GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD SINCE 1920 thehoya.com
Georgetown University • Washington, D.C. Vol. 93, No. 19, © 2011
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2011
REPAIR TIMELINE MAY SHIFT
SENIOR DAY SLAUGHTER
Structural improvements to the Key Bridge may be done as early as 2013 if the jobs bill passes Congress.
The 8-2 Georgetown football team blew out Fordham, 30-13, on the Hoyas’ Senior Day.
NEWS, A8
SPORTS, A12
Captured Alum Returns Home 24 Call Boxes Broken GLENN RUSSO
A routine check Friday found the emergency phones in need of repair
Hoya Staff Writer
Matthew VanDyke (GRD ’04) strode out of the gate slowly, dressed in Libyan rebel military fatigues and brandishing a Libyan flag. “Victory! We won,” he said, smiling as his friends and loved ones scrambled to welcome him home. The Georgetown grad had just returned from an eight-month trek to Libya, where he fought on the rebel side in the country’s civil war. He went missing after about 3 weeks and spent the next six months imprisoned by loyalist forces. Once VanDyke escaped and rejoined the Libyan rebel brigade, he fought alongside them during the dying days of Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi’s regime, manning a mounted Russian machine gun on a Jeep. And after having been detained for two hours by Homeland Security personnel at JFK Airport for debriefing, VanDyke, 32, finally made it back to his hometown of Baltimore Saturday night. A small crowd of 15 of his close friends had gathered to meet him at Baltimore-Washington International Airport when he walked off the flight. By the time he arrived, about 20 more bystanders had joined the entourage, intrigued by the ‘welcome home’ signs, American flags
SARI FRANKEL/THE HOYA
See VANDYKE, A6
Matthew VanDyke (GRD ’04) greets his mother in Baltimore after spending time in a Libyan prison and fighting for a rebel brigade.
SARAH KAPLAN Hoya Staff Writer
Gift Boosts LGBTQ Programs
The Department of Public Safety is in the process of repairing 24 of the 188 emergency call boxes throughout the medical center and main campus after discovering they were out of service during a routine test on Friday. Low battery power caused the boxes to stop working, according to university spokeswoman Stacy Kerr. Though technicians were able to repair 14 of the boxes between Friday and Monday night, the remainder will be fixed in the coming days. All of the broken boxes have been labeled as such by DPS. Nineteen of the inoperable boxes are among the 159 newer wired call boxes that DPS is able to check daily through automatic updates from the boxes. Of these boxes, five are still out of service. “Those are expected to be fixed as quickly as the technicians are able to fix them,” Kerr said. In the review, DPS also found that five of the university’s 22 wireless call boxes were inoperable. DPS will now be checking these older boxes, which were previously checked twice a month, once a week. “They’re 32 years old … and showing
CHRIS BIEN/THE HOYA
DPS repaired over half of campus’ broken call boxes this weekend. signs of [their] age,” Kerr said. According to her, one box has been used to make an emergency call in the past four years. Though the boxes rarely see any use, students expressed concern that the boxes were inoperable. “[The call boxes] symbolize some type of safety. With so many out of order, I think the effect is more psychological if anything,” Nadir Zaidi (COL ’13) said. Priya Sharma (MSB ’15), who noticed the outages while walking with friends this weekend, agreed that the boxes typically make her feel safe. “It made me uncomfortable to see that something [that is] supposed to provide safety … was broken,” she said.
MORBID MEMORIES: LXR WAS ONCE A HOME TO HOSPITAL, MORGUE
RITA PEARSON
staff, students and alumni. “The way I see it, LGBTQ life is not separate from or apart from all other diversity on A $1 million donation to the LGBTQ Re- campus,” Subbaraman said. “For me, Georgesource Center will help expand its presence town’s Jesuit identity means allowing flouron campus according to its director, Sivaga- ishing. Gay students have not always had to right to or the ability to flourish.” mi Subbaraman. Subbaraman hopes to use the money to Chairman of the Board of Directors Paul Tagliabue (CAS ’62) and his wife, Chandler, allo- bring high-level speakers to campus and incated one-fifth of their $5 milvolve more student groups lion donation to the center as in promoting campus diverpart of the capital campaign “LGBTQ life is not sity. For her, this is critical drive two weekends ago. to countering the percepseparate from or “This is an opportunity tion that the donation is to elevate the conversation apart from all other going to a marginal group. around gay issues to be a “I think it’s really imdiversity on campus.” portant Georgetown issue,” Subfor all students to baraman said. “Tagliabue know that the endowment SIVAGAMI SUBBARAMAN realizes that it is not a narDirector, LGBTQ Resource Center is for all students to live in row issue in a corner — it is a better community,” she relevant to all of campus.” said. Dubbed “The Tagliabue Initiative for LGIn a statement to the university, the BTQ Life: Fostering Formation and Trans- Tagliabues wrote that they hope the gift will formation,” the push will fund work by help establish a safe and inclusive environstudents and student organizations to make ment on campus. the campus more accepting as well as estabSee LGBTQ, A5 lish an advisory group comprised of faculty, Special to The Hoya
BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION HONORS JACKSON’S LIFE AND LEGACY
COURTESY GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
SARI FRANKEL/THE HOYA
Students reside in rooms that served as operating rooms and mortuary facilities. See photo essay on A5.
Student Investors Weather Crisis JONATHAN GILLIS Hoya Staff Writer
MEAGAN KELLY/THE HOYA
Prominent civil rights activists and black leaders gathered Monday in Gaston Hall to commemorate the lasting efforts of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s work fighting for racial equality. See story on A6. Newsroom: (202) 687-3415 Business: (202) 687-8350
There are 18 people in Healy 103, and all of them are annoyed with the Greeks. “If you guys have Greek friends, kill them. My best friend is Greek, and I want to kill him,” Graham Robertson (COL ’12) says in a joking manner. It may sound like a gathering of ancient Persians, but in fact it’s a meeting of the Georgetown Collegiate Investors, and Robertson is their CEO. For the past week, they have been anxiously watching the stock market wobble over speculation about Greece, which is facing a severe debt crisis. On this night, the major concern
Published Tuesdays and Fridays
is whether or not the country will leave the Eurozone, the economic and monetary union of states that adopted the euro as their official currency.
“Our inexperience is ... an asset, because it allows us to look at things in a different way.” GRAHAM ROBERTSON (COL ’12) CEO, Georgetown Collegiate Investors
This is how the Georgetown Collegiate Investors spend their Wednesday nights. They analyze their holdings, pinpoint rising companies and struggle to understand what global events mean for
the American markets. They look like college students, but they talk like partners in an investing firm. In fact, they are both. Georgetown Collegiate Investors, LLC, is the nation’s largest student investing firm, with over 240 members and $100,000 to work with. They are entirely separate from the university, filing their own taxes and investing their own money. And for the past few years, they have been growing. That’s an impressive statistic, especially considering the fact that the United States has been in a recession since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the first semester of college for this year’s See GCI, A6
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