11 3 2011

VOICE the georgetown

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GU ANNOUNCES CAPITAL CAMPAIGN PAGE 4

WOMEN’S SOCCER INTO BIG EAST SEMIS PAGE 6

CRUMBS, CRUMBS, YUMZ PAGE 11

Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w November 3, 2011 w Volume 45, Issue 11 w georgetownvoice.com

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2 the georgetown voice

november 3, 2011

Voice Crossword “Looks Can Be Deceiving” by Tyler Pierce

Across 1. Internet sensation Black 8. Writer of “In Cold Blood” 14. High energy type of exercise 15. Spill one’s guts

16. Perform a business operation 18. Harangue 19. Sounds from an a capella background 21. Strike down from heaven 22. Bi, di, or in follower

25. The Amish, for example 27. Eye part 28. One of a dueling pair from “Deliverance” 30. They are supposed to be out of Iraq by the end of the year 32. Pop the top off of 33. Super continent 36. ___ and Gabbana 37. Madam’s partner 38. Option at Chipotle 40. Sensory preceptors 42. Take advantage of, as privileges 43. A young girl in Spanish class?

45. More sneaky 46. Length x width 49. Apple product 50. Aristotle’s “H” 51. Units of electrical potential 53. They may be split or loose 55. Stays up for 57. “Most ___ Bachelor” 63. Start a trip 64. Prophet whose name means “God will strengthen” 65. Hip 66. Like some scenes Down 1. Snitch 2. Always, to Shakespeare

answers at georgetownvoice.com 3. It’s there for support 4. Time piece?

5. NCIS network 6. “Ta-Ta!” 7. Synonym for 18- Across 8. It’s corny 9. “Planet of the ___” 10. “If there is no God, everything is ___,” quote from a Dostoevsky work 11. Live 12. Together, on a score 13. Pointless weapon?

17. Theme of this Crossword 20. Grimace 22. List of official Bible books 23. Remus or Sam, for example 24. Sudden outburst 26. Rocky precipice 28. Type of brewski 29. Wagner work 31. Fritas preceder

34. Indigenous Canadian 35. On a boat 37. Pick off 39. “Star Spangled Banner” contraction 41. Clandestine maritime org.

44. Bewildered 46. Pirate’s attention getter 47. Coxswain addressee 48. Cheer up 52. Two-by-four, sometimes 54. It doesn’t matter 56. Pigs digs 58. Do goo 59. Liked in the 50’s 60. An anxious person might be chomping at it 61. Comic pioneer Stan 62. Antiquity, in antiquity

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 45.11 November 3, 2011 Editor-in-Chief: Tim Shine Managing Editor: Sean Quigley Blog Editor: Leigh Finnegan News Editor: Holly Tao Sports Editor: Daniel Kellner Feature Editor: Kara Brandeisky Cover Editor: Iris Kim Leisure Editor: John Sapunor Voices Editor: Kate Imel Photo Editor: Max Blodgett Design Editors: Catherine Johnson, Kathleen Soriano-Taylor Projects Editor: Rob Sapunor Crossword Editor: Scott Fligor Assistant Blog Editor: Ryan Bellmore Assistant News Editor: Neha Ghanshamdas Assistant Sports Editors: Abby Sherburne, Kevin Joseph Assistant Leisure Editors: Mary Borowiec, Heather Regen Assistant Photo Editors: Julianne Deno, Matthew Funk Contributing Editor: Nico Dodd

Staff Writers:

Nick Berti, Geoffrey Bible, Rachel Calvert, Mary Cass, Patricia Cipollitti, Jane Conroy, Emma Forster, Julia Lloyd-George, Kirill Makarenko, Morgan Manger, Kelsey McCullough, Vanya Mehta, Sadaf Qureshi, Adam Rosenfeld, Jake Schindler, Melissa Sullivan

Staff Photographers:

Sam Brothers, Richard De La Paz, Abby Greene, Lucia He, Kirill Makarenko, Tim Markatos, Jackson Perry

Staff Designer: Julia Kwon

Copy Chief: Aodhan Beirne Copy Editors:

Connor Jones, Claire McDaniel, Jordan Moenly, Neil Saad, Kim Tay, Chris Yamada

Editorial Board Chair: Jackson Perry Editorial Board:

Gavin Bade, Tiffany Brown, Rachel Calvert, Ethan Chess, Julia Jester, Sean Quigley, Julia Tanaka, J. Galen Weber

Head of Business: Keaton Hoffman The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

the georgetown voice 3

FOR GENERATIONS TO COME

Sky is the limit for the capital campaign Last Friday, the University launched “The Campaign for Georgetown: For Generations to Come,” a $1.5 billion fundraising initiative aimed at comprehensively improving life on the Hilltop. The campaign is a necessary response to the needs of our community and a notable exception to the perceived inattention of the administration to improving the undergraduate experience in recent years.

If all is accomplished as planned, the cash generated by the campaign promises to cement Georgetown’s place as a first-rate university. The campaign will not only improve the quality of undergraduate life, but it also holds the potential to increase our standing in comparative rankings with our peer institutions. Most laudably, the campaign takes a large step toward guaranteeing every well-qualified student who applies to Georgetown the education he or she deserves regardless of socioeconomic status.

The initiative aims to assist in improving four foundational aspects of the Georgetown undergraduate experience. It allots $500 million to fund new scholarships, $500 million for investment in faculty expansion and endowment, $200 million for expansion and renovation of student activity centers, and $300 million for future transformational projects, similar to the creation of SFS-Qatar.

Georgetown also deserves praise for its confident promotion of the largest financial campaign in the University’s history.

Because our endowment is currently just above $1 billion, remaining competitive with peer institutions through persistent expansion and renovation requires a massive fundraising campaign.

The campaign has also enabled current students to interact with a wide range of famous alumni and other guests. Notable visitors within the last week range from former President Bill Clinton (SFS ’68) to his class-

mate Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal (SFS ’68) to former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue (COL ’62). This diverse group of distinguished and popular speakers stands as a reminder of the distinct academic culture and intellectual spirit Georgetown is asking investors to sustain with their donations.

Georgetown’s alumni and supporters are stepping up. The campaign has already accrued $775 million of its $1.5 billion goal since the beginning of its “quiet phase” in 2006. If and when the campaign reaches its goal, the funds generated promise not only to sustain the Georgetown legacy, but also to touch our community in ways that cannot be done without the help of generous donors.

In the last several years, the administration has often faced withering criticism for its actions and inactions on the Hilltop.

The Campaign for Georgetown is a mission, however, that we can all rally around.

DECKCHAIRS ON THE TITANIC

SAC reforms are just more of the same This week, the Student Activities Commission launched its latest club funding structure, called the Comprehensive Budget System. Though SAC Chair Andrew Koenig (COL ’12) called it a “fundamental departure from the ‘programming arc’ system of financial allocation, as well as a significant change in the way SAC approves organization events and operations,” the new system is neither a departure from the previous, flawed system nor a significant change in SAC’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.

Although it is laudable that SAC recognized that its initial programming arc structure required scrapping, student groups will find that little has changed from the old, widely disliked system.

There is a difference between correcting an obvious flaw in the previous system and fundamentally changing the overall funding process.

This reform is a recipe for continued discontent with SAC as an institution, and it will not be surprising if a Commission chair a year or two down the road will be hailing a new system as a fundamental departure from the Comprehensive Budget System. Until the Commission gets serious about creating a truly new system, complaints will continue.

The most meaningful change is still a minor one: a shift from yearly programming arc submissions to semesterly budget allocations for all SAC groups. For an entire weekend each semester, every SAC group will present their plans for the next semester in front of the Commission at a “Budget Summit.” Although this shift will give groups greater flexibility in event planning, it will also force student leaders to sacrifice two weekends every year to defending their budgets in front of students that will be just as exhausted

from midterms as they are.

The few minor improvements in the new system, such as reforms to travel funding and a shift to electronic approval of routine events, don’t address the underlying issue: a massive bureaucracy that drowns club leaders in paperwork and arbitrary rules. Ultimately, the welcome changes don’t affect the overall relationship between SAC and its organizations.

The idea of SAC reform is an excellent one, but somehow reforms are never as transformative as their lofty names or the fanfare that accompanies them may make it appear. Efforts to improve SAC must focus squarely on the causes of bureaucratic overload and better integrate student complaints into the Commission’s routine. For the sake of the clubs who are its constituents, the Commission must not think its era of reform is over.

TO CATCH A PARASITE

This newspaper was made possible with the support of Campus Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, online at CampusProgress.org. Campus Progress works to help young people — advocates, activists, journalists, artists — make their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

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On this week’s cover: Battle of the Band Illustration: Iris Kim

Anti-piracy effort crushes Internet freedom Last Wednesday, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, Lamar Smith (R-Texas), introduced the E-PARASITE Act, a measure that will shackle innovation and freedom on the Internet in an attempt to stop piracy.

The proposed legislation, which features even more aggressive policies than those contained in the Senate’s already controversial Protect IP Act, has caused widespread outrage in online communities. The measure seeks to give the federal government excessive legal power on the Internet, allowing it to shut down websites almost as it pleases based on ambiguous anti-piracy clauses.

Certainly, a productive economic system must protect intellectual property, which is necessary to incentivize continued innovation by companies and entrepreneurs. However, this bill’s blatant shift of authority from the courts to the Justice Department is suggestive of the legislation’s corporate backing.

It is disappointing yet unsurprising that the bipartisan group behind the bill is attempting to enact all of the entertainment industry’s legal fantasies into law.

Though the act claims to protect users from “notorious infringers,” it functionally empowers corporations to pressure the government to unilaterally block any content by websites that purportedly violate intellectual property rights. Any foreign website that the Attorney General deems as infringing of intellectual property rights can instantly be blocked by the federal government without any hearing. Bypassing the courts, the legislation would empower a political appointee to be the entertainment industry’s hatchet man, cutting down whatever nascent websites or technologies that those industries consider threatening. With this act, corporate capture of government proceeds even further.

However, corporations are not the only ones that come out ahead in this battle. The

bill gives the government and its lawyers the indiscriminate authority of identifying and analyzing “notorious foreign infringers.” The same bureaucrats can then also directly intervene and shut down the same domains based on their own interpretations of the new law. Censorship that ought to remain an open legal process would take place in a matter of seconds and with just a few signatures from Justice Department officials.

As we have seen, the Internet has been a powerful force for good in recent times— especially in major democratic revolts in the Arab world—and there is no reason to believe its importance will decrease. The web is a great equalizer, offering an unparalleled venue for people from all over the world to communicate, share ideas and organize.

Building a firewall around America does injustice to our democratic ideals. Congress must scrap the E-PARASITE Act.

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november 3, 2011

Capital campaign launches transformative programs

by Morgan Manger Out of the $1.5 billion the University looks to raise by 2016 as part of the Campaign for Georgetown, $300 million will go to the ambiguously titled “transformative opportunities.”

Over the weekend, the University shed some light on what

this category is meant to entail, releasing details for some of the projects it could fund.

“A transformative opportunity first builds upon [the University’s] existing strength. Second, [it] allows us to advance our mission,” R. Bartley Moore, the Vice-President of the Office of Advancement, said. “The

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Donors pledged $21 million last weekend during the campaign’s public launch.

third … is that eminence in the area in question will enhance the university’s ability to contribute to the understanding and response to the most important issues that we confront as a global community.”

Before the quiet phase of the campaign began in 2006, Georgetown departments were asked to identify big ambitions that would lead to transformative opportunities. Leaders of the campaign chose a select few to support.

One such transformative opportunity program is the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, led by Tom Banchoff. The center was recently endowed with a $10 million gift from campaign chair William Doyle as part of the Doyle Engaging Difference Initiative, established in 2009.

“The center supports teaching and student-led research that engages issues of difference at the heart of the human community—religious, cultural, economic, ethnic, or other,” Banchoff wrote in an email.

According to Banchoff, the center hopes to utilize this gift by

infusing themes of diversity into many different classes already on campus, as well as creating four credit seminars that would include a research project.

Another opportunity focuses on environmental studies. According to Moore, it would build upon the science core that the University already possesses, but would go beyond what most other universities in the United States are doing.

“Our assessments suggest that no place has been really good at promoting the multidisciplinary or integrated study of the environment,” said Moore.

“We think that’s an opportunity that if we were to seize and realize, would accomplish something here that no place else is fully doing yet.”

Other areas that could receive funding include public policy, global health, personalized cancer treatment, and a transactional law clinic. An anonymous donor recently gave $5 million towards these transformative opportunities.

According to Moore, $778 million of the total $1.5 billion

had already been raised before the public launch kick-off last weekend. During the weekend, the campaign received an additional $21 million in verbal commitments, which will not become official until the donor signs a gift agreement.

The initiative was designed to ensure that students had the opportunity to be involved in the campaign. All students were welcome to the Afternoon of Ideas on Friday as well as the reception Friday evening. A small group of students also attended at a gala at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday.

Mike Meaney (SFS ’12), the president of the Georgetown University Student Association, gave a toast at the Friday reception and attended the gala.

“It represents a inflection point in the trajectory of Georgetown,” Meaney said. “The financial footing that [this campaign] will put us on will allow us to continue to do all the extraordinary work we currently do along with expanding upon that work.”

Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13), a member of the GUSA FinApp Committee who was involved in choosing the solar panel project, said that Georgetown Energy submitted “a very thorough proposal.

[There were] no financial or other concerns with the proposal.”

According to Peter Nulsen, the panels will have paid for themselves in 11 years.

“Solar energy is projected to generate enough to cover 30 percent of the house’s electric bills,” he said. “The energy savings are then directed right back to the student body, through a fund operated by students, for students.

At our current estimates, students will earn a minimum of $1,000 in the first month and each month thereafter for 20 years.”

By year 2020, the group projects that the solar panels will have earned the University $234,000, all of which will be put into the GUSA fund to be used on more projects to benefit students.

The project leaders see this as more than just an opportunity to make Georgetown greener. They also believe that it will be something that can be utilized in many different disciplines that students study. For example, science students can learn the mechanics behind the panels, or School of Foreign Studies students can

make comparisons to application of solar energy in China.

“I think how we use energy, and how we use our natural resources will be one of the largest challenges our generation will face,” Peter Nulsen said.

“Solar panels on University townhouses is one tangible step into our energy future.”

GU townhouse solar panel project to move forward

by Morgan Manger The student group Georgetown Energy is currently working on an effort to place solar panels on a selection of University townhouses, a project which would be the largest student-funded solar project in the world if it is completed the way it was envisioned, the group’s cofounder and CEO David Nulsen (SFS ‘12) said.

The leaders of Georgetown Energy are meeting with members of the Georgetown administration today to discuss final details of the project, including whether to put panels on all townhouses at once or to start with a pilot program. They believe that the administration will approve the program, although they will not know for sure until after the meeting.

The group is “nearing the completion of the working group and contract negotiations with a chosen solar vendor before a referendum in early December.” Nulsen wrote in a follow-up email. “The referendum will give students the

opportunity to formally release the money to the solar project.”

In order for the student referendum to pass, at least 2,000 students must vote in favor of the project.

“When [co-founder] Anthony [Conyers] and I walked by the ICC, we asked, ‘What’s the deal with those panels?’

We found out the 25-year-old panels operated at less than 33 percent productivity,” Peter Nulsen (SFS ‘12) said. “We saw the energy IQ of our classmates as a huge area for growth. So we decided let’s do some research and find a way we can help Georgetown morph into a green university.”

When the group learned of the $3.4 million of Student Activities Fee Endowment available for student projects they decided to pursue a portion of the money in order to fund their initiative. They proposed building solar panels on 43 townhouse roofs at a cost of $163,399. Last March, the group learned that they had been selected as one of two finalists to receive funding.

Julian De La Paz

Georgetown Energy leads the biggest student-funded solar project in the world.

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the georgetown voice 5

Grieg against Evans for ANC chair, supported by GU students

by Rachel Calvert Fiona Grieg, a Democratic candidate for the Ward 2 City Council seat challenging incumbent Jack Evans, recently established the non-partisan Students for Fiona working group.

Composed of Georgetown students, the group aims to increase student voter registration this semester, in anticipation of next April’s election.

“In the spring, [the Students for Fiona group] will be focused on creating action plans for everyone involved, making sure people know where to vote, when to vote, how to vote, and then the reasons why to vote,” the group’s co-captain Craig Cassey (COL ‘15) said.

By the numbers, mobilizing student voters can potentially have a very tangible impact at the polls, cocaptain Ash Das (COL ‘15) said. In 2005, Evans defeated his opponent, Carrie Sullivan, by 1500 votes.

Although students may register in the District for the April City Council elections and transfer their registration for the 2012 federal elections, Cassey recommends that students register permanently in the District.

“Although we can appreciate someone’s interest in their own local elections and the problems at hand there, we feel that this is more important to the Georgetown community,” he said.

With the 2012 presidential and congressional elections on the horizon, Cassey and Das acknowledge the potential difficulties of convincing students to register in the District.

“I think knowing what is at stake in this current election in Ward 2 for Fiona and for students here [will increase motivation],” Cassey said.

To Cassey, one of the more salient of these issues is the neighborhood debate surrounding the 2010 campus plan.

Every 10 years, all District universities must file a campus plan with D.C.’s Zoning Commission detailing their plans for growth and development. The University’s 2010 campus plan has heightened debate between the University and its neighbors over issues like off-campus housing.

In May, D.C.’s Office of Planning released a report recommending the University house 90 percent of its students on campus by 2015, and all of them by 2016. The report also suggested that the University should accept a legal limit on enrollment.

Evans, who has served on the Council since 1991, is a consistent critic of the University’s campus plan. Like the Burleith Citizens Association and the Citizens Association of Georgetown, Evans feels the University should move to house 100 percent of students on campus.

“Even if students who live offcampus in our neighborhood are well behaved, it is too much of a strain on residents,” Evans wrote in his Jan. 26 column in The Georgetowner. Unlike her opponent, Grieg said it would be infeasible for the University to house all of its students.

“I do believe students should be able to live off campus. It’s unsustain-

A campaign for all students Images of the doors of Georgetown’s iconic buildings have become omnipresent on campus in the past few weeks due to the kickoff of the University’s capital campaign, “For Generations to Come: The Campaign for Georgetown.” They have supplanted the blue “Spirit of Georgetown” banners typically bound to the light poles and mounted on the face of the Intercultural Center building. It’s hard to walk anywhere on campus without seeing something about it.

The 10-year campaign has an ambitious, but achievable, goal of raising $1.5 billion by 2016. Since it began with its quiet phase in July 2006, the initiative hit its halfway point prior to the festivities of the formal kickoff this past weekend.

With a capital campaign comes the inevitable task of asking everyone—including current students and parents—to contribute to the campaign in addition to paying for tuition. Undoubtedly students and parents will dread this. No one wants to be asked for more money on top of the already high cost of tuition to attend Georgetown.

But is this campaign worth it?

Absolutely.

The University—like many other Catholic colleges and universities across the nation— only began major fundraising in the 1970s. This, among several other factors, has put Georgetown behind its peers in terms of our endowment, which hovers around $1 billion. The Campaign for Georgetown will help

able for a growing institution to be required to house all its students on campus,” she said. “Students should have a choice.”

Cassey said the neighborhood’s demands would diminish the quality of on-campus student life.

“That means the funds currently devoted to future athletic centers and religious centers to be built will have to be reallocated,” he said.

Grieg said the University plays a valuable role in the District, as a job creator and a cultural center. “I don’t think we should be penalizing it for its desire or ability to grow,” she said.

According to Grieg, the University should make more substantial efforts to diminish the tension caused by off-campus parties.

“The University does need to play a much more active role in creating more spaces for students to socialize on campus,” she said. “A restaurant-slash-bar, a community hangout on campus, would go a long way towards that.”

She also recommended that the University more closely monitor offcampus parties. “You should have to register these parties, and the same rules should apply to on-campus and off-campus parties,” she said.

She said this mechanism would allow the University to follow up more effectively on noise complaints, as well as tracking partyto-complaint ratios from month to month. “Much more proactive oversight of activity off-campus would help the University track its own to increase the University’s paltry endowment, an essential factor for continuing to have a quality institution. Having an endowment is a key way for a university to ensure its continued financial stability.

The endowment is not the only aspect that the campaign

Saxa Politica

by Geoffrey Bible

A bi-weekly column on campus news and politics will help. The campaign also seeks to expand the amount of scholarships that the University can offer. Offering more needbased scholarships allows for the University to continue attracting the best and brightest students from around the country, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Not only will this create more diversity in our communi-

progress and defend itself against complaints it gets from neighbors off campus,” she said.

In addition to connecting with students, Grieg has been in touch with neighborhood associations about issues like the campus plan, saying she is aware of student sentiment on neighborhood issues and that her platform generally aligns with student interests.

“My platform is about good, clean government, creating a sustainable city, and it’s about education,” Grieg said. “Residents of all kind want to be proud of their local government, and right now the City Council is in its darkest hour in terms of ethical issues.”

According to Grieg, students can benefit from the smart growth

policies she would advocate from her position on the City Council.

She supports extending street car tracks across the city and establishing dedicated bus lanes on hightraffic corridors and improving the city’s bike lanes.

“I want to see dedicated bike lanes so that not only daredevils can bike across town, so even my daughter can eventually bike across town,” she said.

Grieg said her central goal in negotiating future campus plans would be a compromise between neighbors and the University.

“That’s the kind of leader I am,” she said. “Someone who’s a great listener and who seeks common ground.”

guPRogReSSiVe.Com

Fiona Grieg believes Georgetown students should be able to live off campus. ty, but it will also allow our University community to expand to places where it currently has little presence.

The campaign also plans to allocate $500 million toward faculty and research. This is a crucial element of the plan, and any student should be able to realize its importance. The esteemed faculty at Georgetown certainly played a role in the decision to come here for many students.

Continuing Georgetown’s tradition of having excellent professors will allow for the University to thrive in to the future.

While it may be easy for us, as students, to pass this off as something not for us to be concerned with, that’s a silly attitude to have.

Even if we do not realize it, every single student on this campus is affected in one way or another by the money raised by the Campaign for Georgetown, whether

it is from the $1 million given by Board of Directors Chairman Paul Tagliabue (COL ’62) for an LGBTQ student life initiative, the $5 million given to further support the Berkley Center, or the countless donations to further Georgetown athletics. No student is left unaffected by this campaign.

It may get annoying receiving countless Phonathon calls and letters from the Office of Advancement about the Campaign for Georgetown, but the long-term effects of this endeavor make the campaign entirely worth it. Supporting this campaign will truly allow us to preserve and improve our alma mater for generations to come.

Let Geoffrey know what you think about the University’s growing endowment at gbible@georgetownvoice.com

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november 3, 2011

Hoyas slam Syracuse, through to Big East semis

by Abby Sherburne Beating the same team twice in a season isn’t easy, especially when that team is your archrival.

But the Georgetown women’s soccer team managed just that, defeating Syracuse 3-1 on Sunday to secure a spot in the Big East Tournament semifinals.

While the Hoyas (15-5, 8-3 Big East) are excited to be heading to their first semifinal since 2007, they still have a lot to work on before facing West Virginia on Friday. However, head coach Dave Nolan’s focus is directed more towards correcting his squad’s mistakes against the Orange rather than scheming for a talented West Virginia team.

“I just don’t think we played well [in the Syracuse game],” Nolan said. “To be honest, probably the worst thing that could have happened to us was scoring so early.”

A mere 52 seconds into the game, freshman Daphne Corboz scored off the rebound of a saved shot. Georgetown scored again in the 19th minute with a clever crossover in front of goal from senior forward Camille Trujillo.

Still, Nolan was especially unimpressed with the Hoyas’ overall effort in the first half.

“I felt the first half was our worst performance of the year,” he said. “I know they can do better.”

In the second half, senior Ingrid Wells was able to guarantee the win, calmly putting in a rebound from her own saved penalty to extend the lead. While the Orange responded with a goal in the 76th minute, the 3-1 lead proved insurmountable.

Despite the Syracuse goal, Nolan was happier with his team’s

second half of play, but Wells understands Nolan’s frustration with the Hoyas play early.

“Scoring early ... is obviously a good thing, but I think our mentality shifted, maybe not for the best,” she said. “[We were] a little too confident.”

Both Nolan and Wells, although disappointed with the team’s overall play, were satiated with the win.

“It wasn’t a pretty game at all, and I don’t think we played our best but we still got the win,” Wells said. “That’s what good teams do.”

The physicality of the Big East matchup combined with the muddy conditions on North Kehoe Field resulted in a sloppy game. Four yellow cards were issued to the Orange, and a red card was issued to Syracuse midfielder Tina Romagnuolo after she cursed at an official in the 85th minute.

An incensed Romagnuolo shoved Georgetown defender Alexandra Bushman as she left the field, giving the Hoyas something extra to think about until they next play their rival.

“I don’t even know what just happened,” Wells said minutes after the incident. “I’m still taken aback a little. I’ve never played in a game like that. I just want to let it go.”

However, with all that was at stake in the game, she can understand that the Orange had nothing left to lose. Nolan agreed, citing frustration as the major reason for the unsportsmanlike penalty.

“A better team would have beaten us today,” he said. “Find ways to perform and the results will take care of themselves.”

The Hoyas will look to do just that against West Virginia on Friday. Although defeating Syra-

TIM MARKATOS

Camille Trujillo added to her team-leading goal tally, helping the Hoyas past ‘Cuse.

cuse likely assured Georgetown’s invitation to the NCAA Tournament, the team should have plenty of motivation to avenge their earlier 3-1 loss to the No. 12 Mountaineers.

Still Nolan, usually a stickler for his “one game at a time” mantra, can’t help but look ahead.

“The next step now is to make the Big East Championship,” he said. “We’ve never done that, and this is what we’ve been doing as the year goes on, just setting new goals. So maybe we’ll go try and win the game Friday night and see what happens Sunday.”

Winning the conference could portend big things: last year’s champion, Notre Dame, went on to win the national championship. But first comes the Hoyas’ semifinal showdown in Morgantown, where they’ll look to acquire a team-record 16th win.

the Sports Sermon “Then he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I’m going to be the Will Smith of the NBA.’” – Shaq discussing Kobe’s prophecies in his new book fans still only care about the implications of realignment insofar as they impact the Hoyas’ basketball schedule and prestige. Thus, while previous reports of inviting TCU, Boise State, and the service academies to join as full members offered some semblance of stability, there was a hesitance to get excited about adding schools that would be almost guaranteed basketball duds every year.

The new conference plan, however, wants to add these schools (minus TCU, which has since joined the Big 12), as football playing members only. Meanwhile, Houston, SMU, and UCF will be leaving Conference USA to join the Big East as full members, playing both basketball and football.

Many fans will roll their eyes, seeing this approach as more of the same. We don’t need another DePaul or USF; we need to replace

Big East to the immense Dallas market and another recruiting hotIt has been a roller coaster few bed. Entry into a major conference months for the Big East conferlike the Big East could change their ence, to say the least. New reports fortunes with former North Carolithis week, however, indicate that na coach Matt Doherty at the helm. the Big East may finally be addHouston, meanwhile, is pering teams rather than subtracting haps the most interesting addithem, sending invitations to Houstion. Most will have little recolton, Southern Methodist, and Cenlection of Houston as a relevant tral Florida, as well as football-only basketball program, but histoinvitations to Navy, Air Force, and rians and connoisseurs of the Boise State. While these programs game will be eager to point out may not be the sexy solution Big consecutive NCAA Tournament East fans were hoping for, they still Finals appearances in 1983 and have good reason to cheer up.

1984 (including a loss to GeorgeThe announcement that Pitt town in the championship game) and Syracuse would leave the Big by the famous “Phi Slamma JamEast for the ACC sent shockwaves ma” squads. Recent years have throughout the conference’s basbeen tough for the program, but, ketball community. West Virginia with a legacy of five Final Four reaffirmed this paranoia with its appearances and several NBA declaration of intent to join the Hall of Fame alumni such as ElBig 12. Many naysayers and pesvin Hayes, Clyde Drexler, and simists felt that losing three perenHakeem Olajuwon, the Cougars nial powers would are potentially a Pete Rose Central surely cripple the sleeping giant for conference, changing the Big East.

Da bettin’ line the face of the Big East While none of Dookies Margin forever, if not comthese programs are Hoyas pletely undoing it. set to enter the Big (underdogs) (duh!) (favorites) But while the basEast framework as B=ama ketball implications Tiger blood title favorites in the LSU of these departures seasons, Tebow Hail mary coming Media dominated the minds they are each loaded Cardinals Mucho dinero with potential in Pujols of Georgetown fans, the real damage was done to Big three schools that account for four their own way. More importantly, East football. The conference still of the last seven Big East Tourna- however, the Big East will almost maintains an ample number of ment champions. certainly persist through the requality basketball programs, but Though it is unlikely that the alignment apocalypse. The Big the football-playing members now proposed basketball replacements East can afford to lose some comtotal just five, surely not enough will live up to their predecessors petition in basketball anyway. The to warrant an automatic BCS bid, anytime soon, they are far from real danger to the Hoyas was the which is perhaps the most signifi- being as dismal as people suggest. uncertain existence of the confercant factor keeping the conference UCF, for example, started 14-0 last ence as an entity at all. If this plan relevant in college football. year, beating schools like Florida goes ahead successfully, the Hoyas Adding these football-playing and Miami, before stunningly los- will still have Big East basketball, members revitalizes the confer- ing eight straight games in a rather and that’s what really matters. ence, providing replacements for Georgetown-esque collapse. Their While the conference may the departed teams in addition to location is also a bonus, setting up never be what we grew up with assuring other potential detectors a potential rivalry with USF and or make any geographical sense like Cincinnati and Louisville that growing the conference’s profile in whatsoever, no one can deny that the Big East is here to stay. a recruit-rich state. competitively, the conference can However, even with the necesFew will care about SMU’s still salvage its rich basketball herisity for stability in the conference’s 1956 Final Four banner, but the tage. Somehow, the future of the football lineup, most Georgetown school’s presence does open the Big East looking up again.

by Daniel Kellner

sports

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Men’s soccer preps for tourney

by Melissa Sullivan After a successful regular season, the Georgetown men’s soccer team has qualified for the Big East Tournament and will begin with a tough test at St. John’s tonight.

The Hoyas were given the sixth seed in the tournament after a posting a 10-4-4 record and going 5-3-1 in the Big East.

Georgetown faced stiff competition in the Big East regular season, matching up against nationally renowned programs such as No. 4 Connecticut and No. 18 Notre Dame. While they struggled to win consistently at home, they were defeated just once in nine away appearances. Their resilience on the road might come in handy, as the team will be away from North Kehoe Field from here on.

“It’s been a really good group to work with,” head coach Brian Weise said. “I think they are very close and have an intangible quality to them. We’ve had a lot of interesting games.”

The Hoyas closed out their regular season with an unexpected defeat to Providence. While they battled hard against their conference rival, they could not overcome the Friars through difficult conditions of rain, snow, and sleet.

Junior captain Tommy Muller, however, has not lost faith in his team’s potential in the postseason, despite their disappointing defeat.

“We faced a lot of hardships as far as conditions,” he said. “But we feel confident in our ability to win games and do well in the postseason.”

Last season, Providence ended the Hoyas’ Big East run in the quarterfinals after a frustrating encounter. This year, the team hopes for better progress leading into the NCAA Tournament.

“We are going to attack it like we usually do,” Muller said. “We are going to go in confident that we have the ability to win.”

Wiese is also optimistic and believes the Big East is a much

TIM MARKATOS

Ian Christianson is optimistic about the Hoyas chances to make a postseason run.

The Passion of the Tebow This past Sunday witnessed one of the more lopsided encounters of the NFL season so far, as the Detroit Lions battered quarterback Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos up and down the field all afternoon. Not only did the Lions win 45-10, they made Tebow look simply atrocious.

“We knew all week that if we brought any kind of defensive pressure, he couldn’t do anything,” one Lions defender told Yahoo! Sports. “In the second half it got boring out there. We were like, ‘Come on – that’s your quarterback? Seriously?’”

Such a sentiment was echoed across ESPN, as analyst after analyst said Tebow would never be successful. Merrill Hoge went as far

as to say Tebow was the worst quarterback he’d ever seen.

While it may seem that the entire sporting world has lost faith in the polarizing quarterback, it is still far too early to deem the Tebow experiment a complete failure.

Though his style—light on throwing mechanics, heavy on God-given grit and determination—is unconventional, he has not been given a truly fair chance to succeed.

Tebow’s unfortunate descent from college football immortality to pro football futility began on draft night, when the Broncos traded-up to select him with the 25th overall pick, generating unreasonable expectations.

Tebow became the immediate hope of a franchise and city. But

tighter conference than records or seeding would suggest.

“We have as good of a chance of winning the league as anyone else,” he said. “The distance between the top seed and the sixth seed is almost nothing … I think this team is a group that has an innate self-confidence and that we have a good chance of winning [the tournament].”

While the Hoyas are excited to start their league tournament, they understand what this game means to the future of the team.

St. John’s is a strong opponent, earning a No. 3 seed. Georgetown last played the Red Storm in 2009, losing 2-0 away in New York.

This time around the game will be crucial for the Hoyas’ extended postseason hopes as they seek an invitation to the NCAA Tournament.

“I think our next game is a must win looking at getting into the NCAA Tournament,” said Muller. “We feel it is a game we are intended and expected to win.”

Beyond reaching the Big East semifinals at Red Bull Arena, the Hoyas are set on progress in the NCAAs, where they have unfinished business from last season.

Junior captain Ian Christianson is looking to quench the bitter taste lingering from last season’s unfortunate end, where they found themselves losing on penalties kicks in the second round to perennial powerhouse UNC after a well-fought contest.

“We went out on a heartbreaker last year,” he said. “Looking at the bigger picture with the NCAAs, we’d love to make a bigger run … It’d be great to build on last year.”

With a win tonight, the Hoyas will help secure that chance. he was never going to be the next John Elway, even if every break fell his way.

Still, Tebow did have a fair measure of success during his rookie year, winning rookie-ofthe-week honors twice. Former Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels used Tebow wisely, inserting him at the goal line and

Double Teamed

by Adam Rosenfeld

a rotating column on sports in end of game situations that allowed the quarterback to get his feet wet.

Unfortunately for Tebow, the Broncos set a franchise record for losses and McDaniels, Tebow’s main supporter, was fired before the season ended. The offseason

the georgetown voice 7

Football sets up title clash

by Kevin Joseph In the midst of last weekend’s snow, the Georgetown football team (7-2, 3-1 Patriot League) defeated Holy Cross for the second straight season with a 19-6 victory. The Hoyas won playing smash-mouth football, rushing for 220 yards and recovering five fumbles on the afternoon.

Defensive end Andrew Schaetzke led the charge with two sacks and three tackles for a loss and was named Patriot League Defensive Player of the Week. Head coach Kevin Kelly continued his praise of the senior, whom he often calls the best defensive player in the Patriot League.

“He’s a guy that people have to scheme for,” Kelly said. “We just try to get him in the best possible position to make plays and that’s what he does.”

But for Schaetzke, the Patriot League leader in sacks (9.5) and tackles for loss (17.5), taking one step closer to a Patriot League crown was the real highlight of the afternoon.

“The win is the most important thing,” he said. “We played for a chance to play for a Patriot League title and, despite the conditions, we played a hard-nosed football game and got it done. It just felt great to be a part of this win.”

With two straight Patriot League victories, the team has set themselves up for a chance to guarantee at least a share of the Patriot League title with a win against Lehigh on Nov. 12.

brought new management and an uncertain future.

The new regime, unintentionally or perhaps intentionally, has not put Tebow in a position to succeed.

New coach John Fox and team president Elway made the correct decision in placing Tebow third on the depth chart out of training camp despite strong public support for Tebow from fans. However, after the team’s horrific 1-4 start, Fox gave the fans what they wanted by naming Tebow the starter during the Broncos’ bye week.

During the Lions game, the Denver coaching staff called plays as if Tebow was Peyton Manning.

They consistently called for slowdeveloping passing plays—a recipe for disaster against a stout defensive line like the Lions’. It was as if the coaching staff was trying to show the fans why they didn’t start him.

Before that happens, though, the Hoyas could be facing a trap game against the Fordham Rams on Senior Day this Saturday at MultiSport Field. This year ’s graduating class oversaw the revival of the football program from a winless 2009 season to a surprising 7-2 record this year. Kelly, has a number of goals with this weekend’s game.

“It’s our fourth home game and we want to be undefeated at home this year,” Kelly said.

“We want to have the seniors go out a winner at home and for me, the more you win the more you have the momentum in your favor.”

Fordham comes into the game with a 1-7 record, though none of their Patriot League contests count for the league title, because the rams offer athletic scholarships.

The Rams’ poor record may be misleading, however, as they scheduled several FBS programs this season. Fordham will certainly be looking to salvage some pride after relinquishing 514 rushing yards against Army in their last game.

“Fordham will not be an easy task,” Kelly said. “They are a much better team than their record would indicate.

They have had some injuries, but they have as much talent as anyone in this league, so we know we will have our hands full.”

Georgetown looks to double their win total from last season with number eight on Saturday. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. at Multi-Sport Field.

Sure, Tebow was inaccurate and indecisive, but such is to be expected with a non-traditional quarterback in only his fifth career start on a team with a serious lack of talent. Tebow needs time to develop and a system that caters to his unique skill set, taking advantage of his mobility and running power while masking his inability to unleash the ball downfield.

The Tebow experiment might be close to over in Denver before it was given a legitimate chance. It seems everyone is focused on what he is not, instead of what he is. He’s certainly no Brady or Manning, but he could be a legitimate threat in some capacity in the NFL. He just needs a fair chance.

Practice Tebowing with Adam at arosenfeld@georgetownvoice.com

feature

8 the georgetown voice

november 3, 2011

feature

georgetownvoice.com

A Band of Brothers: Music at Georgetown

by John Sapunor In Georgetown, even daytime house concerts attract police attention. Though a D.C. noise ordinance gives officers the right to arrest perpetrators creating noise that is “likely to annoy” anyone after 10 p.m., when student band Text Message played a daytime house show, they still had multiple run-ins with the Metropolitan Police Department. Although the police were unable to take lawful action before 10 p.m., neighbors repeatedly called the cops anyway. The band tried to take it in stride.

“The police disturbances split the show into three 20-minute sets,” Mike Jaroski (COL ’14) said.

Georgetown isn’t a school known for its music scene. Aside from venues outside the Georgetown neighborhood, there are only a handful of opportunities for bands to play on campus every year. WGTB hosts an open mic night once a semester, and the Guild of Bands has a performance every semester, but the lack of regular on-campus performance areas in combination with the dearth of house shows, forces bands to look beyond the front gates.

Despite these obstacles, Text Message is one student band that has been able to thrive with the help of University resources. A self-described “low-fi indie rock band,” Text Message formed last spring when Jaroski joined forces with brothers John (COL ‘14) and Joe Romano (COL ‘12). The group began to write material, and in the last two weeks of the semester, Text Message recorded a 10-song album in an on-campus studio.

Having a pair of brothers who both happen to be musicians turned out to be a very

Brotherly love: Mike Jaroski joined Joe and John Romano to form the band Text Message.

IRIS KIM

convenient aspect of forming the band. And as Joe and Jaroski had already been playing together before John started at Georgetown, the trio fit together naturally. “We all had an idea of what we were going to play,” John said.

With the help of the Guild of Bands, Text Message was able to overcome a major obstacle: access to practice space. The Guild of Bands is a one-credit class that gives musicians access to Studio D in New North, tucked away from hostile neighbors. To practice, the band simply puts their name on a schedule. Since a large batch of Guild members has recently graduated, Text Message has space to practice three times a week.

Professor Joe McCarthy, who has led the Guild of Bands for the past three years, said that the program was created to put students together in an environment that fostered both songwriting creativity and musical skill development. McCarthy meets with bands at least once a week, giving them advice on technique and performance. At the end of the semester, all the bands get together for a concert on Georgetown’s campus.

The Guild of Bands has also given Jaroski and John the tools to learn drums. With the help of McCarthy, who is also the drummer for the Grammy Awardwinning Afro Bop Alliance, Jaroski and John have reached a comfortable level in their drumming. “He’s given good advice, and it’s also been a blast to learn drums,” John said.

The Guild of Bands has been so helpful to the band that John said, “I would find it very unlikely that there would be a band around that isn’t in the guild.”

But Geordie Kieffer (COL ’12) has taken a decidedly different route from Text Message.

Coming off the success of New Vo Riche, an EMI-signed band that he formed with his brother and their friend, Kieffer is starting a new project with a few other seniors he started playing with in his freshman year. Kieffer ’s project decided to work outside the Guild of Bands, citing the sense of “feeling locked in there” as the main concern with the class. Unlike Text Message, this unnamed project has been able to practice two to three times a week in a basement.

Though not part of the Guild of the Bands, Kieffer has still tried to pursue music on his own.

“Here at Georgetown, there’s not much of a music program, but there are a lot of kids that play music that are kind of hidden and tucked away,” Kieffer said. “You have to find yourself around that scene.”

When it came time to record the 10-track album, Text Message used Georgetown resources again. The band needed a friend taking an advanced recording class to give them access to the New North recording studio—not to be confused with the Guild of Bands practice room—but after seven or eight sessions in the last two weeks of spring semester,

RICHARD DE LA PAZ

The Guild of Bands offers student musicians a place to practice.

Text Message had a finished product.

After uploading the tracks onto their bandcamp.com page this September, Text Message was ready to move on to shows—an arduous step that would present the band’s biggest challenges to date. Text Message began sending out emails to 10 venues around D.C., of which only two have proved fruitful. This September, they performed a 40-minute set at the Velvet Lounge with four other bands.

However, getting booked at a small venue like the Vel-

bers which bands they have come to see at the door, and then pays the bands accordingly, has been implemented at clubs such as DC9.

“They’re more concerned about making money off the bar, so it doesn’t matter if you’re a new band that’s either good or not good. It just matters how many people you can bring,” Jaroski said. “We took a cab to bring equipment, and we barely broke even with the cab drive.”

Sasha Lord, the booking agent at Comet Ping Pong on Connecticut Ave., where Text Message is performing on No-

lem for Text Message. If promoters are measuring success by crowd size, they need to bring an audience over from Georgetown. But with the closing of the bar Saloun, the last small venue for bands on M Street, there are no places to perform in the proximity of Georgetown, so packing a concert with University students becomes a daunting task.

The only viable solution has been to befriend other bands in the hope of opening for them in the future. “One of the only things you can do is open for a band that has had experience playing at these places,” John said.

The band just linked up with Mercies, a band composed of Georgetown alumni, at the Velvet Lounge show. But befriending bands outside of the Georgetown circle may take a little more time.

“There’s a bunch of places to play [in D.C.], but not necessarily local bands and a local scene doing their own stuff,” John said. He has found the ratio of touring bands to local bands in D.C. as a source of the difficulty in booking shows.

After working at the Black Cat—a medium sized gig— for ten years, Lord has found a strong local presence with her booking experience. She admitted that there has been a shortage of college bands looking to perform, either from Georgetown or other local universities.

“College bands should have more opportunities here, but perhaps they’re new in booking, or new in town, so they still have to figure what the venues are and who the contacts are,” Lord said. “It takes a while to move to a town and meet the right people.”

Lord has also seen a rising number of independent promoters who book gigs at restaurants or other less conventional locations. In established

the georgetown voice 9 McCarthy, who has lived in D.C. for 18 years, has found both ups and downs with D.C.’s music venues. “With the amount of different clubs around town, there are many different opportunities and lots of festivals,” McCarthy said.

Yet, at least in the Georgetown music scene, he has seen better days in terms of venues available for college bands.

“Obviously, maybe 10 or 12 years ago, there was more work in terms of money,” McCarthy said. “But I don’t think that has affected the artistic end of things. I think people who are serious about their craft are going to move forward whether or not there’s money to be made.”

However, the lack of outlets for college bands in D.C. has left the band with dreams beyond D.C. altogether. As Joe and Jaroski approach graduation, the band has made a tentative outline for its future.

They hope to record new songs on Long Island with Mike Fiore, a good friend of Joe’s who attends the University of Southern California. They said Fiore has had a drastically different experience as a musician in L.A., a city full of clubs and bars that cater to smaller bands.

Over the summer, Text Message plans to tour New

York City, Chicago, and other Northeastern cities where they can count on friends to help them book shows. “It’ll be a graduation road trip,” Jaroski said. When summer ends, Joe and Jaroski will have to move back up to D.C. if they want to keep the band as a single unit, but John is already eyeing Text Message’s future after his graduation in 2014. He hopes to go to Los Angeles with Fiore’s band.

The band members are eager to look beyond Georgetown, which doesn’t seem to have as vibrant of a music scene as other schools.

“One of my buddies at Emerson has a couple groups he’s playing with, and it seems to me, it’s easier to get shows together, and there’s a lot more bands. … Georgetown could be the antithesis of all that,” John said. “It’s a very small group of people here that’s interested in music itself.”

At the same time, they’re grateful to the Guild of Bands for providing them the resources to practice and record an album.

“There’s a way to practice, there a place to play songs with your band, write songs, and get better,” Jaroski said. “All the opportunities are there, but they’re not utilized that well.”

“Here at Georgetown, there’s not much of a music program, but there are a lot of kids that play music that are kind of hidden and tucked away. You have to find yourself around that scene.” vet Lounge is not the same as getting paid. Since all proceeds came from the door, they only earned around ten dollars each.

With profits based on proceeds at the door, venues expect bands to bring the crowds. Door-polling, a system that asks audience mem-

vember 12, is against this recent trend.

“Touring bands get paid higher percentages because they have higher expenses, but we divide payment equally with local bands,” Lord said.

The door-polling payment system has presented a prob-

night life scenes like U Street and in areas like H Street where bars and eateries are sprouting up, local start-up bands may have a better shot at booking consistently than if they were to aim for medium-sized bars that favor touring bands that draw more crowds.

RICHARD DE LA PAZ

Professor Joe McCarthy gave John Romano the tools to learn to play drums.

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

november 3, 2011

Make sure to track down the Hunter

by Nico Dodd

A Child Shall Lead Them: Making The Night of The Hunter is a play that makes you feel like you’ve just watched a movie.

The play is based on the production of the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton, a commercial failure that is now considered a piece of classic cinema.

In the film, a preacher and a condemned thief share a prison cell. After the priest is released from prison, he returns to his cellmate’s family to find some hidden money, which the thief’s children were sworn to hide.

Off-screen (and on stage) Laughton is having his own problems with a druggy actor and a behind schedule and overbudget production. His producer is doubting the marketability of the film as it moves in a progressive direction The play is a coproduction organized by Georgetown’s De-

partment of Performing Arts and the University of MarylandCollege Park School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. Students, staff, and faculty are from both universities, commuting 10 miles to rehearsal during rush hour. The play ambitiously juggles its two separate plotlines along with envelopepushing film projections.

The whole play takes place on a movie set, and during scenes where the movie is filmed, the production is projected in real time on the back of the stage. The acknowledgement of the setting makes the idea of “sets“ in the film segments of the story more believable.

The projections, a key aspect of the play, were designed

by Jared Mezzochi. who also worked on The Glass Menagerie, a production for Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival last March. Director and writer Derek Goldman trasnforms Mezzochi’s projections from an interesting novelty into a central part of the production.

The play opens with Laughton, played by Dan Hrebenak

tim markatos

“Why am I so unhappy? I had a happy childhood, I have a family, yet getting out of bed everyday is a struggle.”

(SFS ’12), entering the stage and addressing the audience. Soon, period Laughton footage is projected over all the set. As the monologue continues, live footage of the actor’s face is superimposed over Laughton’s, until it’s only Hrebenak’s.

Through the rest of the play, scenes from the film, along with actors performing the scenes live, are projected onto anything that can be turned into a screen, such as held up blankets and the sliding warehouse walls.

The projections lit up the Gonda Theater like a dynamic movie theater.

A Child Shall Lead Them is an innovative production that blurs the line between the making of a film and performance, and it features stellar showings

by Hrebenak, Justin McCarthy (COL ’12), and UMD’s Robert Mitchum. The play runs through November 6 at the Gonda Theater, and will run at College Park from November 12-19.

Got me feeling Like Crazy in love

by Julia Lloyd-George

In Romeo and Juliet, the titular lovers are threatened by a deep animosity between rival families. In Like Crazy, lovers Jacob and Anna’s relationship is threatened by immigration officers, as rising stars Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play a young couple struggling with the strife of a long-distance relationship.

Drawing on themes of angstridden separation and the bureaucratic red-tape of immigration policy, Anna and Jacob are split up when Anna, unable to renew her visa, is forced back to London.

By documenting the growing tension between the two with a shaky hand-held camera, Like Crazy explores a conflict that becomes progressively less believable as the plot develops, and the result is a poor display of the passion and pain of love.

Beginning with Jacob and Anna as college students in Los Angeles, the film opens with a typical classroom scene. Meaningful looks are exchanged. The next thing we know, the two are sharing coffee and getting along famously, bonding over their shared appreciation for Paul Simon’s Graceland.

In a montage of sweetly realized scenes devoid of dialogue, their relationship inevitably deepens.

Here, the film shows its strength with cinematographic flourishes like focusing on meaningful details in a scene—when the couple sit on Santa Monica Beach, for example, the camera closes in on their sandy feet.

It is artistic touches like these that wordlessly yet successfully convey the intimate, emotional atmosphere in any given scene.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, many scenes are shot in a voyeuristic style—the viewer sees the couple around a door frame or lamppost—that effectively make up the second half of what director Drake Doremus calls “the balance between intimacy and voyeurism.”

The first hint of trouble in this blissful time comes when Jacob asks, “What are we going to do after we graduate?”

Choosing to avoid reality rather than face it, Anna naively advises not to ponder this question. When the dreaded time actually arrives, Anna chooses to stay in L.A. with Jacob and “spend the whole summer in bed” (a rapid-fire montage of the couple sleeping proves, she

really wasn’t kidding). She finally has to leave for the U.K., but tragedy strikes when she tries to return to the States. That monster of bureaucracy, the customs officer, refuses to let her in.

What follows is the development of an increasing separation—both physically and emotionally—as Jacob and Anna are divided by half a world of pesky geography. Jacob starts a furniture company (he has a particular fondness for chairs) and begins a half-hearted yet convenient relationship with a woman played

by Jennifer Lawrence. Meanwhile, Anna begins to blog for a London-based magazine. The couple’s relationship becomes defined by phone calls that are increasingly few and reserved.

Events take a briefly positive turn when Jacob visits Anna in London, but the reunion quickly turns sour when it becomes evident that the distance between them was more than physical. Jacob’s visit ends, and the couple’s lives continue without each other.

The game changes when Anna reaches her breaking point and convinces Jacob to get married in order to resolve visa issues. Married life is no fairytale ending,

however. Another six months of forced separation leaves the couple resorting to infidelity. When they are finally reunited, there is palpable tension as they adapt to their new lives together.

After much brouhaha, the ban on Anna’s visa is finally lifted and she goes back to L.A. with Jacob, but their relationship has clearly lost the supposed passion that it began with. In a frustrating lack of closure, the ending does little more than imply continued tension. What is clear is that the naïve craziness of love has faded in a film that fails to portray the ardor it advertises.

The dialogue between Jacob and Anna is a particularly weak point, as it allows for excessive improvisation from young actors without the skills to pull it off.

Though their relationship is in no way defined by communication, their dialogue (when it does happen) is so bland that it fails to convey the supposed complexity of their love. Though Doremus does his best to explore the “grey areas” of modern love in these nuanced exchanges, the passion gets lost in the shuffle. In the end, the convoluted plot is just, for lack of a better word, a little too crazy to create the visceral moments it strives for.

imdb

“I don’t understand, why don’t you just lean over and pick up that soap?”

georgetownvoice.com

“God help you if you use voice-over in your work.” —adaptation

Thumbs up for Crumbs

by Alex Rice There’s no denying the fact that the “cupcake culture “ has hit the D.C. area in full throttle. We’ve all rolled our eyes at the seemingly endless line that extends outside of Georgetown Cupcake’s doors.

We’ve listened to our friends get into heated debates about whether the treats at Sprinkles or Baked and Wired are superior. What is it exactly that makes people do such crazy things in the name of a muffin-shaped cake doused in buttercream frosting? Beats me. But for all you loyal cupcake fans, I have good news: yet another cupcakery has just opened up. And it’s worth getting excited about.

With over 40 locations stretching from Los Angeles to New York, Crumbs Bake Shop has made a statement across the country. The most recent addition to the popular chain opened two weeks ago in Farragut Square, selling a variety of sinful desserts, from freshly baked scones to a variety of gooey brownies. However, what Crumbs is most known for is its wide selection of rich, oversized cupcakes. This bakery has a cupcake for everyone, offering flavors that range from the classic “Vanilla Sprinkle” to the more exotic “S’mores” or “Grasshopper” cupcakes.

As a fan of cupcakes, I couldn’t wait to try out the tasty treats at Crumbs. Upon walking into the bakery, I noticed the words painted above the doorway: “Welcome to Happiness.” A bold claim, I thought, but one I was willing to test out. In order to get a feel for Crumbs’ range of flavors, I ordered a classic “Vanilla/Vanilla” and a more unconventional “White Hot Chocolate.”

The vanilla cupcake was solid, but its buttery cake and smooth buttercream frosting were practically identical to the many vanilla cupcakes of my past. But it was the “White Hot Chocolate” that really sold me.

This white chocolate mousse-filled cake smothered in delectable cream cheese frosting was topped off with mini white chocolate chips and baby marshmallows.

One bite, and I resolved that the sign above the door was right—this bakeshop was indeed a place of happiness. Two bites, and I was in heaven.

Three bites, and I realized that I would have to slow down unless I wanted to finish off my day with a stomach ache. As scrumptious as these cupcakes are, they are so rich that it would take an iron stomach to down one in a single sitting. But this isn’t necessarily bad news—it just means more to take home for later!

Can’t make up your mind on which of the many delicious fla-

You are not the father

Think about something someone could tell you that would make you really, really excited. You’d whoop, scream, get out of your chair, and do a victory dance while a crowd of people cheered you on. But the information you were just told wasn’t that you’ve just won the lottery, or you’ve become an overnight international celebrity. It’s even better—in the case of this 14-month-old baby, you are not the father.

This situation surely sounds familiar, and no, I’m not accusing my beloved Voice readers of having been involved in paternity scandals of their own (although if you have, no judgment). I am, however accusing you of having—maybe because you were stuck at home sick, or you were in a waiting room at a doctor’s office—found yourself deeply, personally engrossed in

an episode of Maury. Which, as far as morality goes, really isn’t much better.

Maury, like its more violent, more obscene, and markedly less entertaining counterpart The Jerry Springer Show, represents the rare breed of television trash that has withstood the test of time. Sure, we always have our rotating series of bad reality shows and sitcoms, but even such mainstays as The Real World can’t boast the breadth of viewership and consistency that these shows have. Maury spans ages and demographics, and proves that if there’s one thing this country can bond over, it’s spending a few hours in the middle of the day watching shameless specimens of humanity air out their very personal problems.

And boy, are they personal.

Jerry and Maury have spawned

vors to choose? No problem.

Crumbs also sells “taste packs,” which feature a dozen bite-sized cupcakes in an assortment of flavors. And with the overwhelming richness of many of the flavors, a bite-sized cake is often all you’ll need to satisfy that postdinner sweet tooth craving.

If you have a major sweet tooth and enjoy generous portions of rich desserts, then Crumbs is the place for you.

The bakery offers larger cupcakes than those of its equivalently priced competitors, not to mention a much shorter line!

Sorry Georgetown Cupcake, but I’m going to have to side with Crumbs on this one.

the georgetown voice 11

CONCERT CALENDAR Saturday 11/5 Wild Fruit with Sleeping in Avry and Paperhaus Velvet Lounge, 9 p.m., $8 The Sounds with Natalia Kills, The Limousines, Kids At The Bar Black Cat, 8 p.m., $20 Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers with Deep River 9:30 Club, 7 p.m., $20 Sunday 11/6 The Drums with Patrick Cleandenim MetroStage, 8 p.m., $14 Monday 11/7 Cold War Kids 9:30 Club, 7 p.m., $25 Thursday 11/10 The Sea and Cake with Brokeback Black Cat, 8 p.m., $15 Friday 11/11 moe.

9:30 Club, 8 p.m., $25

aLEX riCE

Gotta hand it to these cupcakes.

such broadcast TV classics as the woman with a phobia of pickles and the 15-year-old who’s had sex over 300 times, in addition to daddy-guessing sagas like that poor white guy whose white wife gave birth to an obviously biracial child, and the one couple that—try not to gag—found out after having their first kid that they’re half-

idiot box

by Leigh Finnegan a bi-weekly column about television siblings. And for every episode, viewers turn out in unbelievable numbers to entertain their ultimate guilty pleasure, where there is no pretense of plot, no superfluous competition, nobody trying to heighten modeling or acting careers—just pure, up-front, no-frills trash.

Of equal importance to the trash is the man moderating it. An even-tempered, turtle-

Wednesday 11/16 Phantogram Black Cat, 8 p.m., $17

necked senior citizen, Maury Povich seems to be the least likely person to serve as liaison between a promiscuous woman and her child’s eleventh potential father. Jerry Springer, by contrast, is pretty carefully branded as a troublemaker, and his crowd’s teleprompted chants of “Jerry! Jerry!” cost the show part of its voyeuristic appeal (“Look, honey, a real and unsolicited fight broke out on TV!”).

Maury’s guests don’t get into as many explosive physical fights as Jerry’s, and as such he has earned, if you can believe it, a classier reputation. Get caught watching Jerry Springer and you’ll immediately be judged for contributing to the success of such an exploitative, entirely fake television show.

But if someone walks in on you watching Maury, he may not verbally ask you to bring him up to speed, but I can almost

Owl City 9:30 Club, 5:30 p.m., $20 Peter Murphy and She Wants Revenge with Hussle Club 9:30 Club, 10 p.m., $25 Thursday 11/17 Mike Doughty and His Band Fantastic with Moon Hooch 9:30 Club, 7 p.m., $25 Fu Manchu with Honky, The Shrine Black Cat, 8 p.m., $17 Friday 11/18 Trampled by Turtles with Jonny Corndawg 9:30 Club, 10 p.m., $18 The Shakedowns with The Alphabet Bombers, Nervous Impulse, The Do Likes Black Cat, 9 p.m., $10 Sunday 11/20 The Kooks 9:30 Club, 7 p.m., $26 Tuesday 11/22 The Radio Dept Black Cat, 8 p.m., $15

guarantee you that he’ll want to.

But although he seems a little incongruous to his surroundings, Maury’s attempts at foraying into other genres of television have failed miserably. He tried to host a game show in 2000 and co-hosted a news program with his wife in 2006, both of which were cancelled shortly after their debuts. Apparently, America doesn’t want to see Maury unless he’s talking to people looking to cure their crippling globophobia (fear of balloons—it exists, and he did a show about it). No, Americans need exactly what Maury has always given them—a zoo-like window into the lives of the most ridiculous, pitiable, offensive, miserable people our country has to offer.

Email Leigh if you think she is the mother of your child at lfinnegan@georgetownvoice.com

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

november 3, 2011

C r i t i c a l V o i ces genre confusion. Both songs are impossibly slow and manage to sound simultaneously flat and twangy. The lyrics don’t make up for the lackluster melodies. For example, “Davy” repeatedly references “screws and spades” and “weepin’ weeds” in a poor attempt to convey the raw emotion of the Wild West.

One song, however, manages to produce a new indie-country sound while avoiding manufactured twang. Album opener “E. Watson” tells of another western tragedy, but this time the sound and lyrics are grittier, making the song more interesting, if not more authentic.

The greatest success of the album moves in another direction entirely, harkening back to the band’s old work. “I 4 U & U 4 Me,” with its cheery lyrics, upbeat rhythm, and hopeful melody, gives listeners a muchneeded respite from dreary western themes. “Sonnet” is another love song that closes the EP on a slower, happier note.

The Decemberists are evidently moving in new direction, crossing continents and genres to reach the American West. Long Live the King offers a disconcerting mix

of the band’s usual folksy indie style and a new, at times awkward, country sound. In the end, Decemberists fans listening to the EP are likely to have some respect for a band experimenting with a different genre. This respect, however, is likely to be drowned out by an overwhelming nostalgia for the band’s old cheerful and folksy work, produced before their apparent identity crisis.

Clocks and robbers

to have been coordinated by student pranksters suggests that it required a bit more than a key and physical fitness.

In 1976, according to a Hoya article, nine freshmen living on the fifth floor of Copley began mapping out all the possible entrances to the

The Decemberists, Long Live the King, Capitol After 2009’s prog-influenced rock opera The Hazards of Love added a sludgy, blues-metal lower end to the Decemberists’ literary indie-folk, the band seems to have settled into a country motif over their last two releases, The King is Dead and the recently released Long Live the King EP. But where the western influences on The King is Dead felt like a natural extension of the Decemberists’ already folky style, Long Live the King seems to be built from awkward outtakes from the album, many of them failing to materialize into fully convincing songs.

“Burying Davy” and “Row Jimmy” are the most apparent victims of the Decemberists’

Halloween at Georgetown is full of traditions: watching The Exorcist in Gaston, exploring the underground tunnels below campus, or taking part in spreading old rumors about the supposedly haunted fifth floor of Healy Hall. But what about the story that attributes wails in Healy to the ghost of a student who was crushed to death between the clock hands in the clock tower? This story may originate in another Georgetown tradition: stealing the clock hands straight off the tower as a prank.

Though it is not clear when or why this tradition began, according to a 1966 article in the Hoya, tradition dictated that freshmen abscond with the hands for a “short period of time” during the beginning of the school year. In 1966, that short period lasted for over a month.

According to the tradition, successful pranksters were supposed to mail the hands to the Vatican, to be sent back with a “return to sender” stamp. There were, however, variations on this. For example, a pamphlet found in the University Archives stated that in 1989 they were sent to the White House with the request that President Reagan personally return them. The Secret Service sent the hands back to University. In 1975, students stole the hands, only to replace them after painting them with “festive red and white peppermint stripes for Christmas.”

According to the pamphlet, “entrance to the soaring heights of the Healy Clock tower requir[ed] a ‘folding key’ and physical stamina.”

However, the extensive plotting and planning that seems

Voice’s Choices: “I 4 U & U 4 Me,” “E. Watson” —Jane Conroy

Lou Reed and Metallica, Lulu, Warner Bros.

On the first of November of the 2,011th anniversary of the alleged birth of Christ, Lou Reed

throwback Jack

by Sadaf Qureshi

a bi-weekly column about Hoya History clock tower. They called themselves Hands of the Clock Klub, or HOCK, and went by nicknames and numbers that were assigned to each member. They came up with four ways to access the clock: “Hernando’s Hideaway”— a padlocked door with an iron bar in Healy, a securely locked door in Gaston Hall, “a panel in the ceiling of the fourth Healy,” and a “narrow window at the top of a

and Metallica, henceforth malevolently referred to as Loutallica, released the collaborative double album Lulu, proudly proclaiming that, in no uncertain terms, “Rock is dead. We killed it.” Though this unholy union did not shout this proclamation from the rooftops, the 87 minutes of pure rubbish do all the talking (literally—most of the album is spoken word).

All puns aside, Lulu is by far the worst album in rock history.

From the very start, Lulu is doomed to fail. “Brandenburg Gate” begins the album with the frantic acoustic strumming of a five-year-old who has just learned his first guitar chord. As Lou Reed begins to speak nonsense into the microphone with his raspy voice, the listener cannot help but hold a memorial service for the money and time wasted on Lulu.

What Loutallica tries to pass off as an LP does not improve with time, and listening to the album more than once may have adverse health effects. “Frustration,” at the end of the first CD, echoes any listener’s feelings on trying to sit through even one listen. With its chaotic chords and Lou Reed reading the listener’s

fire escape of Healy.” Anyone who got through Hernando’s Hideaway would also have to pass through a second door secured by three locks and a burglar alarm.

Members of HOCK decided to access the tower through a panel in the ceiling of Healy, spending “four hours removing floorboards from the story above the attic.” They used a hand drill in place of a saw to avoid making too much noise.

Once the floorboards were removed, a door with two padlocks was dealt with using hacksaw blades, a wrench, and a screwdriver, and the students were out of there with clock hands in hand.

According to articles in the Hoya, the University began to seal up all entrances around 1976, but this did not stop students from attempting to steal the clock hands. However, it did make the endeavor a bit more dangerous.

mind by repeating, “I want so bad to hurt you,” this track launches listeners into a second disc filled with tracks that are much too long.

The album’s final song and 20-minute monolithic steaming pile of trash, “Junior Dad,” provides the perfect definitive allegory for Loutallica’s Lulu as a whole. Met allica’s surprisingly soft steadily progressing guitar lines provide hope of a decent production until Lou Reed’s monotonous voice and painfully uninspiring lyrics destroy any vision of the track’s quality. Unmistakable Metallica riffs occasionally punctuate the deathly horror of the remainder of the song, attempting to resurrect the sound that built the band until the very last note.

This quiet, steady, 10-minutelong last note, with nearly undetectable alterations in pitch, signals the end of the track, the end of Lulu, and the probable end of Metallica. With apologies to T.S. Eliot, this is how the world of rock ‘n’ roll ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

Voice’s Choice: “Frustration” —Kirill Makarenko

Attempts to steal the hands seem to have been successful roughly every five years, with the most recent theft occurring in 2005. We are just about due for another successful attempt, but beware: the University’s shifting responses to attempts demand caution. In 1976, students who were caught climbing up to the tower were let off with a $40 fine and a letter sent home. However, in 2005, the University took matters more seriously. An article in the Hoya said that students involved in the 2005 attempt were on academic probation for a year and had to write an essay on ways to engage in more constructive traditions.

So if you’re a senior looking for a job, you might want to follow tradition and leave this to the freshmen.

Send your clock hands to Sadaf at squreshi@georgetownvoice.com

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georgetownvoice.com

The Puzzle Page

by Tyler Pierce

JULIA KWON

Arabic Art History Biochemistry Biology Chemistry Chinese Classics Economics English

French German Government History Italian Japanese Linguistics Mathematics Neurobiology

TCAHC

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NUBDO

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VETWEL

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KOMDES

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the georgetown voice 13

Philosophy Physics Portuguese Psychology Russian Sociology Spanish Studio Art Theology

The campaign for Georgetown is supposed to open doors for students, and yet this student is feeling _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ from all the nice events.

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14 the georgetown voice

november 3, 2011

Twuesday Tweetacular: dispatches from the hashtag front

by Leigh Finnegan A few days ago, a friend of mine was sitting at her computer, her face expressing deep, hopeless concentration—writer’s block if I’ve ever seen it. When I asked her what was stumping her, she sounded exasperated: “I can’t think of anything to tweet about.”

Her answer surprised me, but not because of the importance that she was assigning to coming up with a bite-sized sentiment to bestow on her dozens of followers.

Rather, I was baffled that she had enough self-awareness not to just type up her latest passing thought and throw in some number signs and words without spaces between them. From my experience, that’s what Twitter is all about.

I am a reluctant tweeter. Back in the day, out of the jobless boredom that was my summer after graduating high school, I made myself a Twitter account. It currently consists of four tweets, the last of which was posted on August 5, 2009. But earlier this year, when I became editor of Vox Populi, the Voice’s blog, I became responsible for the weekly

microblog survey known as the “Twuesday Tweetacular.” This quickly became my least favorite task, as it required me to weed through ungodly numbers of tweets from the over 1,000 accounts that @GtownVoice follows, and try to find five—just five!—that are suitable for those coveted Tuesday morning spots.

You’d marvel at just how difficult this is.

Manning this account gives me an unusual perspective on Twitter. I’m an outsider looking in, reading the tweets of a massive population consisting largely of regular people I’ve never met and know nothing about.

I’m not laughing at inside jokes, having conversations with my friends, or posting culturally relevant Huffington Post articles— my job is to, as quickly as possible, judge tweets based solely on their comic value or degree of insight. Through this weekly process I have come to a not-soshocking conclusion: virtually all people lack Twitter filters, and very, very few of them are funny.

Sure, there are exceptions— mostly joke accounts and news

sources. But for every @PimpBillClinton there are thousands of accounts like @guyinmyEnglishclass, who live-tweets his thoughts like they’re some kind of political debate.

I’m not saying that Twitter is the first website that has made its users think undeservingly highly of themselves—that’s been going on since every eighth grade girl with a MySpace profile thought taking mirror pictures made her Adriana Lima. But on Twitter, we’ve reached a new level of online self-importance. Bios of average, relatively insignificant @hoyadudes unironically state that “tweets are my own, retweets are not endorsements.”

This started with celebrities and politicians, who sometimes pay assistants to tweet for them and have the ability to, you know, actually endorse things. But now, this trend has spread to the masses, and everybody needs to tell their “followers”—implying not friendship but fandom, admiration, dependence—that their snappy comments about #singlegirlproblems were not written by a professional.

And then there’s that number sign. With the recent boom in Twitter use, the hashtag has become a cultural phenomenon that blurs the line between Twitter and other forms of communication. The hashtag was designed to allow Twitter to track which topics users were talking about at a particular time. But that simple, practical idea has since entered the extra-Twitter lexicon, to the point where virtually everyone—including yours truly—has been caught hashtagging texts, Facebook posts, even regular, in-person conversations.

Besides the fact that it’s annoying, and, at least when speaking out loud, a little awkward to say, using the hashtag makes one crunch even communication not barred by a 140-character limit into impersonal little sound bytes. A hashtag-adorned text is little more than a targeted tweet— probably sent to multiple people, obviously meant to show off the sender’s hashtagging hilarity, and would likely be tweeted to the masses if more people would understand it. And as funny as it can occasionally be to hashtag normal

categorically negating the legacy of the founders. In an editorial special to CNN last month, Kennedy writes that blacks, in large part, reject Herman Cain because he esteems the founders as great men, who “did their job … a great job.”

Kennedy, in response to Cain, wrote that Cain “makes no mention of … the Constitution’s protection of slavery, or that the initial Constitution forbade Congress from prohibiting American participation in the international slave trade for 20 years and indeed made that provision un-

amendable. Cain evinces no recognition of the Founding Fathers’ role in erecting a cruel pigmentocracy that continues to poison virtually every aspect of American political, social, and cultural life.”

To begin, the notion that blacks wouldn’t support a candidate that demonstrates respect for the founders is ridiculous. Barack Obama, hugely popular among blacks at the time of his inauguration and still now, said in his inaugural address, “Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man.” Blacks, of course, didn’t repudiate Obama over this statement. Where was Kennedy in January 2009? Why didn’t he remind the President that the founding fathers owned slaves?

The fact is that what the founders did, while imperfect, was tremendously significant.

The nation was never perfect, and it still isn’t. Denying the Founding Fathers’ eminence because they did not abolish slavery in the new nation is not only to ignore their role in setting up representative government, but to gloss over the historical fact that many founders did work, albeit quietly, to slow the spread of slavery and limit its prominence.

Thomas Jefferson himself saw slavery as an evil, unjust institution, but he did not see a way to emancipate slaves and keep social stability. Jefferson deeply mistrusted vagrants—to him—people without land were only free in name. The founders distrusted landless whites just as they distrusted landless, freed blacks. England had a history of landless whites creating unrest. To Jefferson, the nation could only remain safe so long as slavery existed. He, like Lincoln, never envisioned a multiracial society. He imagined if the United States were to rid itself of slavery, then it would need to recolonize Africa.

There were historical reasons why blacks remained unfree; it wasn’t simply because the founders didn’t have the moral backbone to do it. A slave-based agrarian economy had been, by 1788, ingrained in the United States for about one hundred years. The framers couldn’t simply have broken it at the time of the Constitution. The southern states, Georgia and South Carolina, certainly, would never have ratified a Constitution limiting an institution they so desperately relied on.

In large part, the founders did the best they could to limit the spread of slavery while forming a Union.

conversation, the trend has had its share of cultural casualties—think about how much less attention Charlie Sheen would’ve gotten if #winning had confined itself to tweeters.

And that’s my biggest qualm, complaint, and fear about the Twitter monster—its implications beyond its own bounds. In less than a month, my tenure as Vox editor will be up, the Tweetacular will be someone else’s burden, and I can recede into the comfortable life of the Twitterless. But as long as I still get shortened, impersonal texts, see movie posters advertising with hashtags rather than slogans, and have to listen to my friends self-importantly talk about their “CULP major problems,” I will be constantly and involuntarily living in the real-world Twittermerica, feeling like there’s #nowayout.

Leigh Finnegan a is a junior in the College. Her only followers are Not Greg Monroe and Beltway Greg— #singlegirlproblems.

Founding Fathers fought slavery in their own way

by Connor Jones As many have noted, ”all men are created equal” did not hold true for the vast majority of Americans until 1865, 1919, and even beyond. The founders did not create a republic for all; they created a republic for the few, but even this was a significant accomplishment—no other country had affirmed and secured natural rights in the same way that the United States did in 1788.

In any case, this hasn’t stopped Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law, from

“Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”

FLICKR

The Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, banning the importation of slavery into the Northwest Territory; five signers voted for it, one against.

The Congress of the United States voted to enforce the measure; 16 signers voted for it, none against, with Washington signing it.

When the Northwest Ordinance passed, it passed quietly, without dissent. The framers attempted to limit the spread of slavery, behind closed doors. So while it’s fair to say that the framers didn’t—or, more properly, couldn’t—end slavery, at least 21 of 39 acted to limit it so that it would be contained and, in their minds, die off.

This approach treads on moral relativism, but history is about examining those who lived in the past on their own terms. Yes, slavery was just as evil then as we know it to be now. Yet we need thank the founders for achieving what was possible—not ending slavery outright, but perhaps slowing its spread so that it would be easier to end in the future.

Connor Jones is a freshman in the College. On Saturday nights he watches the two-part Gettysburg film and cries himself to sleep.

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the georgetown voice

15

Troy Davis is yet another victim of a broken system

by Udayan Tripathi Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to death before many students at Georgetown today were born. His fate has been sealed our entire lives. On September 21, 2011, yet another American man was killed for a crime he did not commit.

Having spent most of his adult life on death row, Davis had to spend his last day in an agonizing battle. First the world heard that the President would not intervene. Then, the Supreme Court deliberated for hours over a stay of execution,

which he had successfully received three times before. But he was denied a fourth. From his fatal injection at 10:53 p.m. to death at 11:08 p.m., Troy Davis passed away and became a pallid shadow cast long and low over the United States.

This Tuesday night, in Copley Formal Lounge, Troy’s sister Kimberly described her brother.

She described his faith, his love for his niece and nephew, and what he had done for her as she soldiered through a debilitating paralysis caused by multiple sclerosis. She lovingly recalled how he would calmly tell her

MAX BLODGETT

Kimberley Davis, Carolyn Forché, and Laura Moye look on as Jen Marlowe speaks.

No more stolen lunch money To my disappointment, the Internet recently seems to have become more about social change and less about LOLcats. From the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, broadcast all across the world during the 2009 Iranian election protests, to the subsequent coverage of the Arab Spring, it became clear how powerful viral material could be. With that in mind, the It Gets Better Campaign was launched to end bullying and what seems like an increase in bullying-related suicides. The organization targets youth by releasing videos urging the bullied masses to keep on keeping on, and boasts videos from the likes of President Obama, various members of Congress, and professional athletes.

These videos, though inspiring, fail to address any

solution to bullying, or even the sad possibility that bullying can never be eliminated as a result of our Aristotelian, power-hungry, animalistic nature. They serve as an increasingly disingenuous ointment for psychological wounds that probably cannot be healed by Kim Kardashian’s two cents on the matter.

There is a fatal disconnect in their method. Bullied teens may watch the videos, but celebrities cannot provide actual help, and those who can, teachers and parents, are less likely to be influenced by celebrities, or even be aware of the campaign. Even worse, bullied youths may look to the advice of these celebrity videos in lieu of professional help for depression.

The organization focuses mainly on LGBT youth.

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 424.

Opinions expressed in the Voices section do not necessarily reflect the views of the General Board of the Voice.

that “‘can’t’ is not a word in your vocabulary.”

From her words it was sharply clear that his voice challenged her to fight her condition. To Troy, Kimberly could play basketball again. To Troy, Kimberly had to walk again, and so one afternoon on the driveway he simply asked her to get up, which she did, and pulled the wheelchair away. Terrified, she complained, but he warmly insisted she must succeed. She did. This small glimpse into the life of the Davis family revealed how normal they were, how bravely they fought life’s injustices, and how strong they could be together.

These qualities took them on three-hour journeys to and from the prison. Troy would plead with them to make the onerous drive less frequently, but his mother and sisters would have none of it. His sister Martina’s children loved seeing their uncle, even through plexiglass and iron mesh. His young niece would put her hand up to the screen and he would reach out.

Contact visits were banned three years ago, which meant he could no longer hug his mother. All he had left was the sight of his famThough these kids are obviously at risk for bullying, and in need of encouragement, you can’t help but wonder how perennially bullied overweight and disabled kids or their parents feel about being left out of the largest antibullying campaign in history.

Ironically, the movement further alienates some kids in desperate need of help.

Carrying On

by Aodhan Beirne A rotating column by Voice senior staffers

Despite its good intentions, the campaign is ultimately doomed because of its popularity. Its celebrity appeal means that it is at risk of falling by the wayside when it is no longer trendy to offer help, just like what happened when the campaign to raise awareness about the Darfur genocide became more popular than Justin Bieber. It seems like celebrities catch on to these trends to feign goodwill or check off “charity” from their bucket list. It is easier than ever now that they only have to record a three-minute message pretending they can

ily and prayer. His mother said a family that prays together stays together, and so Troy led prayers when they visited.

Davis’ death casts a pall over the American criminal justice system. It is not simply the question of whether justice is done or not. It isn’t even about fair trials and the definition of “peer” when selecting a jury. Here a more intrinsic wrong was committed, one which we cannot debate with style and panache.

The issue here is about the taking of life at all. Execution is absurd. The possibility of executing the wrong man isn’t the point at hand. Innocence is not in question because to truly support abolition of the death penalty one must accept commutation of all death sentences, including those for despicable crimes like the horrific killing of James Byrd. That killing, ten years after the murder Davis was accused of, was a racist, sadistic, and macabre killing of a man simply because of the colour of his skin. But Lawrence Brewer, Shawn Berry, and John William King do not deserve death sentences either. No one does. relate to what is undoubtedly excruciating pain.

That isn’t to say some of the celebrity endorsements are not poignant or powerful, or that some teens are not affected for the better by the videos, but any project involving the participation of Ke$ha or Lindsay Lohan is bound to lose its intended bite. What the project is doing is noble, and I think it would have succeeded in being a force for social change had celebrities not worn it like a trendy pair of sneakers or otherwise completely misconstrued the depth of the issue.

Some celebrities have taken their bullying benevolence past YouTube videos, and have incorporated the theme into their songs—Lady Gaga, Pink, and Katy Perry, specifically. Katy Perry’s song “Firework” is about overcoming a low sense of self-worth, which I imagine is pretty easy for Katy Perry to do, considering how attractive she is. In the video, fireworks stream from her cleavage, calling attention to the very thing for which many girls who are uncomfortable about their bodies are bullied.

It’s clear that Katy Perry is not actually committed to

It isn’t appropriate for any human to kill another. It is an act woefully ignorant of the potential that each and every human life holds. To love like Troy did, to take care of one’s family, is commendable and makes his murder by the state of Georgia all the more sorrowful. It does not however make one iota of difference whether or not he should have lived.

That is determined solely by what Lawrence Hayes told students on Tuesday: “The Constitution says: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life’—I think I can stop there. Life.” It is indeed an unalienable right, and it is decreed in the first legal document of this country. If these revolutionary words won’t suffice in establishing the sanctity of life, what will?

Udayan Tripathi is a senior in the SFS. Udayan would like to add public urination to his unalienable rights. ending bullying or low selfesteem when her hypersexual image reinforces the very insecurities she is supposedly combatting. A similar message from Judi Dench, Danny Devito, or Kirstie Alley might prove more effective or authentic.

When bullied youth stop getting mixed and diluted messages about bullying and self-esteem from those they admire most, they might actually stand a chance against their aggressors. And when the movement to end bullying is directed at parents, teachers, and administrators, bullying in schools, and the tolerance for it, might finally be mitigated. Celebrities, unless they are actually passionate about the issue or otherwise personally connected, should stick their profession, lest the issue be watered down and lost among the myriad celebrity causes that have outrun their 15 minutes. Until then, I’ll be looking elsewhere for my LOLcats and cheezeburgers.

Aodhan Beirne is a senior in the College.

Katy Perry isn’t the only one who shows off her cleavage, you should see Aodhan at the pool.

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