The Georgetown Voice, 2/17/23

F E B R U A RY 17, 2 0 2 3

INCREASING EQUITY AT GEORGETOWN BEGINS WITH REFORMING BLUE & GRAY

By Brandon Wu, Kathryn Yang, and Viha Vishwanathan

FACING MANAGERIAL HOSTILITY, GEORGETOWN’S FACILITIES WORKERS REVEAL DETERIORATING WORK ENVIRONMENT

By Nora Scully and Max Zhang

AFTER A HISTORIC 2022 SEASON, GEORGETOWN BASEBALL IS HUNGRY FOR MORE

By Andrew Arnold

Contents

February 17, 2023 Volume 55 | Issue 10

4

Editor-In-Chief Annabella Hoge Managing Editor Nora Scully

features

GUASFCU intern highlights institutional anti-Blackness, calls for change in open letter

internal resources Executive Editor for Ajani Jones Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion Editor for Sexual Violence Sarah Craig Advocacy and Coverage Service Chair Aminah Malik Social Chair Connor Martin

AMANDA YEN

7

voices

Increasing equity at Georgetown begins with reforming Blue & Gray BRANDON WU, KATHRYN YANG, AND VIHA VISHWANATHAN

8

halftime leisure

What lies beyond Infinity: What the MCU’s Phase 5 can learn from its shaky predecessor

news Executive Editor Joanna Li Features Editor Franziska Wild News Editor Graham Krewinghaus Assistant News Editors Yihan Deng, Alex Deramo, Amber Xie

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voices

Students subverting students: The Corp must prioritize employee empowerment SUNAINA SUNDA

12

10

11

Magic Mike’s Last Dance strips away logic with its barely there plot

After a historic 2022 season, Georgetown Baseball is hungry for more

leisure

halftime sports

sports

CHETAN DOKKU AND MAANASI CHINTAMANI

ANDREW ARNOLD

PG. 7 contact us

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

2

BRADSHAW CATE

13 news

AJANI JONES AND JUPITER HUANG

“To create a more representative and equitable picture of Georgetown, tour guides must be paid.

Even more importantly, our tours must fully address Georgetown’s legacy of racism and the role of student activists in addressing our institution’s flaws.”

Who is defending the District in 2023?

on the cover

D.C. attempts to address decadeold housing waitlist backlog and restore reputation ANGELENA BOUGIAMAS AND ANANYA RAMESH

14

features

Facing managerial hostility, Georgetown’s facilities workers reveal deteriorating work environment NORA SCULLY AND MAX ZHANG

“raising bloody hell” GRACE NURI

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.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

opinion Executive Editor Kulsum Gulamhusein Voices Editor Lou Jacquin Assistant Voices Editors Barrett Ahn, Ella Bruno, Andrea Ho Editorial Board Chair Alec Weiker Editorial Board William Hammond, Annette Hasnas, Andrea Ho, Annabella Hoge, Jupiter Huang, Paul James, Connor Martin, Allison O'Donnell, Sarah Watson, Max Zhang leisure Executive Editor Adora Adeyemi Leisure Editor Maya Kominsky Assistant Editors Pierson Cohen, Cole Kindiger, Hailey Wharram Halftime Editor Francesca Theofilou Assistant Halftime Editors Eileen Chen, Caroline Samoluk, Zachary Warren sports Executive Editor Nicholas Riccio Sports Editor Lucie Peyrebrune Assistant Editors Andrew Arnold, Thomas Fischbeck, Ben Jakabcsin Halftime Editor Jo Stephens Assistant Halftime Editors Bradshaw Cate, Sam Lynch, Henry Skarecky design Executive Editor Dane Tedder Design Editor Connor Martin Spread Editors Olivia Li, Sabrina Shaffer Cover Editor Grace Nuri Assistant Design Editors Cecilia Cassidy, Madeleine Ott copy Copy Chiefs Donovan Barnes, Maanasi Chintamani Assistant Copy Editors Chetan Dokku, Paul James, Shajaka Shelton multimedia Podcast Executive Producer Jillian Seitz Podcast Editor Livia de Queiroz Brito Assistant Podcast Editor Romy Abu-Fadel Photo Editor Jina Zhao online Website Editor Tyler Salensky Social Media Editor Allison DeRose Assistant Social Media Editor Ninabella Arlis business General Manager Megan O’Malley Assistant Manager of Rovi Yu Accounts and Sales Assistant Manager of Horace Wong Alumni and Outreach support Contributing Editors Lucy Cook, Deborah Han, Annette Hasnas, Margaret Hartigan, Tim Tan, Sarah Watson, Max Zhang Staff Contributors Nicholas Budler, Romita Chattaraj, Leon Cheung, Elin Choe, Erin Ducharme, Nikki Farnham, James Garrow, Alex Giorno, Ethan Greer, Christine Ji, Julia Kelly, Sofia Kemeny, Ashley Kulberg, David McDaniels, Insha Momin, Amelia Myre, Natalia Porras, Owen Posnett, Daniel Rankin, Carlos Rueda, Ryan Samway, Michelle Serban, Elizabeth Short, Sagun Shrestha, Isabelle Stratta, Sophie Tafazzoli, Amelia Wanamaker, Fallon Wolfley, Amanda Yen, Nadine Zakheim

graphic by elyza bruce; layout by connor martin

Page 3

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

"hot goss" by dane tedder; crossword by nick romero; "pointed knife" by annie hoge; fly swatter by franziska wild; bow and arrow by kulsum gulamhusein; trident by ajani jones; flaming sword by lucy cook

→ LISTEN TO PODCASTS

→ GOSSIP RAT Check out this week’s podcast to hear assistant halftime sports editor Bradshaw Cate join assistant podcast editor Romy Abu-Fadel to take a deep dive into the XFL!

→ YOU CAN'T SPELL VIOLENCE WITHOUT VOICE!

→ OVERHEARD AT ROYAL JACKET

“I would trade anything in the world for some sense of love.”

→ NICK'S CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1. See 28 down 4. Video game series or a carrelated crime 7. Sleeping noise 9. Took the wheel 11. Academy Award 12. Far from urban 13. “In excelsis ___” 14. ___ G. Biv 16. Goal or motive 17. ___ Mahal, India 19. Flyers, Caps org.

20. Preamble 21. Canola cooking spray 23. Reagan National, not Dulles 26. Trouble or hurt, physically/ mentally 27. Card game w/ “Skip” and “Draw Four” 29. “Cost an ___ and a leg” 31. More crafty or cunning 33. North Dakota city or TV series 35. Durant, Hart, or Bacon 36. Place to discuss ideas, such as in Rome 37. Conference of LSU and Alabama 38. Chemical used to make soap

DOWN 1. Something small put in, like a picture or diagram 2. Hot wintertime drink 3. “End of an ___” 4. Despicable Me villain 5. First five books of Hebrew Bible 6. Without success: “to no _____” 7. Ground surface with grass 8. Make a mistake 9. Not wet 10. Deciduous tree with namesake disease 15. Frequently 18. Nickname for James 19. Head signal for approval 21. Heaps 22. Not deceased 24. Hold up or bring 25. Verbally fight 26. Query 27. Vase, sometimes with ashes 28. With 1-Across, sitcom featuring the highlighted answers 30. Small store: “___-and-pop” 32. Annabella Hoge’s title here, for short 34. Noisy early internet provider FEBRUARY 17, 2023

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FEATURES Editor’s note: Some names in the article have been changed to protect the anonymity of sources.

J

oel Bossous (CAS ’23), has been an intern at the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union (GUASFCU) for as long as he has been a Hoya. Now, drawing on his eight semesters in the credit union, he’s calling for structural and cultural change.

On Dec. 23, 2022, Bossous sent a nearly ninepage open letter to all active interns in GUASFCU, voicing serious concerns regarding the antiBlackness embedded in the club’s culture and its lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The letter, which was obtained by the Voice, reflects Bossous’ experience at the credit union, including one year as an executive, as well as the concerns of numerous current and former interns, many of whom are students of color, who have confided in him over the years.

One of the letter’s primary concerns was the credit union’s consistent failure to recruit and support its Black and Latino interns. Bossous, who served as the president of Georgetown’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter from 2021-22 and is currently the co-president of the Black Student Alliance (BSA), cited GUASFCU’s lack of sustained and meaningful outreach to affinity organizations as resulting in a lack of diversity in their teller classes. Despite the credit union’s reported overall high retention rate, Bossous’ letter noted that the majority of interns who left the organization were Black.

“Despite more popular affirmations that the credit union ‘strives to create an inclusive environment,’ ‘promotes diversity,’ is ‘looking forward to creating a community that makes everyone feel comfortable, valued and included,’ and ‘has opportunities for everyone,’” Bossous wrote, “GUASFCU is incredibly off the mark and has actual work to do—not merely work we say needs to be done.”

“So much of [GUASFCU’s] commitments to diversity and inclusion have been performative at best,” Sara, who has been in the credit union for the last three years, wrote anonymously to the Voice. She wrote that Bossous’ letter deeply resonated with her as a person of color.

The lack of support for Black interns is reflected at the organization’s highest levels of leadership. Bossous noted

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

GUASFCU intern highlights Blackness, calls for chan in his letter that during the 2021-22 board term, he was the only Black executive out of 26 available positions: nine C-suite members of the board of directors and 17 auxiliary executives who report to them. Bossous described that since joining the credit union in 2019, he has counted only five Black interns, including himself, who have held leadership roles, none of which were C-suite positions (the letter was sent before 2023-24 Board elections and does not reflect those officers).

In response to his letter, the 2022-23 board of directors met with Bossous on Jan. 4 over Zoom, but he is not confident that they will take the steps toward inclusion that he has suggested. Only six of the nine members of the board were present, which signaled to him that they did not take his concerns seriously.

“While grateful to them for taking the time, I went into the meeting with little to no expectations,” Bossous said in an interview with the Voice. “As much as I was waiting for them to impress me with a meaningful response, I was not holding out hope for very long.”

In Bossous’ view, the board repeated a familiar strategy: issuing commitments to diversity and inclusion, yet neglecting actionable follow-through.

Bossous advocated in his letter for meaningful actions that demonstrated the credit union was capable of more than paying lip service to values of diversity and inclusion, as it has done in the past.

Many of the letter’s concerns reflect the long-standing cultural issues that have affected GUASFCU since before many of its current interns joined. The credit union is no stranger to allegations of toxic behavior within the workplace. In 2017, a GUASFCU intern took issue with the persistent whiteness of the new class of tellers and the “beauty contest” recruitment process. Senior Hoyas might recall the misconduct scandal involving 2019-20 CEO Kuran Malhotra (MSB ’20), whose ascension to C-suite was enabled by old board members who knew about yet chose to overlook his misconduct allegations. In January 2022, an intern in the class of 2022 wrote a letter to the freshly elected 2022-23 board of directors, urging them to do greater outreach toward students of color.

Bossous, who was consulted by that intern a year ago, drew on those recommendations in his own advocacy.

Bossous’ letter advocates for organizational transparency with its past scandals to bridge the institutional memory gap. “GUASFCU shoulders the burden and responsibility of keeping its interns fully informed, even if that involves less palatable issues and uncomfortable conversations about

workplace misconduct, a history of nepotism in recruitment, or, as much as we claim to value the opposite, a culture of exclusivity,” he wrote.

GUASFCU’s hiring practices have historically enabled subjectivity and favoritism in determining who is accepted into the club, according to Boussous. The letter criticized the timeline of GUASFCU’s application cycle in fall of 2022, arguing that its decision to hold first-round interviews during CAB fair instead of tabling privileged first year applicants who already knew about the organization before matriculating.

“When we make a hiring decision, it is a unanimous decision between all nine members of the board of directors, plus the executives from Human Resources and Community Engagement,” a representative from the 2022-23 GUASFCU Board explained in an interview with the Voice.

Bossous and an intern who spoke with the Voice under the condition of anonymity thus see the lack of diversity in GUASFCU leadership as contributing to a cyclical lack of diversity in teller classes.

Jordan, who previously served as a GUASFCU executive and commented on the condition of anonymity, highlighted several flaws with the hiring process in their support for Bossous and his letter. “I agree that the hiring practices lack standardization and at times sensitive consideration,” Jordan wrote, reflecting on their time conducting recruitment interviews during the 2021-22 cycle. “And when the deliberation room lacks diversity, pulling more in can be an uphill battle.”

This year, the credit union started to phase in some of those hiring reforms. In the fall 2022 recruitment cycle, GUASFCU introduced a rubric to standardize its interview process and held a bias sensitivity training ahead of interviews. “We believe that having some sort of numerical tie to our interviews helps make sure that we can limit bias as much as possible,” a representative from the executive board explained.

Bossous, however, was not particularly impressed by the results of this step, especially given the length of time it took the board to implement rubric-based hiring. Bossous mentioned that standardizing interviews was proposed as early as 2020 but was not realized until last fall. “The credit union has made these changes with negligible results,” he said. “There is not a big difference in the demographics of the new [fall 2022] intern class, so the question that should arise is: What should we do better?”

During fall recruitment, GUASFCU also introduced a networking event for students of color. “We have started a tea time program during recruitment for interns of color, allowing them to ask other interns of color about their experiences as an open and honest

design by dane tedder

s institutional antinge in open letter

By Amanda Yen

conversation,” the board stated. “This is part of our overall initiative to build a stronger sense of community for our organization.”

The board noted that these policy changes are not universally shared, however. “Although these changes and conversations happen at the board level, they’re not always communicated to the rest of the organization,” the board explained.

“While we’re putting in the work and putting in the hours, it’s contained to a small subset of people who are aware of this.”

Bossous’ letter interpreted this dynamic as a systemic lack of transparency around the credit union’s efforts, even within the organization itself.

One of the problems with creating institutional change in an organization staffed by college students is the unavoidable turnover rate that occurs with graduation. Long-term cultural and structural shifts are difficult when frequent personnel changes lead to institutional inertia, which is why Bossous emphasized the need to keep GUASFCU’s new teller classes informed of its organizational history.

The credit union recently established affinity group Slack channels for interns of color, and LGBTQ+ interns as well. While there are groups for women of color, Latino, and South Asian interns, Bossous confirmed there is no organized space for Black interns specifically. Moreover, whereas GUASFCU’s comments to the Voice represented interns of color collectively, Bossous’ letter took special concern for the experiences of Black and Latino interns in the credit union. In the most recent teller classes, Black and Latino interns have been less represented than other non-white racial groups.

“What credit union leadership has tended to do is to confront issues without exploring the complexities of the issues themselves,” Bossous

"They use the language and the vernacular of ‘We hear you’ to anyone who is not white. But not all interns of color’s experiences and issues are the same."

explained. “They use the language and the vernacular of ‘We hear you’ to anyone who is not white. But not all interns of color’s experiences and issues are the same. My experience of being Black is not your experience of being Asian. The nuances of being non-white cannot be addressed in one fell swoop of ‘interns of color.’”

The credit union’s long-standing reputation as a deliberately exclusive group has hindered its current efforts toward inclusivity. GUASFCU has reached out to Black affinity groups for guidance, but according to leaders in these groups, the credit union seems to lack an understanding of the role they aim to play on campus.

“It’s not the job of Black student groups to solve the inclusion issues of Georgetown clubs,” a senior member of one of these organizations, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. In their view, Black student groups at Georgetown are concerned with building community spaces for Black Hoyas, not with solving the anti-Blackness of other clubs.

Bossous’ letter enumerated concrete recommendations as well as concerns. He suggested that at minimum, the credit union host targeted information sessions during recruitment with groups that serve marginalized students, such as BSA, Latinx Leadership Forum, the Georgetown Scholars Program, and the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access. He also recommended yearlong partnerships with other finance and banking groups at Georgetown, such as Georgetown Aspiring Minority Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs and BlackGenCapital, to help teach financial literacy to more students on campus. These suggestions aim to expand GUASFCU’s outreach to historically underrepresented students, working against its reputation as an exclusive, fraternity-like group.

Bossous explained that he pitched these ideas while applying to work as part of GUASFCU’s summer crew in 2022. However, he was not chosen for that role, and the ideas were not implemented.

Regarding the structure of GUASFCU’s leadership, Bossous called for the creation of a Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) position to lead and oversee diversity and inclusion efforts.

While wary of tokenizing the few interns of color in the credit union, Bossous explained that the creation of this position would ultimately help alleviate some of the strain on the chief communications officer, a board of directors executive who oversees three other credit union operations in addition to diversity and inclusion.

Despite having had discussions about creating a CDO position for the past two years, the GUASFCU board said that it hasn’t fully envisioned what the role would look like in terms of how it would work with

other board positions or what departments would fall under it.

“It’s a position that we know we want to add at some point. But we want to make sure that when it is implemented, it is implemented correctly,” the board commented. “We didn't think it was the right time to institute a CDO position on the board.”

While the board has met with external consultants, such as a Georgetown graduate student who specializes in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, its members do not expect the CDO role to be instituted anytime soon. “If we decide to do so in the future, we want to do so in a way that is not rushed or tokenizing, and the timeline this year did not give us the opportunity to proceed in that way,” they said.

Past structural reforms that targeted diversity and inclusion have been short-lived in Bossous’ experience with the credit union. In 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the national attention on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, GUASFCU established three standing committees aimed at improving equity in recruitment and creating a more inclusive culture.

These committees achieved some success––for example, they eliminated the resume requirement in GUAFSCU’s application––but have since been dissolved. According to Bossous, after the initial momentum of BLM ebbed, GUASFCU’s efforts to diversify their organization faded as well.

Last fall, the credit union held an Inclusive Leadership Strategy Session to open conversations around DEI initiatives in the organization.

Now, as a new board begins its leadership term, the organization is once again facing calls for movement on those plans and vision statements.

Bossous and others believe that although it will require constant evaluation and risk-taking to define what the path forward looks like, action is the first step.

“We are unmoved by the keywords and catchphrases, the jargon, and the language of change without its production,” Bossous wrote. G

FEBRUARY UPDATE PUB 17, DATE 2023

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VOICES

Students subverting students: The Corp must prioritize employee empowerment

BY SUNAINA SUNDA

T

oward the end of January, I, alongside a few other Corpies, spent a weekend in and out of interviews as The Corp underwent its annual hiring session for its executive leadership, called the C-suite. Though my rejection call later that weekend marked the end of my C-suite journey, the experience revealed to me institutional flaws in the organization.

Specifically, The Corp’s institutional design favors—and will continue to favor—the status quo over true, progressive changes.

I applied to The Corp last fall because I wanted to engage with my passion for coffee, make some money, and also find a community on campus. I felt very out of place upon returning to Georgetown after spending a year online and another on a medical leave of absence. When I was eventually hired at the Midnight MUG, I noticed operational and cultural issues. To fill in for insufficient barista training, a fellow new hire and I hosted office hours to improve bar skills and create a unique bonding event with our service’s hiring class. We also worked with the current COO and the head of training and facilities,to standardize procedures for coffee and tea preparation. Following these successes, I felt that being in the C-suite would give me more sway in further advocating for measures like these.

But I was a flawed candidate. Maybe I was too focused on my coffee background during my interviews and came across as uninterested in The Corp’s other services. Looking back on the process, I realize I am not suited for the role, and think my rejection was for the best.

My disillusionment instead arises from the fact that the part of my platform that faced the most intense criticism in the interview room was the empowerment of non-managerial employees.

Part of the final interview is dedicated to pointing out shortcomings in applicants’ proposals. My suggestion that The Corp introduce a semi-democratic system of electing service management—whereby the upper management vets applicants and sends a shortlist so Corpies can vote on their service’s next leadership team—was met with disapproval by upper management. My interviewers pointed out that this is not how typical businesses operate. However, The Corp is not a typical business; The Corp not only provides employment opportunities but also markets itself as a social community.

Because individual service managements are integral to defining Corp culture—and the director of each service serves on the upper management—it is vital for non-managerial Corpies to have a say in at least choosing who

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

they feel can best understand, represent, and advocate for their needs.

The ideas of non-managerial Corpies haven’t gone completely unheard, especially in regard to diversity hiring, but this hasn’t been enough. This semester, The Corp shifted its hiring outreach strategy so that affinity groups like Qorp, which represents LGBTQ+ Corpies, could lead information sessions.

But to ensure a more diverse Corp actually reflects meaningful change, the mechanisms that determine leadership roles must change as well. If not, The Corp risks continuing to hire individuals who mainly cater to the views of current

leadership instead of those who are honest about how The Corp should operate.

If The Corp doesn’t partially democratize the mechanisms governing upward mobility within services, it will continue to create management bodies that are out of touch with the needs of non-managerial employees. While The Corp touts the benefits they give their employees—like allocating tips to HR funds for social events—they don't understand how these may not be seen as benefits to all Corpies, especially those less interested in the heavy party culture that has historically dominated the organization. Although HR funds are allegedly used for purchases besides alcohol, some Corpies abstain from attending Corp socials due to the tradition of substance use at these events. My suggestion of alternative benefits, such as free shift drinks, however, were met with vitriol; this is just one example of how The Corp’s leadership makes decisions that don’t cater to all members.

And to label tips a “benefit” may be a misnomer given recent events; on Jan. 31, The Corp upper management revealed that it was uncertain what tips have been used for. According to a Corp-wide email, “[tip] tracking was lost in operations and transparency was an issue.” Because upward mobility currently depends on gaining the favor of those in positions of power, unethical practices like tip mismanagement go unquestioned for far too long. We need mechanisms for feedback to prevent the glaring lack of transparency.

One might ask, since management teams in the real world often don’t want to transfer power to non-managerial employees, why would you expect The Corp to be any different? My response to that is: Why not? In a business where two new hires could guide corrective operational and cultural measures, why not prioritize feedback mechanisms that create a more fluid dialogue between the upper management and nonmanagerial employees?

By refusing to take advantage of and expand on The Corp’s greatest strength—the relatively short distance between a nonmanagerial employee and the upper management—The Corp also holds itself back from implementing meaningful cultural changes and maximizing its potential as a business. As an organization run solely by students, why emulate the real world when we can instead experiment with non-traditional solutions that can serve as a blueprint for designing more equitable workplaces outside of Georgetown?

I truly look forward to seeing what changes the incoming C-suite makes and am glad they represent a more diverse set of backgrounds than C-suites in the past. I hope the new upper management takes the changes I have proposed seriously; it is only by prioritizing worker empowerment that we can envision a more equitable Corp. As for me, I know I will not pursue other leadership opportunities in The Corp and am uncertain whether I will remain an employee after the publication of this piece. My hope is I can stay and continue bar office hours to promote the change for which I advocated so dearly. G

graphic by elyza bruce; layout by cecilia cassidy

VOICES

Increasing equity at Georgetown begins with reforming Blue & Gray

BY BRANDON WU, KATHRYN YANG, AND VIHA VISHWANATHAN

"D

oes anyone know what special day it is at Georgetown? Every day is a special day at Georgetown!” After reciting our introductions for the umpteenth time, we rush out into the heat or the rain or the freezing cold, armed with Hydro Flasks and our best smiles.

For many prospective students, their impression of Georgetown starts with a 75-minute tour given by student guides from the Blue & Gray Tour Guide Society. As volunteers, Blue & Gray (B&G) guides have never been officially compensated, and we say on tours that we volunteer our time as guides because we love Georgetown!

Being a tour guide means generally presenting Georgetown positively to visitors.

But as three guides of color, we often tiptoe between spouting the information the Office of Undergraduate Admissions wants us to share and acknowledging our lived experiences beyond the brochures.

To create a more representative and equitable picture of Georgetown, tour guides must be paid. Even more importantly, our tours must fully address Georgetown’s legacy of racism and the role of student activists in addressing our institution’s flaws.

To date, B&G underrepresents students of various identities, prominently students of color and first-generation, low-income (FGLI) students. Unfortunately, this means it is often white, privileged students with largely positive impressions of Georgetown who give onedimensional tours, omitting critical information about the experiences of FGLI students on campus.

One solution proposed time and time again to increase equity in B&G is to pay guides.

Our peer institutions—including American University and all Ivy League universities—pay their guides. Even at Georgetown, select guides already get paid due to staffing shortages in the summer; Admissions pays guides who are employed directly by their office, whose tours equal unpaid guides’ tours in quality and content.

B&G’s recent statement regarding the payment of guides argues that compensation results in reduced tour quality, less honest tours, and a reduced number of guides. But in regard to quality, B&G’s rigorous training would stay the same even with compensation, and it is wrong to assume that guides—especially those of marginalized identities— would share less of their honest experiences if they were compensated by the university. And Georgetown receives an estimated $1.5 million every admissions cycle from undergraduate applicant fees,

design by olivia li

and Admissions could easily dedicate 5 percent of that revenue to pay every guide. In fact, many, if not all, of our peer institutions have more than 20 guides and manage to pay them. And if Admissions tries to cite these disproven strawman arguments to justify not paying guides, B&G leadership and every tour guide should fight for compensation.

But to actually advance equity at Georgetown, paying guides is not enough.

Beyond compensation, tours must be reframed to reflect Georgetown’s legacy of racism and colonialism. Tours do not include that our school colors—blue and gray—reference how Georgetown wanted to appease Hoyas who fought for both the Union (blue) and the slaveholding Confederacy (gray). Key figures like John Carroll, SJ., and William Gaston are glorified without context about how they both contributed to enslavement and colonization.

Our discussion of student activism also lacks emphasis on the unfair labor and burden placed on students of marginalized identities to fight tooth and nail for justice. While our tours’ main goal should still be promoting Georgetown, B&G can increase equity by further integrating the history of Georgetown’s structural inequities into tours.

We must also explain the role of student activism in exposing flaws within Georgetown’s institutions today, such as GUPD and the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action, which have both failed to properly aid survivors of hate crimes.

Not only is the exclusion of this context a disservice to prospective students who don’t come from privileged backgrounds, but it also explains why many FGLI students are uninterested in applying to B&G—it’s often perceived that guides must only speak positively about Georgetown or present an experience they don’t identify with.

Yet this isn’t about telling students that “Leo’s food sucks” or “Darnall has rats.” This is about portraying Georgetown through diverse narratives

to show how a predominantly white institution can become a home for anyone. Equity cannot increase at Georgetown until we confront—not whitewash— our history and institutions to visitors.

We cannot delay change. Privilege trickles down in B&G: Affluent and white guides often hold intrinsic biases towards club applicants similar to them, which leads to cyclical rehiring of privileged, white students. This cements the image to visitors that the students who love their time here at Georgetown are affluent and/or white. As more privileged students decide to apply, Georgetown remains inequitable. Of course, it’s not B&G’s fault that Georgetown is a campus where 50 percent of students come from the top 5 percent of American households. As guides, however, we’re taught that one tour can have a surprisingly lasting influence on prospective students.

Without compensation and structural changes to our tours, B&G’s initiatives to connect with underrepresented groups are performative. For instance, B&G has long aimed to interest more students of marginalized identities in applying, including members of the Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP), an organization dedicated to helping FGLI students navigate campus. Yet, GSP students continue to be underrepresented within B&G. Paying guides and reframing tours could encourage FGLI students— who are often also students of color—to join B&G. Having more guides of color means that visitors of historically underrepresented backgrounds could hear from someone with representative experience, a small step toward increasing equity at Georgetown.

Admissions must approve efforts to compensate guides and reframe our tours to reflect marginalized students’ experiences. For years, guides have sought compensation, and student organizations have demanded inclusive changes to tour content. Charles Deacon, the undergraduate admissions dean, even conceded that Georgetown falls short in its diversity.

If Admissions continues to resist changing tour content and implementing compensation equitably, B&G—from its leadership down to every guide—must take direct action to stop the flow of privilege from trickling down. Vanderbilt guides even protested their administration and threatened to strike for compensation, with a letter signed by their tour guide executive board.

If we want to increase equity at Georgetown, it begins with reforming Blue & Gray. G FEBRUARY UPDATE PUB 17, DATE 2023

7

HALFTIME LEISURE

What liEs HM:b` ` `Uqz LesSonS tHe McU’s Phase 5 can leArN R.b_ Uq/ n @\z pRedecesSor

BY AJANI JONES AND JUPITER HUANG

This review contains spoilers for Phase Four of the MCU.

T

he year was 2019. After 11 years, 21 films, and several (retroactively canon) TV shows, each building upon a massive web of deeply interconnected narratives and storylines, the Infinity Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) finally entered its endgame. Although Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) acts as Phase Three’s official conclusion, at the time, Avengers: Endgame (2019) really did feel like the end of an era.

Despite its many flaws, it is widely understood that Endgame was a massive cultural phenomenon when it was released. In addition to breaking countless records, the film was one of the most ambitious crossover events in modern entertainment. Endgame brought millions of fans together from across the globe to celebrate the apparent final chapter of what was, and in many ways still is, one of the biggest media franchises of our generation.

So, after such a seemingly perfect “final chapter,” the big question for many fans remained: What comes next? How could they hope to continue going forward after the end? For two years these questions would go unanswered.

Enter Phase Four, the official start of the Multiverse Saga of the MCU. Unlike its predecessors, Phase Four was no mere continuation of previous projects and storylines.

Rather, Phase Four set out to be a new beginning for the MCU, a fresh start following the culminating conflicts of the Infinity Saga.

While this distinction meant new projects would offer the MCU far greater scope to explore new narratives, characters, and expand its universe, it also meant this slate of projects had to spend considerable effort tying up the loose ends left by Endgame.

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Moreover, these films would have to balance this lofty goal with setting up future projects in a way that shifted the scope of the MCU to the multiverse—a task that would necessitate future projects innovate upon existing conventions for the MCU’s narratives and worldbuilding.

These two goals left Phase Four simultaneously occupying the roles of both prologue and epilogue. While the new roster of films and projects transitioned away from beloved characters—like Tony Stark’s Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers’ Captain America (Chris Evans)—the films had to make way for the many new heroes and narrative developments future phases of the MCU were hoping to explore.

The efforts to balance its transitional role within the MCU manifested as a heavy sense of grief and change that pervaded the thematic components of each project. In many ways, Phase Four— arguably more than any of the other phases of the MCU—also had to balance these goals with integrating itself seamlessly into the societal narrative of a “post-pandemic” world.

The thematic aspects of the Phase Four projects mirrored the sociocultural state of our reality at the time of their release—a world scarred by the impact of a global pandemic.

Whether intentional or not, Phase Four had to grapple with prevailing questions that surrounded not only recovery but also how to navigate a world so drastically and rapidly changed by tragedy— in this case, the infamous snap.

These challenges provided a unique opportunity for the MCU to reinvent its boundaries, but in execution, Phase Four fails to meet audience expectations, much less meaningfully tackle these challenges.

Phase Four has widely been considered a disappointment by both new and longtime fans— but it didn’t mean they weren’t watching. With several Phase Four

movies being ranked among the top 10 most successful MCU films at the box office, there is, at least presently, no lack of audience interest in what the MCU has to offer.

Despite record-breaking interest, however, many fans continue to express a sense of disillusionment with all that this phase has offered. While many aspects of Phase Four are admittedly praiseworthy, there were simply too many pitfalls that left fans utterly disappointed with the overall experience.

Much of this disappointment stemmed from the failure to consistently execute its themes across its many slated projects and successfully carry the MCU into its newest saga. Phase Four—the first to include TV shows as fully integrated parts of the MCU—had to balance its overarching themes across 15 total projects rather than just the seven film releases. While an impressive feat on paper, this plan was too ambitious to execute, especially in just one year following major release schedule changes.

With projects ranging from the long-awaited Black Widow (2021) to the fourth wall-breaking She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Phase Four bit off far too much narratively, ultimately fumbling what could have been excellent storytelling.

Aside from condensing what should have been years of development for many new characters into a handful of projects, the entire phase felt incredibly disjointed. While many of these projects did connect in some way or other— albeit sometimes through fan invention—there was simply not enough care put into making sure that all these stories fit cohesively into a larger narrative. Many projects felt only tangentially related, with little thematic consistency between one another. The resulting product was incredibly disappointing, especially for a phase that had the potential to allow the MCU to further flourish with the complex themes it planned to tackle.

Two projects guiltiest of these narrative shortcomings were Eternals (2021) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). Each had the capacity to be phenomenal, but ultimately squandered

design by sabrina shaffer

their stories for mediocre storytelling—or in the case of Love and Thunder, utterly underwhelming use of the characters they featured.

Eternals, with its incredibly diverse cast of interesting new characters, could have been a captivating story of lost purpose, disillusionment, and new beginnings. Instead, the film failed to fully engage its audience and did very little to actually integrate this new cast into the grander scheme of the multiverse.

This film felt painfully separate from the rest of the MCU. What connection it did have felt like an afterthought rather than a legitimate justification for the existence of this project and its characters. Moreover, Eternals failed to fully embody the concepts of change and grief that pervaded other Phase Four projects. Due to the sheer size of its cast and the massive amount of worldbuilding that had to be done, Eternals accomplished very little with all it set out to do—a problem that seems to plague the entirety of Phase Four.

While projects like Eternals disappointed because they fell short, films like Love and Thunder simply failed. It strayed so far in its attempts at comedy that it not only felt tonally divorced from the remainder of Phase Four, but it also wholly disregarded years of development for one of the MCU’s most beloved protagonists.

This film’s complete character assassination of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is not only indicative of a lack of care but also reveals worrying levels of dissonance between these projects and the stories they hoped to carry on.

Beyond its narrative inconsistencies and tonal failings, the MCU attempted to leverage Phase Four to integrate new directorial styles and genres into its projects—with mixed success.

Projects like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), which promised a new stylistic direction and multiversal possibilities for the MCU, severely under-delivered. The film teased fans with the promise of horror and noir with the appointment of Sam Raimi as director and pitted two of the most powerful and intriguing MCU characters against each other. Though there were moments of excellent supernatural gore, and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) made for an intense and terrifying villain, the film suffered from a severely rushed and simplified narrative.

Wanda’s reduction into a two-dimensional antagonist—without a clear explanation of the Darkhold’s corrupting effects—left fans who had come to know the character via WandaVision wanting. Multiverse of Madness’ mediocrity serves as a clear warning: Reducing a former protagonist/current anti-hero into a full-fledged villain to appeal to a broader audience cannot be done without extreme care.

Despite marketing distinct new “flavors” of projects to audiences, poor production and management also led to potentially great projects feeling laughably mediocre at best. Though Love and Thunder squandered its narrative potential, many of its problems also derive from Phase Four’s rushed release schedule.

The movie’s complete lack of balance between moments of comedy and gravity indicates a script that desperately needed more time to simmer. Moreover, audiences have pointed out the movie’s at-times comical CGI, from oversaturated backgrounds to the infamous floating head of an Asgardian child. The lack of quality not only comes from last-minute changes to filming locations and production timelines due to COVID-19 but also from industry-specific demands. Marvel’s overloaded launch schedule places immense pressure on VFX artists, who wrestle with extremely tight turnaround times. The sheer number of movies in Phase Four resulted in copious reshoots and late-stage changes demanded by directors with little understanding of VFX, leading to absurd overtime hours and stress for artists, many of whom are not unionized.

Despite these creative disappointments, projects like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), and WandaVision represent some of the best of what the MCU had to offer. At its best, Phase Four proved Marvel projects can still astonish audiences when given the right time, vision, and execution. These projects told incredibly compelling stories while embracing themes of mourning and change with open arms. These projects placed great care into the stories they aimed to tell, resulting in some of the most cohesive and moving projects of Phase Four. They hit on the phase’s thematic motifs beautifully, giving room for audiences to grieve, cope, and grow along with the lead characters.

Most notably, Wakanda Forever dove headfirst into the grief of its characters and treated their pain with immense care. The movie took its central thesis of grief and ran, allowing the film to flourish into a completely sincere and masterfully curated project (which was also visually, aurally, and technically brilliant).

Another success and one of Phase Four’s first forays into the multiverse, No Way Home came out as the surprising favorite in expanding the MCU, hitting the necessary summer blockbuster notes, and, as the seventh-highest-grossing film of all time, proved that theatrical releases could rebound from COVID-19. No Way Home’s threeway crossover bringing in Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spidermen from past Sony projects made for an unmatched post-outbreak theater atmosphere. The film even achieved the remarkable feat of retroactively improving

on characters and iterations of Spider-Man borrowed from other franchises by virtue of their cameo appearances.

However, these excellent Phase Four projects further emphasize the glaring shortcomings of the phase as a whole. Each project simply needed more time to breathe in their conception and production as well as time between each project for fans to become fully acquainted with all the new characters and storylines being introduced.

Moreover, if the MCU had put greater emphasis on ensuring narrative and thematic consistency within Phase Four, these projects could have better complemented one another and been drastically improved.

With Phase Five officially beginning with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on Feb. 17, the MCU needs to return to the quality that audiences have come to expect from Marvel studios. Not only does the new phase need a clear narrative structure that ties its projects together, but this phase must also set a captivating, tangible, and sufficiently terrifying future threat to ground the series. In other words, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) must be compelling, and always looming. The MCU’s version of Kang must have a strong and complex motivation to keep audiences engaged, as well as excellent power scaling to establish the threat they pose.

Ultimately, Phase Four was more of an utter disappointment than an outright failure; it would be disingenuous to pretend that its components were entirely without merit. As the phase continuously botched its characters and themes to produce many arguably unfinished projects, one cannot help but yearn for what Phase Four could have been. If the MCU has learned its lesson, Phase Five will hopefully propel this franchise toward greater heights by building on the shaky foundation of its predecessor. Otherwise, fans may not continue to be as forgiving of the multiverse’s blunders. #

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

9

LEISURE

Magic Mike's Last Dance strips away logic with its barely there plot

BY CHETAN DOKKU AND MAANASI CHINTAMANI

“T

here’s no nudity in Magic Mike’s Last Dance. There’s not even a thong,” director Steven Soderbergh noted in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Inspired by producer and star Channing Tatum’s pre-fame stripping career, the Magic Mike films cast a light on the distinct struggles of male entertainers in a post-Great Recession economy. Behind all the sweaty dollar bills, the first two installments were—at their core— an ode to dance and the resilience of their characters. Unfortunately, Magic Mike’s “final tease” swaps drugs and tear-away pants for pseudo-feminism and an ill-developed romance, resulting in ​​ an overly sanitized farewell to a beloved franchise.

Set after the COVID-19 pandemic, Last Dance (2023) picks up after Mike (Tatum) has shuttered his dream custom furniture design company due to the economic downturn and now works as an events bartender in Miami. While working a charity fundraiser, he catches the attention of the foundation head, wealthy socialite Maxandra “Max” Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault), who propositions him for a private dance to take her mind off her ongoing divorce. After the eye-opening, furniture-dangling $6,000 dance, Max whisks him away to London on a surprise mission. She takes Mike to the historic Rattigan Theater that she’s taken ownership of from her ex-husband and enlists him to direct a stripper show in place of the staid, traditionalist play Isabel Ascendant currently running there.

Despite a promising—if contrived—premise, the script is sloppy, necessitating a narrator to guide viewers through the plot. Last Dance enlists Zadie (Jemelia George), Max’s fauxintellectual teenage daughter, for the role, but the film fails to fully commit to this narrative framework. Rather than providing the structure and personal perspective one expects from a narrator, Zadie instead interjects abruptly throughout the film to pontificate on the evolutionary significance of dance, and also, inexplicably, offer her takes on gentrification and “systemic economic inequality,” all couched in insufferable psychobabble.

These superficial and altogether unnecessary attempts at engaging with real-world issues persist throughout the film. In the wake of her divorce, Max preaches feminism and liberation for women, which she seems to believe is a radical concept (in reality, her ideas wouldn’t have been groundbreaking even 25 years ago). The film’s calls for equality—expressed as hollow one-liners—feel clumsy and out of place: During a discussion about the stage layout, Max declares pointedly that “no woman wants to be suffocated by testicles.”

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Yet even with this supposedly feminist spirit, the film proceeds to portray all its female characters as fundamentally unlikable, while their male counterparts—with the exception of Max’s power-hungry ex-husband Roger (Alan Cox)—are depicted favorably or, at the very least, neutrally. Max is flighty, volatile, and an unreliable mother, while Zadie is irritatingly pretentious. Even minor characters cannot escape this treatment: Hannah (Juliette Motamed)—the actress who played the titular Isabel Ascendant and is then enlisted to emcee the final dance—appears to be motivated primarily by her attraction to Mike, openly and uncomfortably thirsting after him during rehearsals. Meanwhile, the film barely characterizes the men, dedicating much airtime but little narrative progression to Victor (Ayub Khan-Din), Max’s vaguely helpful and perpetually lurking butler. Even Mike himself is reduced to a mere plot vehicle rather than a welldefined individual.

The most charming aspect of the first two films in the franchise is the friendship between the Kings of Tampa—Mike’s stripper troupe— as they deal with the highs and lows of the male entertainment industry. Each of them was a fully fleshed-out character with his own personality, struggles, and dreams. Meanwhile, audiences walk out of Last Dance with no idea who any of the dancers—essentially, talented extras—are, other than Mike; we don’t even know their names.

Complementing its superficial characterizations, Last Dance relies on unbelievable conceits to move the plot along—the most absurd being the magical unicorn as a deus ex machina that grants Hannah, in her role as Isabel, any wish she wants. The unicorn, voiced by Mike, devolves the stuffy play into a live strip show, revealing Hannah’s inner desires.

She trades in her corseted gown for an all-leather look while emceeing a performance about “women getting what they want.”

Beyond the subpar storytelling, Last Dance fails to create a captivating viewing experience. The film has virtually no soundtrack besides the dance numbers, creating unintentionally uncomfortable silences and further emphasizing the flaws in the script. Additionally, the visuals feel rushed and amateur, from choppy jump cuts to heavyhanded montages, particularly during the climactic final dance.

The film’s greatest strength—and most successful incorporation of feminist ideas— is its dance, particularly the two elaborate performances that bookend the story. From the outset, the film centers female comfort

and pleasure. During the first dance, the screenplay emphasizes Mike’s requests for consent from Max, and the intense, mesmerizing choreography is designed with Max’s experience in mind. Later, as the two plan their show in London, they aim to bring passion to what Max describes as a “numb, disconnected, [and] desensitized” predominantly female audience. Ballerina Kylie Shea has a starring (but unnamed) role in the strip show, adding a female perspective to an otherwise male-centric genre. And yet Last Dance’s poor production value cheapens an otherwise dynamic, flawlessly performed dance. In this concluding spectacle, Tatum and Shea recount Mike and Max’s whirlwind romance on a rain-soaked stage, while haphazardly interspersed clips from earlier in the film disrupt one of the few moments of true magnetism and chemistry.

Last Dance relies on half-hearted fan service to keep devotees connected to the franchise. There’s an odd, iMovie-esque intro montage of clips from the first two movies that tries to situate this threequel in the franchise, as if the film even cares about sticking to its spirit. An awkward Zoom cameo between Mike and the other Kings of Tampa sputters and lags for too long before abruptly ending as soon as Max walks into the room, as if any connection between Mike’s current and previous life is out of bounds.

For both new viewers and longtime fans, Last Dance is an unnecessary coda that fails to achieve its stated goals. As she narrates the happy ending, Zadie remarks that “dance doesn’t follow logic or reason”—and disappointingly, neither does this film.G

design by madeleine ott

SPORTS

After a historic 2022 season, Georgetown Baseball is hungry for more

BY ANDREW ARNOLD

B

aseball was the first sport for Hoyas. It’s been a part of the Georgetown experience for 157 years. Despite that, the program has never been to the College World Series. Hell, they’ve never even won a single BIG EAST Tournament game. Their home field isn’t on the Hilltop, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone on campus who even knows that Georgetown has a Division I baseball team.

Head Coach Edwin Thompson and this year’s team aim to change that.

Thompson did not have the easiest start to his career at Georgetown. He and his staff were brought aboard during the pandemic and, due to COVID-19 restrictions, they were not allowed to meet the players until March 2021.

With just one week of practice under their belts, the season started. The team went 6-25.

For all intents and purposes, it was a forgettable year. But 2021 was just an appetizer.

“There was a lot of uncertainty, but what we knew was that that first year playing really kind of laid the foundation for our program,” Thompson said. “We were able to focus on baseball development and culture, and obviously the results weren’t what we wanted . . . but I think in some ways it helped us because we were able to get to know the guys really well over that period.”

The seeds planted in 2021 blossomed into a masterpiece of a season for the Hoyas in 2022. The Hoyas won a program record 32 games, finishing the year at 32-24. They went from hitting just six homers in 2021 to hitting 98 (a program record); from 226 total bases to 925 (another program record); from 82 runs to 400 ( just shy of a program record).

They finished the season the highest they’ve ever ranked according to the NCAA’s rating percentage index (137th out of 301). They reached the BIG EAST Tournament for the first time in four years. But most importantly, it was Georgetown’s first winning season since 1986—which, for those keeping track at home, was 36 years ago.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the 2022 season was absolutely historic.

“We knew we were a special group; there was a game [last year] we had like five home runs. We had six the entire ’21 season. So we know we had a good team,” Thompson said.

But as fantastic as the ’22 season was for the Hoyas, it ultimately ended in heartbreak.

They were the first team eliminated in the BIG EAST Tournament and ended up missing out on the College World Series.

“My goals every year are simple: Win the regular season championship,” Thompson said. “And if we don’t do that, make sure we’re in the top four to qualify for the [BIG EAST] Conference Tournament. And then plan on playing in the championship game on Sunday.”

Luckily for Thompson and his squad, Georgetown is returning eight of their nine starters, including graduate outfielder Ubaldo Lopez, junior outfielder Jake Hyde, and reigning unanimous BIG EAST Freshman of the Year catcher Owen Carapellotti—the first time a Georgetown freshman had ever taken home the award. Both Lopez and Hyde set a program record, each having 19 homers last year, and will be the anchors of the Hoya lineup this year. And all Carapellotti did in his rookie campaign was hit a cool .282 AVG/.396 OBP/.552 SLG with eight homers while also handling a diverse pitching staff as the primary catcher for the Hoyas. And, oh yeah, he was a freshman!

“It was awesome,” Carapellotti said of his breakout 2022 season. “I just bought into the way [the coaching staff ] was going about things and trusted their ways and they trusted me to do what I do and it ended up working out.”

Carapellotti attributes much of the team's success in 2022 to the camaraderie in the Hoya dugout. “When you’re catching your friends, it’s so much easier to be on the same page. You understand them more as a person, and you know how they think.”

design by lou jacquin; photos courtesy of georgetown athletics

After the 2022 season, expectations are high. The Hoyas aren’t going to be punching up anymore. In the preseason coach’s poll, Georgetown is projected to finish fourth in the BIG EAST, which would set the Hoyas up for their first-ever back-to-back BIG EAST Tournament appearances. And although these expectations coincide with a tough projected schedule—multiple marquee matchups against No. 13 University of Maryland, Penn State, Navy, and local rival George Washington— Thompson and the Hoyas are not fazed. In fact, they welcome the challenge.

“Do we expect to double our wins every year? No, that’s not realistic, but do we expect to be competing for a BIG EAST championship every single year? Absolutely, that’s what I expect,” Thompson said.

One of Thompson’s tenets is staying motivated and finding that inner drive for greatness. “You can either be hungry, satisfied, or starving. We want to be starving.

We want to make our own mark this year.”

Thompson harps on the details. He wants his guys to give 110 percent each and every time they step out onto that field. If they lose, then so be it, but they sure as hell aren’t going to beat themselves.

“Nobody’s gonna win every game, but everybody wants to be as close to perfect as possible. [The coaching staff ] preach on not missing the cookies—not missing the fastball,” Carapellotti added. “We need to stay hungry.”

The Hoyas are going to do everything they can to get back to the BIG EAST Tournament and potentially beyond. But that comes one pitch at a time. And, instead of five “home” ballparks last year (yes, five different parks across the DMV), they’ll have a permanent home this year at the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy.

With the season starting on Feb. 17 in Cary, North Carolina vs. Presbyterian, Georgetown isn’t just hungry to show that last year wasn’t a fluke. They’re starving.G FEBRUARY 17, 2023

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HALFTIME SPORTS

Who is defending the District in 2023?

BY BRADSHAW CATE

O

n Feb. 19, Sea Dragons will fly into Washington, D.C. Thankfully, the District has gained new knights in shining helmets. The D.C. Defenders of the newly reformed XFL—a new springtime football league—will play them on the gridiron to defend the castle that is Audi Field.

When the XFL first hit fields in 2001, D.C. did not have a team. Vince McMahon, then chairman of the World Wrestling Federation, wanted to create a springtime competitor to the NFL and make the sport more physically brutal after the NFL implemented rules to protect player safety—changes which, to some, fumbled the spirit of the game. He founded the XFL to fill that gap. But the league ended in disaster and folded after just one season, with commentators citing the poor quality of play and low ratings.

So when McMahon announced the return of the XFL in 2018, fans were more than skeptical. Few wanted the return of the bloodsport witnessed in 2001, especially with increased scrutiny on concussions and player safety. In order to match modern audience's preferences, McMahon marketed the new XFL as a faster-paced version of the “No Fun League” and introduced new rules for player safety. Those rules included faster game clocks, double forward passes to make defense more difficult, and creating safer kickoffs by preventing dangerous collisions.

Buzz developed around the league when play kicked off in 2020, with millions of people tuning in to watch spring football. That popularity propelled P. J. Walker, Josh Johnson, and other athletes to legitimate stardom. The D.C. Defenders debuted in this iteration of the league and went 3-2 over five weeks. Sadly, the

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league lost its momentum when the COVID-19 pandemic deflated the XFL once again.

The XFL was revived for a third time, though, when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson purchased the league from McMahon for a reported $15 million. The 2023 season includes eight teams, some from the 2020 season as well as several newly formed clubs. The future of the league seems more stable, as The Rock has reached a research and development deal with the NFL, allowing him to test out new replay and player safety policies.

So with the new season imminent, excitement around the D.C. Defenders is exploding. One XFL news site ranked the team as second best in the league. And while rules that promote offense may make the Defenders’ name hard to live up to, the team’s coaching staff seems well-equipped to utilize player talent. Reggie Barlow, head coach of the Defenders, previously coached football at Virginia State, where he won both a championship and a coach of the year award.

Not only is he an accomplished leader, but he also hopes to open the door to more coaches of color being hired in professional football.

Barlow is also surrounded by experienced coordinators. Fred Kaiss is a lifelong friend who worked with Barlow at Alabama State and will be coaching the offensive side of the ball. On defense, the Defenders hired Gregg Williams, who played an integral role in the New Orleans Saints’ 2010 Super Bowl win, ranking second in total forced turnovers.

Despite his success, Williams was at the center of a scandal called “Bountygate” in 2012, when defensive players were paid to injure opposing players. There’s hope that Williams will turn over a new leaf with the XFL, but fans should be wary of supporting his coaching.

The Defenders also have a stellar roster for the 2023 season. D.C.’s quarterback room is a dangerous Cerberus; each player is a threat in the air, on the ground, and receiving.

Jordan Ta’amu will play a central role in the position, as he has the most experience in the XFL. Formerly a quarterback for the St. Louis Battlehawks, Ta’amu finished the COVID-19 season with a passer rating of 101.3 (better than every NFL quarterback this season).

His arm isn’t his only weapon, so expect to see him pick up a few rushing touchdowns to complement his excellent throwing skills.

QB Eric Dungey’s success is harder to predict, as he has not played significantly since graduating from Syracuse in 2018.

Dungey’s athleticism may complement Ta’amu well, as they run at similar speeds and can create plays for each other. The Defenders shared a video of Ta’amu throwing to Dungey, highlighting the shifting positions bound to confuse XFL defenses.

D’Eriq King is the youngest of the three QBs, graduating in 2021 from the University of Miami. He threw more touchdown passes than either Ta’amu or Dungey during his college career, so it will be interesting to see him develop as the season progresses.

Turning over to the other side of the ball, D.C.’s defensive roster seems primed to take over the league. Safety Kentrell Brice should be utilized well by Williams (who is known for outstanding safety play). And with Brice’s experience in the NFL, he should be an anchor for this defensive unit.

Even as the Washington Commanders prepare for their fall season, the XFL may present a unique opportunity for D.C. residents bored by the typically slow pace of professional football. Tickets are well below the price of an NFL game, which makes the sport more financially accessible to those who are not wealthy, die-hard fans. Audi Field, home of the D.C. United soccer team, is easier to get to from Georgetown compared to FedEx Field. Additionally, the Defenders’ fans have a tradition of forming a “beer snake” with their empty cups; clearly, the game environment will be electric come Sunday. So for those who want to see D.C. defended from Sea Dragons, Battlehawks, and the like, the 2023 Defenders are the team to watch. G

graphic by elin choe; layout by sabrina shaffer

NEWS

D.C. attempts to address decade-old housing waitlist backlog and restore reputation

BY ANGELENA BOUGIAMAS AND ANANYA RAMESH

P

am Reeves signed up for the D.C. Housing Authority’s (DCHA) voucher program in 1995 when she moved from North Carolina to Washington, D.C. with her three sons. She did not receive any further information until 15 years later, when her name appeared on the program list and DCHA contacted her. She was told she was called by accident, and by that time, Reeves had found housing on her own.

Decades later, Reeves’ niece is now hoping to have better luck under DCHA’s new streamlined initiatives.

DCHA held an affordable housing eligibility event on Feb. 3, the second such event this year. They’re part of DCHA’s recent efforts to clear its 20,000-person affordable housing waitlist, which has not accepted applications in nearly 10 years.

The DCHA events, hosted at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, are designed to help applicants determine their eligibility for affordable housing—a prerequisite for being matched with available housing units.

“This is the first time we’ve heard of that the Housing Authority has done anything like this,” Rachel Joseph, DCHA's chief operating officer, said of the first event on Jan. 6. Over 5,000 applicants were invited via letters, robocalls, and non-transferable email invites; over 600 individuals attended.

For D.C. residents in need of affordable, safe housing, the backlogged waitlist and deteriorating public housing units have contributed to longstanding problems. Many have been either displaced or forced to put up with unclean, dangerous conditions as the Housing Authority has stalled in adequately addressing their needs.

Around 2,500 applicants were invited to the eligibility event on Feb. 3, according to Raymond Skinner, chairman of the Stabilization and Reform (STAR) Board of Commissioners. This time around, 225 families attended and worked with DCHA staff to submit the paperwork necessary for determining affordable housing eligibility.

Joseph said that invitations are applicantspecific, so those who have not updated the contact information they provided DCHA may not be contacted by them about the event.

She said that DCHA will be having another event for these individuals, and the agency encouraged applicants to update their contact information.

graphic by joanna li; layout by olivia li

Skinner said that applicants who are nonresponsive to DCHA outreach using onfile contact information are removed from the waitlist so that the agency can move on to housing others.

Joseph also noted that some attended the event after hearing about it elsewhere, such as Facebook, even if the DCHA did not specifically reach out to them.

One attendee of the Feb. 3 eligibility event, who spoke with the Voice on the condition of anonymity, said that he had been on the waitlist for over a decade. He joined the waitlist when he was 19; now, attending the event at 31 after hearing about it through a family member, he hoped to receive a voucher due to rent increases in D.C. and the additional costs his family expects from having their second child.

When he checked his eligibility at Friday’s event, however, he was told his name could not be found on the DCHA housing waitlist.

“They said I might still receive something in the mail, but when the lady just looked on the government [website] she said she don’t even see my name in the system,” he said.

Following a House and Urban Development audit issued in Oct. 2022 that criticized DCHA’s management and maintenance of public housing units, the D.C. City Council passed legislation replacing the previous 13-person board with the nineperson STAR Board in place today. According to Skinner, the new board is made up of members with specific expertise relevant to new legislation and contrasts with the previous STAR Board which was too caught up in “day-to-day” operational matters.

Skinner said a plan is in place to hold the agency accountable for correcting the HUD report’s highlighted deficiencies, which include “updating policies, developing new systems and programs, training staff, and implementing new technologies.” He anticipates the board’s biggest challenge will be restoring DCHA’s reputation in the D.C. community.

DCHA’s upcoming priorities also include increasing occupancy rates for their housing units and conducting preventative maintenance while managing redevelopment efforts.

The Housing Authority published an Admissions and Continued Occupancy

Plan (ACOP) and an Administrative Plan for public comment on Feb. 14. These plans govern the city’s public housing operations and the housing choice voucher programs that place residents in private housing units, respectively. Once the STAR Board approves the new ACOP, DCHA will move toward implementing separate, site-based waitlists for their 56 public housing properties.

Currently, DCHA has one waitlist for all of its public housing. “When our waiting lists are reopened, applicants will select sites they qualify for based on their personal preferences and buildings that have units that meet their family size,” Skinner said.

Skinner is optimistic the new waiting list plan will reduce the time it takes to fill housing units, reducing the likelihood of a backlogged waitlist in the future. The current housing waitlist, however, must be cleared before this new process is operationalized.

To advance redevelopment efforts, board members approved two contracts at a Jan. 25 STAR Board meeting enabling the agency to inspect each housing unit and make necessary health and safety repairs.

In the meantime, residents are as hopeful as they can be that the historically flawed Housing Authority will meet their needs.

Reeves’ niece worked with DCHA staff to complete the intake process during the eligibility event on Feb. 3, hoping her family could move to a larger housing unit in a safer area. “She’s in a two-bedroom, she has four kids,” Reeves said. “She just don’t want to be there anymore.”

One attendee was told to keep checking the website for when the waitlist reopens.

“I was on the list in 2012,” the attendee who spoke with the Voice on Feb. 3 said. “It could be another [few years]. Why keep waiting?”

Skinner anticipates that there will be at least two more events for those who remain on the affordable housing waitlist. But if the District does not adequately address its affordable housing issues, residents who are able to may leave the city.

“Nobody really gets a place so it’s kinda hard in this city to do anything, even if you have a good job,” the attendee said. “Hopefully this helps us out but if anything, we was already thinking about moving from D.C.” G FEBRUARY 17, 2023

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FEATURES

Facing managerial hostility, Georgetown’s facilities workers reveal deteriorating work environment

BY NORA SCULLY AND MAX ZHANG

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eorgetown has relied on Jose Chanchavac to fix its broken heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for 28 years—longer than most current Hoyas have been alive. His son and daughter both attended Georgetown; his life is deeply entwined with this university.

“When a student says, ‘I don't have heat or cooling,’ it’s like my son or daughter saying that I don’t have heating or cooling,” Chanchavac said. “I care about them.”

Yet facilities workers like Chanchavac have described Georgetown as an increasingly hostile working environment, particularly since the pandemic began. Many long-time facilities workers consider the last year one of the worst for labor relations in recent memory. Since October, the Voice has interviewed and met with dozens of workers, who have spoken of systematic problems in facilities management, including punitive behaviors, racial discrimination, unfilled vacancies, and insufficient union support.

“Georgetown used to be a great place to work, but not so much anymore,” Chanchavac said.

Chanchavac highlighted a Jan. 14 incident as indicative of the systematic mistreatment he’s encountered. After receiving a work order for a broken HVAC system in Henle, Chanchavac found the offending thermostat had simply been turned down. He increased the temperature and, upon feeling warm air, left to help a junior technician.

After later being alerted that the HVAC system was still malfunctioning, Chanchavac asked another technician to check it. That technician reported a parts issue that required supervisor approval, meaning the problem would have to wait until Monday.

Two days later, Chanchavac received a notification from his supervisor: The university

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THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

was mandating employees come in to clear the snow, expecting a snowstorm. Chanchavac, having already worked the minimum 40 hours stipulated in the union agreement, told a group chat of fellow technicians that he wasn’t available to work due to a personal emergency.

Chanchavac believes he was retaliated against for this text message. On Jan. 27, he was written up for the Jan. 14 HVAC repair— which he alleges could not be completed without access to mechanical parts requiring supervisory approval. Although the report officially listed “poor work performance” as the cause, Chanchavac sees the write-up as retribution for his text, which he says his supervisor viewed as insubordination.

As a university spokesperson noted, the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the union stipulates that employees may not be subject to retaliation for “reporting their concerns or participating in grievance procedures in good faith.”

Write-ups have long-term impacts— Chanchavac considers the warning a significant hindrance to his ability to pursue supervisory promotion.

“I think they wrote me up based on retaliation,” he said. “Georgetown preaches values: respect and dignity. But they don’t respect us.”

Many facilities workers have echoed Chanchavac’s sentiment about a fundamental lack of respect and support from Georgetown’s management.

“We deeply appreciate all that our facilities workers do to support our university community.

Georgetown is committed to protecting the health and safety, and respecting the dignity, of all members of our community,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to the Voice.

Georgetown’s facilities department is characterized by a complex hierarchical leadership structure. A handful of administrators—like Associate Vice President of Facilities Lisa Belokur, whom several workers identified as responsible for unpopular policies—preside over department directors and dozens of supervisors, who in turn oversee roughly 300 facilities workers.

Several workers also described clear dichotomies between supervisors who are “against workers” or “on the side of workers”—many of the latter have left Georgetown in the last few years.

Several custodial workers and HVAC technicians believe management has done a poor job of building employee relationships, resulting in a fear of retaliation and hostility. Most interviewed workers testified to key supervisors never introducing themselves or ignoring workers, despite the substantial control they have over the workers’ daily lives.

“Big boss is going to come and it’s going to be a problem,” another facilities worker said, describing an intimidation tactic employed by supervisors to threaten getting upper managers like Belokur involved.

According to several facilities workers, supervisors also began to routinely implement punitive consequences for small infractions, furthering the lack of community support. Being minutes late resulted in docking missed time from vacation days or pay, while previous supervisors had allowed workers to recoup the time at the end of their shift, even if the CBA does not permit tardiness.

“The workers’ basic problem is with upper management who doesn’t respect us,” one custodial worker said.

Another long-term custodial worker perceived a disregard for worker safety from missing COVID-19

PPE early in the pandemic. Once, when he brought up concerns to a supervisor, the response from upper management was deflating: “They should be happy they have a job here.”

Moreover, some workers have alleged racial discrimination and serious underlying racial tensions. Many workers noted a stark racial partition between shifts, as most maintenance and housekeeping day workers are Latino, while the vast majority of night workers are Black. In contrast, top management is largely white. The resulting dynamic is one where Black and Latino workers are often pitted against one another to the detriment of both.

Chanchavac, who is Latino, has lodged a number of complaints to the Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action (IDEAA) office. Multiple Latino maintenance workers also alleged supervisors were unfairly harsh on Latinos over the usage of their supply closets, and one Black worker believed the Black workers did not have equal access to overtime availability over the summer.

“Any report of discrimination or retaliation is taken seriously and investigated by the university,” a university spokesperson wrote.

Most of the workers who spoke with the Voice are also immigrants who often face language barriers in accessing legal support and self-advocacy. Many rely on stable hours and overtime, often balancing multiple jobs to meet the high cost of living in D.C. When shifts are inconsistent, workers’ lives are drastically impacted. One worker testified to how some employees even changed their children’s schooling to accommodate changed shifts.

Yet despite management promising shift changes would end post-pandemic, two housekeeping workers alleged that they were forced, yet again, to change shifts at the threat of dismissal.

“Either you move or you get fired. They don’t give a fuck,” one put it simply.

Overtime access has been a sore spot for workers. One long-time custodial worker identified barriers to overtime hours during May 2022’s graduation as one managerial turning point, noting that she’d worked overtime for every graduation prior. The limited access to overtime hours in recent years has exacerbated workers’ economic insecurity and reduced the quality of facilities maintenance.

Many believe the more prominent utilization of subcontractors—including those associated with SSC Services for Education—factors into this picture, especially for HVAC technicians.

“We use contractors in limited circumstances to support the work of the Office of Planning and Facilities Management,” a university spokesperson wrote.

The scope of work has also drastically changed.

In the past, housekeeping workers would be assigned in pairs to clean a building for their safety.

Now, however, several workers testified to being assigned an entire floor or two on their own.

Supervisors have allegedly also reduced the availability of quality cleaning supplies or refused to replenish old stock, making janitorial work more difficult and less thorough. “If you don’t have cleaning supplies, how is the place going to be cleaned?” one worker said.

The increased workload has been compounded by worker shortages, as Georgetown has not rehired

staff post-pandemic. “Georgetown University employees, they leave, they go away, they die, or they retire, or they go somewhere else, but they don’t fill the vacancy, and that means more work for us,” Chanchavac said.

According to Chanchavac, there used to be more than 30 people employed in the HVAC department.

Now, there are about a dozen. Many current workers assume the extra workload—Chanchavac says that five AC mechanics are responsible for all of the main campus. To compensate, workers allege that supervisors have assigned non-licensed workers the responsibilities of licensed technicians without corresponding pay increases.

The university’s treatment of workers has long been criticized by workers and students. In 2018, The Hoya reported that facilities workers faced similar mistreatment and had failed to catalyze change through standard complaint channels to supervisors, managers, human resources, or union representatives.

The union for all trade and facilities workers—1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—hasn’t always provided clear solutions. Although Chanchavac contacted his union representative, organizer Angel de la Rosa

"If I had a child coming here, I would raise bloody hell!"

Pena, they were unsuccessful in withdrawing his write-up after Georgetown dismissed his grievance.

Other workers have responded derisively when asked about whether the union has been helpful in navigating their challenges. “I’d rather be without a union than pay $100 every two weeks because they’re not helping,” one maintenance worker said, a sentiment echoed by many. “We are the union.”

In the past year, union organizers have handled around a half-dozen formal grievances and 15-20 general complaints. De la Rosa Pena noted he holds weekly on-campus meetings with workers, although from his perspective the greatest challenge is poor communication. The union receives few formal grievances, limiting their capacity to respond.

1199 SEIU Vice President Carrietta Hiers highlighted another limiting factor for union help: the difference between a grievance and a gripe. Grievances, or violations of the union’s CBA, are subject to a stricter adjudication process involving human resources, while gripes are processed on a looser timeline and involve a labor-management meeting.

Certain issues, like hostility, toe the line.

“It’s not a violation of the contract but it’s frankly disrespectful, which creates a hostile work environment, which is a violation of the CBA,” Hiers said.

graphic by max zhang; layout by connor martin

Hiers and de la Rosa Pena believe bringing supervisors (whom they generally view as “proworker”), union representatives, and workers to the communication table might address many of the issues workers are experiencing. “That’s what the union is for: to improve the lives of our members. And if we’re a tool and a resource for them, that’s what we’re for,” Heirs stressed.

But absent greater institutional support, workers have turned to one another for solutions. “We’ve got to do this together,” one Black custodial worker said. One AC maintenance worker explained that if he could afford legal representation to support the experiences of Latino housekeeping day workers, he would.

“We don’t really complain because a lot of us fear we may lose our jobs,” one facilities worker said.

To help, student organizers like Xavi Molina (SFS ’25) and Josh Gavsie (CAS ’24) and the Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights have been key in stirring university response to the ongoing complaints. Initially formed in 2020 to support food workers and protest the implementation of Redeploy Georgetown, a policy that workers claimed forced them to be COVID-19 public health screeners, the coalition has expanded its scope to focus on workers’ rights issues across campus.

At Georgetown, student organizing has been instrumental in pushing ethical reform on labor rights, as evidenced by the 2005 student hunger strike to achieve livable wages for Georgetown employees and 2011 solidarity efforts to support unionization of Leo’s workers.

Many workers see their mistreatment as directly connected to student experience.

“This is not fair, as far as I’m concerned, for the students. If I had a child coming here, I would raise bloody hell!” one custodial worker said.

According to student organizers, beyond pushing for better working conditions at the policy level, the coalition also aims to deepen relationships between students and workers.

Since October, the Voice has attended the coalition’s weekly worker meetings held to create tangible, face-to-face connections.

“A lot of the success that Georgetown has historically had with its labor organizing has come from student and worker solidarity,” Gavsie said. “Our main priority last semester was how do we rebuild that? How do we form connections with these staff?”

Molina was emphatic that ultimately, building relationships is critical to forcing change. “They’re our neighbors and that means they’re our family,” Molina noted. “Your responsibility is to be part of their community.”

Gavsie cited the recent Georgetown Protests Racists protests as an example of successful student organizing efforts.

“We’re going to need a lot of people calling the administration on their shit,” Gavsie said of upcoming contract negotiations. “Every student has a role to play.”

“That’s the magic of student organizing,” Molina added. “We can be as mouthy as we want.” G FEBRUARY 17, 2023

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