

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october 7, 2010

georgetownvoice.com

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the georgetown voice 11

Bottom right On Alana, model’s own ensemble.

On Arthur, t-shirt by T

by Alexander Wang, shirt by Eddie Bauer, sweater, thrift, sweatpants by Gant by Michael Bastian, boots by Fiorentini + Baker.

On Alison, shirt by American Retro, leggings by H&M.

Top left, on Alison, vintage shirt and bike shorts, model’s own, sneakers by Urban Outfitters. On Arthur, shirt by T by Alexander Wang, jeans by Marc by Marc Jacobs, shoes

by Urban Outfitters .

Top right, on Alana, dress by Jil Sander, shoes by Dolce Vita.

On Alison, dress by Rodarte for Target.

Bottom right, on Alison, vintage Dior sportcoat, sweater

by H&M, skirt, stylist’s own.

On Alana, shirt by American Apparel.

12 the georgetown voice

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october 7, 2010

Bottom left On Alison, t-shirt by Barneys, jeans by Marc by Marc Jacobs, boots by Doc Martens.

On Arthur, shirt by T by Alexander Wang, jacket by H&M, jeans by Marc by Marc Jacobs.

Bottom right On Alana, jacket by Zara, shorts by Forever 21.

On Arthur, shirt by T by Alexander Wang, jacket by Levi’s.

On Alison, vintage Missoni sweater.

georgetownvoice.com

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the georgetown voice 13

On Arthur, jacket by Marc by Marc Jacobs, jeans by American Apparel, shoes by Sperry.

On Alison, scarf by Anthropologie, jeans by Levi’s.

On Alana, jacket by H&M, shoes by Dolce Vita.

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october 7, 2010

Considerate comedy with Mike Birbiglia

On Tuesday night, comedian and Georgetown grad Mike Birbiglia (COL ’00) spoke with the Voice about his current tour, upcoming book, and his time on the Hilltop. Interview conducted and transcribed by Heather Regen.

So how are you?

Well, you’ll be interviewing me, so first, how are you?

I’m doing well. Better now that I’ve finished my paper for International Relations.

I took a class like that. I think it was Intro to International Relations, or something like that. I was terrible at it. I think I took it freshman fall, and from the moment I was in the class I was like, “This is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.” In my mind, when I signed up for it I was like, “Okay, we’re at Georgetown and it’s famous for international relations, so sign me up! Get me some international relations!”

Cut to me not having any idea what the professor was talking about. [He was] using vocabulary as a baseline that I didn’t even understand. I just didn’t follow it at all, and I just barely eked by. It was terrible.

lez’hur ledger

So if not IR, what does a comedian study at Georgetown?

I was an English major and a theater minor. I focused on writing. I worked closely with [Professor] John Glavin. He was my mentor there in the English

a lot of things. The way he teaches writing is very disciplined. It’s not “I’ll write when I’m inspired.”

It was, “No, you’ll write until you get inspired.” He really espoused that and I have become a disciple of that theory.

Why is Mike laughing? Because he’s reading your sad, sad diary.

Department. I was a dramatic writing major, and I wrote two feature-length screenplays and a three-act play in the course of my four years. They are all terrible. They have not been produced.

John Glavin was actually a very influential person in my life.

He changed the way I think about

IMDB

I’ve heard that you’re encouraging fans to hold “make-out parties” to celebrate your new book. Could you tell us a little bit about these?

In one of the stories in my book, I tell a story about my first kiss, and it was really awkward and painful. In honor of my book coming out, I thought it’d be fun-

ny if we made black light posters that said “Mike Birbiglia’s Awkward Make-Out Party.” We made 200 of them, and encouraged people to have make-out parties around the country, with the prerequisite being that I cannot be invited. Because that’s true to how my life was. I wasn’t invited to the cool make-out parties. We’ll see if people have them. So far 30 people have offered to have them.

Do you have any advice for fledging Hoya comedians?

Get on stage as much as you can. There are [improv] groups at Georgetown that you can audition for. I used to just host everything at school—this event called Cabaret, the a capella festival, the Cherry Tree Massacre. Actually, I co-hosted the Cherry Tree Massacre with my friend Nick Kroll (COL ’01). He’s now a comedian and an actor. He’s on the series “The League” on FX. And he’s my special guest on my show at the Warner, next week.

Double Hoyas for you.

How have your experiences at Georgetown shaped your later life?

I just went to my ten-year reunion actually, and I really enjoyed it. I didn’t expect to enjoy it at all—I thought it was going to be terrible, but it ended up being really nice. I think that when I was at Georgetown, when I was there I didn’t like it. Or maybe that’s too harsh. I thought it was “passable.”

When I first arrived I was miserable because I thought that I hadn’t found my people. I was like, “I went to the wrong school.” And then I was cast in the improv troupe, and those people became my closest friends.

Beyond improv, I waited tables at the Tombs. I worked the door at D.C. Improv [the D.C. branch of the national comedy club franchise].

The whole time I was at Georgetown I was just thinking, “I’ve got to graduate and move to N.Y.” And in retrospect I wish I had taken it in more. Taken some time to read some more books. You don’t have a lot of time on your hands to do that [after you graduate].

Mike Birbiglia’s book, Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories, hits stores Oct. 12. Mike is performing at the Warner Theatre on Oct. 15.

There are no winners at the Air Sex World Championship

by Brendan Baumgardner So here’s the thing about showing up to the D.C. leg of the Air Sex World Championship alone: it’s awkward. Like, hanging out alone at the back of an indie rock concert by yourself awkward, but with the added fear that everyone around you will think you’re some kind of pervert. To be fair, all of those people also took time out of their day to both appreciate and participate in a night of onstage “faux-fucking,” so getting past the initial discomfort isn’t too tough. At the very least, you can do what I did—sidle up to the bar and order yourself as many sixteen ounce PBRs as it takes you to loosen up.

For the uninitiated, the Air Sex World Championship is a traveling competition styled after the more conventional Air Guitar World Championship, but with invisible instruments replaced by invisible sex partners.

I made quick work of my first few drinks while the event’s MC/ air-pimp Chris Trew urged the crowd to participate. I took this as

a bad sign. What am I about to see, I thought. A bunch of half-assed impromptu acts? That isn’t what I signed up for. But as I cruised for the door, a voice in the crowd said something that restored my faith in the integrity of the competition: “Do I have time to run next door and grab a smoke machine?”

Oh man. It … is … on.

The man with the smoke machine was Auto Erotic. A big man in a velvet zebra-striped suit, Auto Erotic was last year’s runner-up and the only returning contestant.

He was clearly going to be a force on stage. The rest of the contestants were harder to pick out— most were just casually dressed folks looking to go a little nuts. But when I overheard one group discussing their plan of attack (something involving a sign language interpreter), I strode over to get some inside information. When I disclosed that I was a reporter for the Voice, however, my new exhibitionist friend clammed up.

“I teach at Georgetown,” he told me, reluctantly, his gaze dropping to the floor. Clearly, I had

stumbled upon something here that I was clearly never meant to see—a Georgetown professor planning to pantomime penetration for a crowd of cheering freaks.

Then, in as a gesture of halfsympathy and half-solidarity, I did the unthinkable. I volunteered.

Now, as much as I’m all for mindless entertainment in the form of no-holds-barred pseudosex, I was not going to pass up an excellent opportunity to educate the crowd about the dangers of certain sexual practices. So I opted to take the stage as “The Ninja Master,” to perform what I felt would be a touching tribute to the final moments of David Carradine’s life, that simultaneously highlighted the dangers of autoerotic asphyxiation. For my musical accompaniment, I requested the saddest song the D.J. had—“Lightening Crashes,” by Live.

My reception was … mixed.

While there was some laughter (most of it nervous, as I hung limp and sticky from my invisible noose for a few seconds too long), others offered constructive criticism.

“That was so bad I wanted to kill myself!” one man yelled. But I believe my message got across: always have a spotter, folks.

The rest of the performers tended to be more conventional— or as conventional as one can be in the Air Sex World Championships. “The Love Guru” gave an appropriately tantric performance, while the business casual-clad “Busty St. Claire” deftly illustrated some multi-partner coitus that one judge called “a boning pot-

purri.” The only other act to join me in the darker side of things was Auto Erotic, who broke out the fog machine as he stimulated two disembodied legs (props he also provided).

“I was a doctor…” he exclaimed, a bit defeated, to a confused crowd. But come on man, that’s just fucked up.

And the Georgetown professor? When it came time for him to take the stage, he was nowhere to be found.

air sex world championship

Don’t make that face, sir. You clearly know exactly what you’re doing.

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 15

“That’s a big Twinkie.”—Ghostbusters

Should have stayed Buried Tragic but “fun”

by Sam Thompson

Perpetual frat-boy Van Wilder trades in his iconic red Solo cup for the confines of a coffin in Rodrigo Cortès’s new thriller, Buried. From the very first scene of the film, the audience is also resigned to this tragic fate, as the camera stubbornly remains trapped inside of the coffin for the entire 94-minute duration of the film. But what was intended to be an audacious, artistic decision turns out to be a cheap ploy to keep the audience distracted from the unintelligible storyline and irrelevant political commentary the film espouses.

Set in modern-day Iraq, Buried tells the tale of Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), a U.S. contractor who wakes to find himself the victim of a kidnapping, buried alive unless he can somehow get his hands on $5 million dollars for his ransom.

Equipped with a lighter, pen, and cell phone rapidly losing battery (which—with unexpected longevity to rival the menorah—miraculously endures for the entire film), Paul frantically places calls to various government agencies, only to find himself entangled in bureaucratic apathy. The government’s inadequacy and lack of concern for Paul’s predicament is meant to be a feeble jab at our country’s emotional disregard for the Americans sent to the Middle East. Regardless of the validity of

these claims, this political agenda proved awkward amidst this super-charged thriller. In the same way we scoffed at Sex and the City 2 for attempting to comment on U.S.-Middle East relations, here too it is all too clear that the film’s political agenda is just an afterthought tacked on in an attempt to give some depth to a thematically shallow film.

The artistic integrity of the movie, however, is occasionally salvaged by Cortès’s innovative camerawork. Tight shots induce bouts of claustrophobia, but more impressively succeed at the arduous task of maintaining the audience’s attention while shackled to a tiny box. The lens attacks at all angles, invading Reynolds’s privacy as it frenetically whips around, mimicking Paul’s panic.

Reynolds, too, must be commend-

The real horror? The last meal above ground was Mexican food.

Dirty jeans done dirt cheap

Jeans may have won their first fans during the California Gold Rush, but proper jean care has come a long way from simply plunking down your pan and dunking your dungarees into the stream in between sifting sessions. Some have caring for denim down to a science, but is the extra effort to enhance the aesthetics of your blue jeans worth it?

Carl Chiara, Levi Strauss & Co.’s Director of Brand Concepts seems to think so. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chiara outlined his peculiar denim maintenance habbits. Breaking in a new pair of jeans, to him, is as fundamental as getting a correctly measured suit or scuffing up a pair of tooclean Converse. When Chiara

ed for his impressive leap from the lowbrow comedies and forgettable action flicks that define his career to this exhausting one-man performance. His portrayal of Paul is remarkably believable, although occasionally undermined by the convoluted script and minimal human interaction. Still, Buried sparks a curiosity in Reynolds’s potential as an actor by highlighting a range he rarely explores.

Although transferring from low-brow comedy to Oscarworthy films is one of the most challenging tasks for a comedic actor, Reynolds’s performance shows that he deserves a chance to prove himself, ideally in a feature that doesn’t rely on a restrictive gimmick to gain notoriety.

And if all else fails, I guess the world could always use a few more romantic comedies.

gets a new pair of jeans, he said, he jogs and squats in them to break in the fabric, giving them creases and wrinkles characteristic of the joints on his legs.

Chiara claims that wearing the pants daily allows sweat and oils from your skin to accumulate and mesh into the fabric, morphing the denim to the shape of your legs and giving them a mold that is unique to your build.

If you only wash your jeans twice a year, they’ll maintain the shape of your body as well as divots in the fabric where you keep your wallet and keys—a valuable, personal aesthetic touch. In the six months between washings, spot cleaning with a sponge using any under-the-sink cleaner (such

IMDB

as 409 or Windex) can remove grease and stains, while hanging the jeans up in the bathroom during a hot shower can remove smells and grime.

When it finally does come time to clean them, Yulia Briman of the website Pocket Change says to stay away from

suffer for Fashion

by Keenan Sheridan Timko a bi-weekly column about fashion the ordinary warm-wash and tumble-dry. Minimal machine washing not only prevents the fading of the indigo color, it also guards against agitations that can fray the fibers and make them “bloom,” or swell and tense up, in the process shrinking the cotton.

Jean aficionado blogs like

by Leigh Finnegan

Anyone who read Macbeth in high school knows the basics of the tragic play: it’s long, heavy, and ominous, and its costumes and sets echo its grim themes. A colorful, lively set design and outlandish costumes are probably not what you’d see in the typical performance of Les Miserables. But, as director and professor Nadia Madhi explains, her interpretation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding—which tells of a scandalous love triangle between enemy families—is intended to be anything but the typical tragedy.

“I [imagined] it as a celebration of the fun, of the humor, as well as the darker, more complicated side,” Madhi said, “rather than imagining it as one really inexorable, plodding progression towards gloom and doom.”

As curtain time draws nearer, Blood Wedding—Madhi’s directorial debut at Georgetown—is poised to fulfill her vision in more ways than she anticipated. The show, which runs from Oct. 14 to 23 in the Divine Studio Theater at the Davis Center for Performing Arts, is a collaborative effort between the University’s professional production team, a talented group of theater majors, and an equally talented group from outside of the College. Two cast members, Vivian Cook (COL ’13) and Daniel Hrebenak (SFS ’12) auditioned with denimblog.com say to wash your jeans in a lukewarm bath with vinegar and mild soap for around half an hour. After a dripdry (and maybe putting some potpourri in the pockets) the dungarees are fresh and goodto-go for another half a year.

Chiara isn’t alone in pampering his trousers like children.

The makers of Nudie Jeans write on their website that jeans are like a “second skin where the indigo and denim are living material… Jeans [are] all about passion and [a] deep relationship,” suggesting that love, too, is a vital factor in jean care. To me, this approaches talking to your plants in ridiculousness.

In one sense, I find the level of care that that these strategies require a little counterintuitive to the purpose of jeans—a characteristically low-maintenance

pieces of original music, which impressed Madhi so much that she incorporated them into the performance. “[Cook’s] song sounded like it should be in the show, and now it is,” Madhi said. “And [Hrebenak] has become essentially another designer, from the musical perspective.”

Theater majors were required to help produce the play, even though the show is departmentrun and -directed. So it was a pleasant surprise, Madhi said, that the presence from non-theater majors at auditions was substantial, and their contributions to the play were significant.

“We’ve got a lot of talented people at our disposal,” Jimmy Lacey (MSB ‘11) said. Lacey is making his Georgetown theater debut in Blood Wedding in one of the lead roles.

Even the stage itself is on the unconventional side. The show is performed in the round, meaning that the square stage is surrounded by audience members sitting in risers on all four sides.

“It makes you really feel like you’re in the middle of the action,” Lacey said.

With tech rehearsals beginning this week, Blood Wedding is still very much a work in progress.

But based on what the cast and crew has already accomplished, it seems that the show is going to be a unique, powerful contribution to the Davis Center’s fall season.

garment. On the other hand, these strategies require far less traditional cleaning and can result in a lasting aesthetic texture and quality that you won’t have after yanking them out of the dryer, crushed, stiff, and fuzzy, for the twentieth time.

If your jeans are of the highend pedigree, say ACNE or Diesel, then putting wood-scented sachets in your jeans’ pockets after giving them a bath might be the right move. But for the rest of us in the off-the-rack crowd, it’s safe to stick with the laundromat for the time being. Still, fortyniners and busy college students alike can heave a sigh of relief, knowing that neglecting their laundry is in vogue.

Smell something funny? Ask Keenan when he last washed his jeans at ktimko@georgetownvoice.com

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16 the georgetown voice

october 7, 2010

C r i t i c a l V o i ces

Sufjan Stevens, Age of Adz, Asthmatic Kitty Records In 2004, Sufjan Stevens announced an audacious plan to write an album for each of the fifty states, beginning with 2003’s Michigan and moving south to Illinois in 2005. However, as years passed and another state album never materialized, impatience washed away speculation over which state would be “Sufjanized” next.

Then, in 2009, Stevens shamelessly announced that the “Fifty State Project” was nothing more than a publicity stunt, and that he was starting anew.

Stevens welcomes us to this new era with Age of Adz. And if you are eager to have the old Sufjan back, this album isn’t going to deliver.

Adz is an absolute departure from his earlier lullabies. It’s as if Sufjan’s sleepy-eyed tunes of old rolled out of bed, left their banjo behind, and took a rocket ship to an

upbeat, experimental dimension.

You can hear Sufjan testing the limits of his new sound as early as the second track, “Too Much,” which begins with an effervescent intro and moves into drum machine-based electronica. As if that weren’t enough, the track occasionally features chamber music strings and is topped with beautifully crooned vocals. The overall effect is dense and complex. Although it is wildly different from his past hits, the song still bears Sufjan’s trademark sense of intimacy.

Next up is the title track, a dense, eight-minute song that combines cosmic noise with heavilylayered vocals, all drenched in reverb. As the music wanders from place to place, the lengthy track gives Sufjan time to prove his versatility. When the eerie electronic glitches become too dark, they are countered by lofty harmonies and a fleet of horns and orchestral arrangements.

The busyness of the title track pervades Age of Adz. While the addition of more progressive elements to his alt-folk roots doesn’t always work, it’s always good to hear that Stevens is attempting new things. The album is sure to disappoint the fans who fell in love with his banjo-plucking ballads. He may be accused of selling out to postMerriweather trends. But for those who are not intimidated by Sufjan’s new style, Age of Adz is a beautiful,

No, but I saw the movie

Adapting a book can be a tricky business. On rare occasions, an adapted movie can transcend its source, but more often than not, it loses some of the elements that readers loved. Book snobs, the lot of pretentious bastards that they are, often rightly criticize adaptations for failing to live up to original texts.

That’s the major difference between the Godfathers and the I, Robots of the world, they say.

The former stays true to the original material, the latter substitutes quality for visual flair.

And while I’m not about to defend Will Smith’s sad excuse for a Nike commercial, I think it’s difficult to judge an adaptation against its source. It’s not wrong to debate the merits of an original creation against its creative

interpretation—hell, it’s awfully fun—but it is wrong to ignore the differences between them.

Consider how reading can inspire the imagination. In a book, settings, characters, and scenes don’t depend on projected images. The reader isn’t passive; he creates as he consumes, piggybacking off of the writer’s words.

A movie actively involves its audience, too, but in a different way. An adaptation is the director and screenwriters’ imagined version of a book, whether it delights its audience or earns its disdain.

Their imagined worlds become public, and when audience members walk out of theaters and talk to one another, they discuss that world. Watching may be passive, but watching a movie doesn’t end with its credits.

space-pop symphony that may just be his most creative endeavor yet.

Voice’s Choices: “Too Much,” “Age of Adz”, “Now That I’m Older.”

—Luke Howley

Salem, King Night, IAMSOUND This year’s buzziest new genre boasts the most ridiculous title the Internet genre-naming gods have ever bestowed (and that includes “purple” and “chillwave”): “witch house.” So named for its ethereal synths and ominous, DJ Screw-influenced beats, this new genre includes bands with names as ridiculous as oOoOO and ///\\\. If you hate it already, you’re not so different from most of the music enthusiasts who haven’t heard Salem’s first fulllength album, King Night.

Salem’s debut, EP Yes I Smoke Crack, pretty much invented and epitomized the witch house genre two years before a bunch of amaMovie adaptations of books exaggerate the passive-active divide that a reader experiences. They inject personal opinion into another person’s work, twisting and changing it into something new. But that’s not a bad thing.

literary Tools

by Chris Heller

a bi-weekly column about literature Look at two recently adapted books, The Accidental Billionaires and Never Let Me Go. The former, a fictionalized Facebook origin story, was optioned before its publication date; screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and author Ben Mezrich compared notes, but worked independently. The result? Two unrelated tales that each, in their own way, caution

teur DJs found garageband and the ‘insert symbol’ feature in Microsoft Word. It doesn’t hurt that Salem has a name that is both pronounceable and not really freaking lame. King Night is the nascent genre’s best act, and it shows an army of imitators how witch house should sound.

You’ll get it on the very first track of the album—the title song alone sums up the whole aesthetic. All reverb-laden synths and snapping, stuttering snares, “King Night” deftly weaves together Southern hip-hop, dubstep, and dream-pop for a stunning four minutes. From there, the album tends in opposite directions—exploring each facet of the sound more closely, but never sounding disjointed.

The sheer breadth of their sound is most impressive in the back-to-back songs “Trapdoor” and “Redlights.” The former is straightup chopped-and-screwed Southern hip-hop, albeit put through Salem’s hazy filter. Slowed down to the point of indecipherability, the group’s white-boy rap is haunting instead of awkward—explaining how Salem managed to successfully co-opt elements of hip-hop into a decidedly “alternative” sound without being ironic or embarrassing themselves could be an essay. When the snare stops, though, Salem moves seamlessly into the almost-angelic “Redlights,” where drawled-out raps are replaced by us that six billion dollars doesn’t buy friends.

Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go, however, merely tweaks Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about organ-donating clones in 20th century England to make it a bizarre, unique horror story. It’s addition through subtraction, at the expense of Ishiguro’s subtle— and inimitable—plot progression. The movie is streamlined, thoughtful, and terribly sad without sabotaging its source.

Never Let Me Go is far from perfect, but it gives the audience a chance to peek behind the scenes and learn how Romanek interpreted Ishiguro’s book.

Unless, of course, you haven’t read it. And that’s the true gripe in the “books versus movies” debate; reading is supposedly an intellectual act, while watching is not. At the bottom of almost ev-

a melodious vocal line and ghastly dissonance from harmonic synths.

Considering the complimentary adjectives thrown about by critics and bloggers, and the group’s diverse influences, there’s no doubt that this is an album to pull out the nerd headphones for. It’s worth it for the bass alone—which hits frequencies you forgot existed—but the group’s sheer enjoyment of sound for sound’s sake is also delightful. Each and every track explores unique synth sounds, ranging from guttural crunch to alien lightness to trancey tinkling.

This may all sound familiar to jaded listeners. Just one year ago, we were buying into a scene with a stronger web presence than a stage presence, where bands like Washed Out and Neon Indian created endearing music that drew upon a wide smattering of influences before buckling under the weight of their own hype. Which is why, this time around, I’ll encourage you to avoid the scene, avoid the buzz, avoid the bound-to-be terrible live shows, and just to focus on a unique band making a remarkably fresh sound. And to those of you lining up for the hypewagon: I promise you, no matter what you think of ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜ right now, you’re gonna regret it in the morning.

Voice’s Choices: “King Night” “Trapdoor,” “Redlights” —Matthew Collins ery snide remark about how “the book was better” lies an elitist attitude against movies.

But an adaptation isn’t meant to better its source; it’s meant to reveal how the creator responded to reading the source. It’s why Fight Club didn’t end with the Narrator in a hospital bed.

It’s why Samwise didn’t leave Middle Earth with Frodo in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

And it’s why Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief led to Adaptation, a meta-commentary mind fuck about writing itself.

The truth is, it’s impossible to copy from paper to film without altering part of the meaning. So why not embrace the differences?

Get a glimpse of Chris’s “imagined world” at cheller@georgetownvoice.com

fiction

georgetownvoice.com

Jeff Whitman

By Leigh Finnegan

“J

effrey, stop that. We talked about this.”

His mother’s quick hiss was harsh and familiar, and Jeff reflexively looked down at his arm. He hadn’t even realized he’d been slowly digging his fingernails into his flesh, but he never did. It was a nervous habit as old as he could remember, one of many, but this one most frequently came out to play during these traditional Whitman family Sunday brunches at the club. He moved his left hand away and examined the pink, crescentshaped welts on his right forearm. It was getting worse. He began scratching at his pastel blue tie, silently, so as to not set off his mother’s radar again.

Not that she was going to notice.

She’d already dived right back into vapid conversation with his older sister, heartlessly gossiping about Mrs. Flynn, who sat with her own daughter in the opposite corner of the dining room. “I admire her nerve,” Mrs. Whitman mused.

“To keep coming here with her head high.

Even though everyone knows.”

“That poor woman,” Kelsey replied without a single note of empathy. “Even after the nose job, I guess he still thought his secretary was better-looking.”

Jeff let his eyes wander at the rest of the club members, expertly tuning the conversation out. He’d heard it all already. Club gossip, fashion commentary, maybe a tale of Kelsey’s latest trip to the Cape to visit Jay, her boyfriend of three years whose grandmother was a Vanderbilt. His father stood a few feet away, sipping his cocktail and chatting with Mr. Banks, the two of them proving that the best way to debate health care reform is to have the same opinion as your opponent.

This was why he hated going home. It was the same surgically-modified faces, the same salmon-colored conversation, the same parade of air-kisses and Southside cocktails and “how’s young Cutler Jr. enjoying Harvard?” that he’d been watching and hearing since he was an infant, already wearing white shorts and spending his summers at tennis camp. It was by some grace of God that he’d convinced his parents to let him leave the East Coast for college, not to go straight from boarding school to Princeton like the rest of the Whitman men. Not that Princeton had really been an option, he’d made sure of that. Amid the shockwaves that rocked the family after his rejection letter, the phone calls to the admissions office and threats of halted donations, nobody had bothered to look at the application and

“

the freedom of the unfamiliar, worlds away where no one recognized him as the son of Andrew Whitman of the Whitman Group, and nobody had ever heard of the incestuous, provincial universe that was the Lakeway Golf Club. Coming back was like time travel.

He was suddenly reverted to his angsty fourteen-year-old self, shoehorned into a jacket and tie and silently gnawing the inside of his lip while he contemplated small ways to shock his parents, knowing he’d never have the balls to try a single one of them.

His gaze had landed on the opposite wall, and he was jerked from his thoughts when their waitress kicked through the kitchen door, holding a tray of drinks with both hands. She was new this season, but had been serving his family at every brunch. He watched her as she smoothly, though not very gracefully, navigated through the tables to get to the Whitmans’. An insolent strand of her long, wavy brown hair had fallen out of her ponytail across her cheek, and she

The first thing Jeff had noticed at the beginning of the summer was how uncommonly pretty she was. notice the inexcusable mediocrity of his essay, the lack of his family’s alumni history, and a truncated list of extracurricular activities. Even though he eventually received a personal letter of acceptance and apology from the dean of admissions (who pacified the family by assuring them that the unfortunate soul responsible for Jeff’s rejection had been “removed from his position”), the damage had been done, and he’d played on his parents’ unflinching pride to sell them on Stanford, which had thought him good enough the first time around. And there he’d basked

Marc Fichera

”

blew upward at it from her bottom lip, trying in vain to get it off her face. Her tray wobbled.

The first thing Jeff had noticed at the beginning of the summer was how uncommonly pretty she was.

Definitely not club-member pretty: her big, emphatic brown eyes and extra holes punched in her earlobes floated her above the sea of seersucker as much as her uniform polo and black apron. She had a spattering of sunburn across her nose that was new this week, which he suspected didn’t happen at her family’s private beach in the Hamptons. Besides, country club girls never burned: the mere thought of someday having a wrinkle was enough to send them diving under a Tommy Hillfiger sun hat and putting another emergency aesthetician on speed dial.

Plus everybody knows tan looks so much better under blonde hair and white sundresses. He kept watching her as she approached the table, obviously fishing her distracted mind for which drink went to which Whitman.

He found himself contemplating that, despite that he saw her once a week, he knew very little about the waitress aside from her striking appearance. He knew from her required shiny gold pin that her name

the georgetown voice 17

was Andrea. He guessed that she was around his age. He knew that she’d had a boyfriend, a disheveled brownhaired kid, who would pick her up in his tan Toyota Camry after her shift every Sunday. He also knew that this had abruptly stopped happening two weeks ago, around the same time he overheard a too-loud conversation at the servers’ station in which she referred to someone named Ben with a kaleidoscope of expletives that no good Lakeway girl could have picked up at Andover. He knew that his father thought the ratio of grape soda to ginger ale in her Transfusions was off.

He knew that she always had another member of the waitstaff tie her shoes for her. He knew she had a habit of tapping her pen against the silver ring on her right hand when waiting for a table to order, and wondered if even she was aware of it.

Warily, Andrea placed an iced tea in front of Kelsey, and had barely removed her hand before Mrs. Whitman had her bony, diamond-laced fingers around the bottom of the glass. She slid it in front of her own place setting, not even dignifying the waitress with a direct address. “She’s confused again,” she said to Kelsey, removing the lemon from the side of her glass and placing it on the tablecloth. “I ordered the iced tea.” Jeff looked up at Andrea for a reaction, and watched her eyes narrow with ire as she mumbled a word of apology and finished passing the drinks. She took out her check pad, and immediately began tapping her pen more quickly than usual against her blue-polished finger. Mrs. Whitman, slow and deliberate, opened her menu, a pretense since she always ordered the same chef’s salad, hold the bacon and dressing on the side.

He wasn’t sure why he did it. He certainly didn’t have any premeditated plans. It was a wave of spontaneity, spawned by twenty years’ worth of pressure-cooked frustration and resentment sent violently bubbling to the surface in the course of a few Sunday brunches. The result of Mr. Whitman’s passive, booze-pacified stare down at his menu, ignoring the disgusting superiority that oozed from his trophy-wife’s every pore, and the way Kelsey still wore a striped headband in her straight blonde hair the same way she had every day since she was five. Jeff abruptly and defiantly stood up from his seat, his chair making a loud, unpleasant scraping noise as it shot backwards. He was standing next to the waitress, and he looked his mother dead in the eye.

“Mom, Dad,” he said loudly, his heart accelerating with unfamiliar adrenaline.

“This is my girlfriend, Andrea.”

To be contined in next week’s issue...

voices

18 the georgetown voice

october 7, 2010

Silencing a mute: RJC ends, student rights stay the same

by David Freenock As a second-year member of the Residential Judicial Council, I could not be happier with the Office of Residential Life’s recent decision to suspend and restructure the council during the 2010-11 academic year.

Some students have complained that they have lost a voice in the University’s judicial process, but the truth is they never really had one in the first place.

The RJC was a student-run judicial body that adjudicated alleged violations of the Student Code of Conduct. Most students, however, did not know about this arm of Georgetown’s adjudication bureaucracy because it was rarely used and almost never publicized. It only dealt with small infractions, known as Category A violations. If, for instance, you hosted an unregistered party or you peed in your roommate’s bed—which has actually happened before—or, worse still, you got caught without your GoCard, your case could have been adjudicated by the RJC.

In the Sept. 28 issue of the Hoya, a news article and an editorial championed the RJC as the sole channel for student expression in the disciplinary process.

According to the Hoya, the RJC supposedly provided a venue for student input and oversight.

Because students were judged by their peers, this process offered more understanding than other adjudication methods at Georgetown. The RJC, they said, was a forum where students could regulate their own community and hold each other accountable for their conduct.

Sounds great, right? It would be. That is, if the RJC actually did these things. The truth is less pleasant. The deck was always stacked against students in the disciplinary process long before the RJC had a chance to affect it. Because, in truth, the RJC has very little influence in the process.

Consider the following scenario: You have recently been cited for hosting an unregistered party. Your hall director reads you the incident report

which contains all the relevant evidence: on a Friday in Village A, he heard loud music (Lil Jon’s “Shots”) coming from your apartment; after several knocks, you answered your door, and he saw red cups in your guests’ hands. He does not see other evidence of alcohol. To determine guilt, hall directors adhere to a standard of “more likely than not,” which is ambiguous to say the least.

In this scenario, it appears likely that you were having a party.

Your hall director explains this as he reads off your sanctions.

Have fun not hosting parties for the next month!

Clearly, there is a serious problem with this process.

The Office of Student Conduct claims there is a presumption of innocence for all students accused of a potential violation. As a result, the burden of proof rests with the complainant to prove that you “more likely than not” committed an offense. The “more likely than not” standard, however, provides very little space for a pre-

sumption of innocence. If there is a 51 percent chance that you violated the Student Code of Conduct, you are guilty. You can forget about the 49 percent chance that you didn’t do anything wrong.

Judicial decisions are not made in a vacuum, either. Hall directors make many assumptions about college life and partying. Who can blame them?

However, these assumptions almost always favor the “more likely” and very rarely the “not.” There goes your razor thin presumption of innocence.

At this point, you may have realized the real problem with the RJC: it’s virtually nonexistent. In the scenario I just described, your case was not adjudicated before a board of your peers—you were not even given that option. That’s because the RJC operated at the sole discretion of ResLife staff. If individual hall directors choose to determine cases themselves instead of forwarding them to the RJC, your fellow students will never have the opportunity to

be active in the judicial process.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of judicial cases are handled this way. Thus, student influence in the disciplinary process is not only rare, but also entirely contingent on whether hall directors choose to relinquish judicial control, which they often do not. There goes your student input.

I hope that ResLife uses this “reassessment” period to substantively increase the role the RJC plays in the judicial process. Every student should have the right to have his or her case adjudicated with some input from his peers, especially since the standards of proof are already weighted against us.

But I’m afraid that when—or if—the RJC returns, little will have changed and, worse yet, no one will notice.

David Freenock is a junior in the College. He always thought that the song “Shots” by Lil Jon was about baskeball.

Corporal punishment, my daily dose of café-au-hell

by Julie Patterson Students of Georgetown, Inc. is the single worst organization at Georgetown University. It epitomizes the fact that college is not the real world, as so many postgraduates warn us. It operates in a fantasy land where bad business practices can still yield a profit, where employees face virtually no risk of being fired short of stealing from the company, where employers provide rivers of free alcohol, and

where customers continue to patronize businesses that provide terrible service and sell goods at inflated prices.

My accusations may be strong, but I’m confident that most students, like me, have had awful experiences with the main business operations of the Corp, Vital Vittles, Hoya Snaxa, Uncommon Grounds, MUG, and Midnight MUG. The Corp enjoys almost a total monopoly on on-campus food and beverage choices.

Yes, there’s a Starbucks and

OLIVIA BERCOW

Coffee is black, lattes are brown, I hate the Corp, so I’m taking you down.

Così in the Leavey Center, Saxby’s isn’t too far off campus, and there’s a GUTS Bus that runs to the Wisconsin Safeway. Even so there usually are lines at each of the Corp’s terrible establishments—and only so much of that can be due to painfully slow service.

When it comes to the day-today activities of the average student, it just so happens that the Corp’s services are more accessible. This can only be attributed to their location, not to any efforts by the Corp to actually make their services desirable.

Students frequent the Corp locations because they have little to no direct competition— which means that there is, first and foremost, no price competition. Two dollars for a one-liter bottle of Coke? I’ve never paid more than $1.20 at a chain grocery store. A large blended coffee drink costs $5.00? McDonald’s has a comparable product for just over two bucks.

The second tragedy of the Corp’s monopoly is the complete absence of quality control. Its employees sit or stand behind a counter for three hours at a time. If the cashier at Starbucks coming off an eighthour turnaround shift can go through a line of six people in less than ten minutes, so can

Corpies. But they are more interested in chatting with their fellow barista about the weekend, changing the music on the iPod to something more pretentious and indie, or discussing a homework assignment with a classmate whose transaction they have already completed. Their relaxed attitude also leads to excessively long and slow-moving lines.

The service itself is also abysmal. Cashiers can’t seem to figure out how to be efficient. Slide my card before you start to bag my items.

Why in the world can’t you find the barcode on my candy bar? How hard is it to remember that I ordered a large instead of a medium? How hard is it remember my order at all?

Apparently, it’s quite difficult, because it has happened to me numerous times at all three Corp coffee shops.

And please, Corp, don’t think giving me a card for a free drink makes things any better. That’s just asking me to come back and endure another excruciating fifteen minutes at the worst business in the history of mankind, where I am guaranteed to have just as terrible an experience as I did when I got the card in the first place.

Starbucks does not run out of large cups. Saxby’s espresso

machine doesn’t break down.

Caribou always has ice. Everyone always has ice. Except for the Corp. Safeway doesn’t run out of its most popular items the day it stocks them. If you know you always run out of garlic salt bagels, do you know what you should do?

Order more next time.

I’m inclined to believe that the Corp’s main problem is that while it appears to be a business, it is actually a fraternity that is merely operating under the guise of being a legitimate corporation. It asks its employees to work meager three hour shifts a few times a week, and in exchange provides them with a large network of friends, keg Wednesdays, extravagantly themed parties, and a smug sense of self-satisfaction that is wholly undeserved.

For all of the incorrectly made drinks, the hours wasted waiting in line at Midnight MUG, and the scarcity of garlic salt bagels, I say a big, fat “screw you” to the Students of Georgetown, Inc.

Julie Patterson is a junior in the College.

She doesn’t understand why the Corp can’t seem to make her orange mocha frappuccino!

voices

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice

19

Oh Columbus Day, Columbus Day, why do you exist?

by Peter Stanton When I first saw Columbus Day on the Registrar’s calendar as a freshman last year, I was amused to find that we had the day off. For many students in this country, Columbus Day is just a novelty, and many states and school districts have never used it as an excuse to cancel school. Students, however, really shouldn’t just dismiss Columbus Day out of hand. Instead, they should think seriously about what this holiday really commemorates.

Centennial celebrations of Christopher Columbus’s landing took place in the United States in 1792 and 1892, before it became

popular to celebrate Columbus Day annually. Colorado made it a holiday by law in 1907, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized it in 1934, although Columbus Day didn’t actually become a federal holiday until 1971.

Americans commemorate Columbus Day in many places across the country, sometime as a celebration of Italian-American heritage.

Italian-Americans have every right to celebrate their heritage, even though it seems a little strange to celebrate Italian heritage and immigration to America on a day that remembers a Renaissance-era Genovese who never came to this country at all. More often, though, it’s a nod to the man

AMBER REN

Land ho! A whole new world, a dazzling place I never knew... but the natives did.

Some like it flat About a month ago, in an orientation speech for my study abroad program in Copenhagen, a Danish government official explained to my fellow Americans and me how expensive it would be for us to live in Denmark. Thanks to an unfortunate exchange rate, it costs about 5.5 kroner to purchase $1 dollar. Here, a cheap cup of coffee costs about 22 kroner. Smirking, the speaker said, “Don’t blame us—blame your parents.

Perhaps if they’d spent a little less and saved a bit more, the dollar wouldn’t be so cheap.”

Our parents’ generation isn’t the only one with a poor saving record, though: the personal savings rate in the United States for the second

quarter of 2010 is around 6 percent, which is higher than in pre-crisis years, but still abysmally low. Between 2005 and 2008, the personal savings rate hovered between 1 percent and 2 percent of income earned. That means that on average, for every $100 earned, we now spend $94. In China and India, the savings rates are considerably higher, 38 percent and 35 percent respectively. Our low savings rate contributed substantially to the mortgage crisis, and will likely play a role in what experts expect to be the next big financial problem: underfunded pension plans. So, how can Americans start to save more and spend less?

Let the Voice be your voice. We accept opinions, letters to the editor, personal experiences, and creative writing that are exclusive to the Voice. Submissions do not express the opinion of the board of the Voice. The Voice reserves the right to edit submissions for accuracy, length, and clarity. To submit, email voices@georgetownvoice.com or come to the Voice office in Leavey 413.

whose actions would eventually lead to the founding of our nation.

For that reason, it is necessary to look at what Columbus symbolizes in our history.

Ernest Renan, a 19th-century writer, once wrote, “To forget and, I will venture to say, to get one’s history wrong are essential factors in the making of a nation.” For most young students, Columbus is where the American mythology begins. Every American child is bound to hear that Columbus discovered America. This is true, under a limited definition of “discover,” but for most children the statement is never qualified.

Some students might hear that Norsemen settled in North America—something Columbus never did—or even that the Americas were first truly discovered and populated by people who came here tens of thousands of years before. But unfortunately, nothing is as romantic as the tales of the Italian accidentally finding a continent while serving the king and queen of Spain.

In 1967, the late Representative Peter W. Rodino, Jr. (D-N.J.), provided some clues as to why this is when he spoke before Congress about the possibility of renaming the holiday “Discoverers Day.” “Our textbooks and our history have been written around Christopher Columbus, and there are a great many scholars who adhere to the proposition that it was Christo-

Given how hot the current debate over extending the Bush tax cuts is, few are likely to be interested in a flat tax.

However, reworking the tax code—specifically, introducing a modified flat tax—might help solve our savings issues. Typically, for a flat tax, the govern-

Carrying On

by George D’Angelo A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

ment sets a tax rate on income, say 20 percent, and everyone has to pay the same percentage of their income in taxes, no matter what their earnings.

There is an initial deduction based on family size, so no one pays taxes on the first $30,000 to $40,000 of income. Beyond that, whether your income is $45,000 or $4,500,000, you pay 20 percent of your income, minus the initial deduction—with very few other deductions.

The current tax system is highly complex. With a flat tax,

pher Columbus who initially made the discovery of the New World and opened it up to civilization and colonization,” he said.

Rodino’s testimony is proof that it is America’s historical narrative that gives Columbus his importance. This narrative emphasizes exploration, expansion and settlement, values every American child associates with his or her country’s history. The narrative implicitly, and at times explicitly, lauds European and EuropeanAmerican conquest.

But what is most important is what the narrative omits: the history of our continent’s original inhabitants. It forgets that in addition to opening America to “civilization and colonization,” Columbus also opened it to widespread slavery, cultural extermination, and the destruction of millions of lives. And it conveniently leaves out the fact that we are not just Kennedy’s “nation of immigrants”—our nation includes Native Americans, too.

Something else Rondino said struck me as interesting. He told his fellow House members that “the observance of Columbus Day as a national holiday will, I am certain, prove to be effective in blotting out the vestiges of discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry—and for this reason alone I would urge favorable action on the pending bill.”

Yes, discrimination against Italians and other immigrant groups absolutely mar our nation’s his-

filing a tax return would take about 10 minutes. Systems like this have been successful in many countries, such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, and a slew of other former Soviet bloc countries. The tax code is so simple that it’s nearly impossible to cheat. As a result, fewer people feel disgruntled about paying.

Where do the savings increases come in? Since flat tax systems usually involve either no tax or very little tax on capital gains, interest, and dividends, people will save more because the interest on their savings and the gains on their investments won’t be taxed when they take the gains.

As a caveat, people whose incomes come primarily from capital gains, like professional investors, could be taxed at the normal flat income rate. Or perhaps a capital gain could be redefined from investments not traded for one year to investments that are not traded for five years. This would reward investors (who allocate capital to help business grow), not traders (who profit from

tory. But given the Civil Rights Movement that was ongoing when he said this, and Columbus’ role in the eventual shipment of African slaves to the Americas, Rondino’s statement is deeply ironic. And while it is unfortunate for a group to be discriminated against, it is something else entirely for one to be forgotten.

Only three people are honored with federal holidays in the United States: George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., and Christopher Columbus. Two of these men are fundamental figures in American history and embody our nation’s ideals. But Columbus’s connection to our country is tenuous at best, even though our national myth makes it seem otherwise.

Columbus Day doesn’t need to be reconsidered because of how history judges the results of his “discovery,” nor because government holidays need to be politically correct. We should reconsider about Columbus Day because American children deserve to learn history as it happened. They deserve a nation that might, someday, get the narrative right.

Peter Stanton is a sophomore in the SFS. He thinks Italians should have a national holiday around the Situation instead.

price movements in financial markets). If there’s no penalty for saving and investing, more people will be inclined to do so.

Given the current state of affairs in Congress, it is highly unlikely that we will see a flat tax any time soon. After all, part of the reason a flat tax system came about in so many former Soviet countries is because before the early 1990s, most of these countries did not exist so they had to write their tax systems from scratch.

While a flat tax may be too extreme for the United States, we need to confront the fact that we have a serious problem when it comes to personal saving. Cultural habits may be part of the problem, but the government needs to start considering more tax-based incentives to save, encourage saving rather than spending.

George D’Angelo is a junior in the MSB. Taxes are probably the only thing he likes flat. Soda, tires, and women are better unflat.

T H E V O I C E friday october 1st * 6 p.m. * leavey 413 * free pizza

OPEN HOUSE

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