The Hoya: Nov. 11, 2011

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD SINCE 1920 thehoya.com

Georgetown University • Washington, D.C. Vol. 93, No. 20, © 2011

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

BEHIND THE WHEEL

Zooming around the city’s street corners, taxi drivers in the District find their sense of direction.

OUT IN THE COLD

The women’s soccer team was unexpectedly left out of the NCAA tournament field.

THE GUIDE, G8

SPORTS, A10

Ghost Town: Mall Leases to Expire Dec. 31 Early App

Numbers Increase

KELLY CHURCH Hoya Staff Writer

As the number of vacant storefronts at the Shops at Georgetown Park creeps toward 50, the remaining tenants of the mall suspect their realtor could be gearing up to overhaul the building.

According to store managers, the mall’s realtor, Vornado Realty Trust, has stopped renewing leases on the roughly 110 retail spaces in the building. The contracts are set to expire Dec. 31.

There is the possibility that leases could be extended, according to Total Party costume store owner Lorenzo Caltagirone, though the shopping center at the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue has yet to finalize stores that can anchor the center as it undergoes changes.

Business owners have not been informed of what will happen to the space after they leave.

“We knew it was coming,” Tsering Shakya, owner of Dorjebajra Tibet Shop, said. “The worst part about the mall right now is that no one has an answer.”

According to Ava Mutchler, See MALL, A7

Rise beats expectations after changes to peer institutions’ admissions cycles ADRIANNA SMITH Special to The Hoya

MICHELLE CASSIDY/THE HOYA

Several retailers in the Shops at Georgetown Park may be forced to vacate their spaces by year’s end.

PAUSING TO HONOR THOSE WHO HAVE SERVED

Greig Drops Council Bid, Cites Intimidation ELIZABETH GARBITELLI & SARAH KAPLAN

describing “dirt” her opponent had on her and angry emails sent to a Greig supporter who had offered to Hoya Staff Writers hold an event.

Ward 2 D.C. Council candidate Grieg also said that her opponent, Fiona Greig pulled out of the race 20-year incumbent Jack Evans, had Wednesday morning, citing an “in- hired a private investigator to foltimidation campaign” from her op- low and intimidate her. Media specponent Jack Evans ulation pointed as a factor in her to Ken Cummins, decision to with- “Talking about the president of pridraw. person following vate investigation “Working inside and research firm, D.C. government [Greig], I probably Capitol Inquiry. didn’t prepare me overshot the runway.”

In an interview for what I faced with The Hoya, when I launched KEN ARCHER Cummins said Campaign Chair for Fiona Greig an underdog chalthat he had relenge for the Ward quested contro2 seat,” Greig said in the statement versial finance forms for Greig’s posted on her campaign website. campaign from the D.C Office of Greig went on to describe some of Campaign Finance, but that the the occurrences that had driven her to call it quits, citing muffled calls See GREIG, A6

Georgetown received a record number of early applications for the Class of 2016 despite the reintroduction of early action application options at several rival institutions.

Last Tuesday, about 6,750 Georgetown hopefuls submitted early action applications, a 1.4 percent increase from last year’s total of 6,658.

This jump came as a surprise to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Charles Deacon, who said that he had originally expected the number of early applicants to drop after Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia reinstated early action policies this year.

While the two Ivy League schools recently adopted single-choice early action programs, preventing their applicants from applying to other schools before Nov. 1, UVA initiated a policy similar to Georgetown’s. Under this unrestricted program, high school students may apply to multiple colleges during the early period.

The university’s increase in applications has left the admissions office pleased, as the increase shows a visible rise in demand since students must take the time to apply specifically to Georgetown, which does not accept the common application.

“We’re really happy with these numbers because it means people are coming to us [as a serious choice],” Deacon said. “Georgetown has a growing name recognition and is in higher demand.”

This year’s early application numbers compare favorably with those of other schools. Georgetown saw 6.750 applicants aiming to snag one of 1,600 spots in the Class of 2016. In comparison, UVA received 11,415 early action applications for the roughly 3,300 seats in its freshman class, while See APPLICATIONS, A6

AFTER SUMMER BLAZE, HOOK TO RE-OPEN AS UPSCALE MEXICAN EATERY LEONEL DE VELEZ FOR THE HOYA

Students, faculty and staff joined ROTC members and veterans on Copley Lawn Wednesday to celebrate Veterans Day. See story on A4.

Board of Governors Taps Into Alumni Base MATTHEW STRAUSS Hoya Staff Writer

For Alumni Association President Julia Farr Connolly (CAS ’88), her role as Board of Governors chair is a far cry from her gradeschool days of stuffing and labeling envelopes for the Annual Fund efforts.

Elected by the Alumni Association to chair the 120-member group, which consists of alumni, faculty and student governors, Connolly has served half of her three-year term as chair. Today, Connolly spearheads a body charged with a daunting task: cultivating a relationship between the university and its 10s of thousands of alumni, all the while securing

the school’s placement in the top tier of universities worldwide.

“The association provides more than 160,000 alumni with programming and events that advance our core mission — to serve all alumni by connecting them to the university and each other, today and throughout their lives,” Bill Reynolds (CAS ’79), executive director of the Alumni Association, said in an official letter to alumni.

For Connolly, this connection reaches deeper than her posting.

Connolly has long been attached to the Robert and Bernice Wagner Alumni House, where she developed her first memories of

Newsroom: (202) 687-3415 Business: (202) 687-8350

See ALUMNI, A7

MICHELLE CASSIDY/THE HOYA

The space formerly occupied by Hook, a popular seafood restaurant on M Street, will become a modern Mexican restaurant in early 2012 run by chef Mike Isabella of Top Chef fame. Hook was closed following a fire this summer.

Published Tuesdays and Fridays

Send Story Ideas and Tips to news@thehoya.com

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EDITORIAL

THE HOYA

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

A Top-Tier Ticketing System

Founded January 14, 1920

To the Editor,

In the initial roundtable held in midOctober, the majority of concerns circled around the Department of Public Safety. Last night, students were given the opportunity to ask about late-night food trucks, moving procedures, print stations on campus and HoyaInnovation. But topics like facilities, housing and wireless have yet to be addressed.

Hoya Roundtables has been a good start to discussing issues requiring immediate attention, but the dialogue goes both ways. Without our input, how will administrators know what to improve in campus life? With issues that beg immediate attention, direct communication is often the best solution.

Such dialogue allows both parties to gain a better understanding of their respective needs and responsibilities, while working to chip away at the administration-student divide. Hoya Roundtables are a welcome stimulant for a needed conversation — all we need to do is make sure we speak up.

No Contest, No Progress The political pressure was too much for Fiona Greig.

Announcing Wednesday that she was pulling out of the race for the Ward 2 seat on the D.C. Council, she said that the “intimidation” from incumbent Jack Evans drove her to do so. Greig claims that Evans hired a private investigator to look through her private records, received threatening phone calls and spotted a man following her and tracking guests to her home.

As this board bemoaned in our most recent editorial, Evans’ failures on the D.C. Council, possible ethics violations and divisive role in community discourse during his tenure is creating a questionable legacy. But even Greig’s campaign manager admitted that accusing Evans of following her was a

mistake. The early onset of political pressures overwhelmed Greig and her political base, resulting in her withdrawal just a week after her campaign launched.

Part of the appeal of Greig’s candidacy was that she seemed to be someone that could rise above the petty squabbling of career politicians. While it is understandable that she would not want to endure a possible smear campaign, Greig showed that she was not the type of fighting candidate we had been waiting for.

With the council primary election just six months away, inhabitants of Ward 2 must look elsewhere for an alternative to Jack Evans. Hopefully, a strong and thoughtful candidate will emerge, ready to end Evans’ decades-long hold on the Georgetown community.

C C C

For students who don’t know the inner workings of the university, oncampus services may seem like they’re composed of an army of overpaid bureaucrats.

Fortunately, the university has taken steps this semester to demystify the administrative leviathan and incorporate student feedback. Thursday evening, Chief Operating Officer Christopher Augostini presided over the second edition of Hoya Roundtables, a meeting where students can voice concerns and suggestions straight to the source. Like the first roundtable, it provided students with a unique opportunity to express any discontent or confusion to top university officials about issues of university life on the Hilltop. After the first roundtable, at which, student safety questions were answered, last night’s discussion shed light on technology services, food availability on campus and HoyaInnovation. But if we want these roundtables to remain effective, students need to show up.

The editorial “Curb Lines, Not Enthusiasm” (The Hoya, A2, Nov. 4, 2011) missed the mark in criticizing the student ticketing system at the Bill Clinton event on Oct. 2. In particular, the editorial incorrectly asserted that “organizers scrambled at the last minute to fill up lottery winners’ vacant seats in Gaston.”

In fact, the vast majority of university lottery winners arrived on time to claim their spots. The quick effort to fill open seats immediately before the event was not because of missing lottery winners. Rather, a number of

C C

An Open Relationship

the town. Showing up to an exam (or even class) while drunk may be one of the biggest college taboos (at least most days of the year), but many students do the equivalent without thinking twice when they pull allnighters.

These physical effects don’t hold a candle to the effects of long-term stress on your mental health. We may joke about our hot tempers, but our hormones can have serious effects if left unchecked and imbalanced. And as fall turns to winter, cold weather and little sunlight can lead to Seasonal Affective Disorder, especially in students who hail from sunnier locales.

As we crawl toward the final stretch of classes, it’s more important than ever to focus on our mental health and wellbeing just as much as our studies. After all, Tuesday morning class shouldn’t look like a repeat of Saturday night.

that this lottery model would entice more students to claim their tickets because they could bring a friend, and it worked. We saw a much greater proportion of lottery-won tickets claimed by winners than we have seen in the past.

As we prepare for future events, we welcome feedback from The Hoya and any other members of the university community. However, in this particular case, we believe that the ticketing system performed well in very challenging circumstances.

John Gwin Chair, Georgetown University Lecture Fund

THE VERDICT by The Editorial Board And Then There Were None — Georgetown resident Fiona Greig dropped out of the Ward 2 D.C. Council race Wednesday, claiming the incumbent Jack Evans’ intimidation factor was much to handle.

Grey’s Anatomy 4.0 — A department chair at The George Washington University’s Medical School resigned after students complained that she never showed up to teach a class, yet gave them all As anyway.

Just Dance — On Tuesday, Rangila put on a flash mob to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” in O’Donovan Hall to advertise for their shows next weekend. Tickets go on sale today in Red Square.

Try, Try Again — Despite an impressive season, the women’s soccer team didn’t make the NCAA tournament. See The Hoya’s coverage on A10.

Dishonoring Those Who Have Served — Between 2003 and 2008, the Dover Air Force Base mortuary disposed of some dead troops’ remains by dumping them in a Virginia landfill.

Off the Web “Hit the Road, Jack: Don’t Come Back to Ward 2” Article posted Nov. 7, 2011 Comment posted Nov. 9, 2011 Factchecker: The university may not pay property taxes, but it provides thousands of jobs for city residents, spends lots of money on goods and services provided by local businesses, brings in students who spend lots of money at local businesses and pay sales and meal tax on everything they spend, plus taxes are deducted from wages of university employees and students who work in the District, the enormous demand for housing drives rents absolutely through the roof, allowing local landlords to make a fortune, et cetera, et cetera. I could go on and on. The point is, the university is not a leech sucking on the local economy; it is an engine providing power for the local economy.

And just because the student newspaper endorses a candidate doesn’t mean the university endorses the candidate. I am disturbed by the multiple comments on here that imply that The Hoya is an arm of the university. It is not — it is a student-run publication that takes no cues from the administration. This is why we need an independent newspaper.

Your Moment of Zen There’s little Georgetown students enjoy more than complaining about their workloads. But even if we brag about our marathons of studying or the number of days we’ve gone without sleep, it’s important not to let the hectic nature of campus life get the best of our health.

Firstly, the physiological consequences of poor eating are no secret.

The infamous “freshman 15” should be enough to remind students that a diet of Easy Mac and Wisey’s is a surefire path to an expanded waistline.

Unhealthy eating aside, sleep deprivation can be a near epidemic among Georgetown students. Theoretically, students should sleep for eight hours each night. Getting fewer than six hours of sleep can have effects similar to alcohol intoxication; exhausted students will show the same impaired coordination, slow reaction times and faulty judgment as those who spent the night out on

Clinton Foundation guests did not claim their reserved seats, which were subsequently released to students.

To fill these unexpected openings, the Lecture Fund was able to grant a spot to every student that took the time to join the standby list. When this group was admitted, we quickly moved to offer seats to as many other students as possible.

Of course, no ticketing system is perfect, every event is different and we continue to make refinements based on experience. For this event — unlike others in the past — lottery winners earned two tickets instead of one. We believed

Comment posted Nov. 9, 2011 Stephen R. Brown, Burleith: How quickly the so-called “independent” editorial board of The Hoya (or tools of the administration) forgets that Councilman Evans made it possible for GU to secure $1,128,000,000 in low-interest municipal bond financing over the past 19 years. Several years ago, DeGioia called him the “best friend the university ever had.”

If Evans’s re-election is in danger, it is because of his long-standing support of a university that simply refuses to build adequate housing and imposes upon its voting neighbors. As the university has grown 50 percent in the past five years, you forget that your once “exclusive” degree is becoming “not so exclusive” as GU lets anyone in who’s got the money.

“GUSA to Release Bill of Rights” Article posted Nov. 7, 2011 Comment posted Nov. 9, 2011 Anonymous: Hopefully they’ll eliminate the “double-jeopardy” experienced by off-campus students in facing both city and university penalties for trash violations, noise violations and academic probation.

CORRECTIONS In the editorial, “Hit the Road, Jack: Don’t Come Back to Ward 2” (The Hoya, A2, Nov. 8, 2011) Ward 2’s bond rating was reported as AAA. The bond rating for D.C. has actually been moved to “negative outlook.”

In the article “A Legacy: Feeding the Applicant Pool” (The Hoya, A1, Nov. 4, 2011) the number of applications sent by Georgetown’s top-10 feeder schools was misstated. These schools submitted over 50 applications for the entire 2011 admissions cycle, not just for early action.

In the article “Gray Slams Campus Plan” (The Hoya, A1, Oct. 4, 2011) Gray’s quote, “What we’re looking at is, are there any city services that the universities can step up to with the vast capacities they have to do that?” has been changed to include an omitted clause: “What we’re looking at is, are there any city services ... that the universities can step up with the vast capacities that these universities collectively have ... to do that?”

Policies & Information

Eamon O’Connor, Editor-in-Chief Lauren Weber, Executive Editor Connor Gregoire, Managing Editor Glenn Russo, Campus News Editor Sarah Kaplan, City News Editor Pat Curran, Sports Editor Sarah Amos, Guide Editor Katherine Foley, Opinion Editor Meagan Kelly, Photography Editor Laura Engshuber, Online Editor Shakti Nochur, Layout Editor Suzanne Fonzi, Copy Chief Fiona Hanly, Multimedia Editor Caitlin Mac Neal, Social Media Director

Editorial Board Katherine Foley, Chair

Deputy Campus News Editor Mariah Byrne Deputy Campus News Editor Upasana Kaku Deputy City News Editor Anne Skomba Jonathan Gillis Deputy News Editor for Features Deputy Sports Editor Lawson Ferguson Deputy Sports Editor Evan Hollander Deputy Guide Editor Peter Brigham Deputy Guide Editor Alex Sanchez Deputy Guide Editor Bethany Imondi Deputy Opinion Editor Martin Hussey Deputy Photography Editor Chris Bien Deputy Photography Editor Michelle Cassidy Deputy Online Editor Stephen Levy Deputy Layout Editor Remy Samuels Kavya Devarakonda Deputy Layout Editor Nikita Buley Deputy Copy Editor Sam Randazzo Deputy Copy Editor

Contributing Editors

Madeleine Colavita, Michael Clark, Kavya Devarakonda, Laura Engshuber, Eddie Fearon, Michael Palmer, Michael Palmer, Brian Shaud Mairead Reilly, Elizabeth Rowe, Jeremy Tramer

Benjy Messner, General Manager Kelly Connelly, Director of Finance Caroline Boerwinkle, Director of Personnel Jonathan Rabar, Director of Sales Dan Subak, Director of Technology Evan Marks Web Leslie Sara Eshleman Bryn Hastings Alejandra Paredes Michael Grasso Ryan Smith

Accounts Manager Marketing and External Relations Manager Operations Manager Local Advertisements Manager Institutional Diversity Manager Human Resources Manager Web Manager

Board of Directors

Carolyn Shanahan, Chair Margaret Delaney, Kathryn DeVincenzo, Web Leslie, Benjy Messner, Eamon O’Connor, Michael Palmer

Letter to the Editor & Viewpoint Policies The Hoya welcomes letters and viewpoints from our readers and will print as many as possible. To be eligible for publication, letters should specifically address a recent campus issue or Hoya story. Letters should not exceed 300 words.

Viewpoints are always welcome from all members of the Georgetown community on any topic, but priority will be given to relevant campus issues.

Viewpoint submissions should be between 600-800 words.

Send all submissions to: opinion@ thehoya.com.

Letters and viewpoints are due Sunday at 5 p.m. for Tuesday’s issue and Wednesday at 5 p.m. for Friday’s issue.

The Hoya reserves the right to reject letters or viewpoints and edit for length, style, clarity and accuracy. The Hoya further reserves the right to write headlines and select illustrations to accompany letters and viewpoints.

Corrections & Clarifications If you have a comment or question about the fairness or accuracy of a story, contact Executive Editor Lauren Weber at (202) 687-3415 or email executive@ thehoya.com.

News Tips Campus News Editor Glenn Russo: Call (202) 687-3415 or email campus@ thehoya.com.

City News Editor Sarah Kaplan: Call (202) 687-3415 or email city@thehoya. com.

Sports Editor Pat Curran: Call (202) 6873415 or email sports@thehoya.com.

General Information The Hoya is published twice each week during the academic year with the excep-

tion of holiday and exam periods. Address all correspondence to: The Hoya Georgetown University Box 571065 Washington, D.C. 20057-1065 The writing, articles, pictures, layout and format are the responsibility of The Hoya and do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University.

Signed columns and cartoons represent the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the editorial position of The Hoya.

Unsigned essays that appear on the left side of the editorial page are the opinion of the majority of the editorial board.

Georgetown University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression for student editors.

The Hoya does not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, color, national or ethnic origin. © 1920-2011. The Hoya, Georgetown University twice weekly. No part of this publication may be used without the permission of The Hoya Board of Editors. All rights reserved. The Hoya is available free of charge, one copy per reader, at distribution sites on and around the Georgetown University campus. Additional copies are $1 each.

Editorial: (202) 687-3415 Advertising: (202) 687-3947 Business: (202) 687-8350 Facsimile: (202) 687-2741 Email: editor@thehoya.com Online at www.thehoya.com Circulation: 6,500.

COMMENTARY

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

A Guide Through ‘Jungleland’ Fr. Ryan Maher

As This Jesuit Sees It ...

B

ruce Springsteen and Broadway have made me a better Catholic.

Really.

In March of 1988, I found myself at a Springsteen concert in the Spectrum in Philadelphia. It was the “Tunnel of Love” tour. I had fallen in love with Springsteen’s music when I was a high school student in Arizona. Once I came to Georgetown as a freshman in the late 1970s and met honest-to-God Jerseyites, my appreciation of the Boss only deepened as I realized that he wasn’t making these people up.

By the time the “Tunnel of Love” tour rolled around, Springsteen’s music was a deep and rich part of my life. It moved me, simple as that. I didn’t understand it, but I knew it was true.

Oddly, though, on that March night, the Boss’s music moved me and thousands of other fans to the last thing I expected to encounter in the Spectrum: silence.

After a full night of raucous music, Springsteen came back on stage to play an encore. We went wild. Carrying an acoustic guitar, Bruce walked to the center of the stage and, with a single spotlight plucking him out of the dark, he sang a gentle, haunting version of “Born to Run.” Honestly, at first I was a little disappointed. I had been looking forward to the “regular” version of that song, the version I had come to love over more than a decade of listening. But as the acoustic version unfolded, I found myself drawn into the song in a new way.

And I soon realized that I was not alone.

The Spectrum, full of people, was being drawn in the song together.

When the song ended, the thousands of us in the arena were, for lack of a better word, stunned. I remember clearly, all these years later, that we stood in silence for several long seconds after the last note. The whole Spectrum, silent. I will never forget the charged quality of that silence. It was followed, of course, by more raucous cheering and applause, but the power of those silent seconds has stuck with me. It was a silence that rose from somewhere deep inside me and from somewhere deep within the “us” that was the audience that night.

We had shared beauty. Powerful stuff, that.

Obviously, not all experiences of musical beauty lead to silence. Earlier this year, I was at the closing performance of the Broadway show “Catch Me If You Can.” It was a show I had been lucky enough to see several times and liked very much. The lead actor, Aaron Tveit, had also been in a show that I had loved the season before called “Next to Normal.” For reasons that are still mysterious to me, he was denied Tony nominations for both of these shows.

On top of that, “Catch Me If You Can” was closing earlier than expected due to inside-Broadway financial politics. For all of those reasons, closing night was emotionally-charged for Tveit and for the Broadway-savvy closing-night audience.

As seemed fitting, the final song Tveit sang in the show was a heart-grabbing number called “Goodbye,” in which the main character renounces his life of crime. That night, though, he was singing goodbye to the show, to the cast and

to the sort of connection that develops between a good show and its audience.

As the song thundered to its close, the entire audience joined in an immediate and sustained standing ovation and raucous, surging “hurrah” that sounded like something out of “Braveheart.” We were on our feet cheering for the heartfelt, emotionally-charged performance we had just experienced, and the connection between the actor and audience, like the connection among the audience members, was palpable.

Although it evoked a response that was far from silence, it was an experience very much like the experience I had had in the Spectrum so many years before.

Both of those musical experiences, different though they were, moved me in a way that I honestly believe helped me grow as a human being and as a man of faith. That may sound like an overblown claim, but I don’t think it is.

Experience has taught me that music and the shared experience of beauty that it makes possible can stretch and warm the human heart, rendering it open to the sorts of gifts for which it was made — gifts like compassion, forgiveness, love, hope and faith.

But more: Music can attune the human spirit to the frequency of the Divine. It really is as simple as that. The part of us that can be moved by music is the part of us that can be moved by God. Bruce Springsteen and Broadway have made me a better Catholic. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J. is an associate dean and director of Catholic studies in the College. Fr. Schall, Fr. Maher and Fr. O’Brien alternate as the writers of AS THIS JESUIT SEES IT ... , which appears every other Friday.

The Value of Our Native Tongue Sarah Stodder An International Development

A

s Georgetown students, we’re constantly pushing ourselves to learn new languages. We’ve all walked into the Intercultural Center Galleria at some point and heard at least three different languages by the time we reach the line for More Uncommon Grounds.

From Spanish and Arabic to Ancient Greek and Ukrainian, learning a new language at Georgetown can be a way to make friends, get into a study abroad program, graduate from the School of Foreign Service or simply feel a bit more worldly when pulling off a correct pronunciation of the latest deposed foreign dictator. The drive to improve our communication skills with people from other cultures is part of what gives Georgetown its unique international outlook.

Rarely, however, do we reflect on the value of our English skills. For most of us, English is a given, a jumpingoff point from which to shoot for the higher goal of attaining fluency in another language. But for much of the rest of the world, English fluency is the higher goal — it’s a path toward greater mobility as well as wider employment and educational opportunities. And for Georgetown students, our English skills can serve as an incredible resource to those areas of the world where education, especially in English, illuminates a path out of poverty.

This was the world that Tim Worm (SFS ’10) entered in this summer when he joined Teach for China. Having never studied Chinese in school, he made the gutsy decision to pursue a two-year teaching fellowship in rural China and now spends time in the classroom with roughly 180 children each week, most of whose parents are farmers. The economic change was originally shock-

ing for Worm, when, as the temperature started to drop, many of the kids showed up to school without jackets.

Worm finds that there are good days and bad days, but that the good days, when the kids are engaged, never cease to be amazing.

Kimberly Fernandes (SFS-Q ’11) found herself in a similar world several months ago when she began her twoyear fellowship with Teach for India.

For her 40 fourth-graders living in one of Mumbai’s poorest neighborhoods, learning English is a constant struggle but one with uncountable benefits. It’s a hard road to success for these children, who sit three to a desk in crowded classrooms and are often as many as four years behind their grade-level standards in multiple subjects. Fernandes,

For much of the rest of the world, English fluency is the higher goal. who speaks Hindi, makes a conscious effort to speak only in English to the kids, despite the temptation to revert back to their native language in order to discipline them.

Along with many other Georgetown graduates now placed throughout the world, Worm and Fernandes have taken their English skills abroad with the goal of improving educational opportunity internationally. Teach for China and Teach for India are both a part of Teach for All, a global network of social enterprises serving underprivileged schools in 22 countries. Founded by Wendy Kopp, the CEO of Teach for America, Teach for All provides knowledge, experience and occasional financial help to the separate teaching organizations in each of its 22 countries.

Teach for China, in particular, employs a creative model where foreign fel-

lows are paired with fellows of Chinese origin. These fellows — over 150 in the 2011-2012 school year — work together to teach a host of different subjects at over 40 middle and elementary schools in two Chinese provinces, Yunnan and Guangdong. Education in China is compulsory until eighth grade, at which point students take the gaokao, a nationally-administered exam that determines whether they will go on to higher education or not. Teach for China targets middle school-level children in particular because of the importance of the upcoming gaokao in determining their future. Although about 40 percent of Chinese students go on to higher education nationally, less than 2 percent of children in the schools Teach for China serves pass the gaokao.

Although China is booming economically around its cities, the country’s rural areas still lag behind in development. While Guangdong contains economically powerful cities such as Guangzhou, this new affluence has not yet reached many other parts of the state. Yunnan remains primarily an agricultural province, with ethnic minorities comprising about one-third of the population. Teach for China is the only alternative teaching group that places teachers in Chinese public schools, and it will certainly take the expansion of Teach for China, or the creation of other such programs, for China to achieve truly universal educational opportunity.

Knowledge of English opens doors — and not just for kids in rural China or crowded urban India. For an intrepid Georgetown student looking for adventure (as most of us are), English fluency can mean a ticket to two challenging yet rewarding years as a teacher to students who need it the most.

THE HOYA

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Eamon O’Connor

Beyond the News: A Paper in Progress A

s with most things at The Hoya, it all started with a phone call.

I was a first-semester freshman copy editor, recently promoted to deputy copy editor status, and my rational self was going to take my sweet time before making any major on-campus commitments.

Kidding. The newly elected copy chief, my boss at the time, had resigned. In a flurry of phone conversations over Thanksgiving break, I was being asked

by Hoya elders to run for the spot and fill the void. So I did — and from there, I was sucked in, soon falling victim to a very Georgetown-esque assumption that all commitments we make on campus should be permanent, all-consuming fixtures of our day-to-day lives. As I have upped my involvement over the years, however, I have found the reality to be far different.

College doesn’t last forever, as much as we’d like to think otherwise. It is a transitional, time-strapped whirlwind.

Friendships can come and go, the allnighters we pull to get ahead fade into obscurity, and yes, we phase out of the leadership positions we work so hard to assume. Through all these transitions, we learn to let go, trust others and gain the sort of perspective that any true adult needs in order to live fully — all in four short years.

This is not to undermine the features of undergraduate life that stay with us beyond the gates, whether the friendships that last or the lessons we learn. Rather, I recognize that college is the first time in our lives when we are forced to become comfortable with change, with difference; in short, it is when we realize that not all things are fixed. For The Hoya as a force for high-quality journalism on campus, the same realization must come to bear.

Historically, The Hoya has struggled with a self-imposed sense of permanence, to the point where it has stalled our institutional growth and our ability to transition to new ways of thinking; at times, we think we are unbreakable. We saw this with The Hoya’s disastrous and offensive 2009 April Fools’ issue when staffers became accustomed to tradition at the expense of being sensitive to all members of the campus community. We saw it day to day in the first years of this century as our online product lagged behind those of

our peers. Most clearly, we have seen it in our years-long push to become an entity independent of the university.

As jarring as it may sound, we need to break ourselves in order to serve you, our readers. That means constantly questioning and reinventing across all areas of coverage, from our stories to our design, our recruitment to our social media strategy.

And if you don’t see us whittling away at tired traditions for the sake of pursuing new ventures, please tell us. Chances are we’ve become a bit proud of our position, however esteemed, on this campus — and that feeling of permanence is no path to progress.

In the past year, I’d like to think we’ve made some headway on that path. Last January, we debuted the spring semester with a complete overhaul of our website, poring over design and content elements.

Since then, we have adapted our production schedule to accommodate a 24-hour news cycle, adopting a new social media and multimedia strategy in the process.

Redesigns of our main issue, The Guide and all our new and existing special issues — Year in Review, Summer Guide, the New Student Survival Guide, the fashion issues and the Basketball Preview — have also come with a year’s worth of hard work. In all of these revamps, we have changed everything from font styles to story angles, from coloring to web platforms. All of this has been paired with greater attempts at community engagement, namely, more event sponsorships, our now-annual journalism conference, and no less important, complimentary Hoya sunglasses. Simply put, we are striving to inform your rendition of Georgetown — not just in our always-evolving coverage, but in other ways, too.

Any permanence worth having must come with an openness to change. As I close the book on another year of Hoya history, I put the onus on the next staff to strive for transformative leadership just as much as I expect you, our readers, to hold us accountable. Nurturing this relationship is the only way we can cultivate a tradition more than 90 years in the making for decades to come. Now that’s what I call permanence.

EAMON O’CONNOR is a senior in the College. He is the 137th editor-in-chief of The Hoya. His term ends Saturday.

THE RAW DEAL by Anthony Mastroianni

Sarah Stodder is a senior in the School of Foreign Service. AN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT appears every other Friday.

Sari Frankel

Keeping the Game in Perspective, Both On and Off the Field

H

appy Valley, Pa., is one place I’m sure glad I’m not right now.

The allegations against Joe Paterno that he withheld information in the court case against his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky have been both an embarrassment and an outrage for the entire Penn State community. Since Paterno’s official dismissal as head football coach of the Nittany Lions Nov. 9, the situation has escalated to nothing short of frightening for students and members of the media at the scene.

A friend of mine who studies at Penn State posted a Facebook status last night at 2 a.m. merely saying, “I’m alive.”

Another friend of mine, also at Penn State, wrote, “I hope the media learned their lesson with the tipped-over news bus last night.

Piss off until you all get the facts straight.”

It’s one thing to have an opinion; it’s something entirely different to go around tipping over news vans.

This muddled mess that is the end of Joe Paterno’s career is tragic, confusing and shocking, to say the least.

And this probably marks the final act in the decline of the powerhouse that has been Penn State football for the last 46 years. Football is an integral part of the Penn State experience, and it’s a shame its name has been tarnished like this. But the reactions of everyone, both affiliated with the university and not, make me worry about where people’s morals stand.

Naturally, the scandal upsets me.

The degree of Joe Paterno’s responsibility in all of this is debatable — perhaps he could have done more

than he did about the situation, or perhaps he couldn’t have. Molesting children isn’t ever okay, obviously.

But neither is rioting.

There is something about sports that makes people forget their dignity. When the Canucks lost to the Bruins in game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals last June, vengeful Canucks fans took to the streets of Vancouver and laid waste to vast swathes of the city. Ever the punching bag, the expectation is that whenever a Philadelphia team wins anything, drunken revelry ensues. Parents are routinely removed from youth recreation centers for verbally abusing the referees when “unfair” calls are made against their children.

And now, angry college students are “justifiably” tipping over media

buses and endangering journalists.

When sex scandals started surfacing in the Catholic Church nearly a decade ago, people were angry. But no one rioted. And the Catholic Church has far more followers than Penn State football.

If the scandal revolved around the heads of the university, people would be angry but wouldn’t be breaking lampposts or tipping cars over right now. If it were cafeteria workers, the public probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. But for some reason, when it comes to athletics, people think it’s acceptable to react like this. I have no theories as to why this is so. People tend to laugh and cry with each victory and loss of their favorite teams.

But many are equally emotionally invested in their favorite television programs, and little more than dismay ensues when a beloved show is taken

off the air.

Friends at State College keep telling me I don’t get it. One of them posted, “The ‘father figure’ of 40,000 teenagers was fired last night. He’s legally gone from this family. So honestly, what did you think was going to happen? Were we going to sit quietly in our rooms and study … If you’re on the outside looking ... you really don’t understand the colossal impact this has on us, so please stop finding amusement in this.” But honestly, I think I get it better than they do.

It’s football, not the apocalypse.

Football fanatic or fair-weather fan, it is never excusable to endanger others. Please responsibly exercise your right to peaceably assemble.

SARI FRANKEL is a freshman in the College and a staff photographer.

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

YOUR NEWS, IN BRIEF

Ceremony Honors FROM THE WEB Veterans’ Sacrifices GALLERY MARISSA BROGGER Special to The Hoya

In honor of Veterans’ Day, the Georgetown University Student Veterans of America commemorated the service veterans and current members of the military Wednesday on Copley Lawn.

The event, co-sponsored by Georgetown University Alumni Association and the Reserve Officer Training Corp, featured ROTC student service members, the Marine Corps Drum and the Bugle Corps’ performance of “Commandment’s Own.” The guest speaker, Brigadier General Kenneth Lee (LAW ’07), deputy commandant for aviation in the United States Marine Corps, gave the final address, reminding all those in attendance that the U.S. armed services are about protecting freedom. Lee underscored the importance of a continuing commitment to supporting the nation’s veterans, specifically through institutions of higher learning, like Georgetown, that help to reintegrate veterans into civilian life.

Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson closed the ceremony with the flag dedication, taking a moment of silence to honor those who have sacrificed their lives for others. Georgetown, The George Washington University and American University ROTC students were among those presenting the flag.

“This is one of the few professions where I like to believe that the reward received is greater than the sacrifice given,” Calvin Ogbun, a senior at GW, said.

Donna Hernandez (SFS ’13) at-

tended the service in honor of her husband who is currently serving at Quantico Sentry in Virginia. Others came out of respect for their relatives and friends. “[Service] is a sacrifice for both the family and the service member, which is why support is so important,” Danielle Lujan (COL ’13) said.

After the formal ceremony, a reception was held at the Wagner Alumni House, where students, alumni and veterans were able to interact.

“I think it’s really great when people come together and remember what serving in the military entails,” Mary Birdsall (NHS ’13), a ROTC member, said.

Several veteran attendants emphasized that the Georgetown community has warmly welcomed them and helped them utilize their military background.

“Coming to Georgetown out of the Marines Corps was a pivotal point for me. … The network of community and support has helped me to transition to where I am now,” said Margo Ellis, a second-year student in the School of Continuing Studies program and a Marine Corps veteran.

Colby Howard (SFS ’12), president of GUSVA, who served in the Marine Corps from 2000-2008, noted that veteran support at Georgetown has steadily increased over the past several years but that there is still more room to grow.

“Georgetown gave perspective to my experiences serving, and my experiences serving grounded the education I have received here.

They have complemented each other, and I appreciate them both tremendously,” he said.

View photos online of Rangila’s flash mob in Leo O’Donovan Dining Hall Wednesday promoting its upcoming shows next weekend.

BASKETBALL PREVIEW Get ready for basketball season to tip off Friday by checking out The Hoya’s preview magazine online or picking up a copy around campus.

MULTIMEDIA Checking in with the residents of Magis Row, The Hoya hears about their house themes, upcoming events and the community living experience.

verbatim

“

We knew it was coming. The worst part about the mall right now is that no one has an answer.

”

Tsering Shakya, owner of a the Dorjebajra Tibet Shop on the Shops at Georgetown Park’s decision to stop renewing leases, which are set to expire Dec. 31.

See story on A1.

Student Contenders Step Into Political Ring DANNY FUNT

Hoya Staff Writer

While many Americans were casting votes in local elections across the country, Georgetown’s politically active engaged in a spirited debate Tuesday night over the hot-button issues that could decide next year’s presidential contest.

The College Republicans, College Democrats and Hoyas for Liberty debated a range of topics for two hours in McNeir Auditorium. Although the debate began with a formal format, a town hall-style discussion soon ensued as passion bubbled over in the 80-person audience.

Representing the Democrats were Nabeel Zewail (SFS ’15), Shom Mazumder (SFS ’15) and Gabrielle Gold (COL ’14). The Republicans brought Ziad Jawadi (COL ’15),

Brandon Rosty (COL ’15) and Katie Bolas (COL ’15) as their contenders.

The clubs debate face-to-face once per semester, although this was the first time that Hoyas for Liberty was included in the event. Reilly Poppert (SFS ’15), Michael Mouch (SFS ’15) and Luke Young (MSB ’15) represented the Libertarian student group.

The debaters for Hoyas for Liberty opposed Obama’s re-election, although they generally sided with the Democrats on most issues. Young opened the debate by clarifying what Hoyas for Liberty stands for.

“When we get to campus, there [are] a lot of us at Georgetown who are interested in politics, and it can be really tempting to pigeonhole ourselves into Republicans or Democrats,” he said. “Hoyas for Liberty formulate our own policies based on rea-

son, and we represent critical judgment on the issues.”

The debaters addressed a range of issues, including the Occupy Wall Street movement, sexual harassment charges facing GOP candidate Herman Cain and the contentious individual mandate of the new healthcare bill.

Audience participation began with a few outbursts from attendees. Moderator E.J. Dionne, a government professor and political columnist for The Washington Post, soon allowed onlookers to interrupt with questions.

“I was surprised by how energetic the audience was,” Zewail said after the debate. “At presidential debates the audience is silent, but the crowd involvement definitely added an interesting element to the debate.”

NEWS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

THE HOYA

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Alum’s GU Education Propels Air Force Career SARAH PATRICK Special to The Hoya

Undersecretary of the Air Force Erin Conaton (SFS ’92) highlighted the effects of the fiscal constraints and upcoming budget negotiations on national security and the U.S. Air Force Thursday morning.

The discussion, held by the Center for Peace and Security Studies in the Mortara Center, emphasized the uncertainty with which Americans view the national budgetary situation.

Because of the cuts from the Budget Control Act of 2011, the Air Force has begun examining and developing plans for its budget under three main categories: fore-structure, modernization and readiness.

Conaton also addressed the debate over how much funding the military should receive.

During the Q-and-A session of the discussion, topics ranged from cyber warfare and security to the lessons learned

from the Libyan civil war and how the budget cuts will affect the use of technology in the military.

Much of Conaton’s career success can be attributed to the education, both in and out of the classroom, that she received as an undergraduate at Georgetown.

“I think Georgetown’s broad-ranging diplomatic and security training has ended up giving me great skills not only on the Hill, but now at the Pentagon,” she said. “I think it’s really not only the great education but the opportunities for student leadership here that help set you up for the future.”

During her time on the Hilltop, Conaton served as chair of both the International Relations Club and the International Relations Association.

Conaton is now responsible for the affairs of the Department of the Air Force, which include organizing, training and equipping all personnel and overseeing the Air Force’s annual budget.

National Jesuit Conference Finds Home at Georgetown ANNIE CHEN

Special to The Hoya

Members of Jesuit institutions nationwide will gather for a weekend of learning, prayer, networking and legislative advocacy at the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice 2011 tomorrow.

The program is held every November to commemorate six Jesuit priests who were murdered in El Salvador for their work advocating on behalf of the poor.

This will be the second year the conference heads to the Hilltop, after being held the 12 years previous at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. “We want to take advantage of the location of Georgetown. Being [in] D.C. allows our participants to engage in direct advocacy with Congress and other policymakers,” Christopher Kerr, executive director of the Ignatian Solidarity Network, said.

The national planning committee for the Teach-In consisted of about 50 people from Jesuit institutions across the country. The group included David Monaco, Roman Catholic program director of Georgetown’s Campus Ministry.

University engagement with the conference has expanded under Monaco’s direction.

“Prior to my arrival at Georgetown, our involvement was limited to one trip with members of the GU Knights of Columbus and a staff person from Campus Ministry and another trip led by [the] Georgetown Solidarity Committee,” he said. “Our combined trips were excellent learning trips that brought together diverse groups.”

The weekend’s theme is “The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It,” which is taken from a speech given by former Jesuit Superior General Fr. Peter-Hans Kol-

venbach, S.J, according to Kerr.

“This weekend’s main objective is to inform high school and college students on the key issues of their time and [to construct] a broader network of activists,” Kerr said.

Nearly 1,100 individuals from more than 60 institutions, including 26 Jesuit universities, 20 Jesuit high schools and many Jesuit parishes, are registered to attend the weekend events. About 30 Georgetown students plan to take part.

“We won’t just be attending the conference, but we’ll also have time to come back to our own group afterward and talk about what we learned,” Jordan Denari (SFS ’13) said.

“This is a group of people who I know I can go back to share my thoughts with, because they share the same passion to work for social justice.”

Student who have attended the TeachIn said they left the conference with a deeper understanding of the connections between social justice, the Catholic faith and their studies.

“This will be my fourth year attending the Teach-In,” Denari said. “I think it does a good job at re-energizing the participants’ passion for certain global issues. It allows those of us who are studying these social justice issues to reflect on what we’re doing and put it into perspective and recommit to our studies and work.”

Kieran Halloran (SFS ’14), a student who also attended last year’s Teach-In, said that the conference gave him a chance to better understand his faith.

“It brought the values of social justice closer to my faith,” he said. “Especially when so often Georgetown students get so caught in their studies, this is a great way to widen the scope and understanding toward global issues.”

RANGILA FLASH MOB FINDS DINING HALL STAGE

SARI FRANKEL/THE HOYA

Panellists, including Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng (center), led a discussion about human rights in China, including Georgetown’s relationship with the country and the implications of the denial of these rights for the future.

Panel Analyzes Rights in China LILY WESTERGAARD Special to The Hoya

Panelists, including Chinese pro-democracy dissident Wei Jingsheng, discussed the country’s human rights record and the implications of the university’s relationship with Chinese governmental organizations Wednesday night.

The panel, which took place in McShain Lounge, was cosponsored by the International Relations Club, the Lecture Fund and the Georgetown University Students Association. GUSA is spearheading an initiative for Georgetown to engage in dialogue with Chinese human rights activists and the Chinese government.

The event included Huang Ciping, a human rights activist who translated for Wei, as well as Amnesty International Director of Advocacy T. Kumar and Director of Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs and associate professor Tom Banchoff.

Fr. Steven Fields, S.J., monitored the spirited discussion.

Wei, who spent 18 years in Chinese prisons before being exiled to

the United States, voiced criticism of his home country’s approach to human rights.

“In China, there is only one political party — the Communist Party — and no one can compete,” he said.

“With only one party, human rights cannot be well respected,” he said.

Kumar added that half a million people are currently detained by the Chinese government, some for up to 40 years. Religious minorities are especially targeted, according to Kumar.

“No religion is allowed. Only the state-sponsored religion is accepted,” he said.

The most controversial topic of the evening was the Chinese government’s denial of a visa to Georgetown professor James Millward related to his contribution to a book concerning a Muslim area in China.

Wei, Kumar and Huang criticized Georgetown’s lack of action on behalf of professor Millward.

“You do not have to be champions, but you must not do damage,” Kumar said. “Georgetown has damaged its own reputation.”

Banchoff defended Georgetown’s handling of the situation

and relationship with Chinese governmental organizations, such as the State Administration of Religious Affairs.

“Principles are important, but we live in a complex world,” he said.

“We shouldn’t put the relationship [between Georgetown and China] at stake for one scholar’s visa.”

Student opinions were somewhat divided about Chinese-U.S. relations. One student demanded to know what Wei had done for the Chinese people, aside from making speeches.

“You have mentioned that I have often criticized the Chinese government,” Wei said. “That is what I have done for the Chinese people.”

Other students came away with warmer feelings toward Wei. “I thought he was hilarious,” Sophia Weng (MSB ’15) said. “He’s hoping for a change, and you can tell it through his words.”

The panel concluded on an optimistic note, when Wei was asked about the future of the regime in China.

“If they don’t reform, Chinese people will uprise,” Wei said. “The final conclusion is, China will change.”

SmarTrip Changes Baffle Riders TONIANN MANISCALCO Special to The Hoya

A change initiated earlier this month in the way Metro customers must manage their money on SmarTrip cards is causing confusion some riders.

According to The Washington Post, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority made changes to comply with the Internal Revenue Service’s 2006 decision to separate parking and public transit funds in SmarTrip accounts.

Before the system’s transformation, when users tapped their cards at Metro stations, the reader displayed the total dollar amount stored on the card. The figure included funds for paying parking fees at municipal parking facilities and fares on Metrorail and Metrobus.

Under the new system mandated by the IRS, users will store funds in separate “purses,” and card readers will only be able to display the contents of one purse at a time, creating the possibility that riders will be confused

MEAGAN KELLY/THE HOYA

SmarTrip cards now carry seperate balances for parking fees and fares on Metrorail and Metrobuses after being mandated to do so by the IRS. about the total value on their cards.

To find out how much remains on their cards, riders must tap them against a fare machine, fare box, fare gate or a parking garage exit.

These changes may make

things more difficult for Metro patrons, like Leonor Dominguez (MSB ’15).

“People use the metro because they want to travel quickly, and this new system will just complicate things for riders,” she said.

DPS BLOTTER WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2, 2011 Theft, Darnall Hall, 6 p.m.

A student reported that she had locked her bicycle to the bike rack. When she returned several hours later, she found her bike missing. There are no suspects or witnesses.

Theft, McDonough Arena, 5:08 p.m.

A student reported that her iPad was stolen out of her unsecured locker while she was at basketball practice. There are no suspects or witnesses.

HANSKY SANTOS/THE HOYA

Dancers from “The Rangila Files: Mystery at Gaston” surprised diners at O’Donovan Hall Wednesday evening with a spontaneous performance advertising their upcoming shows.

THURSDAY, NOV. 3, 2011 Alcohol Violation, Reynolds Hall, 3:35 a.m.

DPS officers responded to a call for a suspicious odor. Officers determined that the occupants were smoking inside the room and alcoholic beverages were being consumed by underage students. The case has been referred to student conduct.

FRIDAY, NOV. 4, 2011 Drug Violation, LXR Hall, 2:51 a.m.

While responding to a drug violation complaint, suspected marijuana and drug paraphernalia were located. DPS confiscated the drugs and paraphernalia. The case has been referred to student conduct.

Theft, Pre-Clinical Science Building, 2:44 p.m.

A staff member reported that she accidentally left her wallet unattended. When she returned to retrieve her wallet, it was missing.

There are no suspects or witnesses and no other leads. The case is closed.

Drug Violation, LXR Hall, 3:30 a.m.

DPS officers responded to a drug complaint. Suspected marijuana and drug paraphernalia were collected by DPS officers. The case has been referred to student conduct.

SATURDAY, NOV. 5, 2011 Alcohol Violation, 37th and O Streets, 11:41 a.m.

While on patrol, a DPS officer made contact with an underage student who was in possession of alcoholic beverages. The student was identified, and the case has been referred to student conduct.

Drug Violation, LXR Hall, 7:41 a.m.

While conducting a drug violation investigation, DPS officers made contact with occupants of a residence who were found to be in possession of drugs and paraphernalia. The items were confiscated and submitted as evidence. The case has been forwarded to student conduct.

SUNDAY, NOV. 6, 2011 Theft, O’Donovan Hall, 1 p.m.

A student reported that he locked his bicycle to the bike rack. When he returned to the listed location, he found his bike missing. There are no suspects or witnesses.

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Students Find Academic Adventures Beyond the Core SARAH PATRICK Special to The Hoya

Students rummaging through the course listings to assemble the perfect pre-registration schedule for the spring could find themselves enrolling in the school of rock or studying Bella and Edward’s fated love.

RELIGION IN THE LIMELIGHT Next semester, some theology electives are branching out into lesscharted territory.

“Mormonism: A New World Religion,” taught by Carl Cranney for the first time next semester, examines the formation of religions using the context of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latterday Saints.

Cranney emphasized the importance of studying Mormonism because of its recent emergence and growing popularity. According to Cranney, the religion is becoming a focal point in the media as the success of the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” and Mormon presidential candidates become more prevalent.

“Mormonism is becoming more and more prominent, and it’s just something that more people ought to be informed of, especially because polls seem to indicate … that the likely Republican candidate for president next year will be Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon,” he said.

Elyssa Skeirik (SFS ’15) echoed Cranney’s sentiments.

“Mormonism is often neglected as a faith,” she said. “Many people see it as a kind of fascination, instead of a legitimate religion, because of sensationalist misconceptions that are fostered by negative depictions, such as in ‘South Park’ and ‘Big Love.’”

However, another class intends to study exactly that — pop culture’s de-

piction of the Bible.

“The Bible Goes to Hollywood,” a new Catholic Studies course, examines the importance of the historical role of the Bible and Catholic imagination through biblical films in popular culture. The class, taught by adjunct professor Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, focuses on the comparison of Biblical passages and film analysis.

Apostolos-Cappadona plans to draw from her background in iconography to emphasize how paintings by Michelangelo and Rembrandt influence the way we understand what’s authentic in a biblical movie.

“Those illustrations have either been reproductions or copies of great works of art, and somehow, that’s how we think Jesus should look,” she said.

The class will differ from other courses taught through the film medium, according to Apostolos-Cappadona, because it will follow the order of biblical scriptures instead of the chronology of the movies.

WE’LL DO IT LIVE Spring’s course offerings also include a handful of classes that immerse students in performing arts experiences not traditionally offered in the academic arena.

“Guild of Bands,” which is in its fourth semester as a one-credit performance course, provides previously established campus bands the opportunity to compose, rehearse and perform their own music under the guidance of adjunct associate professor Joseph McCarthy.

Created as an alternative to the more formal musical ensembles, the course helps assuage student musicians’ worries of where and when they can perform.

“It is a great opportunity for nonclassical musicians to focus on their

unique tastes and styles,” music major Jackson Sinnenberg (COL ’15) said.

McCarthy listens to the groups perform every Wednesday, giving them constructive criticism on the content of the music and their performing style. Each group is expected to rehearse throughout the week, and many also do performances outside the classroom. McCarthy believes the less-formal course set-up allows students to improve faster.

“The students can set parameters for the structure of how things will happen, so they can get to a goal a little quicker,” he said.

With another nod to the stage, the class “Comedy” will explore the importance of humor in everyday life and examines the ethics, neurobiology, psychology and politics behind the art form.

The first session, taught by Mame Hunt in Spring 2010, drew 40 students from a variety of majors and departments. Because of this success, the theatre and performance studies department plans to offer the course every other year in the future.

Hunt cited her work with previous playwrights as her motivation to develop the class.

“I’ve often been in the position of shaping a moment for a laugh, but I never knew how comedy actually worked,” she said. “I always wanted to teach it, but couldn’t figure out how to arrange it so it made academic and pedagogical sense.”

Hunt has expanded her curriculum this year to include a section on the “shadow side” of comedy, that which is used to exert power through bullying and teasing. She also plans to discuss the neurobiology of laughter.

While centered on class discussions, the course also features trips to

stand-up comedy clubs and comedic plays.

Alex Watson (COL ’15) expressed interest in the course because of the numerous functions of comedy in society.

“Comedy plays an important role in everyday life,” he wrote in an email. “People use it as a way to bring light to a tough subject, and it spans multiple disciplines.”

A NEW TAKE ON OLD SUBJECTS Some upcoming classes will also focus on subjects from the past, both recent and colonial.

“Food and the French Empire,” offered through the French department, will explore the production, consumption and circulation of foodstuffs and cuisine in the country’s colonial empire.

Using old recipe books and historical articles, the course will focus on specific brands and follow how they were advertised and consumed in France’s history.

Topics discussed will include the political stigma associated with Halal food, which is prepared according to Islamic law, as well as the racial and historical aspects of advertising, such as the colonial black soldier used to sell Banania, a popular French chocolate drink.

“My hope is that … we can change the ways that [people] think about food by making them aware of the interactions between food, power and politics,” said associate professor Sylvie Durmelat, who will teach the course. “Hopefully, it will make us more active consumers of food but also readers of texts about food in our everyday life.”

Durmelat was inspired to create the course because of her interests in both food and francophone studies. The class will also be included in the food studies cluster, which is cur-

rently being developed.

The class “Young Adult Fiction and Film” will even allow students to rewind time to take a look at the books of their youth. The course, which focuses on literature for teenagers, is itself 30 years old as of this coming semester.

Students in the class analyze power dimensions, popular culture and marketing through novels geared toward 12 to 15-year-olds, including the book “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” “The Hunger Games” and excerpts from the “Twilight” series.

“We look at the ways in which certain kinds of books invite youngsters to resist cultural norms, think for themselves and become independent readers,” Fisher said.

The curriculum also features film screenings that instigate discussion about how directors alter the plot of books for visual and perspective purposes.

The course work is not the task of children, however, according to Delia Santos (SFS ’12), who previously took the class sophomore year.

“Everything about [the course] was amazing, but I would caution my friend that it is a lot of work,” she wrote in an email. “People should be warned that it will not be an easy ride if that’s what they are hoping to do by taking the course.”

Although not cross-listed with the minor in education, justice and inquiry, the class helps potential teachers develop a bibliography for lessons, choose novels for their students and determine how to better read and analyze books that have become childhood favorites.

“It’s useful for people who are going to be teachers, parents and citizens of the world,” Fisher said.

“It’s the way we socialize the next generation.”

Diversity Up for Applicant Pool APPLICATIONS, from A1 Princeton, with an average class size of 1,275, saw 3,547 applications. According to Harvard University Director of Admissions Marilyn McGrath, the college will not release its early admissions data until next week.

For the early action applicants, the acceptance rate hovers between 17 and 20 percent, typically filling about 17 percent of the freshman class. Deacon said that the university tries to ensure that the same number of early action students enroll at Georgetown each year because of restrictions in on-campus space.

Due to the rise in applications and the jump in yield rates that Georgetown saw last spring, the admission rate of early applicants will see a significant decrease.

According to Deacon, fewer than 17 percent of applicants were admitted from the Class of 2015 early pool, totaling about 1,122 acceptances.

This year, Georgetown will likely have to lower the anticipated acceptance rate to about 15 percent, admitting about 1,012 students.

Deacon added that the academic

caliber of prospective students has remained steady through each admissions cycle. Although the number of applications jumped, the academic record of this year’s round of early applicants has a combined SAT Critical Reading and Math average of 1360, a number similar to last year’s.

The fact that the quality of the applicant pool held steady even as the size of the pool increased means that more highly qualified applicants are considering Georgetown as a top choice, he said.

“Georgetown is becoming more of a brand to [high] schools who don’t know us as well,” Deacon said.

The improved quantity and quality of these applicants will force the admissions office to be more selective in admitting students.

The diversity of the applicant pool jumped along with its overall size, with the number of Latino and Asian-American applicants increasing by 9 percent and 8 percent to 703 and 845, respectively. The number of prospective international students rose by about 12 percent, from 417 to 468 applicants.

Deacon said that the variety of prospective students in this season’s data shows that the university is succeeding in its goal to diversify its applicant pool.

“The early applicant pool has been traditionally skewed to white students from upper-income backgrounds and prep schools,” Deacon said. “But this year shows how Georgetown continues to follow the trends of the country [in increasing early-action applications from minority students].”

New York continued its tradition of sending the greatest number of early applications, with 632. Californians took the second spot by mailing in 583 applications, a 10 percent increase from the number for the Class of 2015.

Deacon added that those requesting financial aid have applied in greater numbers this fall, increasing applications from 62 to 68 percent. “[We] want and plan to hold on to a need-blind financial aid policy,” he said. “This is more of a challenge for us to meet the greater need, but these are great challenges to have.”

Greig Campaign Regrets Charges GREIG, from A1

FILE PHOTO: MEAGAN KELLY/THE HOYA

Following the lead of his predecessor Calen Angert (MSB ’11), GUSA President Mike Meaney will travel to Russia with student body presidents from other American universities.

Meaney to Visit Russian Duma, Student Leaders SAM RODMAN

Special to The Hoya

Georgetown University Student Association President Mike Meaney (SFS ’12) will head to Russia next week as part of a program intended to bolster U.S.-Russia relations.

On the trip, Meaney and the other student body presidents selected for the Kremlin Fellows Program will meet with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Duma as well as with Russian youth leaders, who will likely visit the United States as part of a similar program in the near future.

Meaney was selected as one of 15 student body presidents to take part in the week-long program, which is sponsored by the Open World Leadership Center. The group includes representatives from Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, Duke, University of Arizona and Oklahoma State University.

Meaney said he hopes the trip will help solidify the university’s role as an institution

steeped in international relations.

“It further enhances Georgetown’s reputation as a student body that is actively engaged and playing a substantive role in a way that many other university student bodies are able to do,” he said.

Upon returning from Russia, Meaney will meet with University President John J. DeGioia and Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies Angela Stent to discuss his experiences.

Last year, then-GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) participated in the program.

Upon his return, he held an event for students featuring Ilya Yashin, the leader of the Moscow branch of the People’s Freedom Party.

Meaney hopes to work with the university to hold a similar forum for students on the future of Russian-American relations.

“Hopefully what this event can accomplish is to continue to establish Georgetown as a place where all types of dialogue that are critical to global affairs take place,” he said.

request had nothing to do with Evans’ campaign. As a former writer of the “Loose Lips” column for the Washington City Paper, Cummins said that it is normal for him to look up information about political candidates for his own purposes.

But the forms caused a scandal when Cummins discovered that the campaign had mistakenly attached a document in which a donor was referred to as “homosexual” and another as “super-rich.”

According to Greig’s campaign chair, Ken Archer, this is why the campaign thought that Cummins had been hired by Evans.

“It seemed like a reasonable conclusion to come to that he had been paid,” Archer said. “I think we jumped to that conclusion, but we knew that there had been some other explanation [as to why the reports came out].”

Cummins criticized the campaign for being so quick to accuse him of working for Evans. “[Greig] made a wild leap there that has no basis,” he said. “It appears to me that she just wasn’t ready for politics.”

Though Cummins has done some opposition research for other political campaigns during his time as a private investigator, he said he would never have exhibited the behavior that Greig described in her statement, including following the subject of an investigation.

“Even if I was working on a cam-

paign, I wouldn’t do anything like that,” he said. “That’s not research, that’s intimidation. … I doubt that any candidates would do something like that.”

Though Evans declined to comment on the issue, a political consultant for Evans, Tom Lindenfeld, agreed that the allegations were too strange to be true.

“Their theory … is a fantasy,” Lindenfeld said. “[The Greig campaign] is reading detective novels.”

Lindenfeld added that he knew nothing about the unwanted phone calls to Greig’s home or where they could have originated.

Archer expressed regret that the issue of the investigator had been brought up.

“Talking about the person following [Greig], I probably overshot the runway on that one,” he said. “It happened at a very intense point in the campaign.”

But he stressed that the demise of the campaign should not detract from the message Greig was trying to convey.

“I’m disappointed in myself in creating this distraction,” he said. “Jack Evans will now run [this] election uncontested.”

“Evans is not an agent of change [in D.C. politics],” he added.

According to Archer, Greig had hoped to shake things up in the D.C. Council but faced resistance from the D.C. Democratic Party. “[Greig] wanted to have a campaign of ideas, but she got frozen

out,” Archer said. “D.C. Democrats have been especially guilty of being an old boys’ and [old] ladies’ club [in recent years].”

Archer said that the “old boys club” nature of D.C. politics prevents insurgent candidates from entering the arena.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to get support to good people who are not career politicians early in the process so they don’t make these missteps and so they are … prepared for the scrutiny of the process,” he said.

ANC 2E student representative Jake Sticka (COL ’13) said that he is not surprised the Greig campaign had a hard time getting off the ground.

“It is very difficult to run a campaign, especially against a 20-year incumbent,” Sticka said.

Craig Cassey (COL ’15), the on-campus captain for Greig’s campaign, said that the news of Greig’s decision came as a surprise.

“All the students I’ve talked to have expressed a lot of sadness,” he said. “Not that they feel she let them down, but they’re very hopeful for a pro-student candidate. They still thought that even after everything that occurred, she still had a lot of potential to win.”

Cassey added that he hopes another candidate will attempt to be a voice for students.

“There’s still time for a candidate who’s supportive of students to step up, so we’ll just have to wait and see,” Cassey said.

NEWS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

THE HOYA

A7

A Lasting Link For Alumni ALUMNI, from A1

MICHELLE CASSIDY/THE HOYA

Dozens of storefronts stand empty at the Shops at Georgetown Park, though the building’s realtors have not released information about new tenants.

Target, Bloomingdale’s Rumors Unconfirmed MALL, from A1 manager at Fornash Designs, the stores have no say in the matter.

“If you had a lease and it’s up, they’re not renewing it,” she said.

“It’s a shame,” Caltagirone said. “I know people who have been here 10 years and were booted out.”

Mutchler said that she is not worried about her store, which sells women’s accessories and jewelry, but she does have concerns about some of the smaller stores.

“We’re not affected because we have a wholesale business.

Really what it’s affecting is the mom-and-pop stores — the deli downstairs and the little cafes,”

she said.

The uncertainty has been difficult for other stores, such as Total Party, however. Caltagirone fears what the changes could mean for its customer base — Georgetown students and local residents.

“It’s been really difficult, because we order two seasons in advance,” he said. “We are a staple in Georgetown. We’re the only big costume shop in D.C.” In addition to the stores that have already closed or relocated, some remaining shops, including Comfort One Shoes and Niccolo, are holding liquidation sales to prepare for their closings. Many stores have already begun looking for new spaces in Georgetown and Dupont Circle.

“I would like to stay in Georgetown, but the rents are extremely high,” Caltagirone said. “Unless we do massive volumes, we cannot cover our expenses.”

Renovation plans have not been confirmed by Vornado.

Wendi Kopsick, spokeswoman for Vornado, declined to comment.

While the plans for the mall are uncertain, some shop owners mentioned a rumor that Target might lease the empty space.

Molly Snyder, manager of communications for Target, said that she could not confirm whether the chain is coming to Georgetown.

“Target typically announces its real estate plans for new sites a year before a store is set to open.

We don’t have any news to share about that particular location,” she said in an email.

Bloomingdale’s, another rumored contender for space in the mall, also declined to comment on whether the department store was considering opening a branch in the neighborhood.

“We never discuss where we may or may not be looking for store locations,” Bloomingdale’s Operating Vice President for National Media Relations Marissa Vitagliano wrote in an email.

“When we have an announcement to make, we [will] make [it] then.”

Hoya Staff Writer Mariah Byrne contributed to this report.

Georgetown. Because her mother worked as the Alumni Association’s secretary and later an editorial assistant, Connolly soon became a favorite of former Director of Financial Affairs Ruth Ketterman.

“When we were old enough, Ruth would bring my brother and sisters to work with her on school holidays and breaks to help out with stuffing and labeling envelopes for association mailings, opening the Annual Fund checks and running errands on campus. Through high school, I spent many school breaks and summers as a student worker-in-training at the Alumni House,” she said.

Connolly’s experience reflects the value the Alumni Office and Board of Governors holds for student input.

“The fundamental goal of the Board of Governors is to make connections — connections between alumni, the administration and students,” student governor Shuo Yan Tan (SFS ’12) said.

Appointed by the Georgetown Undergraduate Student Association, Tan and his 12 fellow student colleagues are considered “working governors” because they are not granted a vote within the board’s general assembly but are able to vote within the subcommittees.

In addition to the student governors, 42 alumni governors are elected to serve three-year terms. The rest of the greater board is comprised of senators — former governors who have reached their twoterm limit but remain involved with the Alumni Association.

According to the Board of Governors Statement of Responsibility, the body’s main goal is to protect and preserve Hilltop traditions and encourage support for the university. The guidelines do not shy away from strongly encouraging financial donations from governors.

“Governors have a responsibility to support Georgetown, both with their financial support and in their local communities. Governors have the responsibility to participate in the annual funds each year and are often asked to provide financial support for other initiatives of the alumni association,” the document reads.

Reynolds believes the organization is the best outlet for alumni to stay tied to Georgetown.

“I encourage you to connect with each other, give back to the university and current students and take advantage of the opportunities Georgetown continues to offer,” he said in his letter.

And according to Tan, giving back is what it’s all about.

“I always believe that the student voice is very valuable for balancing out other opinions and providing a different, informed perspective on how certain university policies can affect students,” he said.

But for Tan, his role comes down to working with the community of Georgetown past and present.

“If the role of alumni is to remember, then the job of us students is to remind them,” he said.

Neighbors Express Ongoing Noise Grievances in ANC Report BRADEN MCDONALD Hoya Staff Writer

According to an Advisory Neighborhood Commission report, neighbors say that student behavior problems persist despite the university’s assurance that there were minimal disturbances last weekend.

The ANC’s report, which was released Tuesday, suggested that student rowdiness remains an acute problem in both Georgetown and Burleith.

This conflicts with data from the recent second edition of Rocky’s Report, a weekly public safety update written

by Vice President of University Safety Rocco Del Monaco and distributed to neighbors. The update indicated that student-caused disturbances were minimal on the weekend of Nov. 3-5.

Del Monaco wrote that the Metropolitan Police Department has confirmed a decline in noise violations

INDEX

in West Georgetown and Burleith in recent months and that five of six 911 calls last weekend for noise complaints were not linked to Georgetown students.

The release stated that the presence of several university-funded MPD officers, who patrol the area on weekend nights, is partly responsible for a reduction in student noise.

According to Del Monaco, the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program responded to the one noise complaint linked to students and broke up a party of about 20 to 30 students on Winfield Lane Saturday night. In addition, an active SNAP patrol shut down a noisy party on S Street Saturday night.

Despite the university’s efforts to reduce student noise violations and rowdiness on weekend nights, the authors of the ANC report expressed doubt about the university’s ability to

CLASSIFIEDS

MISCELLANEOUS

live up to its promises to reduce student noise in anticipation of the D.C. Zoning Commission hearing Nov. 17.

In testimony attached to the statement, ANC district 2E commissioner Ed Solomon wrote that he is skeptical of the university’s pledge to reduce student noise because of the frequency of these incidents.

“Based on extensive past experience over the years as well as recent experience, neither my neighbors nor I believe that the university can or will keep things quiet over the long run. The Burleith community and I have heard rosy predictions about this before from the university, and it never has worked,” he wrote.

ANC2E commissioner Ron Lewis echoed Solomon’s sentiments in the statement.

“The loud and disruptive late-night student behavior has continued this

fall at the same objectionable levels as in the past,” he wrote. “I have seen no evidence that GU’s additional …

MPD officers are active or effective in addressing this noise in the area I represent.”

Solomon wrote that some of his constituents in Burleith considered moving out of the neighborhood because of student-related disturbances.

“I am often out observing late at night, and I am constantly in touch with members of the Burleith community. My neighbors and I have experienced and we continue to experience loud and disruptive objectionable conduct from GU students in and around student group houses and throughout our community,” he wrote. “These conditions continue despite GU’s new initiatives including any increase in reimbursable MPD or increased SNAP presence.”

ANC Commissioner Jake Sticka

(COL ’13), whose constituency includes mostly Georgetown students, said Del Monaco’s most recent report suggests that students are not responsible for much of the rowdiness in the area.

“It’s really important for people to be aware that not everything negative that’s happening is [caused by] a student,” he said.

While Sticka said that the university is acting in good faith in releasing the report, he acknowledged that it may be slow to change neighborhood opinions. “[Georgetown is] trying to let the community know what’s happening on the weekends. It’s an honest depiction. Whether the community is going to take that seriously and accept that as the reality of what’s happening remains to be seen,” he said.

MPD could not be reached for comment.

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Applications for Magis Row Living and Learning Communities were due Sunday. Check out the video of current residents reflecting on their experiences and programming so far this semester at thehoya.com.

A8

SPORTS

THE HOYA

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Clark, Hoyas Welcome Tigers to Verizon Center MEN’S BASKETBALL, from A10 and reacting. Sure, we don’t run-andgun, which is what everyone wants to see because people pay top dollar to see a run-and-gun show. But we’re going to take our time and pick and choose.”

To get the season off to a winning start, Georgetown will have to get past Savannah State. An independent until this season, the Tigers are now members of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.

Despite a 12-18 record last season and zero combined freshmen and seniors, the Tigers will benefit from their experience and that of the team’s two junior college transfers.

Savannah State closed very well last season, winning its last five games, but that success came largely on the back of then-senior Jovonni Shuler, who averaged 18.1 points and 5.1 boards per game.

Junior guard Preston Blackmon and junior forward Joshua Montgomery, who averaged 12.3 and 10.1 points per game, respectively, will

have to pick up some of Shuler’s slack. Savannah State split its two exhibition games but defeated rival Armstrong Atlantic on the back of a double-double by redshirt junior forward Rashad Hassan.

In the other game, a loss to Division II Benedict, sophomore forward Jyles Smith turned in a 14-point, 10-rebound and four-block performance. In other words, the Tigers will have a lot of options to test the Blue and Gray defense.

Although the players, coaches and fans know that Georgetown basketball is about more than a November game against a MEAC team, they are taking things one day at a time.

“We want to improve. We want to get better. We want to be better tomorrow than we are today. Because of the conference we are in, if you step back and start thinking about the big picture it can be daunting,” Thompson said. “If you just put your head down and go to that gym and work hard and grow, things will take care of themselves.”

FILE PHOTO: WEB LESLIE/THE HOYA

Senior guard Jason Clark (above) and sophomore forward Nate Lubick are the two returning starters from last year’s team.

FOOTBALL

COMMENTARY

Georgetown Plays David to Lehigh’s Goliath UCF, PSU FOOTBALL, from A10 Specifically, the secondary will be crucial in slowing down Lehigh, because, despite dominating teams on the ground, the Hoyas have let their opponents to earn some big numbers through the air.

The Hoyas will again count

on special teams to step up this week. Senior kicker Brett Weiss has performed superbly this season and was named Patriot League special teams player of the week for the third time this year.

Georgetown’s last win against Lehigh came in 1925, and with the power of the Mountain

Hawks’ offense, the Hoyas are up against more than just history. But Georgetown has spent an entire season proving its doubters wrong, and the team knows that the success or failure of its ultimate goal will be determined in 60 minutes this Saturday.

“Their head coach, Andy

Coen, might have struggled at the beginning of his tenure, but over the last two years they have had the most consistent team in the Patriot League,” Kelly said.

“We know we are in for a battle on Saturday.”

Kickoff is at 12:30 p.m. at Goodman Stadium in Bethlehem, Pa.

WOMEN’S SOCCER

FILE PHOTO: CHRIS BIEN/THE HOYA

Record-Breaking Season Not Enough for GU really stunned pretty much everybody — not just players, but coaches, administrators, people in the soccer community. … They’re all as surprised as we are that we didn’t get in.”

While the NCAA tournament committee is not permitted to officially comment on the rationale of selection process, among the possible explanations is that this year’s choices were less centered on the Rating Percentage Index, seeing as Georgetown’s RPI of 42 is traditionally good enough for qualification. However, seven teams were selected with an RPI worse than 42.

Nolan emphasized that the decision would not define the Hoyas’ season.

“I told the girls we can’t allow the subjectivity of ten people in a room to determine or define if our season was a success or not,” Nolan said.

Indeed, in hindsight it would be difficult to characterize Georgetown’s season as anything but a triumph, as the team battled adversity to make history in more ways than one.

“We equaled a program record for number of wins on the season, we set a record for the best regular-season record, we got back to the Big East semifinal for only the second time in the program history, we scored [a program best of] 53 goals and we knocked off the defending national champions on their home field,” Nolan said. “We did all of this with a target on our back, and we did all of this overcoming a lot of significant injuries which really stretched us.”

From the late days of August to the first week of November, the Hoyas’ success hinged largely upon the skill, vision and leadership of its six graduating members.

Among the group of seniors

is goalkeeper Liz Hanna, who battled past injury to stand strong as the last line of defense.

Centerback Gabby Miller, a fouryear starter, continued to be a “model of consistency” for the Blue and Gray while serving as field general from the defense despite injuries of her own.

Midfielder Kelly D’Ambrisi has been called perhaps the program’s greatest success story by her coach, entering the program as a virtual walkon and developing into one of the top midfielders in the conference, being selected to the all-Big East first team in 2010 and 2011. Explosive forward Samantha Baker, notorious for her dangerously long throw-ins and set-piece delivery, was also named to the all-conference third team this season.

Forward Camille Trujillo is the program’s record-holder in career and single-season goals scored, and she received all-conference first team hon-

Matt Emch

Riding the Pine

T

Redshirt senior Ingrid Wells saw her college career end surprisingly, but she is training with the U.S. national team in Phoenix, Ariz.

WOMEN’S SOCCER, from A10

Scandals Shake Faith in Sports

ors after dominating Big East defenders to the tune of 11 goals in her last 10 games.

Finally, Ingrid Wells, who is currently training with the United States national team in Phoenix, Ariz., is the Blue and Gray’s career points leader and the first Hoya with more than 100 points to her name. The small but fierce playmaker led Georgetown with 30 points this season, and is the two-time Big East midfielder of the year.

“It’s disappointing for the seniors in particular, because coming off the field against West Virginia we didn’t know that it was the last time that those kids would play together,” Nolan said. “The most disappointing thing is that the seniors never got a chance to say goodbye. ... But eventually they’ll sit back and look over the whole body of work for the four years that they’ve been here and realize, wow what a great run it was for those kids.”

he list of scandals in college sports has been growing at a sickening rate in recent years, both in number and magnitude. It started a few years ago with USC and the Reggie Bush saga. Then, schools like Ohio State, Boise State, Miami (Fla.), Memphis, Michigan, North Carolina and Oklahoma drew the ire of the NCAA as well. That list isn’t exhaustive, but nothing has been more disturbing than what has unfolded in the last 48 hours with Penn State and the University of Central Florida.

It started when news of a systemic cover-up leaked from Happy Valley. People cringed because college athletics had never seen a scandal of such magnitude. It is alleged that this cover-up enabled Jerry Sandusky, a coach at Penn State from 1969 to 1999, to continue sexually assaulting young boys after administrators and coaches found out about his indiscretions in 2002 but decided to look the other way.

He remained an integral part of the university and was seen there last week — even after the grand jury had filed its charges against him. This scandal has resulted in the firing of Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in NCAA football history. Graham Spanier, Penn State’s president, has also followed him to the unemployment line.

Please don’t feel sorry for JoePa. If you do, read all 23 pages of the grand jury report and re-examine your values. Sure, he is in the clear legally, but his moral actions are reproachable. How could he, or another staffer, not take a report of a 10-year-old boy being raped in Penn State’s locker room to the police?

I don’t even want to think about the coaches’ motives in covering up for Sandusky.

But this is not about Joe Paterno or even Penn State. It’s about the moral compass between right and wrong when dealing with young men who will be forever scarred due to the heinous actions of one man and the subsequent inaction of many others.

Since the national media has been investigating the Penn State situation, the University of Central Florida’s NCAA violations have been swept under the rug. In what looks like the worst NCAA violations since Southern Methodist’s in the late 1980s, UCF’s Athletic Director Keith Tribble and football assistant David Kelly were forced to resign for involvement with runners for sports agents and giving cash payments and gifts to recruits.

The NCAA alleges that Ken Caldwell and Brandon Bender, recruiters for a professional sports agency, pushed six basketball recruits — including Michael Jordan’s sons, Marcus and Jeff — and five football recruits to enroll at UCF. Additionally, the NCAA claims that Caldwell and Bender paid tuition and fees for various basketball players, gave a laptop computer to a football recruit and covered transportation expenses for men’s basketball recruits.

This looks bad from all angles. While the violations themselves are standard in comparison to what we’ve come to expect from corrupt athletic departments, the fact that UCF is currently under probation for illegal phone calls to recruits amplifies this situation by tenfold. If they are hit with both failure to monitor and lack of institutional control by the NCAA, it’s not out of the question that either program could receive the death penalty.

Even though the Penn State scandal is in a universe of its own due to the fact that laws, not just NCAA rules, were broken, it is a microcosm of the problem that big-time college athletics breeds. Instead of being guided by a moral compass, many administrators in charge are guided by different incentives such as money or power. Paterno’s case is by far the most difficult to stomach. Instead of his career being celebrated for his unparalleled success, he will live with a stigma that will be forever emblematic of his and others’ inaction, which allowed a monster to roam free for over a decade.

Matt Emch is a sophomore in the College. RIDING THE PINE appears every Friday.

SPORTS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

THE HOYA

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

A9

VOLLEYBALL

Hoyas Play Host to Big East’s Best LEONARD OLSEN Hoya Staff Writer

FILE PHOTO: CHRIS BIEN/THE HOYA

Junior guard Sugar Rodgers was the Big East’s second-leading scorer last season and was named to the Wooden Award top-30 watch list.

Hoyas Aim to Start Off on Right Foot WOMEN’S BASKETBALL, from A10 Crawford, who join her in the starting lineup. Either senior guard Alexa Roche or senior forward Tommacina McBride will likely round out the starting five, and junior center Sydney Wilson is expected to play a bigger role than she has in the past.

“The players that we are expecting to step up this year need to begin stepping up with this game,” Williams-Flournoy said.

“It’s [Wilson’s] junior year, she’s healthy and I think that helps Sydney as far as her mindset.”

Georgetown’s Friday night opponent, Longwood, is a Division I Independent from Farmville, Va. The Lancers return four start-

ers from a team that finished the 2010-2011 campaign with a 7-23 record.

Longwood is led by senior forward Brittanni Billups, who led the team in both scoring and rebounding last year with 9.4 points and 6.7 boards per game.

She is joined in the lineup by three fellow returning starters: Senior guard Mina Jovanovic, junior forward Chelsea Coward and junior guard Erin Neal.

Longwood also returns three other players and welcomes three freshmen to the roster.

“Their four and their five are their two leading scorers,” Williams-Flournoy said. “They’re very long, lanky athletic post players that we have to be ready

to sit down and defend.”

Despite their struggles, the Lancers are likely to give the Hoyas several different looks under first-year Head Coach Bill Reinson. During Reinson’s reign as interim head coach last season, 10 different players appeared in the starting lineup for Longwood and 12 players averaged more than 10 minutes of playing time per contest.

Virtually every player who touches the floor is a scoring option for the Lancers, but without a go-to player that can take over a game like the Hoyas’ Rodgers, Longwood lacks the scoring punch to penetrate the Georgetown defense, which terrorized opponents last year.

The Blue and Gray will look to get out early against the likely overmatched Lancers, so it is possible that some of the younger players could make an appearance in the second half as Georgetown tries to shake off the rust of a long offseason. But talented as they are, the freshmen — Taylor Brown, Brittany Horne and Jasmine Jackson — likely will not see major floor time this season on a veteran-heavy squad.

“The freshmen won’t look like freshmen,” Williams-Flournoy said. “In all honesty, with such a veteran team, it’s almost time that they will have to sit back and wait their turn a little bit.

But I think they still will get playing time.”

Coming off a loss to South Florida last weekend, the Georgetown volleyball team (14-11, 6-6 Big East) faces two critical matchups in the final weekend of the regular season as they prepare to face No. 18 Cincinnati (20-8, 10-2 Big East) and Louisville (19-7, 11-1 Big East) at home.

“The bottom line is that we just didn’t take care of our responsibilities,” Head Coach Arlisa Williams said. “But our players are still riding high and feeling good, and [we’re] just looking at this past weekend as a blip on our radar.”

The Blue and Gray currently sit at seventh in the Big East standings, but with only eight teams making the Big East tournament and Georgetown tied with three other teams at 6-6 in the league, the Hoyas need to take one and possibly both of these games to earn a trip to the tournament in Milwaukee.

That certainly will be no easy task, as the Cardinals and the Bearcats boast the two best records in the league. Louisville is currently first with only one league loss, but Cincinnati is the only Big East team ranked in the nation’s top 25.

The Bearcats come into the match on fire. They have seven straight wins and haven’t lost a game since falling to Louisville on Oct. 14. Cincinnati also boasts a strong offense, and ranks in the top three in the league in hitting percentage, assists and kills.

Senior outside hitter Missy Harpenau and junior middle blocker Jordanne Scott lead Cincinnati. Harpenau leads the team with 347 kills and was named to last week’s Big East honor roll, while Scott comes in with 326 kills and a stellar .302 hitting percentage.

“Cincinnati is more of a gamer team, [and] they have a fast offense and can take care of the ball well,” Williams said.

“Harpenau is a skinny little thing, but she’s going to bring it with some heat, and Scott [is dangerous because she] can play any position across the front row.”

Louisville also relies on a powerful offense, but the Cardinals also limit opponents to a .170 hitting percentage — the third best in the Big East. They also enter the weekend with momentum, having defeated Syracuse and Marquette, two of the top teams in the league, last weekend.

The Cardinals boast the Big East’s best finisher in junior outside hitter Lola Arslanbekova, who has posted an incredible 458 kills with 4.98 kills per set, first in the league by a large margin. Sophomore outside hitter Emily Juhl serves as a fine complement to Arslanbekova, tallying 219 kills with a .281 hitting percentage.

“Arslanbekova will try to hit over [the] top of us and Juhl does some really good things for them [as well],” Williams said.

“Louisville is huge. They have lots of size and will try to overpower us.”

But despite the challenge that confronts them, Williams and her team are confident and ready to battle. On top of that, two of the teams’ senior leaders in libero and captain Tory Rezin and setter Ashley Malone will play with plenty of emotion in their final time taking the court at McDonough Arena.

“I think our team has played so well this year. We’ve played good volleyball and have battled back after overcoming obstacles,” Williams said. “We’re the underdogs here, and have absolutely nothing to lose by giving our all.”

Georgetown will square off against Cincinnati Friday at 12:30 p.m, and will take the court for Senior Day Sunday at 2 p.m. against Louisville.

COMMENTARY

Scandal Forever Tarnishes Penn State, Joe Paterno Corey Blaine

The Bleacher Seats

I

was 17 years old the night I slid a 1982 Penn State National Championship ring on my finger. It’s one of the vivid memories I have involving sports from my childhood, mostly because of how special it felt. Penn State stood as one of those special programs in college football. From JoePa to the Camelot feel of Happy Valley, Penn State had an aura that few college programs were able to replicate.

Recently, the specialness of that fall night has since been lost in the confusion and shame emanating out of State College. The details of the events that have taken place since 1994 (according to the findings of the grand jury) have not only left a massive black mark across the face of a once-proud football program, but have also man-

aged to shatter the cone of shelter that sports provides us from the dangers of the real world.

Before Jerry Sandusky became a household name, the magic of sports rested in its ability to keep the dangers of the real world out.

The atmosphere of college football is one distinct from the realities of everyday life. Fans inside Beaver Stadium and other stadiums across the country completely forget about their GPAs, their interviews the following week or the papers they haven’t written yet and just focus on the game. That magic, at least for the time being, has disappeared.

Even the scandals facing the sports world pale in comparison to the corruption of the real world.

Miami (Fla.), Ohio State and USC have all come under fire for various ways in which they have paid their student-athletes. At the time, the sports media called for resignations, declared the leaders of those teams unfit to supervise college stu-

dents and attacked the integrity of those involved in vicious ways.

Today, we’re faced with a real issue. This isn’t a situation where Joe Paterno knew his players were making a few bucks and chose to protect the bright futures of his young players. Rather, this is a situation where Paterno may have knowingly protected or ignored a child molester, or at the very least, had reason to believe his former defensive coordinator was engaging in inappropriate activity on campus.

Penn State football in this past week has suddenly reintroduced a new level of reality to sports that hasn’t been there seen since the Baylor basketball murder scandal and the Len Bias tragedy at Maryland.

In a way, this scandal may go down as our generation’s Len Bias moment. Before any of us heard the news, we still pictured Happy Valley as Camelot and operated under the assumption that college football was untouched by the real world.

After hearing the news, the veil of ignorance in college athletics was lifted, and we were forced to face the fact that sometimes the real world can infiltrate athletics with its horrifying realities in the same way that our parents were forced to cope with Len Bias’ overdose.

None of this is to say that Paterno legally needed to report the incident to the police. After all, he neither failed to alert his superior nor did he have any role in Sandusky’s actions. However, based on the sickening report published by the grand jury of Centre County, Penn., it is safe to question how Paterno and Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley could have possibly dismissed these allegations for the past nine years on moral grounds.

This isn’t the first time Paterno has demonstrated a lack of control over his football program. ESPN reported in 2008 that 46 Penn State football players faced a total of 163 criminal charges between 2002 and

2008. However, this is the gravest.

By turning the other way, the previously lovable JoePa apparently allowed children to be subjected to unspeakable horrors, something that definitely fails to live up to Paterno’s idea of “success with honor.”

Unless things change dramatically, I can’t help but feel different about that championship ring. For the first time in my generation, the horrors of the real world invaded the bubble of college sports, leaving a trail of shame and disgust in its wake. I had no way of knowing then that the defensive coordinator on that team would later face such gruesome charges, but that was the cone of shelter working. This scandal has pierced that protective cone and taken down a former hero in the process.

Corey Blaine is a junior in the McDonough School of Business. THE BLEACHER SEATS appears every Friday.

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MEN’S BASKETBALL Hoyas (0-0) vs. Savannah St. (0-0) Saturday, Noon Verizon Center

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011

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WHAT’S INSIDE Leonard Olsen previews the volleyball team’s upcoming homestand against Cincinnati and Louisville.

West Virginia St. John’s

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Seton Hall DePaul

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Duquesne Pittsburgh

UPCOMING GAMES: BIG EAST VOLLEYBALL

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DePaul at Syracuse Tonight, 7 p.m.

“I told the girls we can’t allow the subjectivity of 10 people in a room to determine or define whether our season was a success or not.”

Women’s soccer Head Coach Dave Nolan

FOOTBALL

WOMEN’S SOCCER

Patriot League Title at Stake EVAN HOLLANDER Hoya Staff Writer

After sending off its seniors with a win against Fordham (18) last Saturday, the Georgetown football team (8-2, 3-1 Patriot League) travels to Bethlehem, Pa. this Saturday to take on No. 6 Lehigh (8-1, 3-0 Patriot League) in a David-and-Goliath battle with a championship on the line.

The Mountain Hawks have

Cincinnati at Georgetown Tonight, 8 p.m.

Louisville at Villanova Tonight, 7 p.m.

won nine league championships, the most of any school in the Patriot League’s 25-year history. The Hoyas, who joined in 2001, had only won eight league games in the last 10 years and remain the only conference member without a league championship.

Saturday’s game means a lot for both teams. Before the season, Head Coach Kevin Kelly had two goals for the Blue and Gray: a winning season and a Patriot League

CHRIS BIEN/THE HOYA

Junior defensive back Jeremy Moore, shown returning a kick against Fordham, has sparked the team since returning from a suspension.

title. The squad has clinched the winning season, but the championship hinges on defeating the Mountain Hawks.

“This week we will play Lehigh for a chance to achieve our ultimate goal of winning the Patriot League Championship and earn a berth in the playoffs,” Kelly said in a statement. “For all of the players, especially our seniors who have been here, coaches and administrators, this is a dream come true.”

A strong showing from senior quarterback Scott Darby solidified the Blue and Gray’s Senior Day win over Fordham, but Kelly has indicated that junior Isaiah Kempf, the regular starter, is rested and will likely helm the Hoyas on Saturday.

While Georgetown needs a good showing from their offense, the game will hinge on how the Hoyas’ vaunted defense stacks up against Lehigh’s powerful offense. Led by senior quarterback Chris Lum, Lehigh has averaged 491 yards per game, the best total offense in the Football Championship Subdivision.

“Lehigh has a very productive offense and an excellent scheme.

They are very well coached in every facet of the game,” Kelly said.

“Their senior quarterback, Chris Lum, manages the game very well for them. They have a strong running game and two excellent wide receivers.”

Georgetown will need their defense, including senior defensive end and Patriot League sack leader Andrew Schaetzke, to step up against Lehigh. Junior defensive back Jeremy Moore has also sparked the Blue and Gray’s defense since returning from a suspension earlier in the season.

See FOOTBALL, A8

FILE PHOTO: CHRIS BIEN/THE HOYA

Redshirt senior midfielder Ingrid Wells is Georgetown’s all-time leading scorer and the only Hoya with more than 100 goals to her name.

Hoyas’ Successful Season Ends in Snub BENO PICCIANO Hoya Staff Writer

As the NCAA tournament selection show began at 4:30 p.m. Monday afternoon, the question was not whether the Georgetown women’s soccer team (15-6, 8-3 Big East) would be awarded an atlarge bid to the field of 64 tournament teams, but rather a matter of who the Hoyas would face in the opening round.

An hour later, the unthinkable had happened. Despite setting a school record with 14 regular season wins, finishing second in the Big East National

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Division and making the conference tournament semifinals, the Blue and Gray’s season came to an unanticipated end as they were excluded from the 2011 NCAA tournament.

“We didn’t expect it, not even close.

We didn’t even think it was an issue,” said Head Coach Dave Nolan, who has received outreach from an array of Big East and nonconference coaches alike expressing their surprise at the decision.

“The plan was just to go train on Monday night. It was a huge surprise, and it See WOMEN’S SOCCER, A8

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

GU Opens Season Against Savannah State Bar Set High EVAN HOLLANDER Hoya Staff Writer

The Hoyas have put their 2010-2011 campaign — the dominance of Austin Freeman, the devastation of Chris Wright’s broken hand and the embarrassment of being ousted early in the NCAA tournament by VCU — behind them.

Georgetown will begin a new season with a fresh start when it takes on Savannah State tomorrow afternoon.

“This is an exciting time of year.

I’ve said this before, with this group, I’m excited to get going with a new group,” Head Coach John Thompson III said. “They have all the emotions — anxious, excited, nervous — that go along with the beginning of the year.

We’re ready to get going.”

Fans will see a starting lineup that looks considerably different than last year’s, highlighted by senior guard Jason Clark, senior center Henry Sims and junior forward Hollis Thompson.

Sophomore forward Nate Lubick and sophomore guard Markel Starks are both also expected to be on the court at tip-off.

“I think we’re going to have a lot of different groups out there at different times. Who’s going to be out there at the beginning? Probably the same group as last year: Jason, Markel, Hollis, Henry and Nate,” Thompson said.

“But more so than in past years, who’s out there at the beginning, when it’s 0-0 and 40 minutes [are left], is not that important.”

Still, Georgetown basketball will be considerably different without Freeman and Wright. Freeman was the go-to scorer who came through at key points and Wright was a calm pilot

who led the offense until his injury.

Saturday’s game will be the first opportunity to see what the Hoyas look like without two-thirds of the D.C. Three.

“We want to prove that we don’t have to rely on the guys that left,” Starks said. “We want to show that we have guys here who can put the ball in the hole, who can defend, who can do other things, in place of those guys from last year.”

Starks and his fellow returnees will benefit from one of Georgetown’s best — and tallest — recruiting classes in recent years. The freshman class includes guard Jabril Trawick, center Tyler Adams and forwards Otto Porter, Mikael Hopkins and Greg Whittington.

The young team’s preseason trip to China, despite all the attention surrounding the brawl with the Bayi Rockets, helped bring the freshmen up to speed with returning members of the squad.

“We will be a versatile team — most people think about offense — but we will be versatile defensively also,” Thompson said. “I like when we make the opposition take tough, contested shots. We haven’t been as good at that in past years as I’d like for us to be, so I’ve tried to put a premium on that.”

The Hoyas will stick with the same offensive scheme they have used in the past but hope some of the freshmen will provide a presence inside that they lacked at times last year.

“Some people say the offense is slow. It’s not. Some people say the offense is boring. It’s not. It’s a good offense,” Starks said. “You’re reading See MEN’S BASKETBALL, A8

For No. 10 Georgetown

PRESTON BARCLAY & PAT CURRAN Hoya Staff Writers

FILE PHOTO: WEB LESLIE/THE HOYA

Senior guard Jason Clark, shown against Cincinnati last season, is expected to play a major scoring role this year.

Visit us online at thehoya.com/sports

The No. 10 Georgetown women’s basketball team is set to tip off the 20112012 season against Longwood tonight at McDonough Arena.

The Blue and Gray return 12 players after graduating only one senior, guard Monica McNutt, from last year’s squad and hope to build on last season’s run to the Sweet 16.

The 2011-12 Hoyas were recently ranked No. 10 in the country in the Associated Press Preseason Poll and No. 11 in the USA Today/ESPN Preseason Coaches’ Poll — their highest preseason rankings ever. These high ratings have generated lofty expectations, but Head Coach Terri Williams-Flournoy has her players focused on the task at hand.

“I told our players not to look at this as a stress. … It’s nothing but another challenge. It’s another season beginning with another challenge for us,” Williams-Flournoy said. “Are we excited to go into this season? Absolutely.

At this point, you’re tired of playing against each other, you’re ready to go out and play a game now.”

Expected to lead the way for Georgetown in the season opener are junior guard Sugar Rodgers, who led the Hoyas in scoring last year with 18.7 points per game, and seniors Rubylee Wright, Tia Magee, and Adria See WOMEN’S BASKETBALL, A9