M A R C H 13 , 2 0 2 6
F E B R U A RY 20, 2 02 6
“TIME FOR US TO START TELLING OUR STORY”: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF GO-GO By Alexandra Risi
GEORGETOWN, WILL YOU EVER CHOOSE PEOPLE OVER PROFIT? By the Editorial Board
A LOVE LETTER TO DRUID STONE LABOR OF LOVE: BEHIND THE AND HATE MAIL TO CONFORMITY SCENES OF GEORGETOWN'S By Paige Benish SPRING THEATER PRODUCTIONS
IN A CHANGING CITY, D.C.’S REMAINING ETHNIC GROCERY STORES HOLD STRONG By Sydney Carroll
By Evan Schleck
Contents Alysa Liu and the death of the grindset PAIGE BENISH
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halftime sports
March 13, 2026 Volume 58 | Issue 9
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Labor of love: Behind the scenes of Georgetown’s spring theater productions
The lost kitchens of Gaza: Where cooking ensures that Palestine never dies
EVAN SCHLECK
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voices
features
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SELMA ZUAITER
editorials
features
More than static: WGTB returns to its place on Georgetown’s airwaves EMILY GUTIERREZ
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Georgetown, will you ever choose people over profit? EDITORIAL BOARD
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voices
leisure
The Chimes go big on Desperate Chimes, Desperate Measures
Do you know soand-so? The art of adjacency PHOEBE NASH
AARON POLLOCK AND SAATHVIK POLURI
on the cover
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Georgetown athletes balance professional pathways and athletic aspirations
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Bridgerton Season 4 is a welcome return to form LUCY MONTALTI
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“proportions inspired by Toby Fox” MICHELLE WANG
“Labor abuse cannot be tolerated at Georgetown. The university cannot act as a moral and intellectual leader in the District and the country while simultaneously treating those it employs with disdain.”
THE GEORGETOWN VOICE
leisure: Executive Editor — Elizabeth Adler Leisure Editor — Lucy Montalti Asst. Leisure Editors — Ryan Goodwin, Karcin Hagi Halftime Editor — Aaron Pollock Asst. Halftime Editors — Joaquin Martinez, Alex Hwang, Quinn Ross sports: Executive Editor — Anna Cordova Sports Editor — Julia Maurer Asst. Sports Editors — Andrew Swank, Stella Linn Halftime Editor — Eileen Weisner Asst. Halftime Editors — Vince Gude, Lila Gizzie
online: Online Executive — Connor Dwin Asst. Website Editor — Apara Chandavarkar Social Media Editor — Maysam Ider
leisure
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opinion: Executive Editor — Evalyn Lee Voices Editor — Phoebe Nash Asst. Voices Editors — Olivia Pozen, Jacob Gardner, Colby Kelly, Bridgette Jeonarine Editorial Board Chair — Darin Eberhardt Editorial Board — Seth Edwards, Imani Liburd Kamran Darnall-Hirani, Paige Benish, Phoebe Nash, Olivia Pozen
multimedia: Multimedia Executive — Olivia Fanders Podcast Exec. Producer — Katie Reddy Podcast Editor — Romy Abu-Fadel Podcast Asst. Editor — Alaena Hunt Asst. Photo Editors — Yunji Yun, Ella Qu, Ayman Alam
halftime leisure
PG. 10
news: Executive Editor — Aubrey Butterfield Features Editor — Alexandra Risi News Editor — Sophia Jacome Asst. News Editors — Justin Higgins, Sehr Khosla, Julia Carvalho, Basia Panko Asst. Features Editors — Sophie St Amand
copy: Copy Chiefs — Isabella Baldwin, Madison Weis Asst. Copy Editors — Lila Wesner, Sonia Pensa, Michelle Lee
ANNA CORDOVA
JACOB GARDNER
internal resources: Exec. Manager for Staff — Chih-Rong Kuo Exec. Editor for Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion — Elaine Clarke Asst. Editor for Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion — Renee Pujara Editor for Sexual Violence Advocacy, Prevention, and Coverage — Olivia Fanders Social Chairs — Aaron Pollock, Justin Higgins Archivist — Eileen Miller
design: Design Editor — Paige Benish Spread Editors — Maggie Zhang Cover Editor — Michelle Wang Asst. Design Editors — Pia Cruz, Sophie St Amand, Shabad Singh
sports
Hilary Duff hit the jackpot. Must be luck…or something
Editor-in-Chief — Eddy Binford-Ross Managing Editor of Content — Sydney Carroll Managing Editor of Operations — Imani Liburd
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business: General Manager — Amber Bai Asst. Manager of Alumni Outreach — Elyse van Houten Asst. Manager of Accounts & Sales — Ally Rogers support: Contributing Editors — Tina Solki, Sam Monteiro, Emma Cameron, Alex Lalli, Ninabella Arlis, Eileen Miller, Katie Doran Staff Contributors — Izzy Wagener, Ali Chaudhry, Rhea Banerjee, Leah Abraham, Olivia Li, Bradshaw Cate, Cassie Delinsky, Annie Egan, Massimo D’Onofrio, Elle Marinello, Elizabeth Foster, Alexandra Hamilton, Katie Han, Rina Khoury, Michelle Lee, Belinda Li, Aidan Munroe, Rory Myers, Christina Pan, Mahika Sharma, Alexis Tamm, Hannah Yu, Minhal Nazeer
Artifical athletics: Why our athletes need AI more than anyone else BY BRADSHAW CATE
pg. 12 graphic by paige benish; backcover: “macarthur park” by michelle wang
s Hoyas always strive to be on Additionally, Gemini can especially when their intense U the cutting edge. After President help with our on- and off-the- athletic schedule gives them little Groves’s widely celebrated field decision-making. The next time to complete assignments… announcement that Georgetown will be forcefully integrating Google’s Gemini AI into our lives, I have already thought of some uses for our student athletes. For example, Gemini can replace our experienced training staff with curated diet and workout plans. “Hey Gemini, should I get the chicken tenders or quesadilla from Epi’s?” “Hey Gemini, plan me a workout at Yates that avoids the area where all the elderly men exercise.” Who needs humans when you can use the magical word-association machine of a trillion dollar company?
time a basketball player decides to shoot a three, the university suggests the player ask Gemini first. While pulling out your phone during a game may be unorthodox, Georgetown basketball has never been conventional. Ed Cooley could even use the chatbot to calculate the flight path of his next thrown water bottle. Anything to boost the distance, accuracy, and value of our shots. In the classroom, student athletes can use Gemini to “support research” for their papers. There are no other obvious applications for generative AI in their classwork,
Still, Hoyas be warned. Can the university truly stop our BIG EAST rivals from taking each prompt, data point, and Epi’s order we give to Gemini? Anything our players give Gemini could be used against us. I don’t want to give the Blue Demons, Red Storm, or Golden Eagles an advantage because they know Laila Jewett’s favorite shot or, ironically, what she is learning about in her cybersecurity program. So, be careful what data you give to AI, as you never know what nonexistent mascot could be reading log (I mean seriously, what is a “Red Storm?”).
Labor of love: Behind the scenes of Georgetown’s spring theater productions LESIURE
BY EVAN SCHLECK
DESIGN BY KATIE REDDY
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n a Friday afternoon in February, while some students may have been studying or taking a nap, Linsey Brookfield (CAS ’26) was cutting a piece of plywood with a circular saw. Brookfield was working down in the scene shop, a high-ceilinged room in the basement of Georgetown’s Davis Performing Arts Center (DPAC). Every cut needed to be meticulously measured to fit the set design for the upcoming student production of A Streetcar Named Desire. During performances, audiences might be enthralled by the dynamic characters and plotlines onstage, but it’s the hours that production and direction staff, like Brookfield, devote behind the scenes that help make the shows shine. The Voice spoke to student directors, producers, choreographers, and others who are working to bring two student shows to life this spring. A Streetcar Named Desire A few years after she first entered the scene shop and started working with “scary” power tools, Brookfield is now leading the team building the set for Nomadic Theatre and Black Theatre Ensemble’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The production is set to run in the Village C Theater March 19-28. Brookfield’s primary job as a technical director is to execute the set designs drawn by the creative team. She’s found herself pushed to make creative choices throughout the process. “The set we’re building is this rundown apartment, and so the division that we’re creating between the bedroom and the
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kitchen is actually just a sliding curtain,” Brookfield said. “I’ve never done that in a production, but I think it’s going to end up looking really cool.” Because production staff build the set pieces in the DPAC scene shop and must transport them to the theater for rehearsals, Brookfield has to consider a variety of logistical factors. “If you’ve been to the VC Theater, you’ll know that there is an elevator, but not all of our pieces fit in there, and so sometimes you’ll see us walking these really big wooden things down the stairs,” Brookfield laughed. “It’s always comical.” Brookfield enjoys working around the challenges of show production, as well as the opportunity to pass skills onto other students in Nomadic. “I get to teach other people how to do it, which I think is my favorite part about being a part of Nomadic, and getting to build these sets,” Brookfield said. “You’re bringing a lot of people who have been involved in theater and the arts together.” For Evelyn Christina Wiredu (SFS ’26), Black Theatre Ensemble’s executive producer and the director of A Streetcar Named Desire, the production has been a learning process as well. Although she initially “stumbled into” directing after the original director stepped down, Wiredu said the support of other members of Georgetown’s theater community has helped her grow into the role. Fatima Dyfan, the faculty artistic director for all the co-curricular theater groups, was particularly supportive. “She was really helpful in [saying], ‘Here are some things that you could do.
Here’s some ways to be thinking about it,’ walking me through creating a vision statement and all of that,” Wiredu said. Working with other members of the production staff allows her to give input on which design choices will work with her vision, which focuses on the show’s historical setting. “I very much see it as a time capsule of the late-1940s, post-World War II era,” Wiredu said. “I’m more focused on the history aspect of it.” Wiredu also appreciates the opportunity that directing has given her to focus on blocking, or the precise way that actors move within the show. This is an aspect that she finds is often overlooked in the theater. “Every single movement is, to some extent, choreography, and I don’t think that’s talked about on stage as much when it’s not a musical, when they’re not literally dancing,” Wiredu said. “Every movement, picking up a glass, putting it down, it’s all part of a choreography.” Like directors, producers must also look at shows in a new way, according to Felicity Misse-Ekwa (CAS ’28). Misse-Ekwa has encountered numerous surprises as the producer for A Streetcar Named Desire, with one of her first challenges being the casting process. “I’ve never helped with casting before, and it honestly changed my mind, because I always thought, ‘Okay, the best actor gets the role,’’ Misse-Ekwa said. “But no, I learned that it’s whoever fits the role best that gets the role.” While actors must believably portray their characters, production staff must immerse the audience in the play’s setting so they can see those characters in context. “The actors can bring you to that character, but the role of the set and the music is to bring you to that area,” Misse-Ekwa said. “Streetcar is set in New Orleans, and so the role of the set, the role of the music, the role of the lights, is to also bring you into New Orleans.” Making sure the crews for the set, music, and lights are running on a smooth schedule is the role of the stage manager. Despite not having much experience in theater before coming to Georgetown, Anandita Agarwal (SFS ’28) said she has felt welcome serving in that position for A Streetcar Named Desire.
“I do feel like some of it is a little hard to understand at first when you enter the world, but I think it’s easy to get involved, and if you really put in time and energy, it’s really easy to learn about the resources they have,” Agarwal said. For Agarwal, the supportive and artistic theater community contrasts with the structured and preprofessional culture in other on-campus activities. “I’m also a little surprised by how informal theater is. At Georgetown, it’s kind of in the margins, and it’s more of a third space,” Agarwal said. “Over here, it’s the investment banking clubs and the consulting clubs that get all the budget, right? So we had to make do with the remains of it. But there’s a very big community of artists.” Agarwal highlighted members of the Nomadic community, including past stage managers, for giving her support and guidance. But even with their help, stage managing can be taxing. “Not only do I have to be there at every rehearsal and be actually present and engaged in the process of putting together a product on stage, but I’m also working outside of rehearsal. I spend at least 10 hours a week on theater stuff,” Agarwal said. Spring Awakening In Mask and Bauble, Georgetown’s oldest theater troupe, students are also hard at work preparing for their production: the troupe will put on Spring Awakening this month. The show is scheduled to run April 10-18 in the Mask and Bauble Theater in Poulton Hall. For director Nate Findlay (CAS ’27), working on Spring Awakening has allowed him to express his longtime love for the show and interpret it in a new, creative way. “Spring Awakening has been my favorite show since God knows how long. Not only is the music incredible and the show dynamic, but I’ve never encountered a piece equally as fun and emotional,” Findlay said. Although the show revolves around young teenagers in 19th-century Germany, Findlay said its themes of “personal repression, liberation, joy, and freedom” make it equally relevant to 2026. Acting makes up much of Findlay’s previous theater experience, but he was excited to get involved in the creative side of production. He sees directing as an opportunity to give back to the theater community and create meaningful experiences for performers by supporting their personal expression and artistic development. “It’s more than a production, it’s an extension of who they are […] manifested into the world,” Findlay said.
For Findlay, who is studying film, specific visual elements and symbols have become a big part of his creative process. “I think through images: how images will help guide an audience through the story,” Findlay said. For example, the set will prominently feature wood. The performers’ interactions with wooden or natural objects and humanmade objects will make the characters’ internal battles between nature and nurture, a major theme in the show, more vivid to the audience, Findlay said. Alexis Giaquinta (CAS ’28), who is producing Spring Awakening, has also worked thoughtfully on the show’s set pieces. Among the unusual problems Giaquinta had to tackle was finding a piano; instead of building a fake one, the team decided to find a real piano and hollow it out for the set. Giaquinta said the unpredictability involved in producing has changed her perspective on theater. “With acting […] sometimes things are weird, but you know it’s written in the script, and you know what’s gonna happen,” Giaquinta, who acted in high school, said. “A lot of times with producing, I’ll get a question, and I’m like, ‘Well, I really wasn’t expecting to be asked this question today.’” Giaquinta hopes audiences will recognize the attention to detail that producers have while building sets. “A lot of people will look at art and enjoy it, and that’s really awesome. But it’s also important to think about it in a critical way, and realize that these are choices that are being made on purpose, and not just because we thought it would look cool,” Giaquinta said.
As one of the choreographers for Spring Awakening, Charlotte Bonneau (CAS ’27) is continuing her love for dance while helping execute the artistic vision of the show. Because a choreographer must design dances with both the actors and the people who operate lights and sound in mind, Bonneau stays in constant communication with everyone in the production. Choreographing an ensemble of actors who all have different levels of dance experience can be challenging. “You have to make everything very accessible for what we call a ‘strong mover,’ but not a dancer. It’s all about making the performers look good, and finding a really happy medium with something that’s challenging but not out of the realm of possibility,” Bonneau said. In addition, a choreographer must consider the audience’s viewing experience. Spring Awakening will be staged in the round, meaning that audience members will be seated on three sides of the stage, watching the performance from several angles. “How do we make it look cool to people sitting in the back, in the front, on all sides of the audience?” Bonneau said. “Adapting to the space is one of the most fun parts, because it forces our production to be unique.” When Bonneau and others reflected on the amount of time and effort that goes into their shows, they said the process remains rewarding. It’s not a resumebuilder, but a way to build community and appreciation for the performing arts. “There’s no career incentive to college theater,” Bonneau said. “Everyone there is there for the love of the game.” G
FEBRUARY MARCH 13 15, 13,, 2026 MARCH
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More than static: WGTB returns to its place on Georgetown’s airwaves BY EMILY GUTIERREZ| DESIGN BY SOPHIE ST AMAND
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fter WGTB Georgetown University Radio’s equipment failed unexpectedly last semester, Georgetown’s only studentrun radio station went silent. After four months of troubleshooting, the station returned to the air in mid-February, ready to prove its importance on campus as both a club and a community. For members of the station, the revival marks the return of a space for student creativity, connection, and preprofessional opportunities in the arts. “I think radio is really important within the Georgetown community because music is something that I think a lot of people listen to, but they don’t have an opportunity to engage with it all that much,” WGTB Board Member Cristina Gomez (SFS ’27) said. “I think radio is a very low-stakes way to sort of tap into that part of yourself that you may not be able to anyways.” However, current WGTB leadership feels that the university’s support is lacking. When the station’s Windows desktop computer gave out and the server malfunctioned last semester, WGTB had to enlist a live sound expert from George Washington University to diagnose and repair the setup due to the lack of technical support from Georgetown. “It certainly would have been nicer if [WGTB] had someone dedicated at Georgetown who could have helped us,” WGTB General Manager Chandler Paulk (CAS ’28) said. “There are a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get someone from outside of the university to come in and fix it.” WGTB radio alumni remain engaged with the station, and with their help and donations, the station plans to pursue a studio-wide revamp, including buying a new $8,000
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soundboard over the summer to avoid future broadcasting disturbances. Throughout its 80-year run, WGTB’s place on campus has been a source of controversy. The station was founded in 1946 by Rev. Francis J. Heyden, S.J., as an AM station that broadcast Latin Mass to shutins in the District. In 1960, the university obtained a license for WGTB, transitioning the station from AM to FM radio during the slow rise of FM broadcasting. From the 1960s into the 1970s, the station built a following across the D.C. area for its alternative rock programming and progressive political leanings. These positions frequently placed the station in conflict with the university administration, alumni, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 1971, the station shut down for eight months due to complaints from Georgetown’s Physics Department that the station’s transmissions were interfering with their equipment and experiments. That same year, the station’s radio tower was blown down due to “inclement weather”— however, DJs at the time suspected administrators had tampered with the equipment to disrupt its programming. In 1973, the station’s broadcasting of John Lennon’s song “Working Class Hero” led to its first of six complaints from the FCC due to the song’s mentions of religion, sex, and explicit language. Georgetown’s termination of the station’s manager, along with WGTB’s license remaining unapproved by the FCC, led the station to shut down in March of that year. In 1979, then-Georgetown President Rev. Timothy Healy, S.J., sold the station’s 6,700-watt signal and license to the University of the District of Columbia for $1. WGTB staff attempted to block the transfer but failed, ending WGTB’s original broadcast run. Students revived the station in 1982 as WROX-AM, and by 1985, it reclaimed the WGTB name. The studio moved from the basement of Copley Hall to the Leavey Center in 1996, where it has remained for the past 30 years. Following the semester-long break, audience engagement on the station’s Instagram page declined compared to previous semesters. Still, WGTB has launched several collaboration initiatives to rebuild its presence on campus.
“We are working on a collaboration with Hoya Hospitality,” WGTB General Manager Lucy Johnson said. “We’re also working with some Corp locations, like we’ve been playing in Uncommon Grounds a lot.” In addition to expanding broadcasting locations, Johnson mentioned that the station is working with Echo Stage to secure free concert tickets for student giveaways, including shows by Two Friends, Gryffin, Alan Walker, Subtronics, SIDEPIECE, Timmy Trumpet, and Galantis, along with talks about bringing in the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team for an interview. Through its Instagram account, the station also promotes events and opportunities. Currently, WGTB is preparing to host its annual Spring Concert where Georgetown indie band m.e.n. will be opening for indie rock musician Eliza McLamb on Sunday, March 15. At a university where it can often feel like finance recruiting, coffee chats, and the race to the ideal resume dominate daily life, WGTB says they offer a way to combine creative pursuits with transferable skills. According to data from the Cawley Career Center on the class of 2024’s postgraduate outcomes, the top three industries students entered were financial services, management consulting, and healthcare, accounting for 36.57% of graduates. With more than a third of students going into finance or healthcare post-graduation, WGTB helps students interested in pursuing a career in the arts gain skills while offering a low-pressure creative outlet. For those interested in deeper involvement, the station offers writing workshops, DJ training, and behind-thescenes roles such as logging physical media, creating entry points for students with varying levels of interest in radio or the arts. “It may not be consulting, but we’re also preprofessional in a way,” Paulk said. “We are press passing for Union Station and the Anthem, we’re talking to so many people in artist management right now about our Spring Concert, and so there are opportunities for preprofessional careers in the arts, you just have to be involved.” G
LEISURE
The Chimes go big on Desperate Chimes, Desperate Measures BY AARON POLLOCK AND SAATHVIK POLURI
DESIGN BY MAGGIE ZHANG
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t’s been so long (10 years) since last we met with the Georgetown Chimes for a full-length album. Thankfully, this year, Georgetown’s oldest a cappella group has blessed us with Desperate Chimes, Desperate Measures (2026), which features a tracklist of 23 barbershop classics and modern ballads. It’s a daring tracklist, but the Chimes always make the risk worth the reward. Their cover of “Go the Distance” from Disney’s Hercules (1997) is emblematic of the confidence the Chimes had in assembling the track list for Desperate Chimes. “I want” songs, a Disney staple where the protagonist proclaims their forbidden yet irresistible desires, often work well when an a cappella group can deliver a more confident cover than the original. For the Chimes’ rendition of “Go the Distance,” Christian Kim (CAS ’25, GRAD ’26) takes on the role of a more confident young Hercules who can convert misunderstood physical strength into vocal prowess. Other songs are risky to cover simply because they’ve had staying power for generations. For example, “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) is likely the only song that Audrey Hepburn, Frank Ocean, and the Georgetown Chimes could ever have in common. Each version offers something unique—Audrey Hepburn’s could make anyone swoon with its delicate simplicity, while Frank Ocean’s discordant harmonies welcome feelings of wanderlust. In the Chimes’ take, the swinging harmonies sound as if an older Disney Studios had hired the group to sing backup on a riverboat adventure. Despite traveling in risky waters, the Chimes still ride the river to a safe destination.
The Chimes treat “Irish Blessing” with the gentle, kind care usually reserved for antique glassware. Boasting the clearest production on the record, the sonic clarity unfolds like a small musical staircase with every bridging harmony gently stepping up. The group wisely chooses to lean into restraint on this storied, cultured song of the barbershop scene, letting the blend do the work. The Chimes also maintain their vocal control despite crafting difficult vocal arrangements, preventing their barbershop from becoming a butcher shop. Little could be worse than some pitchy tenor belting out “All I Ask” by Adele, until he finally gives up and turns the high D5 note into a mere squeak. That hypothetical disaster couldn’t be further from what the Chimes accomplished with their cover of Adele’s classic power ballad. Alex Du (SFS ’25) successfully croons his way through an unforgiving song with a crystal clear vibrato. No one can quite be Adele, but his tone alone makes for a solid homage to the legendary singer. Next, the Chimes take a bold swing at Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” a song also known for being vocally acrobatic and consistently avoided by tenor vocalists. However, this moment on the record is a creative and compositional high point for the group. The Chimes provide a looser arrangement and interpretation of Queen’s harmonies, while still preserving the gospellike call-and-response elements and the galloping momentum to Freddie Mercury’s familiar falsetto climax. Towards the end of the track, the soloist, Kim, goes in for the iconic solo belt with admirable nerve. The track then strays from the original, adding harmonies for a restrained yet satisfying finish that makes the cover feel less like a tribute act and more like the Chimes claiming the song as their own. “The Parting Glass” stands out due to its lead, specifically in the middle of the arrangement’s “sandwich,” where the vocal chorus sounds large and immersive through rich doubled harmonies. The captivating performance is in part due to the quivering phrasing that flickers between formal barbershop diction and a more relaxed delivery with softer or blurred words. This pushand-pull effect gives the track an
oddly modern feel, painting a picture of a ’90s power pop frontman wandering into a barbershop quartet on a whim. Without the luxury of studio polish, the production takes a slight dip on the several live recordings on the LP when compared to the crystal-clear studio cuts, though not to any fault of the singers. Among the tracks, “It is Well With My Soul” stands out for its graceful harmonic composition, which sounds straight out of a lost Brian Wilson Beach Boys composition. The record eventually circles back to campus with a live rendition of Georgetown’s fight song. The Chimes hold on to tradition, imbuing the song with even more emotion and grit than a student section in a packed gym. They are just as dedicated as they have been throughout the album—but this time, they are playing in familiar territory. The live setting gives the performance an extra spark, as the harmonies carry the familiar melody with a sense of proud ease. It’s a fitting way to close the record— bringing the Chimes and their listeners right back home to Georgetown. #
MARCH 13, 2026
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The lost kitchens of Gaza: Where cooking ensures that Palestine never dies BY SELMA ZUAITER
GRAPHICS BY MASHA MILLER; LAYOUT BY LUCY MONTALTI
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he kitchen breathes in small movements: the subdued sweetness of onions melting in olive oil, the whistle of a kettle brewing tea, and cutlery clinking underneath the sink’s running water. On the counter, a bowl of water-soaked rice and potatoes sits beside tomatoes and pots overflowing with herbs. It is a lived-in warmth, the kind of kitchen that feels like home, even though it isn’t the home B.H. had no choice but to leave behind. At the stove, B.H. (MAAS ’26)—a Georgetown master’s student who spoke to me on the condition that she be identified by her initials due to safety concerns—slips between the stove flame and counter with a quiet certainty. She stirs the broth, then waves away a bloom of steam that envelops her face. Tonight, she is making maqluba, meaning “upside-down” in Arabic. B.H. begins to layer the dish as she has done many times before: thin slices of fried eggplant, each one delicately placed across the bottom. Crisped potatoes fill the spaces in between. “The way I’m putting all the ingredients together, this is my mother’s way,” B.H. says, gesturing toward the jar of ground black pepper beside her. “Use your sense,” she says when I pause, unsure how much of the spice to add. “Don’t worry.” Before Israel’s genocide in Palestine, B.H. was an English teacher in Gaza, just like her mother. In Gaza, her mother cooked for everyone. B.H. has lived in Washington, D.C. for a year and a half since leaving her family in Palestine. Here, B.H. has taken on the same role: cooking for neighbors, cousins, friends, or anyone passing through. Cooking is how she loves, how she finds continuity. “Every time I cooked any of my mother’s recipe,” B.H. tells me, “I felt like I’m recalling her again. I felt like her spirit with me in the kitchen.” As the pot of layered vegetables, chicken, and spiced rice is left to simmer, she pours fresh strawberry-bananaapple juice into glasses—the “winter juice” her mother would make for her as a child. The kitchen smells like memory: the scent of fruit, oil, and cardamom suspended in the air. B.H.’s D.C. kitchen is bountiful, but her kitchen in Gaza is debris buried 8
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under settled dust. Since October 2023, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has destroyed more than half of its buildings, decimating approximately 360,000 homes, including B.H.’s. According to the United Nations, as of October 2025, approximately 81% of all structures had been damaged. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that nine in 10 Palestinians— Gaza’s population is 2.2 million—have been displaced and forced to cook in tents, shelters, and the exposed frames of houses that lay open to the sky. Even before October 2023, decades of Israel’s blockade of the city propelled families into chronic starvation: food insecurity and poverty rates in Gaza had risen to 65% in July 2022. Now in 2026, almost every Gazan, including 100% of people in the cities of Deir al Balah and Khan Yunis, is experiencing acute levels of hunger. It is from this reality, one built upon decades of loss, displacement, and ethnic cleansing, that four Palestinians—three in the diaspora and one still living in Gaza—cook to preserve memory and, in turn, their existence. Cooking in absence While B.H.’s kitchen holds the memory of what she lost, Hamada Shaqoura’s kitchen bears what that loss looks like up close. Shaqoura, a chef in Gaza, labors every day to cook something out of almost nothing. Shaqoura’s kitchen in Khan Yunis is not a room, but a remnant: a rented house stripped to its bones. And yet, in this place that no longer resembles home, he cooks. Shaqoura works as a content creator in Gaza, promoting recipes and local restaurants on his Instagram page. He witnessed the emergence of a culinary microcosm, even under blockade, where chefs were expanding what was possible in the strip. “When the genocide began I became known as an internet chef, showing what it means to cook under siege,” Shaqoura wrote to me. “I usually introduce myself through food, because for me cooking is the clearest way to
connect with people, to show resilience, and to keep our story alive.” After one of the first ceasefires, some ingredients returned, but even before the genocide, it had never been enough, according to Shaqoura. In his Instagram videos, Shaqoura is often pictured cooking for children running around with empty pots the size of their bodies, sometimes with enough lentils or rice to feed just themselves. Shaqoura craves small blinks of home: the fresh parsley, mint, and dill that once threaded their brightness through every meal. “Without them, the food feels dead, as if it lost its soul,” Shaqoura wrote. Olive oil, the pith of Palestinian cooking, was a loss that hollowed Shaqoura. Pressed from the indigenous olive trees that grow in silver-green rows, the olive oil comes from groves that, time and time again, are bulldozed. Yet every season, the trees still grow, as if the land refuses to let them die. “We use it in almost every recipe, and when it is missing, the food does not feel like food to me,” Shaqoura wrote. Since the genocide started, Shaqoura has learned to improvise his meals, once using dulled vegetables, milk, and rice to recreate a comfort meal of chicken and cream from his old life. “It actually tasted really good,” Shaqoura wrote, “I am not sure if it was because it truly did, or because I was imagining eating the real thing the whole time.” What inspires Shaqoura’s resilience isn’t the memory of food, but the children
he feeds. Shaqoura’s nickname among children has become Zaki, delicious in Arabic. He remembers the children who call him Zaki when cooking feels like an impossible feat. “People outside may think cooking is still about recipes or choices. Here it is about survival,” Shaqoura wrote. “Every meal I prepare says we are still alive, we are still here, we will not disappear.” In his Instagram cooking videos, Shaqoura looks into the camera without speaking, his face set in a silent, solemn stillness. Shaqoura never utters a word, yet says so much. “I am staring at every free soul in the world, challenging them to speak up,” Shaqoura said. The smell of bread browning in an oven, or the bustle of children waiting for food keeps Shaqoura going, where even the faintest sounds and smells become joys that stay alive. Inventing survival For Shaqoura, surviving means coaxing meals with a makeshift creativity. Similarly true for A. (MSFS ’26) and N., Gaza is “the city of the mother of invention,” where kitchens became places of engineering more than just cooking. A. and N., a Georgetown master’s student and his wife, spoke to me on the condition that they be identified by their first initials due to safety concerns. Before arriving in the U.S. in 2024 with their two children, A. and N. had been forced to cook using mud ovens, scavenging for fish along Gaza’s coastline. They were first displaced to Khan Yunis on Oct. 13, 2023, the day before A.’s birthday. They settled in an apartment stripped down to its concrete skeleton, arriving with nothing. Soon, A. began doing what was necessary to survive. “You literally have to go hunting in order to secure some portions of food,” A. said. When flour disappeared entirely, panic consumed them. Bread, the anchor of a Palestinian table, became impossible to find. Without nearby bakeries or gas, A. and N. bought the mud oven. A.’s sister, the only person who knew how to use it, baked for 10 people: kneading dough by hand, feeding the fire, then pulling hot rounds of bread from the clay. “It’s very difficult,” N. said. But bread meant fullness and, thus, a day survived. When N. decided to learn, it took her a week or so of practice to master the touch, timing, and gut feeling that is required for a perfect piece of bread. “All of my family and A. were very
happy. Like, ‘Wow! I did it!’” she said proudly. In a place consumed with loss, baking a single round of bread felt like proof that something could still make A. and N. smile. What the body carries B.H. moved to the District in the fall of 2024 and soon after stopped eating chicken or fish when her mother could not find any back home. “I cooked the same thing that they cook in Gaza,” B.H. says. “If it is pasta without chicken, so it is just pasta here. I have this feeling that it’s like I cannot enjoy the food that they don’t have.” When she admitted to doing this, her mother laughed. “No, ya’ma, you have to enjoy food,” B.H says her mother told her, using the Arabic word for my darling. “Allah gives you this.” The warmth that soothes her in the kitchen fails to do so outside of it. Her curiosity carried her to the U.S., but now it coexists with fear. For B.H., the fear has become physical. She began wearing a sweatshirt hood pulled over her hijab and stopped walking in her neighborhood, even to buy groceries. “I’m worried about myself. But I’m more worried about my family’s feeling, my mom and my dad’s feelings,” B.H. tells me. “They are really comfortable that I’m safe [here] and I’m doing my research. And I don’t want to put them under another pressure [than] on what’s happening in Gaza.” On Nov. 4, 2024, B.H. was at an event with Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Palestine. Her phone lit up with messages. “My neighbor, she sent me some photos and the news that they destroyed [my] house. They burned it,” B.H. says. At first, B.H. wasn’t sure. But then she saw a TikTok video, filmed by Israeli soldiers, with footage of her neighborhood, Al-Nuseirat, reduced to rubble. “They were talking in the video of proudly destroying the whole area,” B.H. says. At first, she didn’t know that this was her home until she noticed the faded o!-white walls and a brick-red stripe that surrounded what remained of the structure. She left the lecture hall mid-speech. “I lost the house, I lost the house,” she recalls crying to her friends. Her
parents had spent thirty years working for that home—her father in healthcare, her mother in education. “My mom, she always called it beit al-amour, the dream house,” B.H. says. “Losing the house was the biggest thing. But sometimes I stop caring about the house. Because when you lose people, you felt like, no, it’s not the house. It’s people.” Last July, three families—30 of B.H.’s neighbors—were killed in the middle of the night after returning home to put up their tents after a ceasefire, B.H. said. Among them were her childhood friends, neighbors, and neighborhood ammos—the “uncles” she called family growing up. B.H. describes her attempts to cope with the killings through cooking as a kind of internal switch, a defense mechanism, a means to endure. “I have here a whole life,” B.H. tells me. “I have to be strong because I want to support my family. I don’t have time or this privilege to collapse. I’m not ready to collapse now.” B.H. checks her watch; she gets up to unwrap the foil from the pot of maqluba, and turns off the gas. “Ready?” she asks, gripping the pot handles. "
MARCH 13, 2026
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EDITORIALS
Georgetown, will you ever choose people over profit? BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD | DESIGN BY ELYSE VAN HOUTEN
The editorial board is the official opinion of The Georgetown Voice. The editorial board operates independently of the Voice’s newsroom and the General Board. The board’s editorials reflect the majority opinion of the editorial board’s members, who are listed on the masthead.
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hen given the choice between behaving as a corporation that treats its workers and students as commodities and purporting Jesuit values, Georgetown time and again finds itself drawn to profit. The school praises its own history of student activism for workers’ rights. Georgetown’s freshman Race, Power, and Justice class includes a film about a 2005 student hunger strike that pressured the administration to enact Georgetown’s Just Employment Policy. Yet, hypocritically, Georgetown continues to commit labor abuses today just as it did then. Last summer, Georgetown decided to hire current custodial staffers as Georgetown employees rather than as subcontractors, cutting employees’ pay by $4 per hour and stripping them of seniority benefits accrued over as many as four decades of loyal service to the university. Employees were given no advanced notice of the policy change and its implications, putting them in a precarious financial situation in a single moment. Students have protested this action, with a Feb. 24 protest in Red Square and a petition that garnered over 300 signatures and support from 19 campus organizations. However, the fact that workers’ rights remain under university attack, two decades after the hunger strike, is a shameful blight on Georgetown and a sign of its misguided priorities. For any invested members of Georgetown’s community, from Jesuit clergy members to alumni, continued support for the university must be contingent on labor justice. This editorial board wants no part in an education that rests on worker exploitation and greed. New advocacy on behalf of custodial workers follows a months-long campaign against Georgetown administrators’ outsourcing of Georgetown University Transport Service (GUTS) shuttle drivers. This organizing enjoyed a brief moment of success in December 2025. However, the university promptly responded in January 10
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2026 with what can only be described as a retaliatory and punitive policy change, forcing GUTS employees to start and end their days thirty minutes from Georgetown University in Hyattsville, Maryland. Over 1,100 students signed a petition in support of the drivers—yet, evidently, that did not stop the university from continuing to treat drivers contemptuously. Although these abuses are some of the most egregious and well-known on campus, examples of carelessness and hostility towards workers are prevalent across departments. Adjunct faculty, who make up nearly half of Georgetown’s instructional employees, continue to fight with the university for a livable wage. This reflects a similar challenge made by graduate student employees to get fair compensation in 2023, which the university also fought. Meanwhile, the university introduced unexpected policies for resident assistants (RAs) at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, which had significant implications for their work schedules and responsibilities, such as requiring more RAs to remain on campus during holidays. These groups’ ability to unionize and bargain with the university is a minimum. The real question is why must employees negotiate with Georgetown for a living wage and fair working conditions at all? The university will try to justify its abuses by citing its own financial troubles, but this is entirely inappropriate and counterfactual. Georgetown’s spending does not reflect a university that is floundering. As long as Georgetown’s executive leadership is earning seven-figure salaries, no one employed by the university should be experiencing financial insecurity. Students, faculty, and staff are the foundation of any educational institution— they must be the priority. Rather than investing in an artificial intelligence program with dubious benefits, Georgetown should ensure its employees are treated exceptionally. After Georgetown’s fifth tuition increase in five years, this editorial board believes many students would rather see their tuition dollars fund the salaries of those who work to
make our college years great, not a Google Gemini subscription or even a substantial investment into the Capitol Campus. Any acquiescence by the university should never be taken as a sign of graciousness. Just treatment for workers is not a privilege but a right, and it should not take the action of students and workers to compel the university to uphold its end of the deal. Georgetown must not only meet its employees’ demands in various ongoing negotiations but also adhere to policies of just employment in perpetuity. If Georgetown is to improve its treatment of workers, it must stop seeing itself as a company, even if that means removing administrators who cannot see it otherwise. Executives have proven time and again that they do not see Georgetown’s staff as equals. Chief Operating Officer David Green was the architect behind GUTS’s outsourcing. Vice President of Planning and Facilities Management Lisa Belokur oversaw the custodial staff’s pay cuts and custodial workers have identified her as responsible for policies that created hostile work environments. Unless they can learn to stop treating workers as resources, they do not belong at this university. Labor abuse cannot be tolerated at Georgetown. The university cannot act as a moral and intellectual leader in the District and the country while simultaneously treating those it employs with disdain. The community of students, alumni, Jesuits, donors, and other stakeholders should repeatedly remind the school that it cannot have it both ways. Georgetown, we are watching. G
VOICES
“Do you know soso-and and--so? so?””: The art of adjacency BY PHOEBE NASH | DESIGN BY LUCY MONTALTI
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t’s a perfectly autumnal day when my mother and I climb the black vinyl steps of Healy Hall, excited to see her favorite journalist—because it’s important to have one—Andrew Sullivan. He’s on campus for the Berkley Center’s Faith and Culture Series, a semesterly event led by my favorite professor (again, important to have), Paul Elie. Luckily, my mom is already in town for parents’ weekend, Delta Airlines offers flexible rebooking, and her daughter faithfully checks her email. This is an unmissable event. While my brothers and I often make fun of my mother for her fangirlhood, she’s selective with her choices: Lebron James, my best friend, Zoë, and, of course, Andrew Sullivan. While she first discovered Sullivan’s work when he was a teaching assistant for a government class she took in 1986, he has since become quite the household name, at least in my childhood home. My mom often references his opinions and forwards his articles to her most loyal followers, her three kids. After the event, they bond over Harvey “B-minus” Mansfield and how absolutely insane it is that forty years have passed. Standing by her side, as I had for many similar conversations, this reunion felt like the epitome of the connection-making that I grew up learning. I was raised on the art of adjacency. With every new person someone in my family meets, there is a well-practiced and always exhilarating string of “Well, do you know so-and-so,” dashing between friends and traveling across towns until we eventually land on a common connection. “A small world!” we exclaim, well-earned rest after our arduous linguistic journey. It truly is a familial ritual. My grandparents faithfully follow the athletic pursuits of any and all North Andover-natives; my older brothers can remember which middle or high school sports team they played on with every random Instagram mutual I discover; somehow my dad can locate the exact
street someone grew up on in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and my mom, leader of the connections circus, dominates the game as masterfully as she plays Yahtzee. As a child, I often found this sort of friend-finding to be a futile pursuit, another pastime of my parents’ that made every grocery store trip a little longer as I stood beside them in the produce aisle while they compared mutual friends (and sometimes even ran into those friends). However, as I’ve grown older, moved across the country, and developed my own web of friends, it’s comforting when my world feels even a little smaller. Away from home, especially at Georgetown, discovering mutual friends has become a comforting way to forge community. Friends from faraway places, who know versions of me that now feel long gone, will reach out to identify a niche connection. A friend who joined me on an 80day expedition in the Pacific Northwest somehow met one of the 18 people in my American Studies cohort on a family trip to Costa Rica. A fellow Outdoor Education guide lived in the same town as my aunt but knew her as a celebrity school administrator instead of Aunt Liz. After the best New Year’s Eve of my life, I discovered my camp friend’s high school friends that I celebrated with were my Georgetown friend’s camp friends—whew! To the career-minded and internshipobsessed, this probably sounds an awful lot like networking. While there are definitely commonalities, particularly the endless connection chains and statements of “you should meet,” there is no external expectation or underlying motivation. You’re not in it for anything—not the postgrad job, or even summer internship— except maybe an excuse to reach out to an old friend. Plus, you can avoid logging into LinkedIn entirely! Notably, there is a particular privilege that comes with this interconnectedness. It is essential to recognize that this practice often depends on the ability to travel, access the
internet, and even to move across the country to attend a destination college. Further, it is often rooted in one’s acceptance and engagement with elite institutions. It is from the benefit of having a world so seemingly large that I am gifted with the ability to make it feel smaller. However, this obsession is at least quasiscientific and universal: there’s a theory that every human being is at most six or fewer social connections away from every other person, aptly named the six degrees of separation. In other words, you’re at most six friend-of-a-friends away from everyone else. There is something deeply comforting about the closeness of human beings. It explains the thrill of discovering a mutual friend, or that you’ve both visited the same restaurant, or grew up only a few streets apart. Beyond knowing the same places, understanding where someone is from— whether you’ve been to their high school or tried their favorite coffee shop—can bring a sense of home to interactions. To know and be known by what seems like complete strangers generates the joy and understanding often hard to find in new environments. At the aforementioned event, after reconnecting with Sullivan and indulging in university-sponsored catering, we met a member of the second graduating class of women in the College of Arts and Sciences. Upon realizing we lived in the same dorm—the one and only Darnall Hall— our conversation exploded. We compared experiences: she was shocked by the threeyear housing guarantee, and I was by the luxury of having two women’s bathrooms per floor. Even generations apart, this similarity gave us common ground for connection. While it is a sometimes frustrating and occasionally fruitless practice, shared experience—even if it comes after a dozen questions of “do you know”— is the core of human connection. And it’s a comfort I proudly take with me wherever I go, knowing there is always someone out there who knows me, even if it takes a few tries. G
MARCH 13, 2026
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HALFTIME SPORTS LEISURE
Alysa Liu and the death of the grindset BY PAIGE BENISH | DESIGN BY PAIGE BENISH
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t the 2026 Winter Olympics, Alysa Liu didn’t just win gold in women’s figure skating. In the eyes of many Americans (or at least in mine), she won the entire Olympics. Liu’s iconic striped hair and bubbly smile have appeared everywhere from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (2014-present) to murals in her hometown of Oakland, California. She has become much more than just an Olympic champion, and there is no question as to why. Her free skate performance to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” was intoxicating. Everything about her felt playful and alive. Completing seven triples and four doubles, including an extremely difficult triple lutz-triple toe loop combination and an even more grueling triple lutz-double axel-double toe loop sequence, she was a goddess upon Milan’s ice. Despite her winning score of 150.20, her skating didn’t feel ruthless or forced. She moved with such hypnotizing ease that it felt like she actually danced to the music. It was that joyous energy of her performance that gave her the gold over her equally technically-skilled competitors. No more were the days of the Mamba Mentality, as Olympic praise was now to be found in joy. The Mamba Mentality, coined by the late basketball god Kobe Bryant, proposed that success requires absolute obsession. Bryant framed success as a relentless pursuit of perfection that demands constant discipline. Such has been the dominant narrative in sports, school, and work. The modern mythology of achievement tells us that greatness belongs to those willing to sacrifice everything—sleep, relationships, hobbies, their mental health—in pursuit of a goal. The dominant narrative has celebrated the idea of grinding, pushing, and suffering longer than everyone else. And to be fair, the grindset works. Many elite athletes and high achievers credit their success to extreme discipline and obsession. Liu herself 12
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used to be an example of this very phenomenon. Liu first entered the public eye as a thirteen-year-old prodigy, becoming the youngest U.S. women’s national champion and quickly establishing herself as one of the sport’s brightest young stars. But that rapid ascent came with the familiar pressures of elite athletics. By her late teens, the sport that once felt like play began to feel like an obligation, so Liu stepped away from competition, citing burnout and the need to rediscover why she loved skating in the first place. When Liu returned ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, she said it was on her own terms. She skated only to music she genuinely enjoyed, dressed how she wanted, and approached her skate programs as creative performances rather than perfectionist routines. In doing so, she put joy back into her work instead of treating her body like a machine and ended up more successful for it. If Alysa Liu only regained her competitive edge because she didn’t sacrifice herself, of what actual use is the Mamba Mentality? More importantly, if success demands a life spent in dread and exhaustion, what exactly is the victory? Victory, when fought for with all the blood, sweat, and tears, is only a temporary relief from a lifetime spent grinding toward it. The most decorated Olympian in history, Michael Phelps, has spoken repeatedly about his severe depression and anxiety despite his unparalleled success. Many athletes also experience what’s known as “post-Olympic blues.” After dedicating years to a singular goal, many people reach the finish line only to feel hollow. When your entire identity and livelihood revolve around winning, what happens when the competition is over? Furthermore, if someone spends years motivated by anxiety, fear, and relentless pressure, winning doesn’t magically erase those habits. The championship becomes
less of a triumphant moment and more a brief pause from a life structured around stress. The problem isn’t that these athletes didn’t succeed. The problem is that nominal success often fails to deliver the fulfillment it promises. After all, none of us are machines. Despite society’s endless little rat race, everyone is still human. Our bodies tend to be too fragile and our minds too curious to spend our time consumed in loveless labor. If the Olympics are a testament to the most physically able and mentally disciplined of humanity, the average mental well-being of Olympic athletes (or lack thereof) is a dire warning about the grindset. We were never meant to push ourselves through our days, running at full speed until we burn out. At some point, we have to allow ourselves the grace to be silly and enjoy what we are doing. Otherwise, one’s life is spent dragging forward toward goals that never quite repay the cost of getting there. When Liu’s skate ended, and the scores were announced, the victory ceremony ended almost as quickly as it began. For every Olympian, the games inevitably end, and life continues. The high of achievement, no matter how extraordinary, can fade surprisingly fast. What remains far longer is the experience of how one spent their days getting there. Is that fleeting moment of triumph worth years spent denying yourself joy? If the process of achieving something extraordinary is miserable, will the reward at the end truly compensate for it? None of this is an argument against hard work. Alysa Liu still had to train relentlessly. But the difference between Liu and the traditional grindset is that she didn’t lose herself in the process. The work was still serious—but it wasn’t joyless. It is evident in her success that excellence doesn’t have to come from self-erasure and complete self-sacrifice. The true victory may come from holding onto the most whimsical part of yourself that enjoys the work in the first place. G
SPORTS
Georgetown athletes balance professional pathways and athletic aspirations BY ANNA CORDOVA
DESIGN BY SHABAD SINGH
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or many college athletes, the end of their collegiate careers brings a difficult decision: should they continue pursuing a professional sports dream, or begin building a career outside of athletics? Across the NCAA, more than 500,000 student athletes compete in sports that have professional leagues—yet fewer than 2% ultimately reach that level. For Georgetown women’s golfer Olivia Ty (MSB ’28), her answer to the question of whether to pursue golf or another career has shifted throughout her college experience. “I’ve been making vision boards for five or six years now, and my very first few vision boards had professional golf on them,” she said in an interview with the Voice. “I’ve always dreamed of playing.” However, Ty acknowledged the challenges that come with going pro: “It’s very difficult. It’s so expensive. It takes a lot of time and effort, and it will break you down mentally.” Ty explored opportunities beyond athletics, including finance recruitment, and found that balancing collegiate golf with career exploration is not easy. The demands of travel, practice, and tournaments make it difficult to gain the experience employers expect. “I would be told, ‘You’re a great candidate,’ but then they would say my resume isn’t built up enough,” she said. “As a golfer, I don’t have the time to be part of these extracurricular clubs that build your resume. My entire resume is centered around golf.” Over time, Ty’s perspective shifted about the job application process and recruiting—she decided to focus on her experience in college and continue to follow her dream of professional golf. “At some point, I decided to live in the present,” she said. “I wouldn’t say ‘I didn’t choose recruiting.’ I think the root is probably what’s more important, which is me choosing to enjoy my four years here and make the most of it.” Some Georgetown athletes have gone on to achieve their athletic dreams after graduation. Georgetown men’s soccer alum Maximus Jennings (CAS ’24), who has been playing professionally for over a year and recently signed with Westchester
SC, has achieved what many student athletes dream of: turning his passion for the game into a professional career. “One thing I always knew since I could remember was that I wanted to be a professional athlete,” he told the Voice. However, his path wasn’t always clear. “My freshman year and part of my sophomore year, I didn’t touch the field,” he said. “There were definitely moments of doubt.” After being drafted by Real Salt Lake in the 2024 Major League Soccer SuperDraft, the decision to continue playing felt obvious. “If I were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream of playing professionally, I was going to take it,” Jennings said. For other athletes, collegiate play exists completely outside of career plans. Georgetown lightweight women’s rower Austin Forrester (CAS ’27) has always approached rowing as an experience beyond her professional life. “I don’t think I ever really considered going forward with rowing in a professional context,” she said in an interview with the Voice. Instead, Forrester focused on preparing for a career in consulting. Consulting recruitment is an intense process, especially when balancing with rowing. “I did almost all of my interview prep and applications over the summer,” she said. “While the fall is our less busy racing season, we were still training for Head of the Charles [the world’s largest three-day rowing race].” While Forrester doesn’t plan to row after graduation, the sport has remained an important part of her college experience. “I keep rowing for a lot of reasons […] The main reason is just love for the sport itself,” she said. “It’s so nice to get out on the water every day and focus on something other than academics.” Regardless of if they’re planning to go pro or not, all the athletes emphasized the importance of their coaches and teammates in supporting their goals. For Forrester, coordinating interviews with practice schedules required careful planning and communication with coaches and teammates. “In rowing, if someone is out, that impacts the whole eight-person boat, so we really try to minimize absences,” she said.
Forrester added that the rowing community has been critical in her job hunt process. “Several former rowers and their friends were super helpful on the networking side of things,” she said. “I practiced casing [interviews based on real-world business scenarios] with a few other rowers in Lau when we had the time.” The soccer community at Georgetown, particularly Jennings’ coaches, were also pivotal as he figured out his life post-graduation. Jennings credits the program with setting him up to succeed in professional soccer. “There’s a standard of excellence in the [Georgetown] program that pushed me to grow not just as a player but as a man,” he said. “I give a lot of credit to Coach [Brian] Wiese and the coaching staff…Even though the people and place were different, the professionalism and expectations of how to approach each day felt very familiar.” Now pursuing his dream, Jennings reflects on how his both experiences shaped him. “Going to a place like Georgetown prepared me for life beyond soccer and made sure I had options. I know the game eventually comes to an end, but right now I’m grateful to be chasing this dream and making the most of the opportunity while I have it,” he said. “My dad used to tell me not to let sports use me, but for me to use sports to create opportunities for myself.” Like Jennings, Ty noted the support she has received from her coaches and team as she looks to pursue golf professionally. “Our coach is super supportive of us, and she just wants us to be happy, have fun, and work hard,” she said. “Everyone here just wants the best for everyone.” Ultimately, the community around Ty, from her coaches and teammates to her family, made it possible for her to pursue her goals. “Life is short,” she said. “My grandparents and my parents sacrificed so much so that I would have the opportunity to chase my dreams, and I feel I’d be wasting that opportunity if I didn’t try to pursue it.” G MARCH 13, 2026
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HALFTIME LEISURE
Bridgerton Season 4 is a welcome return to form BY LUCY MONTALTI
GRAPHICS BY MARIAM OKUNOLA; LAYOUT BY MAGGIE ZHANG This review contains spoilers for Bridgerton Season 4.
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etflix’s Bridgerton (2020-present) is welcoming its dearest gentle viewers back for a fourth season, and it’s just as flouncy and swoon-worthy as ever. This time around, the Shonda Rhimes production—based on the book series of the same name—turns its attention to Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), the second-oldest son in the titular family, in a twist on the classic Cinderella tale. His romance begins at a masquerade ball, where he becomes enchanted by a mysterious “lady in silver.” Determined to find her, he begins searching throughout the ton, or Regency England’s upper-class society, for the masked woman who stole his heart. Meanwhile, he grows close to a maid named Sophie (Yerin Ha), unaware that she is the very woman he has been looking for. Like each season before it, Bridgerton Season 4 follows a familiar formula. The central romance lies between a reckless bachelor (or, in 19th-century speak, a rake) and a young woman who—for some given reason—cannot or will not marry him. The formula is tried and true, but repetition always carries the risk of settling into an exaggerated version of what the series once was. That danger was noticeably present in Season 3, which struggled to balance the show’s ever-expanding ensemble cast, resulting in tiresome subplots that muddled the story. Season 4, fortunately, amends these stumbles with B- and C-plots that feel additive and, in some instances, outshine the central storyline. One subplot highlight centers Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) and Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), who are navigating the potential final moments of their decadesold friendship as Lady Danbury desires to leave England to visit her ancestral home. The conflict and its eventual conclusion offer a sentimental and bittersweet portrayal of female friendship, especially for women later in life. Some of the season’s best moments surround Francesca Stirling (Hannah Dodd), the fifth Bridgerton sibling. In the later half of the season, Francesca discovers her husband, John (Victor Alli) dead in their bedroom, leaving her widowed at just 19 years old. In Episode 7, “The Beyond”— one of the strongest episodes in the entire 14
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series—Dodd delivers a heart-wrenching performance, capturing Francesca’s grief for her husband and for the family they never got to build together. Her emotions come in complex waves of numbing shock and deep anguish, all exacerbated by John’s cousin, Michaela (Masali Baduza), whose headstrong temperament clashes with Francesca’s penchant for rule-following. Season 4 also reels in much of Season 3’s excess in the costume, hair, and makeup departments, which adorned characters in garish costumes and glammed-up makeup that distracted from the characters themselves. It’s certainly a return to form, recapturing much of what makes the first two seasons so beloved. There is a much calmer balance struck between historical accuracy and the fantasticality of the Bridgerton universe—which, admittedly, never promised to be a faithful replica of early 19th-century London. Bridgerton famously imagines a culturally diverse Regency society, inspired by the theory that Queen Charlotte may have been biracial. This creative choice, which diverges from Julia Quinn’s original novels, has become one of the show’s defining features, bringing representation of many communities to the screen. In Season 2, for instance, love interests Kate (Simone Ashley) and Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran) are from Bombay, India, and aspects of their culture are incorporated into the storyline, from traditional wedding ceremonies to a hatred for English-style tea. Because of this precedent, many fans were excited to see that Season 4’s love interest would be Korean, changing the book’s Sophie Beckett to Sophie Baek. Fans speculated about how the show might bring elements of Korean culture into the Regency setting, perhaps implementing hanbok-inspired costume design elements or moments where Sophie might speak Korean. In reality, very little of this came true. Aside from a passing mention of her ability to speak Korean and her name change, there was very little acknowledgment of her heritage. That is not to say that every element of her character should have been visibly referential to her cultural background. In fact, it would be very easy for that direction to evolve into orientalism or separate her from the show’s white cast. But in Bridgerton, a show that prides and markets itself on its diversity, it
is disappointing that Sophie’s Korean identity was left unexplored. Introducing Sophie does bring the issue of class into the picture. In prior seasons, the maids, cooks, and coachmen often faded into the background as the Bridgerton family lived lives of comfort and luxury. The new season gives the audience a rare peek into the servants’ quarters, offering insight into labor behind the ton. Beyond simply acknowledging the staff, the season delves into the realities of the power structures embedded in high society. As several servants face the threat of unemployment, viewers see how the whims of the show’s main characters can dramatically change the lives of workingclass people at the drop of a hat. As the illegitimate child of a nobleman and a maid, Sophie knows all too well how the affections of a wealthy man can be fleeting and dangerous. With Sophie’s livelihood on the line, Benedict must decide whether his love is unwavering before the two can truly be together. Bridgerton has plans to span eight total seasons, one for each sibling’s love story. Now halfway through, the show must begin paving the way for a strong finish; and, in many respects, Season 4 does exactly that. After a shaky Season 3, this installment feels like a necessary course correction as the show finally pulls its ensemble cast together. If Bridgerton continues on this path, the show may well be on its way to a satisfying final stretch. "
LEISURE
Hilary Duff hit the jackpot. Must be luck…or something BY JACOB GARDNER | DESIGN BY ELLE MARINELLO
A
s a newborn, I couldn’t be soothed by my mother’s amateur singing. I’d whine, cry, and spit in her face. My parents tried anything and everything, to no avail— until the house got cable and a new kind of lullaby arrived: Hilary Duff as Lizzie McGuire on Disney Channel. Finally, the crying stopped. Two decades later, Duff is back at the poker table with new chips. Luck… or something (2026) is a comeback and a rebirth, proof that time can both soften a pop star’s image and sharpen her pen. Most comeback albums either lean full tilt into nostalgia or pretend the past never happened. Here, Duff and her husband/collaborator Matthew Koma find a third lane: music that’s contemporary and commercially crisp while also spotlighting the granular interior life of a woman beyond her twenties. The production trades the maximalism of her past discography for hooky restraint—think bright choruses with occasional indie-folk textures— which allows the lyrics to breathe instead of burying them in gloss. That said, what makes this record most compelling is Duff ’s voice: not her instrument—though she is serviceable—but her perspective. Where much of mainstream pop continues to traffic in the aesthetics and lessons of youth (first heartbreaks, first hookups, first… everythings), luck… or something centers on complication: familial drama, marriage paranoia, intrusive thoughts, and the disorienting passage of time. While Duff ’s pop career of the 2000s was never a beacon of confessional, thoughtprovoking lyricism, that shift is what makes this record so fabulous! Duff makes zero
attempts to replicate formulas that may have once worked for her; instead, she creates a new template for herself. Duff is wordy, self-aware, naive, and mature—all at the same time. This push-and-pull is palpable throughout. On the album’s second single, “Roommates,” Duff reminisces: “Back at the dive bar, giving you head / Then sneak home late, wake up your roommates.” The memory captures the album’s central tension, youthful recklessness rubbing up against the sharper self-awareness of adulthood. On the opening track, “Weather For Tennis,” she follows the rhythm of an argument with her significant other, singing, “You calling me batshit’s the fastest antibiotic for thinking you’re different this time.” She has writerly concerns for these songs, and through them flows the current of existentialism that underpins the album as a whole. She’s also brutally honest about familial estrangement on the record. On “We Don’t Talk,” Duff sings about facing disconnection with someone who comes from “The same home, the same blood / A different combination, but the same lock,” alluding to her no longer having contact with her sister. “The Optimist” is the album’s sonic oddball, discussing Duff ’s relationship with her father and detailing her visit to a hypnotist in hopes of learning how not to dream, seeing as she’s “got too much [she] thinks about.” Elsewhere, in fizzier numbers like “Holiday Party,” the hooks seduce more directly: “In my head, you live another life / Where you fuck all my friends / And wish someone else could’ve been your wife.” The track’s pop sparkle masks a paranoid spiral—it’s a party anthem and a panic attack in one. But the album ties those moments together on “Adult Size Medium,” its rueful closer. Here, Duff holds up an old t-shirt to the sky; pulling on “holes of an adult size medium,” she asks how she arrived where she is today. The lyrics don’t dramatize aging, but rather watch it happen in soft, melancholic detail.
This vantage of a pop star interrogating the distance between the self who wore the shirt at 22 and the self who buys thermometers for her kids is the kind of story that mainstream pop seldom allows for. Hilary Duff is not reinventing the wheel, but the kinds of stories she chooses to share help expand our definition of who and what a pop star can be. Despite its inherently formulaic aspects, pop music too often regurgitates the same emotional syllabus, and when the music industry prizes immediacy above all, the realities of life are flattened into a highlight reel. This ramification is significant because pop teaches just as much as it entertains; it offers models for how generations understand love, shame, loyalty, and sex in ways that are easy to metabolize. Duff ’s history as a child star alters the terms of this discussion and undermines the industry playbook. She grew up inside the syllabus she now refuses, which gives her a unique authority. She isn’t trading in nostalgia so much as she is translating the lessons she was taught into the language of maturation. Rather than perform expected roles—nostalgia act, influencer cameo, sacrificial relic— she treats adulthood as legitimate subject matter, with contradictory emotions, small humiliations, and the grind of responsibility. Labels chase youth like a renewable resource, compressing careers into predictable cycles. Luck… or something resists that compression by highlighting songs about what comes next, all without sacrificing the hooks and clarity of pop music. Messy obligations! Lingering resentments! Petty marital catastrophes! The record’s smaller moments each add up into a coherent, age-aware record. Sure, this isn’t a seismic shift in the pop universe, but it does broaden the conversation. Duff ’s willingness to write plainly about estrangement, the slow erosion of self, and the trials and tribulations of grown life is an essential correction. Mainstream pop can thrive if it makes room for more individual, developed storytelling. Call it luck, or something else; either way, it’s a welcome change. G
MARCH 13, 2026
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