The Georgetown Voice, 12/06/2019

D E C E M B E R 6 , 2019

“IT’S HEARTBREAKING”:

AN ACADEMIC FRAMEWORK TO ANALYZE TITLE IX

By Inès de Miranda & Sarah Watson CATHOLIC WOMEN SEEK PLACE IN PRIESTHOOD

By Ryan Remmel & Sarah Watson

TO CLOSE AMID FINANCIAL TROUBLE

BY JOHN WOOLLEY

Contents

December 6, 2019 Volume 52 | Issue 8

4

Celebrating 50 Years

editorials

IMPEACH

Editor-In-Chief Noah Telerski Managing Editor Katherine Randolph

Defend DACA, but Aim for Reform

5

carrying on

Problems at Home Don’t Stay at Home CHEYENNE MARTIN

6

news

Executive Editor Features Editor News Editor Assistant News Editors

10

opinion

cover story

Finding a Voice in America NURSENA OKTEM

7

voices

The Hidden Cost of E-Scooters

12

14

leisure

15

Hail Mary: Catholic Women Seek Place in Priesthood

Best of 2019: Albums

Best of 2019: Movies

VOICE STAFF

VOICE STAFF

feature

leisure

RYAN REMMEL & SARAH WATSON

AMANDA CHU

8

Executive Editor Voices Editor Assistant Voices Editor Editorial Board Chair Editorial Board

“It’s heartbreaking” Newseum to Close Amid Financial Trouble JOHN WOOLLEY

voices

Caroline Hamilton Annemarie Cuccia Roman Peregrino Darren Jian, Ryan Remmel, Sarah Watson

Leina Hsu Amanda Chu Paul James, Max Zhang Inès de Miranda Sienna Brancato, Delaney Corcoran, Annemarie Cuccia, Inès de Miranda, Lizz Pankova, Julia Pinney, Noah Telerski, Jack Townsend

leisure

Executive Editor Juliana Vaccaro De Souza Leisure Editor Skyler Coffey Assistant Editors Emma Chuck, Anna Pogrebivsky, Abby Webster Halftime Editor John Woolley Assistant Halftime Editors Lucy Cook, Chetan Dokku, Samantha Tritt

sports

Executive Editor Sports Editor Assistant Editors Halftime Editor Assistant Halftime Editors

Will Shanahan Tristan Lee Nathan Chen, Jake Gilstrap Ethan Cantrell Arshan Goudarzi

design

Josh Klein Insha Momin, Cade Shore Sean Ye Allison DeRose, Alex Giorno, Neha Malik Staff Designers Marie Luca, Ally West, Amy Zhou

Executive Editor Spread Editors Cover Editor Assistant Design Editors

↑

copy

feature

By Students, for Students: an Academic Framework to Analyze Title IX INÈS DE MIRANDA & SARAH WATSON

““You name the field and there are women. We are everywhere. And we’re not going back to the kitchen in our slippers and our aprons. We’re just not.” PG. 12

The opinions expressed in The Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty, or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Columns, advertisements, cartoons, and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of The Georgetown Voice. The university subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. All materials copyright The Georgetown Voice, unless otherwise indicated.

contact us

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photo by john woolley

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

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

Copy Chief Sophie Stewart Assistant Copy Editors Maya Knepp, Julia Rahimzadeh Editors Mya Allen, Christopher Boose, Jennifer Kret, Stephanie Leow, Moira Phan, Madison Scully, Cindy Strizak, Maya Tenzer, Kristin Turner, Rachel Weinman

multimedia

Executive Editor Podcast Editor Assistant Podcast Editor Photo Editor

Sarema Shorr Panna Gattyan Anna Sofia Neil John Picker

online

on the cover

Executive Editor Cam Smith Social Media Editor Eli Lefcowitz

business

General Manager Maggie Grubert Assistant Manager of Alice Gao Alumni Outreach

support

“Newseum” SEAN YE & JACOB BILICH

Associate Editors Tim Adami, Delaney Corcoran, Olivia Stevens Contributing Editors Sienna Brancato, Rachel Cohen, Dajour Evans, Brynn Furey, Emily Jaster, Julia Pinney, Lizz Pankova, Jack Townsend Staff Writers Nathan Barber, Maya Cassady, Jason Cuomo, Steven Frost, Steven Kingkiner, Lily Kissinger, Jaden Kielty, Bella McGlore, Orly Salik, Anna Savo-Matthews, Katie Woodhouse

Page 3

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

→ HALFTIME LEISURE

→ GOSSIP RAT

Best of the Decade

Gossip Rat here, your one and only source into life as a hot person.

As the decade comes to a close, Halftime is celebrating by taking a look back at the best the 2010s had to offer. Check out the website for some of our favorite shows, albums, and movies from the past ten years. Find us on georgetownvoice.com for daily leisurely content and more!

No gossip today, just a statement: I am obsessed with hot people. I literally stay up till the crack of dawn just staring at their faces, unable to fall asleep until I’ve gotten my daily fix of their beauty. The progression of my obsession is painfully emotional and traumatic. The first stage requires that I fall in love with them. Just a simple glance in their direction and I become entranced by their visage, a feeling which then turns to envy. “Why are they hotter than me?”

“Why am I so ugly?” “Why won’t Linda pay for my much-needed nose job; I only broke it five times…” I start to spend all my time obsessing over how perfect hot people are and how gross I am. Like yeah, I could shower and shave and wash my clothes and brush my teeth and generally take care of myself, but I could also not do those things. This brings us to the last phase—a fierce motivation to become hot. I use this time to spend all my money on new clothes that completely innovate my style (though there are certainly other avenues by which this can be experienced). In a strange way, I guess we should be thanking hot people. They push us to be better versions of ourselves—wasting our time and money to achieve an ideal of worth certainly tangible in everyday society. *written by a hot person

afternoon tea by egan barnitt; best of decade by john woolley; lacroix rat by tim adami; soccer photo by john picker

xoxo Gossip Rat

→ SPORTS

→ AFTERNOON TEA REPORTS

Photo of the Week

“Your GPA is not worth your sanity. Get some sleep pals ... and that’s the tea.

LISTEN TO THE AFTERNOON TEA PODCAST AT GEORGETOWNVOICE.COM Decisive wins over Pittsburgh and Louisville lift Men’s Soccer into the NCAA Quarterfinals vs. #6 Washington on Saturday, Dec. 7.

→ OVERHEARD AT GEORGETOWN

“They didn’t tell me it was $17 a glass!”

→ PLAYLIST

Halftime’s Holly Jolly Holiday Playlist 1. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) Mariah Carey 2. Santa Tell Me Ariana Grande 3. Ribbons and Bows Kacey Musgraves 4. Santa’s Coming for Us Sia 5. Dick In A Box The Lonely Island and Justin Timberlake 6. Shake Up Christmas Train 7. Emo Revival Christmas 2014 Chris Farren 8. Mistletoe Justin Bieber 9. Winter Things Ariana Grande 10. All I Want for Christmas Is You Mariah Carey

DECEMBER 6, 2019

3

EDITORIALS

IMPEACH

P

resident Donald Trump must be impeached.

Trump engaged in a months-long plot to coerce the new President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, into announcing two politically motivated investigations: one into the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and another into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The evidence of the President’s pressure campaign is abundant, and the central charge, that he asked Zelensky for the investigations, is undeniable given the summary notes of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky released by the White House. Trump withheld key military aid and White House meetings from Ukraine to strong-arm Zelensky into announcing the partisan domestic investigations. His actions ran counter to the national security interests of the United States and show he is willing to abuse the office of the presidency in order to damage his political rivals.

Central to the scandal is Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, a peninsula of Ukraine with a population of over 2 million, which was condemned by NATO and violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity as affirmed by the United Nations. At the beginning of the occupation, the Obama administration pledged $1 billion in aid to Ukraine, essential for Ukraine’s survival in the struggle against Russia which has now caused the death of over 13,000 Ukrainians. This year, Congress appropriated almost $400 million in assistance to Ukraine to continue to defend against Russian aggression.

Earlier this year, Ukraine elected Zelensky, a political newcomer who ran on an anti-corruption and reformist agenda. After the election, Trump and his henchmen, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, began leveraging his office to convince Zelensky to initiate the aforementioned investigations, skirting normal State Department channels. In May, Giuliani told the New York Times “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do.” If the President were genuinely interested in reforming Ukraine, there would be no reason for his personal lawyer to be running a shadow foreign policy pointedly designed to tarnish his rivals.

During the now-infamous July 25 call with Zelensky, Trump told Zelensky “I would like you to do us a favor though…” He then brought up a false conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, not Russia, and requested they launch an inquiry to validate that conspiracy.

Trump went on to explicitly name Joe Biden in the call, accusing him of working to end an investigation into Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian company, and told Zelensky to coordinate with Giuliani. Records obtained by the House Intelligence Committee now show Giuliani was in contact with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, in charge of the money designated for Ukraine, and whose acting director is also Trump’s acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney.

When asked why the aid was being held, Mulvaney admitted it was being used as leverage.

Some of the President’s supporters have argued that while his actions were inappropriate, the conduct is not impeachable, or that impeachment is unnecessary because next year’s election will serve as a referendum on his behavior. Regardless of these objections, impeachment is necessary because Trump tried to subvert the legitimate electoral process by damaging his rivals. In fact, the possibility of a president abusing his office in the way Trump has was specifically contemplated by the Constitution’s Framers.

James Madison argued the impeachment clause should apply

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

to the President, saying “the limitation of the period of [the President’s] service, was not a sufficient security... He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers.”

The President’s supporters have also contended that because the military aid to Ukraine was ultimately delivered, it was not being used as leverage for the investigations. The funding, however, was not released until after the White House became aware of a whistleblower complaint filed to warn Congress of the President’s scheme, indicating the administration was aware they were acting improperly, and reversed course only once they had been caught. Additionally, Zelensky still has not gotten the coveted Oval Office meeting he believes would shore up Ukraine’s credibility as a Western ally—a necessary step for the country to garner support in its efforts against Russia. During his Congressional testimony, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland addressed the elephant in the room: Was there a quid pro quo? “With regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting,” Sondland said, “the answer is yes.”

Trump has lambasted the impeachment inquiry thus far as a sham, blocking key witnesses from testifying and important documents from being released despite Congress’s lawfully issued subpoenas. His contempt for the lawful impeachment process is obstructive, and reflects unwillingness to comply with the law.

Even if Trump’s claims about the Bidens and the 2016 election were true, which they are not, his actions hindered the stated foreign policy goals of the United States as a means of damaging his enemies. By dangling White House meetings and withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, Trump tried to extort Ukraine in an attempt to solicit foreign interference in our electoral process. He put his own interests above his duty to our country, which warrants his removal from office being adjudicated in the Senate. Members of Congress have a responsibility to fulfill their oaths and defend the Constitution by impeaching this President. #

Defend DACA, but Aim for Reform

I

n 2012, President Barack Obama made a promise to undocumented immigrants in the United States. With his passage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (DACA), undocumented people who were under the age of 16 when they entered the country—before June 2007—were granted the basic rights to attend school and work without fear of deportation. DACA did not offer a permanent path to citizenship and only allowed recipients to renew their DACA status every two years. DACA has allowed thousands of young people to learn, work, and live freely in the country where they have spent a significant portion of their lives.

In September 2017, however, President Donald Trump proved he had no interest in protecting or supporting undocumented immigrants when he rescinded DACA. Now, the fate of more than 700,000 DACA recipients lies in the hands of the Supreme Court as they deliberate on whether to uphold Trump’s repeal of the program or allow it to continue.

This editorial board believes that DACA should be supported in the face of Trump’s attacks, and reformed to offer more permanent protection to a larger pool of immigrants.

If we are to treat undocumented people with dignity and respect, we must protect DACA from the attacks of an

administration that does not value immigrants and their experiences. If the Supreme Court rules with Trump to repeal DACA, recipients will lose their ability to work and attend school securely in the country they call home. The threat of deportation is real and terrifying, and it will hang over their heads, just as it does for the thousands of non-DACA protected immigrants currently in the United States.

A country of origin or birth is not the same as a home.

For many childhood arrivals, America is the home they have known for most of their lives. The countries in which they were born might no longer offer economic stability or physical safety. Asking them to return to a place where they have not lived in years, where they might know few people or have little opportunity, is cruel and morally wrong. Our country must rise above punishing its residents for events that occurred when they were children—events that emerged from the desire to offer them better lives.

While DACA is a step in the right direction in terms of immigration policy, the program still requires reform. The $495 processing fee made applying difficult for many families who wanted their children to receive DACA’s protections. Qualifying people could not apply until they reached the age of 15. Because the Trump administration stopped taking new applications in September 2017, children who entered the country before the 2007 cutoff but have not yet reached 15 years old did not even have the opportunity to apply for DACA’s benefits. DACA did not provide permanent solutions for the immigration dilemma at hand; its recipients were never given a permanent home in the United States.

The program also needs to expand who it offers its protections to. Between the 2007 cutoff date and Obama’s enactment of DACA in 2012, undocumented children continued to enter the United States. Do they not deserve our protection as well? Though DACA has given hundreds of thousands of students and workers the security they deserve, there are still more immigrants facing debilitating uncertainty in the United States who have a legitimate claim to protection.

We must expand DACA to include more people, and then we must reform the program to offer a path to permanent residency in the United States. By only evaluating DACA recipients’ worth on a 2-year timeline, the government forces them to plan their lives in the United States on a temporary basis. This is their home, and they deserve the right to pursue happiness beyond DACA’s limited scope.

DACA’s fate ultimately comes down to the matter of human dignity and upholding the commitment Obama made in 2011. When DACA was enacted, the government invited thousands of people to apply, and these people gave personal information in exchange for DACA’s benefits, information that could easily make them targets if the promised protections don’t come through. If the Supreme Court allows Trump to destroy the program, our country will not only be failing to defend the values of freedom and acceptance upon which it was built, but also punishing immigrants who applied for DACA in an attempt to follow government guidelines and secure a future in this country.

Even if a repeal of DACA doesn’t result in immediate deportations, as Trump implied it wouldn’t in a 2017 tweet, it will push hundreds of thousands of people to a second-class status of living other undocumented immigrants already face.

These immigrants struggle to be able to work and attend school securely, which severely impacts their quality of life. They sit in our classrooms, work with us at our jobs, and serve in our military. They deserve the unhindered opportunity to pursue happiness in our country, and it is up to America to not only protect, but embrace them.#

VOICES

Problems at Home Don’t Stay at Home CHEYENNE MARTIN

Refresh, scroll down, nothing new. Wait.

“W

hat do you think?” my friend asks. His words barely process. I’m staring at my laptop, refreshing an anonymously-run Facebook page. It’s the same cycle: Refresh, scroll down, nothing new. This page, which contains accurate, real-time updates, is my only connection to one of Tennessee’s worst prisons, run by the private prison company, CoreCivic. The state has four private prisons contracted with this company, though state law discourages them from contracting more than one. For me, the anonymous page is personal: It covers the prison my loved one serves time in.

Refresh. Scroll.

An update appears: During lunch, a gang fight broke out in four separate areas of the prison. No word on injuries, but my mind knows it isn’t good.

My heart races as I worry about my loved one’s safety. He has been there for a little over a year, and is slated for another year, or until he finishes his educational program. He is serving for a nonviolent crime while getting his GED. He’s taking full advantage of the state educational programs to rebuild his life and be released as soon as possible.

He had been moved from another CoreCivic facility after being targeted by a supremacist gang.

Refresh. Scroll.

I know there aren’t enough guards there to stop the current riot—a little over 100 guards are responsible for over 2,200 inmates. The facility is dangerously understaffed, as cited by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury in numerous audits, and as I had observed during my visits.

I once asked my loved one about the guards and he laughed. They rarely check in on inmates. After a 7 p.m. shift change, it is free reign. None of the locks work. Inmates, supposedly in cells for nightly lockdowns, are free to wander. He said he rigged his door to tell if someone had entered while he was gone. He felt horrible for guards who did their jobs fairly. These guards are typically well-liked by prisoners and families for their professionalism and kindness. He said you learned quickly who was good and who wasn’t, as many guards were on the gang’s payroll and opened cell doors for them to rough someone up while other guards averted their gaze.

To protect their loved ones, families, including mine, are often forced to pay a gang tax. The gangs demand $50-$100 to be consistently deposited into a gang member’s account. Knowing the inefficiency

of the guards and staff, the tax creates major anxiety and fear, for not only me, but other families, as we know our money is the last thing stopping our loved ones from being killed. Even after families like mine have spent nearly or over $1,000 to buy the safety the prison cannot provide, our pleas to wardens for help are left on voicemail.

Cheyenne is a junior in the College studying history and government to inspire her punk rock lifestyle to the fullest. You can easily spot her on campus because she wears band t-shirts every day.

Refresh. Scroll.

I nearly jump when I see a new update. Four critically injured so far. The guards had pulled out every rubber bullet and pepper ball they had, and it still wasn’t enough.

Still, I know there is more to the story. My body shakes as I dig up new information about the gang fight. According to a guard, one inmate died, but the prison had transferred him to a hospital before he passed so he would not count into the prison’s statistics. Tennessee CoreCivic prisons have had four-times more deaths than state-run prisons, though they house less than half the number of inmates. My loved one once told us, if the prison ever said he committed suicide, it would be a lie. He said many deaths were blatantly misreported and described the horrible medical care that took place.

His statements are backed by several class action lawsuits against CoreCivic.

The prison has a record of negligent record keeping, understaffing (44 critical positions unstaffed at almost any given day), and incompetence by failure to repeatedly comply with state laws. Our politicians are letting this happen.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee stated he has no concern with private prisons, despite the recorded problems. Coincidently, CoreCivic donated over $20,000 to his campaign. The company has also made substantial donations to people in the state and federal government, such as Senator Marsha Blackburn.

Feeling helpless, I fall back on my bed. I’m at this prestigious university to change the world and I can do nothing. The money my family spends to buy my loved one’s life, the sleepless nights of research and stress-filled days feel as if they add up to nothing.

The only people who can act are in on it. I cry for the families like mine who anxiously await every phone call as proof of aliveness, especially now.

Because I am aware of the situation in Tennessee correctional facilities, I am constantly thinking of how to shut this place down and bring justice to the families. As a person who has family in prison and family as police officers, I have immense respect for both sides of the law. This private company should not be above what they claim to enforce. They’ll

illustration by allison derose

make over $100 million in Tennessee taxpayer money alone next year and they have facilities across the United States.

I swallow hard and stop crying. I have reading to do, a final paper, and a chemistry exam the next day. I don’t have time to cry. Time isn’t a luxury I can afford. Every day, I’m worried about the phone call I might get. Problems at home don’t stay at home. You never know what is going on behind closed dorm rooms, or jail doors. And behind my dorm door, I feel there is nothing I can do while stuck at Georgetown, a place that is supposed to inspire us to change the world.

Attending a prestigious university like Georgetown, where many people dream and live for social justice, only makes me feel more helpless in an ironic way. Many students, including myself, major in and work towards careers in social justice with dreams of helping the world on either a large or small scale. Coming out of a class discussion on how best to address the minimum wage crisis in America to new emails confirming transactions to several prisoner bank accounts is humbling. It reminds me how easy it is to sit in a safe classroom and discuss theories about how to solve societal problems, but not actually be subjected to and conscious of how these problems affect people every day. These problems are not just broad societal issues to cover in lectures; these problems are hurting real people daily.

While real progress and change can take time, it is almost impossible for someone to ponder the “what-ifs” of the long-term when the problem is affecting them in the then-and-now. It’s hard to think about what changes could be made in the next year when you’re simply trying to survive from hour to hour.

A week later, my loved one called. He said that he was okay, but his cellmate was injured. We told him about the report of four injuries. He laughed and said, “Those are four they had the staff to carry out. Other people are in cells trying not to bleed out.” His cellmate had part of his ear cut off and his eye socket smashed in, along with other injuries.

He didn’t get to talk much longer but it was a relief to know he was okay. While I was thankful for the good news, the relief was short-lived, as I knew this would be far from the last time I would be left worrying about his safety due to the incompetence of the CoreCivic facility. .

DECEMBER 6, 2019

5

VOICES

Finding a Voice in America NURSENA OKTEM

W

hen I left Turkey, I left behind many things: my loved ones, my childhood, the law school I was always dreaming about. Right before I arrived in America, I was studying for my midterms, but I could not take any of them. I left my class notes for my classmates. I left the theater ticket I bought for the next week. I left my books.

I left my notebooks in which I wrote short stories.

I left my childhood collections. I put everything in one luggage bag and left behind the rest of the things that are part of me. I didn’t think I would also leave my voice behind.

I came to America out of necessity. Although in the back of my mind, I wanted to experience America, actually coming here seemed scary, complicated, and unreachable. Nevertheless, life had a different plan. Being a recent immigrant comes with many struggles. For me, it did not only bring adversity but also changed the way I expressed myself. Back home in Turkey, I was a vocal advocate for Syrian refugees. I was the person who voiced their opinions, even in the face of opposition from others. When I moved, I found myself on the other side of the world, where the words I knew became meaningless, and I lost my voice. As if constant isolation and loneliness were not enough, I had to keep what I was going through to myself, unable to express even the smallest of frustrations. Can you imagine how it would feel to all of a sudden become wordless?

Growing up, I was always the cheerful extrovert who loved sharing her thoughts and feelings. In America, I was a stranger to the language and the culture, reluctant to take the initiative and start a conversation. In my first days here, I met someone who was studying philosophy. When she was talking about her favourite philosopher, I caught the name and got excited. I remembered the name from my philosophy class in Turkey. I wanted to tell her what I thought, but I could not make it happen. How could I, when I didn’t know any proper terms to frame my thoughts? This was one of many incidents in which I chose to stay silent because I didn’t know the language very well, despite being passionate about the subject.

Some people around me probably thought I had no idea about what was going on in the world.

Being aware of my abilities but not being able to show them made me feel isolated. We tend to think we are only as much as the other people understand about us, not how we see ourselves.

When I realized how people portrayed me in their mind was not actually who I was, it was painful.

I started asking myself questions: Where was home for me? If there is no place I feel comfortable, where was home? When I left my home country,

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

I was no longer comfortable there. Here did not feel like home either, so where was home? Where did I actually belong? Questions like these started eating at me. Who was I before? Who am I today?

Who was I becoming without wanting to? Who was responsible for the lost parts of myself?

I was aware that I was influenced by the opinions of the people around me, but I was not aware that the way they saw me would have the biggest impact on who I became. Even though my English was improving, I was bullied many times at work because of my grammar mistakes and mispronunciations. As a result, I turned my voice down. I don’t think my coworkers knew what I was going through and how it affected me. I realized the way people treated me was also responsible for my lost parts; it was responsible for making me voiceless.

Still, I never gave up on trying to improve my English so I could raise my voice and make my words meaningful. Maybe my coworkers thought I was a shy immigrant girl. Maybe my professors thought I was an average kid because I did not raise my hand during lectures. Nevertheless, I continued to try. Three years after I migrated to America and had to start my life over from scratch, I was accepted into Georgetown University.

I have been at Georgetown for a few months now, and like any new student, the adjustment process has been hard. It’s even more difficult as a recent immigrant and transfer student from a community college where classes were much easier. One of the classes I’m taking is a philosophy class. As someone who has only been speaking the language for three years, understanding Plato and Hobbes takes twice as much time as the average Georgetown student would spend. This is only one of the many struggles I’ve experienced here at Georgetown. While I’ve made efforts to feel like this is my home, many continue to treat me as a guest. Students tell me, “Here is abroad for you, so don’t worry if you can’t do study abroad.” This always hurts me. Imagine you moved into a new home, but your roommates treat you like a guest even when you don’t have any other place to go.

How would you feel?

I was determined to find my lost parts, but there are many other immigrants and refugees who may not have that courage. When people meet a recent immigrant, refugee, or maybe an international student who is not familiar with American culture or with English, they should not make any assumptions about their capacity. Even though most people do not state their presumptions aloud, there are unspoken indicators of judgement. As immigrants, being

Nursena is a junior in the College majoring in government. She is obsessed with Pinterest and loves to watch Youtube videos, especially when she has exams the next day. She makes and sells jewelry on the side.

born in different countries and in different cultures does not mean we have no idea about the world. The only difference is we learned what you learned in different languages. There are many immigrants and refugees who mastered subjects in many other languages, but not in English. That does not make them uneducated or someone who does not deserve to be respected. From my experience, what hurts the most is when people look down on you without knowing or even asking who you are and what you have gone through.

Most immigrants and refugees do not leave their places of origin without good reason.

Moreover, these reasons are usually things most Americans would never be concerned about, but are vitally important to others. Being an immigrant or refugee is already very hard by itself, so being kind to them is so essential to making their adjustment process easier. One would never know what immigrants have been going through.

No one can know where life is going to take them tomorrow or next year, so there is always a potential for anyone to end up as an immigrant.

Please don’t let us be voiceless. Have our backs. Be our voice when we cannot protect ourselves from bullying. We have been going through enough.

Don’t be another barrier; be a friend. /

illustration by delaney corcoran

VOICES

The Hidden Cost of E-Scooters AMANDA CHU

S

ince their introduction to the D.C. landscape in September 2017, electric scooters, or e-scooters, have become as ubiquitous as rats in the Georgetown neighborhood. It is not uncommon to trip over one on an unsuspecting stroll down to CVS or to feel one at your heels in a crowded Red Square on a Farmer’s Market Wednesday. Like it or not, what started as a fad has gained traction as a legitimate form of transportation. A recent editorial from The Hoya urged the university to subsidize the cost of e-scooters after its previous collaboration with Lime to offer discounts on dockless bike rides had ended.

Three days later, the university instead announced its partnership with Capital Bikeshare to lower the cost of bikes and expand sustainable transportation options for students.

Bikes are affordable, durable, and safe.

Under Capital Bikeshare, a one hour ride costs two dollars. They reduce carbon emissions, and there are currently 25 protected bike lanes in Washington D.C. Protected bike lanes reduce the number of injuries and encourage the use of bikes. They also reduce the number of bikes on sidewalks.

However, until the city doubles down on regulation, university subsidization of e-scooters would be a terrible idea.

With the most recent bill proposed by the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) to expand the number of e-scooters, it would make sense if the university subsidized their cost.

Under the new guidelines, only four companies can operate in the city and each is allowed up to 2,500 scooters, amounting to a possible 10,000 scooters dotting the streets in January, nearly twice the number there are currently. There are also plans in place to expand this number depending on company performance. Other parts of the bill require companies to deploy at least 20 scooters in each ward by 6 a.m. each day, ensuring an equal distribution of scooters throughout the city.

Although this bill is extensive and addresses many potential concerns about e-scooters, the city does not adequately tackle the issue of safety.

In September 2018, a 20-year-old man was hit by an SUV while riding an e-scooter in Dupont Circle. He died shortly after. His death is suspected to be the first death in the country while riding an e-scooter and is certainly not the last. At least 16 people in the country have died while riding rented e-scooters, and it’s possible the number is even higher because crash reports are not designed to mention these devices. The Dupont Circle crash miscategorized the e-scooter rider as a “bicyclist.” While the number of deaths

Amanda is the Voices editor and a sophomore in the SFS. She hails from Queens, New York.

may seem small in comparison to the number of people killed in car accidents, many states and countries are taking this number seriously. This month, New Jersey decided to end its e-scooter program after a teenager was struck and killed by a tow truck while riding one. France and Singapore have banned e-scooters in their countries entirely.

In light of the surge in scooter-related injuries, the CDC conducted its first e-scooter study in the spring of 2019. The study found that almost half of the injuries were head injuries, with 15 percent being traumatic brain injuries. Notably, only 1 out of the 190 injured riders in the study was wearing a helmet.

While D.C. encourages companies to provide free helmets, no formal requirement exists. The study also found that most injuries do not occur at night, contrary to the popular belief that has led many cities to ban the nighttime use of e-scooters.

The most insightful finding of the study, however, was that a third of the injuries occurred on the first ride, suggesting the apps’ warnings and the safety tutorial videos are inadequate in teaching and persuading people to properly use them. The flagrant misuse of e-scooters is not uncommon. Though D.C. law states that riders must be 16 years of age or older and that e-scooters are meant for single passenger use, we’ve all seen two teenagers rolling down a hilly street on a scooter built for one. This year, a 5-year-old boy died riding with his mom. E-scooter laws may be in place, but cities do not go to adequate lengths to enforce them. More importantly, each time D.C. passes a new bill on e-scooters, legislation fixates more on questions of distribution and access rather than those of safety.

The District may have financial incentives to emphasize distribution and access but overlook safety restrictions. A quick look at the DDOT’s Scooter Terms and Conditions reveals the city charges a monthly fee of up to $60 per scooter along with other fees like permit renewals and vehicle registration. A $10,000 refundable bond must be given to the Department as a security deposit.

Limiting the number of e-scooter companies to four will also drive up the already escalating prices.

This extra income may explain why the city is nearly doubling the size of their fleet while other cities like Nashville are cutting their fleets in half in an effort to prevent future accidents.

illustration by olivia stevens

Until the District finds some way to make their scooters safer for use, expanding the number of scooters in January will only lead to greater numbers of injuries and fatal accidents.

The Georgetown neighborhood’s cobblestone and brick streets and hilly roads make e-scooters difficult to ride. Bicyclists also do not want to share their bike lanes, and it is unclear whether these devices belong on the roads or on the sidewalks. The city could require helmets with disposable liners, although this may compromise the device’s image of convenience and reduce the number of rides. Some may argue that e-scooters are simply an equivalent alternative to bicycles.

However, in the United States, the helmet wearing rate for bikes is 55 percent, while for e-scooters, the rate is 20 percent. Bikes are also more stable, easily recognizable by cars, and cities have spent years designing and planning for them.

Infrastructure has yet to adapt to e-scooter use.

These e-scooter companies are not only neglecting the well-being of their riders, but also of the environment. Companies market their e-scooters as a gadget of the future: simple, convenient, and sustainable. Many consumers thus resort to these devices as their last-mile solutions in lieu of other forms of transportation.

A study at North Carolina State University, however, found that e-scooters produced 202 grams of carbon pollution per mile. This is more than a bus, bicycle, or moped. The study also found that 49 percent of e-scooter riders would have walked or biked, 11 percent would have taken the bus, and 7 percent would not have made the trip at all if scooters were not an option. The substitution of these forms of transportation for e-scooters, along with their false claim to environmentalism, is backtracking on our progress towards a future of sustainable transportation.

Only a third of e-scooter riders would have taken the less sustainable option: driving. E-scooters may appear carbon-free, but their manufacturing and charging processes produce an enormous amount of emissions, not including the emissions produced by the trucks that have to collect and redistribute them at the end of the day. This is problematic since e-scooters, being easy targets for vandalism and neglected by riders, constantly need to be replaced. The average lifespan of an e-scooter is estimated to be as short as 28 days with another study estimating three months.

I’m not trying to be the Grinch about e-scooters. Although I personally don’t ride them and think they are silly, I don’t think they should be banned. I do take issue with the fact that over the past two years, e-scooters have become a billion-dollar industry under the guise of ease and sustainability. The stance that Georgetown takes on e-scooters matters, not just as a commitment to environmental preservation, but because it is only a matter of time before these fatal accidents and injuries affect us Hoyas directly. Until more legitimate safety measures are put in place, Georgetown’s subsidization of e-scooters will only encourage corporate interests that favor profit over our personal safety. .

DECEMBER 6, 2019

7

By students, for students: an academic framework to analyze

IX Title

By Inès de Miranda & Sarah Watson

Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault.

E

very registration period, Georgetown asks students to scroll through course descriptions, try every possible configuration of their schedule, and bow to the inevitability of overlapping course times. It can be easy to be lost in the monotony of this process; however, as students registered for the spring 2020 semester, a different kind of class was added to their lists. Offered in the Women’s and Gender Studies (WGST) department, the class, titled Title IX for a New Generation, is unique because of who created it—a group of students.

Every Monday and Wednesday this semester, 11 students have met in class with adjunct professor Sara Collina to design the framework and curriculum of the course, which will be taught for the first time this spring.

The course’s creators thought the university should offer an academic framework to look at Title IX, an issue of which students often have only a surface-level understanding. The class is aimed at understanding the rules and regulations of Title IX, discussing the national and on-campus context of the statute, and brainstorming ideas for improving the policy’s practices. The students designing the course tried to keep their peers’ point-ofviews in mind as they created the syllabus.

“It’s created by students, for students,” said Casey Doherty (SFS ’20), a member of the class. “So we think about what we would be most interested in learning as students, as people who interact with this issue a lot and see what it’s done to people on this campus.”

Title IX, part of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972, is a federal civil rights law that prohibits sexbased discrimination—including sexual harassment and assault—within educational institutions such as

Georgetown. The term “Title IX” also refers to the office on campus responsible for investigations of sexual assault at Georgetown, and the specific policies the university has for campus Title IX procedures.

The designing course and the resulting spring class, while housed in the WGST department, are made possible and funded through the Enhancing and Transforming the Core Curriculum Initiative, a multi-year pilot development initiative at Georgetown meant to broaden and expand the Core Curriculum. “The proposal review committee, and the Initiative’s leadership team, were especially excited about the development process that included the studentled design course this fall,” Vice Provost for Education Randy Bass wrote in a statement to the Voice.

To carry out their vision, the current class members will act as peer mentors in the spring, guiding the new class through the complex issues of Title IX and the lessons they created. To accommodate this, the class is double-coded: a 100-level course for regular students and a 300-level for facilitators. This way, students in next spring’s class will be able to facilitate next fall.

The 30-seat spring course is currently full, with 24 students on the waitlist. Described in Georgetown’s course catalog as “a project-based, student-created course on sex discrimination in education,” each class will be discussionbased, and the course will include a final project designed to have a tangible impact on the way Title IX operates at Georgetown.

“We have a couple of different learning objectives,” Collina said. “The purpose of this course is not only for people to better understand the issue, but to use the academic tools of critical thinking analysis, as well as creativity

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

and collaboration, to actually address an overall problem.”

While the class recognizes that many aspects of the Title IX system are complex, and its problems cannot be solved overnight, it aims to equip future policymakers with potential solutions and reforms.

“We’re not trying to go against any existing resources on campus,” Doherty said. “We want students to think critically and be able to think against the status quo and think about how we could make these resources better without completely denigrating them.”

According to the 2019 Campus Climate Survey, 24.2 percent of respondents believe that sexual assault and misconduct is “very or extremely problematic”: On Georgetown’s campus, 31.6 percent of female-identifying undergraduates reported having been sexually assaulted since enrolling at Georgetown, higher than the 25.9 percent average from the 32 other schools that took the same survey. Reported rates of sexual assault have not decreased since 2016, despite the implementation of programs designed to prevent sexual assault. These higher rates led frustrated students to participate in the designing class when they received an email through the WGST department gauging interest.

“Georgetown is above average in these issues,” said Michael Blank (COL ’20), a student in the class. To him, the fact that Title IX affects so many people makes it a relevant class. “It is one public policy issue that is so relatable because it is all about students and all about universities and ties so directly to Georgetown like no other issue can.”

The public policy is currently being altered, which will feature in next semester’s class. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released suggested changes to the national

Title IX guidelines last November, which set the minimum standards schools must have in their policies. These proposed changes roll back protections for students and raise the standard of evidence, and have drawn protests from the university and students alike.

This concern over Title IX-related issues is what drove Olivia Horton (COL ’20) to talk to Collina, her Gender and the Law professor, about the public policy issue. These office hour conversations eventually turned into submitting a class proposal in April. “I’m very excited,” Horton said. “It’s looking like it’s going to be a very forward looking class, which is what we were hoping for and aiming for.”

For Horton, the emphasis on projects and changemaking sets the class apart. It asks students to look at Title IX in a new way, to question the status quo, and to think through what can be done to improve university policy. “We really wanted this class to focus on the progress that we can make and the power that we have as students to change the system as opposed to like the horrible changes or perceived horrible changes that might be happening,” Horton said.

To Collina, the sexual assault rates and policy changes represent an urgent crisis that warrants greater attention.

She thought this class could be an academic forum to discuss the high rates of sexual assault on campus. “I have been really shocked and dismayed at what I considered to be a house on fire,” Collina said. “The numbers are shockingly bad.”

Rates of sexual assault vary widely across identities.

Respondents who identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community reported a 13.5 percent assault rate, while heterosexual-identifying respondees had an 11.4 percent rate.

The racial breakdown of the 2019 survey shows that 11.9 percent of black students, 14.3 percent of white students, 7.1 of Asian students, 12.8 percent of Hispanic or Latinx students, and 14.4 percent of other and multiracial students reported nonconsensual sexual contact while at Georgetown.

Students in their first year on campus were more likely to report nonconsensual sexual contact than upperclassmen.

The creators of the class hope all of these communities will be present to provide their perspectives next semester.

Of the 11 students designing the course, two are men and one is a person of color, but the class aims to incorporate as many perspectives as possible in the voices that are included. According to Doherty, in order to ensure the discussion included more points of view, they posted a survey with a randomized $100 reward to get external input.

“We don’t represent all perspectives on campus, which is hard when you’re talking about an issue that’s so

important and it has so many different intersectionalities,” Doherty said. “We are always looking for suggestions and ways to present this issue to the student body in a way that people feel is responsible, equitable, ethical.”

Matthew Hua (COL ’22), a student in the course, believes the diversity of voices is important so Title IX does not become relegated to a political interest issue. “I’ve heard Title IX characterized as a woman’s issue, LGBTQ, or people of color—as if it’s their issue. I disagree with that,” Hua said.

“I wanted to be a part of the group of people that made sure it’s not just this separate group—it’s everybody’s problem, and we need to figure out what to do together.”

“I wanted to be a part of the group of people that made sure it’s not just this separate group—it’s everybody’s problem, and we need to figure out what to do together.”

As part of their efforts to confront the problem, Collina took her students to a panel discussing the results of the 2019 Campus Climate Survey. At the panel, students from the class brought up concerns about the delay in hiring a new Title IX coordinator after Laura Cutway left in June 2018. Samantha Berner transitioned from the investigator role to the coordinator role after a year of doing both jobs, leaving the position of a full-time Title IX investigator still unfilled. The attendees also advocated for increased student representation in Title IX-related administrative decisions and Student Health Services.

The class questioned the effectiveness of bystander training as well. Since 2017, all incoming undergraduates have undergone a mandatory, school-administered bystander training workshop, meaning only the class of 2020 does not have a 100 percent rate of completion. While more students report that they intervene in situations they find questionable, reported rates of sexual misconduct have remained stagnant. Collina believes this means there is a fundamental flaw in the program.

“I am generally charmed by bystander trainings, but they don’t work,” Collina said, “They don’t work. I mean, the numbers show it.”

Doherty, a bystander training facilitator, believes there is room for improvement in prevention programs, and that it is related to the classroom she wants to create. “I really enjoy bystander training,” Doherty said. “I think if we really focus on preventative measures like that and hopefully making programs like that better, that’s how we can work with the education piece of this class, and then also with prevention methods outside of the class to really impact the culture in a positive way.”

In addition to creating a curriculum, the students have valued the process of class-building and learning about the administrative operations involved. There was

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a learning curve for all involved, even Collina. “I have had the honor and privilege of actually not only working with my students in terms of learning the topic, but also getting to know Georgetown’s system and some of the struggles that people have had,” Collina said.

The students say the university has been supportive and that members of the administration have shown enthusiasm about the direct inclusion of Title IX in the curriculum. Annemarie Bianco, associate vice president and university registrar, wrote in an email to the Voice that the university welcomes the creation of new courses, so long as they meet the expected level of academic rigor.

“We not only encourage but support the innovation of new ways to develop and deliver courses,” Bianco wrote.

Additionally, the class creators want the course to fulfill a requirement in the College’s core curriculum to ease the burden for students who don’t have elective credits to spare.

While they were unable to get a Humanities: Arts, Literature, and Cultures (HALC) accreditation for the spring, they hope acquiring the status next fall will make the class an option for students to fulfill their Core requirements.

In regards to the longevity of the course and the topic, Doherty would want to expand it in the future to resemble one of the core requirement classes all students must take.

To her, the format and theory behind the discussion-based class could be sustainable regardless of the specific topic.

“I think there are tons of issues that we could do that for,” Doherty said. “I think it creates a unique, safe, yet challenging discussion environment where students can really engage with each other on the issue with the help of a really supportive professor.”

For all her support, Collina does not see herself as the solution to rectifying Title IX issues on college campuses.

Instead, she places her hope in the students she teaches.

“I have a strong sense that I’m not going to be the one to fix this and no administrators can be the one that fixes this,” Collina said. “But I do believe deeply that it’s this generation who has the skills, the knowledge, the expertise about what it means right now, right here.” #

Confidential Resources Health Education Services (HES): sarp@georgetown.edu Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS): 202-687-6985 D.C. Rape Crisis Center Hotline: 202-333-RAPE (7273) Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN): 1-800-656-4673 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 Non-confidential Resources Georgetown University Resource Center: https://sexualassault. georgetown.edu/get-help/ resourcecenter/ Title IX Online Reporting Form: georgetown.protocall.info/incidentreport

DECEMBER 6, 2019

9

“it’s heartbreaking”:

newseum to close amid financial trouble by john woolley

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pproaching the Newseum from afar is like walking toward a temple. A stone tablet inscribed with the First Amendment looms several stories tall above onlookers, granting hope and security to those who visit.

Situated only a short walk from the Capitol Building, the facility holds records of a long and storied history of journalism, where icons are frozen in time and the echoes of past generations are preserved through treasured pamphlets of ink and paper. The Newseum illuminates the past and honors those who reported on it, and yet—come Dec. 31—will close its doors for the final time.

After struggling financially for a number of years, the Newseum announced on Jan. 25 that it would sell its building to Johns Hopkins University for use in housing D.C.-based graduate programs. Johns Hopkins will buy the property, a glassy seven-level building on Pennsylvania Avenue, for $372.5 million. Upon closing, the museum’s collection of artifacts and displays will go into storage in an out-of-District support center for use in public events and educational opportunities.

The Newseum opened in its current location in 2008 after moving across the Potomac from Arlington,

Virginia, and was primarily funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan educational foundation. The closing, a product of unsustainable operating costs, reflects wider uncertainties about the financial sustainability of journalism organizations across the country.

In a city where free-to-enter public attractions are abundant, the Newseum charges nearly $25 per ticket— one of the highest museum admission fees in the District.

Coupled with a 10 percent staff reduction in January 2017, this meant the threat of closure loomed over the organization for months before the official announcement.

Sonya Gavankar, director of public relations for the Newseum, elaborated on what the closing means for the future of Freedom Forum’s educational mission. “What we do really well is education in a very non-partisan way, and that will continue on with our education programs and convening of high level conversations,” Gavankar said.

The financial difficulties behind the closure date back to the recession in 2008. Since then, the museum has lost between $2.5 million and $8 million annually. Just in 2017, the most recent year for which records are available, the organization lost almost $5 million. Despite these losses,

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

executives at the non-profit museum still received large salaries—including former president and CEO Jeffrey Herbst, whose salary totaled $721,108 in 2017. Herbst resigned in August of that year amid a financial review by the museum’s board.

Herbst was not alone, as the Newseum has seen dramatic turnover in executive positions in recent years.

Gary Officer, former senior vice president and chief development officer, also resigned in 2017 after only a year in the position to take a new position as president and CEO of Senior Service America. Former Chief Operating Officer Scott Williams, who served as Newseum president beginning in March 2018, left late that August after only a six-month tenure.

Tara Ravishankar (COL ’22), who works at the Newseum as a tour guide, is a native of the D.C. area and described how the museum impacted her growing up. “The Newseum has been such an important part of me becoming an adult I think. It made me understand that the world isn’t as bright and shiny as I once thought it was.”

Through its years of operation, the Newseum has hosted a variety of different exhibits, all of which presented

the broader field of journalism from an unconventional angle. These displays cover many different mediums, including broadcast journalism, photography, and classic pen-and-paper reporting. This, in conjunction with the wide range of reporting beats showcased—music, celebrity, civil rights, war, immigration—indicates just how central the contributions of journalists remain in American life.

Each artifact stored within the Newseum’s walls occupies a unique spot within the wider story of journalism.

Some of the museum’s most recent additions include the notebook of Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for his investigations into the exaggerated philanthropy of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, as well as the broken glasses of Ben Jacobs, a Guardian reporter who was assaulted by Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) in May 2017.

These recent additions join an already impressive collection: an 1829 copy of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix; protest signs from the 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri; the press passes of Jorge Ramos, K.W. Lee, and other leading journalists from diverse backgrounds. Held in showcases such as the Bloomberg Internet, TV, and Radio Gallery and the News Corporation News History Gallery, the Newseum’s collection is comprehensive.

Upon closing, the collection will be cleared out and the building will undergo renovations. This construction, scheduled to begin in autumn of next year, will take approximately two and a half years to complete. Mitch Bonanno, chief real estate officer for Johns Hopkins, wrote in an email to the Voice that the facility is a “unique, purpose-built property that will require significant renovations and governmental reviews for conversion to academic use.”

Within the newly renovated space, Johns Hopkins would consolidate its existing D.C. graduate programs, currently spread across the District, into a single location.

These programs include a number of divisions within the university, such as the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Carey Business School, and the School of Nursing.

In an announcement letter from his office, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels voiced his excitement for the move. “The renovated building will provide opportunities for every academic division of the university to pursue research and educational activities in Washington—complementing and drawing on those conducted on our flagship Baltimore campuses and deepening our connections to debates over national and global policy,” he wrote. In order to pay for the facility, Daniels cited funds from selling the university’s existing D.C. properties, as well as general university funds and philanthropic contributions.

On a larger scale, Daniels described the move as a way for Johns Hopkins to integrate itself into the wider D.C. community. “Our commitment to contributing our ideas and expertise to these debates lies at the core of what it means to be a vital and relevant university,” he wrote.

For consumers, the biggest change coming with the Newseum’s closure will be the potentially permanent dismantling of the facility’s many exhibitions. The Newseum’s current (and final) line-up includes a number of stand-outs.

“Seriously Funny,” located on the second floor, is a history of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, and how his style went on to inspire a number of current political comedy

shows. Just a few levels above lies “Rise Up,” a display showcasing the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States following the 1969 Stonewall riots. These exhibits, among others, showcase the diversity present in the facilities’ collection.

Ravishankar highlighted the Journalists Memorial, located on the third floor. Rising two stories above visitors, the glass monument’s surface bears the names of journalists who have been killed while reporting. “It is because of the names on this wall that massively important stories are told,” she said. “We need to keep protecting these people who tell us these stories, because they are what protect our humanity.”

“It’s so easy to write off violations of human rights in our hearts if we aren’t forced to care about them. Journalism takes away that ignorance.”

The Newseum’s 9/11 Gallery is uniquely striking.

Located on the fourth floor of the museum, it houses a massive fragment recovered from the World Trade Center site. Towering behind the monument is a wall covered top-to-bottom with newspaper front pages from the day after the attack. Publications from across the world are on display, mounted in rows one after another, memorializing the ways different communities reacted to the attacks in the moment. The headlines vary—some predict war, some focus on the destruction, others on the loss of life—yet all are unified in a strange, melancholic solidarity.

Perhaps the most iconic of the Newseum’s exhibits, however, is the Pulitzer Prize Photography Gallery. This collection, situated right by the building’s entrance, showcases a collection of stunning photos dating back to the award’s creation in 1942. Inside the gallery are over a thousand images, digital and physical, making it the most comprehensive gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs in the world. Here, the memories captured range from historic success to unthinkable tragedy.

“The Pulitzer photos were unbelievable. Just heart wrenching to see those moments captured,” said Glenn Krake, an Oregon journalism teacher who brought his students to see the museum a month before the scheduled closure. “The stories that don’t often get told, the photographers that put us where nobody else is able to see, and shine light on that—that’s powerful.”

Ravishankar echoed this sentiment. “Free press is so necessary because it allows us to humanize the conflicts that are occurring to people who don’t look like us, and it allows us to stay informed so that we don’t get complacent,” she said. “It’s so easy to write off violations of human rights in our hearts if we aren’t forced to care about them. Journalism takes away that ignorance.”

After the Newseum’s closing, some of these displays will still be circulated for educational programs, loans, and public events. Currently, the Newseum operates a pop-up exhibit in both Dulles and Reagan Airports marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This showcase will continue operation until February 2020 and will be followed by a new exhibit on women’s suffrage to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification.

Once the building is closed to visitors, removal of the exhibits is projected to take at least six months. While Newseum leadership has not announced any concrete plans to reopen, it has expressed interest in finding a new location once the sale is complete.

Krake spoke about how the Newseum’s closure reflected a wider uncertainty about journalism today. “It’s heartbreaking. We talk about the U.S. being a place of free speech, yet we’re not free of the bondage of capitalism— which I kind of say that in jest—but we kind of are slaves to the economy if we don’t have a way to make it pay for itself,” Krake said. “It’s sad. I don’t know what the answer is.”

Journalistic organizations around the country face comparable economic hardship. According to a 2018 research study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), nearly 20 percent of local newspapers have shut down since 2004.

Doyle McManus, director of the Journalism Department at Georgetown, lamented this changing landscape and placed emphasis on the importance of these local outlets.

“The closing of the Newseum is a loss to the public—but not nearly as great a loss as the shrinkage and death of hundreds of local newspapers, which has deprived many Americans of essential information about the governments they pay for,” he said.

Rural newspapers are especially at risk of closure, creating “news deserts” where democratic accountability through the press is stunted. Nearly half of all counties in the United States have only a single publication, and almost 200 counties have no local newspaper whatsoever. Moreover, UNC found that this trend appears to be accelerating. Total weekday circulation, including weekly and daily papers, has declined by 49 million copies in the past 15 years—20 million of which was in the last four years alone.

This is not the only sign of the times—the number of journalists employed by newspapers has been cut in half since 2004 and the ownership of those papers has consolidated rapidly due to financial strain and shifting business models. Just 10 companies own nearly half of all daily papers in the United States, and fewer than one-third of U.S. weekly papers remain locally owned. In spite of this, Krake remains hopeful.

In particular, Krake focused on the role that future journalists, and students at large, have in supporting and maintaining the profession. “I think there’s hope that this next generation can sense truth,” he said. “It’s so important to be the voice for people who don’t have a voice. It’s important to shine a spotlight on injustice, and to bring truth, and to do it with credibility, to do it with honesty, to do it courageously. Our society depends on it.”# DECEMBER 6, 2019

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HAIL MARY: CATHOLIC WOMEN SEEK PLACE IN PRIESTHOOD B Y RY A N R E M M E L & S A R A H W A T S O N

“I

never thought I would live to see this,” said one congregation member with tears in his eyes. He stood near a kitchen table covered in tulips and a cloth, transformed into a makeshift altar. Minutes before, he had attended a Catholic Mass led by Rev. Barbara Beadles in a Washington, D.C. home. Though he and Beadles had never met before, they were brought together on a night this April as part of a new organization, Washington Home Inclusive Monthly Mass (WHIMM).

WHIMM, which began meeting in January 2019, offers Northwest D.C. residents the chance to experience a Mass led by a female priest, something not currently permitted within the institutional Catholic Church. Since the congregation has no physical church where they can meet, every month a member of WHIMM opens their home to the rest of the community for the service.

The rise of groups such as WHIMM comes at a time of scandal for the Catholic Church. Reported in 2002 by the Boston Globe, the Catholic sexual abuse crisis has led many both within and outside the Church to question clerical leadership and Vatican doctrine. As cases against clergy members continue to surface, the Church has taken steps to address its widespread instances of sexual abuse, such as issuing a plan in June to establish a third-party reporting system for cases of sexual misconduct. But for some Catholics, these actions are not enough.

According to Beadles, the abuse cases continue to impact Catholics’ trust in the Church. “The whole business of pedophelia in the clergy has turned so many people away that it’s going to take us a lifetime for people to trust us again,” Beadles said.

Members and organizers of WHIMM believe the Catholic Church has been slow to respond to more issues than just sexual abuse in the clergy. To this day, the Church

does not allow the ordination of women as priests or bishops. This precludes them from entering much of the leadership hierarchy of the Church and from exercising any of the sacraments, or holy rituals, and duties of priests, including presiding over marriages and funerals, performing baptisms, and distributing the Eucharist.

For Catholics, the acceptance of the Eucharist, or Communion, is the most important part of the Mass, as it signifies direct unification with Christ’s body and blood. The Church denies the Eucharist to people of other faiths, nonbelievers, excommunicated people, and some divorcees.

Beadles sees the Catholic Church’s current exclusion of these groups as hypocritical. “The anger in me is that somebody who may be breaking their vows, abusing a child, breaking the law, being out loose so that they continue whatever this behavior is, has the nerve to look at somebody and say, ‘you’re divorced, you can’t have Communion,’” she said.

In response to these disagreements with the Church, WHIMM has changed the traditional Mass in ways beyond a priest’s gender. Its home masses offer full participation, including the distribution of Communion to anyone in attendance, and also use gender-neutral language to refer to God in the scripture. “We don’t say God the Father.

You could say sometimes it’s God the creator, or MotherFather God,” said Jane Varner Malhotra (SCS ’20), one of the group’s organizers. “God is the ultimate unknown.

Anytime we ascribe gender to God we are limiting.”

To further break down the barrier between congregation and priest, the participants also take an active role in the homily, the discussion of the scripture during which priests typically address the congregation.

Beadles contrasted the communal nature of WHIMM with the hierarchy of much of the Church’s leadership.

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“If Pope Francis called tonight and said, ‘Barbara, I have a place for you, a parish for you, bring your gear and come on,’ I would say no,” she said. “This layer of hierarchy and that layer of hierarchy and the rules for this, and you can do this but you can’t do that. I don’t want any part of that. Because it is exclusionary, and it’s not focused, in my opinion, on the words of Jesus.”

In 2013, Beadles had spent 18 years of her life as a nun, and most of her life feeling frustrated by the Church’s gender restrictions. That year, she made a life changing internet search—“Roman Catholic women priests”— that introduced her to a new world of possibilities for Catholic women. The search brought her to the website for Roman Catholic Women Priests (RCWP), an international organization that oversees the training and ordination of female priests outside of the traditional Church structure.

The group, according to Beadles, oversees more than 100 congregations like WHIMM across the nation (known as “intentional Eucharistic communities”) which adhere to the Catholic faith while breaking from certain elements of the Church.

To Beadles, the integration of women into all levels of the Church seemed a natural progression from women’s recent expansion into leadership roles across society. “We fly airplanes, we got to the moon, we run companies as CEOs, we have professors in universities and colleges, we have presidents of colleges,” she said. “You name the field and there are women. We are everywhere. And we’re not going back to the kitchen in our slippers and our aprons.

We’re just not.”

As an organization of ordained women, the RCWP traces its lineage back to the “Danube Seven,” a group of seven women ordained in secret on the Danube River in Germany by three men of the Catholic Church in 2002.

The Catholic Church responded by excommunicating the seven women—officially barring them from participation in the Eucharist—and declaring their ordinations invalid.

Pope Benedict XIV later declared that “both the one who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive a sacred order, incur an excommunication latae sententiae [automatically].”

Canonical precedent justified Benedict’s warning. In Pope John Paul II’s 1994 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis Apostolic Letter, he concludes that canonical law, the legal system of the Roman Catholic Church, grants “no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.”

In 2016, Pope Francis ended discussions on the issue by declaring, “On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the last word is clear.”

Disregarding the stance of Church leadership, however, the Danube Seven have gone on to ordain other women as priests and bishops. Beadles recounted the first time she learned about this group of female priests. “These were ladies that had figured out how to get around the system.” Soon after, she filled out her own application to become ordained in this line of succession. After almost two years of study and training to build on her previous religious education, she achieved her goal and became an ordained priest through RCWP, at the price of automatic excommunication from the Church she had dedicated over 18 years of her life to.

Despite the Vatican’s disapproval, WHIMM’s leadership and members maintain that their female leadership and religious gatherings are wholly Catholic. According to Malhotra, while they disagree with certain aspects of Catholic dogma, the group’s members are determined not to leave the Church. Instead, they hope to reform it from within. “Do it through the institution, recognizing that it is imperfect and broken, like most institutions, because they’re made of people, but not walking away from it when you disagree,” Malhotra said.

This goal to not entirely break away from the Church has influenced WHIMM’s structure. The group meets once a month, allowing many of its members to continue attending masses locally at their Vatican-approved, maleled local parishes during the rest of the month. This setup means WHIMM’s members continue to have a voice in how their local parishes move forward, including with regard to clergy sexual abuse and leadership roles for women.

On Georgetown’s campus, multiple past clergy members have been identified as perpetrators of sexual abuse. In response to clergy members’ sexual abuse of children, the Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought has at times called for greater representation of women among the Church’s lay (non-clergy) leadership,

but has never expressed support for the ordination of women as priests.

Georgetown, as a Catholic and Jesuit institution, does not publicly support the ordination of women. Georgetown employs female leaders of other faiths, including Protestant Chaplain Rev. Ebony Grisom and Jewish Chaplain Rabbi Rachel Gartner. A university spokesperson declined to comment when asked about the university’s position on the ordination of women as Catholic priests.

Malhotra suggested that Catholic institutions like Georgetown and members of these institutions that have taken religious vows may be unwilling to publicly support women’s ordination due to a fear of excommunication and loss of institutional support from the Church. Catholic individuals who have publicly spoken out in favor of the ordination of women have faced retribution from Catholic leadership in the past. In 2013, Pope Francis excommunicated an Australian priest, Fr. Greg Reynolds, in part due to his public support of female ordination.

“If you think about the life of a religious member of the clergy, or a vowed religious, that’s everything, that’s their whole community,” Malhotra said. “So it’s a huge thing if you talk to any Jesuit about if they would take this risk to come out publicly to support this, most of them would not, because they can’t. They don’t want to give up what they would be forced to give up.”

“ I f e e l l i k e t h a t ’s h o w t h e C h u rch s t a r t e d . Je s u s w a s n o t o b ey i n g p e o p l e, h e w a s forging his own path.”

Members of the Georgetown community hold a variety of views on the topic of women’s ordination. Emily Iannuzzelli (SCS ’11), who has attended multiple masses at a neighboring community under the RCWP, supports the ordination of women priests.

In these women-led masses, Iannuzzelli said she discovered “a new way of being Catholic.” This new space offered an alternative Catholic experience without the typical limits on women’s participation and leadership. “It bothers me to identify with a group in which I can’t have a say of authority,” she said. “And it just feels really unfair, and it just feels like, I don’t like being part of a group where I don’t even have a choice.”

In contrast, Laura Arenas (COL ’22), the social chair of Catholic Women of Georgetown, sees the ordination of

women as a less relevant issue. She believes the Mass exists to connect the individual to God, not to the priest. “My role in the Catholic Church is to find a deeper relationship with God,” she said. “I don’t necessarily need a female priest to guide me.”

However, Arenas is not against future discussions on female ordination. “If there is a chance for women to proceed farther into any type of leadership position, I am always down for that,” she said.

According to a 2015 Shriver report, 88 percent of U.S. Catholics would be “comfortable” with female ordination.

In Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Letter to Women, he wrote that women within the Church are still valued leaders in the lay community despite not being able to seek official ordination. “A certain diversity of roles is not prejudicial to women,” the letter read, but rather an “expression of what is specific to being male and female.”

Catholic women are not the only ones struggling to gain leadership roles in religious hierarchies; Georgetown Protestant Chaplain Rev. Ebony Grisom explained that female leaders, regardless of denomination, face challenges in leading a congregation. “Some barriers include women not being granted the space to lead authentically,” she said.

“The expectation is that they would follow a pattern cut by someone else, usually a male leader. They are expected to embody, model leadership that a community has already made a standard.”

While WHIMM diverges from the traditional, male-led model of a Catholic congregation, Iannuzzelli shared that, in her view, they are continuing a different kind of tradition that stretches back to the Catholic Church’s founding.“I feel like that’s how the Church started. Jesus was not obeying people, he was forging his own path.”

Iannuzzelli also spoke of her difficulties in spreading the word about female ordination and her excitement on the topic. “I guess there’s been conversations where people say ‘that would be nice’ or ‘that should happen.’ But it’s usually a conversation with women, and what power then do we have to do anything about it?”

Still, through WHIMM and similar congregations across the world, women appear to be taking church leadership into their own hands. Despite the threat of excommunication and public rejection, WHIMM’s rise demonstrates how women-led congregations continue to grow.

Malhotra shared her conviction that while leaders in the Vatican might reject their movement, female priests are ushering in a new era for the Church. “We are the church, and we are ordaining women,” she said. “The official church hasn’t quite come around yet, but the living church, the community of the faithful are doing it, and living it, and finding joy and hope in it.” $ DECEMBER 6, 2019

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LEISURE

ALBUMS

1

Igor

On IGOR, we meet a version of Tyler, the Creator Tyler, The Creator who has assumed his place as one of the decade’s most prolific, provocative, and talented artists.

IGOR maintains the more mature, thoughtful perspective of Tyler’s Flower Boy (2017) while allowing his off-kilter production to take center stage. The songs are dynamic, bursting with delightfully weird instrumental and structural choices. Buzzing synths and compressed drums come together to create a deceptively pretty soundscape that backs masterful features and precise, focused lyricism. IGOR makes no compromises for the sake of easy consumability, yet is decidedly magnetic. - Timmy Sutton

3 WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP,WHERE DO WE GO? Billie Eilish

Billie Eilish’s debut album revolutionized music in 2019 by refusing to display the characteristics of any single specific genre. In WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, Eilish creates her own sound, one which has significantly influenced the music of other artists.

The production of the album has an avant-garde aura, combining heavy bass, quiet vocals, and snippets of commonplace, non-musical noises, such as an airplane announcement on the song “i love you.” The complex and layered production, combined with Eilish’s heartfelt and emotional vocals, shows pop music can be vulnerable, experimental, and still a lot of fun. At only 17, Eilish made a debut that shook music, garnered tremendous success, and is slowly becoming everybody’s “strange addiction.” - Rachelle Bonja

4

mere six months after the release of her Grammythank u, next Aaward winning Sweetener (2018), Ariana Grande burst

Ariana Grande

back onto the music scene to encapsulate the mayhem of her personal life—in another full-length album. The singer’s vulnerability glimmers throughout thank u, next, and her music is a guiding star. Among the effusive highs of “7 Rings” and “bloodline” appear the skillfully-crafted lows of “ghostin,” “in my head,” and “needy.” Grande finds herself in the only entirely solo album of her discography, and it speaks volumes. thank u, next offers an abundance of the themes that connect humanity: love, loss, growth, hope, friendship, and liberation. - Emma Chuck

5 Norman Fucking Rockwwell!

Anyone listening to Lana Del Rey’s sixth album will recognize Lana Del Rey the artist’s sound immediately.

She maintains her signature deadpan, sultry style while expanding her songwriting horizons in Norman Fucking Rockwell!, an album that contains her most explicit and jarring lyrics yet. With references to the LP’s titular American painter and to Sylvia Plath, a famous American writer, Del Rey creates a darkly romantic vision for the whole country, not just the Southern California locations she mentions. The album’s third track,“Venice Bitch,” makes this connection effortlessly and other tracks, like “Cinnamon Girl,” discuss a dark side of relationships. On Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Del Rey brings both haunting emotionality and her A game. - Olivia Martin 14

T h e VO i c e ’ s C h o i c e s

Cuz I Love You

On her third studio album, singer/rapper Lizzo finally got Lizzo her big break—and wow, was it worth the wait. She raps about confidence and female empowerment on “Like A Girl,” “Water Me,” and “Soulmate,” scorns inadequate lovers on “Crybaby” and “Jerome,” and celebrates satisfactory ones on “Cuz I Love You” and “Better in Color.” Lizzo’s 14 poetic tracks give us all the heaping, infectious dose of radical self-love we need in a world that constantly demands we be thinner, prettier, and richer. Cuz I Love You is Lizzo’s love. letter to herself, and we’re all just privileged enough to read it over her shoulder. -Katherine Randolph

2

B E ST O F

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

6

Wasteland, Baby!

7

Father of the Bride In Father of the Bride, Vampire Weekend

Arriving five years after the release of his debut album, Hozier’s Wasteland, Baby! is comfortably familiar yet refreshingly unlike his previous Hozier work. Where before the singer lingered in a standard blues-rock sound, he now conjures the style and subject matter of 1960s protest music to fantastic effect. It’s loud, it’s aware, and it’s defiant. This rebellious feeling, coupled with catchy drum lines and Hozier’s signature soulful vocals, creates an album with clear vision and authentic theming. The album’s opener in particular embodies this spirit—titled “Nina Cried Power,” it is a testament to all activist music icons who came before him. If you need some energy, don’t let this release pass you by. - John Woolley masters their now-signature upbeat, folkpop vulnerability. Ezra Koenig’s clever lyrics have evolved from playful abstraction into meticulously scripted narratives, which resolve neatly without sacrificing integrity. Although bordering on overly-repetitive, the outward simplicity of each song preserves the emotional rawness that has been the core of Vampire Weekend since their self-titled 2008 debut. The tracks’ varied styles link classic country to modern mixing, and merge modern anxieties with timeless sentimentality. What line could more accurately summarize Millennial tension than “Harmony Hall”’s hit reframe, “I don’t wanna live like this / but I don’t wanna die”? - Emily Jaster

Vampire Weekend

8 HOMECOMING

HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM is not a Beyoncé’s greatest hits album. Consisting of the entirety of her historic 2018 headline Coachella performance, it is Beyoncé at the peak of her ambition, creativity, and versatility. Amidst the marching band’s pulsating brass fanfare, Beyoncé breathes new life into old bops like “Crazy in Love” and new hits like “Formation,” sampling artists from Nina Simone to Kendrick Lamar in a two-hour-long celebration of black excellence. Perhaps her most defining statement as an artist, HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM cements Beyoncé’s status as the 21st century’s single greatest entertainer. Bow down. - Jason Cuomo

Beyoncé

9

Lover

Lover is the pinnacle of Taylor Swift’s sound—the pop sensation’s long-awaited seventh album cements her full transition to adulthood. A refreshing lightheartedness underlies the emotional tracks on this album. As in all of Swift’s records, there is a nod to her infamous enemies with “I Forgot that You Existed,” an upbeat tune about moving on. Singles like “ME! (feat. Brendon Urie)” and “You Need to Calm Down” provide some levity for an album full of heavier songs like “Soon You’ll Get Better (feat. Dixie Chicks),” which reveals Swift’s mother’s battle with cancer. Other tracks, such as “Lover” and “Cornelia Street,” vividly chronicle the bittersweet process of falling in love. Listeners will be enamored with Lover. - Olivia Martin

Taylor Swift

10

When I Get Home

Solange hones her unique sonic style in her fifth studio album, When I Get Home, which Solange features contributions from R&B heavyweights like The-Dream and renowned producers like Pharrell. An exploration into funk psychedelia, the ethereal record lilts from track to track, blending the line between song and speech. Solange uses a combination of ambient synths and airy vocals to create a cyclical, rhythmic flow throughout. The record culminates in “Almeda,” and the song’s dreamy soundscape clashes with lucid lyrics about taking pride in the resilience of the black community. From “Stay Flo” to “Binz,” the album reflects Solange’s cohesive vision, bending genre and musical texture expertly to her will. - Skyler Coffey

design by cade shore

LEISURE

MOVIES

2019 1 Booksmart

Directed by Olivia Wilde, this coming-of-age movie perfectly balances raw, unrequited love with hints of a happily ever after. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and her best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Devers) want to have one night that epitomizes the “cool” high school experience before they graduate. Throughout their chaotic evening, both Amy and Molly gain the confidence to talk to their respective crushes. Booksmart masterfully incorporates a diverse variety of storylines in an honest, humorous fashion. As one of the few movies of 2019 to do justice to an LGBTQ+ plot line, while simultaneously destigmatizing some of the very real struggles high school seniors encounter, Booksmart is a great example of why more femaledriven movies need to be accepted by Hollywood. - Anna Pogrebivsky

2 Parasite

Parasite is a film best experienced blind. Directed by genius filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho and set in South Korea, the story follows the impoverished Kim family, who become employed by the egregiously wealthy Park household. A satirical heist turned suspenseful thriller, the film explores the brutal, cyclical nature of poverty with a visceral plea for class solidarity in the cruel face of capitalism. It became an unexpected hit, breaking barriers as an international film by finding widespread box-office success.

With haunting performances and a nail-biting story that’ll stick with you long after the credits roll, Parasite is not just one of the best films of 2019, but of the decade as a whole. - Dajour Evans

6 Us

Jordan Peele’s second horror film, Us, dives even deeper into the genre than 2017’s Get Out, creating a world in which eerie doppelganger “tethers” ascend from an underground realm to enact revenge on and replace their above-ground counterparts. Star Lupita Nyong’o plays doppelgangers Adelaide Wilson and Red flawlessly, the maniacal tether being one of the most striking performances of her career. The scariest aspect of Us is the feeling it produces that its events could happen in real life—science fiction underlies the horrific reality within this picture, with bone-chilling concepts and sinister imagery that are sure to haunt viewers long after the credits roll. - Olivia Martin

7 Joker

Perhaps the most controversial film of the year, Joker offers a raw and eerie origin story for the iconic supervillain. Directed

by Todd Phillips and starring the legendary Joaquin Phoenix, the film follows Arthur Fleck, a failing stand-up comedian slowly descending into insanity as his reality crumbles. His transformation from lank-haired introvert to grinning nihilist in a dapper red suit is both disturbing and remarkable. Though at its core a psychological thriller, the film highlights key societal issues, including the treatment of mental illness, the effects of isolation, and the prevalence of violence. There are no vats of chemical waste nor heroes to oppose here: Fleck could be anyone, and this is perhaps what should frighten us most. - Sara Blomquist

Jojo Rabbit 8 Once Upon a Time In Hollywood 3

Featuring truly fantastic performances from Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio and the best production design of the year, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a beautiful love letter to Old Hollywood. It’s essentially a hangout movie, following the lives of a washed up actor, his stuntman, and their neighbor, Sharon Tate, in the days leading up to the Manson murders.

Director Quentin Tarantino channels his three decades of experience as a filmmaker into a meticulously crafted vision of late-1960s L.A. Surprisingly, he adopts a more mature and reflective tone, saving his typical bombast for an explosive final sequence. The result is almost melancholic, an ode to both a bygone era and a future that sadly can never be. - Steven Frost

4 The Farewell

Lulu Wang’s comedy-drama beautifully tackles the complexity of Asian American identity and captures the often-difficult experience of putting family before self out of love. The Farewell tells the story of Billi (Awkwafina), a Millenial New Yorker, and her immigrant family returning to China to visit her grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen) who is dying of lung cancer. Determined to prevent Nai Nai from learning about her fatal condition, the family stages a fake wedding so everyone can gather to say goodbye. Billi struggles between American values urging that she tell Nai Nai the truth and Chinese values prioritizing that she take on the burden quietly so as not to ruin her grandmother’s last living moments. Viewers are challenged to consider this “good lie”: Is it better to live with the knowledge of impending death, or to live in blissful ignorance? - Jaden Kielty Avengers: Endgame is the culmination of ten years of blockbuster films, and easily the most epic Marvel movie to date. The follow-up to 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, it delivers on its weighty task of wrapping up the 22-movie narrative now lauded the “Infinity Saga.” Determined to undo Thanos’s (Josh Brolin) snap, which decimated half of all life in the universe, the remaining cast must band together one final time to bring back the fallen heroes. As the final performance from Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans in the franchise, the movie provides an immensely satisfying conclusion. Endgame successfully resolves not just the Thanos storyline, but also the character arcs of each of the six Avengers fans have loved and followed for over a decade. - Orly Salik

5 Avengers: Endgame design by cade shore

Jojo Rabbit is a rare film: one that tackles both comedy and tragedy successfully when discussing life under Hitler’s regime. Ten-yearold Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), a member of the Hitler Youth, makes sense of the changing world around him with the help of his imaginary friend, a satirical version of Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi) himself. As the war comes to a close, the boy finds out his mother has been protecting a young Jewish girl, Elsa Korr (Thomasin McKenzie), in their home, and he is torn between his Nazi identity and his relationships and moral compass. Griffin Davis’s incredible performance makes the movie especially compelling. Jojo Rabbit is sure to bring audiences both laughter and tears. - Olivia Martin

9 Rocketman

With multi-talented leading man Taron Egerton at the wheel, Rocketman follows Elton John’s journey to super-stardom, through his childhood and rise to fame. While much of the film is exhilarating, as John experiences love along with phenomenal career success, there are starkly somber moments as well. Rocketman doesn’t shy away from John’s fraught familial relationships and history of substance abuse. The movie offers up blunt honesty, but blends it with magical realism that leaves audiences intrigued, saddened, and all the more aware of who John is as an artist and as a person. Rocketman allows the man behind the music to shine through as brightly as his iconic bedazzled Dodgers uniform. - Emma Chuck

10 Hustlers

Equal parts heart-warming female friendship flick, thrilling crime drama, and provocative exploration of sex and wealth in American society, Hustlers aims for several notes— and hits them all. The all-star cast of Hustlers alone earns the groundbreaking film a spot on our list. Led by the unlikely duo of Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez, the film follows the true story of a group of strippers in their attempts to make a living using innovative means, including creating their own cocktail of drugs and charging the credit cards of would-be clients. Bringing viewers into the world of the strip club and all its politics, the film manages to honestly tell the tale of its protagonists’ rise and fall from glory, all while literally asking the audience: Given the opportunity, would you not hustle? - Annemarie Cuccia DECEMBER 6, 2019

15

VOICES

No matter which list you’re on, you can have

in your stocking!

Happy Holidays from the Voice 16

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE