The Georgetown Voice, 2/3/23

FEBRUARY 3, 2023

FOR THE AUTHENTICITY OF CHING CHING CHA TO STAY AFTER RENT HIKE, IT HAD TO LEAVE GEORGETOWN

By Angelena Bougiamas and Joanna Li

KALEIDOSCOPE TRIES A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING AND STRUGGLES WITH IT ALL

By Eileen Chen

"INVOLUNTARY FOUNDERS": THE MISSING PEOPLE IN GEORGETOWN'S MEMORY WORK

By Franziska Wild

4 news

For the authenticity of Ching Ching Cha to stay after rent hike, it had to leave Georgetown

ANGELENA BOUGIAMAS AND JOANNA LI

7 editorials Republicans, mind your own House: Respect D.C.’s autonomy EDITORIAL BOARD

8 features “Involuntary founders”: The missing people in Georgetown’s memory work

FRANZISKA WILD

6 voices After Lunar New Year gun violence, I devote

10 voices Heroin chic and the price of beauty CHRISTINE JI

11 leisure

Turn Every Page documents a legendary literary duo’s fear of legacy, mortality, and… semicolons?

SOFIA KEMENY

12

halftime leisure The Voice predicts the 2023 GRAMMYs

ADORA ADEYEMI, MAANASI CHINTAMANI, AJANI JONES, AND MAYA KOMINSKY

13

halftime sports Cashing out: How D.C.

has never and will never look for descendants. Descendants have always come to Georgetown and said this is who we are,” [ShortColomb] said. “My reason to come to Georgetown was not to receive anything from Georgetown. Georgetown doesn’t have anything to give

PG.

Editor-In-Chief Annabella Hoge

Managing Editor Nora Scully

internal resources

Executive Editor for Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion Ajani Jones

Editor for Sexual Violence

Advocacy and Coverage Sarah Craig

Service Chair Aminah Malik

Social Chair Connor Martin

news

Executive Editor Joanna Li

Features Editor Franziska Wild

News Editor Graham Krewinghaus

Assistant News Editors Yihan Deng, Alex Deramo, Amber Xie

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, 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 Accounts and Sales Rovi Yu

Assistant Manager of Alumni and Outreach Horace Wong

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, Ethan Greer, Christine Ji, Julia Kelly, Sofia Kemeny, Ashley Kulberg, David McDaniels, Amelia Myre, Natalia Porras, Owen Posnett, Daniel Rankin, Carlos Rueda, Michelle Serban, Elizabeth Short, Sagun Shrestha, Isabelle Stratta, Sophie Tafazzoli, Amelia Wanamaker, Fallon Wolfley, Amanda Yen, Nadine Zakheim

“ching ching cha” GRACE NURI

myself to grief

MAX ZHANG

“Georgetown

me.”

9

Page 3

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

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TOP 10 PLACES TO GET DUMPED ON CAMPUS

1. HFSC ping pong table

2. The Tondorf Road construction area

3. In front of a Blue & Gray tour

4. John Carroll's lap

5. The Jesuit graveyard

6. The De La Cruz Art Gallery

7. The Exorcist Steps

8. In Red Square between the H*yas for Choice and Right to Life tables

9. The G-Spot on Cooper Field

10. In the Yates pool while it's on fire

→ OVERHEARD ON LAU 2

→ JOANNA'S FLAMINGO AND DUCK CHILDREN

GOSSIP RAT

Here comes the bride. Comes—get it?

Now, ahem, it is time for me to get a lil serious—seriously wet. No, really, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. Two of my children. Two beloved pups who I’ve known since their childhood in the steamy, grimy, gaseous sewer we call home are joining in eternal union this weekend.

As they embark on their journey of love (and hopefully squishy wet romps through the gutteral sheets), I want for them only that they trust—or thrust-in each other for the rest of their lives. That they cherish each other and indulge in each other’s delicacies.

With that, I formally extend to you all a very salacious save the date. Remember to wear something borrowed, blue, or nothing all—let the bouquet hang free, so to speak.

xoxo, Gossip Rat

→ LISTEN TO PODCASTS

Tune into this week’s episode of Post Pitch to hear from the Franziska Wild author of “‘Involuntary founders:’ The missing people in Georgetown’s memory work” using the QR code:

→ PLACES IN WHICH I HAVE BOTH CRIED AND FARTED (SOMETIMES SIMULTANEOUSLY; THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS)

1. The ICC second floor men’s bathroom

2. Blommer

3. In front of the cashier at Trader Joe’s who’s definitely flirting with you

4. Whisk

5. White-Gravenor roof

6. The path next to Arrupe so you can check yourself out at the same time

7. McCarthy elevators (both)

8. Lau 1 cubicles

9. The baking aisle of Vital Vittles

10. Call Your Mother during Parents' Weekend

11. The Henle community room

→ JOIN THE VOICE

Interested in joining the Voice ? We’re looking for new contributors (as always)! As an open-membership, no application publication, the Voice is dedicated to making its work accessible for new members of all different backgrounds. Scan this QR code to get involved:

“I am not by any means an expert on the vagina.”

For the authenticity of it had to leave Georgetown

BY ANGELENA BOUGIAMAS AND JOANNA LI

Not many shop owners ask how you are and genuinely mean it. Fewer would already know the answer based on your order. And in Georgetown, there was only one who would sit with you for the time it takes to finish a hot cup of tea.

Ching Ching (Hollie) Wong opened the doors of Ching Ching Cha on Wisconsin Avenue after moving to D.C. from Hong Kong. Since 1998, the teahouse has served the Georgetown community; now, following unprecedented rent hikes, it’s moving to Dupont Circle. In these 25 years, the teahouse was a hub for building connections and escaping the noisy stress of everyday life.

When asked whether creating this dynamic atmosphere was ever her goal, Wong’s answer was simple: “Not really. I just want a teahouse.”

Ching Ching Cha is a lively yet tranquil space. There are no laptops or background music— Wong won’t allow it. In a neighborhood filled with busy shops and boisterous students, the quietness was what made the teahouse unique. It’s what tea does to people, Wong explained.

“You walk in, the whole atmosphere calm you down, slow you down. You just be yourself, and quiet help you think right,” Wong said. “It is naturally that way. You walk in, you will laugh. After you stay five minutes, you will be quiet.”

This quietness allowed for undiluted conversations, which drew in regulars. Jeremy Davis and Aris Hart, friends since their college days, came to the teahouse every Monday for the last five years. Davis described it as the “single most consistent routine in [his] life.”

“We hang out literally until closing every single time we come here,” Hart said. They would talk for hours—usually they casually banter, but occasionally they vigorously debate. “What other place is going to accommodate that?”

But the two of them, along with the rest of Wong’s regulars, are parting from their routine visits to the teahouse—at least for now.

Despite its popularity, Ching Ching Cha closed the doors on its Georgetown location on Jan. 29. A 48 percent rent increase prompted Wong to choose between running a business focused on raising revenue or running a teahouse her way—even if that means moving to a smaller space in Dupont Circle.

The former has never been Wong’s style— she doesn’t even consider running a teahouse her “career.” Rather than working, Wong thinks of herself as “flowing comfortably.” The relocation of Ching Ching Cha to Dupont is just her “moving to another stage of life.”

“I’m just quietly doing what I like to do. It’s not a career. I’m just living my life, I just follow myself,” she told us. “I work hard but I don’t feel I work hard, because I always love what I do.”

investment would be in the teahouse run by a “very steady tenant that he can keep.”

Wong could stay, but she would need to raise prices by 150 percent to keep up with rent.

“I am too old to accommodate that, and I’m not going to,” Wong said. “I will not change my original idea of how I run my teahouse.”

Running Ching Ching Cha like a typical business may also look like sacrificing the open layout, no-laptop policy, and music-free setting that makes the teahouse more than just a trendy location to sip on fancy imported tea.

Staying in Georgetown could also mean prematurely cutting off customer conversations to optimize table turnover time—something Wong already resented having to do to accommodate the teahouse’s spike in popularity during its final days in town.

“There’s never been a problem with us staying for a long time,” Davis told us. “Now, with the place closing, she’s put a [75-minute] time limit on sitting down because so many people have shown up.”

Wong told us that one recent weekend, the line wrapped around the block, and people were waiting over two hours for a table. She apologized to every single one.

Like its tea, the popularity of the teahouse is authentic—it stems entirely from word of mouth. Wong has never advertised, nor does she have the passwords to her Facebook or Instagram, which her staff handles.

“Sometimes we don’t understand what she’s saying,” long-time employee Harry Pan said endearingly. “You don’t want a business, but you’re running business. Her friends try to show her how to make revenue, and she says ‘I don't want to know.’”

Although Wong doesn’t consider herself a business owner, she is well aware of the rules of the game. She understands why her landlord would prefer a tenant that can provide a faster, higher cash flow. But she thinks that the smart

As the teahouse got busier over the years, Pan noted that the lines of people made it feel like too much of a business for Wong’s liking. It became increasingly difficult to serve customers without sacrificing the authentic human connection sourced from unhurriedly enjoying equally authentic tea.

Ching Ching Cha is contrasted by the trendy boba shops—like Gong cha—that have popped up nearby in recent years. Wong isn’t fazed; to her, they’re still authentic teahouses, just in different forms.

Nonetheless, these newer shops are franchised chains—they’re everywhere in the country, and don’t offer nearly the sense of

design by dane tedder and joanna li; photos by joanna li

kinship that a small store like Ching Ching Cha does. Customers know from the moment they walk in that Hollie Wong will be at the teahouse. The staff’s been here all along, too. “My first staff been here for 16 years. My kitchen girl was with me for 24 years,” Wong said. Pan, who’s currently getting his Ph.D. in economics, had been at Ching Ching Cha for nine years. “So we know customer,” Wong added.

A Georgetown student and Ching Ching Cha regular, Yara, sees the tea shop as a nurturing space. She spoke on the condition that the Voice use a pseudonym when referencing her experience, and explained that campus can feel unsafe at times; but when she would go to Ching Ching Cha, her anxiety would dissipate.

“When I come to Ching Ching’s, I feel like I can just chill. I just feel a lot calmer, [when I] eat the food and drink tea,” Yara said.

Yara’s first visit to Ching Ching Cha was right before closing time. Trying to ease Wong’s distress that she wouldn’t have enough time to drink her tea, Yara offered to pay ahead of time. Wong shooed her to her seat and refused—if Yara didn’t like the tea, she didn’t have to pay at all.

“What our teahouse is, is a connection, it’s not a transaction,” Wong explained. She has infused the teahouse with the love for her work, her spirit of generosity, and her genuine care for others. “If you talk to me one more hour, I will want to know exactly how are you doing all the time,” she said.

Davis, who has tried every tea on Ching Ching Cha’s menu, told us, “Whenever I’ve had a bad day or I’m stressed and I have a lot on my mind, I specifically order Pu’er, to the point where everyone who works here … knows if I order Pu’er, I’ve had a bad day. And Hollie will ask me, ‘What’s wrong?’”

Wong refers to Ching Ching Cha’s customers as her people and her community. She hopes to bring these connections from Georgetown to Dupont.

Being the sole manager and owner of the teahouse lets Wong be her own boss. While that means hard work, it never feels like it, she says. She doesn’t need to be in the teahouse everyday—she wants to be.

“[My landlord] said, ‘You must be rich because no business in Georgetown opens five days a week and close at seven.’ But he’s very wrong. I just love my life, and I love time more than he does. And he would say, ‘Why don’t you find a manager?’ But I want to be here.”

Wong is taking her love for the teahouse to Dupont, even if that means some logistical changes. The Dupont location is half the size of the Georgetown one. There’s no kitchen space, so the teahouse will have to forgo its food options and let go of the kitchen staff and servers. Wong doesn’t want to rush to open the Dupont location either—she wants to take her time before jumping into a new venture, and doesn’t want to burden her current, long-time employees with this choice.

“I cannot say, ‘Oh, stay until I know what I’m going to do,’” Wong said. She doesn’t want to impose an uncertain time gap in paying her employees a steady wage—iIt wouldn’t be fair.

A full staff could run the new teahouse for her while she’s on break, Wong said, but being in the teahouse is a habit, even if she has to work solo. The break would also give her the time to envision the new Ching Ching Cha.

“The idea for the new place, I really don’t know. Everyone asks. I do not have a crystal clear idea of what kind of [work] to do,” she said. “I’m going to take my time, and focus on closing this one, and I will take my time to start the next one.”

“Every emotion you name it, I’m going through all of it,” Wong reflected.

Some, like Pan, have a positive view of the move. Maintaining a huge location demands a lot of time and energy, especially while doing it alone. A smaller teahouse can provide more intimacy with less day-to-day stress for Wong.

That doesn’t mean Wong’s regulars won’t miss the intricately detailed arches of the Georgetown location or the meaningful conversations that have echoed off of the walls. Davis describes the teahouse’s closing being “like having a whole bunch of friends move away all at once.”

“Coming here really is a home away from home for me,” Davis said. “It’s not that I can’t imagine having other routines or doing other things, but it’s more that I can’t imagine doing anything else because I’ve been coming here so often for so long.”

For Davis’ last pre-pandemic birthday, he and 20 of his best friends celebrated with him at the tea house. “We were all talking about how it’s like ‘Oh, maybe we can finally do that again,’ and then we get the news that she’s closing.”

In addition to birthdays, the versatile teahouse has hosted weddings, graduations, and memorial services. “There’s a lot of memories here. There’s a lot of celebration, there’s a lot of sadness, there’s a lot of many things,” Wong said.

In the interim, regulars may have to find alternatives from the teahouse, but it’ll be difficult. “There are plenty of coffee shops that fit the bill but they’re usually a lot busier,

After Lunar New Year gun violence, I devote myself to grief

BY MAX ZHANG

A9:33 a.m. call from my roommate

Liv rouses me from the thicket of sleep on the morning of Lunar New Year. We’d made plans to swing by a Chinese supermarket ahead of the potluck I am hosting that night, and I brace myself for a gentle chastising given our scheduled 10 o’clock departure.

Instead, she says, “Are you okay?”

Facing the bleary mumblings of my confusion, she’s quiet: “Check the news.” To the Times I go, and headline fragments send my waking brain whirling. 10 dead … 10 injured … Monterey Park shooting … dance studios, ethnoburb, most Chinese, 广 场舞, elders, suspect at large.

On the most sacred day of the Chinese calendar—its first—death marks the path forward. I swallow and exhale. “I know,” Liv says. A half-Japanese lesbian Las Vegan, Liv, like so many of us, can trace the journey of identity by mile-markers of gun violence: Pulse—the country music festival—the Atlanta massage parlors. Perhaps it’s mere human instinct to measure ourselves by shared tragedies, but there’s something brutal about the unregulated bullet being a defining genre of timestamp for our generation. There’s the Methodist church and the synagogue; one elementary, and the next. I think of adolescence, and the names and cities pool.

But that morning I curbed tears: The Chinese supermarket in Falls Church is a warm homecoming, its rice cakes and haw flakes aglow, its napa cabbages and puffy tofu all a consumerist totem to a personhood so easily lost in the trappings of Georgetown. It’s the multilingual crossfire between Latino and Vietnamese workers. It’s having 15 brands of dumplings to pick through; it’s taking a wild guess at how your father made something you grew up with; it’s buying a rice bowl with a fish on it, because how have you made it all this way without one? I pick out lotus root and cuttlefish and move on.

Still, mourning coats the store floor. I understand why Michelle Zauner cried in H Mart: An Asian supermarket is both a reminder of how good it feels to be yourself and how long you’ve been away from that self. Ethnic supermarkets can be first temples, unflinching cultural beacons. Freshman year, I used to take a 75-minute bus pilgrimage to get to one, simply to stir up some intimacy of my lineage. So when I wheel my cart in, surrounded by elders, I wonder: When someone kills a woman I could call grandmother—what should I do but weep?

That night, I welcome joy into my home: nine friends—all Asian diasporans—come potluck,

peddling heart and gossip. Laughter clinging to the red clothing many of us don for good fortune. We do not participate in the system of grief. But not even 24 hours later, my Twitter interrupts, and I manage my first tears. Here’s Half Moon Bay, 12,000 residents strong, 500 of them Asian. Seven dead at two mushroom farms, including five Chinese and two Latino farmworkers, all over 50. Someone holds me, and I cry without abandon.

How we got here is a top-of-mind question. Political commentators noted the strangeness of two elderly Asian men committing back-to-back mass murders, one in an immigrant neighborhood known to provide refuge, not slaughter. Some have weaponized “Asian-onAsian crime” to vindicate white supremacist rhetoric and a media economy that has vulcanized hatred. Without proper non-English content moderation, the newfound primacy of algorithm-based platforms like YouTube and WeChat as informational sources for many elders has become dangerous, per Sylvia ChanMalik. It’s no coincidence Chinese diasporans crowdfunded 80 percent of the donations for the Proud Boys’ medical bills post-Jan. 6 insurrection. The shootings also collide dynamics of sexual violence and labor, further complicating matters. Some experts probed domestic violence—linked to more than two-thirds of American mass shootings—as a factor at Monterey Park. And the awful Half Moon Bay attack relates to workplace exploitation; it is hard to look past the abhorrent living and working conditions—no running water or insulation, rodent-infested—at one of the farms. Of course, the root issue of all this remains a failure to properly regulate the distribution of guns: The epidemic of gun violence would simply not metastasize in the way it has if gun control was taken seriously.

And then there’s everything here: Why won’t Georgetown couple its declarations of “solidarity with the AAAPI community” with establishing an Asian American Studies program? We need one to deconstruct and address the root causes of violence against Asian Americans. And much like wider reticence to address other forms of racial violence, it seems like few have batted an eye in the wake of what has occurred: a scarring of holiday, a violation of what’s precious. There will not be another Lunar New Year for quite some time unmarked by anxiety about copycat attacks. Violence has visited many marginalized communities at Georgetown—the antisemitic graffiti, the police murder of Tyre Nichols, recent hate speech—and I wonder how solidarity will manifest, if at

all. I return to Nicole Chung post-Atlanta: “We all deserve to be safe.”

My friend Katherine urged in The Atlantic that Asian Americans grieve without qualifier—and I agree wholeheartedly; the absence of situational clarity shouldn’t impede the motion to mourn. But even grieving feels hard when doing it communally is a rarity. I’ve long felt complex fractures with Asian spaces at Georgetown. I’m grateful organizations like Asian American Student Association (AASA) have held vigils and dialogues, and I don’t doubt they can be harbors for countless students, especially given internal club transformations since my freshman year. But a messy history with these institutions—one of not feeling like the “right kind” of Asian American, of frictions over the exclusion of non-East Asian ethnicities, of questioning their function—has led to an unmooring. It’s a conversation I’ve had with many of my senior Asian friends—How’d you fall out of love with AASA?—and the answers have ramifications on our relative lack of communal Asian spaces.

It feels telling that my first moment of true shared grieving happens at Ching Ching Cha, Georgetown’s historic Chinese tea house that shuttered Jan. 29 after an astronomical rent increase. Visiting Ching Ching Cha has been a sacred rite; it is one of the only truly Chinese neighborhood fixtures, and entering its doors to speak Mandarin with its waitstaff and perform (relatively) authentic tea practice for two hours constituted its own flavor of cultural healing. Its closing merits its own wave of tears. My Chinese American friend Robin and I stop by on Jan. 24 to bid our goodbyes.

For my final tea, I order the oolong tea tieguanyin (铁观音)—“Iron Goddess of Mercy.” Its mythic backstory involves a poor farmer finding a rundown temple with an iron statue of Guanyin, a beloved Chinese folk goddess personifying compassion, love, and grace. Though he can’t pay for renovation, he comes every day to sweep up and light a candle to the statue—and in return, he’s divinely gifted tieguanyin tea leaves. Perhaps this is the true path of grief: practicing devotion despite struggle, improving what we can. As I drink my fourth, fifth, sixth cup of tea, I feel a candle flame flicker awake inside myself, burning hollow but strong. We’re crying, but we’re here, together. G

Republicans, mind your own House: Respect D.C.'s autonomy

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Republican interference in the governing of D.C., an overwhelmingly Democratic, majorityminority city, is neither new nor unexpected. From attempts to prevent the reduction of law enforcement funding to the prohibition of publicly funded abortion procedures, Republicans have often sought to impose conservative policies on our unwilling city. While these attempts have long concerned D.C. residents, Republicans’ ability to enact changes had been hampered by their limited congressional power over the past two years. Current Republican control over the House of Representatives has reduced these limits. Though the effects of a Republican House and the newly empowered, ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus will be felt nationally, the shift is particularly noteworthy for D.C. because of the city’s limited autonomy.

Under the District Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to modify and overturn any D.C. legislation, impose laws on the District, and approve D.C.’s annual budget. Only the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which created the office of the D.C. mayor and the D.C. council, affords the city any measure of selfgovernance. Despite D.C. residents advocating for statehood for decades, Republicans have blocked the change, arguing the left-leaning District would add power to the Democratic contingent in Congress.

Historically, Republicans have engaged in voter suppression against Black communities; D.C. is no different. Statehood for D.C. would also increase the congressional power of Black voters, considering nearly half of the District’s population is Black; it comes as no surprise the party is anti-D.C. statehood.

On its own, a Republican majority in the House is enough to concern advocates for D.C.’s autonomy, but combined with the concessions made during the drawn-out House Speaker race, the new Republican House is particularly alarming for statehood supporters. To gain votes from some of the most extreme Republican representatives, Speaker Kevin McCarthy was forced to concede on several key demands. These included appointments of far-right politicians to key positions—many of these likely to go to members of the House Freedom Caucus, widely considered the farthest-right bloc within the House. Rep. Andrew Clyde, who is pushing to outright repeal the Home Rule Act, is a member of this caucus.

Perhaps more important than committee assignments is the concession to allow unlimited amendments to government funding bills. In the past, much Republican congressional meddling in D.C. policy has come in the form of riders on

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budget bills—amendments to the federal budget that dictate what the federal government can and cannot fund. One such example is the 2016 prohibition on publicly funded abortion procedures and the commercialization of marijuana. Riders are often controversial and can be snuck into thousand-page spending bills with little or no public debate, sometimes even without lawmakers’ knowledge. More amendment power for far-right Republicans in the House is likely to mean more extreme interference in D.C. politics against the expressed desires of District residents.

House Republicans have already shown eagerness to use this power. During the speakership election, Republicans vowed to block a recently passed bill that permits noncitizen residents of the District—including undocumented immigrants, green card holders, and temporary residents on visas—to vote in local elections starting in 2024. This legislation is currently under congressional review. In order for Congress to fully block the bill, it must pass a disapproval resolution in both chambers, which is unlikely to succeed given the Democratic majority in the Senate. House Republicans, however, could use budget riders to disrupt or limit the legislation’s impact. They have also vowed to stop D.C.’s criminal code overhaul, which proposes an end to most mandatory minimum sentences, jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases, and a reduction in the maximum penalties for burglaries, carjackings, and robberies.

The Editorial Board has long made radical calls for change in this city, including its environmental, housing, and policing policies, but congressional interference makes even D.C.’s current plans for reform unlikely to succeed. The new House could also take aim at Mayor Bowser’s recently announced downtown revitalization plan, which aims to create new jobs, fill key gaps in food, housing, and internet access, and raise the median household income of Black residents by $25,000. Congressional disruption of this plan would endanger the immediate needs of residents, which are pressing. A quarter of D.C. households still don’t have broadband internet connections, with a majority being Black households in wards 5, 7, and 8. The mayor’s plan would see substantial improvement for these residents, but not if the House blocks it or amends it beyond recognition.

Even if congressional policymakers are engaging in debate over the mayor’s revitalization plan, for example, the problem remains that members of

Congress who were not elected by the residents of D.C. are aiming to stop the actions of D.C.’s democratically elected, local officials.

Republican policy-meddling is also disproportionately harmful to Black residents. The subsidization of abortion from D.C.’s own local funds, for example, would have benefited Black communities, as three-quarters of those who die in or of complications from childbirth are Black women—and the District has the highest maternal mortality rate in the nation.

Republicans are not even interested in talking to the District’s leaders, going so far as to ban Mayor Bowser from the House floor, despite maintaining the privilege for governors, foreign ministers, and 15 more categories of people. Withdrawing the mayor’s floor privileges is nothing short of petty, and speaks to the immaturity of the new Republican majority. Moreover, the incident epitomizes the Republican’s perception of the District as a city to be governed, not listened to. The District deserves autonomy from the personal political wishlists of an overwhelmingly and disproportionately white, male Congress with little real understanding of the lives of many District residents.

The Editorial Board believes that statehood for D.C. is essential for its over 700,000 residents who are openly denied equal citizenship. D.C. has no voting member in Congress, and despite contributing more per capita in federal income tax than any area in the country, its people have no say in how their money is spent. The Republican House is further perpetuating this harm by threatening the limited agency the District has enjoyed under the past two years of a Democratically controlled Congress.

The people of Washington, D.C. deserve the same rights afforded to residents of states. The District’s future must be of the making of its residents, and not of a House full of far-right Republicans eager to prolong the white paternalist ideology that has long denied D.C. the freedom and representation it deserves. The Editorial Board calls on the House of Representatives to refrain from imposing its unwanted political agenda on the people of D.C. and to respect the will and autonomy of D.C. residents and their elected representatives.G

The missing people in Georgetown’s memory work

BY FRANZISKA WILD

Becoming a Georgetown student means learning certain names: Healy, Lauinger, White-Gravenor, Darnall. They become not only geographical stamps and second homes, but also part of the collective consciousness, a type of remembrance for notable people in Georgetown’s history.

Margaret Smallwood is one name that most students probably have never nor will ever encounter. But she’s integral to Georgetown’s existence today.

Born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, Margaret Smallwood lived at Georgetown in the 1830s, was enslaved by the college, and married Charles Smallwood. While enslaved, her work included the intensive manual washing of students’ and Jesuits’ clothes, fundamental to the day-to-day existence of the all-white student body. She and thousands of other enslaved people kept Georgetown afloat throughout financial difficulty.

Margaret Smallwood died on April 21, 1837, at the age of 45. The last line of the House Diary entry which describes her death and burial states: “Apparuit aurora borealis per horam.” The aurora borealis appeared for an hour. The above is all the information the Georgetown Archives contain about her.

She was buried in College Ground cemetery, now located underneath the Reiss Science Building, the ICC, and Arrupe. Reiss was built in 1953 despite knowledge of the cemetery. The vast majority of remains are still underneath these buildings; a femur was discovered in 2018.

The treatment of College Ground is one distinct example of the history and people that have been erased by Georgetown. Its existence as the final resting place of the remains of many enslaved and non-enslaved people is unmarked and un-commemorated on this campus, and thus, its significance is ignored by many.

Addressing and acknowledging the university’s history of slavery is intimately intertwined with developing ways to actively memorialize the people it enslaved. Memory work is complex, and Georgetown as an institution has always been pushed to do it by students and descendants. Descendants and advocates call on students to be more proactive in the necessary memorialization and education needed to honor these people.

Not only did Georgetown rely on enslaved labor for daily operations, but the university also relied on income generated by the Jesuit slave plantations

in Maryland to keep afloat. Debt incurred in the 1830s under President Rev. Thomas F. Mulledy, S.J. led to the 1838 sale of over 314 enslaved men, women, and children (the “GU272+”), to two landowners in Louisiana, netting, in today’s dollars, around $3.3 million. More than 80 percent of the 1,141 Georgetown students and alumni who enlisted in the Civil War also fought for the Confederacy and therefore the institution of slavery, and the gray in our school colors honors them to this day.

Mélisande Short-Colomb (CAS ’21) is a direct descendant of members of the GU272+. In 2017, she enrolled at Georgetown and has been involved in keeping the history of her family and others enslaved by the university alive by serving on the Board of Advisors for the Georgetown Memory Project. Now a Community Engagement Associate at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, Short-Colomb is putting on a one-woman play called “Here I Am” about her families’ connection to Georgetown’s legacy of slavery.

“I came to Georgetown to bring my family and the acknowledgment of the involuntary founders of Georgetown University and the edifice of Jesuit education across America,” Short-Colomb said, “to make sure they are no longer forgotten.”

you leave is climb up in his lap and take a picture. But nobody talks about his family being a slaveowning family and a human-trafficking family.”

Carroll himself owned and sold enslaved people and managed the Jesuit plantations, which were sustained with slave labor.

A lack of active memorialization and education leads enslaved people and their histories to be often overlooked by the Georgetown community, according to Adam Rothman, a professor of history who served on the 2016 Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation.

The group was convened by President John DeGioia to develop recommendations to acknowledge Georgetown’s history of slavery and begin dialogue around reparations—the report developed by the group included explicit recommendations on memorialization, including erecting public memorials for enslaved people and members of the GU272+ like Susan Plowden, Margaret Queen, and Harry Scott, whose names remain largely unknown due to the lack of implementation.

The GU272+ have received the majority of public attention, Rothman noted. “But it is only one part of a much larger story of Georgetown’s various entanglements with slavery,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do around all the dimensions of our school history.”

Although Georgetown has taken steps in recognizing its history with enslavement, including the recently announced reparations fund—created in response to a 2019 student referendum—many of the people central to this history remain forgotten.

“Georgetown is a predominantly white institution, and it behaves as such,” Short-Colomb said. “Everyone sees John Carroll and knows his story—one of the things to do at Georgetown before

Part of this work is understanding the true scale of Georgetown’s connection to slavery—the men, women, and children sold in the 1838 sale are not the only people the Jesuits enslaved. From 1650 to 1838, Georgetown and the Jesuits enslaved over 1,000 people like Margaret Smallwood.

“We haven’t done as good of a job communicating that history in public,” Rothman said.

Student activists and descendants see the lack of memorialization as disruptive to proper engagement with Georgetown’s history. “It allows us to be able to walk around and

“Involuntary founders”:

"THE MEMORY LIVES IN THE PEOPLE."

disconnect from the campus’s legacy of slavery,” Ollie Henry (CAS ’24), an organizer with Hoyas Accounting for Slavery Accountability (HASA), said.

“I think that does a disservice to everyone, that we don’t get to meaningfully engage with what it means to hold a Georgetown education and how that education has been shaped by harm over time.”

Short-Colomb added that the university only began to confront its past because of descendants like her.

“Georgetown has never and will never look for descendants. Descendants have always come to Georgetown and said this is who we are,” she said. “My reason to come to Georgetown was not to receive anything from Georgetown. Georgetown doesn’t have anything to give me.”

Other than Isaac Hawkins Hall—which was renamed in 2017 to remember Isaac Hawkins, who was enslaved and sold by Georgetown—the only physical memorial on campus is a singular screen in Sellinger displaying a rolling list of names of the 272+.

Descendants’ requests to erect memorialization projects have neither received attention nor been enacted. Associate Dean of the College Bernard Cook has been heavily involved with memorialization efforts on campus—during the pandemic, Cook met with Valerie White, who was interested in memorializing her ancestor Frank Campbell on campus.

The son of Watt and Theresa Campbell, Frank Campbell was enslaved by the Jesuits and among the people sold by Georgetown in 1838. After being sold, he survived slavery and lived to see freedom. Frank Campbell is thought to be the only person enslaved by the Jesuits of whom there remains a photograph.

According to Cook, White wanted Frank Campbell remembered at Georgetown, and the family that remembers him daily was willing to pay for it. Cook sees the lack of a memorial to Frank Campbell as an example of how Georgetown lacked will and coordination when it comes to memorialization, thus leading to institutional foot-dragging.

“We have to be able to respond to people when they come to us, especially descendants when they come to us with ideas,” Cook said.

Elsa Mendoza, a professor at Middlebury College who completed her doctorate at Georgetown in 2021, created a series of temporary memorials to honor those enslaved by Georgetown and buried at College Ground. She hung up posters displaying their names in the ICC and helped Cook create a temporary memorial by projecting the names on Red Square.

The names—which included Teresa Queen, Osborn, and Louisa Jackson—are largely unknown to the Georgetown community.

“Every student should know some of the names of the people that were enslaved on our campus,” Mendoza said. “This is what students should learn about. That is what should be recognized on our campus.”

What memorialization should look like, however, is a complicated question—one that Mendoza and Cook believe should be left up to descendants.

“You really have to be extremely respectful, extremely flexible, in this work. These people and their families have been wronged.” Cook said. “We need to acknowledge that and atone for it, and work together toward correcting the power imbalances that have been in place since slavery was the dominant American institution.”

Curriculum integration could be part of this calculus, as many descendants have previously advocated, and HASA and Henry envision a university where this history is integrated into every Georgetown classroom.

Henry pointed to the Alternative Breaks Program that takes students to Maringouin, Louisiana, to learn from and engage in service in descendant communities as an example of meaningful engagement.

“These are living people who are holding their own histories,” Henry said. “We can be learning the history from them.”

Moreover, both Henry and Short-Colomb believe being a Georgetown student is inherently tied to enslavement, making historical education especially integral. “Every student that comes to Georgetown reaps the benefit of the enslavement and trafficking of those families,” ShortColomb said.

Rothman also believes that teaching this history is a key component of any physical memorialization on campus. “You can rename buildings

“The referendum was a clear indication that student organizers made something happen, and we’re still talking about it. That’s a memorial— the fact that we are still having conversations about,” she said.

In recent years, however, memorialization has stalled. “The committee didn’t meet during COVID and has not met since. I asked if we would meet last academic year, and we didn’t, and I’ve heard nothing about this academic year,” Cook said.

Anita Gonzalez, a professor of African American studies who leads Georgetown’s Racial Justice Institute, thinks the onus to engage in memory work and to educate themselves rests most heavily on Georgetown administrators.

“My experience with the administration is that the people doing the administrative work don’t have the knowledge set,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a circular thing. The institution can’t do more unless it knows more.”

According to Mendoza and Gonzalez, the primary obstacle to accessible education about Georgetown’s history is the historical archives themselves—the majority of which were written by the Jesuits. While oral histories exist, they are less accessible and numerous than other sources, and limited to the GU272+. Georgetown has not significantly engaged in other research methodologies, according to Gonzalez, and thus the body of knowledge about the lives of enslaved people is limited.

Short-Colomb thinks that, ultimately, the only place to go for concrete information about the people Georgetown enslaved are their descendants.

“The Georgetown archives are not a good place to find out about those families. Their descendants are the place to go for that,” ShortColomb said.

“The memory lives in the people,” Gonzalez said. “The way memories are carried in your body—it connects to folklore, oral history, songs, and dances.”

Short-Colomb believes students carry the greatest load of memory work. She places responsibility on them for

Heroin chic and the price of beauty

BY CHRISTINE JI

Content warning: This article discusses drug use and eating disorders.

As we start the second month of 2023, New Year’s resolutions of getting that “dream body” are in full swing. Perennially inescapable but especially heightened this time of year, this sentiment haunts copies of Cosmopolitan, social media, and casual everyday conversations. The pervasive message is that one can always be healthier, and more importantly, hotter. Hotter, by whose standards? The volatility of beauty standards, exemplified by the second coming of heroin chic, sharply illuminates the socioeconomic politics of bodily modification.

If female media personalities such as the Kardashians or Hadids are any barometer for the constantly changing goal post of what the cultural zeitgeist deems the dream body, then 2023 signals a transition from “thicc” back toward heroin chic. A resurgence of a mid-’80s and ’90s fashion photography trend, “heroin chic” is characterized by pale skin, emaciated features, and an overall sickly-looking aura, drawing its name from common side effects of the drug. Gia Carangi, Kate Moss, and other original heroin chic models were known for rampant partying and substance abuse, utilizing appetite-suppressing cocktails of opiates and stimulants to fuel their lifestyles.

After building her brand upon her curvaceous figure, Kim Kardashian sported a much smaller frame at the last Met Gala, dropping 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday” dress for the occasion. Supermodel

Bella Hadid left very little of her svelte figure to the imagination as she walked the runway in a dress spray-painted upon her nearly naked body for Paris Fashion Week last October. The message is clear: Big asses and boobs are out, protruding collar bones and wrist bones are in.

Our everyday lives have quickly reflected this change, and TikTok is the most obvious mirror. “She’s been blamed for promoting anorexia and heroin use, and her nicknames include Cocaine Kate and Kate Mess. She’s Kate Moss, and she’s a rockstar trapped in a

supermodel’s body,” one popular soundbite narrates. Used in over 30,000 videos, the sound turns eating disorders and substance abuse into a sexy, grunge aesthetic. Though TikTok has tightened regulation of videos promoting drug use, self-harm, and disordered eating, the continued popularity of such videos indicates the voracious appetite for conformity to changing societal standards as well as TikTok’s limited content regulation abilities.

Heroin chic’s reign manifests outside of social media, too. Low-rise jeans, once decried as a fashion abomination, are repopulating runways and retail. Pilates classes have seen a significant uptick in the number of women enrollees, which studio owners attribute to a desire to obtain the “long, lean look.” Demand for diabetes management and weight loss drugs such as Ozempic has shot up, resulting in nationwide shortages.

The return of heroin chic highlights not only the dangerous implications of chasing a beauty standard but also the exclusive social position associated with said standards. The ability to sculpt one’s body at will is only accessible to the upper echelons. Brazilian butt lifts, previously popular before the return of heroin chic, are no longer as relevant as the Kardashians downsize their behinds. Instead, buccal fat removal, targeting facial fat reduction for more angular cheekbones, has become the new trend. The swinging of the beauty pendulum comes with a steep price tag: A BBL can cost anywhere between $3,000 to $30,000; a BBL reversal $5,000 to $30,000; and buccal fat removal $2,000 to $8,000. The physical metamorphosis demanded by fluctuating beauty standards is thus reserved for those with deep pockets.

Plastic surgery may be a drastic—albeit illustrative, case, but the same situation stands for other beauty-conforming measures. Many have speculated that Kardashian utilized Ozempic for her Met Gala weight loss. In a nation notorious for sky-high pharmaceutical costs, the ability to procure these prescriptions on a whim is an incredible luxury. Not only that, but the popularity of the drug has come at the expense of those who actually need it for blood sugar control.

The inaccessibility of a societally perfect physique is further heightened by the fact that 44 percent of Americans struggle to even afford basic healthcare and 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Even access to healthy food is increasingly becoming a privilege, with an estimated 53.6 million Americans living in food deserts. For many, basic healthcare is out of reach, and participating in body trends even more so.

The politics of bodies has become a battleground for distinguishing social

percent of Americans report feeling dissatisfied with their body. According to the National Organization for Women, 45.5 percent of teens report considering cosmetic surgery, and 70 percent of college women report feeling worse about their body image after reading women’s magazines. The prevalence of eating disorders has more than doubled in the last two decades. Amplified by social media and consumer culture, expectations of the perfect body are contributing to a brewing mental health crisis.

And yet, beauty trends remain popular. There’s a certain allure to being able to revamp one’s closet inventory in sync with fast fashion and attend boutique fitness classes. Conformity comes with intoxicating social capital: It broadcasts the message that you have the time and money to indulge in the slew of consumer activities necessary to reshape the body. Or, if you don’t have the time, then you at least have the financial resources to obtain the drugs and surgery to uphold such an illusion.

Our society puts transient beauty standards on a pedestal while glorifying consumerism, drug abuse, eating disorders, and cosmetic procedures as a means to achieving that end. Barraged by a flood of marketing, media personalities, and harmful social media messaging, we become stuck in a loop of perpetual dissatisfaction and insecurity. Deconstructing these narratives is no easy task, but it begins with seeing the societallydeemed “dream body” for what it is: a transient illusion that fluctuates with the seasons. As the self-improvement resolutions draw nigh in 2023, let us acknowledge how body trends amplify existing socioeconomic imbalances and reflect on our own personal definitions of well-being instead of what is promoted through mass media. Some food for thought as we enter the new year. G

TurnEveryPage documents a legendary literary duo’s fear of legacy, mortality, and…semicolons?

BY SOFIA KEMENY

rom the opening sounds of a typewriter clacking, Turn Every Page (2022) hints at its muses: a legendary writer-editor duo whose decades-long working relationship produced multiple Pulitzer Prizewinning political biographies. With her latest documentary, director Lizzie Gottlieb chronicles the working relationship between the literary legends Robert Gottlieb—her father—and Robert Caro, providing a beautiful image of the two men’s lives but often leaving out detrimental details of their relationship.

Unlike the initial typing sound, this documentary is far from monotonous; and unlike the typewriter itself, it’s not a relic of the past. Instead, Turn Every Page juxtaposes Caro and Gottlieb’s antiquated eccentricities with the uniformity that comes with modernization. (Caro literally throws a copy of everything he’s written into an unorganized, unshelved cabinet, while Gottlieb has dozens of vintage vinyl purses above his bed.) As our lives become further digitally integrated, Caro and Gottlieb embrace an increasingly outdated tradition with their paper-and-pen editing process. By constructing an ever-changing world around Caro and Gottlieb—both of whom are trying to build a legacy with the time they have left— Lizzie Gottlieb skillfully draws the audience into the complex life and legacy of the two men, individually.

The film first introduces Caro, a highly decorated author whose success precedes him. Caro won the Pulitzer twice: first for The Power Broker (1974), a biography about New York city planner Robert Moses, and again for Master of the Senate (2002), the third volume of his Lyndon B. Johnson biographies. One of the film’s early interviewees notes that having The Power Broker on your bookshelf signals intelligence to political and economic professionals because you’ve read—or at least recognize the significance of— Caro’s exposé on power and greed in New York City. Clips of Caro receiving high praise from former President Barack Obama, and political activists who consider The Power Broker one of the most influential books of our generation, establish his massive cult following.

Lizzie Gottlieb replicates this blueprint to introduce her father. She places the audience in a run-of-the-mill bookstore with Gottlieb and his grandson, who peruses the shelves, picking up books and examining their covers. As he

Fgrazes a familiar title, Gottlieb cannot help but interject: “I edited that one.”

The phrase is repeated as the camera pans over to generation-defining novels. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Bill Clinton’s autobiography. Gottlieb edited all of these and more.

Caro’s well-known success is reinforced by his high praise among figures, but the vast array of notable contemporary books (including Caro’s) that Gottlieb worked on hallows his status as an editing legend. Caro is the genius behind the pencil, while Gottlieb wields the power of the eraser; neither can survive without the other. In tandem, their genius is limitless.

one shade. She creates a beautiful and emotional portrait of the two men separately, but the dynamics of their partnership lack the same depth and intensity, which do not live up to the precedent of her previous artistry. The film talks greatly about how the editing of the first volume of the Johnson biography was a “tremendous battle, an angry, angry, battle,” but the audience hears little about the details of these tense moments, leaving them in the dark about the lasting impacts of these disagreements on Caro and Gottlieb’s relationship. By the end of the film, Caro and Gottlieb are portrayed as enigmatic and dynamic people, but as a duo, they are only painted in one dimension.

Caro and Gottlieb’s apprehension to a documentary about their editing process limited the director’s artistic ability; they say their process is “sort of [a] private thing.” There is ultimately a piece missing from their depicted relationship. Lizzie Gottlieb illustrates their partnership through rose-colored glasses, while the audience had previously seen the men’s individual stories in vivid technicolor. The switch from their incredibly detailed private lives to the vagueness of their working relationship leaves much to be desired. The audience is told that their biggest fight was simply about a semicolon, without any further exploration of the stubbornness and pride in their work that led to an argument about a semicolon in the first place.

As the audience comes to know Gottlieb and Caro as the duo responsible for some of the most influential books of our generation, they become larger than life, unstoppable in their partnership. But before we can get too carried away, Turn Every Page brings us down to Earth, humanizing these two men.

Lizzie Gottlieb couples the testimonies of both men with photos of their younger selves, which creates a vivid connection between the audience and the duo. It’s one thing to hear how Caro fled to Central Park to escape his tumultuous relationship with his father, but it is a completely different experience to see images of a young Caro, feet dangling off a park bench as he reads in peaceful silence, escaping the difficult home life he explains half a century later. The windows into their respective pasts take them off their literary pedestal and remind us that they’re just two boys from New York City.

While Lizzie Gottlieb showcases her artistic talent through this emotional journey of their respective lives, legacy, and love, she unfortunately only paints Gottlieb and Caro’s relationship with

However, as Lizzie Gottlieb narrows back in on the individuals, she beautifully articulates Caro and Gottlieb’s shared fear of their mortality and loss of legacy. Both men, 87 and 91 years old respectively, are acutely aware that they are nearing the end of their lives. With their final volume of Johnson’s biography still in the works, both Caro and Gottlieb are anxious about the end product. Not only does this project represent the end of Caro and Gottlieb’s working relationship, but as their final book together, it also has the potential to define their legacy.

The moment when Caro and Gottlieb express their fears about finishing this final book together before either one passes away is heartbreaking, and the emotional punch hits especially hard after we have journeyed through their lives. Here is where Lizzie Gottlieb truly shines as an artist: She beautifully splices the personal, yet mundane, clips of Caro and Gottlieb’s lives overtop their own testimony. Turn Every Page often keeps Caro and Gottlieb’s relationship vague, but as we hear Caro and Gottlieb express their fear of mortality, we see them step down from their pedestal and be wholly human. G

The Voice predicts the 2023 GRAMMYs

BY HALFTIME LEISURE

Album of the Year by Maanasi Chintamani

This year’s Album of the Year nominations leave much to be desired, from puzzling omissions—like Rosalía’s genre-bending and career-defining album MOTOMAMI—to equally puzzling inclusions, such as Lizzo’s ironically unremarkable Special, which feels Old Navy commercial-bound, not GRAMMY-worthy.

The category is dominated by GRAMMY veterans: the nominees have already amassed a combined 85 GRAMMYs. But past successes don’t guarantee continued quality work. Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres is a far cry from the sweeping instrumentation and signature stirring lyricism of the band’s previous albums. Meanwhile, on Harry’s House, Harry Styles offers a pleasant, coherent listening experience, but hews too closely to his reference material—’70s hits and modern indie-rock—thus failing to innovate.

The legitimate contenders in this category are Bad Bunny’s record-breaking soundtrack of the summer, Un Verano Sin Ti; Kendrick Lamar’s poignantly selfexamining Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers; and, finally, the album of the year in every conceivable sense, Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE. The year’s most salient musical development was the return of house music to the mainstream, and RENAISSANCE is the pinnacle. The album offers range, balancing a slick, lush seamlessness (“PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA”) with a grittier, more fiery sound (“CHURCH GIRL”). With lyrics overflowing with confidence and sensuality, RENAISSANCE concocts a vibrant style exuding liberation and release. Beyoncé deftly harkens back to house music’s rich history while pushing the genre forward. When a stellar album from a perennial GRAMMY favorite also achieves tremendous commercial success, the Academy would be foolish not to acclaim it.

Prediction: RENAISSANCE, Beyoncé | Should Win: RENAISSANCE, Beyoncé

Record of the Year by Adora Adeyemi

If you’re wondering what the difference is between Record of the Year (ROTY) and Song of the Year (SOTY), let me explain: ROTY awards the work of the artists and producers involved in recording the track, while SOTY awards composition, and is presented to songwriters. Now let’s dig into the real tea!

Defining one year with a single record is difficult. It's an incredibly diverse category—from pulsating diva-house club anthems to cozy country croons—and each song is a strong representative of its respective genre. “Easy on Me,”Adele’s long-awaited comeback, is a simple yet powerful pop ballad, and it's no secret that Adele is a GRAMMYs darling. Though this seems the most likely win for ROTY, it doesn’t move me with each listen the way some of the other nominations do.

One deserving recipient is “About Damn Time,” the groovy disco track that served as Lizzo’s lead single from her latest album, Special (2022). With an intoxicating bassline leading the charge, each layer of its production radiates through its listener. Another fitting winner would be Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit,” whose chorus took over TikTok. Not only is it a head-bopping earworm, its lengthy beatbox outro is an undeniable showcase of production prowess. So while it may be tempting for the Recording Academy to fall back into old habits, honoring innovative design and production may open up the floor for something more inspired.

Prediction: “Easy on Me” by Adele | Should Win: “About Damn Time” by Lizzo or “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy

Song of the Year by Ajani Jones

The highly coveted Song of the Year category for songwriters is always fairly contentious. This year, the nominations are chock-full of incredible talents and culturally formative tracks. Barring the occasional sneak nomination (looking at you, “abcdefu”), this year’s award could take many paths.

Singles like Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (The Short Film)” and Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” dominated pop culture and, in the case of the former, remade what “radio airworthy” means.

Yet the artists making big comebacks hold greater gravity. In their long-awaited full-length solo albums, both Beyoncé and Adele released singles (“BREAK MY SOUL,” “Easy On Me”) that shook the indusry. Both singles are lyrically and sonically phenomenal, resonating deeply with a public consciousness centering resilience and loss alike.

But it’s “BREAK MY SOUL” that should ultimately be victorious. Beyoncé’s lead single on her seventh studio album has maintained its initial relevance, and has a much more immediate and palpable cultural impact when compared to Adele’s more personal and selfcontained “Easy On Me.” Her first and only SOTY win was for “Single Ladies”; let’s hope she brings home one more.

Prediction: “BREAK MY SOUL” by Beyoncé or “Easy On Me” by Adele | Should Win: “BREAK MY SOUL” by Beyoncé

The GRAMMYs have a loose definition of “new” in the Best New Artist category. Nominees must have at least five singles or one album, and there is no limitation on the length of discography; but the main criteria is that they “must have achieved a breakthrough into the public consciousness and impacted the musical landscape” in the qualifying year. Though the subjectiveness of “a breakthrough” makes the category difficult to judge, none of the nominees had a standout year like Omar Apollo.

His nomination may seem overdue, but 2022 was undoubtedly his breakthrough. The son of Mexican immigrants, Apollo draws on mariachi and corrido influences—and sings in English and Spanish—in his heart-wrenchingly mournful love songs and his upbeat electro-pop hits. Although he’s released three EPs since his 2017 breakout single “Ugotme,” the success of his debut album Ivory (2022) and the deluxe version Marfil (2022) have brought him to center stage. After a well-received international tour, Apollo was announced as the opener for R&B superstar SZA’s upcoming (sold-out) tour.

Apollo appears to be the obvious frontrunner, however, Muni Long is a more predictable GRAMMYs pick. She’s co-written hits for artists like Rihanna and Ariana Grande, and finally had her own breakout song this year with “Hrs and Hrs.” Though Long would be a deserving recipient, Apollo’s unique blend of influences and genres gives him the potential to be a voice of a generation. G

Prediction: Muni Long | Should Win: Omar Apollo Tune in to the GRAMMYs on Sunday, Feb. 5 at 8 p.m., and follow along with our live coverage on Twitter @VoiceHalftime.

graphic by lukas soloman; layout by madeleine ott

Best New Artist by Maya Kominsky

Cashing out: How D.C. students and residents alike are navigating stringent District sports betting laws

BY HENRY SKARECKY

On Super Bowl Sunday, four-time Super Bowl champion tight end Rob Gronkowski will attempt a field goal live on-air as part of a promotion by FanDuel Sportsbook to give out $10 million in free bets. This is just the latest promotional stunt from the company, which forms part of the up-and-coming multibilliondollar legal sports betting industry now available in 36 states as well as Washington, D.C., which legalized the practice for those 18 and older in 2019 after a Supreme Court ruling the year prior declared that states can create their own gambling laws.

Many D.C. sports bettors, however, will be stuck on the sidelines for Gronkowski’s highly anticipated promotion, as D.C. has placed far heavier restrictions on how people can bet on sports compared to other states, resulting in many sports fans in the District missing out on an enhanced sports watching experience— the entertaining and often rewarding world of sports betting.

The major platforms that accept sports bets (sportsbooks) such as FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars Sportsbook—names that have become synonymous with legal sports betting across America—are restricted to physical locations at Audi Field, Nationals Park, and Capital One Arena, respectively. Additionally, their online apps only allow for bets in D.C. to be placed within two blocks of their books’ physical location.

The restrictions in place have a disproportionate impact on college-age students. Sports bettors must be 21 years old or older to enter any bars that act as sportsbooks in the District. D.C. also forbids betting on any game involving a collegiate team from a D.C. university, including Georgetown, meaning that interested bettors must find ways to circumvent these restrictions to bet for (or against) the Hoyas.

Conor Hyland (MSB ’25) overcomes the District’s restrictions on sports betting apps by outsourcing his bets to his brother who lives in New York. “Back home in New York I could just use FanDuel and other companies’ apps, but being

in D.C. it’s not legal,” Hyland said. “It definitely makes it more difficult to bet because if I wanted to place anything through those accounts I would have to get my brother to do it.”

Students who circumvent geographic restrictions to access the major sportsbooks are still faced with the regulations of other states. Georgetown’s close proximity to Virginia—a state which does allow betting through the major apps no matter your location—opens up the opportunity for students to gamble by simply crossing Key Bridge and placing bets across the Potomac. However, most states that have legalized sports betting, including Virginia, have set the minimum gambling age to 21. “Most people I know who are under 21 will sign up through their parents’ account and just tie it into their own email,” Hyland said, illustrating the lengths to which students go to get around betting laws in D.C. and other states.

The only online sportsbook currently available throughout the District is GambetDC, a betting platform operated by the D.C. Lottery. As part of the city’s process to legalize sports betting, the city controversially contracted the book to be the sole citywide online sports betting platform, leading to a sports gambling monopoly in most parts of D.C. Since its launch in May 2020, the system has been plagued by problems, including geolocation issues as well as an embarrassing outage during last year’s Super Bowl when GambetDC’s iOS app went down for the entirety of the game and users with Apple devices were unable to place bets during the biggest game of the year.

GambetDC’s biggest issue, however, stems from the bets themselves. GambetDC consistently provides odds that are worse for gamblers than the major sportsbooks, turning potential sports bettors away from the platform in search of greater returns on their bets. The Voice’s analysis of singlegame bets for NBA and NHL games on Jan. 27 and 28 revealed that FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars Sportsbook on average have a house edge of about 4.75 percent of money wagered. GambetDC, however, has an edge of about six percent on all wagers, meaning that GambetDC’s odds are set

to allow the company to pocket, on average, six percent of all wagers as revenue. This results in GambetDC providing worse odds for any given wager when compared to its Vegas counterparts, and thus worse returns for a winning bet. Despite GambetDC’s poor odds being a point of criticism since its inception, the service has maintained its uncompetitive model in the hopes that it will generate increased revenues for the city.

The difference between GambetDC and the Vegas sportsbooks only grows when looking at bets placed on long-term sporting outcomes. For example, for wagers placed on which team will win this year’s NHL championship, Vegas sportsbooks keep 24.9 percent of the money wagered on NHL “futures,” with the rest of the money going towards paying out winning bets. GambetDC, on the other hand, pockets a staggering 38.4 percent of those bets, meaning that there is an even greater financial incentive for people to place bets using the major sportsbooks. These problems as a whole contribute to GambetDC being a mere afterthought to most sports bettors in the District, if any thought at all. When asked about the platform, Hyland remarked that he didn’t even recognize it. “I’ve never used it,” he said.

Ultimately, GambetDC’s failures have contributed to it making just half of the revenue in 2022 of the commercial sportsbooks in the District despite their location restrictions.

Little progress has been made toward creating a better sports betting experience in the District, even with GambetDC’s bad reputation and the dismal state of D.C. sports gambling laws. In October, at-large D.C. council member Elissa Silverman introduced legislation to allow the major sportsbooks to operate throughout the entirety of the District, ending the monopoly held by GambetDC. Silverman, however, lost reelection in November, stalling the legislation pending reintroduction this year. As a result, D.C. sports bettors are ultimately condemned to continue making tedious journeys to Maryland, Virginia, and sporting arenas downtown to bet on sports for the foreseeable future. G

Kaleidoscope tries a little bit of everything and struggles with it all

BY EILEEN CHEN

Content warning: This article discusses racist and xenophobic rhetoric.

Author’s note: I watched the show in this order: “Yellow,” “Orange,” “Red,” “Pink,” “Green,” “Violet,” “Blue,” and “White.”

Netflix’s newest heist series can be watched in 5,040 different ways: There’s no designated order beyond the season finale. Rather than being numbered, each episode is named after a color, and Netflix gives each viewer a randomly generated order. While the premise sounds enticing, the audience must constantly take mental notes to keep track of everything happening. When this gimmick is combined with a plot that lacks substance and social commentary that fails to make any purposeful statement, Kaleidoscope falls spectacularly short of its hyped-up expectations.

Kaleidoscope presents itself as a standard heist show—vault, criminal mastermind, motley crew—and its central scheme appears elaborate at first glance. The vault is boasted as the world’s most secure, owned by tech millionaire Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell). Our mastermind is Roger’s former partner in crime, Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito). And of course, there’s every token heist character you would expect: Stan (Peter Mark Kendall) the smuggler, Bob (Jai Courtney) the safecracker, Judy (Rosaline Elbay) the chemist, RJ (Jordan Mendoza) the driver, and Ava (Paz Vega) the lawyer/weapons specialist/overall girlboss. The job falls apart when all the usual culprits—selfishness, betrayal, distrust, and the FBI—begin to kick in.

So, how does Kaleidoscope claim to make this randomized viewing possible? There’s some exposition to kick off each episode, explaining where it stands in the overall timeline; however, it’s still not enough for each episode to truly stand alone. The opening voice-overs don’t fully introduce all characters, the time and place, or how far along the heist is—rather, they’re often very cryptic and ominous. While I could put the pieces together

feels much more like a chronological show out of order. Because Kaleidoscope ’s story progression is so conventional, its unconventional viewing approach doesn’t fit the plot. If each episode portrayed the heist from each crew member’s perspective, perhaps, a random viewing order would be much more effective.

Overly embellished heist aside, Kaleidoscope attempts a lot of social commentary (and doesn’t execute any of it). Many difficult conflicts are introduced, but never suitably resolved. Agent Abbasi (Niousha Noor)—the FBI agent hot on the heist crew’s tail—struggles with a history of substance use throughout the show. While chasing the crew, she is fighting a custody battle and faces skepticism from coworkers. Despite this nuance, however, Abbasi’s character is reduced to her anger at the custody battle, rather than the themes of growth and healthy recovery. Later, during a heated negotiation after Abbasi orders the deportation of Ava’s nanny, Ava makes a pointed remark about the cruelty of ICE and American foreign policy— but it’s never once brought up again.

Kaleidoscope beats around the bush on multiple social issues, and the failure to adequately engage topics of race is glaring. When Leo, a Black man, decides to put his foot down and end his criminal partnership with Roger, who is white, Leo begs of Roger: “What happens when they see a Black man breaking into a white man’s house?” But the answer to that question is never given, instead left to the audience to infer. After Leo eventually quits crime to run a business, his wife, Lily (Robinne Lee), a Black woman, is fired in a tirade of racially motivated insults and stereotypes when her white boss assumes her family has been stealing. To “get back” at Lily’s employer, Leo goes to rob the place. While the goal was to demonstrate Leo’s love for his wife, he does exactly what his wife was wrongly accused of. By making this a pivotal part of Leo’s narrative arc, the show fails to reckon with its own hypocrisy. It carries a condescending undertone, painting a picture of the victim making the wrong choice in

them. None of these incredibly complex and important issues are given meaningful exploration. If Kaleidoscope wants to level powerful critiques, it needs to do more than mention a whole range of class and identity struggles in a handful of throwaway lines. If a problem is mentioned, a resolution, a healthy way to cope, or at least a proper explanation for why should be given. Introducing these topics without giving them substantive commentary can be counterproductive—it can contribute to the desensitization of audiences to heavy topics by treating them as normal and not needing further elaboration.

It’s also worth noting that episode randomization is an accidental hindrance to the show’s ability to create comprehensive personal narratives. Since viewers do not experience the same timeline, it’s impossible to build continuous characterization or devote enough time to any individual backstory. The only emotional plot point that has a relatively consistent presence throughout the series is Leo’s complicated relationship with his daughter, Hannah Kim (Tati Gabrielle): The two live separately, Hannah works for Roger, and Hannah blames Leo for her mother’s death. She ends up playing the wild card—acting out against Leo and turning the operation on its head— yet it’s hard to pinpoint a distinct moment when Hannah finally decides to “turn.” Her conversations with Leo all carry the same negative undertones, but there’s no continuous emotional arc. While the finale definitely comes as a surprising twist, it comes out of nowhere, and not in a good way. As a result, viewers lose the satisfaction of remembering all the little bits and pieces of past episodes and having that “Aha!” moment when they put it all together.

Kaleidoscope tries hard to be unlike other shows, but it’s not all that different. In the process of trying to be so experimental, it loses the heart of what makes any heist show good: an action-packed, immaculately executed heist. The best way to watch it is probably just chronologically—that way,

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HALFTIME

You'll never be the same after After

Content warning: This article references domestic abuse.

One cursed weekend last February, my friends and I made a life-altering decision: to marathon the After movies. What we witnessed was a plot disaster propped up by toxic masculinity and romanticization of abusive relationships, and absolutely no continuity—even the casting wasn’t consistent. And yet, we ate it up.

After (2019) first began as Harry Styles fanfiction published to Wattpad in 2013 by Anna Todd. Subsequent popularity saw the work picked up by publishing house Gallery Books, where Todd continued to publish four followup novels. The first movie in the franchise was released on Netflix and three more followed— After We Collided (2020), After We Fell (2021), and After Ever Happy (2022). (Yes, that’s the actual name.)

The After franchise belongs to a long line of stories that have fallen down the fanfiction-tosmutty-movie pipeline made popular by the likes of Fifty Shades of Grey and The Kissing Booth. But why are people entertained by these films? The only explanation I can come up with is that hatewatching is one of the most powerful motives for consuming media. I became so attached to these movies not because they were masterpieces, but because they were completely awful. The acting, the casting, the costumes, the writing, the attention to detail—every single aspect failed to produce any sense of verisimilitude. It was absurd.

But first, let’s go over the premise of the first installment in the sexy saga. Tessa Scott (Josephine Langford) is a naive college freshman with no intention of rocking the boat; however, soon after arriving at Washington Central University, her more experienced roommate introduces her to the mysterious Hardin Scott (Hero Fiennes Tiffin)—read: That’s the Harry Styles. Hardin wears all black, always looks angry, and has never been rejected by a woman until Tessa refuses to kiss him in an unfriendly game of Truth or Dare. Shocker.

Thus begins an endless on-again-off-again obsessive relationship: have sex, lie, expose said lie, fight, break up, and have make-up sex. Repeat that cycle four times in every book, sprinkle in increasing familial tensions, and you have the first four movies of the After series. There are also various complicated subplots— all poorly veiled attempts to lurch the otherwise static plot forward.

Watching Tessa and Hardin’s overly problematic relationship unfold was disturbing, but it opened my eyes to the social environment that allowed such a couple to emerge and

become culturally relevant. The main characters each play into the fanfiction archetypes of pickme girls and overprotective alpha-male-esque boyfriends. The classic pick-me girl prides herself on being “not like other girls.” These characters tend to lack other female friends, prefer male companionship, and possess a tragic backstory which makes them somber, yet somehow more mature and desirable to men. The overly possessive boyfriend will go to any length to protect his girlfriend from real or imagined threats and is typically violently jealous, especially when any man shows his girlfriend attention. Even her step-brother.

These stereotypes, rooted in archaic societal perceptions of white masculinity and femininity, became extremely pervasive at the height of the 2010s, particularly in real-person fanfiction. Platforms like Wattpad host a plethora of content that transform real celebrities—in this case, the hit boy band One Direction— into these archetypes. A legion of authors and readers populated by mostly young women had their conceptions of love and romance shaped by individuals just as inexperienced as themselves. Like many other fanfics, the After franchise has long been criticized for promoting toxic relationships in a misguided attempt at representing insatiable desire. The feeling of wanting what is inaccessible is what draws readers in, but that quickly fades if the couple actually succeeds at being together.

Tessa begins the first movie with only two close relationships: her mom and her high school boyfriend, both of which are shortly destroyed by Hardin’s presence. Throughout the series, anytime Tessa tries to make a new friend, Hardin, in a jealous rage, comes sweeping in to try and stamp out any connection. Disturbingly, the guy is only really attracted to her when she’s vulnerable. The dynamic is written to be sexy, giving the impression that such relationships are healthy or even desirable. After all, it’s much more exciting to read a will-they-won’tthey story. However, by the close of the series, all of these fundamental issues are passed off as minor, shifting the focus to how they are in love and meant to be together. For a young person still developing their understanding of relationships, After may lead them to believe that Tessa and Hardin’s relationship is a healthy portrayal of love. But if this content is so flagrantly problematic for romanticizing toxic relationships, why is it so popular, even among adults?

From my view, there are two camps: those who enjoy it for the

steamy content, regardless of quality, and those who watch it for how hysterically bad it is. To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with sexually explicit content, and an audience with a mature understanding of relationships will be able to identify these portrayals as unhealthy. The second camp, however, fascinates me most because it appears to be fundamentally contradictory. How can you like something that you acknowledge is awful?

I know with absolute certainty that these movies are terrible, but I still love them. The irony is what brings me back. When Hardin, tortured by his desire for Tessa, screams “FUCK” directly into the camera, we’re all rolling on the floor with laughter. His actions and emotions are so overdramatic that it’s ridiculous. The humor emerges because it’s not supposed to be funny— but it is. The fact that the movie is so woefully unaware of itself only intensifies the humor tenfold. Any sense of reality in the After universe is so warped by the bad acting and writing that it borders on nonsensical. In these movies we were not looking for great art or a lesson in morality; we were looking for filth, because filth is entertaining. If one is able to muscle through the initial shock of the horrible technical elements, it’s fun to watch. Trying to view the absurdity as intentional for comedic purposes helps with the shift in mental state required to get through the 90 minutes and remain sane.

So, will you find us watching the last three movies? Yes. We’re already making plans for our next viewing party, and we are fully expecting to witness the most pointless piece of smut ever to hit a streaming service. Do I recommend that other people watch? Well… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. At the very least, don’t suffer through it alone. G

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