The Hoya: November 21, 2014

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

Georgetown University • Washington, D.C. Vol. 96, No. 24, © 2014

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

TARGETING THE TRUTH

EDITORIAL Cutting classes with low enrollment does a disservice to education.

Examining the stories of “Rosewater” and interred journalists worldwide.

GUIDE, B1

Katherine Richardson Hoya Staff Writer

See GSP, A6

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL The Hoyas defeated the Loyola Maryland Greyhounds, 71-44.

NEWS, A4

SPORTS, B8

OPINION, A2

GSP Celebrates 10 Years

Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of the Georgetown Scholarship Program, which provides financial aid and a robust support system to 625 students from all 50 states and nine countries, particularly those who come from low-income backgrounds or are first generation college students.

According to GSP Program Director Missy Foy (COL ’03), GSP celebrated its 10th anniversary with a party for donors, university administrators and alumni mentors in October. Students and alumni of the program shared stories of their experiences with the hashtag #GSProud on the program’s anniversary Tuesday.

“Saxbys at 6 a.m. to do homework and realizing how fortunate I am to have the privilege of education,

WORKER ADVOCACY The new GUSA Office of Student Worker Advocacy addresses grievances.

Self-Defense Classes Expand Purview Tom Garzillo

After hearing student complaints about the restrictive nature of these self-defense classes, the Georgetown The Georgetown University Police University Student Association StuDepartment will expand its self- dent Health and Safety cabinet staff defense class offerings, which have sent out a campus-wide survey last been limited to courses for women, week asking students if they would to include a class for LGBTQ individ- be interested in taking a self-defense uals and a class open to all students class, and if they were, if they would regardless of sexual orientation or prefer a class limited to their gender, gender identity next semester. specifically for LGBTQ individuals or The univerwith people of all sity has offered identities. self-defense “Some people courses for were interested women for in gender specific about four classes, some were years and is ofinterested in LGfering two new BTQ specific classcourses after es, and most peoreceiving critiple were interested cism for rein classes available stricting these to everyone,” GUSA NORA WEST (SFS ’15) offerings to feGUSA Secretary of Student Student Health Health and Safety male students. and Safety SecreThe courses tary and Sexual Asare designed to teach students basic sault Peer Educator Nora West (SFS self-defense in case of assault and ’15) said. “We just wanted to look are offered in four hour standalone to see if students outside of women sessions open to a maximum of 20 would be interested in these classes people in Reiss Science Building and we found out that they were.” classrooms.

The survey’s results convinced The classes, taught by a certified Georgetown University Police Deself-defense instructor with training partment Chief of Police Jay Gruber in krav maga, a popular self-defense to expand beyond women-only selfsystem that blends elements of vari- defense classes. ous fighting styles, will consist of “It’s a wonderful class, and we got general safety presentations con- great feedback,” Gruber said. “I’m recerning possible risks, as well as a ally excited to offer classes to a differvariety of self-defense tactics and ent audience this spring semester. I lessons on how to handle physical hope the classes are packed.” confrontations.

Sexual Assault Peer Educators will They follow the same general be present at each course to discuss model as previous classes, but tech- risk prevention, according to West. niques taught will differ depending Take Back the Night President Saron the gender identity of partici- ah Rabon (COL ’16) said that while pants. the classes are a good first step, they The classes were initially only of- will not solve the problem of sexual fered to women because they are assault on college campuses. more likely to face sexual violence.

“For some people, self-defense Additionally, some female students classes can be incredibly empowerindicated that they would feel more ing,” Rabon said. “However, these comfortable in a class that was tailored to women.

See DEFENSE, A6

Hoya Staff Writer

DAN GANNON/THE HOYA

The Georgetown Scholarship Program has offices in Healy Hall, where it employs student staff and offers guidance for its scholars.

STARTUP BLASTS OFF

COURTESY JOHN DINGELL

John Dingell (C ’49, LAW ’52) will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

VALERIA BALZA/THE HOYA

“We just wanted to look and see if students outside of women would be interested.”

Dingell Wins Medal of Smithsonian Slated for $2B Renovations Freedom Christine Trinh (NHS ’16) delivers her “BookerT” pitch for the Rocket Pitch competition, sponsored by StartupHoyas.

Deirdre Collins Hoya Staff Writer

Kshithij Shrinath Hoya Staff Writer

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich., C ’49, LAW ’52), the longest-serving member of Congress, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a ceremony at the White House on Nov. 24.

Dingell, who has served in the House of Representatives since 1955 and represents Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, announced his retirement earlier this year. He succeeded his father, John Dingell Sr., in office and will be followed by his wife, Deborah Dingell (SFS ’75, GRD ’98), who won the seat Nov. 4, making her the first woman to be elected to the seat of a living, retired husband in Congress.

Dingell holds the record for the longest uninterrupted tenure in Congressional history.

“There are few words that could accurately describe my thoughts and feelings in receiving this wonderful honor,” Dingell said in a statement.“It is especially meaningful to me to receive this recognition alongside such a distinguished and diverse group of individuals that truly represents the ideals and values that have made this nation great. I am most humbled by this recognition, and I thank President Obama for his kindness in awarding me this prestigious honor.”

President John F. Kennedy established the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 as the United States’ highest civilian award. Over 500 people have previously received the award, and 19 civilians will join their ranks on Monday, including Meryl Streep, Stevie Wonder and Tom Brokaw. Last year’s awardees included President Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.

Dingell joins the three of members of the Georgetown community to recently See DINGELL, A6

The Smithsonian Institution will renovate museums and gardens on the South Mall campus to improve infrastructure, visitor services and accessibility in a multiyear project that will begin in 2016, the institution announced Nov. 12.

The $2 billion redesign and restoration of the world’s largest museum and research complex will affect museums located between the National Mall and Independence Avenue SW, notably the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Arts and Industries Building, the Smithsonian Castle, the National Museum of African Art, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Freer Gallery of Art and the S. Dillon Ripley Center. The other Smithsonian museums and galleries on the National Mall — the Air

MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA

The redesign, beginning in 2016, includes the Smithsonian Castle.

Newsroom: (202) 687-3415 Business: (202) 687-3947

and Space Museum, the American Art Museum Portrait Gallery, the American History Museum, the National History Museum, the Postal Museum, and the Renwick Gallery — will remain untouched.

The proposed South Mall Campus Master Plan will be implemented over a 10- to 20-year period, combining major projects that will improve infrastructure of the Smithsonian museums and galleries, reinvent the style of the South Mall campus and ensure the energy efficiency of the complex.

The cost of the master plan will be split between federal funding and privately raised funds, though fundraising has not begun yet.

Smithsonian Public Affairs Specialist Becky Haberacker explained that the renovations will focus on the oldest part of the Smithsonian campus.

“The proposed plan makes these museums more accessible to our visitors and better connects them to one another. It enables us to provide visitors with a better experience when they come to visit,” Haberacker said.

Haberacker confirmed that, despite the renovations of the South Mall campus, the respective identities and goals of each museum would remain the same.

“The mission and focus of each of the museums won’t change. The proposed South Mall Master Plan increases the usable space for the museums and helps all of the spaces — both above and below ground — flow together better. It also provides more space for public programs and educational activates,” Haberacker said.

The master plan was designed by a Denmark-based architectural firm, Bjarke Ingels Group, which has worked closely with the Smithsonian Institution to develop the

Published Tuesdays and Fridays

ISABEL BINAMIRA/THE HOYA

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is one of the museums subject to the $2 billion Smithsonian renovation and restoration. redesign ever since the group’s proposal was chosen in March 2013.

“The design has a modern aesthetic that works in harmony with the classic architecture of the buildings that already exist in the South Mall Campus,” Haberacker said.

BIG founding partner and Master Plan architect Bjarke Ingels expressed his excitement regarding the redesign of the South Mall campus.

“It’s a great honor and a humbling challenge to reimagine one of the most significant American institutions on the front lawn of the nation’s capital,” Ingels said in a press release from the Smithsonian Institution. “We have created a new landscape of connectivity and possibility. We believe this plan holds the potential to guide the Smithsonian South Mall campus into the future while remaining See SMITHSONIAN, A6

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A2

OPINION

THE HOYA

friday, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

THE VERDICT Founded January 14, 1920

EDITORIALS

Education Lost to Policy Preregistration can be a very stressful process. Filtering through scores of classes to find those with the highest-rated professors and the most interesting topics, all while fulfilling demanding requirements within a reasonable weekly schedule, poses quite the challenge. Above all, however, is the everimportant question: Will I actually get into these classes?

A new policy implemented by the Office of the College Dean will make the answer to this question more likely to be no. Per the new policy, department heads are instructed to delete classes with fewer than eight students enrolled at the end of preregistration — with exceptions made only for general education requirements, major requirements and upper-level language classes.

The change will likely have the effect of reducing the number of small classes, closing many of them out before they even meet for the first time.

Larger classes will be clearly favored, causing big lecture classes and departments that primarily offer bigger classes to be favored as well. This would be detrimental to students, as many would not be able to enjoy the opportunity to enroll in smaller classes, enjoy certain coveted professors or

find desired classes in smaller departments.

The automatic elimination of classes with fewer than eight enrolled students during preregistration will also limit student options during the add-drop period, on which many undergraduates depend to make adjustments to their schedules. By cutting classes before add-drop, the College Dean’s office will only narrow student options, lengthen waitlists and crowd lecture halls this spring.

In an interview with The Hoya (“College Scraps Unpopular Classes Before Add-Drop,” A7, Nov. 18, 2014), College Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Strategic Planning Jeff Connor-Linton speculated that the change is intended to help Georgetown manage its resources and that the change will not result in a noticeable impact for students during add-drop. But unless there is evidence that the change will save significant resources without closing out small classes, the policy is simply unjustified.

The Office of the College Dean should reconsider this policy. Georgetown’s small classes are one of its strengths, and unless the need to conserve academic resources is direr than we know, this policy will only hurt our departments and students.

Expanding Expression In a campus-wide email sent by Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson earlier this week, the Division of Student Affairs made a clarification of free speech policies, long-overdue.

Student Affairs’ email specified in exceptional detail where students can and cannot table, as well as explicating where students can hold protests for certain events. This is a clearer and more explicit layout of the way free speech works on campus, leaving little room for the past issues of wrongful university intervention. Also clearer is the method for directing complaints about issues of free speech.

In response to these improvements, fliers were posted in university classroom buildings including Healy Hall and the Rafik B. Hariri Building, stating “This building is not a ‘free speech’ zone,” presumably drawing attention to the prolonged problem that students cannot conduct protests in every campus space without police intervention.

Yet the expansions of free speech zones are reasonable for this moment in time. Students may protest in myriad new locations, yet specific places that have been designated as sacred — including and especially Healy Hall — still do not allow protests. Without antagonizing the Catholic community that wishes these sacred spaces like Gaston Hall or Dahlgren Quadrangle to remain free of any potentially offensive or anti-Catholic demonstrations, free speech is allowed in most other places on campus. Furthermore, Olson’s map specifically noted that in the public spaces designated, tabling is either allowed or prohibited, specifically to allow “safe egress.”

Perhaps in the future, the administration will consider further expanding these zones, and those students who are unsatisfied with the current reforms can still lead a protest in favor of more free speech. Now, at least, they can lead those protests in more places than ever before.

C C C

Mallika Sen, Executive Editor Robert DePaolo, Managing Editor Ian Tice, Online Editor Molly Simio, Campus News Editor Suzanne Monyak, City News Editor Sam Abrams, Sports Editor Jess Kelham-Hohler, Guide Editor David Chardack, Opinion Editor Michelle Xu, Photography Editor Zack Saravay, Copy Chief Emma Holland, Blog Editor

Contributing Editors

Zoe Bertrand, TM Gibbons-Neff, Penny Hung, Nicole Jarvis, Hanaa Khadraoui, Sheena Karkal, Jackie McCadden, Sean Sullivan, Laura Wagner, Emory Wellman

Katherine Richardson Deputy Campus News Editor Deputy City News Editor Kshithij Shrinath Deputy Business News Editor Kim Bussing Deputy Sports Editor Andrew May Sports Blog Editor Max Wheeler Deputy Guide Editor Allison Hillsbery Deputy Guide Edtior Hannah Kaufman Opinion Blog Editor Jinwoo Chong Deputy Opinion Editor Ben Germano Deputy Photography Editor Julia Hennrikus Deputy Photography Editor Daniel Smith Deputy Photography Editor Natasha Thomson Acting Layout Editor Zoe Bertrand Acting Layout Editor Emory Wellman Deputy Copy Editor Gabi Hasson Deputy Copy Editor Katie Haynes Deputy Copy Editor Sharanya Sriram Deputy Blog Editor Emily Min

Glory Restored — Uncommon Grounds bought a new thermos for its skim milk, replacing the one that broke several weeks ago.

Students Should Compromise on Free Speech

To the Editor:

Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson recently announced key changes to Georgetown’s Speech and Expression Policy. Among these changes are the additions of Alumni Square, Harbin Patio, the Healey Family Student Center patio, the Lau walkway and Regents Lawn to the list of areas where tabling is permitted as well as the clarification of policies regarding protests in an attempt to avoid arbitrary enforcement by campus police in the future. I am thrilled by these substantive changes and by the administration’s responsiveness to the

the vocal minority accuses anyone who is against them of hating free speech.

I applaud the administration for its flexibility, but I beg it to know where to stop. The student body is happy with the expansion of free speech, but do not let the loud minority push free speech into the realm of unfettered and chaotic freedom. Some restrictions on speech are logical, especially the restrictions on Healy Circle. The loud minority should learn to accept compromises rather than continually complaining.

Alexander Zajac COL ’15

Rethinking the Dangers of Plagiarism To the Editor: Just the utterance of the word “plagiarism” can elicit fear in students and professors alike. Most students have come to understand its parameters within an academic setting, but they do not always grasp how it translates to the real world. During a writing seminar that I recently attended as a member of the Honor Council, I realized that students generally comprehend plagiarism in an academic milieu, but struggle when it pertains to non-academic information sharing. In light of the digital age, plagiarism issues have become more complex and even more imperative to descry. I have spent many years as a magazine publisher, and I have hired (and sadly fired) many

This week on

talented writers, who simply missed the genesis behind plagiarism ethics — it’s all about creativity. It’s not only about protecting creativity, but encouraging it as well. I think if we could step back and look at the honor code in a macro setting, it may be easier to discern its universal mission.

During the writing seminar, students expressed enormous displeasure when someone “stole” their quotes, comments or photos from Facebook or Twitter and tried to “pawn” them off as his own “super smart ideas.” That’s precisely it: It’s all about honoring and protecting a hard-earned, super-cool idea —that’s what deserves the focus. Whether it’s an academic paper, a social-media post or a project at work, at the core of the mat-

ter we are expected to bring our own unique ideas to the table, or simply give appropriate credit when expanding on someone else’s.

The end of the semester is upon us, and we all have significant papers to accomplish; I encourage you to keep these words in mind as you embark on that process. The protection and encouragement of creativity is a key aspect of the honor code at Georgetown University; having a strong honor code in place creates an environment for students (and professors) to dig deeper and tap into their creative process. Creative ideas are rare, thus it is important to nurture and protect them at all costs.

Hoya Saxa, Melissa Harris

[ CHATTER ]

Olivia Huppman (COL ‘15) represents the Philodemic Society in an overview of their recent debate: Resolved: Artists should be beholden to their audience.

Affirmative: Artists should be beholden to their audience because art is created for the audience.

Negative: Not all works produced by artists are displayed to an audience, but this does not mean that they cannot be art.

Find this and more at

thehoya.com/chatter

CORRECTIONS In the article “Scores Rise for Hispanic Students” [The Hoya, A5, Nov. 18, 2014], Sinead Carolan was incorrectly stated as being a sophomore in the College. She is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service.

The article “To Live in JesRes, Embody ‘Georgetown Spirit’” [The Hoya, A1, Nov. 18, 2014] incorrectly stated that applications for the Spirit of Georgetown LLC are due in early December.

Applications will be made available in early December.

Michal Grabias, General Manager Jason Yoffe, Director of Accounting Brenna Muldrow, Director of Corporate Development Nicole Foggan, Director of Marketing Addie Fleron, Director of Human Resources Brian Carden, Director of Sales Janet Zhu, Director of Technology Tessa Bell Laura Tonnessen Joseph Scudiero Monika Patel Tessa Guiv Catherine Huber Christine Cha Sarah Hannigan Gregory Saydah Lena Duffield Matthew Da Silva

Senior Accounts Manager National Accounts Manager Operations Manager Local Accounts Manager Alumni Relations Manager Special Events Manager Institutional Diversity Manager Organizational Development Manager Local Advertisements Manager National Advertisements Manager Systems Manager

Editorial Board

Consultants

David Chardack, Chair

Nick DeLessio, Kevin Tian

Celeste Chisholm, Kit Clemente, Ben Germano, Johnny Verhovek, Christopher Wadibia

needs of its students.

Yet a loud-voiced minority is unhappy. It appears no compromise will satisfy them; rather, they want all or nothing. They must continue to fight “The Man” until every one of their requests is granted. I, for one, am annoyed.

I am annoyed that a louder minority may overrule the silent majority. I truly believe, from personal conversations with other students, that the overwhelming majority of students do not want Healy Circle and the surrounding sidewalks to be polluted by tabling student groups. There are very logical aesthetic and safety reasons for this, and yet

Be sure to check Chatter, The Hoya’s online opinion section, throughout the week for additional opinion pieces.

face must continue to rest at the forefront of GUSA executive leaders’ agendas, especially when advocating for those groups with university administrators.

Nonetheless, for the present, this policy stands as a testament to GUSA’s mission to not only voice the concerns of students but also efficaciously address them. In order for this policy to become coagulated as a tenet of Georgetown’s treatment of all student groups, steps need to be taken to ensure this advancement becomes more institutionally permanent — and that the university is still pressured to continually re-evaluate its view of unrecognized groups.

In making greater strides toward bringing unrecognized student groups into the recognized university community, Georgetown has the opportunity to demonstrate the stock of its character, and its truest nature as an institution of higher education.

Emma Hinchliffe, Editor-in-Chief

The Season for Not Giving — Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed a bill that would provide meals for low-income students in D.C. on days that schools are shut down. Councilmembers Mary Cheh and David Grosso are “baffled,” as the bill provided great flexibility to develop a workable plan to help students who rely on school for breakfast and lunch.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Access Beyond GUSA Unrecognized student groups now have provisional access to benefits, including on-campus storage space and the opportunity to reserve classrooms, through a GUSA-led apparatus seeking to expand the range of access to benefits policy.

Groups like fraternities, sororities and, of course, H*yas for Choice, which have traditionally been barred from formal university recognition, can now enjoy some of the benefits that all other student groups freely utilize. Amid the good news of this development, questions arise as to the long-term feasibility of this genre of reform.

Particularly, there is no guarantee that future Georgetown University Student Association executives will not forget this priority and reallocate those spaces and resources to causes that may be deemed more important in the future. The need for a solid, unremitting awareness of the difficulties unrecognized student groups

Cat Lovers Rejoice — A cat cafe is coming to D.C. It will be called Crumbs and Whiskers, and patrons can pay to play with cats among the featured fancy cat furniture and play areas. All the cats, donated by the Washington Humane Society, will be available for adoption.

Board of Directors

Sheena Karkal, Chair

Michal Grabias, Emma Hinchliffe, Hanaa Khadraoui, Hunter Main, Zach Singer, Laura Wagner 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 Mallika Sen at (310) 918-6116 or email executive@ thehoya.com.

News Tips Campus News Editor Molly Simio: Call (201) 661-1440 or email campus@thehoya.com.

City News Editor Suzanne Monyak: Call (404) 641-4923 or email city@thehoya.com.

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OPINION

friDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

HOYA HISTORIAN

THE HOYA

A3

VIEWPOINT • Ramirez & Roberts

With GSP, Building a Discussion on Class T

Matthew Quallen

Our Struggle To Integrate The Hilltop W

hen Patricia Brauer visited the dental clinic at Georgetown, she discovered she had a problem.

Patricia was black, and at the time, the clinic served only white patients. Brauer, who enrolled at Georgetown in the fall of 1952, was the School of Nursing and Health Studies’ first black student. By the spring of 1953, she had left after facing terrible discrimination.

For Brauer and others, the first efforts at integrating Georgetown came piecemeal.

While some schools and university services remained segregated, others integrated.

The College did not enroll its first black student until 1962 — 10 years after Brauer enrolled in the NHS. Even then, if Georgetown believed it had opened the proverbial floodgates when Harry Thomas Campbell arrived on Georgetown’s campus to study in the College, it would have been wrong; black enrollment only trickled in.

In addition to formal obstacles, Brauer, Campbell and their classmates faced tremendous discrimination. Virtually alone at a university that had, for many years, held slaves and educated Confederate officers, these pioneers often found themselves abused by faculty and treated with indifference by the university.

One history professor claimed that “Lincoln had deliberately tricked the South into starting the Civil War,” and that “claims about the equal intelligence of blacks and whites were sheer bunk.” When a diner in Virginia denied service to a black Georgetown student, resulting in a protest, the university quickly distanced itself from the students, declaring that they had not acted “as representatives of the university.”

No doubt, the atmosphere at Georgetown would have discouraged black students from enrolling.

But the era of civil rights and integration was not without its high points at Georgetown. Even as the university distanced itself from its black students, many began to challenge the traditional Catholic reluctance to engage on issues of race.

Francis Kearns, a professor in the English department, publicly excoriated the university for responding to the diner incident with “casual indifference.” Nearly 250 Georgetown students, faculty and staff participated in the March on Washington in 1963; 900 members of the Georgetown community departed the front gates to march in solidarity after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, before overwhelming violence forced them to turn back; by 1966, the largest student group at Georgetown, the Georgetown University Community Action Program, was focusing the bulk of its attention on issues of civil rights and racial justice.

These students lived during a most unusual time in American history. Across the world, they believed they had seen a society reveal its violent ease in Vietnam’s steaming jungles. At home, they watched as police officers beat their fellow students and assassins’ bullets felled hero after hero.

The world was unraveling at its seams. No longer content with official apathy, they demanded more.

But the battle over Georgetown’s early equivocation on race did not reverse the tide of low black enrollment at Georgetown — affirmative action did. Responding to demands from the Black Student Alliance in 1970, administrators in the Office of Admissions, including now-Dean Charles Deacon, charted a bold plan. They recommended that the university apply the same criteria to black applicants as it did to legacy applicants and guarantee financial aid to support all black applicants with demonstrated need.

Their program, which became the Community Scholars, brought the number of enrolled black students from roughly 50 to nearly 200 by 1975. Admittedly, these students remained woefully outnumbered — only 3.2 percent of undergraduates in 1975. But other victories followed, including the implementation of affirmative-action hiring and the addition of multiple tenured black professors both on the main campus and in the law school.

Most recently, The Hoya ran a cover story declaring a shift toward greater diversity in early applicants. Even as students mocked the paltry changes apparent beneath the headline, the image captured a kernel of truth: Shifts often come slowly.

In integrating American higher education, they have arrived with dazzling torpor. It took Georgetown 30 years to complete the process of formal integration, no less to begin the much more fraught process of affirmative action.

Even seemingly small improvements — service at the dental clinic, a seat at the lunch counter — are to be cherished.

Matthew Quallen is a junior in the School of Foreign Service. This is the final appearance of Hoya Historian this semester.

he Georgetown Scholarship Program is a community of 640 high-achieving, lowincome and trailblazing students who are, for the most part, the first in their family to attend college. The community, celebrating its 10th anniversary, is made up of a diverse group of students of different faiths, ages, abilities, sexual orientations, genders, races and experiences.

Currently 21 percent of GSPers are white, 28 percent are black and 14 percent are Asian. Some students in the program selfidentify with the middle class, while others identify as working class or low income. While GSPers may be diverse in interests and backgrounds, two very important things remain true about all of us.

First, we have all worked hard to get to Georgetown and are proud of being selected to be part of a program as competitive and prestigious as GSP. The second is that we are not poor.

We often hear “poor” used to describe students of modest backgrounds, and we find it problematic, in light of the rich experiences of low-income students. First and foremost, to call someone poor implies that they are “worse than is usual or desirable.” This term implies that one does not add value or lacks the sufficient means to do so, which is incredibly precarious because it discounts the perseverance and grit it takes to come from a humble upbringing.

Since joining the GSP board this past fall, we have spent a great deal of time talking to representatives from our peer institutions about the best practices to build holistic institutional support for firstgeneration college students. GSP is a model for universities across the United States and is looking to support this demographic.

To put the success of the pro-

We are never made to feel like a charity case and are charged to recognize our own self-worth. gram in perspective, the national average of first-generation college students graduating in four years is 39 percent. And while 70 percent of GSP students are first generation students, 97 percent of GSP students graduate in four years. With that statistic alone, it is clear that there are a lot of reasons to be #GSProud.

GSP is working because it treats every participant with dignity and respect. Any time a student feels that his or her socioeconomic background is inhibiting him or her from success, there is an office

full of cheerleaders believing in our capabilities and giving us the resources to succeed. We are never made to feel like a charity case and are charged to recognize our selfworth as students with limitless potential and bright futures.

To celebrate the growth, successes and this year’s 10th anniversary of GSP, the student board launched the #GSProud social media campaign. The #GSProud launch created a forum that allowed GSPers, as we often call ourselves, to reflect on our experiences with socioeconomic status at Georgetown.

VIEWPOINT • Hinchliffe

As one student proudly stated, “From ensuring that my first night on the Hilltop was warm by providing me bedding for the nights to come, to ensuring my way home in times of family crises; GSP has held my hand and heart through the most trying and rewarding moments of my Georgetown career.”

One thing was incredibly clear to us as we read posts throughout the day and it is that despite the inclusion of the word “scholarship” in the program’s title, GSP is much more than a funding source. GSP is a family and future that purports equity in an institution of higher education. Over the past 10 years, GSP has positively affected the lives of 1,000 current students and alumni of the program.

We need to recognize how incredibly far Georgetown has come and needs to go. In the past few years, this conversation about identifying as part of an organization for predominantly low-income and first-generation college students was unprecedented. Participation in this campaign was truly a demonstration of solidarity, strength and love.

We believe that #GSProud should just be the beginning of larger conversations about class at Georgetown. While there is still much work to be done to address issues of socioeconomic status on our campus, we want to take this moment to commend all the supporters of a one-of-a-kind program that ensures all students who are accepted into Georgetown have the opportunity not only to survive, but to thrive.

Jimmy Ramirez and Colleen Roberts are seniors in the College. They are chairs of advocacy and strategic partnerships for the Georgetown Scholarship Program.

THE SENSIBLE CENTRIST

In Campus Journalism, Encouraging Women to The Best Education Run for Public Office

T

he most cliche thing I could possibly say is that my Georgetown education has taken place outside the classroom.

But, as you probably guessed, that’s what I’m going to say, and it’s true.

As editor-in-chief of The Hoya, I’ve spent I-don’t-wantto-know-how-many hours in this office, skipped way too many classes and met everyone who works the 3 a.m.

Leavey Center shift.

My cell phone number has been printed in 318,500 newspapers (I’ve only gotten one creepy message), and I leave more voicemails than any normal college student in 2014.

Over three-and-a-half years, I’ve written and edited hundreds of articles. I’ve argued with administrators, defended our reporters against criticism and sought to improve when that criticism is right and we haven’t done our best work.

None of this is unique; it’s the norm for dozens of Hoya staffers, and for staffers at student newspapers across the country.

Through the monotony and excitement of running a newspaper, what has been the most significant to me is that The Hoya retains its character as more than just a paper.

Even during tough times, The Hoya remains a refuge from academics and outside life, a part of Georgetown’s history and, most importantly, a place to learn.

The Hoya exists for the Georgetown community, but it also exists for the students who work here. We are and should be held accountable by our readers for everything we print, but as much as this newspaper is about its final product, it’s also about the learning process that gets 40 articles on the page and delivered to newsstands twice a week.

The Hoya’s biggest, most public mistakes offer their own form of learning experiences, whether we’ve published something that did not meet our readers’ standards and are appropriately called out on it, or whether someone with access to The Hoya’s Facebook account accidental-

ly likes our own post.

But I’ve found that the routine procedure of chronicling our campus community is where the lasting learning happens, and it’s what I’ll remember most about The Hoya.

It’s through a malfunctioning tape recorder that deletes an hour-long interview, a lost front page five minutes before deadline or the mysterious (yet temporary) disappearance of every photo The Hoya has ever taken that we learn to handle a crisis.

Through an embarrassing copy error (my favorite is “District of Colombia”) or a silly blunder (referring to an unnamed student in a photo as “Girl, left”), we learn how to make mistakes and move on.

Over the six nights a week I’ve spent in this office for two years, I relearned every night at 12:15 a.m. that Uncommon Grounds closes at midnight, and not 1 a.m., and that Mai Thai will deliver right to your Leavey 421 desk, if you ask nicely.

After reporting and writing about the intricacies of Georgetown and the people who make up this place, some of us discover a passion for journalism and perhaps decide the course of our careers.

The Hoya will celebrate its 95th anniversary this year, and these lessons only become more integral to the paper as time passes (especially Mai Thai delivery). The challenges The Hoya faces have evolved since I started here over three years ago, and they’ll change as the next staff takes the newspaper in their own direction.

But no matter how much The Hoya transforms, its defining feature will always be its role as both a resource and an outlet for students to learn by reading, and by doing.

Acting as editor-in-chief of The Hoya has been the greatest honor, challenge and privilege of my time on this campus. I can only hope that I’m leaving this role having served the paper half as much as it’s served me.

Acting as editor-inchief has been a great honor and challenge.

Emma Hinchliffe is a senior in the College. She is the 140th editor-in-chief of The Hoya.

Her term ends Saturday.

L

ast Thursday, I attended a re- their name printed on the ballot. Hisception for Emerge America, tory has proven to be one of the bigan organization committed to gest barriers to women running for training and supporting future and office. current female elected officials. It was After all, it wasn’t until 1974 that remarkable to hear female members women could have credit cards in of Congress echo the experiences and their own name; it wasn’t until 1975 theories written about in books and that women could serve on juries; it taught in classes. wasn’t until 1987 that legislation was Despite having more women serv- passed prohibiting employers from ing in Congress and in the profes- firing female workers simply because sional world than ever before, women they were pregnant. Frankly, with still face an uphill battle in achieving these types of legal and societal barriequality in the political and profes- ers existing for as long as they did, it’s sional worlds and therefore continue amazing we’ve come as far as we have. to be dramatically underrepresented Society continues to impose barriers in these fields. on women today. No matter what career Just over a year ago, I held a very they hold, women are still expected to different outlook on women in poli- be the primary caretakers of children tics and the professional world. As a and take on the majority of household woman, I always felt a special pride responsibilities. Many professional and when I accomplished something or political women either never have a rose to a level that was usually con- family at all or wait until their children sidered as reserved for men. I believed are grown to enter a profession or polithat women, as individuals, tics, giving them could advocate and work for a much later start themselves and did not need in their chosen ca“special treatment.” reers.

According However, after reading to Director of the Sheryl Sandberg’s book Women and Politics “Lean In: Women, Work, Institute Jenifer Lawand the Will to Lead” as well less, women who do as taking the class “Women opt for both chilin American Politics” with dren and a career in Tricia Correia political analyst Donna Braelected office “face zile here at Georgetown, my closer scrutiny and views changed drastically. are forced to reconWomen continue to be cile their familial greatly underrepresented, and professional making up only 34 percent roles in a way that of lawyers, 5 percent of the men are not.”

Fortune 500 CEOs and less Even in 2014, than 20 percent of all representatives deciding between or balancing a in Congress. With statistics like these, family and a career not only prewe should all — both men and wom- vents many women from taking en — engage in the noble pursuit of on higher leadership roles but also encouraging and supporting women makes it much more difficult for who want to enter such professions. them to succeed if they do decide to As I have learned, working to promote take on these roles. oneself is great, but working to proFurther, women are less likely to remote others is even better. ceive the suggestion to run for office In the political world, gaining more from both a personal source as well female representatives — both Demo- as party elites. This is unfortunate cratic and Republican — is vital be- because research has found that encause women representatives bring a couragement from either a personal whole new set of priorities and meth- source or party elites is a large deterods of leadership to our legislatures. minant in someone’s decision to stand Even with less than 20 percent of rep- for election. resentatives in Congress being female, The barriers I’ve explained thus far “Gender discrimination, women’s are only a few of the many that exist health and issues involving the bal- to prevent women from taking office. ance between family and workplace So, in an optimistic call to action, I are more seriously addressed,” write urge you all to please reach out to a the authors of “Congress and its Mem- passionate and inspirational woman bers.” As Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) you know and encourage her to run put it, “We’ve made it OK for men to for office. talk about these [women’s] issues, We need more women at every level too.” With women making up more of the corporate ladder and the politithan half of the American population, cal pipeline. We should not let the talit’s just bad representation to have less ents and abilities of half of our populathan one-fifth of a representative body tion go to waste. consist of women.

Even though women who run for Tricia Correia is a senior in the Mcoffice are elected at equal rates as men Donough School of Business. This is who run, there are many barriers that the final appearance of THE SENSIBLE women face in the process of having CENTRIST this semester.

I urge you to urge women to run for office.

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THE HOYA

PAGE FOUR

NEWS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE A relationship counselor spoke to students Tuesday about healthy sexual relationships. See story at thehoya.com

Your news — from every corner of The Hoya.

IN FOCUS

REJOICE IN THE LAMB

verbatim

“

I want something that reflects ... the amount of different cultural groups that we have on campus.”

Justin Chen (COL ’17) on the future installment of a mural on the wall near Yates Field House.

See story on A5.

from

ALEXANDER BROWN/THE HOYA

DAN GANNON/THE HOYA

The Georgetown University Concert Choir performed at Dahlgren Chapel on Wednesday. The choir, led by Music Director Frederick Binkholder, performed “Rejoice in the Lamb” by Benjamin Britten, among other pieces.

RANGILA PREVIEW Take a look at each of the dances that will be featured in this weekend’s special edition of Rangila at the Kennedy Center. blog.thehoya.com

GUSA Fights for Student Workers Peace Corps Plans KRISTEN FEDOR Hoya Staff Writer

The Georgetown University Student Association’s new Office of the Student Worker Advocate, which aims to address any concerns of student workers in a confidential, peer-to-peer setting, held its first series of office hours last week.

GUSA President Trevor Tezel (SFS ’15) said the idea stemmed from student feedback. In order to maintain confidentiality, he did not elaborate on specific grievances, but touched on a range of issues, heard both from individual complaints and from survey data.

“We identified that there was a need for student workers to be able to have other students they could talk to about employment concerns, perhaps before they went to the student employment office and started entering the university bureaucracy,” Tezel said.

GUSA Vice President Omika Jikaria (SFS ’15) said OSWA provides an extra resource for students who may need guidance navigating employment conflicts.

“It’s much more about disseminating information and really helping students through the process. It’s not necessarily providing

them with the information that the actual offices are providing them with,” Jikaria said. “It’s more about helping them through the process and feeling like they can actually go to a confidential resource and understand how to approach their problem in the first place.”

Tezel said that the new advocacy group was modeled after the Student Advocacy Office, which addresses students’ judicial concerns. Julia Hubbell (COL ’15) serves as a student worker advocate and, as OSWA grows, will appoint other students to various positions. Hubbell received training from the Student Employment Office regarding intricacies of student workers at Georgetown. She also meets with the Student Employment Office biweekly to discuss both individual and broader issues raised by OSWA. Hubbell said that both the university and Dean of Student Financial Services Patricia McWade have been supportive throughout the development of OSWA. “We’re looking forward to a relationship where we can talk honestly about student experiences in being employed at Georgetown,” Hubbell said.

According to Hubbell, one

DANIEL SMITH/THE HOYA

GUSA created an advocacy network for student workers, such as LXR Residential Housing Office employee Kyle Rinaudo (SFS ’18).

main problem that student workers face is late paychecks with regards to Georgetown Management System.

“There are huge numbers of student workers on campus, many of who feel disrespected or confused about their rights on the job and these sorts of complaints would generally float around Georgetown,” Hubbell said.

Hubbell said a large part of this issue lies in the fact that student workers are simultaneously employees and students, which can lead to a destructive workplace culture. Additionally, student workers know that there are always other students in need of a job that can replace them if they do quit.

“Students also experience the dynamic of being a student, which feels much more powerless. It feels like there is less recourse, and it fosters a defeatist attitude,” Hubbell said.

In light of the recent anonymous confessions of resident assistants in the Georgetown Voice about mistreatment from the university, the GUSA Senate passed “A Resolution Addressing the Mistreatment of Residential Assistants of Georgetown University” at its Nov. 16 meeting. The resolution calls for the university to conduct an internal review of allegations brought forth by the RAs. Hubbell said OSWA is a resource for any RAs who want assistance in navigating this campus-wide issue.

“OSWA is absolutely beginning a larger campus conversation about what life is like as an RA for our students,” Hubbell said.

Hubbell added that the office has already reached out to student working locations, such as Residence Hall Offices, in a publicity campaign that ran last week. Additionally, OSWA has its own Facebook page to reach student workers and bring awareness to this new resource.

Sinead Schenk (COL ’17), who works as a student guard, one of the most popular on-campus jobs, noted that her experience working for the university has been relatively easy. She added that one time she was paid late, but after a quick email to her supervisor, the problem was corrected immediately.

“I don’t know how it is for other student workers, but I’ve never heard anyone complaining about their work in a negative way, that they would need extra help,” Schenk said. “But maybe it’s a good idea for some people.

I just don’t think its 100 percent necessary.”

Memorial in DC KRISTEN FEDOR

dents,” she said. “There’s nowhere where you can see other elements of our national narrative sort of written After receiving authorization from on the typical landscape.”

Congress in January 2014, the Peace She emphasized the project’s charCorps Commemorative Foundation acterization as a commemorative, will move forward with its plan to not a monument, to reflect the modconstruct a commemorative sculp- esty of the Peace Corps. ture in Washington, D.C., to celebrate “It would not be a large statue or the 53-year history of the service or- something grandiose, because that’s ganization. just not in keeping with what the Roger Lewis, chairman and presi- Peace Corps represents,” Burman said. dent of the Peace Corps CommemoraThe Peace Corps Commemorative tive Foundation, explained that the Foundation is currently in the process idea for a commemorative sculpture of securing a specific site for the projoriginated in 2008 in anticipation ect and will conduct environmental of the organization’s 50th anniver- and historical assessments on four sary in 2011, fitting well within the possible locations. One site that is restrictions of the Commemorative preferred at this time, but not yet conWorks Act of 1986, which limits the firmed, is a quarter-acre space near creation of commemorative works the Capitol at the intersection of Louiin the District to honoring events at siana Avenue, First and C streets. None least 25 years in of the sites lie on the past. the National Mall “The notion itself, which is was that the currently closed creation of the to the construcPeace Corps in tion of any new 1961 was a very structures. significant moAs the foundament in Amerition moves forcan history. We ward with design believed, as did plans, it plans on Congress, that holding a nationROGER LEWIS Chairman and President of the Peace Corps the ideas in its al design compeCommemorative Foundation creation were tition in 2015. now a part of American history,” he After the design is picked, the founsaid. dation will work with the National The Peace Corps Commemorative Capital Planning Commission to apFoundation was established with the prove the design. NCPC Senior Urban sole purpose of creating the memo- Planner Lucy Kempf said NCPC will rial. Although the design has not be a source of guidance but will not yet been finalized, Lewis noted that dictate any specifics. a Peace Corps commemorative work “It’s generally in the staff evaluawould serve as a positive addition to tion of any site — we’ll talk about the the District. goals for the site, but we wouldn’t be “We have a city full of commemora- descriptive about what the design tive works, monuments and memori- has to be,” she said. “I think the reals, mostly honoring the generals lated dialogue, the memorial sponand admirals in wars. And wouldn’t sor will propose a design concept and it be nice to add something to that then we will ultimately approve that archipelago of monuments, memori- concept.” als and commemoratives, something Once a site and specific design is that was about making peace, Ameri- finalized — an end most likely over a ca doing things for the cause of peace year away — the National Park Service and goodwill?” Lewis said. will oversee the actual construction Erica Burman, director of com- and future maintenance of the communications for the National Peace memorative. Glenn DeMarr of the NaCorps Association, a nonprofit for tional Park Service said that the NPS returned Peace Corps volunteers, would follow the guidance of Conechoed Lewis’ sentiments and added gress in constructing the memorial. that the Peace Corps will fill a void “Congress considered the legislain the current makeup of the city’s tion, and when they enact the legislamonuments, memorials and com- tion, they are providing us direction memoratives. that we are supposed to work with “When you look over the monu- the sponsor to see that the commemments, over the Mall, when you oration is established. Congress, in take the trolley tour of Washington, its role, established [the commemothere’s a lot of war and dead presi- rative’s] importance,” he said.

Hoya Staff Writer

“The creation of the Peace Corps in 1961 was a very significant moment in American history.”

news

FRIday, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

THE HOYA

A5

Wider Neighborhood Corp, GUASFCU Fund Murals Sidewalks Considered Jack Bennett Hoya Staff Writer

Andrew Wallender

Georgetown 2028 Action Agenda, which is the “to-do list” component Hoya Staff Writer of the 15-year plan put out by the Georgetown’s congested side- BID in April 2013.

“Red-brick sidewalks are a primawalks may see some relief in the near future, as the Georgetown Busi- ry element of Georgetown’s historic ness Improvement District will now streetscape,” a statement in the 2028 regularly widen sidewalks in the Plan reads. “But these sidewalks are Georgetown neighborhood during often a source of frustration and inconvenience to pedestrians as large times of heavy pedestrian traffic.

According to BID Transportation light poles reduce usable sidewalk Director Will Handsfield, the deci- space, uncovered tree boxes make sion comes after a successful test for tricky footing and bricks that program during Georgetown Uni- need replacing go untended.”

Despite comments on Handsversity’s Parents’ Weekend, which took place from Oct. 17 to 19. Accord- field’s article calling for permanent ing to Handsfield, there was a 9.6 sidewalk widening in Georgetown, percent increase in foot traffic dur- Handsfield said that the District Department of Transportation is ing the weekend. “[Georgetown’s sidewalks] are nar- not considering any permanent rower than usual for a commercial changes because of their potential district, and especially for an inter- impact on the already heavy traffic nationally famous destination ... like congestion in the neighborhood.

DDOT could not Georgetown. When be reached for we have busy weekcomment. ends, sidewalks are “We do not connot sufficiently wide trol the permato move people comnent configurafortably,” Handsfield tion of sidewalks; wrote. that is DDOT, and Another sidewalk at present they expansion is already are not considerplanned for coming any permamencement weekend nent changes,” in May. The BID will Will Handsfield BID Transportation Director Handsfield wrote. also select four to Tiffany Lam six additional highpedestrian-traffic weekends when (NHS ’17) said that she thought Georgetown would benefit from that congestion of the sidewalks was only primarily a problem durwidened sidewalks.

The average sidewalk in George- ing high-impact weekends but that town is only eight feet wide, accord- the cobblestone sidewalks are difing to an article Handsfield wrote ficult to walk on year-round.

“I think that the only times on the blog Greater Greater Washington. Although this is much nar- that really are congested are rower than other neighborhoods in mainly during the holiday seaWashington, D.C., upwards of 4,000 sons or in the beginning when people per hour use the M Street you have parents everywhere. But sidewalks during the busiest week- personally I really haven’t seen a problem during the school year,” ends.

Street traffic was unaffected by Lam said. “And I don’t see [conthe sidewalk expansion during Par- gestion] as that bad. I think the ents’ Weekend, as the additional main issue is the way [the sideroom for pedestrians was gained by walks are] made. It’s pretty diffieliminating street-side parking spac- cult to walk on cobblestones and es. The District Department of Trans- uneven bricks.”

Cindy Hassan (COL ’17) said that portation set up barricades adjacent to the parking spaces to separate the she did not think that expanding the sidewalks would be necessary in pedestrian traffic from cars.

In his blog post, Handsfield said Georgetown.

“I think it’s a bustling town, that some customers raised concerns when they were unable to load but I don’t think it’s as crowded furniture or other bulky items into as New York City or a bigger city. I their cars from stores on M Street be- think sidewalk expansions would take a while and cause a lot of cause of the barriers.

Temporary sidewalk expansions traffic, so I don’t think it would be are listed as a priority effort in the necessary,” Hassan said.

“When we have busy weekends, sidewalks are not sufficiently wide.”

Over a year after the discontinuation of the “ReImagine Georgetown Grant” program, Students of Georgetown, Inc. and the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union will distribute remaining funds to painting murals on campus, bringing “Starry Night Over Georgetown” back to campus.

The project plan currently includes two murals, one along the wall in front of Yates Field House facing the street and the other on the wall in the stairway between the second and third floors of Lauinger Library.

The combined cost for the murals will be $3,000 — most of which is from leftover funds from previous ReImagine Georgetown projects, which include the Georgetown Farmers Market and the Winter Hoyaland that furnished Healy Circle with Christmas decorations. According to Students of Georgetown, Inc. CEO Sam Rodman (MSB ’15), students had plans for a similar art project that received RIG funding in 2012 but graduated before the project came to fruition.

Rodman said that GUAFSCU tapped into unused RIG funding, while The Corp funded the difference to reach $3,000.

“The way we see it is that we wouldn’t exist without the Georgetown community, we wouldn’t exist without students who patronize our services,” Rodman said. “We want to make sure that we’re consistently challenging ourselves to find the most high-impact voices to grant some scholarships or even more creative outlets.”

The Lauinger mural will be a remake of the “Starry Night Over Georgetown” that was chalked in Red Square last winter, while the Yates mural, whose official design is yet to be determined, will be more school-spirit oriented. The artists must hear back from the athletics department before finalizing plans for the mural in Yates.

Georgetown University Student Association Senator Mandy Lee (SFS ’17) learned of leftover RIG funds and asked The Corp and GUAFSCU for monetary support to revitalize the mural project. Lee said she decided to revamp the mural project to bring art to campus because she thought that the arts presence was lacking.

“There’s really not a huge presence in terms of the arts community, and living in the city, we’re surrounded by gorgeous murals,” Lee said. “I thought this would be an extremely cool idea, especially since I found out it had been attempted in the past.”

RIG, which was discontinued last fall due to logistical problems with continuing the projects, was created in

DANIEL SMITH/THE HOYA

The Corp and GUASFCU will use leftover funds from ReImagine Georgetown to install a mural in the staircase of Lauinger Library.

2007 as a partnership between GUASFCU, The Corp and The Hoya that aimed to better the community. The Corp and GUASFCU provided funding, while The Hoya provided marketing.

GUSA Senator Meredith Cheney (COL ’16) helped develop plans for the project and said that she received over 20 submissions for mural ideas from students.

Agree Ahmed (SFS ’15), who chalked an interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in Red Square in December, will recreate the piece in paint on Lauinger’s wall.

“From all the hype that it got when it was chalked in Red Square last February, we thought it would be a more perfect piece of art to highlight somewhere around campus,” Cheney said.

Lee said she is eager to develop more concrete plans for the Yates mural since its designs will involve student input.

“We’re actually working with athletics to try and come up with something that revolves a little bit more around school spirit,” Lee said. “We haven’t come up with a design or anything yet; we have designs that were submitted by students last year which we’re looking at, as well as the design team over at athletics is working on a few different designs.”

Although Vice President for Planning and Facilities Robin Morey has approved the Lauinger mural, the library’s administrators have not yet ap-

proved it. Cheney said she hopes the Lauinger mural will be finished by February but that the Yates mural may take longer.

“We really need to wait ’til the end of basketball season to hear feedback from athletics,” Cheney said. “Their designers are quite busy.”

According to Cheney, GUSA is looking to paint murals in other locations on campus in the future.

“We don’t have any other locations as of yet but we’re definitely looking for proposals,” Cheney said. “The criterion that we have stuck with for determining a location is high visibility and somewhere central on campus. According to Lau [aministrators], on a given day Lau receives about 4,000 people. ” Justin Chen (COL ’17) said he was a fan of last year’s Starry Night but was hesitant about how the money was being used.

“Honestly, there might be better uses of resources than doing murals like that,” Chen said. “I think they’re nice to look at, but I don’t see them adding a lot to the campus community.”

Chen said he hopes that the Yates mural will acknowledge the pluralistic Georgetown experience. “[I want] something that reflects diversity on campus, something that reflects the amount of different cultural groups that we have on campus,” Chen said. “I think that would be really cool to capture in a mural.”

A6

news

THE HOYA

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

Self-Defense Classes Expand Their Reach DEFENSE, from A1 classes do not address the deeper issues of rape culture that play a role in letting perpetrators of sexual assault to continue to do harm.”

Rabon warned against placing the onus on women and using self-defense classes as an excuse to justify victim blaming.

“It is never the responsibility of survivors to engage in attempt to prevent their assault,” Rabon said. “Survivors of assault that did not elect to take a self-defense class made no error and cannot and should not be judged or blamed for that choice.”

Additionally, Rabon emphasized the importance of self-defense classes restricted by gender identity or other factors in creating a comfortable atmosphere for participants.

“For the students that do want to take these classes, I think it is important to make sure they

are offered in a format that makes the students feel safe and comfortable,” Rabon said. “That may mean limiting some individual sections to students that identify with certain genders or sexual orientations.”

Self-defense classes have recently seen a growing increase in popularity, particularly among college students.

A national self-defense curriculum called the Rape Aggression Defense Systems program, or RAD, is taught at over 1,200 universities and colleges around the country. At some schools, these classes can be taken for credit.

This class was previously taught at Georgetown in 2009, but the large time commitment of 12 hours of training led the university to abandon the program after three years. In D.C., the RAD program is offered at American University, the Catholic University of America and Howard University.

Obama Awards Dingell With Medal of Freedom Profs Receive USAID Grant MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA

Economics professor Billy Jack (right) and public policy professor James Habyarimana received a $3 million grant from USAID for a project to improve road safety in East Africa.

DINGELL, from A1

Xinlan Hu

Hoya Staff Writer

The United States Agency for International Development awarded the Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation, known as gui2de, a $3 million grant to expand a road safety intervention project in East Africa.

The USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures offered the grants to support Stage 3 of the Zusha study in Kenya conducted by economics professor Billy Jack and public policy professor James Habyarimana.

The project is called Zusha, which means “protest” in Kiswahili, and mobilized participants to put up stickers on mini-buses across Kenya in order to encourage passengers to speak up in protest against reckless drivers. With a successful first-phase pilot in 2007 that reduced traffic accidents by about 25 percent in a sample of 2,400 mini-buses and an equally successful second phase, the project proved to be effective with a low-cost innovation.

“We have run two successful trials,” Habyarimana wrote in an email. “A randomized evaluation of the messages in a sample of 2,400 vehicles revealed a halving of accident rates. This is a very large impact given the presumed difficulty of improving safety and relative to the very low cost of the intervention. The second evaluation was considerably larger: In a sample of 12,000 vehicles we found reductions in accident rates of between a quarter and a third​. The results from this larger trial give us confidence that this intervention represents a powerful constraint on driver behavior.”

Convinced by the quantitative social impact from the first two phases in saving lives, USAID decided to fund the

project’s expansion across Kenya and into Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, according to the DIV. “Each year, the number of deaths caused by road accidents is on par with those caused by AIDS, TB and malaria combined,” representatives from the DIV wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Georgetown University proved, through their Stage 2 randomized control trial, that the simple innovation of putting stickers in buses in Kenya that empower passengers to speak up about reckless driving reduces road accidents by 25 percent.”

USAID awards grants on an individual basis and evaluated Zusha based on the three core principles of evidence, cost effectiveness and pathways to scale. Zusha is DIV’s secondever Stage 3 award and the first award to be transitioned from a former Stage 2 grant.

The grant money will mostly go to East Africa in supporting local personnel and printing the stickers. Some of it will be used to fund a new program at Georgetown and support research assistants helping with data analysis and business solutions, according to Jack.

Jack pointed out that the Stage 3 expansion would start on an experimental basis and scale up with other possible components such as TV, radio, billboard and social media to send the empowering message to passengers. He pointed out the challenge and the value in exporting an effective measure into another cultural context.

“We decided that we would continue this trend of research, both because we are not sure if the research can be easily exported to another cultural context. And also because we find a good thing and we want to do it. No one else is going to do it,” Jack said.

Habyarimana said that the

project has many real-life policy implications.

“The ultimate goal of this research is to uncover messages and other low cost strategies to generate safer transport services in the developing world, where 90 percent of all fatalities and injuries occur,” Habyarimana wrote. “This research has immediate policy implications as it provides policy-makers, transport providers and insurance companies with a low-cost strategy to reduce fatalities, injuries and property damage.​” Jack added that this project had the potential to make a difference in all developing countries.

“Every developing country, without exception, has a public road safety problem. It’s ubiquitous. So we feel that if we can make it work in Kenya, we can probably make it work somewhere else,” Jack said.

Jack said that despite the project’s initial success, he predicts challenges in local resistance, including hostility from bus drivers.

“The future is full of challenges,” Jack said. “It was really hard work; how simple the idea was but how difficult it was to carry out. It takes years and years and years of frustration and persistence.”

Jack also pointed to the inevitably uncertain results of expanding a public policy project because of different cultural norms.

“We need to be ambitious, but we also need to be realistic,” Jack said. “The result of the two studies has indicated that a very simple intervention, which is nearly laughably easy, appears to have the potential to have very large effects on people’s life. … [But] in this context, this is about the cultural norms and specific ways that evolve over time, so we have to maintain a certain amount of humility in thinking that we can change the world. I’m very excited to try but I’m also slightly nervous.”

Museums Begin Redesign SMITHSONIAN, from A1 firmly rooted in its heritage.”

The centerpiece of the master plan is the restoration is the Smithsonian Castle, which was built in 1855 and is the oldest structure of The Smithsonian Institution. Currently used as an information center and as headquarters for the institution, the castle will add two underground floors for visitor services, a cafe and a shop that will have direct access to the Enid A. Haupt Garden and the Ripley Center.

The redesign will also construct pathways to connect the museums and gardens on the South Mall campus.

“Currently, the museums are not connected to each other if you are traveling east to west or west to east on the campus. The proposed plan will link the museums together both above and below ground to enable visitors to move from one to another more easily,” Haberacker said.

The proposed master plan still awaits review by the National Capital Planning Commission, which will work with The Smithsonian Institution to ensure the renovations fulfill the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and Section 106 of the Historical Preservation Act. An updated master plan will be issued in a formal

meeting in December.

Dan Corry (COL ’15) was excited by the changes, hoping it would inspire more students to visit the museums. “[The Smithsonian is] a really important resource that is right at your fingertips. You have all these specialized museums basically in one place, and because of the Georgetown bubble, they are really underutilized by Georgetown students. How many people do you know who have gone

to the National Museum of the American Indian?” Corry said. “I am excited to see how the renovations turn out.”

Andrea Roos (SFS ’17) agreed that the renovations would be a positive change.

“I’m excited that it seems the government is putting a higher priority on educating its public through methods other than the schooling system. It’s a move in the right direction,” she wrote in an email.

ISABEL BINAMIRA/THE HOYA

The Smithsonian Institution announced a redesign of seven of its museums in a 10-year project beginning in 2016.

win the award. Jan Karski (G ’52, H ’83), a World War Two resistance fighter and Georgetown scholar, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at Georgetown, won the award in April 2012. Former senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), a Georgetown public policy professor, won in 2013.

“I look forward to presenting these 19 bold, inspiring Americans with our nation’s highest civilian honor,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House. “From activists who fought for change to artists who explored the furthest

reaches of our imagination; from scientists who kept America on the cutting edge to public servants who help write new chapters in our American story, these citizens have made extraordinary contributions to our country and the world.”

On Monday, Dingell was also awarded the LBJ Liberty and Justice for All Award from the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, along with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). Dingell stood next to Johnson when the then-president signed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law after he fought vigorously for the bill, and Dingell has since advocated for environmental regulation and health care legislation.

The 88-year-old representative will leave office at the end of his term in December.

Scholarship Program Marks 10th Anniversary GSP, from A1 thanks to @GSPhoyas #GSProud ‬#ClassatGU‬,” Anthony Do (NHS ’15) wrote in a tweet.

“Getting too emotional reading these #GSProud tweets. Feel so humbled to be in the presence of incredible peers,” Jimmy Ramirez (COL ’15) wrote in a tweet.

GSP scholar Bserat Ghebremicael (MSB ’17) from Las Vegas, Nev., said that she has found community and mentorship through the program.

“Last year, GSP was there for me when I struggled in homesickness, struggled in my pre-med classes and struggled financially,” Ghebremicael wrote in an email. “The struggle was so real. But it was comforting just being able to talk about these things and get them off my chest. That’s when I realized that GSP was my home away from home.

That’s when I realized, that I was in a network of incredible people with incredible stories — people I can relate to and people I can mentor and get mentored by.”

When GSP Scholar Andrea Jaime (NHS ’17) died from bacterial meningitis in September, Ghebremicael said that GSP hosted a Sophomore Strong Summit to bring the group together.

“They brought all these GSPers together as a community in support of one another and re-energize each other, and it just goes to show how invested they are in the success of every individual, no matter their background and socioeconomic status,” Ghebremicael said. “They saw potential in us when we were at our low points and continue to see our potential at our high points, and that’s why I have succeeded at Georgetown thus far.”

GSP scholar Stephanie Estévez (COL ’16) from New York said that the program has helped her develop an individual identity.

“GSP has helped me in the journey toward becoming acclimated to an environment and culture so drastically different from my hometown of Harlem, offered endless emotional support and provided a community with which I’m able to closely identify,” Estévez wrote in an email. “Most importantly, they continue to remind me that being of a low socioeconomic status shouldn’t be something I intentionally try to conceal. It’s an integral aspect of my identity that has shaped my experiences, fostered my resilience and made me

who I am today.”

GSP Scholar Isaiah Jones (COL ’16) from Virginia said that the community has been an invaluable source of many forms of support during his time at Georgetown, helping him find a job and intern in New York over the summer.

“GSP is my second family on campus because the staff gets to know every student individually and is there for us no matter what we need, whether it is advice, money, food, winter coats, a laptop or just someone to vent to about a terrible grade we got on a test,” Jones wrote. “GSP is my conversation starter, my social and professional network, my best friend but most importantly, my village.”

As GSP has supported students on campus over the past 10 years, GSP scholars have also contributed to campus life in a number of ways, Foy said.

“I think our students make Georgetown a better place, a more relevant place, because they come with so many diverse experiences,” Foy said.

“They literally come from all over the country: rural, urban, suburban. ... I think they each bring a pretty unique and diverse set of experiences, life experiences to our campus and then hopefully into the classrooms and their dorm rooms.”

According to Foy, the program has plans to grow in the future and find a larger office space to accommodate more students.

“We’re extremely grateful to be in Healy, to feel like right here at the center of the university,” Foy said. “I think the fact that we’re even here in Healy is a recognition that the university prioritizes us as a program and our students and values and hopefully our student’s contributions. But we are a little strangled for space, so we’re thinking down the road about how we can expand physically to match the growth of our program.”

Foy also said that she hopes to expand professional development services, offer more skill building classes and push for further donations to grow the program after its first 10 years.

“In the world of access and first-generation college attendance there’s been just a lot of bad news and negativity,” Foy said. “And this is a great opportunity to highlight that it isn’t all doom and gloom, that there is hope if schools do the right thing. And we have a model that that really seems to be working.”

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

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Malala Fund Partners With GW Margaret Heftler Hoya Staff Writer

NATASHA THOMSON/THE HOYA

Faregates at the Gallery Place Metro Station began accepting payment from credit cards and smartphones on Thursday.

Metro Tests Credit Card, Phone Payment System Sarah Smith Hoya Staff Writer

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority introduced new faregates that allow users to pay with credit cards and smartphones at the Gallery Place Station on Thursday. The move comes in advance of Metro’s payment pilot program that will operate at 10 stations and six bus routes in January.

Together with a demonstration of new payment methods during Thursday’s launch, WMATA announced the expanded payment options in a press release, detailing the new ways commuters will be able to utilize the faregates, including mobile payment options and credit or debit cards.

“The new fare system will allow riders to pay for their trip using a variety of new methods, without the need to convert U.S. currency to Metro fare value,” the press release said. “For example, visitors to the region will be able to enter and exit the rail system and pay for their trip using many types of [Near Field Communications]-equipped or contactless credit or debit cards and mobile devices, all without stopping at a fare machine or purchasing a SmarTrip card.

Federal workers eventually will

be able to use their workplace ID card.”

The 10 metro stops selected for the January launch are Shady Grove, Eisenhower Avenue, Bethesda, Pentagon City, Pentagon, Ballston, Farragut West, Navy Yard, Suitland and Gallery Place.

Depending on the success of the three-month pilot in January, the payment system may expand to the rest of the transportation system in Washington, D.C. as early as 2017.

“If the pilot is successful, Metro plans to replace the now decadesold faregates and vending machines at station entrances across the system and add new payment targets onboard buses and at parking facilities, starting in 2017,” WMATA wrote.

Additionally, the D.C. Metro board of directors approved a decision last May to phase out paper farecards over the next 18 months in favor of SmarTrip cards.

Olivia Gasser (NHS ’18) frequently uses the Metro and said these new changes will have a positive effect on her commuting experience.

“It really helps because I don’t carry cash around that often, and that’s been an issue for me before with the Metro. But I always have a credit card on me, so this sounds like a great idea,” she said.

The George Washington University partnered with 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai and Little, Brown and Company publishing house to release a free online companion to Yousafzai’s memoir Nov. 13, aiming to help educators integrate her teachings on women’s education into university classrooms.

An initiative of GWU’s Global Women’s Institute, the classroomresource guide was announced at an event that included a speech from Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai.

“It is our hope that Malala’s story will inspire the next generation of leaders in the global fight for education for all girls and boys,” Yousafzai’s father said in a press release.

The guide expands on themes in Yousafzai’s memoir, “I Am Malala,” which was released in 2013. GWI Director Mary Ellsberg explained that the institute brought together faculty members to expand on the themes

from multiple perspectives.

“It was important to us that the resource guide be interdisciplinary, making Malala’s message relevant to students and faculty across multiple areas of study,” Ellsberg said in a statement to The Hoya. “Each faculty member brought his or her unique perspective to the common goal of expanding on the message of an extraordinary young activist.”

The partnership originated when the GWI, which aims to promote the position of women and girls around the world, contacted Yousafzai after the announcement of her memoir, inspired by the 17-year-old’s efforts to draw attention to children’s education in Pakistan and her subsequent targeting by the Taliban.

“When we heard about the creation of the Malala Fund and her forthcoming memoir last year, we contacted them to see how we could support their efforts. Together we came up with the idea of developing a resource guide that would help educators use the memoir in both college and high school courses,”

Ellsberg said.

GWU professors have used the resource guide in classes to supplement course material with positive effects.

“Students have been very enthusiastic about the memoir, as well as the essays and activities included in the guide,” Ellsberg said.

The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security declined to comment on whether it would be interested in implementing something similar, but Assistant Director of the GIWPS Mayesha Alam praised the guide as an effective means to stress the importance of education for girls worldwide.

“This resource guide will be a great tool to reinforce the importance of girls’ education to peace and prosperity around the world,” Alam said in a statement to The Hoya.

The resource guide, which is available for free download, is available to other universities, and faculty members are currently working to create a new guide for high school students by 2015.

Donor Funds Ethics Faculty Chair Andrew Wallender Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics received a $3.6 million donation from Kathleen McNamara Hugin (COL ’82) and her husband, Robert, this week to fund a faculty chair in ethics and help develop Georgetown’s Ethics Lab. The donation will be split with $3 million going toward endowing the faculty chair in ethics and the remaining $600,000 being used for phase two of Ethics Lab, according to a news release put out by the university.

“The gift is truly transformative for the Kennedy Institute of Ethics,” KIE Head of Communications Kelly Heuer wrote in an email to The Hoya. “It represents both a commitment [to] the continued stre`ngth of its faculty — historically a great strength — as well as an investment in the future of the institute and its experiments in what engaged ethics can be and do here at Georgetown and in the world at large.”

The gift was given in honor of Hugin’s father,FrancisJ.McNamaraJr.(C’49,LAW’51).

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics was founded in 1971 and is a center for “practically engaged ethics” with a scope that spans all areas of applied ethics, according to Heuer. Ethics Lab began its second phase last year and gives students handson experience with solving complex ethical dilemmas.

One of the projects undertaken by Ethics Lab this year is led by Spencer Wells, the founder of the National Geographic Genographic Project and a current Ethics Lab Scholar in Residence. Wells’ class is exploring the ethical dilemmas of testing individual genomes. After discussion, students are allowed the chance to test their genomes or the opportunity to refrain from testing. The students’ findings will be shared with National Geographic at the end of the semester.

Blake Meza (NHS ’15) participated in an Ethics Lab class last year.

“I didn’t realize how much of an impact it had on me until it was all over. My creative thinking, participation in ethical discussions and confidence in presenting material all skyrocketed. It’s amazing how much one class can change how you view so many things,” Meza said in a university news release about Hugin’s gift.

The donation will help to ensure that Georgetown is at the forefront of ethical debates in the world as well as help develop a strong foundation of ethics in Georgetown students, according to Heuer.

“I believe that the work we are doing with Ethics Lab has the potential to change how moral issues are addressed in a fundamental way, and we are so grateful for the vision and generosity of Kathy Hugin and her husband Bob for investing in this potential,” Heuer said.

The university’s Director of Media Relations Rachel Pugh said that the university

MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics received a $3.6 million donation. appreciates the donation. as it makes bioethics research possible.

“We are grateful that members of our community support the academic work of the university, and especially the important and groundbreaking bioethics research taking place at our Kennedy Institute of Ethics,” Pugh wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Supporting the research of our faculty is an institutional priority for us and we support that work with university funding and resources. Philanthropy advances this work even further, and makes transformative research possible.”

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NEWS

THE HOYA

Friday, November 21, 2014

Startup Prize Comes to GU Margaret Heftler Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown students and alumni are now able to submit their business plans through the university for the Hult Prize, the world’s largest student competition and startup platform for social good, and will be able to skip past an applicant pool of 10,000 and go straight to regional competitions by competing through the university.

Six finalists worldwide will be chosen from the regional competitions, with one eventually winning the coveted prize.

This year’s competition will focus on addressing issues in education. “[The proposals] have to address the problem of early childhood education while including a mechanism to be self-sustainable,” Hult Prize campus director Erin Leonard (SFS ’16) said.

Leonard added that she was motivated to bring the Hult Prize to Georgetown because she noticed a lack of social entrepreneurship on campus despite the growth of broader entrepreneurship ventures.

“I think there’s a lack of social entrepreneurship specifically, and I think there’s a lot of talent at Georgetown that would be interested in the social entrepreneurship route rather than traditional entrepreneurship route, so I wanted to create a place where students can explore that a little more,” she said.

Currently, there are 10

Georgetown teams involved in the competition, with each team consisting of three to five people.

One of the team captains, Sohayle Sizar (COL ’14), said he was inspired to get involved in the Hult Prize after eight years of working in education.

“I’m on the train of going after my vision and making my dream come true so part of that is providing education for students, so part of the Hult Prize is allowing my dream to be a reality,” he said.

Sizar said that his team’s business plan focuses on the emotional growth of children.

“Many people focus on the academic growth of a child, which is very important, but focusing on the emotional growth of the child is also very critical to the development of the child,” he said. “So we’re focused on the emotional well-being … of children and providing a mechanism that can increase the emotional health of a child.”

Apple Li (MSB ’15), another team captain, said that while her team has not yet developed an idea, she’s competing in this year’s Hult Prize because of the theme of her interest in a class on early childhood education she is taking as a psychology minor.

“I learned in class is that early childhood education has a huge impact on a person’s future life in terms of IQ development, future social and economic status, so it’s definitely very important area that there aren’t many re-

sources that are devoted to that right now in many countries,” Li said.

Georgetown will host an Innovation Lab to help applicants this Saturday. Leonard said the lab will include lectures from professors who are experts in early childhood education, global development and human-centered design thinking. After the lecture, applicants will split into teams to start brainstorming and developing their team’s idea.

Leonard said the Innovation Lab is useful for applicants moving forward in the competition.

“We’ll have guided questions and activities and workshops to help them through this whole process so they come away with a really good idea of direction for the next month before the competition,” she said.

She added that the Innovation Lab is open to all interested participants and to students who do not plan on competing.

“It’s still a great way to learn a lot more about early childhood education and the links that business could have in that field,” she said.

Li said she hopes the Innovation Lab will help her team come up with a self-sustainable business model.

“Our biggest challenge is to be self-sustainable, because we invest in the children age zero to five, it’ll be hard to find a source of income,” she said. “So we’re going to get advice on this through that. We also want a better understanding on what early education entails.”

Lau Purchases 3D Printer Cooper Logerfo Hoya Staff Writer

Lauinger Library’s Gelardin New Media Center purchased a 3D printer earlier last month and has plans to purchase another one for next semester.

The MakerBot Replicator 5th Generation printers have the capacity to print objects up to 10” x 7.5” x 6” using PLA plastic filaments and cost $2,900 each.

According to Gelardin Department Head Beth Marhanka, the first printer was purchased with library-technology funds, while the second will be purchased through an Initiative for Technology-Enhanced Learning grant received by professor Robert Thomas.

Marhanka said that the 3D printers will further enhance student research and innovation while propelling Lauinger into the future.

“Libraries have always provided free and equitable access to tools and resources that facilitate the production of knowledge, from the parchment scrolls of centuries past to electronic resources like ebooks, computer software, video cameras and now 3D printing,” Marhanka wrote in an email.

“One of our missions as a library has always been to house and archive print resources, but now we also nurture creativity and discovery of emerging technologies through access to state-ofthe-art tools.”

Currently, access to the printer is restricted to Gelardin staff members, who have been testing it with a variety of projects.

“After that first test file, we started printing objects we thought would be most interesting to Georgetown faculty, like a double helix DNA molecule, a replica of a cuneiform tablet and a chemical molecule,” Mar-

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Lauinger Library’s Gelardin New Media Center bought a 3D printer last month and looks to buy another next semester. hanka wrote.

Lauinger Library’s Coordinator of Communications, Outreach and Programming Jennifer Smith said that services will soon be open to students and faculty.

“We ran a survey maybe a month ago to figure out what people want to use a 3D printer for at the university, and we had a lot of responses from faculty, especially our science faculty, that there are projects that they could use it for — I think creating models of molecules and organs and different structures,” Smith said.

According to Smith, the printers can be used for class projects, as well as student requests in the spring. Gelardin staff has not yet created a pricing model, but printing currently costs $50 per spool.

“First, we will be working with faculty who have class uses for it, and then we are anticipating at some point in the spring semester that it will be opened up for other academic uses and people will be able to submit a request,” Smith said. “It will have probably a two-week turnaround to get those done, and they will be priced because it is expensive.”

In addition to providing printing services, Gelardin will also offer 3D printing classes.

“We are really excited to have the opportunity to do this, and it seems like a strange fit for the library, but libraries have always been about providing technology and resources that people can’t afford on their own, so we are super excited to see where it goes,” Smith said.

Peer institutions including the University of Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern University have 3D printers in their libraries.

Nico Cuevas (MSB ’18) said he hopes to be able to make use of the 3D printer to further his research and academics.

“I hope I will eventually have access to the 3D printer to better understand the concepts I’m learning in class, especially in chemistry where we can possibly develop models for different atoms and molecules,” Cuevas said. “It would be great if students will be able to have some type of access to these printers even if it’s through a class. If I have any research ideas, I believe the 3D printer will allow me to advance those ideas.”

ISABEL BINAMIRA/THE HOYA

A project started by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to transcribe 19th- and 20th-century currency proofs is soliciting volunteers online.

Smithsonian Recruits Volunteers for Project Toby Hung

Hoya Staff Writer

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recently launched an online project to transcribe thousands of certified currency proofs from Washington, D.C., from 1863 to 1935.

The Smithsonian has uploaded 139 pages of scanned currency proofs, given to the museum by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in the early 1970s, onto its online transcription center.

The high-resolution digitization of the proofs allows virtual visitors to closely examine the engraving of the plates from which the proofs were made.

According to the Smithsonian Institution, the proofs contain significant evidence on the history of American currency.

“Hopefully, these images will allow research to begin or will bring a new understanding to the history of our nation, as seen through the multitude of banks across America that were chartered by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to create currency,” the Smithsonian wrote in a statement to The Hoya.

The currency proofs contain information about banks, bonds, securities and treasuries in different states during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The engravings on some notes also depict political scenes and allegories.

One of the transcribed currency proofs issued by the National Bank of the Republic of Washington has been identified as depicting an allegorical scene with Christopher Columbus.

According to the statement from the Smithsonian, any visitor to the online collection can volunteer for the project.

“The digitization and transcription of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing proof-sheet collection will allow people around the world to look into the Smithsonian’s collections and become a virtual volunteer,” it said. “For numismatists around the world, this opens up a new

collection, in its entirety, for the first time.”

At press time, there were 17 listed volunteers on the transcription project’s website, with 130 out of 139 pages of currency proofs transcribed.

Previous transcription projects from the National Museum of American History, which have enlisted up to 2,800 volunteers, include field notebooks, diaries and revenue stamps.

After a volunteer transcribes a note, Smithsonian staff members evaluate the transcription for accuracy.

Zackary Gardner, who teaches a course in American history of the 19th century, said that the transcription project would be a good opportunity for Georgetown students interested in American history.

“If students want to help the Smithsonian, then this is a fairly straightforward way they can do so from the comfort of their dorm room,” Gardner said.

However, Gardner said that the openness of the volunteer opportunity may result in unreliable transcription and would likely only interest die-hard history fanatics.

“The idea of using online crowd-sourcing for historical transcription is interesting and novel,” he said. “As the opportunity could be taken by undergraduates with no experience at the Smithsonian, with Smithsonian staff or working with museum collections, I am unsure what the students would get out of it other than the satisfaction of volunteering in transcription work.”

Marco Lam (MSB ’18), who is currently enrolled in an American history course, expressed interest in the transcription project but thought the job would be better suited to those who have thoroughly studied American history.

“Although I think it is cool to see what these bills can tell us about the currency system in the 18th century, I don’t think I know enough about American history to help the museum. I think this job should be left to experts,” Lam said.

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Friday, November 21, 2014

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MBA Rankings Rise in 2014 Charlotte Allen Hoya Staff Writer

COURTESY JANNE KOURI

Janne Kouri (GSB ’97) demonstrates some of the equipment at NextStep, his nonprofit progressive rehab center.

Alum’s Rehab Facility Struggles

David Brown Hoya Staff Writer

After overcoming paralysis despite doctors predicting recovery to be impossible, Janne Kouri (GSB ’97), celebrated ex-Georgetown football defensive tackle, not only triumphed over his affliction but is now working to help others with his nonprofit progressive rehab center, NextStep.

Offering services to anyone with paralysis as well as victims of brain injuries, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy, and wounded veterans, NextStep provides the necessary facilities that Kouri himself used on the path to recovery.

“For me, it was a simple decision. I experienced a traumatic situation but the question was, ‘Do I want to lead a happy life or not lead a happy life?’ I asked myself how I was going to get myself out of this situation and how can I have a wonderful life despite my disability,” Kouri said.

However, despite success in recovery, there were still problems during the process.

“Average insurance companies have plans that cover 30 days of rehab for paralysis victims. After that the insurance plan drops you, and you no longer have access to continuous care. People are stuck in their homes and it is extremely expensive to pay for private rehab,” Kouri said. “Insurance dropped me and I was kicked out of the hospital.”

Observing the lack of long-term continuous care for paralysis victims made it clear that a business like NextStep was needed. Kouri’s wife and sister created the business plan for NextStep, and after raising a million dollars in capital through large donations by Georgetown alumni, the company got off the ground.

“NextStep takes the best possible rehab for paralysis victims and puts it into a community setting.

Our goal is to make our services as affordable as possible so that anyone and everyone that is suffering from paralysis can get the services they need. We have everything that is offered at any progressive rehab hospital,” Kouri said.

Located in Los Angeles, the facility offers members the ability to work out and train their bodies to relearn movements and build muscle strength. Prominent among the available equipment is the locomotor training apparatus,

a device that attaches a harness to someone afflicted with paralysis, allowing them to maintain an upward position weightlessly so that their nervous system can learn correct posture and the actions required to walk. However, access to this is limited to members who have a top-tier status with NextStep, which costs $1700 a month compared to the basic fee, which is $75 a month.

What separates the NextStep rehab facility from other, more conventional, hospital-based rehab facilities is the aspect of being comfortable. Rather than being stuck in a bleak, white linoleumfloored building, one can learn to overcome paralysis in a setting resembling a real gym.

While NextStep uses typical marketing practices, including social media, advertisements, speaking with other local rehab facilities and reaching out to other nonprofit organizations to spread awareness about NextStep, the main problem that the business faces is lack of awareness about paralysis as a whole.

“Lack of awareness is our biggest problem. People know about cancer and global hunger and AIDS, but people don’t know about the global issue of paralysis.The lack of information causes a lack of concern and people don’t understand the life-threating complications that can come with paralysis,” Kouri said. “Everyone knows someone living with paralysis. 1 out of 50 people in the U.S. suffer from paralysis. It’s staggering.”

However altruistic its mission, NextStep is suffering losses under its current model. With its two types of memberships, basic and top-tier, costing $75 and $1700 per month respectively, NextStep hemorrhages cash with each new member, as staff training costs coupled with subsidies of over 50 percent for membership fees pose inadequate finances of over half a million dollars every year.

In the future, Kouri plans to continue opening NextStep facilities across the country to provide the care needed for paralysis victims.

“We plan to expand to new communities and continue adding facilities over the next five years.

Next year, we are opening a facility in New York at Stony Brook University, and then we are moving to Washington, D.C.,” Kouri said. “Our 10-year goal is to have a facility in every state across the country.”

Shoppers Drawn to Deceiving Prices HAMILTON, from A10 all extra fees we hate to pay will go the way of shipping fees? Why are there so many extra charges added to your mobile phone bill, airline tickets and hotel stays?

It’s primarily because these charges are not very visible when consumers are making purchase decisions.

(In contrast, consumers often abandon their online shopping carts when shipping fees are added.) For example, when choosing a mobile provider, consumers tend to focus on the monthly rate and underestimate the total price including taxes and other charges, which, according to CNN, made up 17 percent of the average consumer’s bill last year.

Unfortunately, by the time consumers see the total price, it’s too late — they’ve already signed the contract, used the service and received their first bill. The Federal Trade Commission calls this “drip” pricing, a practice in which firms advertise only part of a product’s price and then reveal other charges later.

In 2012, I participated in an FTC roundtable on drip pricing prac-

tices. Later that year, the FTC sent a letter to 22 hotel operators warning them that their online reservation systems may violate the law by providing a deceptively low estimate of the total price. Fortunately, some websites help consumers compare total prices by additionally computing taxes and fees for mobile phone service, flights and hotels.

What can we learn from these studies of consumer behavior? Although the best shoppers add up the total price and compare totals across providers, most of us tend to focus on what is drawn to our attention. Even after conducting years of research on price presentation effects, I still hate paying for shipping.

When shopping online, try to remind yourself to check for hidden fees, compare total prices and leave your feelings about paying for shipping out of the decision. Often, it’s a better choice to pay the extra fee than to spend money on a product you don’t really want.

Rebecca Hamilton is a professor of marketing in the McDonough School of Business.

Rankings of Georgetown’s MBA program rose six spots in a recent Businessweek report, from 30th in the country in 2012 to 24th.

“These rankings are a result of the incredibly hard work that we have been working on for a few years now,” Elaine Romanelli, a senior associate dean in the McDonough School of Business, said. “We have been steadily improving both the admissions process and our career services.”

MSB Dean David Thomas attributed two main causes to the rise in rankings: improvements to the programs and changes in the number of employees surveyed.

“We have been making steady improvements to the MBA program in recent years,” he wrote in an email.“Student satisfaction accounts for 45 percent of the methodology of the Businessweek ranking, and the students surveyed this year by Businessweek were the first to graduate under our new MBA curriculum that we rolled out fall 2012.”

The new curriculum was more rigorous than its predecessor and integrated a variety of disciplines to cover certain concepts. The curriculum also took employer feedback into account so that the program could be more tailored to preparing students for jobs

and internships.

Another 45 percent of the ranking calculation comes from a survey of employers.

“The changes in the curriculum, as well as the many programs and initiatives of the MBA Career Center, contributed to greater satisfaction among employers,” Thomas wrote.

Thomas said the second factor in the higher rankings were because of an increase in the number of employers surveyed, citing this as a large help to Georgetown in that category.

The new rankings support the notion that both Georgetown’s MBA program and the MSB as a whole have been on the ascent over the past few years. Although the rankings of the undergraduate and graduate programs are unrelated, both schools saw upward trends. There was a 23 percent increase in applicants for the full-time MBA class, and Businessweek also ranked the undergraduate program No. 1 in the country for finance this year.

Lacey Hatchett (GRD ’15), student government president in the MBA, observed a general increase in positive regard toward the MBA program.

“The student government regularly tracks social media mentions of Georgetown McDonough, and we’ve seen a rise in the quality of mentions we’ve received,” Hatchett wrote in an email. “We think the initial rise in the

MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA

In a report released this year by by Businessweek, Georgetown’s MBA program rose six spots to the 24th-best program in the country.

rankings, as illustrated by Businessweek, is a precursor to a general rise in esteem of the Georgetown McDonough MBA program.”

Hatchett also emphasized the MBA program’s continued efforts to rise in rankings.

“We see our aspirant peer group as the top 15 schools, and we’re working diligently to achieve an even higher ranking in the near future,” Hatchett wrote.

Romanelli credited the positive international perception of the MBA program as a reason for its rise in ranking.

“Around the world, the Georgetown business school has an incredibly strong reputation,” Romanelli said.

“We are very excited about this event, but not at all surprised.”

Romanelli also emphasized that a general cause of the rise in the MBA programs rankings is the snowball effect — with higher rankings attracting better students who further raise the rankings.

These rankings will be beneficial to both the admissions for the MBA program and the opportunities for post grads.

“If we continue to deliver on our promise to provide transformational educational opportunities for our students, we will continue to attract the best employers,” Thomas wrote. “By doing that, we should continue our upward climb in rankings and reputation, creating a cycle that has the potential to elevate the school to preeminence as the premier destination for global business education.”

As the business school continues to work hard on improving its programs, curricula and prestige, the presence of recruiters on campus will also escalate.

“Our MBA rankings have been increasing in recent years, and so have the reputation and buzz around the program,” Thomas wrote, crediting the MBA Admissions Office, the MBA Career Center, the new curriculum and increased alumni engagement efforts as recent successes.

“The rankings were systematically produced by hard work,” Romanelli said. “The main point is that my staff and I have been looking at and analyzing the rankings for the last four years, and not changing to accommodate them, but continuing to do what we do with the rankings in mind.”

Professor Joins Bowser’s Transition Staff MOORE, from A10 Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say, and that is, “All politics is local.”

And so whether it’s national or it’s local, the notion of being able to appreciate the dimensions and the dynamics of local economies and local politics, et cetera, is not unlike what you’ll see elsewhere.

In the case of the District of Columbia, we unfortunately have seen some of the problems that have existed, in the case of the current mayor, and I think lessons are being learned very quickly, and there’s a real desire to be able to make some things happen in these next few years, and Georgetown and the McDonough School of Business certainly want to be as supportive as they possibly can.

How have your previous positions in politics prepared you for this one?

Positions that I have held in government could be very helpful. For example [as Assistant Secretary of Commerce], I was responsible for

overseeing all of U.S. industry. I was very much involved in trying to have a receptive ear to what they had to say, trying to figure out what we could possibly do on a national level that made sense, both just in terms of their business, trying to create jobs, et cetera. I was heavily involved in the “Invest in the USA” program.

I was involved in trying to figure out how best to be able to convince people and businesses that it was in their interest to be able to invest right here in the United States.

Will you continue to teach during this position?

Right now, I’m not teaching. There is such a formidable undertaking for me in being able to set all this up that I’ll get back into the classroom, but it’s going to be a little bit down the road.

What are you most looking forward to about working with the mayor?

I’m looking forward to seeing what her priorities are for the economic development of the city. We’ve been

talking about everything from the building of a new soccer stadium to trying to attract the Olympics to come to D.C. There’s even an effort to see whether the city can try to draw the Redskins back.

So there’s some rather large projects that are being discussed, but at the end of the day, I think it’s what can business do, to be able to, first of all, to be able to stay in the District of Columbia, how to draw business into the city. I think this is a terrific opportunity for Georgetown and the business school to be present at the creation when Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser’s trying to really figure alot of things out.

I know that my colleagues and others at the university, administrators, faculty alike are pleased, and I’m certainly going to be tapping into their expertise and their support to see what it is we can do to help continue to make Washington, D.C., a vibrant city right here in our nation’s capital.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Students Donate Meals to Hungry Toby Hung

Hoya Staff Writer

Swipe Against Hunger, an initiative started by a group of freshmen to combat hunger, collected more than 210 meals for homeless shelters from meal swipes donated by students at Grab ‘n’ Go stations on Friday.

The group set up donation boxes at the three Grab ‘n’ Go locations on campus during the lunch meal period. Of the 210 meals given by students, 140 were donated to Community for Creative Non-Violence, a local homeless shelter. The rest were distributed by volunteers to homeless individuals on the streets on Friday night.

Antonia Liu (MSB ’18), one of the initiative’s founders, said that the donation was a practical solution that benefited both students and the homeless. “[We] initially planned on helping the hungry and homeless by buying food and giving them out during the holiday season,” Liu said. “Georgetown students feel frustrated about all the unused meal swipes they have, and that’s a great resource that we could use to help those who need the food the most.”

According to Jawad Pullin (COL ’18), a co-organizer of the initiative, the Grab ‘n’ Go stations at both O’Donovan Hall and Einstein Bros Bagels in Regents Hall ran out of food by the time the donation boxes were packed up.

Frankie Capers, a cashier at the Einstein Bros Bagels Grab ‘n’ Go station, said that there were noticeably more students using meal swipes on Friday than usual.

“We ran out of food at around 3:30.

We usually run out on Mondays, but not like we did on Friday,” Capers said.

“We usually have a few bagels left — we had zero bagels left on Friday.”

Later that evening, the group brought 15 volunteers to distribute the meals to the homeless shelter.

Liu said that she encouraged student volunteers to distribute the meals to allow them to engage with the D.C. community.

“The idea behind the project was to make the delivering process as personal as possible, to connect with people in need and to make them feel cared for and included in the community,” Liu said. “So we made sure to talk to everyone and show that there are people out there who actually care a lot.”

Indra Acharya (COL ’18), a co-organizer, said that he was able to relate to the cause from personal experience.

“I have been in a situation where I struggled for food, clothes and shelter. So I know how it feels to get some food to eat,” Acharya said. “I was so excited to see the homeless brothers and sisters smiling and blessing us.

We were able to represent the Georgetown community as one that cares about everyone in the world equally.”

After the event on Friday, Liu and

her co-organizers have begun the process of legitimizing Swipe Against Hunger as an organization on campus.

Grab ‘n’ Give, which allows students to donate money through one meal swipe a week, was redesigned in 2013. The money from student meal swipes goes to Martha’s Table, an organization that provides food and clothing for homeless families in D.C. “Right now, we are working on making Swipe Against Hunger an official organization,” Liu said. “Until then, we hope we’ll be able to conduct events like that on Friday.”

Liu said she also hopes to expand the initiative to more homeless shelters in D.C. “We’re also working on establishing partnerships with D.C. community centers and shelters,” Liu said.

“Our ultimate goal for now is to work in southeast D.C. where help like that is needed the most.”

Pullin said that he would also like to see Swipe Against Hunger become a regular event on campus.

“Since coming to Georgetown, one thing I’ve noticed about the school is that tradition really matters here,” Pullin said. “I feel like Swipe Against Hunger is something that doesn’t just have the potential to impact the people we helped, but also the potential to really become an endemic part of the university’s culture, tradition and mission.”

BUSINESS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014

BUSINESS BITS

GEORGETOWN ON THE HILL SERIES

The Georgetown on the Hill series brought industry experts to campus to share their opinions on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, focusing specifically on jobs and growth. The series, part of the Center for Business and Public Policy, hosts events that foster communication between academics and policymakers over issues that are gaining visibility in congress. Panelists shared opinions about the progress of TTIP, which has slowed in recent months because of issues relating to protection of foreign investment, data flow, geographic indicators and trade-in services. The overall consensus of the series was the need for TTIP to move forward and break down its barriers.

NEW FACULTY

CEO and Director of Host Hotels & Resorts W. Edward Walter will join McDonough School of Business faculty next semester, teaching a course called “Real Estate Public Equity” in the finance department. His hiring was motivated by the McDonough Real Estate Finance Initiative’s efforts to establish the program as a top global competitor. The Initiative’s mission is to give students a more comprehensive view of how the private sector works through applied education. Walter will teach the course in spring 2015. Vice President of Finance for The JBG Companies Ashesh Parikh will teach a class on real estate private debt and director of the McDonough Real Estate Finance Initiative Matthew Cypher will teach a course on real estate private equity.

GLOBAL CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

The Hult Prize and the Beeck Center will partner this Saturday for an innovation lab focused on global childhood education. Along with the lab, lectures will be delivered on humancentered design thinking and social enterprise management, and the Hult Prize will discuss its upcoming social entrepreneurship competition. Georgetown students will have the opportunity to enter directly into the regional finals, skipping the general application process, in order for a chance to win the $1 million prize.

Attendees will also have the chance to participate in breakout sessions to start planning their own businesses.

MICHELLE LUBERTO/THE HOYA :COURTESY ED SOULE

Rent the Runway, a luxury clothing rental company that has been primarily online, is opening its second brick-and-mortar store in Georgetown on Tuesday (left). The company, which was previously only online, opened its first physical store in New York this summer (right).

Rent the Runway Opens in Georgetown JESSICA BATEY

Special to The Hoya

Luxury clothing rental company Rent the Runway will continue to expand its brick-and-mortar presence and open a new storefront in Georgetown on Nov. 25. Located just off M Street within Cady’s Alley, the 4,354-square-foot store will be the company’s second, and largest, freestanding store to date.

Since its 2009 establishment by two Harvard Business School students, Rent the Runway has changed the way women approach shopping and luxury brands. The company, which began exclusively online, allows customers to rent designer dresses and accessories at reasonable prices for a 4-day or 8-day period.

Rent the Runway’s new Georgetown location will feature over 1,000 rotating pieces from over 200 designers, including Monique Lhuillier and Badgley Mischka. Customers will be given the opportunity to book an appointment with a stylist and create a unique look

for their event. The store will also continue to incorporate aspects of the “Virtual Closet” experience that Rent the Runway users have come to love: fitting rooms will be equipped with iPad Minis possessing scanning capabilities, allowing customers to rate and save their selections for a later date.

The storefront will add a level of convenience for Washington, D.C. customers now that they can reserve, pick up and return items in-store.

“We have a strong customer base in D.C., and we’ve been hearing from them for years that they’d love to have a place to try on our dresses and accessories in person,” Jennifer Fleiss, co-founder and head of business development, said.

Opening a store in Georgetown was a strategic move for the business since the neighborhood has already developed a reputation as an established destination for luxury brands.

“We were specifically attracted to Georgetown because it’s a high-

COMMENTARY

Research Shows Costs Behind Free Shipping I

magine that you need to buy a new can often be convinced to buy products textbook for class. You find it on the they don’t really like just to avoid paypublisher’s website for $49.95 plus ing for shipping. For example, a recent $4.95 shipping. You do a quick Ama- survey conducted by Georgetown’s Inzon.com search and find it there for stitute for Consumer Research asked the price of $54.90 with free shipping. consumers to imagine they were purFrom which site would you prefer to chasing a product online and decide whether to pay $5 for standard shippurchase the textbook? ping, pay $7 for expeAsk an economist this dited shipping or buy anquestion, and he or she other product they were would say that the two not very excited about offers are equivalent befor $10 to get free shipcause the total price paid, ping. Over a third of the $54.90, is the same. It respondents chose to add should not matter wheththe $10 product to their er part of the price is alshopping basket to avoid located to shipping and paying the extra fee. part of it to the textbook Rebecca Hamilton Why does paying for because the total out-ofshipping feel like a bad pocket cost is identical.

Yet research on consum- Free shipping encour- deal to consumers? One reason is that shipping ers continuously shows ages consumers to is not something we’re that they consistently preaccustomed to paying fer the offer in which the add products. for when we buy offline. book is priced at $54.90 Although both online and offline reand shipping is — theoretically — free.

Why is this the case? When a price is tailers incur costs for shipping, offline divided, or partitioned, into multiple retailers don’t call these costs to our atcomponents, it draws the consumer’s tention. They bundle the costs of shipattention to each individual aspect. ping merchandise to their stores with Looking at the publisher’s website, con- other costs such as paying for the prodsumers evaluate whether paying $49.95 ucts, paying their staff and paying for for the book, and then $4.95 for ship- their retail space when they set prices.

Thus, when consumers compare buying ping, is a supposedly good deal.

Experiments my colleagues and I a product at a store down the street to have conducted suggest that consumers buying a product online, shipping costs feel they derive more benefit from some charged by online retailers stand out.

Over the years, online retailers have components, such as the products they buy, than from other components, such learned to compete by offering free as shipping. As a result, consumers are shipping. Moreover, as we see from the more sensitive to the prices of the low- results of the GICR survey, imposing benefit components (shipping) than to thresholds for free shipping encouragthe prices of high-benefit components es consumers to add products to their (the product). In other words, paying shopping baskets, further increasing $49.95 or even $54.90 for the book feels revenues.

Doesn’t this logic then suggest that like a good deal while paying $4.95 for shipping feels like a bad one.

See HAMILTON, A9 One implication is that consumers

traffic shopping destination with other brands that align with ours,” Fleiss said. “D.C. women have packed social calendars [and] we look forward to helping them find the perfect look for every event of the season, whether it’s a charity gala, a wedding, homecoming or graduation.”

Rent the Runway has seen significant success in its existing brickand-mortar store in New York.

“We’ve witnessed substantial increases in our customer base and brand awareness from our [other] stores. We couldn’t have predicted the huge amount of foot traffic we’re seeing at our New York City store in the Flatiron district, our first stand-alone store,” Fleiss said.

The company predicts continued success in its expansion to Georgetown.

“We love that Georgetown feels like a true neighborhood. M Street in particular is both charming and chic, and we are so excited to call it home,” Fleiss said. “With over 200 designers represented in our store inventory, I think we’ll fit right in

among the various shopping offerings in Georgetown, from the local boutiques to the big international brands.”

Georgetown students are already expressing their anticipation about the store’s opening.

“I can’t wait,” Laura Galanter (COL ’17) said. “It’ll be great to actually try dresses on before you buy them. It takes away some of the risks or inconveniences of the online store. … I won’t have to guess about sizes or hope that the style looks good on me.”

The convenience of being able to physically see and try on dresses or accessories for an event, instead of waiting for them to be delivered, will undoubtedly attract many new and current customers to the store.

“I think we’re changing the way that women think about their closets. We offer an alternative to fastfashion destinations, like Zara and H&M, for those who want to experience the thrill of something new as well as the unmatched quality that ‘designer’ implies,” Fleiss said.

Moore Chosen for Mayoral Team LAURA OWSIANY Hoya Staff Writer

James P. Moore Jr., the managing director of the Business, Society, and Public Policy Initiative at the McDonough School of Business, has been appointed to the Economic Development and Jobs Committee of D.C. Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser’s mayoral transition team. Moore has taught international business, corporate ethics and leadership at Georgetown since 1999, served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Development and managed the government’s investment program, “Invest in the USA.” What was your relationship to Muriel Bowser’s mayoral campaign and how were you chosen for this position?

I actually had reached out to all of the candidates who were running for mayor, and I was doing so in my capacity as managing director of this new Business Public Policy Initiative that we have at the business school to be able to make clear the interest that both the business school and Georgetown University had to being supportive, should any of those individuals be elected as mayor. Muriel Bowser had invited me to get together, which we did probably about three months before the election, and had a very healthy discussion on the city’s future and what we might be able to do to help.

How is it important for the MSB and Georgetown to be involved in city politics?

Given that we are a member of the community of the District of Columbia, it’s absolutely critical that we be an integral part of the future of the city. And so whether we’re talking about, geographi-

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COURTESY JAMES MOORE

James P. Moore Jr., an MSB professor, has been appointed to D.C. Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser’s mayoral transition team. cally, our area or the rest of the city, we have to be responsible partners and responsible members of the community. So this isn’t just an interesting sideline, this is really a top priority, and I think it’s clear that it’s a top priority for President [John J.] DeGioia and Dean David Thomas of the business school.

How are solutions for the business climate in D.C. different across different wards?

Clearly, when we get into issues pertaining to income inequality, you’re going to find wards 7 and 8 being different from wards 2 and 4, and clearly each ward has its own character. But there’s a need to certainly be able to address specific needs in each of the wards,

but also to understand that there is a need to be able to lift the entire city up, so that at the end of the day, the wealth that is generated by creating more businesses and by being able to create more jobs clearly funnels into these other wards. Wards aren’t static.

Someone who lives in one particular ward is certainly working in another ward. So really trying to tackle these issues collectively as well as individually is key to success.

Most of your experience has been in national politics. How do you think that is going to compare to local politics?

There’s the old line that former See MOORE, A9