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VOICE the georgetown

LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS the story of georgetown’s architecture

by julia s. tanaka Georgetown University’s Weekly Newsmagazine Since 1969 w February 6, 2014 w Volume 46, Issue 20 w georgetownvoice.com

2 the georgetown voice

february 6, 2014

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Voice Crossword “Munchies” by Allison Galezo

ACROSS 1. Thank goodness we get credit for them 3. Mrs. Mooney’s and Mrs. Lovett’s 9. The best part of a Georgetown cupcake 11. Mex. neighbor

12. 43,560 square feet 13. Impulsive indulgence 16. Chinese “way” 17. Godiva 20. Steal gasoline 22. Zipped file format 23. Discussion point

24. Our “state” abbreviation 27. Empire State 28. Beer hugger 29. Commercial 30. Albanian currency 32. Opp./hyp.

34. Flavor 36. Dish rich in sugar 39. Beast of burden 40. Spoil 41. “___ Thee I Sing” 42. MLA’s cousin 43. Too long to be a single, too short to be an album 44. Cook, in a way 46. Glam 48. Smoking 50. Candy shots 52. Dear 53. Botanical swelling

DOWN 2. Blue Period artist 3. Thanksgiving dessert 4. Stylish 5. For example 6. Shrek vegetable

7. Coffee sweetener 8. Like Baked & Wired and Sprinkles 10. Buttery bakery buy 12. Astatine symbol 13. Creamy confection 14. Library of Congress 15. Netherlands 17. Cream cheese pie 18. One third of Santa’s catchphrase 19. Muscle shirt 21. Last emperor of China 23. Brain freeze culprit 25. Pre-mp3 26. Spanish custard 31. Be in Barcelona 33. Intercultural (Center) 34. English chew 35. Final 37. My bad!

38. Jupiter’s moon 42. Competent 44. Katniss’s weapon of choice

45. Pad ___ mao - good for Thirsty Thursday 47. City council rep.

49. Miss or Mrs. 51. Meditation mantra

Last Week’s Answers:

editorial

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VOICE the georgetown

Volume 46.20 February 6, 2014 Editor-in-Chief: Connor Jones Managing Editor: Julia Tanaka General Manager: Nick Albanese Blog Editor: Isabel Echarte News Editor: Claire Zeng

Sports Editor: Chris Almeida Feature Editor: Lucia He Cover Editors: Noah Buyon, Christina Libre Leisure Editor: Dayana Morales-Gomez Voices Editor: Steven Criss Photo Editor: Ambika Ahuja Design Editors: Pam Shu, Sophia Super Page 13 Editor: Dylan Cutler Back Page Editor: Minali Aggarwal Creative Directors: Amanda Dominiguez, Kathleen Soriano-Taylor, Madhuri Vairapandi Editors-at-Large: Caitriona Pagni, Ana Smith Assistant Blog Editors: Ryan Greene, Marisa Hawley, Kenneth Lee, Laura Kurek Assistant News Editors: Shalina Chatlani, Lara Fishbane, Manuela Tobias Assistant Sports Editors: Chris Castano, Brendan Crowley, Jeffrey Lin, Joe Pollicino Assistant Cover Editor: Neha Ghanshamdas Assistant Leisure Editors: Emilia Brahm, Daniel Varghese, Joshua Ward Assistant Photo Editors: Gavin Myers, Joshua Raftis Assistant Design Editors: Leila Lebreton, Andie Pine

Staff Writers:

Sourabh Bhat, Max Borowitz, Grace Brennan, Emmy Buck, MaryBailey Frank, Abby Greene, John Guzzetta, Kevin Huggard, Julia Lloyd-George, Claire McDaniel, Dan Paradis, Max Roberts, Abby Sherburne, Jackson Sinnenberg, Deborah Sparks, Chris Wadibia, Annamarie White

Staff Photographers:

Marla Abdilla, Katherine Landau, Alan Liu, Muriel van de Bilt, Annie Wang

Staff Designers:

Katarina Chen, Dylan Cutler, Mike Pacheco, Corrina Di Pirro

Copy Chief: Grace Funsten Copy Editors:

Eleanor Fanto, Sabrina Kayser, Samantha Mladen, Dana Suekoff, Isobel Taylor, Suzanne Trivette

Editorial Board Chair: Julia Jester Editorial Board:

Gavin Bade, Emilia Brahm, Patricia Cipollitti, Lara Fishbane, Juan Daniel Gonçalves, Ryan Greene, Lucia He, Quaila Hugh, Connor Jones, Jeffrey Lin, Ian Philbrick, Ryan Shymansky, Ana Smith, Julia Tanaka

Managing Directors: Mary Bailey-Frank, Allison Manning The Georgetown Voice

The Georgetown Voice is published every Thursday.

Mailing Address: Georgetown University The Georgetown Voice Box 571066 Washington, D.C. 20057

Office: Leavey Center Room 424 Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20057

Email: editor@georgetownvoice.com Advertising: business@georgetownvoice.com Website: georgetownvoice.com Vox Populi: blog.georgetownvoice.com The opinions expressed in the Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Unsigned editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board. Columns, advertisements, cartoons and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of the Georgetown Voice. The University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. The Georgetown Voice is produced in the Georgetown Voice office and composed on Macintosh computers using the Adobe InDesign publishing system and is printed by Silver Communications. All materials copyright the Georgetown Voice. All rights reserved.

On this week’s cover: Georgetown Architecture Cover: F. Delventhal (Photo), Noah Buyon (Design)

the georgetown voice 3 PROTECT THIS HOUSE

Housing office must improve communication Most students discovered changes to the Housing Selection Handbook last Monday after a few students made a Facebook event in protest, not when the Office of Residential Living changed the procedure in midJanuary. The change does not allow students studying abroad in the fall to enter the housing lottery with their original group, since housing selection now occurs after students have been accepted to the programs. Following student concerns, GUSA passed a resolution Sunday asking the university to delay or reverse the change. Student housing said it is considering the delay.

While these changes may not be as disastrous as the Facebook event described—it wouldn’t force the fall study abroad applicants to find off-campus housing for only spring semester—they do severely complicate matters for students attempting to organize housing selection groups, as the changes were made late into the school year. Beforehand,

students received an apartment, dropped out to bring another student in as a “spot filler,” then reversed that change in the spring. These switches were entirely student-facilitated, and Housing would not have enforced any of these agreements. Now, students studying abroad are no longer part of housing selection, instead, their replacements, often underclassmen, are in the housing group from the start.

Patrick Killilee, executive director of student housing, views these changes as minor, and on paper they would seem to be a simple change in timing. But for students scrambling to find housing replacements before they even have housing, the process is unclear and hectic. In the housing selection information session on Tuesday, Killilee admitted that students who planned to use rising sophomores to placehold in the fall are, in fact, punished by the process, because the group will likely receive less desirable lottery numbers because their total housing selection points are lower.

While Housing had the intention of making the process simpler, it only complicated matters by surprising students months after they chose their original groups. Furthermore, that Housing did not notify students is concerning, since this decision is a major procedural change. Killilee said that Housing does not normally notify students of changes this small, as they were planning to release these changes as part of a larger program coming in the following weeks. While this reasoning would have been acceptable before the housing process began, students are now only weeks away from applying for study abroad and housing.

Students are worried about their housing prospects in the spring and are forced to scramble to rearrange housing groups under a process they do not understand.

Housing, therefore, should at the very least follow GUSA’s suggestions to delay the change until students understand and approve of the new procedure.

MEDIA CRITICIZES MEDIA

Olympic message lost during Sochi coverage

The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics will commence this Friday, letting the sports, rather than the political games, finally begin.

Sochi, a resort town with subtropical temperatures, is far from the norm of Russian topography—rather, it is a balmy haven meant to show off Russia’s economic prowess and Putin’s clout to the world. $51 billion have gone into the transformation of Sochi into an Olympic arena, a cost greater than the aggregate of all past winter games. However, the social cost of this Olympics is even greater, emphasized by coverage unevenly balanced between scandal and sport, detracting attention from the games themselves.

The media has chosen to cover what sells easily: fear. Unrest from the Caucasus region in recent months has cast a shadow over the usual Olympic hype. In December, two bombings in Volgograd ignited terrorism fever. Headlines have since fueled panic surrounding possible terrorist attacks at Sochi, with extensive coverage of the three

“Black Widow” suicide bombers and the Pentagon’s two warships in the Black Sea. Yet, such coverage of terrorist attacks has failed to educate the public on why the Caucasus region is restive. There has been no mention of Stalin’s exiling the Chechens to Kazakhstan, Putin’s invasion of Chechnya in 1999 or any history of Islamist extremists in the Caucasus. Facts lack the appeal of fear and death, and unfortunately cable news chooses the latter—giving terrorist organizations exactly what they want.

Additionally, Russian censorship of gay rights activism has affected both LGBT athletes and the ad campaigns of Olympic sponsors such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Legislation enacted last year prohibits homosexual propaganda, which has prevented gay rights marches, as well as airtime coverage of gay issues. In an interview, Putin told gay athletes not to worry about competing in Sochi—as long as they leave the children alone. Despite fears of terror-

ism and hostility against LGBTQ athletes, Putin made a sound bite out of his “ring of steel,” which encompasses 1,500 square feet with 40,000 police officers and soldiers inside. Still, a leaked U.S. Olympic Committee memo requested that American athletes not wear their uniforms outside the ring.

Coverage of the actual Olympics, from the 12 new events to the personal stories of the athletes themselves, has been overlooked. Feeding off of fear and ignorance, the media has given more airtime to terrorist interests and Russian propaganda rather than to the hardworking athletes and their sports. The purpose of the Olympics is to enact diplomacy between countries via sport competition, not create larger international divides. Hopefully, after the opening ceremonies, the media can help undo its own damage by redirecting the focus of the 2014 Olympics and allowing the athletes and events to rightfully dominate the news cycle.

THIS IS JUST OBKNOXIOUS

U.S. should protect Knox from Italian injustice

An Italian jury found Amanda Knox guilty of murder and sentenced her to 28 and a half years in Italian prison for the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher. This was Knox’s second trial, the first being overturned by an appeal after Knox served four years in prison for the crime after already spending a year in prison before she was first convicted by the Italian legal system, which does not guarantee basic rights of double jeopardy, a speedy trial, or criminal charges before being jailed.

Moreover, Knox, now residing in Seattle, faces the possibility of being extradited to serve her sentence in Italy. The question now for U.S. officials is whether to hand her over at Italy’s request. The United States depends on its treaty with Italy, but faced with the eccentricities of the Italian justice system and no tangible proof of Knox’s guilt, denying Knox’s extradition to Italy is the only action the United States can justifiably take.

The American and Italian justice systems are incompatible—the United States protects against double jeopardy, whereas Italy has poor police practices, allows crime scenes to be trampled, builds cases only on conjecture, mandates prosecutors to be the lead detectives in cases, and demonizes foreigners. Little DNA evidence ties Knox to the crime, whereas Rudy Guede, the man already serving time for the murder, left his DNA all over the crime scene. In fact, the only evidence they had to convict Knox was the strangled confession she made after being detained and harassed, a source of evidence that would be inadmissible in the United States due to the illegal investigative procedures. The only thing Knox is guilty of is being incredibly naïve.

Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor and the lead detective in the case, claims to sense Satan’s whereabouts in most of his cases and fantasized the story of a Satanic ritual orgy in which Knox and Sollecito must have murdered

Kercher. Her trials proceeded with an inordinate number of delays in courtrooms where lawyers, judges, and the press spoke over each other and out of turn, and the jury members blatantly tapped away on their phones. Knox was even harassed by interrogators accusing her of being a “stupid liar” when she answered questions and villainized by the Italian press with headlines such as “ORGY OF DEATH; AMANDA WAS A DRUGGED-UP TART.” With its strong international presence and large study abroad program, the case of Amanda Knox—herself a study abroad student at the time—relates to Georgetown. Whether considering the lack of evidence, ridiculous investigative and trial procedures, or the Italian system’s clash with basic U.S. judicial ideology, Knox’s guilt is hardly beyond reasonable doubt.

Protecting Knox would reflect support of both America’s values. The United States must stand up to this injustice rather than give into it.

4 the georgetown voice

News Hits Recruiting numbers down Georgetown has seen a dip in the number of employers recruiting from the 2012-2013 academic year.

According to a report provided by the Cawley Career Education Center, 42 employers, including the Boston Consulting Group, out of the 124 that came to campus to recruit during the 2012-2013 school year did not return this year.

The report, however, also indicated that 29 firms that did not recruit on campus last year made appearances on campus this year for a total of 114 employers, including HSBC Securities and McKinsey & Company.

According to Michael Schaub, executive director of the Career Center, companies that did not return may have been influenced by a lack of student interest in previous efforts.

He stressed, however, that many employers still post work opportunities on Hoya Career Connection.

“It is important to note that on-campus interviewing is best suited to employers who have the capacity to interview lots of students and who can predict what their hiring needs will be after May,” wrote Schaub in an email to the Voice. He also mentioned that the list of recruiters, which was last updated on Jan. 28, is not final.

—Steven Criss

New SFS Asia journal The Asian Studies department of the School of Foreign Service launched the Georgetown Asian Affairs Journal, a new quarterly scholarly journal, on Jan. 22.

According to Director of Asian Studies Victor Cha, the journal aims to provide students with an outlet to publish research.

“About 15-20% of the senior theses in the Asian Studies certificate program each year end up being published in journals like Asian Survey (Berkeley), Columbia Journal of Politics and Society, and Cornell Journal of International Affairs,” Cha wrote in an email to the Voice.

According to Cha, the journal will publish student research from across the nation as well as articles by scholars and professionals in the field.

Asian Studies and Georgetown students, including staff of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, will produce the journal.

“GJIA’s current platforms do not offer an appropriate venue to sate this demand [for places to publish research] … [so] we are attempting to rectify this deficiency,” wrote William Handel (SFS ‘14), executive director of GJIA, in an email to the Voice. According to Handel, GJIA will bring technical support through its experience in editing and its connections with indexers and distributors.

The deadline for submissions for the inaugural issue is Feb. 28.

—Claire Zeng

news

february 6, 2014

Social innovation center to launch Feb. 11

by Jared Kimler The Beeck Center for Social Innovation & Impact, which aims to promote innovation in addressing and solving social issues, will launch with a kick-off event featuring some guest lecturers in the field on Feb. 11.

The Center, which is part of the Provost’s Office, was funded by a gift from Olga María (SFS ’81) and Alberto Beeck, parents of current undergraduate students.

It will be led by Sonal Shah, professor of the practice and former director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation at the White House, and by former White House Fellow Mark Hanis.

“It’s not just about the business school, law school and med school, it’s for everyone,” Shah said. “It’s [a question of] how do we solve social issues across all disciplines?”

According to Shah, the Beeck Center will foster the skills of social innovation through classes and programs, innovation labs, speaker events, and a Fellows program, which will cycle in experts

to teach those interested in the field. These offerings will be targeted towards current students as well as practitioners, alumni, and community members.

The center will be working alongside preexisting social impact groups on campus, including the Social Enterprise and Nonprofit Law Clinic and Startup Hoyas, and aims to augment preexisting projects, according to Shah. In conjunction with the Center, Startup Hoyas plans to hold a Social Innovation Competition for students to pitch social entrepreneurial ideas this month.

Shah stressed the importance of this center’s role within Georgetown, explaining that academic institutions have the ability to push agendas and ask questions in ways that many businesses, nonprofits, and the government cannot.

“Other universities that have social innovation often tend to see it from a business only perspective or nonprofit perspective, but Georgetown, being in D.C., has the opportunity to engage the public sector,” Hanis said.

Club tuition funding reorganized

by Lara Fishbane The Division of Student Affairs approved a new student tuition funding distribution on Jan. 24. The plan, which goes into effect fiscal year 2015, cuts Student Activities Commission and raises Advisory Board for Club Sports tuition funding by $74,954 and $62,028, respectively.

Overall funding for SAC, ABCS, and the four other student advisory boards, however, will not change because of adjustments in funding from Georgetown’s Coca-Cola contract and the student activity fee.

According to Jack Appelbaum (COL ‘14), former SAC Chair, the previous tuition funding distribution had not changed since 2001 and did not reflect the current sizes and needs of the advisory boards.

Since 2001, ABCS, for instance, has grown from 10 teams to 31.

“It’s been a long time since the way tuition dollars are allocated to advisory boards has been looked at,” Appelbaum said. “It’s an outdated system.”

The Division of Student Affairs funds the CSJ Advisory Board for Student Organizations, Media Board, Performing Arts Advisory Council, Georgetown Program Board, ABCS, and SAC mainly using tuition money.

In the past, the proportion of club budgets funded by Student Affairs has been inconsistent. According to the terms of the reallocation, however, Student Affairs will now finance 27.5 percent of each board’s expenses.

According to Erika Cohen-Derr, assistant dean for student engagement, each board’s overall funding will remain the same. Clubs will derive the rest of their funding from the student activity fee and Coca-Cola grant, and they can request the rest of the money they need by submitting requests to the GUSA Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, which controls the student activity fee.

“We aren’t actually going to be receiving more money as a whole, but we are going to get more guaranteed money,” said

The new Dahlgren organ is custom-made.

Gavin Myers

New chapel organ to be completed by March

by Daniel Paradis The new, custom-made pipe organ in Dahlgren Chapel, donated by the Georgetown alumni Lewnowski family, is expected to be ready for use by the beginning of March as a final step in the renovation of the 121-year-old chapel.

After reaching out to multiple companies, the University settled on San Francisco company Schoenstein & Co to build the organ, according to James Wickman, director of liturgy and music. The company worked for a year to build the organ, which first arrived at Georgetown on Jan. 21, to be prepared for use in the Chapel.

Wickman explained that, prior to the organ’s debut, it will undergo extensive tuning to adjust the pipes to Dahlgren’s acoustic environment. “There’s the science of sound and acoustics, but there’s also the art of the human ear listening, so [those working on the organ] will actually tune and voice every single pipe,” said Wickman.

The new organ will be located in the front of Dahlgren in orAlex Skarzynski (SFS ‘15), chair of ABCS, which was previously only funded $7,000 tuition dollars. “It’s nice and reassuring to know that, at the bare minimum, we’re getting more than seven thousand dollars because we wouldn’t be able to do all that we do for our teams with that [amount].”

Overall tuition dollars going to advisory boards will be lowered by $66,375 between fiscal years 2014 and 2015. When asked about the decrease, Cohen-Derr said this money was originally used to fund regular expenses, such as training

der to provide a better sound that compliments the inner acoustics of the chapel. Additionally, the removal of the old organ from the back of the chapel will free up more needed seating, according to Rachel Pugh, director of media relations.

Renovators also installed two wooden columns, able to hold over one thousand heavy organ pipes collectively, to maintain the structure and safety of the instrument. The largest pipe is 16 feet long and weighs over 150 pounds.

Fr. Kevin O’Brien, vice president for mission and ministry, believes that the organ will augment the natural beauty of the chapel for generations to come. “Not only is it visually inspiring, but the music that will fill the chapel will touch the hearts and souls of those who worship there,” O’Brien wrote in an email to the Voice.

As part of a celebration of both the organ installation and the close-to-complete renovation of Dahlgren, there will be a mass of thanksgiving and blessing in Dahlgren Chapel on April 12.

and Student Activity Fair logistics, and Student Affairs will now instead “fund those directly.”

GUSA FinApp Chair Séamus Guerin (COL ‘16) wrote in an email to the Voice that he thinks although the funding redistribution is “more of an organizational change than it is a significant change to student life … it will have a long term benefit in making things more consistent.”

For more news on construction and renovations on-campus, check out Vox Populi at blog.georgetownvoice.com.

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the georgetown voice 5

GUSA petitions Provost Georgetown BID releases 15-year plan about grade inflation

by Ana Smith

by James Constant GUSA released a petition on Monday calling for Provost Robert Groves to address an alleged lack of student input in the administration’s response to grade inflation at Georgetown.

The press release that announced the petition called for greater “dialogue with university administrators concerning recent academic changes proposed by the Provost’s Office.”

The petition raises concerns about the addition of each class’ mean grade to every student’s transcript that was first announced in a Provost blog post on Dec. 25. The petition also references the new Latin honors system that will apply beginning with the class of 2017 and will result in a total of 25 percent of all students graduating with Latin honors, a decrease from 56 percent, 64 percent, 59 percent, and 38 percent of the 2012 graduating class with Latin honors in the college, SFS, NHS, and MSB, respectively.

“The problem is that there was no consultation with the student body at all,” said Guy Mentel (COL ‘14), GUSA secretary for academic affairs.

The petition requests that Provost Groves “not to take any further action regarding this matter without student input.” When asked if he would be willing to cooperate, Groves said he would be open to student dialogue regarding grade inflation, but maintained that the changes would remain in place.

GUSA members claim that the petition does not contain any specific criticism of the methods Provost Groves has taken to address grade inflation.

“We’re not taking a stance on it,” said Shweta Wahal (SFS ’16), chairwoman of the GUSA Senate Intellectual Life Committee. “What we want is to be included in the conversation.”

“The decisions surrounding our grades and our transcripts directly affect us,” said GUSA President Nate Tisa (SFS ‘14). “We think it’s to the benefit of students, the Provost, and the university for there to be solid engagement in this process.”

Provost Groves, who took office in Aug. 2012, said he had little control over the changes on transcripts and Latin honors, as the main campus executive faculty had already voted on them by the time he entered office.

“These are things that were in the queue before I got here,” he said. “They were in the implementation stage, in my view,” Groves said. “None of these changes will have 100 percent of the people in strong support of them.”

Groves justified the changes as useful for students and professors to accurately gauge their respective performance.

“In the case of Latin honors, we were entering a state where the majority of students were getting the message that they were doing better than average … on the transcripts, it’s really about transparency, clear signals to all involved about what a particular grade means,” he said.

Brick by brick, building our story

It’s time to admit it: Georgetown’s buildings are ugly.

With the exception of the main quad, Georgetown wasn’t designed in a unified architectural style.

While we have enough soaring edifices to satisfy most people’s mental image of what a prestigious university should look like, the ratio of architectural treasures to eyesores here is considerably lower than nearly all our peer institutions.

Princeton, the University of Virginia, and Boston College each have sections of campus with buildings that complement each other in style and composition. But, at Georgetown, every Healy Hall has three Darnalls to match.

The majority of campus is constructed of brick, and, through the years, campus planners couldn’t be bothered to match the type of

brick. Every building is a mismatch, and every style is incongruous.

Even Healy Hall’s interior side is constructed of brick instead of the Gothic stone used on the reverse side. Southwest Quad, the Jesuit Residence, and Leo’s Dining Hall is the only group of buildings I can think of that match each other, because they were all built in conjunction with one another.

Throughout most of its history, Georgetown was a regional, Catholic university specializing in instruction, not research. It wasn’t until the latter part of the twentieth century that the school began to transform into the global research institution that it is today. Given the school’s financial constraints, grand works of architecture weren’t feasible. Instead, construction focused on the practical, not the grandiose.

The Georgetown Business Improvement District announced its 15-Year Action Plan on Jan. 30, which proposes 75 action items that seek to improve transportation, use of public spaces, business, and accessibility in the Georgetown area by the year 2028.

According to Georgetown BID CEO Joe Sternlieb, the 2028 Plan marks one of the first comprehensive community attempts to restructure and holistically improve the Georgetown area.

“There really was no comprehensive transportation plan like this where we got everybody in the community to participate in thinking big and for the future,” he said.

The action items include measures to add more transit services, such as improved Circulator and bus services, a streetcar that will run along lower Georgetown and K St, N.W., and the potential for future gondola transit down the C&O Canal. The plan also includes the addition of a Georgetown Metro stop by 2028.

Georgetown Associate Vice President of Community Engagement and Strategic Initiatives and member of the Georgetown BID 2028 Task Force Lauralyn Lee said that the University has “worked very closely with the BID” on the plan, especially on

But, finally, with the 2010 Campus Plan passed and implemented, the University has the means and foresight to start to think seriously about long-term planning. Our structures send a message about who we are as a school, and recent construction has presented a strong image for the future. The Hariri Building was constructed with a

Saxa Politica

by Connor Jones

A bi-weekly column about campus news and politics contemporary design yet contains accents from Georgetown’s past: the modern glass comports well with the stone siding. Across the quad, Regents Hall contains many of the same architectural elements, but, instead of stone, it utilizes metal and brick—which makes sense given the building’s purpose as

The 2028 plan includes construction of a Metro stop. transportation issues and added that the plan “parallel[s] very nicely” with Georgetown’s campus planning.

Both Lee and Sternlieb expressed excitement for the Metro stop. “[It] would be totally a game changer for the city if we could achieve [a Metro stop] within 15 years,” Sternlieb said.

He also noted that “it’s inevitable that we have to build another tunnel, and it’s likely it’ll have to come through Georgetown. …

It’s technically, from an engineering standpoint, certainly feasible. … The only question is when the region and the federal government will put up the money to make it happen.”

ANC2E Commissioner Craig Cassey (COL ‘15) said he felt the ANC supports the plan allaround but noted concern, however, about the impact on business and residents construction

Georgetown’s new scientific research facility.

The school’s newest construction project, the dormitory planned for the Northeast Triangle location, originally copied many of the same architectural elements: metal and glass surfaces contrasted with flat stone façades. But when the design was presented to students, many of them expressed uncharacteristically energetic opposition to the building.

The building’s unofficial tagline became “Reiss and Lau’s baby.”

The criticism of the building centered on how it doesn’t fit with Georgetown’s storied history. Students said they wanted more buildings that look like Healy, WhiteGravenor, and Copley—some sort of grotesque neo-neo-Gothic revival. There’s always some room for student engagement for on-campus issues. For example, students said that putting a pub in the New South

COURTESY OF GEORGETOWN BID

would have, and expressed hope that the Georgetown BID will focus on “how best we can mitigate the impacts.”

Sternlieb anticipates that many of these initiatives will complement transportation services Georgetown students already use. “I think a University student picking up a Capital Bikeshare bike … on or near campus can be down on Wisconsin and K in five minutes, drop off the bike, hop on a street car, and ride it downtown,” he said.

He added that many of the plans, however, will be longterm. “If you’re a freshman today and graduating in three and a half years, of the 75 items, you might see 20 of them come to fruition or be piloted over the next three and a half years, but a lot of them are much farther out and will take many years to get approved,” he said.

Student Center was a priority, and so it is happening.

But outsourcing decisions to the public isn’t always the best way to make decisions. Sometimes a highly-informed but small group of people can make a better decision than a large, semi-informed group of people. During engagement sessions, administrators and architects spent most of their time just explaining their thought processes. In the end, the new design isn’t much different from the old one, for which I applaud the architects. For something as permanent as construction on campus, it’s important to have informed people making the decisions. With the right direction, Georgetown’s architecture can tell a different story.

Pontificate about Georgetown’s incongruity with Connor at cjones@ georgetownvoice.com.

sports

6 the georgetown voice

february 6, 2014

Men’s basketball shows resilience in back-to-back wins

by Joe Pollicino After a lethargic 2-6 stretch during the month of January, which culminated with a five-game losing streak, the now reinvigorated Georgetown men’s basketball team (13-9, 4-6 Big East) has rediscovered their winning ways. Bolstered by the strong play of senior guard Markel Starks and the return of junior guard Jabril Trawick, now recovered from a broken jaw, the Hoyas have indefinitely revived their NCAA Tournament hopes with their recent two wins.

This past Saturday, in a rare mid-season non-conference matchup at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the Hoyas used an allaround team effort to defeat No. 7 Michigan State (19-3, 8-1 Big Ten) in their second win this season against a Top 10 opponent. The loss ended the Blue and Gray’s fivegame losing skid.

“You lose a couple in a row and life is hard. It’s hell,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said. “It’s a good win and I would feel that way regardless of the opponent the way we’ve been going.”

Starks led the Hoyas, who had five players tally at least eight points, with 16 points on 6-of-12 shooting. Starks also dished out four assists. Despite his shooting struggles, at 2-of-13, sophomore guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera found other ways to contribute, especially on the defensive end, with both a game-high eight rebounds and three steals.

“It’s a relief to get a win,” Starks said. “It feels good, finally.”

In increased minutes in his second game back from injury, Trawick also added eight points and effectively contained Michigan State sophomore guard Gary Harris on defense. Harris, the Big Ten Pre-Season Player of the Year, had to work hard for a game-high

20 points due to Trawick’s defen- team’s effort in the first half. The game, every single day we’ve got other guys, I mean he brings an Hoyas entered halftime down 30- to come out with that same inten- element to our team, and I’ve said sive toughness.

“You’re not going to beat 27 after a lackadaisical first half. sity as we did in [the Michigan it for two or three years now, our guys feed off his energy.”

Michigan State or any team in the The Blue and Gray shot an anemic State] game.”

The Hoyas will look to extend Trawick had his best game Big East if you aren’t physical- 9-of-30 from the field, including ly tough,” Thompson said. “You 2-of-10 from three-point range, and since returning from injury. In 28 their winning streak when they need to be tough enough to make seemed out of sorts at times on the minutes, Trawick scored 15 points return home to the Verizon Center on 5-of-8 shooting. Trawick’s in- this Saturday to face Butler (12-10, the hustle plays, run down the defensive end.

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t tensity and determination at both 2-8 Big East) at 1:00 p.m. They then loose balls, run down the long rebounds, and have communication want to take away from the Mich- ends of the floor help lift his team- will have a quick turnaround, as they oppose emerging league conigan State win,” Starks said. “That mates’ play in the second half. on defense.”

“What Jabril brings to this team tender Providence (16-7, 6-4 Big As a unit, the Georgetown was a great boost for us, but at the frontcourt played their best game end of the day, we can’t come out doesn’t always show up in the stat East) on Monday night. Both these in recent memory, as they out-re- and play like we did in the first sheet,” Thompson said. “But he games will provide insight into bounded the Spartans 37-30, in- half, regardless of how big that adds a whole new element, above whether the Hoyas are NCAA or cluding 15 offensive rebounds, win was or what have you. Every and beyond just being able to rest NIT bound in March. and provided a much-needed scoring punch. Junior forward Mikael Hopkins scored 10 points and had a game-high four blocks, ”We’re just going to do it anyway...They need to go ahead and say, ‘Y’all go ahead, smoke it, do what you need to do.’” Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie on why the NFL should end its ban on marijuana use while Lubick scored eight points ranked as the No. 26 player in the 40 point performances. The merand pulled down six rebounds. by Chris Almeida country, is the most anticipated curial guard will almost surely Senior center Moses Ayegba also prospect to come to Georgetown come off the bench next season The Georgetown Hoyas are returned to the lineup after his since Monroe. At 6-foot-9 and 189 with experienced players playing not out of the NCAA tournament perplexing one-game suspension pounds, Copeland has a frame the one and two positions, and picture, despite what we may by the NCAA due to “pre-enrollthat is eerily similar to that of Otto will need to find his groove in the have thought last week in the ment reconciliation.”

Porter. The swingman’s skillset is college game. But, Georgetown middle of a five-game slide, but “Today we got out-toughed. also very similar, with a midrange could greatly benefit from a freakit is clear that this season falls far We got thrown around on the jumper that seems to tear apart ishly athletic score-first player. In below the bar that has been set for boards,” Michigan State Head opposing defenses on the prep time, Peak could change the face the Blue and Gray over the past Coach Tom Izzo said in frustraschool circuit. Next year, with of the struggling Hoya offense. few seasons. tion following his team’s loss.

The last player in the group is Smith-Rivera and Jabril Trawick The Hoyas are short-staffed “We got posted up. I thought they point guard Tre Campbell, anothlikely filling the starting spots in at every position on the floor, manhandled us.” er local product in the long line of the backcourt, there will again and still lack a consistent presFollowing their much-needGeorgetown guards from the D.C. be a need for a scoring threat at ence from all players not named ed win in New York, Georgetown area.

Campbell, who is finishing the small forward position.

While Markel or D’Vauntes.

As a result, traveled to Chicago to resume Big up his last season at St. John’s Colhigh school prospects don’t alit’s no surprise that this year’s East play this past Monday against lege High School, will follow Ausways have the ability to jump to team is struggling to live up to conference cellar dweller DePaul tin Freeman, Jason Clark, Markel the college game right away, Cothe top-5 seed billing that has (10-13, 2-8 Big East). The Hoyas’ Starks, and Chris Wright, who also peland looks like a very promisbecome the standard on the Hillstrong second-half play propelled attended St. John’s, as a player ing candidate to fill this need. top.

Just like all other fans of the them over the DePaul Blue Defrom the immediate area to play Another player that will likeHeart Attack Hoyas, I have no mons in a convincing 71-59 win, in the Hoya backcourt.

Campbell ly see minutes at the three is Paul idea where this season will end, which starts the Blue and Gray’s with possibilities ranging from an White, who has a stature similar is the least touted of the four refirst winning streak of 2014. Starks, elusive Sweet Sixteen run to a trip to Copeland at 6-foot-8 and 185 cruits, but will add depth, somewho was named to Big East Weekly to the CBI, but I am sure that next pounds. White is a Chicago native thing which this year’s team needs Honor Roll prior to the contest, jusyear, the team, which is dreadful- who has been wreaking havoc on dearly, on next year’s team before tified the award by scoring a gamely short on players, will receive a the high school circuit as a part of he eventually finds his spot in the high 26 points. Smith-Rivera also the Whitney Young frontcourt that starting lineup. much needed restocking. added 17 points and Lubick pulled With the exception of Starks, also features the consensus top The Georgetown recruiting down 10 rebounds. most of the key players on this prospect in 2014, Duke commit haul for the high school class of Despite the win, Starks exyear’s team will be available next Jahlil Okafor.

White will be anoth2014 is one of the best in years. pressed disappointment with the Ranked as the sixth best recruit- er frontcourt scoring threat that season, barring any surprise decing class in the nation by ESPN, will be able to spread the floor and larations for the NBA draft. With this group is being billed as the open up lanes to the hoop for the the Hoyas returning Smith-Rivera, Trawick, Reggie Cameron, Mikael best to come to Georgetown since Hoya guards.

Perhaps the most intriguing Hopkins, and, optimistically, Josh the 2008 class that brought Greg Monroe, Henry Sims, and Ja- newcomer is 6-foot-5, 190 pound Smith, while adding these four son Clark. The 2014 class brings L.J. Peak. Peak is has played most new talents, the Hoyas will have three players ranked inside the of his high school career at Gaff- a team that is slightly deeper but country’s top 40. While this is no ney High School, but played a supremely talented, even on to the guarantee of success, what is sure season with White at Whitney bench. Obviously, with the fickle is that this group almost has no Young during his junior year. nature of all Hoya teams, success equal when it comes to talented Peak is a noted slasher with a is not guaranteed, but I have a perpetual green light to go to the feeling we fans will have a much high school players.

Headlining the quartet is hoop. Recently Peak has explod- better postseason outlook a year forward Isaac Copeland, who, ed, ravaging defenses in multiple from now.

Men’s basketball beat Michigan State to prevent a seven game skid.

the sports sermon

NOAH BUYON

sports

georgetownvoice.com

the georgetown voice 7

Women’s hoops loses sixth in a row Track shines on national stage

by Max Borowitz The Georgetown women’s basketball team fell to a 7-15 record (1-9 in Big East) with a 77-54 defeat against Marquette (14-6, 5-4 Big East). The loss is the most recent in a six-game losing streak, as well as the 12th loss in the last 13 contests.

Facing a tough Big East rival in hostile territory, the Hoyas managed to remain competitive with Marquette for most of the contest. Strong performances by Faith Woodard and Natalie Butler, who both played almost the entire game, kept Georgetown within striking distance for most of the first half.

Woodard scored 18 points to go along with five assists, while Butler scored 14, with eight rebounds and four assists.

Unfortunately, these numbers were not enough to bring Georgetown to victory.

Not to be outdone, junior guard Arlesia Morse came off the bench to lead Marquette, shooting seven of eight from the field. By the end of the first half, Georgetown

went into the locker room down by 10 points.

After struggling in the first few minutes after the half, Georgetown eventually began to buckle down again, pulling back to within 10. Yet the Hoyas’ struggles continued as Georgetown fell behind by over 20 points, leading to the lopsided final score.

Despite a tough night that saw her fail to connect on a single shot from the field, Samisha Powell did led the Hoyas with six assists. As a result of unimpressive shooting from the field, along with lackluster performance on the glass, Georgetown found itself unable to find an answer for Marquette, one of the better teams in the conference.

Following this disappointing defeat, the Hoyas will continue on to Creighton University in Omaha to try to bounce back from a discouraging run of play over the last few weeks.

Yet, in a transition year that has been largely disappointing, there are some bright signs for the team. As a result of her exceptional play over the

Women’s basketball is now in a six game losing streak.

THE VOICE

MLB lowers transfer fees

Major League Baseball did its part to help reduce the United States’ trade deficit before the end of 2013 by developing and executing a new posting system for Japanese players being traded out of Nippon Professional Baseball to American teams. The two organizations agreed that the posting price for a Japanese player cannot exceed $20 million, moving away from the former system in a big way.

This new rule certainly does not favor the Japanese clubs in NPB, which makes it surprising that it would agree to the deal in the first place. In the past, Japanese clubs could charge exorbitant amounts of money in order for MLB teams to even have the chance to offer a contract to a player up for trade. The most egregious examples were Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2006 and Yu Darvish in 2011, who were both acquired

after posting fees over $50 million. To be perfectly clear, these amounts are not contracts with the players. NPB clubs first receive the payments. On top of that, MLB clubs had to offer a contract to the players. Both Matsuzaka and Darvish were given six-year contracts above $50 million after the posting fees were agreed upon.

The new cap for posting fees may not make NPB general managers very happy, but it will definitely increase the flow of talented Japanese baseball players to American clubs while reducing some of the risk that comes with signing them.

The main risk associated with signing a star Japanese recruit is a lack of MLB experience. Teams must have a massive amount of faith to pay large amounts of cash to reach deals with these Japanese players. The new posting fee limits wisely reduces some of that risk by making sure that

last week, including at the game in Marquette, Georgetown’s Freshman center Natalie Butler was named Big East Conference Rookie of the Week, the eighth time that she has received the honor. Her strong performance during a disappointing season in which she has scored 14.8 points per game and a conference best 12.9 rebounds per game are indicative of a team that may be better than its record.

“I was proud that we stepped up and did what we could do without a healthy roster. Faith Woodard did an excellent job of being aggressive and attacking,” said Head Coach Jim Lewis When the Hoyas go to face Creighton, it will be at a critical juncture for the team’s hopes of making noise in the Big East Tournament later this season.

Despite having a Big East record that is tied for last place in the conference, the Hoyas have played competitively against many of the more successful teams in the conference. Before losing to Marquette on Feb. 1, the Hoyas had lost in overtime to Marquette in January.

The Hoyas, in the middle of their conference schedule, will need to go on a hot streak to be able to find themselves in a strong position by the Big East tournament. After the face-off against Creighton on Feb. 5, the Hoyas will come home to face Xavier and Seton Hall, the two teams directly ahead of Georgetown in the conference standing.

The Hoyas will look to improve following their recent troubles as the Big East Tournament comes closer.

no team can pay a fee higher than $20 million.

This new system gives hope to smaller market teams in the MLB who before could not match the league’s biggest spenders when trying to bid on Japanese players. This

All the Way

by Steven Criss A bi-weekly column about sports

deal also means that the players themselves will most likely be receiving higher contract deals than before since teams do not have to part with so much money just to pay posting fees. In the end, it’s less money for NPB clubs and more money for the individual players, which means Japanese teams will be less willing to post players and Japanese players more eager to be posted. And here we reach our problem.

by Arjun Gupta After a strong showing this past weekend at the Penn State National Invitational, Georgetown’s indoor Track and Field team seems to be heating up at the right time.

On day one, the women’s Distance Medley Relay team competed against the likes of Stanford, Dartmouth, and Duke, finishing fourth overall and less than half a second behind Big East rival Villanova. The team consisted of freshman Sabrina Southerland, freshman Emma Keenan, senior Chelsea Cox and junior Katrina Coogan.

The men’s DMR team also had a strong showing and finished fifth place in a tough race that involved the Penn State team breaking both a meet and school record.

The second day of the invitational brought more success for the Hoyas as senior Billy Ledder won the 800-meter race with a time of 1:48.92. Freshman Amos Bartelsmeyer won the men’s 1,000-meter invitational, breaking the meet record in the process. The Hoyas had two more strong performaces from junior Hannah Necyzpor and junior Annamarie Mag, who finished first and second respectively with times of 4:51.76 and 4:52.67 in the women’s mile.

Two weeks after winning

Despite Japanese fans’ excitement over seeing their players make it big and succeed in the MLB, I cannot trust that Japanese players will receive support in leaving their Japanese teams for a career in the MLB. This new agreement is only good for the next three years, and after that time is up, it will need to be renegotiated. My prediction is that Japanese clubs will be tired of the $20 million mark before we are halfway through the agreement’s maturity. Parting ways with their best players means less of an opportunity for profits and victories, and since these clubs know that American teams in the past have been willing to cough up amounts that dwarf this new cap, it will not be long before Japanese general managers are calling for a raise.

The biggest news to come out of the new posting agreement so far has been the seven-year $155 million signing of Masahiro Tanaka by the New York Yankees. So much for

Big East Female and Male Track Athletes of the Week, junior Katrina Coogan and freshman Ryan Manahan continued their success.

Coogan finished second in the 3,000 meter to Villanova’s Emily Lipari. Manahan finished in second to teammate Bartelsmeyer in the men’s 1,000-meter.

This meet comes one week after the Hoyas won a total of 13 events at their own Hoya Spiked Shoe Club Invitational. The women’s team collected a total of seven first place finishes, while the men’s team had six. The Hoyas will compete this coming weekend at the Valentine Invitational in Boston, Mass.

There are only three more weeks left before the Big East championships, which will take place in New York. When talking to BIGEAST.com reporters, Georgetown coach Patrick Henner said,”I don’t see any clear cut favorite. …

Without a doubt we are going to continue to be on of the very best conferences in the country.”

Villanova coach, Gina Procaccio, said the same thing about the women. “The teams are more even across the board,” she said.

Without a clear favorite on either side, the pressure seems to be mounting on the Hoyas, but if the last two weeks are any indication, this team is heading in the right direction.

small-market teams having a fairer chance. His contract ranks fifth alltime in size after going 24-0 with a 1.27 earned run average for the Rakuten Golden Eagles last season.

Although it may not last for longer than three years, we can at least look forward to more acquisitions in the off-season and a new pool of talent for MLB teams to select from when building up their rosters. Tanaka is a perfect example of the kind of boost teams are now more easily able to access through the international market.

The first big signing after the new posting limit was set may have not gone to a small-market team as many had hoped would result from the change, but with more Japanese players feeling the urge to try their skills in the United States, we should be seeing some more diversified rosters throughout the MLB and maybe even a team other than the Yankees making headlines for once.

feature

8 the georgetown voice

february 6, 2014

EXACAVATING OUR PAST georgetown’s architectural heritage BY julia s. tanaka In 1894, Rev. J. Harvey Richards sat at his desk and took pen to paper. He was editing a fundraising speech he was set to give to a group of Georgetown alumni. “Professors from other institutions, seeing our immense buildings and grounds, our numerous”—here he scratched out “professors” and put “instructors” above it in spidery handwriting—“and students, do enquire, ‘What is your endowment? It must be very great!

“They are incredulous to the assertion that we can succeed in carrying on and developing so vast an institution by means of the fees of the students alone,” Richards continued writing.

Even on the eve of its centennial, Georgetown was struggling. University President Fr. Patrick Healy had travelled as far as California to attempt to raise money for the construction of Healy Hall, which ultimately cost the school about $450,000, an equivalent of around $12 million today. Despite the arduous journey, he returned with only about $55,000 and resigned as president shortly after in 1882.

Healy’s was an ambitious project meant to bolster the University’s image. As Georgetown Professor Elizabeth Prelinger writes in her essay, “From Her Spires and Steeples Gleaming,” in the book Georgetown at 200, “It was becoming clear ... that it was necessary to establish the legitimacy of Georgetown as the preeminent Catholic university in the country … Healy deliberately reoriented his building to face the city and not the river, effectively signalling Georgetown’s wish to view itself as an educational institution of national importance and altering the direction of expansion on the campus for years to come.” Healy hired the same architectural �irm that would later design the Thomas Jefferson building for the Library of Congress.

These �inancial dif�iculties are neither unusual for a university nor a thing of the past at Georgetown. With a comparatively small endowment, operating costs and expansion are in a battle for the University’s limited resources—and this is evident through the various architectural styles on campus. From Healy Hall to the designs for the Northeast Triangle dorm, Georgetown’s campus is peppered with an eclectic selection of types of buildings.

There are many reasons behind the various styles on Georgetown’s campus, but it’s been clear from the beginning that �inances and land have been major constraints on Georgetown’s ability to build and design. Now limited to the original 104-acre footprint, Georgetown has continued to try to �ind innovative ways to grow despite the constraints of the 2010 Campus Plan.

Healy Hall was designed to attract more students, as well as to increase living and academic space, but the debt incurred by the construction was overwhelming. At the time, Georgetown was a small, local liberal arts college, meant for the surrounding American Catholic community. Although the Jesuits had amassed a fair portion of land in nearby Maryland, speci�ically tobacco �ields, the violence of the American Revolution ruined them, according to John Glavin, a longtime professor of English at the University, and now the Potomac’s lovely daughter struggled to keep her head above water.

Riggs Library was only completed when banker E. Francis Riggs donated $10,000 in honor of his father, and Gaston Hall was not completed until 1909, lying as an empty space for twenty years. The construction of Healy left a massive pile of dirt at Georgetown—both literally and �iguratively. Georgetown’s debt was so

steep after construction that it could not even afford to immediately remove the mountain of dirt amassed from the hole where Healy’s foundation had been laid. The Washington Post ran the headline, “Its Centennial Pile” in 1877, in reference to Healy. In order to pay off the debt, the Jesuits sold a large portion of land north of what is now Reservoir Rd., including several acres and a villa in Tenleytown.

Part of the problem arises from the fact that Catholic donors were not generous throughout the early stages of Georgetown’s history. American Catholics were not the wealthiest community to begin with, but also lacked a culture of donating, according to Professor Emmett Curran, a prominent Georgetown historian. Therefore, Georgetown largely relied on students to pay the bills.

Well into the twentieth century, Georgetown banked on tuition hikes to stay solvent. In Nov. 1964, The Hoya reported that tuition would be raised by $200. According to then-President Edward J. Bunn, S.J., it was a “substantial operating de�icit” that led to this raise. Tuition was raised again in 1967, and again in 1969. As part of the plans for �iscal years 2014 and 2015, an additional tuition raise has been mandated in order to keep the University in the black. Georgetown continued to operate on a substantial de�icit for decades, and continues to do so today. The lack of funds makes expansion dif�icult.

Although Healy is the landmark building on campus, Georgetown’s �irst large architectural undertaking was Old North in 1797, modeled after Princeton’s Nassau Hall. “When Old North was built, it was surely one of the grandest works in Washington, after the Capitol Building,” Prelinger writes in her essay. With enrollment increasing, so did the number of

building projects, with Gervase, an in�irmary at the time, and Mulledy being constructed shortly thereafter.

Georgetown’s small size may be an explanation for the University’s main focus on functionality in its buildings. “I would say that Georgetown’s building is almost entirely functional, and at times aesthetics enters into that. … We’ve got …. much too small a footprint for a university, so we’ve got to build to make the maximum use of the space,” Glavin said. The number of multi-functional buildings—the Leavey Center and White Gravenor, for instance—suggests that Georgetown’s designs have been largely dependent on access to capital, often compromising aesthetics in order to construct new buildings.

“We’ve long had a tension between what our vision might be and our ability to actually make things happen, so we compromise,” O’Neill said.

“Georgetown has had to settle for whatever was cheapest and most expedient, valuing function over appearance, with too little consideration for the fact that, in principle, it was building for posterity,” Prelinger writes. This issue was especially evident once the University began to accept federal funding. The Intercultural Center, for instance, was built with federal funds on the condition that Georgetown would partake in an experiment: the ICC’s roof would be covered in photovoltaic cells. It was the world’s largest solar roof at the time.

There was a similar case with the construction of New South. According to the book Georgetown University

by Paul O’Neill (COL ‘86), after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the federal government decided to invest in higher education to try be competitive in the space race. Georgetown was granted funds for a new dormitory

georgetownvoice.com on the stipulation that it be a “no frills” building. The aesthetics of certain buildings are clearly informed by the source of funding. “Federal Loans Bolster Deteriorating Finances,” a headline from The Hoya read in Dec. 1967.

The largest question on many student’s minds when it comes to aesthetics, however, is Lauinger Library. The dark concrete stands out in stark contrast to the three other buildings surrounding the lawns on the front of campus—Healy, Copley, and White Gravenor, each with its stone façade and sweeping steps.

While the original plan was to complete an aesthetically cohesive quadrangle, due to limited funding, the designs for Lau had to be modified.

“Fr. [Coleman] Nevil’s vision for greater Georgetown, to have a quadrangle … never got finished because we ran out of money,” O’Neill said.

According to Glavin, the original design for Lau was meant to be entirely different. Healy Lawn was to extend into the third floor, which would be framed with slender columns with a view of the Potomac, symbolizing the connection between the school and the city. “It was to be clad in the same stone as Healy,” Glavin said. There remains a tenuous connection between the two buildings—Lau, especially from the south and the west, is a striking, Brutalist rendition of Healy, and the concrete of the exterior was mixed with stones from the same quarry as the stones Healy was built from.

The library cost $6.6 million to build. This expense, along with a spate of other construction projects, meant that there had to be an increase in revenue—a major determinant in the admission of women to the College in 1969, according to Susan Poulson (GRAD ‘90) in Going Coed: Women’s Experiences in Formerly Men’s Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000.

Dahlgren Chapel, on the other hand, was the �irst building to be entirely funded by outside sources. John and Elizabeth Dahlgren, his wife, donated the funds to build the chapel in memory of their infant son who died of pneumonia, according to O’Neill’s book. Elizabeth Dahlgren personally oversaw the creation of the stained glass panels, and the chapel was consecrated in June of 1893.

Dahlgren marked a new era of philanthropic projects on Georgetown’s campus, including Ryan Hall, which was also built using external funds.

Georgetown has seen a steady increase in philanthropic funding for architectural projects in recent years.

The Hariri Building, for instance, was

feature helped to completion by a gift of $20 million from Lebanese Prime Minister and Georgetown alum Saad R. Hariri, in honor of his father. “It was very thoughtfully planned,” O’Neill said of Hariri. “When I �irst came to Georgetown, barely any buildings were named, or they were named after Jesuits. Now we have Hariri, and Regents.”

The Southwest Quadrangle was a modern project that was funded largely by the University.

“The development of the Southwest Quadrangle has been very much an architectural project,” Glavin said.

The Southwest Quad was projected

the georgetown voice 9

“If you think about all the entities, you’ve got the administration that is interested in providing a quality learning and living experience, and then how do you do that within the resources that we have. Then you got the students who want a particular type of building to serve their needs, then you have the city, the Old Georgetown Board … so it’s really a challenge to get all of the stakeholders together,” said Robin Morey, vice president for planning and facilities management. “At the end of the day, you the students are paying the bill, you are the client. So we’re trying to satisfy

JOSHUA RAFTIS

to cost $168.5 million, but ended up costing $188 million. It was largely financed by a $340 million bond sale in January 2001, after undergoing scrutiny by the Zoning Commission.

“We hired architects that would hopefully provide us with a final design for a complex of buildings that would feel, when they were completed, as though they had always been a present on Georgetown’s campus,” Alan Brangman, former head architect of the university, wrote in an email to the Voice.

Brangman now sits on the Old Georgetown Board, one of many administrative hurdles Georgetown has to jump in order to even break ground on new projects. The Northeast Triangle project in particular has crystallized many of the warring interests at play when a new project arises.

all the stakeholders and ultimately provide a quality place for you.”

Alan Brangman disagrees that campus is as wildly disparate as it may appear at first glance. “There are some general aspects to the material selection for the buildings in the last 50 years that helps to neat the architecture of GU together. All the buildings interior to the campus with the exception of the Hariri building are red brick. That decision was a conscience one which was a standard. ... And it still adhered to the precedent that was set by Healy, Copley, and White-Gravenor Halls. ... Stone front facade with a brick rear facade,” he wrote in an email to the Voice.

The eclectic architecture is not necessarily a negative aspect of campus. “There [are] lots of different schools with different architecture.

If you go to a Virginia Tech they’re

all the same exact building. Other campuses try to reflect the nature of the time, so I think Georgetown has been more of that,” said Morey.

From Healy Hall onward, Georgetown’s architecture has subtly articulated a public image. Morey, for instance, explained a clear design vision for the Northeast Triangle dorm.

“When you look at the way the Northeast Triangle reads, the first floor is very transparent and that means ‘come on in,’ we want collaboration. ...

Then you go above that and it’s more solid, which means it reads as private, natural private residence space, So we want to be able to have the buildings read correctly,” he said. “If we could make a certain standard, and then go back and renovate our older buildings in the future to that kind of standard where the students have more quality collaboration space, that’s what we’re trying to project.”

The Master Planning effort is the next phase in Georgetown’s architectural development and curating an image of Georgetown.

With the Northeast Triangle in development and the Healey Family Center and new athletics facility under construction, it is a period of architectural transition for the University. “This is a moment in which there is a considerable amount of thought about the future,” Glavin said. “We’re also having to make a lot of make-do decisions because of the pressure on us to make facilities for our students and our programs.”

O’Neill agrees with this sentiment. “We want our physical campus to reflect our place among the very best institutions of higher education,” he said.

“I believe that one of GU’s public images is that of a global leading institution. I believe that that reality is rooted in the classic architectural image that Georgetown presents to the world on Healy and Copley Lawn with its classic buildings as well as with the state-of-the-facilities that have been erected in the heart of the campus,” Brangman wrote.

Of course, Georgetown still has to be resourceful, considering its comparatively small endowment. Despite the successful capital campaign, Georgetown’s endowment hardly competes with those of Harvard or Yale. “I think that Georgetown is still finding creative ways to use and reuse assets to best meet its current programmatic needs,” Brangman wrote.

“Speaking as an alum,” O’Neill said, “I can’t help but think about how much I loved the campus. It’s not the most cohesive, sure, but I loved it.”

leisure

10 the georgetown voice

february 6, 2014

M&B’s new production gives justice to Pulitzer-winning play

by Elizabeth Baker Proof was chosen as Mask & Bauble’s winter production for their 162nd season. As a play that ventures into the human balance of intellectual and social life, Proof is relatable for students all over the world.

Written in 2000, David Auburn’s Proof addresses key issues such as family conflict and mental illness, all whirling around the world of mathematics.

When Robert, a once prolific mathematical genius, played

by T. Chase Meacham (COL ’14), passes away from heart failure, his daughter and caregiver, Catherine, played by Katie Mitchell (COL ’15), is left wondering what to do next.

Catherine had been taking care of her father for over five years. Despite exhibiting signs of genius herself, she was forced to stay home to look after her father after he developed a very serious mental illness.

Realizing she has inherited her gift from her father, Catherine fears she may inherit his illness, too.

DAYANA MORALES GOMEZ

“I just don’t know what to do with all of these composition notebooks!”

Goldfinch soars beautifully

On Oct. 12, 1654, the munitions factory in Delft exploded. More than a quarter of the city was destroyed and there were countless victims, among them the painter Fabritius—Rembrandt’s student, Vermeer’s teacher—and all but a few of his paintings. One of the few that survived is “The Goldfinch,” a 13-by-9 inch painting of the eponymous bird, chained by its ankle to a perch.

The same bird gives its name to Donna Tartt’s latest novel, The Goldfinch. Tartt is known for her two hefty tomes, The Little Friend and The Secret History, published 10 years apart. They are all epic-like in scale and scope, but The Goldfinch focuses on a boy—Theo Decker—who has lost his mother in a terrorist attack. In a storyline reminiscent of Oliver Twist, we follow Theo’s trials and travails around the United States with the titular painting in tow.

The Goldfinch has been called Dickensian as many times as it

has pages—almost 800. But while Charles Dickens is a universally recognized great, known for his works addressing social inequalities and his caricatures of good and evil, The Goldfinch does not moralize.

It is concerned instead with the beauty to be found in an inevitably rough, dirty life—the way a grimy window can be beautiful when a shard of sunlight pierces through.

In fact, light plays an important role: the pure yellow light of the “Goldfinch” painting itself, the crass light of the neon signs on the Vegas strip, the dim glow of a first-floor Park Avenue apartment shadowed by skyscrapers and overhangs, its windows shuttered by the overhanging stone and massive striving that constitutes NYC. With chiaroscuro creativity, Tartt’s images are so sensually strong that she is painterly, herself.

This is well demonstrated here: “Sometimes, in the evenings, a damp, gritty wind blew in the windows from Park Avenue, just as

Right around the time of the funeral, Hal, one of Robert’s old students, played by Sean Craig (COL ’16), comes to the family home to look through Robert’s old notebooks. Robert had been writing compulsively for the last few years of his life and Hal and other mathematicians are now desperate to find some leftover genius in his notebooks.

As Hal and Catherine begin spending more time together, their developing friendship prompts Catherine to reveal one of her guarded secrets—only to see it backfire on account of faulty trust and unlikely probability.

Trust is one of the most intriguing themes of the play.

When Claire, played by Elly Straske (COL ’16), arrives from New York, she finds it difficult to believe her sister’s story about a mysterious Hal being in the house, at first overlooking the fact that Catherine’s called the police and then refusing to cooperate. Van Dine poses the question, “How do we decide who we trust? For Catherine, it’s based on gut instinct. But for Hal, he needs legitimate proof.”

This juxtaposition of faith and trust causes conflict between Catherine, Hal, and Claire. As Craig explains, “Hal especially spends

the play concerned with the facts.

What really matters, though, are the people behind them.”

Even though the central themes involve trust issues and hard math (especially when discussing numbers like 92,605x2^16,998+1), Proof is a heart-warming play.

The relationship between Robert and Catherine is not without complications, but it runs deep.

Although the roles change—from Robert encouraging Catherine to excel and succeed at Northwestern to Catherine’s flashback of her cradling her father’s head as his mental illness develops—it is clear that both characters care deeply about one another. “Robert loves Catherine very much, though he has a difficult time expressing it.”

Meacham said. “He wants her to succeed, to carry on his work, to overcome her own demons in a way that he was never able to live beyond his own.”

Even Claire, Catherine’s successful yet slightly type-A sister, shows she cares in her own way. Despite her controlling approach—buying Catherine new clothes and forcing her to move with her to New York—it is clear that Claire means well. “I love Claire. I really do. I know she’s made to be the bad guy in this

the rush hour traffic was thinning and the city was emptying for the night; it was rainy, trees leafing out, spring deepening into summer; and the forlorn cry of horns on the street, the dank smell of wet pavement had an electricity about it, a sense of crowds and static, lonely secretaries and fat guys with bags of carry out, everywhere the ungainly sadness of creatures pushing and struggling to live.”

In one of their workroom talks, Hobie says of Fabritius’ “Goldfinch,” “You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire. …

It’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it will never strike in any deep way at all—but a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart.”

But The Goldfinch is not bogged down by art history and the curiosities of sanding techniques for 18th century walnut chairs.

Hobie expresses the accessibility of redemptive beauty: “Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn’t be an object. It’d be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.”

In New York City, some 350 years after his death, Fabritius’ painting is hanging in a travelling exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A young Theo Decker and his lovely mother stop by the

Under the Covers

by Emilia Brahm A bi-weekly literary column But amid the struggle, Tartt’s characters grasp at beauty. Hobie, an antique furniture restorer, is the prime example. He describes with great eloquence the power that art can have to lift people up, and he demonstrates this in his kindness and empathy—Hobie takes Theo in after he is essentially orphaned and they have known each other for only scant few weeks. Theo works with Hobie in his studio imbibing his wisdom and trade.

whole situation, but if you look at her position [through] her eyes, she just wants to make sure her sister’s all right,” Straske says. “No one else is going to set Catherine on the right path.”

Each character in Proof, despite his or her extremities and unique tendencies, is easy to understand and relate to.

Both Hal and Robert are identified by their work—their achievements, their failures— and it becomes difficult for them to slow down and establish deeper relationships with others.

Claire goes out of her way to take care of her sister, admitting intellectual inferiority but showing a more mature form of love.

Catherine, meanwhile, has trouble getting friends and family to accept her as a complex person—rather than an individual who needs “help.” “When you’re defined or dismissed as something, you feel like you’re screaming and no one’s even listening to you,” Mitchell said.

“Catherine is a little crazy, but so are we all. But Cathy—and the rest of us—are stronger than we think.”

This Pulitzer Prize-winning play, with all its eccentricities— much like its characters—is already an overachiever.

Met on the way to a conference at school—Theo has gotten in trouble (again), this time for breaking into houses in the Hamptons with a friend. Theo’s mother leads him through the exhibit on the Dutch masters, detailing the backstory of each painting with a flourish, in just the manner that embarrasses a 14-year-old boy in public with his mother. She leaves him to face his sullenness alone while returning to a painting they passed earlier. A few minutes later, an explosion rocks the museum.

Theo wakes up to the debris— mangled bodies and mouthfuls of dust and canvas crushed under marble. An old man, dying, points at Fabritus’ “Goldfinch” on the wall. “’Take it with you! Go!’ His eyes were bright and wild.”

Theo avoids the bright lights of sirens and news cameras, the painting hidden under his shirt, and leaves through an employee exit. He and the “Goldfinch” are alone.

Draw Emilia like one of your French girls at ebrahm@georgetownvoice.com

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“Your phony school demeans real colleges everywhere!” — Accepted

the georgetown voice 11

The Vagina Monologues hit the spot BMDT goes to work

by Emilia Brahm In 2000, after Georgetown’s yearly production of The Vagina Monologues, Robert Swope (COL ’01) became angry. He wasn’t the first, but his article—never published by The Hoya, who subsequently fired him— was notable for its inflammatory language. He critiqued one of the monologues for “celebrating” rape and called the audience “clap-ridden sailors in a Southeast Asian strip joint.” His review soon went viral.

But his demands that the University stop supporting the production didn’t gain traction.

The Vagina Monologues, a collection of speeches about women’s dynamic relationships with their vaginas, are performed globally between Feb. 1 and Apr. 30. They were the inspiration for the V-Day movement,

addressing violence against women worldwide.

Georgetown Women’s Center and “Take Back the Night”will host this year’s performance. The club’s president, Haley Maness (NHS ’15), is participating in the production for the third year in a row. “It’s hard to get people on board with that because it’s such a heavy message,” Maness said.

“It’s nice that the University really backs this event… [by] giving us the space [and] funding for it.”

Though the acting isn’t of primary importance to the monologues, the actresses are emotive and their enthusiasm is radiant. There are two casts made up of about 24 members, each with her own level of experience. In fact, every actress that tries out for the play gets a part. Mollie Rodgers (COL ‘17), one director, said, “All of the girls who auditioned were cast ...

These lips were made for talking, and that’s just what they’ll do.

Kat easop

I’ve been amazed at how far people have come.”

The most powerful moments were those of self-discovery. One woman who hadn’t had an orgasm in years found her voice and empowerment through a Vagina Workshop.

Another hadn’t looked at her vagina since she was a young girl—and then, at 72, she decided she liked talking about her “down there.”

All of the monologues are based on interviews conducted by Eve Ensler and compiled and recalibrated for the play’s purposes. The monologues are interspersed with facts about sexual assault and genital mutilation.

Some of the facts are stark and shocking: three million women each year have their genitals mutilated. More than 200,000 American women are raped every year.

The contrast between these facts and the stories of self-discovery and assertions of empowerment featured in the monologues don’t detract from each other. Rather, they come together to call for the respect of women: the marginalized, the subjugated, the violated, the repressed, and the unsure.

The Vagina Monologues are inspiring and powerful, and ought to be seen by all—even Robert Swope.

Feb. 6-8, 8 p.m.

Feb. 9, 2 p.m.

Devine Studio Theatre

Exploring women’s role in society through dance

by Ana Smith

Women contribute to every culture, every belief-system and every era, but is there one universal trait that binds them all together? Georgetown University’s Black Movements Dance Theatre seeks to answer this question.

BMDT will open their spring season this weekend with This Woman’s Work. The show pays tribute to the strength of women by portraying the challenges they face in their everyday lives. Joined by guest artists Kevin Iega Jeff, Christopher Huggins, and Ralph Glenmore, This Woman’s Work will feature different pieces inspired and choreographed by students that illustrate the lives, conflicts, and ultimate triumphs of women.

For most of BMDT’s performers, This Woman’s Work is about more than artistic expression.

Co-Student Director Courtney Hodge’s (COL ‘14) piece, “Stronger than the Ribbon,” is a perfect example.“It’s really personal actually. My mom is a cancer survivor.” Hodge says. “[My inspiration came] from watching my mom go through her struggle, and watching her getting this potential

death sentence and being stronger than the death sentence, always fighting, always putting on a brave face.” All of the pieces are based on experiences of BMDT’s members and the women in their lives.

A member of the cast, Vivian Ojo (SFS ‘14), reflected on her experience in the production. “The entire show is just about saying to people, ‘These are the things our women have gone through, these are the thing they are going through, and this is how they are rising to the occasion.’ That’s basically what we are doing as a company as well. ... It’s a celebration of womanhood and sisterhood.”

BMDT members believe This Woman’s Work will resonate strongly with their audience because of the nature of dance as a medium of expression and communication.

Assistant Student Director and Business Manager Jaclyn Markowitz (SFS ‘14), captured this sentiment well, saying “One of our guest choreographers said ... dance is a gift from the people to the people, and I think that’s really true of our show.”

Feb. 7-8, 8 p.m.

Gonda Theatre

New Clooney film a monumental letdown

by Andrew Gutman The Monuments Men—a good ol’ American story of saving masterpieces of art from the Nazis, for the sake of life, liberty, and the American Way. It tells the story of an American’s great purpose and ambition, but unfortunately, the film as a whole ends up not being as exciting or exceptional as its subject matter.

The film follows the exploits of George Stout, played by George Clooney, an art conservator concerned about the countless works of art being looted and destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. With approval from the President, he gathers a small team—eventually known as the Monuments Men —to enter the front lines and help save any art they come across.

The film moves in a sort of episodic fashion. In one scene we’ll see one character try to convince another to help him and the team find stolen art, and then the next scene is of completely different characters encountering a lone German soldier, with little transition.

In these cases, the method of storytelling comes up lacking. As a viewer, it seems like in doubling as director, Clooney couldn’t bear to cut anything from the screenplay, even in the service of more streamlined storytelling.

Not even the all-star line up could make up for the slips.

The characters in the film lack depth, plain and simple. Even Hugh Bonneville’s Donald Jeffries, the film’s resident tragic hero, only has one substantial quality: alcoholism.

But it’s purely an informed trait. We never see him with a bottle—we only know he has done so previously.

The rest of the cast doesn’t have any more to say for themselves.

About half the major characters remain one-dimensional personalities throughout the film.

As an ensemble, however, the cast shines. For a lot of the film they’re divided into duos—Bill Murray and Bob Balaban, Jean Dujardin and John Goodman, etc.— and the pairs have uniformly good chemistry. Despite a shallow script, all the actors are given their share of clever quips, one-liners, and banter.

Many of the best scenes in the film are the ones that only require the cast to be charming. Together, they are the film’s greatest asset.

This is Clooney’s fifth feature as director, and while he’s still not living up to the promise of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck, the film is well assembled. There are a lot of fun little camera tricks and he frames a few interesting shots. The scenes themselves are well-executed and planned out, even if the film as a whole is not.

Alexandre Desplat, one of the more prolific film composers these days, puts out some good music here, recalling the more grandiose film scores of old adventure movies, a mold The Monuments Men clearly wants to imitate. Full of bright strings and military-esque percussion, it perfectly suits the mood the film wants to achieve. Possibly a minor detail, but it’s one of the stronger aspects of the movie.

Clooney wants to have it both ways—he wants his film to be a fun adventure movie with funny characters, but also a serious movie about the significance of art preservation.

“I guess it’s like Wilde said, ‘All art is quite useless.’”

The film has a lot of platitudes to offer about the importance of culture and preserving history, mostly via monologues, but they’re stuffed between jokes about Matt Damon’s French and Bill Murray being Bill Murray. It’s certainly possible for a fun movie with charming characters to hold a meaningful message—Philomena managed it—but here it feels forced.

IMDB

Monuments Men isn’t a bad film; it’s fun and never too boring, which these days is a success in and of itself.

It’s just ironic that a film about how important art is would feel so pedestrian. It never lives up to the significance it insists the story has, mostly because it’s busy trying to make audiences laugh. It is a film that promises weight but delivers mostly fluff—not so monumental, in the end.

leisure

12 the georgetown voice

february 6, 2014

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

Dum Dum Girls, Too True, Sub Pop Records Imagine the soundtrack to a neonoir thriller set at an upscale fashion show. Chances are you’ve thought of something pretty close to the Dum Dum Girls’ new album Too True. It’s at once glam-and-gloom, classic Blondie back from the grave, with frontwoman Dee Dee giving vivacious voice to palpable heartache.

Dropping into a lower register than previous releases, in the first track, “Cult of Love,” Dee Dee makes it clear that this is a serious endeavor with some banal truisms that pepper the album. They are present in lines like, “There is such bliss when you’ve no plan” in the track “Evil Blooms.”

But Dee Dee infuses her lyrics with such gravitas that she manages to elevate the inane to the insightful.

And, despite the presence of these poppy clichés throughout Too True, Dee Dee also shows her chops as a lyricist. With lines like “Every moon is atrocious / Every sun bitter / Sharp love has swollen me up,” Dee Dee paints us a powerful picture. These words come from “Rimbaud Eyes,” an allusion to the French poet.

Raunchy reverb is present on most tracks in Too True, and it is highly effective. “In The Wake Of You” features highly danceable distortion.

It’s a perfect track to get you out of those bad date doldrums. The album features a number of tracks that are both hazy and upbeat, especially “Lost Boys and Girls Club,” which has gotten a lot of attention throughout the blogosphere over the past few months, and for good reason. With a heavy kick drum and an ethereal pedal strum, it’s a lot like Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive”: heavy and dark and angsty and oh-so-satisfying—particularly for anyone who’s just been dumped.

Though most of Too True is compelling, some tracks, like “Under These Hands” and “Are You Okay?” get trapped in the haze.

Their dreamy synth and ever-present reverb feels lazy, like filler for what should have been an EP (like most of the Dum Dum Girls’

Surviving Montezuma’s revenge

Flu season is upon us at Georgetown. As your classmates and friends start coughing and missing class, you’re either smugly smiling about your responsible decision to get a flu shot or hoarding EmergenC packets while donning a face mask.

Besides being a frustrating experience in its own right, an unexpected illness can throw a dagger in a trip’s itinerary. Instead of strolling aimlessly through the Louvre or haggling for souvenirs at the bazaar, you have to spend your time struggling through body-related vocabulary at the pharmacy or—worse yet—lying on a crummy hostel mattress waiting to feel better.

Feeling sick abroad might not be ideal, but it places you in a context that you otherwise would never experience. Conceptions of human health and medical systems vary dramatically from country to country and across generations. You can read theoretical works about medical anthropology, but it’s also in-

credibly valuable to experience for yourself how another culture understands health and wellbeing.

Beliefs about the causes of poor health differ depending on where you’re traveling.

I was in Russia—exhausted like never before. Without a bench in sight, I decided to take a seat on the bare ground. Immediately, everyone around told me to stand back up.

According to the locals, my ovaries were going to freeze.

I’ve laughed with friends about this. But even with my American upbringing, some beliefs have made their way into my own conception of health and illness.

While abroad in Turkey, I was initially confused when our program adviser scolded the students for walking around the house without socks. When one student fell ill with a serious stomach problem, the program director’s response was the same: “No wonder you’re sick, your feet are bare!”

previous releases) rather than a full-length album. “Trouble Is My Name,” though thematically unifying, is, in this same vein, a boring end to the album. Rather than a satisfying caesura, its fade-out ending is like a half-finished sentence. Dee Dee declares “I had a vision” multiple times in the track, reaffirming the Dum Dum Girls as definitional dream pop. But, too often Too True gets stuck in its own dreamy ether, despite some truly artistic tracks.

Voice’s Choices: “Lost Boys and Girls Club,” “Rimbaud Eyes” —Sam Kleinman

The Gaslight Anthem, The B-sides, SideOneDummy Records The Gaslight Anthem’s The B-Sides is like the sand you scoured For us American students, the lack of socks never occurred to be a realistic cause of stomach viruses.

Eventually, we learned to go with the cultural flow, and wearing knitted socks became a standard sartorial choice in the apartment building. Even after having been back at Georgetown for over a year, I still feel weird walking in my house without socks.

Day Tripper

by Colleen Wood A bi-weekly column about travel Self-medication is an acceptable way of handling illness in the U.S. If you’re sick, you pop a Tylenol.

If you find yourself feeling sick abroad, though, you have an opportunity to learn alternate methods for alleviating illness.

My friend Greg spent a year after high school in Russia’s far east.

When I asked him to share any remedies he came across, I expected a short list: vodka.

as a child for cool-looking rocks that occasionally cut you with a shard of sea glass instead. It holds little gems worth a listen. However, just like the gems are left behind at the end of a day at the beach, this album is ultimately of little consequence.

As evident in its aptly named title, The B-Sides serves as a compilation of live tracks, acoustic versions, covers, and unused studio cuts recorded by the band between 2008 and 2011.

The album starts off strong with “She Loves You.” Originally released on the 2010 album American Slang, this track is a sappy love song. In classic Gaslight Anthem fashion, lead singer Brian Fallon’s raw and emotionally shattering vocal chords give voice to emotions that are powerful yet vague when put into words.

Several of the acoustic covers that comprise the majority of the album cannot help but fall short of its strong start and the masterful cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice.”

Particularly insignificant is the third track of the compilation, a live cover of Pearl Jam’s “State of Love and Trust,” which adds little more to the original other than Fallon’s distinct sound at the foreground.

To my surprise, he showed me photographs of garlic. At the first onset of flu-like symptoms, his host parents applied garlic directly to his face… generously. For an extra measure of security, they placed several cloves of garlic on a plate next to his bed at night. Whether the garlic helped Greg in the long run is unclear, but the smell of garlic lingered for several weeks after he had returned to good health.

Sometimes home remedies just won’t suffice, though, and a visit with a doctor is in order.

Insurance logistics aside, the most difficult barrier for solid hospital care is linguistic. If you are traveling alone and need a doctor’s attention, find a native speaker immediately.

Unfortuantely, it’s not always an option to rely on a bilingual friend to help you out. While spending the weekend with a lovely family in northern Azerbaijan, I came down with an illness that required a doctor to come visit. I don’t speak a word of Azerbaijani so I couldn’t tell the

The album’s other acoustic renditions of past releases, such as “The ’59 Sound” and “Boxer” are small treats for diehard fans. The stripped-down guitar and largely vocal nature of these tracks bring out the emotionally heavy lyrics that are often convoluted and overlooked in the original punk rock versions. However, the sheer number of these acoustic versions, and how they are ordered within the album, ultimately make for a lack of variety and a shameful blending of the songs. It all comes together in one indistinguishable mess.

Avid fans of The Gaslight Anthem are sure to find The B-Sides bittersweet. At its best, this compilation serves as a nice snapshot of the band at a particular time and style. At its worst, it is easy to look at this compilation as an obvious effort of SideOneDummy Records to squeeze a little money out of the band’s past successes. When all is said and done, The B-Sides fails to get that coveted A. Voice’s Choices: “She Loves You,” “Tumbling Dice” —Simone Wahnschafft doctor my symptoms directly. My friend did not understand my English, and I absentmindedly agreed to whatever I symptoms were described to me in Azerbaijani.

Somehow, my doctor delivered a diagnosis: drink a spoonful of salt water for an hour. The idea of a prescription probably helped ease my stomach ache more than the medicine itself, but weeks later, I reflected on the experience as a victory.

No one enjoys being sick. Even at Georgetown, a case of the flu or strep throat is rarely a fun experience. You post up in your bed for three days and eat nothing but soup.

If you find yourself feeling queasy while traveling, remember that there’s something to be learned from the experience. Whether it’s the phrase for “low blood pressure” or a useful remedy you can bring back home, it just goes to show that a perfectly healthy trip is not the only way to have a fulfilling experience.

Pop some pills with Colleen at cwood@georgetownvoice.com

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the georgetown voice 13

— Dylan Cutler

voices

14 the georgetown voice

february 6, 2014

Land of the free, home of political correctness: Where is free speech?

by Noah Buyon We’re allowed to say what we want. The flip side of this most unalienable of rights is that we’re also entitled to get offended by anything we want. And, it just so happens that we exercise this entitlement often. Why? Because “words will never harm me” is the most horrible lie we’re all told as children.

Words hurt—sometimes worse than gunshot wounds or the latest Hoya loss. Words jostle our fragile human sensibilities, leaving us with indelible scars from the verbal wars we wage with one another.

Society has long since acknowledged this awful truth. To counter it, without broaching the most holy protections of the first amendment, we as a whole have created a vast network of catch-all’s, circumlocutions, and euphemisms called political correctness, which lets us talk about the tricky things in life without offending those around us. Political correctness doesn’t, at least insofar as I understand it, extend to obscenities, slurs, and the like. There’s no sensitive alterna-

tive to, say, the n-word, because the word itself is only used for the express purpose to offend. (Unless, of course, you’re Lil Wayne and you can’t rhyme anything else.) What political correctness is meant to do, rather, is keep us away from the inadvertent offensiveness of some of the more indelicate expressions of the English language.

This endeavor, then, was born of noble intentions. But when taken too far, as it often is on this very campus, political correctness poses a grave intellectual danger.

Libertarians and Leftists alike will tell you that political correctness is George Orwell’s newspeak realized—a successor to unadulterated language that limits individual expression for the ostensible reason of curbing discrimination.

Frankly, comparing modern political correctness to 1984 is a little extreme, but the fact remains that our collective hypersensitivity to anything and everything that might be construed as offensive creates a culture of apprehension and awkwardness instead of empathy, as was intended.

Indeed, political correctness has morphed into an ungainly, burdensome beast. It’s left us with a knee-jerk assumption of malice or ignorance whenever someone opts for “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” This sorry state of affairs is not just unhealthy—it’s also not working.

A few months ago, I found myself in the cramped Voice office in the wee hours of the morning, nearly tearing my hair out as my editors and I sought to affix a headline to a mental health feature. Some of us wanted to explore an “unseen illness” motif, but others among us raised concerns that such a title would be ableist (read: discriminatory to the blind, er, visually impaired).

So what did we settle on? “Not Crazy, A Little Unwell” – a Matchbox 20 reference, which, while awesome in it’s own right, represents a significant departure from what we were really trying to say: that the Georgetown community is blind to some of the realities of mental illness.

My experience with political correctness, mild as it may be, is a solitary drop in the bucket. A fur-

ther instance of this hypersensitivity rearing its swollen head can be seen in a recent exchange between GU Fossil Free and the Black Student Alliance, in which the latter was offended by the former’s “cultural appropriation” of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” refrain.

What we have, then, is a trend, wherein a desire to make everybody happy inhibits expression and expediency. Your professor has to say “African-Americans” instead of “blacks” even though he or she wants to get at the racially-charged heart of identity politics. I’m obligated to write “he or she,” or even some Spivak pronoun like “xe” that’s totally not a real word and makes E. B. White turn over in his grave, when all I want to do is preserve the flow of my little paragraph.

The proponent of political correctness will rightfully respond that I seem to be privileging expression and expedience over an important linguistic endeavor to make the world a more just place. I guess I am. Does that make me an insensitive person? Nope.

Individual expression—sometimes coarse but always uncontained—is foundational to liberty and democracy. Language, in all its myriad forms, has an infinite capacity to offend. “Vertically challenged” will inevitably become the “dwarf” or “midget” of its day—the kind of thing that will make your grandchildren wince just like you do when Grandpa Joe the WWII vet tosses around words like “chink” and “jap.”

The road to complete equality or neutrality of language is paved with good intentions, but it’s destined never to be completed because words are more powerful and more deadly than any stick or stone ever was. We have to shoulder this admittedly scary burden, as it’s the only thing keeping our speech from going the way of unlimited breadsticks at Olive Garden.

Noah Buyon is a freshman in the College. This raven-haired sage is a modern day Gaucho, looking to find love in a hopeless place.

Chris Christie is Richard Sherman, just with worse results

by Roey Hadar Loud, boisterous, unfiltered.

These words can provide an accurate description of both Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie spent four years brashly and occasionally profanely yelling at political opponents, reporters, and anyone else who dared to offend him and was rewarded by being considered a political game changer who

could have serious presidential potential. Richard Sherman unleashed a 15 second tirade free of any profanity and was dismissed by the media and the public as an arrogant “thug.” Sherman, though, recently won a Super Bowl (hosted, interestingly enough, in New Jersey) while Christie is about to take a few hard political hits after the most recent revelations in his “Bridge-gate” scandal.

You could make the argument that the differing reactions could

PAM SHU AND LEILA LEBRETON

The Boss and the Best in the League, two mouths with the same loud voice.

be rooted in race, with Christie’s no-filter attitude being warmly received because he is white and Sherman’s unabashed confidence dismissed because he is black. This argument is true to a certain extent, but the point is that Christie is held to a different standard. This paradigm, however, is beginning to shift because of “Bridge-gate.”

The sort of vindictive, spiteful retribution that could be expected from Christie’s aggressive leadership style is slowly emerging from the woodwork. One New Jersey public servant after another has come out with claims of the Governor’s office engaging in petty political plays, ranging from tying hurricane relief funds to the approval of a development project operated by a Christie comrade or cancelling meetings with a mayor who chose not to endorse the Governor. Even the bridge lane closures can potentially be tied to the State Senate’s refusal to confirm a Christie appointee to the state Supreme Court. With this past Friday’s revelation from Christie friend and Port Authority appointee David Wildstein that Christie likely knew about the bridge closures, these petty moves appear to be increasingly likely.

The evidence for Christie’s political spite can also be seen in his

frequent public outbursts, many of which his office would capture on video and place on YouTube to boost his anti-establishment persona. Christie has frequently turned to insulting his enemies, calling them names like “numbnuts” and an “arrogant SOB.” He also suggested that people “please take out the bat” on the Democratic State Senate Majority Leader, who also happens to be a 78- year-old woman. Christie even threatened to drop an F-bomb at the 2012 Republican National Convention if the organizers decided to cut a favorable video that was played before his keynote speech. If Christie was directly involved in ordering the “traffic problems in Fort Lee” referred to in the emails sent from Christie’s advisor to the Governor’s friend at the Port Authority, what he called his enemies in those emails is bound to be worse.

Christie may have been “the best in the game” for a while, but his ability to curry political favor and gain momentum through brashness and intimidation is fading. He can still talk the talk, but with these scandals overwhelming him, it is getting increasingly harder for him to control the story like he has previously done so well. Richard Sherman, meanwhile, has a reason to dismiss

his opponents as “sorry” and has earned the right to call himself “the best in the game” because he is, without a doubt, one of the best players at his position and one of the best players on the best defense in the NFL. Both Sherman and Christie are exciting to watch on and off their fields of play because of their actions and their trash talk, but Christie cannot move as well politically in light of this scandal. Richard Sherman has all the flexibility he can get because of his skill.

Even before Sherman and the Seahawks claimed the Lombardi Trophy, Sherman had already won because of his rise to fame. Alternatively, Christie has lost because of his scandal. Sherman is cruising into the offseason with a ring and Christie is stuck in a proverbial traffic jam. With the Super Bowl in New Jersey last Sunday, both of them will surely be stuck in at least some traffic on the George Washington Bridge in the days and weeks ahead.

Roey Hadar is a freshman in the SFS. He has brought himself over from the Dark Side and will be absolving himself of his former Hoya loyalties at the next production night.

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the georgetown voice 15

No better time for Obama to draw the line with Saudi Arabia

by Matthew Weinmann President Obama is reportedly planning a fence-mending trip to Saudi Arabia, but if he does go to Riyadh it should be to draw some lines in the sand and ask the Saudis which side they stand on. The Saudis are against diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program, maintain an abysmal human rights record, and are critical supporters for the reemerging army-dictatorship in Egypt. As the entire region convulses, Obama should not be trying to double down on old relationships but, instead, should be

defining the United States’s vision for a modern Middle East.

First, Obama should tell the monarchy to stop lobbying against a nuclear deal with Iran and to stop threatening to launch their own program. The current deal went into effect on January 20th. This is creating an opportunity for a more comprehensive and lasting agreement to be negotiated over the next six months.

Iran has agreed to stop or reverse progress across its entire program in exchange for access to about $7 billion of frozen assets overseas.

The Saudis oppose the agreement, fearing an era of detente

LEILA LEBRETON

President Obama will have to curb his camel-riding to make time for Saudi leaders.

Financial aid stays within gates

Every year, Georgetown students organize their housing options for the upcoming school year, and, every year, Georgetown housing, through the intellectual miracle that is the points system, sets our fate for the next year. This process is streamlined and everything turns out fine if you prepared beforehand. It’s one of the only systems that seems equally fair to everyone—unless you’re a student on financial aid.

My friend and I found ourselves in this same boat at the beginning of the school year. We snagged our groups’ members and tried to arrange it so that we would get the most housing points possible, even though we have the least points as rising seniors. We spent

time agonizing over the possibility of not having on-campus housing next year and speculated over how many after-school jobs we could tack on to the ones we already have and by how much we could curtail our spending. “Maybe I could cut a meal out a day, I should lose weight anyway,” and “If I don’t take a lab then I’ll save $125, that’s utilities for a month,” we rationalized. We didn’t even tell our parents that we might not get on-campus housing the next year because we didn’t want to stress them out. And, we looked around at our more blessed colleagues enthusiastically signing leases while we fought for our educational dreams and the grades to keep the aid coming.

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will set in between the US and Iran after 34 years of generally hostile relations. During that time Saudi Arabia has been the United States’ indispensable regional ally along with Israel. It would suit the Saudis if negotiations fail and another fire-breathing conservative wins the next Iranian election, driving Iran back into diplomatic isolation.

But it is now in the United States’ best interest to reach a final deal with Iran, with the alternative being an almost certain conservative backlash in Iran and possibly a push for a nuclear weapon.

Second, across the Gulf, human rights are routinely violated, and Saudi Arabia is no exception. Saudi women are not considered equal to men. Saudi law requires a male guardian’s permission to travel, conduct business, and to receive certain medical procedures. There is also the infamous ban on women driving. Migrant workers are abused by the country’s sponsorship system, in which employers routinely confiscate passports and withhold pay in a form of modern slavery. Several political activists, especially those with ties to international rights organizations, have been arrested, and some will be in jail for as long as 10 years.

Obama’s soaring rhetoric of freedom in the Middle East never made it to the Gulf. Surely it will not mean the end of the Saudi monarchy if women are allowed behind the wheel, if foreign workers can choose to leave the country, and if dissidents are allowed peaceful organization. The United States’ efforts to promote democratic institutions, tolerance, and pluralism across the region are undercut when one of the largest regional actors has none of these elements. The Saudi monarchy is an anachronism to say the least, and Obama must pressure the Saudis to respect basic freedoms and human rights if they are to be a leader in a modern Middle East.

Third, after the Egyptian army deposed Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah was the first foreign leader to welcome Morsi’s ouster. He quickly pledged $5 billion in aid.

Since then the monarchy has only increased support for the Egyptian military.

While the Muslim Brotherhood government under Morsi could have been more inclusive, the United States should still be doing more to prevent Egypt from sliding back 50 years into another military dictatorship. One

In 2009, 55 percent of Georgetown students received financial aid and 41 percent of undergraduates received scholarships funded

by Georgetown. In many of these cases, students rely on scholarships, loans, and their independent jobs to help pay for parts or all of their schooling. They or their parents do not have the money in the bank to pay everything upfront or in in-

pocket. The student aid packages provided at enrollment does not cover off-campus housing. Though the FAFSA form provides a section to explain any other circumstances, like extra expenses, you would like them to consider, these requests rarely result in tangible adjustments to your aid package.

So, these students take on extra jobs and set a tighter budget. And, if they are lucky, they can scrape enough together for off-campus housing. But, their situation is still more precarious than it would have been if they had received on-campus housing. The issue begins and ends with the source of the money, not necessarily the price, even though some apartments are more expensive than campus housing, and, if Georgetown Housing has other options, they aren’t widely publicized to these students.

Everyone knows Georgetown Housing is trying to find other residential housing options, and has found some in the past. I’m not saying it would be fair for these students to have priority for the on-campus housing spots, but it’s

Carrying On

by Ana Smith A rotating column by senior Voice staffers

stallments by Georgetown’s deadline. This arrangement is fine, loans will be repaid, and scholarships are greatly appreciated.

But, trouble comes when students on financial aid don’t receive on-campus housing. These students, who formerly relied on their housing costs being covered in the same bill as the rest of their college, now have to find an alternate means of immediately paying for more of their college experience out-of-

of the United States’ ostensible allies in the region shouldn’t be committing massive amounts of aid to that emerging dictatorship. Obama needs to act as the ally of all the Egyptian people when he is in Riyadh.

Saudi’s opposition to the nuclear deal, its support for Egypt, and its suppression of any domestic opposition can ultimately be understood in the context of its rivalry with Iran for regional hegemony.

This contest is formed along the Sunni-Shia sectarian divide and is destroying countries like Syria and Iraq from the inside out. No one is going to win in this contest as countries fall apart and borders are ultimately redrawn.

Obama should use this trip to Riyadh to start untangling the United States from the Saudi-led Sunni side so that it will be in a more neutral position to help put the region back together again. If he does not take a firm stance toward the Saudis, the kingdom will continue to play a major role in holding the entire region back from a peaceful future.

Matthew Weinmann is a junior in the SFS. He has decided to escape from the Voice office in favor of a foreign land, making time for his hot cocoa addiction.

also not fair for them to to be placed in a precarious position with broken promises just because their parents don’t both have six-figure salaries or because they live independently.

Housing’s recent progress in establishing more on-campus options makes the future look brighter, but there are students in this position right now. So, perhaps Housing should make intermediate housing priorities for these students until they renovate old buildings or build new dorms.

You could tell me to “be responsible, earn more money,” but the truth is, most Georgetown students didn’t earn what they have—their parents did. It’s not a product of their sweat, it’s their parents’ life rewards. Technically, all Georgetown students stand on the same ground.

So then, why does Georgetown ignore what its insufficiencies do to students on financial aid? Housing needs to take a step back from looking at the bigger picture and find immediate salves for the here and now. New dorms will be great when they materialize. But, what about the rising seniors right now?