The Hoya: April 15, 2016

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

Georgetown University • Washington, D.C. Vol. 97, No. 44, © 2016

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

CELEBRATING THE STAGE

This season’s Georgetown productions highlight this campus’ theatrical talent.

COMMENTARY A student on her reality beyond the Planned Parenthood debate.

SPOTLIGHT ON JOURNALISM Lecture Fund hosted a panel of experts on the child abuse scandal.

OPINION, A3

NEWS, A4

GUIDE, B1

CAPS Covers Expenses Free counseling offered to survivors of sexual assault LISA BURGOA Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown University Counseling and Psychiatric Services will permanently offer free semester-long services for sexual assault survivors and accused perpetrators, which has been in effect since April 4.

Developed by Georgetown University Student Association and university administrators, the policy — which will be formally announced next week — will allow students to use CAPS as a resource on sexual violence with financial coverage even if they notify the service late in a semester; students will still receive a semester’s worth of treatment regardless of when they begin.

GUSA Deputy Chief of Staff Olivia Hinerfeld (SFS ’17), who specializes in mental health and sexual assault sustainability, said the policy was implemented to combat the lesser-known economic strain associated with sexual assault.

“There are a lot of costs you can incur from medical costs, to tutoring to catch up to classes you may have missed, to seeking counseling, and it can really become expensive,” Hinerfeld said. “Under Title IX, you are guaranteed equal access to education, so if these extra costs that you are facing because of this violence is denying you access to education, we want to continue to make it less expensive for you to get the care you need.”

Georgetown’s Title IX Coordinator Laura Cutway, who was

GABRIELLA MAS/THE HOYA

Whistleblower Edward Snowden discussed his leak of NSA documents in a virtual interview from Russia, where he has asylum.

Snowden Speaks On Privacy Issues JACK LYNCH

Hoya Staff Writer

FILE PHOTO: DANIEL SMITH/THE HOYA

Counseling and Psychiatric Services offers students who have survived sexual assault free semester-long counseling. hired in January in consultation with GUSA, said the new service has significant healing potential.

“I am very excited that Georgetown University’s Office of Counseling and Psychiatric Services will be offering a free semester of services for both survivors and respondents of sexual assault,” Cutway wrote in an email to THE HOYA. “This

Bowser Defends Shelters MATTHEW LARSON Hoya Staff Writer

Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) plan to replace the D.C. General Family Shelter with eight smaller sites in each ward of Washington, D.C., has come under fire throughout March due to concerns over transparency, cost and proposed shelter locations.

Bowser announced Feb. 9 that the city would fund new shelters to enable homeless citizens to move out of the D.C. General shelter, where around 280 families currently reside.

The council is expected to vote on legislation approving closing the shelter on April 19.

type of support is important for the healing process of both parties.”

GUSA Secretary of Safety and Sexual Assault Maddy Moore (SFS ’17) said the free services will be offered to students regardless of whether they choose to utilize university or police reporting processes.

See CAPS, A6

American whistleblower Edward Snowden, wanted in the United States for leaking classified National Security Agency information in 2013, emphasized the importance of privacy and downplayed the national security risks of his document leak in a virtual interview from his asylum in Moscow, Russia in Lohrfink Auditorium on Thursday.

During the interview, which was sponsored by the Georgetown University Lecture Fund and lasted approximately 75 minutes, Snowden fielded questions from moderator on the circumstances of his asylum, the FBI-Apple controversy surrounding iPhone encryption, his thoughts on accusations that he endangered national security and the long-term

GUFF Rallies for Reform TARA SUBRAMANIAM Hoya Staff Writer

Approximately 30 Georgetown University Fossil Free members and supporters gathered to demand socially responsible investments and more transparency from the board of directors’ Socially Responsible Investments Committee — including restricting investments in gun manufacturing and fossil fuel companies — at a rally hosted by GUFF in Red Square on Wednesday.

The rally, which was titled “Follow the Money” and previewed by an event page and introductory video on Facebook, was cosponsored by 10 student organizations, including

Georgetown Against Gun Violence, Georgetown University Amnesty International, H*yas for Choice, Georgetown Israel Alliance, Georgetown Refugee Action, Georgetown Secular Student Alliance, Georgetown Solidarity Committee and Georgetown Students for Justice in Palestine.

Members of GUFF, accompanied by a group of protestors, met after the protest with Chief of Staff of the Office of the President Joe Ferrara and Vice President for Public Affairs Erik Smulson to deliver a list of written demands.

The protestors’ requests primarily included the creation and develop-

ment of a university-wide socially responsible investment policy, which would include a public list of companies and industries the university should refrain from investing in based on its core Jesuit values.

After action by GUFF, the university voted to cease direct investment in coal companies in June 2015, and currently does not provide a public list of energy companies in its endowment.

Additionally, GUFF requested that the university reconstruct the Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility and institute an additional

considerations about personal privacy and consumer protection.

Snowden, a former CIA agent who released classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of theft of government property by the U.S. Department of Justice. He was granted asylum in Russia in summer 2013, and he has lived in an undisclosed location in Russia since.

Professor Alvaro Bedoya of the Georgetown University Law Center conducted the interview, which was attended by approximately 400 students.

The start of the interview was delayed by 45 minutes due to See SNOWDEN, A6

FEATURED

SPORTS Club Boxing The club boxing team won five national titles at the USIBA championships last weekend.

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See GUFF, A6

NEWS

“Because make no mistake, if we fail to act, we will fail.”

IPPS Ends Inaugural Year In its first year, the Georgetown Insitute of Politics and Public Service has hosted several key speakers and debates.

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MURIEL BOWSER Mayor, D.C.

NEWS

D.C. General came under public scrutiny after the disappearance of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd, who police say was kidnapped from the shelter by a janitor in March 2014. The Metropolitan Police Department recently renewed the search for Rudd based on information investigators received, focusing on the U.S. National Arboretum in a two-day effort beginning April 6 that met no success.

In addition to safety concerns, the shelter has been criticized for staff misconduct, unsanitary living conditions and a lack of high-quality facilities.

NENA BEECHAM/THE HOYA

See BOWSER, A6

GU Fossil Free led a protest with several other student clubs in Red Square calling for the university to be more socially responsible with its investments.

On “Throwaway Culture” Immigration and anti-abortion activists discussed the need to protect the vulnerable in Lohrfink Auditorium on Tuesday.

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OPINION

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

Published Tuesdays and Fridays

Address the ARC Flaws The report on the state of the ARC reveals concerning shortcomings in its staffing and funding.

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Send story ideas and tips to news@thehoya.com

OPINION

THE HOYA

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Founded January 14, 1920

EDITORIALS

Make Audits Public A recent external review audit has revealed grave shortcomings within Georgetown’s Academic Resource Center, a tutoring and consultation service available to undergraduate and graduate students. According to the full report, which was leaked to The Hoya, conducted by academic professionals in October 2015 and submitted to campus administrators in January, the ARC “has a minimal ability to serve the populations it professes to support” due to insufficient staff, inaccessibility to physically handicapped students and a lack of resources for studentathletes and those with learning disabilities. Each of these failings must be addressed.

One of the most glaring defects of the ARC is an insufficient number of full-time staff. With only five staff members serving a total student population of more than 17,000, Georgetown lags markedly behind other D.C. institutions. At American University, for example, 19 full-time staff serve an enrollment barely breaking 13,000, while Howard University houses six staff members for a student body of just over 10,000. While it is difficult to make perfect comparisons between universities — for example, AU’s Academic Support and Access Center includes its writing center, whereas Georgetown’s writing center is separate — the problem of inadequate support at home remains. Such discrepancies are even more shocking when one considers the increase in students with registered disabilities over the past two decades. In 1998, roughly 200 Georgetown students required assistance due

to a registered disability; today, the number stands at around 750, yet the number of full-time ARC staff responsible for serving learning-disabled students has grown from just two to three.

Clearly, the ARC is out of step with both external norms and internal needs.

Another serious flaw is the ARC’s handicapped-inaccessible location on the third floor of the Leavey Center.

Describing it as a “former closet” and “claustrophobic,” the report’s authors suggested moving the center to a larger, more readily accessible space.

All Hoyas should have unimpeded access to campus resources, so students should support this prescription. One way to make the office accessible is to work with Georgetown’s Disability Working Group, which is currently facilitated by ARC staff member Dr. Jane Holahan and members of Georgetown University Student Association’s Accessibility Committee.

But students should not limit their demands solely to ARC improvements or be satisfied with a mere reconfiguration of the ARC. The university has a responsibility to make similar audits of on-campus services public. If such shortcomings were brought to light by the leaking of an audit of Georgetown’s ARC, this editorial board wonders just how illuminating reports of Counseling and Psychiatric Services, Health and Education Services and other heavily criticized campus facilities would be. Thus, students ought to go beyond a mere criticism of ARC and demand that audits be made public so students can hold the university accountable to their devotion to student services.

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FRIday, April 15, 2016

THE VERDICT Train Strain — One hundred passengers on a Blue Line Metro train were stranded outside the Rosslyn station for over an hour after the train lost power.

Forming Farmacies — Nonprofits like the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture use big data to bring produce to lower-income neighborhoods in D.C. Trucks in, Tuck in — Truckeroo will return to D.C. for the summer. Food trucks gather every third Friday of the month from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the Half Street Fairgrounds for dining festivities.

Obama Commences — President Obama was announced as the keynote speaker for Howard University’s commencement ceremony.

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Millennial Moviegoers — In an interview with Variety Magazine, AMC CEO Adam Aron implied that AMC Theatres may allow moviegoers to use their cellphones during movies in order to attract younger audiences. Now everyone will be able to Snapchat the latest summer blockbuster live.

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Mamba Out — Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant played his final NBA game on Wednesday night, scoring 60 points in a victory over the Utah Jazz. Bryant is the third-highest scorer in NBA history.

EDITORIAL CARTOON by Noah Taylor

Immoral Connections The Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, tucked away in a corner on the second floor of the Intercultural Center, is responsible for fostering better relations between the Muslim world and the West through various lectures and events. The center also lists Ibrahim Kalin, the chief adviser to the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as one of its senior fellows. While his high association in the Turkish government would appear to be an impressive connection for Georgetown, his name also represents a connection to a regime that actively represses academics and journalists in Turkey. Notably, in January, The Guardian reported that the government detained 27 academics for signing a petition denouncing Turkish attacks on Kurdish people. Kalin’s connection to the attack on academia in Turkey is not consistent with Georgetown’s values. A man with such a misunderstanding of the value of freedom of speech and press should not be a figurehead for a Georgetown center about interfaith dialogue.

Over 1,400 people, including philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky, signed a petition asking Turkey’s government to end its “deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish people.” President Erdogan called the document terror propaganda and asked the judiciary to take action on those with signatures on the petition. The police responded by detaining members from the group “Academicians for Peace,” a group comprised of staff and teachers from over 90 Turkish universities.

While local media groups reported the release of nearly all members, other international actors have expressed open criticism of the Turkish government.

In a written statement from the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass, the diplomat expressed his worries about the Turkish government’s actions towards its own people and stated he was “concerned about this pressure having a chilling effect on legitimate political discourse across Turkish society regarding the sources of and solutions to the ongoing violence.” The prosecutor’s office is still investigating every person who signed the petition and some face disciplinary hearings and the potential for at least seven years in prison. As Erdogan’s chief advisor, Kalin is inextricably linked to the decision that prompted this action.

The United States currently supports the Turkish Kurds, while the Turkish government attacks them with airstrikes. The United States advocates for the Turkish Kurdish fighters to focus on protecting Kurdish areas in Syria from the civil war, while also successfully fighting the Islamic State group.

President Erdogan has called on the United States to choose to side with the Turkish Kurds or with the government.

Regardless of which side should be supported, the government should not penalize its citizens for signing a petition and speaking against government actions. Such restrictions on free speech do not align with Georgetown’s values and the university must not hold someone involved with an establishment that imposes them in an esteemed position.

Georgetown’s resources should be used to foster its moral values globally. Kalin’s direct connection with and endorsement of attacks on innocent peoples and academics are not consistent with these values and must be condemned by the university.

Jess Kelham-Hohler, Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Monyak, Executive Editor Jinwoo Chong, Managing Editor Shannon Hou, Online Editor Ashwin Puri, Campus News Editor Emily Tu, City News Editor Elizabeth Cavacos, Sports Editor Toby Hung, Guide Editor Lauren Gros, Opinion Editor Naaz Modan, Photography Editor Matthew Trunko, Layout Editor Jeanine Santucci, Copy Chief Catherine McNally, Blog Editor Reza Baghaee, Multimedia Editor

Editorial Board

Lauren Gros, Chair Daniel Almeida, Emily Kaye, Irene Koo, Jonathan Marrow, Sam Pence

Syed Humza Moinuddin Deputy Campus News Editor Deputy Campus News Editor Ian Scoville Deputy City News Editor Aly Pachter Business Editor Deirdre Collins Deputy Sports Editor Madeline Auerbach Deputy Sports Editor Darius Iraj Paranoia Editor Russell Guertin Deputy Guide Editor Sean Davey Deputy Guide Editor Tom Garzillo Deputy Guide Editor Kate Kim Deputy Guide Edtior John Miller Deputy Opinion Editor Anthony Palacio Deputy Opinion Editor Vera Mastrorilli Chatter Editor Julia Weil Deputy Photography Editor Robert Cortes Deputy Photography Editor Daniel Kreytak Deputy Photography Editor Stanley Dai Deputy Layout Editor Charlotte Kelly Deputy Layout Editor Jesus Rodriguez Deputy Layout Editor Alyssa Volivar Deputy Copy Editor Yuri Kim Deputy Copy Editor Emma Wenzinger Deputy Copy Editor Sarah Wright Deputy Multimedia Editor Jarrett Ross Deputy Online Editor Kelly Park

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Budget Article Missing Pieces To the Editor, I just wanted to bring to the attention of The Hoya some concerns myself and other members of the Finance and Appropriations Committee had with the recent article on the FY17 Student Activities Budget. While we appreciate the time and effort that was put into the coverage on the passing of the budget, we felt that some important circumstances were mentioned and others omitted.

While the largest budget cuts were specifically mentioned and comments were sought on them, we felt there was some context for those decisions that was left out. In particular, finances are strained when we make especially large increases in funding to certain boards, with Media Board, from whom The Hoya receives a substantial amount of their funding, actually saw the largest of those increases.

So, we prioritized what we thought most crucially need-

ed funding and regretfully cut areas we deemed most likely to be able to handle the burden with the lowest impact on their operational status. We have explanations for each allocation detailed in the final budget report as well, which can be found on the Georgetown University Student Association website, if readers have further questions or concerns.

Owen Hayes SFS ’18

Undocumented Dreamers on the Hilltop To the Editor, As a 1994 graduate of Georgetown who worked with immigrants both documented during my time at the university, and now as a teacher at a high school in Austin, Texas, who counts both documented and un-

documented immigrants among my students, I am so happy and proud to be a Hoya when I read about the support that is being afforded DREAMers on the Hilltop.

There is so much promise in these young minds and hearts that can benefit our university and our nation.

And they deserve the education and opportunity that they have earned through hard work despite an uncertainty and fear that most of us are blessed to never have to face. Thank you.

Maura Patricia Masters COL ’ 94

CORRECTIONS An article (“Panelists Discuss Tice’s Kidnapping, Journalist Safety,” The Hoya, April 8, 2016) previously incorrectly stated that Tice had dropped out of law school to pursue journalism.

He left for Syria during the summer and was registered for his final year when he departed.

Evan Zimmet, General Manager Selena Parra, Director of Accounting Addie Fleron, Director of Corporate Development Nicky Robertson, Director of Human Resources Lucy Cho, Director of Sales Ashley Yiu, Director of Technology Brittnay Logan Senior Accounts and Operations Manager Matt Zezula National Accounts Manager Connor Mayes Local Accounts Manager Alexander Scheidemann Treasury Manager Daniel Almeida Online Sales and Accounts Manager Galilea Zorola Subscriptions Manager Emily Ko Alumni Engagement Manager Shreya Barthwal Special Programs Manager Elizabeth Sherlock Personnel Manager Walter Lohmann Organizational Development Manager Natalia Vasquez Market Research Manager Steven Lee Public Relations Manager Julie LeBlanc National Advertisements Manager

Contributing Editors & Consultants

Madison Ashley, Sara Bastian, Michael Begel, Isabel Binamira, Alexander Brown, Robert DePaolo, Megan Duffy, Sophie Faaborg-Anderson, Cleo Fan, Kristen Fedor, Jesse Jacobs, Caroline Kenneally, Courtney Klein, Charlie Lowe, Carolyn Maguire, Andrew May, Tyler Park, Monika Patel, Jesus Rodriguez, Becca Saltzman, Zack Saravay, Joseph Scudiero, Mallika Sen, Kshithij Shrinath, Molly Simio, Natasha Thomson, Ian Tice, Andrew Wallender, Michelle Xu

Board of Directors

Christina Wing, Chair Lena Duffield, Chandini Jha, Jess Kelham-Hohler, Katherine Richardson, Daniel Smith, Evan Zimmet 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.

The Hoya retains all rights to all published submissions.

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 Suzanne Monyak at (404) 641-4923 or email executive@thehoya.com.

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OPINION

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

THE HOYA

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VIEWPOINT

The Choices We Carry

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t has been eight months and 15 days since it happened and I still cannot say the word out loud.

Even typing it out feels strange. Not because it is painful or difficult, but because I do not identify with it. To say “I had an abortion” would feel inaccurate because that word has been sanitized and repurposed to refer to a topic of discussion, not an action or a reality. For me, that word comes with a whole litany of images and connotations that simply do not apply to me when I think about my experience.

That term feels political and what happened to me was not — and, yes, I use that wording deliberately. Both to myself, to the small number of people I have told and now, to you.

What happened to me.

I say “what happened to me” and not “what I did” because, to my own surprise, this entire process felt and still feels like a medical decision. Not an emotional or moral dilemma.

As an enthusiastic Georgetown student, I write this for publication now so that more Georgetown students may be aware of the immediate relevancy of this situation for at least one, but likely many, of their peers. With the email recently sent out by the university about the event on “throwaway culture,” the impending lecture from Cecile Richards, the upcoming Philodemic Society debate entitled “Resolved: Pro-Choice is Pro-Women” and the many other topical and pertinent events surrounding this issue on this campus right now, I thought it was relevant to bring a level of immediacy to this topic for us as Hoyas.

For me, this was the only road I was ever going to take if I got pregnant at this age and in this phase in my life.

When I, like most women of college age, thought about what I would do in this situation before it actually happened, the idea felt very possible yet highly hypothetical and distant.

And so, when I found myself sitting on my bathroom floor staring at three plastic sticks that were all screaming the same thing at me with their sober little plus sign faces, it surprisingly felt nothing like I had expected it would. I kept waiting for the emotional wave to crash down on me, for my hands to clench over my stomach and for my mind to be thrown into immediate turmoil. And while there were definite surges of confusing feelings and some tears that fell to the dingy tile, I never hesitated for a second to follow the path I knew would let me keep my body and my life as my own for the foresee-

able future.

I absolutely respect the values of those who would choose a different path, because I fundamentally believe there are many valid ways to approach this situation. I also fundamentally believe that even if understanding those choices may be difficult or differ from your own, compassion is key.

When I had to make the call, it was not a decision about politics or internal struggle. It was a medical decision and, for me, the only solution.

In my case, I just found myself on the wrong side of the odds. The two of us did everything we were supposed to do as two consenting and educated adults in that situation: We did not forget to use protection and it did not break. This was not a random stranger I could not fully trust to be safe with me, but rather a good friend I had a history with and still spend time with to this day.

I must also make it clear that this is the only facet of this experience in which I will use the term “we.” He and I were not, are not and never have been in a relationship; I never told him, and I never will. This is not because I thought he would try to tell me what to do with my body or because he had values that conflicted with the choice I knew I would make or because I did not think he had a right to know, but rather because I did not believe he played a part in this story.

That may sound ridiculous to some, since he obviously played a biological role. But this was not something he did to me, it was just something that happened. The knowledge of this would have weighed on him, and I do not think he should have to carry that with him. Even if I could convince him that I have come to terms with what happened and do not regret my decision, it would not help wipe this from his conscience.

This is how I feel about this particular person in this particular situation, and while I acknowledge that it might be different if you switched the players and the game, this entire chapter of my life felt like an independent en-

deavor. It was all an “I,” not a “we.”

I just happened to come face to face with “guarantee’s” spiteful and ugly cousin, “effective 98 percent of the time.”

Another week and a symphony of deep, calming breaths after that, I was alone in the lobby of the Falls Church, Va. Planned Parenthood with my eyes glazed over in the general direction of some vapid morning show on the waiting room television. They called me in. I answered their questions with an overly breezy voice that I used to poorly mask my nerves. I was told

what I already knew and politely denied the technician’s half-hearted offer to show me the sonogram photo. I went home and weighed the options that had been matter-of-factly and helpfully laid out for me at the clinic — I could not access the Planned Parenthood website after protests, which began that week, had shut it down.

I had decided to opt for vacuum aspiration as opposed to the termination pill because I wanted to keep this compartmentalized. I wanted the physical portion of this to be something that began and ended in that clinic as a medical procedure, not something I had to bring home with me into my sanctuary of a room. I did not want memories of this chapter of my life associated with that particular

UNPOPULAR OPINION

space.

One week after that initial visit, I sat shivering in the recovery room on that overly warm Friday in July after having, according to the kind woman who held my hand during the entire process, “as perfect and smooth of a procedure as it could have been.” I drank a cup of juice, got a prescription for extra-strength ibuprofen, exited to the waiting room where my best friend was waiting for me and went home carrying more with me than I had entered with.

I left carrying a weight in the back of my brain that often makes me wonder if I could possibly be the only one here at Georgetown who has gone through this. The only one who has gone through what we, as sexually active women, always know is a possibility but never genuinely think will happen to us as young, full-of-life, safe and swaddled Georgetown students.

Now I understand that I cannot possibly be alone. I wonder how many others avert their eyes from the stickers in the stall of every women’s bathroom that are meant to be a resource, but that scream “Pregnant?” in what now feel like accusatory bold letters. The stickers that have faded around the edges, been written on by some bored bathroomgoers and that still cause a bristle in the base of my diaphragm and down my spine every time I see them, though I did not give them a second glance before that July.

While I was not raised in a religious household and do not hold strong personal spiritual ideologies, Georgetown’s Jesuit identity has touched me deeply during my time here. When I sat through “Pluralism in Action” my freshman year, I reveled in the inclusion and validation of a variety of stories. I believed that I had found a place that would serve as a home for those who came from a range of experiences and that this place would deeply invest in those stories to inform the whole self and community.

While I still hold that thought, there are moments when I cannot help but harbor resentment and sadness at the hypocrisy. When the Office of

the President sent an email advertising for an event, called “Resisting the ‘Throwaway Culture,’” on April 5 calling for an end to violence and citing “the destruction of unborn children,” I recoiled. When I sat down to write this and realized it had been eight months and 15 days since a six-week pregnancy was terminated and what that timeline means for me now, I sat there looking at my calendar unable to comprehend how different my life could have been.

This happened to me as an enthusiastic Georgetown student who has been chugging along diligently on the four-year plan my freshman dean set up. I sit next to you in sociology class or accidentally bump into you in the Lauinger Library stairwell because I am checking my GroupMe notifications. I get coffee in the morning from Uncommon Grounds. I sit on Healy Beach when it is warm. I suffer in the pasta line at O’Donovan Hall.

I am no victim. I had the immense luxury of approaching this situation from a place of privilege: I was able to take two days off work without worrying about the financial hit I would take from lost wages. I have personal ideologies strong enough that I never had to fight an internal battle about my choice. I received a subsidy from Planned Parenthood to offset the cost of the procedure and was able to pay for the rest myself. I had a support system ready to talk about it when I emotionally registered what it meant for me personally. I recovered both physically and mentally and jumped right back into my bustling everyday life. Not everyone is so lucky.

While I have only personally told a small handful of people, I believe that more of our community should be aware of my experience so it may inform theirs. While we embark on the famed “Georgetown dialogue” this week, we must remember that the things we debate and examine about are not just bullet points to be discussed, but realities for our peers. We are a community of storytellers, but not often a community of listeners.

I offer my experience to the Georgetown community in the hopes that it can inspire an informed discussion, but even more importantly, a two-way conversation that is compassionate and aware of the fact that my reality is, in fact, a reality for others here, too.

The author is a senior in the College. Because of the sensitive nature of this piece, the author’s name has been withheld.

GREY MATTER

Promise in Pragmatism Seeing the Reality Beyond Our Senses A

n interesting quality about Georgetown students that I have noticed is our general tendency to favor normative reasoning over positive reasoning.

The former centers on subjective, value-based judgments whereas the latter relies on objective facts. Essentially, the difference is whether one can prove or disprove the claims one makes. For example, when I say the government should increase health care spending, I am making an unprovable normative statement. On the other hand, if I say increased health care spending will increase the government deficit and/or raise tax rates, that is a positive statement economic theorists would seek to prove with statistics.

Our unchecked reliance on normative reasoning — that is, opinions — frustrates me because it allows people to make arguments without any evidentiary standard, accountability or expectation of results. If you argue only on ethics, morals and what people ought to do, you never have to prove that your claims would necessarily hold true in the real world.

Since no one can prove or refute subjective assertions, people do not need to bring data or logical proof to such debates. While normative arguments can be fun, the ivory tower of theoretical claims generally falls flat in the real world. Without objective support, even the best ideas can often prove incommensurable in reality.

We might now consider a timely real-world example: Bernie Sanders. Heretofore, his argument has been that the country has reached an untenable level of inequality and that we should strive for a more egalitarian society. This is obviously an admirable goal. However, he often fails to provide factual data that supports the claims he makes about democratic socialism. We cannot simply make everything more equal because forcing an equality

of any one thing necessarily results in an inequality of some things. The pursuit of true equality has an almost irresistible tendency to exacerbate undesirable inequalities of other kinds.

For example, if we try to make everyone equally healthy, we would spend different amounts of taxpayer money on each person because human beings cannot inherently be equally healthy, and thereby our public spending on healthcare will become unequally distributed.

Rahul Desai Conversely, rigorous planning motivated by facts — in short, practicality — achieves results where idealistically opining does not. A beautiful example of practical reason is the Golden State Warriors’ historic season last year. In 2010, the thennotoriously underperforming team was taken over by venture capital investors and corporate executives, who adopted skills such as “nimble management, open communication, integrating the wisdom of outside advisers and continuous re-evaluation of what companies do and how they do it,” according to an article in The New York Times Magazine. This sort of data-driven management forced the owners of the Warriors to actually determine substantive plans to pursue results, instead of making opinions, such as “I think we should change our lineup.” Pragmatic reasoning took six years to generate sufficient returns for the team, but eventually this strategy paved the way for huge victories.

Clearly, I am more

intrigued by practical reason compared to ethical reason.

This is why I am actually impressed by Mossack Fonseca & Co., the law firm exposed in the Panama Papers leak. It chose to live in a world of reality rather than a world of hypotheticals.

The firm exploited legal loopholes to help its clientele avoid burdensome taxation.

While the offshoring of wealth strikes some as unethical or corrupt, it seems perfectly pragmatic from the decision makers’ point of view. Objectively, the law firm used its command of the law to achieve successful results.

Make no mistake — my argument is not that we should be unethical. Rather, I fundamentally believe that all of our decisions, moral or not, must be undergirded by a sense of the way the world really is. Unchecked idealism more often than not leads to inefficient allocations of resources, time and talent. I believe this is the point my colleague Deep Dheri (MSB ‘16) makes in his viewpoint on divestment (“No to Divestment and Meaningless Solutions,” THE HOYA, Nov. 10, 2016, page published).

He points to the internal mechanics of the stock market to empirically show that divestment from fossil fuel companies would have little to no real-world impact on said firms.

Ultimately, if we try to employ more practical reason, we will undoubtedly make more effective decisions in whatever domain we find ourselves in, whether that be increasing equality, playing basketball, avoiding taxes or protecting the environment.

By simultaneously working our way backward from real consequences and forward from first principles, we can actually create the change we seek.

Rahul Desai is a senior in the McDonough School of Business. UNPOPULAR OPINION appears every other Friday.

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his world contains realities that need to be able to judge the position we were not born to perceive. For and speed of the car in relation to you. instance, the Earth’s magnetic However, consciousness sometimes field constantly passes through provides shortcuts, allowing us to each person, yet it passes unnoticed. work with the pertinent realities Students of biology know this is of the world without bogging us because magnetic fields are not a part down with unnecessary details. For of our umwelt, or the slice of physical instance, physicists tell us matter reality a particular organism can consists mostly of empty space and the sense. Members of different species real reason I cannot punch through a have different umwelts because a concrete wall is because the protons physical reality that matters for one in the wall repel the protons in my type of organism might not matter fist. But consciousness, to the contrary, for another. For instance, certain birds tells us simply that massive walls and sense the Earth’s magnetic field as a massive fists cannot occupy the same biological compass to help guide them space at the same time. during migration.

How does Through inventions consciousness deceive us such as the compass, so? Well, while a third we have made use of of the neurons in your physical phenomena brain are dedicated to beyond our perception vision, only a fraction of to create technologies that third is dedicated that have rendered our to actually sensing light. lives more efficient.

The rest is dedicated However, sometimes to perception, or to Ayan Mandal venturing into the reconstructing your unknown can lead us sensations to paint a to a world in which our coherent picture of intuition fails us. Quantum physics reality. Therefore, we are limited not only is perhaps the most famous example in our ability to sense our surroundings of such a failure. Books can and have — we lack the ability to sense magnetic been written about the peculiarities fields — but also in our interpretation of of quantum physics, but a quick the sensations we do have. highlight reel would include the role But why does any of this matter? Who of observation in altering phenomena, cares if our perceptions do not match the wave-particle duality of light, and reality? We all should care because the probabilistic nature of electron reality may have more to offer us than clouds. We continue to uphold these do our perceptions. The advancement tenets of quantum physics because of new technology will depend on our they lead to testable mathematical ability to harness the power of what lies models that have been confirmed via beyond our umwelt. For instance, the experimentation; yet, these tenets next generation may see a future run on utterly abandon our intuitions. quantum computers, systems that would What could account for the make use of the principles of quantum discrepancy between our intuitions physics to store and analyze massive and reality? Well, similar to how amounts of data. To prepare for such our senses did not evolve to detect a future, we need to be ready to accept, magnetic fields, our intuitions did trust and work with tools beyond our not evolve to comprehend quantum understanding. In fact, a stubborn physics. Rather than independent fixation on personal experiences observers, our minds can be seen as a typically characterizes a denier of part of nature, a biological byproduct science. Think about lawmakers in subject to natural selection like any Washington who deny climate change other aspect of life. Through natural on the basis of it not getting hotter where selection, we developed a conception they live. While we should challenge each of reality that optimized our chances idea presented to us before accepting it, at surviving and reproducing rather we should also not be afraid to reject our than the most true conception of presuppositions should we come across reality. evidence that contradicts them.

Most of the time, survival depends on an accurate picture of the surrounding Ayan Mandal is a junior in the College. world. To avoid getting run over by GREY MATTER appears every other a car when crossing the street, you Friday.

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NEWS

THE HOYA

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

PAGE FOUR

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Sen. Mike Lee spoke on conservatism and the 2016 election Tuesday.

Story on A8.

Your news — from every corner of The Hoya.

IN FOCUS

DIALOGUE INSPIRES

verbatim

“

The question is not when we’ll be done with racism in this country, the question is when will racism cease to be useful in this country.”

Jelani Cobb, Director of the Institute for African American Studies at University of Connecticut.

Story on A7.

from

LAUREN SEIBEL/THE HOYA

Experts reflected on the role of race and religion in the 2016 presidential campaign in a panel titled “Race, Religion and U.S. Presidential Politics” in the Healey Family Student Center on Thursday.

AN ODE TO BROWN HOUSE Brown House is closing. Mourn the loss of every freshman’s favorite weekend spot with 4E’s “Ode to Brown House”! blog.thehoya.com

Panelists Discuss Catholic Church Abuse, Future CHRISTIAN PAZ AND IAN SCOVILLE Hoya Staff Writers

A panel of journalists and experts involved in the reporting of widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church reflected on their experiences before and after the 2002 Boston Globe report, which was documented in the film “Spotlight” at an event in Lohrfink Auditorium on Wednesday.

Lecture Fund member Aiden Johnson (COL ’19) moderated the discussion between former priest and author Richard Sipe, canon lawyer Tom Doyle, former Boston Globe editor and current Washington Post editor Martin Baron, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Spotlight team member Mike Rezendes and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops National Review Board member Robert Bennett (CAS ’61, GULC ’64). Approximately 300 students attended the event.

“A Spotlight on the Church: What This Means for the Ordinary Catholic,” which was sponsored by the Lecture Fund, was introduced by Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., who began with a reflection on his experience with the child abuse crisis before explaining the role of the ordinary Catholic.

“We certainly had no idea of the scope of this. We really didn’t understand just how deep it is, although we could feel in those very early days what a terrible betrayal this was of trust and the kind of justice the church talks about,” Carnes said. “We have so much more to do. We are just starting to scratch the surface with this.”

Carnes said he has realized the church needs outsiders to prevent complacency.

“The church, like so many other institutions, fails to live up to its calling when it starts to become, as Pope Francis has said so many times, self-referential. It’s point of reference is itself,” Carnes said. “This can lead to the misperception that we are our best judges. By our own standards we can have a sense that in some way secrecy would be better.”

The role of outsiders is to provide an independent perspective of the church’s role, Carnes said. He also stressed the church’s need to ask for forgiveness for betraying believers’ trust.

“The sin of clerical abuse is

COURTESTY AIDEN JOHNSON

Lecture Fund member Aiden Johnson (COL ’19) moderated a panel of experts on the Boston Globe Spotlight investigation of the Catholic Church child abuse scandal, including Robert Bennett (CAS ’61, GULC ’64), Tom Doyle, Mike Rezendes, Martin Baron and Richard Sipe. a sin for which we can never fully apologize. We need to beg forgiveness from survivors from abuse, from their families, from the people we have driven away from the church when they heard about this, from those who turned away from God when they could not believe,” Carnes said. “We ask forgiveness from God himself. In some sense, the lives of priests in my generation need to be lives of penance, lives of constantly seeking some kind of atonement for this. It’s part of our mission.”

Following Carnes’ remarks, the panel discussion was divided into analysis of the process before, during and after the Spotlight team’s investigation into child abuse in the Boston Archdiocese.

Doyle said his legal involvement in investigating the church abuse coverup originated when a family in Louisiana filed civil charges against the Catholic Church.

“One of the families that was brought into this, that was signed up for an ironclad confidentiality agreement, backed out and went to court,” Doyle said. “Criminal charges were filed and the media got ahold of it and a very brave, insightful, Georgetown graduate named Jason Berry (CAS ’71) wrote a series of articles for a local newspaper in the Louisiana area.”

“My life was changed when I saw that little boy and knew what happened to him.”

TOM DOYLE Canon Lawyer

Doyle said he knew how terrible the situation was when he met the family of a child abuse victim in Louisiana.

“My life was changed when I saw that little boy and knew what had happened to him. I knew that it was not just wrong,

it was evil,” Doyle said. “I cannot find words in the English language that can adequately describe the pain that I saw in these men and women when they tried to describe what went through their hearts when they first learned that their little boy or little girl had been sexually violated and even worse by a man that they had trusted with everything.”

Rezendes said the church must have been aware of what was happening.

“This happened countless times, and at one point, we got Cardinal Law’s personal calendar and we saw that he had personally met with dozens of these priests and essentially forgiven them and reassigned them. How could they not know? Of course they knew,” Rezendes said.

Baron said The Boston Globe’s work in gaining access to all the Catholic Church’s documents through a court motion was a particularly important moment.

“We were able through that

motion, I think it is important to say that we were able to get the entire church documents so that was something that was sort of a treasure — for us journalistically but also absolutely critical in terms of establishing a precedent as you were saying, so you could actually see how the church were officials were responding as risk control people, how they were responding almost like an insurance company, form letters essent ially,” Baron said.

Doyle said it is important to remember the victims all represent the church.

“I say see those people over there, the victims? They are the church my friend. And don’t you forget it. That’s the core issue. These people who’ve been violently abused, their parents, their friends, their associates, those who defend them, those who support them, they are the body of Christ,” Doyle said.

Hoya Staff Writer Elisabeth Neylan contributed reporting.

news

Friday, april 15, 2016

THE HOYA

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GU Politics Reflects on Transformative Inaugural Year Taylor Harding Hoya Staff Writer

As the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service approaches the end of its inaugural year on campus, its leaders, fellows and student participants reflect on the institute’s accomplishments since it opened its doors in August 2015.

In the past year, the institute, an affiliate of the McCourt School of Public Policy, hosted more than 60 speakers, launched its fellows program and created the student strategy teams program. GU Politics also established a mentorship program, matching students with professionals pursuing careers in line with their own ambitions.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Martin O’Malley (D-Md.), former HewlettPackard executive Carly Fiorina and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama Dan Pfeiffer (COL ’98) among many others, have spoken to students and community members throughout the year.

Funded by the McCourt gift, GU Politics is modeled closely off the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and the University of Chicago Institute Of Politics.

According to Executive Director of GU Politics Mo Elleithee (SFS ’94), there was a commitment upon founding the McCourt School in 2013 to eventually launch a program like GU Politics.

“There has never been one in Washington, let alone at Georgetown.

If there was ever a town that needed to study how politics is really applied, it’s this one,” Elleithee said.

Having served as the communications director of the Democratic National Committee, Elleithee and the GU Politics Staff were given 11 weeks to get the program off the ground before the beginning of the academic year. Although they were crunched for time, the team solidified its major goals from the beginning: to provide students with behind-the-scenes access to prominent political figures so they understand how politics works.

According to Elleithee, today’s college students are not engaged with politics and do not see it as a vehicle for public service.

“The notion that I’m going to come in here, with my gray hair and after 20 years in the business, to teach you how to do politics is actually quite

laughable. I’m one of the guys who broke it,” Elleithee said. “So our approach it to pull back the curtain and provide the access. I’ll bring in everyone I know from both sides of the aisle, and we’ll help you understand how it’s done.”

GU Politics created several speaker series, including Reflections On Running, which hosted former presidential candidates, Women & Politics, which featured prominent female politicians, and the HIPPsters Series, which brought Georgetown alumni in politics back on campus to share their experiences.

GU Politics Operations and Student Engagement Manager Hanna Hope said conversations with former advisors for Dr. Ben Carson’s presidential campaign Barry Bennett and Doug Watts exemplified the institute’s goal of engaging in honest conversations.

“They just gave such unvarnished thoughts on what it was like to work for Ben Carson during the election cycle and then [two days later] Bennett was in the news because he had become a senior advisor to Donald Trump. They said things that I don’t think you would normally ever have a chance to hear because they just didn’t filter their thoughts,” Hope said.

The institute’s fellows program was another highlight from this year. The five fellows, including former White House Deputy Director of Political Affairs Patrick Dillon and former Deputy Campaign Manager of the Romney 2012 campaign Katie Packer, frequently engage in discussion sessions and weekly office hours where they share their opinions and experiences with students.

Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast Jackie Kucinich is one of the fellows this semester, and held discussions focused on the presidential primary process. Kucinich said she was impressed with the engagement and interest she saw from students and the larger community. “[GU Politics] has a reputation already for being a premiere place to be and a premiere place to speak. Part of that is Georgetown’s reputation already, but you can’t discount the people who are working here and how extraordinary it is that they’ve gotten this thing off the ground and that people are talking about it in a positive way and want to be a part of it,” Kucinich said.

As part of Kucinich’s student strategy team, which is responsible for promoting and organizing interactions between

georgetown.edu

Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Mo Elleithee (SFS ’94) helped guide the McCourt-affiliated organization through its first year on campus. fellows and the rest of the student body, Ellie Singer (COL ’18) expressed how working directly with GU Politics fellows and programs has exposed her to ways politics and academic can intersect.

“Becoming part of the GU Politics fold, I’ve been exposed to a lot of people who are downtown and do this for a living, and it’s really interesting to see how things we’re studying here actually play out in real life,” Singer said.

Agustin Porres (GRD ’16), who serves as chief of staff on the strategy team of fellow and former President of the Republic of Costa Rica Laura Chinchilla, said he enjoys how GU Politics explores international topics in depth and values the direct interactions he has had with political figures.

“You may think someone like a former president is so far away from you, and then suddenly you’re having dinner with them. GU Politics gives you the experiences that make you feel prepared to discuss with politicians,” Porres said. “This experience has strengthened my capabilities for sure.”

Elleithee said he experienced uncertainty heading into GU Politics’ first year as to how he could involve individuals with different political

backgrounds, especially considering his personal ties to the Democratic Party. According to Elleithee, others encouraged him to establish a nonpartisan identity as a solution, which he objected to.

“Why would we want to dissuade people from fighting passionately for what they believe in? So what happens today, when one side wins and one side loses, and we can’t find a common ground? Everyone takes their ball and goes home, or they start tweeting insults at one another,” Elleithee said.

“The answer is not to lose our passion or our world views. The answer is to figure out how to work through them.”

Georgetown students have already felt the impact of GU Politics on campus. Many have participated in strategy teams for the institute’s fellows while others have also had opportunities participate in GU Politics’ sponsored events, including Republican and Democratic presidential debate watch parties, which drew crowds of approximately 400 people in October and November.

As the semester comes to a close, GU Politics continues to grow and increase its footprint on campus. Over the summer, GU Politics will construct a perma-

nent office space in the basement of Healy Hall, with a designated political living room with televisions constantly streaming news. According to Hope, the room serves as a space for students to study and chat about politics with fellows.

The initiative will also continue to host several small programming events throughout the year, with an added goal of expanding its programming scope to include international and local politics.

“I also want to do a local politics vertical – not just D.C., but generally. If there’s a place where politics and public service meet, it’s on the ground in local governments around the country,” Elleithee said.

As the institute continues to develop, Hope said believes GU Politics will grow to be an integral part of the Georgetown experience.

“I think that has really been our goal, to make GU Politics feel like a part of Georgetown in such a way that people can’t remember what their Georgetown experience was like before GU Politics,” Hope said. “I think we have found that, in many ways, maybe we’re accomplishing that a little sooner than we thought.”

Metro Plans to Avoid Shutdown Civil Rights Activists Reflect on Progress

William Zhu Hoya Staff Writer

The Metrorail system will not be closed for six months at a time for maintenance and repairs, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority General Manager Paul Wiedefeld announced at a Congressional House Oversight Hearing for the Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets held April 13.

The subcommittee is an investigative body that has oversight jurisdiction over multiple federal departments, including the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Transportation Security Administration.

At the hearing, Wiedefeld stated that WMATA is currently considering alternatives to a complete monthslong shutdown.

“We are working to prepare that plan and will present it to you and the public in the next four to six weeks,” Wiedefeld said.

Wiedefeld said the plan may include limiting rail schedules to allow for overnight work, only closing certain sections of the systems between stations at a time and specifying which lines require attention first.

Wiedefeld’s statement came after the public backlash in light of Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans’ (D-Ward 2) March 30 suggestion of a potential six-month long shutdown.

Drew Morrison, senior legislative aide for chairman of the Council of Governments for the D.C. metropolitan area Roger Berliner, said WMATA is facing both large-scale and smallscale issues, ranging from train reliability to public safety at stations.

“There are both micro- and macroscale issues that Metro is facing,” Morrison said in an interview with The Hoya. “The issues they face are ensuring the public that they can provide a reliable and safe service to the public.”

According to Morrison, the weekend track work WMATA currently does is burdensome for riders and ineffective at fixing issues.

“The way we do maintenance now on the system is that we do these weekend partial shutdowns,” Morrison said. “It just inconveniences folks but still doesn’t get a huge amount of work done.”

Instead of closing entire tracks of the Metrorail system for months at a time, Morrison said WMATA intends to focus on specific areas for extended repair, which might result in limited shutdowns.

“There may be certain places where you’d have to do that in a targeted way in a short duration,” Morrison said.

“The general manager has made pretty clear to us that he does not want to have months and months of shutting down a line.”

Jesse Jacobs Hoya Staff Writer

ROBERT CORTES/THE HOYA

WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld announced Wednesday that the Metrorail system will not shut down for months at a time.

WMATA has also faced funding problems, which Wiedefeld testified to at Wednesday’s hearing, stressing the agency’s need for more funding to effectively maintain and upgrade its systems.

“Our financial systems as a whole are substandard compared to other transit authorities and require continued efforts to modernize,” Wiedefeld said.

Morrison agreed, emphasizing that WMATA’s financial issues could be partially attributed to a decline in ridership caused by a lack of customer confidence in Metro reliability and the advent of new transportation options, such as Uber.

“Some of that ridership loss is due to those first issues of not being able to provide a reliable service,” Morrison said. “If they don’t have enough riders, they may have funding challenges and have to consider cutting service or increasing fares.”

The majority of WMATA’s $1.8 billion operating budget currently comes from the local governments of Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland.

WMATA Chairman Jack Evans (DWard 2), who testified alongside Wiedefeld, asked the subcommittee for an additional $300 million in federal funding to match the amount state governments contribute. If approved, the request would give the agency the most expensive operating budget in the country.

“We need $300 million from the federal government,” Evans said at the meeting. “Each jurisdiction is giving that. The federal government needs to do that as well.”

Chairman of the Transportation and Public Assets Committee Congressman John Mica (R-Florida) denied Evan’s request for more funding, stating that WMATA required better leadership, rather than an enlarged

budget, at the congressional hearing.

“I am not going to bail you out,” Mica said. “We don’t have leadership.

We don’t have management, and these people need to step up to the plate.”

According to Morrison, WMATA is unlike other public transportations systems, as it is not funded by a consistent revenue source and instead must request grants each year from state and federal governments.

“We are unique among public transit systems in the United States in that there is no dedicated tax that goes to Metro,” Morrison said. “That means every year, WMATA has to go back and ask for the money instead of having a stream of revenue that they can rely on.”

Kevin Perez (SFS ’19) defended WMATA’s reliability, but highlighted the convenience of alternative modes of transportation, including the Georgetown University Transportation Shuttles bus.

“Generally every time I have taken the Metro, it’s been a reliable service,” Perez said. “The only reason I have converted from using the Metro more frequently to using the GUTS bus is that the GUTS is generally even more convenient.”

George Donaldson (MSB ’18) said he has had primarily positive experiences riding Metro.

“I have never had a problem with the Metro, I think it is pretty nice,” Donaldson said. “In my person opinion, I really like the Metro.”

However, Michael White (COL ’19) critiqued WMATA’s recent performance, specifically pointing to the unprecedented 29-hour-shutdown of all D.C. Metro lines March 16.

“I am disappointed with the Metro and how lately, things have just not been going right — all these shutdowns and all that. That is very disappointing,” White said.

Leaders from the Black Lives Matter movement, including Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson, encouraged students to engage in issues of racial injustice in a panel in Copley Formal Lounge hosted by the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice on Tuesday.

The panel, titled “Black to the Future: Activism, Community, and the Movement,” featured Morgan DeBaun, founder of media startup Blavity, civil rights activist Johnetta Elzie and Samuel Sinyangwe, a data analyst on online research project Mapping Police Violence, who reflected on the evolution of modern-day civil rights struggles and barriers to current progress.

The event was part of the Lannan Center’s annual Spring Symposium speaker series.

Mckesson began his remarks by explaining the role and nature of impatience as an impediment to the most progress in the fight for racial justice.

“I think there are some people who are more interested in fighting than winning and that worries me when I think about the movement space sometimes,” Mckesson said. “There is something that wakes us up and I think there is sometimes impatience when we think about this work.”

Elzie recounted the origins of her involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, which occurred after the shooting of teenager Michael Brown and the resulting riots in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. “I had my revolution on August 9, and unfortunately, not everyone came to Ferguson. So if you missed it, you missed it. I have earned my stripes and have done all these horrific things like fighting the police and cursing out the national guard.

I don’t have to prove to anybody, so if I feel like my way to get black people free is the way that I go, then that’s what it is,” Elzie said.

DeBaun said there were major discrepancies between the news coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and that in San Francisco. This led her to quit her job and expand the reach of Blavity, a website serving as a platform for minority voices and exploring issues across different cultures. “My Facebook feed was blowing up from people in St. Louis, but in the [San Francisco] Bay no one knew it was happening and no one was covering it,” DeBaun said.

“Black publications weren’t cover-

ing it, major newspapers weren’t covering it, like CNN or Vice. Seeing that disparity and that asymmetry is what made me quit my job and I think access to information is one of the challenges that we have.”

When the discussion centered around barriers to progress and addressing racial injustice, Sinyangwe explained how there continues to be a disconnect between academics and those who are participating in protests and movements actively.

“One of the barriers that I see is the ability to move together and in solidarity across generations and across spaces. This means working with academia to not just produce papers that get produced by other professors but also produce work that other people on the ground can actually read and understand and use in action,” Sinyangwe said.

Influenced by the protests in Ferguson, Sinyangwe said the Black Lives Matter movement continues to divide younger activists from the older generations.

“On August 9, the world changed for our generation, but many folks who had been doing this work for 20 or 30 years just didn’t see that, didn’t feel that, weren’t connected to it, so there was this divide that formed, whereby it was like business as usual in the workplace, while the world was changing outside, and I think, ‘How do we bridge that divide?” Sinyangwe said.

Following the events closely, many students expressed their appreciation for the diversity of views brought forth by the panelists. Ellen Singer (COL ’18) found value in the range of issues discussed and believed all the speakers brought nuance to the discussion of how to tackle racial injustice in the 21st century.

“I thought it was valuable to hear speakers from such different backgrounds, professions, and regions come together around the same goal,” Singer said.

Chris Wadibia (COL ’16) specifically found the views expressed

by McKesson to be nuanced and reflective of what activists must overcome in order to successfully achieve their goals. “I especially enjoyed the insights of Deray McKesson. At one juncture, when highlighting the need for authentic, justice-oriented leadership, McKesson stated that what is important is not always popular. This offering is deeply relevant for my generation.

I hope these words were noted by many and will be honored by even more,” Wadibia said.

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news

THE HOYA

FRIday, April 15, 2016

GUFF Protests For Transparency for progress to be made.

“I thought it was a very effective meetboard of directors working group to up- ing. We elaborated on our demands and hold the policy and include students in engaged in a discussion of topics related the process. to student engagement, socially responProtestors are also seeking the de- sible investment, board transparency, velopment by the university of an in- and CISR reform,” Willard said. “We feel vestment transparency website to pub- like both of them were very receptive to licly disclose any connections between our overall argument, and look forward Georgetown’s investto engaging more with ments and personal “I think it’s great them and the board of connections within directors in the future.” the board of directors that Georgetown Aaron Bennett (COL or other major donors. ’19), who attended the According to GUFF students are rally, said the protesmember Caroline deciding to speak tors’ messages and deJames (COL ’16), the mands for change were purpose of the rally out.” moving. was to raise awareness “I think it’s great aaron bennett COL ’19 for the lack of clear that Georgetown stuand public university dents are deciding to policy on investment. speak out against some of the lack of “We’ve had a lot of frustration with transparency and socially irresponsible the university bureaucracy and basically funding on behalf of Georgetown Unifinding that there isn’t a university-wide versity,” Bennett said. policy about what we will and will not GUFF member Brendan Stelmach invest in,” James said. “So we decided to (SFS ’19) said the demands are essential have a ‘follow-the-money’ rally to show to better align the university’s policies that other groups have a vested interest with Jesuit values, and hopes the uniin seeing the university have this policy.” versity will more carefully consider the According to a statement issued by ways it utilizes its endowment in the Ferrara following the rally, the board of future. directors will review the list of demands.

“One of the most meaningful ways “We will share the demands with the that, as students, we can show our supboard of directors committee that is re- port for protection against climate viewing socially responsible investing,” change is by campaigning to change Ferrara wrote in a statement to The Hoya. how we invest our endowment,” StelGUFF member Grady Willard (SFS mach said. “It’s a direct representation ’18), who attended the meeting, said the of us as students and I think that by group’s conversation with Ferrara was putting some of these changes in place a step in the right direction, but hopes we can move towards being more repthe administration will continue to be resentative of what Georgetown is truly receptive to students’ demands in order about.”

GUFF, from A1

Courtesy tech republic

Former CIA employee Edward Snowden commented on issues dealing with cybersecurity and privacy, inlcuding the FBI’s recent legal battle with Apple over iPhone security.

Snowden Talks Security SNOWDEN, from A1 technical issues surrounding Snowden’s Google Hangout account and Internet connection, according to Lecture Fund Executive Chair Helen Brosnan (COL ’16).

“A representative with Snowden’s team told us that, ‘the call was being blocked in that region [where Snowden was located],’” Brosnan said.

Brosnan said while there was no evidence presented of outside interference to cause the blocked call, she acknowledged that the problems were an unprecedented obstacle in Snowden’s experience of doing Google Hangout lectures.

Throughout the interview, Snowden stressed the importance of privacy, which he contended is an essential part of human development.

“Privacy is the right to the self. And how does that happen? That happens by trying things and failing. And then trying again and succeeding,” Snowden said. “But when you’re making mistakes under observation, under prejudice, it’s quite dangerous to have a permanent record of every mistake you’ve ever made.”

Snowden said the right to privacy is especially important for political and racial minority groups, as there is a fundamental inequality in the types of people the government chooses to surveil.

“Because just like we have an unequal distribution of resources, just like we have an unequal distribution of debts, we have a foolish and unequal application of surveillance techniques,” Snowden said.

Snowden said he was particularly concerned by the FBI’s most recent attempts to force

Apple to unlock the phone of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

“Does the government deputize every private structure — whether it’s you, whether it’s a university, whether it’s a corporation — to perform surveillance on their behalf?” Snowden said.

“There is no precedent for doing that in this creative way, in which the government compels you to create a new capability for surveillance.”

Snowden said the audience should consider the ramifications of corporate data collection on the privacy of private consumers.

“If the CEO of Google wanted to look at your email box today, just because, if they wanted to see everything that you’ve ever typed in a Google search box, what could you do about it?”

Snowden said. “Same thing for Facebook. Same for Verizon.

Same for AT&T.” Snowden downplayed suggestions that his actions compromised national security.

According to Snowden, the responsibility lies with the news outlets who published his information.

“I never published a single story. They all went through independent journalism outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian. The most trusted names in print media. And they were charged with making an independent assessment of the public interest for any given story prior to publishing,” Snowden said.

Professor Bedoya pressed Snowden on his suggestion that independent journalists, rather than his own data leaks, compromised national security.

“You can’t be saying that there is a zero national security cost to what you did, right? That’s not

what you’re saying,” Bedoya said.

Snowden said there is no evidence his leaks have damaged national security.

“I’m saying the risk exists,” Snowden said. “But evidence of harm does not yet exist when we’re sitting here in 2016.”

Snowden said he would have come forward sooner if he were to leak the documents again.

Snowden came forward in June 2013, after first leaking the documents a month earlier.

Mitali Mathur (SFS ’19) said Snowden’s responses showed his commitment to privacy.

“I think the biggest thing that stuck out to me was when the professor asked what he would do differently and he said, ‘I would have come forward sooner.’ I thought that really showed what he believed in and why he thought that was valuable,” Mathur said.

Christina Nangy (GRD ’16) said Snowden’s role in the international discussion around surveillance and privacy makes him role model to many millennials, which lent his talk particular relevance.

“A lot of us are millennials or early post-millennial youth, and a lot of us see him as a hero. So I was really interested in hearing what he had to say,” Nangy said.

Tina Cheesman (SFS ’19) said she was impressed by the straightforward nature of Snowden’s answers.

“I think Snowden made a number of really great points, from addressing how his actions affected himself and others to the ways in which what he started isn’t completely finished yet. He addressed issues bluntly and offered clear examples to illustrate his points,” she said.

Hoya Staff Writer Christian Paz contributed reporting.

Survivors Supported CAPS, from A1 “This conversation allows for options that don’t maybe entail going out to the police and reporting or going out and seeking services, and continuing to build on this idea of what justice means and what healing means,” Moore said.

Former GUSA Chief of Staff Abbey McNaughton (COL ’16) stressed that every reform must be introduced responsibly.

“The policies or practices that are in place are not intended to cause additional issues, but sometimes well intentioned of things do, so it can be challenging to explain how a well-intentioned thing is actually hurting students,” McNaughton wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We have to make sure that each solution or reform is viewed with a critical eye and is actually going to have the effects that were intended. These policies can have detrimental effects on people’s lives, they need to be handled with the utmost responsibility to survivors.”

Expansion of CAPS for sexual assault survivors represents the passing of one policy reform regarding sexual assault brokered by the university and GUSA in their six-point Memorandum of Understanding released September.

Borne out of conversations surrounding The Hoya’s publication last July of former student Willa Murphy’s (COL ‘16) account of sexual assault and

subsequent expulsion from the university written by Zoe Dobkin (SFS ’16), the MOU enumerated a three-pronged plan of hiring a full-time Title IX coordinator, spearheading a marketing campaign for campus sexual assault resources and creating a new bystander intervention program.

“We have to make sure that each solution or reform is viewed with a critical eye and is actually going to have the effects that were intended.” abbey mcnaughton (col ’16) Former Chief of Staff, GUSA

Some of the initiatives that have reached fruition include launching the inaugural Campus Climate Survey in January, printing GOCards with the contact information of resources such as the Georgetown University Police Department, CAPS and the D.C. Rape Crisis Center starting with the class of 2020 and amending the Code of Conduct to include a more flexible definition of relationship violence.

GUSA will host a Sexual Assault Open Forum with six administrators April 20 to discuss the updates.

GUSA President Enushe

Khan (MSB ’17) said she hopes to further advance sexual assault policies during her administration with new projects including an online portal for reporting violations and drafting a new bystander intervention program by next spring.

“This is a great year for our administration to set the tone with Laura [Cutaway] that we want to be great partners with her going forward,” Khan said. “What’s important this year is that the administration kind of had planned in advance that it was time to start touching up on things, but in terms of urgency, that’s what student government does best. Joe [Luther (COL ’16)] and Connor [Rohan (COL ’16)] did a great job of highlighting the urgency of different issues, and Chris and I are committed toward doing the same because the conversation does not end here.”

Luther said the university has made significant progress in improving resources available for survivors during his term, but that more work still needs to be done.

“I think we made a lot of great strides institutionally to make sure that Georgetown’s bureaucracy is accessible and accountable for survivors,” Luther wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Culturally, there is still much work to be done. A lot of the issues, such as culture and stigma, are things that can’t be fixed overnight.”

neena beecham/THE HOYA

Protestors from GU Fossil Free and other student groups demanded that the university’s board of directors reform its investing policies.

Bowser Homelessness Plan Faces Backlash BOWSER, from A1 Seven of the proposed shelters, which will each house up to 50 families, are set to open during 2018. The Patricia Handy Place for Women in Ward 2 has already been completed and opened Feb. 10. The sites are located on property that the city already owns as well as newly purchased or leased land.

In her State of the District address delivered March 22, Bowser defended the proposed plan as a necessity to reduce D.C. homelessness, which has increased by 12 percent in the last five years.

“I urge us not to be distracted by arguments that are based on fear or convenience, or apples and oranges comparisons that falsely represent the cost of lifting our families out of homelessness,” Bowser said. “Because make no mistake, if we fail to act, we will fail.”

Critics, however, have claimed Bowser is intransigent in her desire to pass the bill. To pass the plan quickly, the mayor’s administration said it is unwilling to make changes to any of the proposed locations.

Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless Executive Director Patricia Fugere, who is also a Georgetown University Law Center adjunct professor, said that Bowser’s refusal to consider alternatives to certain shelter sites may harm the people her plan seeks to help.

Fugere pointed specifically to the proposed Ward 5 site, which is located in the New Canaan Baptist Church on Bladensburg Road Northeast, immediately adjacent to a large Metrobus depot. In the proximate area there is also a nightclub, a strip club and a waste-treatment facility.

Fugere stressed that this environment is not conducive to housing those who are currently homeless, particularly pointing to implications for children suffering from asthma. D.C. has one of the nation’s highest asthma rates at 18.5 percent, compared to the national average of 9.5 percent, according to data from the Children’s National Medical Center.

“We were really concerned about air quality problems especially with the incidence of asthma of young children in poor families being so high. It’s not a good sign,” Fugere said. “The more we learned about the area, the more concerned we grew.”

However, Fugere said that the mayor is maintaining an uncompromising stance on the plan’s components.

“We’re hopeful that the admin will

recognize that the Ward 5 site is problematic and that it will be open to suggestions for alternative sites,” Fugere said. “The position of Mayor Bowser and her folks has been that this is a package deal and if one site gets peeled off the whole deal collapses.”

Critics of the plan have also focused on the proposal’s cost, which is estimated to reach $660 million over the next 30 years. This largely originates from plans to lease five of the eight proposed shelter buildings rather than use governmentowned property.

Fugere, who has lobbied for design improvements that would incorporate more privacy in the shelters, expressed satisfaction that the District is willing to spend a large sum but voiced concern that the money will not be used to create the best spaces possible.

“We do have concerns about the money,” Fugere said. “We think due to the amount of money being paid to the developers they should be able to incorporate some greater amenities in their design.”

Additional concerns revolving around transparency and a potential conflict of interest stem from an article published March 16 by The Washington Post indicating that mayoral donors own many of the planned private property shelter locations. The leases would increase the value of these properties by up to 10 times.

Despite the rancor over elements of the plan, Andrew O’Brien (COL ’18), a member of Hoyas/Homeless Outreach Programs and Education, highlighted multiple advantages to decentralizing housing facilities for homeless families.

“The plan decentralizes [homeless shelters] and allows the families to be in more cohesive units that aren’t as sporadic or spread out as D.C. General. And it’s just a bad place,” O’Brien said. “A lot of people actively avoid D.C. General.”

O’Brien noted criticism of the plan has generally come from a genuine desire to improve the situation of the homeless population. He emphasized this resolve as a welcome change from the “notin-my-backyard mentality” some have about sheltering homeless people in their neighborhoods.

“When you read the concerns of Ward 5, it wasn’t that they were concerned that they would be in danger of those who are homeless but rather the people experiencing homelessness would be in danger because of where it was,” O’Brien said.

NEWS

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

THE HOYA

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Cannabis Club Ban Approved Vita Saxa Invites Johnson, Anti-Abortion Advocate LISA BURGOA Hoya Staff Writer

The D.C. Council narrowly passed the first reading of a permanent ban on private pot clubs April 5 by a seven-to-six margin, leaving the marijuana lobby seething as the bill inches closer to becoming law.

Though the bill must still clear a second vote in order to land on Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) desk for approval, the decision marks a departure from the Feb. 2 unanimously passed compromise, which upheld a temporary ban for up to 225 days but established an exploratory task force to investigate the feasibility of allowing cannabis clubs in Washington, D.C. The task force was scheduled to meet for the first time April 22.

When Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1) motioned to table the vote until after the task force completes its work in September, the measure was defeated by Councilmembers Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7), Anita Bonds (D-At Large), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), LaRuby May (D-Ward 8), Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), Brandon Todd (D-Ward 4) and Chairman Phil Mendelson (D).

The same seven councilmembers later voted in favor of the permanent ban.

At the hearing April 5, Nadeau said the legislation, which was implemented before the task force had met, interferes with the force’s purported work.

“While this body established a task force in good faith, to vote today to establish a permanent ban and tie the hands of the task force,” Nadeau said. “This legislation would actually prevent the work of the task force.”

Critics of the ban claim a prohibition of pot clubs constrains users to consuming cannabis in their homes, which poses problems for residents whose leases forbid the possession of marijuana, potentially driving them to illegally smoke in public spaces.

Privately owned restaurants, nightclubs and musical venues, which are open to the general public, face confiscation of their business licenses if owners knowingly serve patrons consuming marijuana.

Since Initiative 71 went into effect February 2015, District residents over 21 can legally possess and consume up to two ounces of cannabis. Just a week after its

legalization, however, Bowser introduced emergency legislation banning all marijuana consumption outside private residences, a measure repeatedly renewed by the D.C. Council through emergency and temporary bans, most recently in February.

Adam Eidinger, who spearheaded Initiative 71, argued that the permanent ban represents a regression that could be potentially irreversible. Eidinger pointed to a congressional omnibus spending bill passed in December 2014 that prohibited the allocation of any District funds to legalizing or reducing penalties for marijuana possession or consumption.

“First we’re treated like children by Congress when they’re the actual children, and then we’re bowled over by politicians who think they know better,” Eidinger said. “Chairman Mendelson is standing in the middle of the path to legalization, and he is blocking us at every turn.

He doesn’t care that people are arrested for smoking marijuana outside their homes outdoors, when cigarette use outdoors is perfectly legal. He doesn’t care that medical patients are living in public housing and they have leases that prevent them from smoking weed on the premises even if they have a legitimate medical condition.”

However, at the April 5 hearing, Mendelson defended his vote in favor of the ban, stating that the task force would not be constrained by the decision.

“The duties of the task force are broader than has been portrayed by those who wish to defeat this bill,” Mendelson said.

Though Eidinger maintained that the vote should have occurred after the task force was able to meet, he expressed skepticism that it will fairly present its findings due to the mayor’s influence over the task force.

“The task force is rigged, because it’s set up so the mayor really controls the task force,” Eidinger said. “The mayor keeps pointing to the task force as ‘Look, we’re doing something about it, but we’re still going to ban them [private pot clubs].’”

Bowser’s office did not respond to THE HOYA’s requests for comment.

According to The Washington Post, Bowser affirmed her support for the ban on pot clubs as she watched the Council vote at

the legislative meeting.

“They are doing the right thing,” Bowser said.

However, Kaitlyn Boecker, policy associate for the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization that advocates for drug reform, said the ban on private pot clubs would exacerbate racially imbalanced drug enforcement policies in D.C. According to the DPA, African Americans constituted 82 percent of the 259 arrests for public marijuana consumption in the District between July 2014 and the end of 2015, despite the fact that they represent 49 percent of D.C. residents and consume cannabis at rates comparable to those of their white counterparts.

“The racial disparities in public consumption arrests highlight the need to create safe venues for residents to consume marijuana, but such spaces will be forbidden if the permanent ban passes,” Boecker said in a DPA press release April 5. “If the council moves forward with the ban, they are all but guaranteeing that the disproportionate arrests of black residents will continue.”

While D.C. is embroiled in a political dispute over acceptable locations for cannabis consumption, the Drug Enforcement Agency is considering plans to reclassify the drug entirely. Under current DEA policy, marijuana falls under a Schedule I designation, along with substances such as heroin, LSD and methamphetamines.

DEA guidelines describe Schedule I drugs as the most dangerous of all drug schedules, as they incur potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.

In a letter to senators signed

by DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg and sent April 4, the agency outlined its plans to potentially assign marijuana a new classification by midyear. While rescheduling the drug may not impact its legality in states where it is prohibited, the new categorization could result in reduced penalties for marijuana offenders and fewer restrictions on research.

“We support research on marijuana and its components that complies with applicable laws and regulations to advance our understanding about health risks and potential therapeutic benefits of medications using marijuana or its components or its derivatives,” the letter states.

CHRISTIAN PAZ Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown Right to Life has scheduled anti-abortion advocate Abby Johnson to speak in Dahlgren Chapel on April 20, the same day Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards is scheduled to address students in Lohrfink Auditorium.

Johnson, who is a former Planned Parenthood clinic director, will discuss her experiences at 7:30 p.m. in Dahlgren Chapel as part of Georgetown Right to Life’s annual Life Week programming.

Right to Life President Michael Khan (COL ’18) said the group hopes to offer students an alternative to Richards’ visit, which is scheduled for 2 p.m. the same day.

“The Abby Johnson event is for students who don’t think Cecile Richards represents Georgetown or Georgetown values, which we don’t believe she does,” Khan said. “We think she is an extremist on this issue and wanted to provide programming for students that day in the evening.”

Johnson, who was named the “Employee of the Year” at Planned Parenthood in 2008, worked at a clinic in Bryan, Texas for eight years before reversing her pro-abortion rights stance. Johnson said it is important an anti-abortion presence responds to Richard’s visit.

“Anytime Planned Parenthood shows up on a university campus to spread their antilife propaganda, we should always hope for a strong, pro-life response,” Johnson said in a press release. “In this case, because a Catholic university has asked the president of the largest abortion corporation in our country to come and speak, we are more than happy to respond with life-affirming truth.”

H*yas for Choice Vice President Michaela Lewis (COL ’18) said that her belief in free speech and her feelings as a pro-abortion rights supporter make her question Right to Life’s methods of protesting.

“I cannot and will not lie about how I feel with regards to the way in which RTL is handling this, the first situation of such significance in which a pro-choice voice is publicly being given the floor at Georgetown,” Lewis wrote in an email to THE HOYA. Lewis added that she thought Vita Saxa’s treatment of Cecile Richards is disrespectful and rooted in fabrication.

“For whatever reason, I think I was optimistic enough to assume that, regardless of their feelings on abortion, RTL would not resort to such a profound show of disrespect as to reduce Cecile Richards, a prominent woman in politics and a champion for reproductive healthcare including and excluding abortion services, to the amalgamation of the anti-choice movement’s fabrications about abortion regret and the selling of fetal parts,” Lewis wrote.

Khan said he plans to attend both the Richards and Johnson events and hopes all students, whether they are pro-choice or pro-life, will do the same while remaining respectful.

“I encourage [pro-choice students] to attend if they really value dialogue, which [pro-choice students] claim to do. I should see them at these events. That is how true dialogue happens,” Khan said. “I think the basic message is if they value free speech, obviously nothing we are doing is contrary to that. Abby will probably be with us during the day on Wednesday, but we are keeping everything respectful.”

Lewis said she hopes Right to Life changes its activism to respect pro-abortion rights students.

“This is my plea to Vita Saxa: Invite whomever you want to campus, hold whatever private events you choose, but please, if you care for women and your fellow students the way you claim to, please, end your hateful, shaming methodology,” Lewis said.

Khan said Vita Saxa will continue to represent the university’s position on abortion.

“That should all be part of our Jesuit mission as a university to uphold the dignity of each human life. That is part of our problem with the Cecile Richards event.

She really strikes at the very heart of our institution and our Jesuit values: the care for the whole person and the value of all human life,” Khan said. “We do that each Life Week.”

Right to Life member Amelia Irvine (SFS ’19) said she opposed the Lecture Fund’s invitation to Richards and believes hosting Johnson will balance dialogue.

“The Lecture Fund should sponsor events that present a fair, balanced perspective, and this event is not balanced. Richards will be speaking unopposed, and I am quite confident that pro-life voices won’t be heard during the question and answer section of the event,” Irvine said. “We hope that pro-choice activists will offer us the same courtesy — come to our events. I’m interested in having a real dialogue, because passive-aggressively staring at one another across Red Square just isn’t good enough anymore.”

Sam Granville (COL ’17) said she hopes both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights students respect each other’s voices.

“I think its good to hear both sides and would encourage students to go listen to both sides, because both sides have something important to say and valid arguments,” Granville said. “As a woman, I am still undecided and I agree with opinions on both sides. That being said, students need to be respectful of the speakers. I hope that there are no vulgar words being shouted out at the speakers and that everyone can just take the opportunities to learn and hear what they have to say without being too aggressive.”

Panelists Address Race PATRICJA OKUNIEWSKA Hoya Staff Writer

Speakers discussed race relations in America at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice’s “A Dream Deferred: Black in the USA” symposium April 11 and 12.

The two-day symposium featured a series of events dedicated to addressing and battling structural racism, microaggressions, police brutality, civil rights and many other issues. The symposium sought to expose the experiences that are inherent with being black in predominantly white institutions.

The inaugural event took place on Monday evening in Gaston Hall with a conversation between Director of the Institute for African American Studies at University of Connecticut Jelani Cobb, who also contributes to The New Yorker, and the Lannan Foundation’s Chair of Poetics Aminatta Forna.

Director of the Lannan Center Carolyn Forché introduced the event with a quote from James Baldwin about society and its governance by hidden laws.

“It is up to the American writer to find out what these laws and assumptions are. In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will not be an easy matter,” Forché said.

Cobb said it is important to understand race and its role within the greater context of American history.

“We have a sense that race is a kind of side dish to the entrée of American history, that we can talk about American history without engaging race, without confronting the complexities of race within this country.

The country’s history and its present is unintelligible without an understanding of race,” Cobb said.

Cobb said the United States must consider how to deal with racism in the future.

“The question is not when we’ll be done with racism as

a country, the question is when will racism cease to be useful in this country?”

Cobb said.

He also stressed the importance of understanding not only the law but human interactions when confronting institutional racism.

Cobb praised the Black Lives Matter movement as an example of the potential of democracy.

“These people actually believe in the potential of democracy, because if people did not believe in their constitutional right to petition their government, then they would be doing something completely different,” Cobb said. “When people are protesting, they believe that there is some sort of possibility.”

Cobb emphasized the importance of using anger in movements, something for which the Black Lives Matter movement has faced criticism. Cobb also said he has optimism for the progress that America has the potential to achieve.

“When I see young people getting together and organizing around the way that we treat undocumented people, and the way that we see people who have organized and said ‘there is a problem that we’re not talking about the violence that is directed at trans people and that this has to be visible.’ That is the thing that gives me a basis for my optimism,” Cobb said.

In the third event, which took place Tuesday afternoon, professor Marcia Chatelain moderated a conversation between Cobb and poet Claudia Rankine.

Rankine said trauma caused by oppression, a topic she addresses in her acclaimed and award-winning poetry book, Citizen, must be addressed through conversation.

“I am very interested in the ways in which living through trauma, living through terrorism perpetuated by white supremacy, destroys the internal ability to address the life, and that has to be addressed through conversation,”

Rankine said.

Cobb said dialogue has had great power for him in addressing the question of the lack of recognition of black humanity.

“Having been in some way traumatized by being in Ferguson, being in Charleston, being in Baltimore, being in New York … I looked and said this other more disturbing question of ‘What if they do recognize your humanity and they just don’t care?’” Cobb said.

Cobb said African Americans may be full citizens, but their rights as citizens fluctuate.

“But I think that probably a more accurate description would be something I have been calling ‘contingent citizenship’ which is that under certain circumstances, with the proper barometric pressure, and the temperature is within a certain range on a particular day, what you have functions as citizenship,” Cobb said.

Rankine advocated for the power of poetry in addressing social justice issues during a seminar following the discussion.

“For me, poetry is the doorway to feelings. Poetry allows privileges, honors, has at its center, internal feelings. I think that is the piece that sometimes gets lost inside of academia, people have agendas. They forget that in the end it’s just you and me and how we feel,” Rankine said.

Zachary Hughbanks (COL ’18), who has read Rankine’s work, said her presentation was particularly powerful.

“Rankine’s reading of her work conveyed the sense of power and resistance present in her written work.

However, her reading took away one of the most powerful aspects of her writing in Citizen. In Citizen her use of the second-person narrator allows the reader to project their own feelings and experiences fully on the piece.

With the addition of Rankine’s voice and supplemental anecdotes, it becomes harder for the audience to project themselves on her work,” Hughbanks said.

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NEWS

THE HOYA

FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

Panel Ignites Abortion, Immigration Dialogue OWEN EAGAN Hoya Staff Writer

Immigration and anti-abortion activists advocated for the increased need to protect migrants, the unborn and other vulnerable individuals in the face of a prevailing “throwaway culture” at a discussion sponsored by the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life in Lohrfink Auditorium on Tuesday.

ICSTPL Director John Carr moderated the panel, which included George Mason University School of Law professor and anti-abortion activist Helen Alvaré, Fordham University associate professor Charles Camosy and Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley and immigration activist Norma Pimentel.

Around 200 people attended the event.

In his opening remarks, University President John J. DeGioia said Georgetown is dedicated to free discussion and the open exchange of ideas.

“There’s a core set of values that animate an institution that calls itself a university. Among these values are academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression,” DeGioia said. “Respect for this ethos of openness is a condition for sustaining an authentic university.”

DeGioia also said the university is committed to the inherent dignity of all life.

“The work to systematically address the threats to life, the urgency of building a civil society with a shared vision of what human sacredness demands, continues to be our work today,” DeGioia said.

Before opening the discussion, Carr defined the ‘throwaway culture’ Pope Francis notes in his encyclical “Laudato Si,” and justified the Catholic response.

“We’re not talking about throwing away cups or our garbage. We’re talking about throwing away human beings, about treating people as things,” Carr said. “And our tradition, our Catholic tradition offers a different vision: We insist every person is precious. We affirm life — all life.”

Alvaré, who founded the anti-abortion female empowerment campaign Women Speak for Themselves, said abortion rights are tied to women’s health, autonomy and empowerment.

“Your own child is actually the key to empowerment. [Abortion] pushes so clearly against the tides of reason and it goes against the tide of a person’s natural inclinations to care,” Alvaré said. “When you base an argument for human rights on denying someone else’s, it just doesn’t

fit. It’s not beautiful. It’s not pro-human.

It can’t be pro-woman.”

The talk also centered on migrant issues. Pimentel said migrants are undervalued in the throwaway culture when they are turned away from a border crossing.

“They are fleeing and they come to us asking for protection. I don’t see how they are illegals or why we would not help them,” Pimentel said. “It’s hard to understand when somebody says, ‘No, we shouldn’t help.’”

Pimentel encouraged attendees to seek encounters with devalued individuals in society to reach their own conclusions about the inherent worth of life.

“Really engage yourself in seeing that face, that child, that mother, and make your own opinion on that, not from what you hear from others,” Pimentel said.

Camosy said immigrants, unborn children and animals are victims of the throwaway culture because society refuses to adjust its preferences to accommodate their dignity.

“The people who are being thrown away, the beings that are being thrown away, most predominately, are those for whom our culture finds their dignity most inconvenient,” Camosy said. “And you could talk about immigrants, you could talk about the animals that we eat and do research on, you could talk about prenatal children.”

Georgetown Right to Life Co-Chair for On-Campus Service Mylan Metzger (COL ’19), who attended the event, said the discussion concerned her in advance of Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards’ upcoming speech on April 20.

The announcement of Richards’ speech, which is organized by the Lecture Fund, sparked ire among the local Catholic community in March.

“I personally [would say that] we talked today about how throwing away human life is bad and to have someone on campus who very much supports this culture of throwing away human life is very upsetting,” Metzger said.

James Pennell (SFS ’18), another member of Georgetown Right to Life who attended the event, said the Georgetown community should reflect upon its values in the abortion debate.

“I really think that modern society and Georgetown more specifically needs to really do some introspection, some serious moral reasoning to see where the truth comes down on this debate,” Pennell said.

CLAIRE SOISSON/THE HOYA

Immigration and anti-abortion activists urged the protection of vulnerable individuals within a “throwaway culture” on Tuesday.

SOPHIE FAABORG-ANDERSON/THE HOYA

The Georgetown University Bookstore is switching vendors from Follett to Barnes & Noble after the university’s contract with Follett expires at the end of June.

Bookstore Switches Vendors TAYLOR HARDING Hoya Staff Writer

The Georgetown University Bookstore will switch vendors from Follett to Barnes & Noble when the university’s contract with Follett expires at the end of June 2016.

The decision to switch from Follett, which has been the bookstore’s vendor for the past 20 years, came after a year of deliberation by Georgetown University’s Auxiliary Business Services, which contracts all vendors on campus.

Associate Vice President of Georgetown’s Auxiliary Business Services Joelle Wiese said the decision was made in agreement with hired consultants, faculty and students.

“Last March, we put together a working group with 12 faculty administrators and five students to talk about potential vendors,” Wiese said. “We tried to figure out what do we want from a new bookstore and what students want, what makes sense for Georgetown.”

After sending out requests for potential vendors in the fall, Auxiliary Business Services received responses in December from the current vendor Follett and Barnes & Noble, which currently serves 786 other colleges and universities across the country.

Auxiliary Business Services held additional stakeholder meetings and conducted surveys across campus before making a final decision. Wiese said the university considered a variety of factors before it chose to switch vendors to Barnes and Noble.

“A lot of things went into the decision to ultimately switch: what students are looking for,

what makes sense, the pricing, the retail, look and feel,” Weise said.

According to Wiese, shifts in demand and technology over the past few years have been a driving force for the changes.

“Over the past 10 years we’ve seen a lot of changes in the market from the digital perspective. Students might have classes that don’t have textbooks,” Wiese said. “There’s a variety of things that play into the market itself, and what students are looking for.”

Despite the changes, the bookstore merchandise will remain the same. The university’s contracts with retailers including Nike, Ping, and League #47 will remain in place while the store switches to Barnes & Noble.

The university and Barnes & Noble will also make physical changes to the space. A new entrance will be added where the Office of Campus Ministry is currently located, and glass windows will be added to the perimeter of the store along with improved lighting.

Wiese said the new improvements to the bookstore will also include offering more technology in the store and other locations where students can receive tech support and GOCard assistance.

“You’re also going to see more technology in the store.

We’re going to have a GOCard kiosk, so if you have any questions with your GOCard, you can pop in there and get a new one,” Wiese said. “We’re going to have a UIS [University Information Services] help desk and more Apple product services, so if you have any questions or issues with your Apple products, you can have someone

there.”

One major issue the Auxiliary Business Services considered when choosing Barnes & Noble over Follett was the price of books. The Business Manager of Auxiliary Business Services Adam Ramadan said they will continue to work with vendors to keep book prices low.

“We know how expensive books are and so whatever we can do with the vendor, or our faculty in terms of getting book lists in as soon as possible, we will do,” Ramadan said.

“Whatever we can do to keep book prices down is all in our best favor.”

Georgetown University Student Association Deputy Chief of Staff Garret Williams (COL ‘18) said he supported the bookstore changes and was glad students were involved in the decision making process.

“We’re thrilled to see this transition from Follett to Barnes & Noble in the university bookstore management.

Students have been involved with this process every step of the way,” Williams said.

Sienna Mori (COL ‘18) said the improvements are necessary. “These renovations sound like they could provide much needed improvements to the current store. Additionally, the possibility of lower prices would be great,” said Mori. Emily Kong (SFS ’16) said she supports the changes but also said students need more information on the rationale behind the changes.

“I guess it would be nice, but it kind of depends on why they are upgrading or at what cost,” Kong said.

Hoya Staff Writer Jesse Jacobs contributed reporting.

Lee Talks Future of Conservatism, 2016 Election MARINA PITOFSKY Hoya Staff Writer

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) spoke on the key elements of conservative ideology, the urgent need for poverty alleviation and the state of the 2016 presidential election in a discussion hosted by the Georgetown University Institute for Politics and Public Service in Old North on April 12.

Lee began his term in the Senate in 2010 and is currently a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as chair of the Senate Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee.

Lee also serves as chair of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. Last week, he became the first senator to publically endorse Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the presidential election.

The event started with an introduction by political commentator and GU Politics advisor Sarah Elizabeth “S.E.” Cupp, who said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s effects on the Republican Party are irreversible.

“I think that the damage he has done to the party is going to be long and difficult to unwind,” Cupp said. “We’re going to have to figure out who his supporters are and how to interact with them and meet their needs without completely abandoning some of our principles and values.”

GU Politics Executive Director Mo Elleithee (SFS ’94) moderated the discussion and began by asking Lee about conservatism and what makes it a cohesive political ideology.

Lee cited two major factors that tie the party together and help

fuel the sense of upward mobility in the United States.

“I’m a conservative because I believe that there are two things that can do more to elevate the human condition than anything else, two things that have helped get more people out of poverty than anything else could, two things that have done more to build the middle class than anything else could. Those are free markets and voluntary institutions in civil society,” Lee said.

Lee noted the challenges faced by the poor and middle class in the United States, arguing that the government is not doing what it should to support this portion of the population.

“The problem is that we have a system that is increasingly rigged against America’s poor and middle class,” Lee said. “We’ve had this great engine in America that has been the greatest influence on the most number of people leaving poverty and entering the middle class than almost anywhere in the world. Some of that has been challenged by government policies that make it harder for people to do that.”

Lee added his thoughts on Trump, attributing the businessman’s popularity to the appeal his candid persona holds for the electorate.

“There’s anger. Anger based on a perception that the Republican Party is out of touch and that Republican office holders and aspiring candidates cannot engage in a frank, honest discussion,” Lee said. “So he comes in and speaks in very frank terms, and that is very attractive to a lot of people.”

GU Politics Director of Programming Sophie Goldmacher said the event demonstrated the spirit of bipartisanship that the organization tries to foster by inviting Elleithee and Lee to engage

LAUREN SEIBEL/THE HOYA

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) discussed the future of conservatism and the Republican Party as well as Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 presidential race on Tuesday. in dialogue.

“Another important goal of GU Politics is to bring partisans — people with different viewpoints and perspectives — together. They may not agree on everything, but they’re willing to have a conversation, debate, and disagree,” Goldmacher wrote in an email to THE HOYA. Max Magid (COL ’19) said Lee was an engaging speaker, but noted that Lee’s remarks about the role of public officials potentially conflict with his decision to join many Republican congressmen in refusing to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination for Supreme Court Justice, Merrick Garland.

“He’s well-spoken, seems to have a good understanding of where he stands and his views on the Constitution,” Magid said. “I find it interesting that he spent so much time talking about doing his job and how congress-people have been comfortable not doing their job when he’s part of the strong Republican majority who refused to consider any nomination by Obama, and therefore not doing his job.”

Cole Horton (SFS ’18), an attendee, said Lee insightfully identified distinctions within the Republican Party in today’s political environment.

“I was not familiar with Senator Lee before the event, but I

enjoyed it. I think he made good points. I think he’s right that there’s a difference between conservatives and Republicans,” Horton said.

Horton also said although he enjoyed Lee’s optimism about the future of the Republican Party, he expressed doubt that the senator’s solutions will be easy to implement.

“Looking towards the future of the Republican Party that he talked about a little bit, I’m not quite as optimistic,” Horton said.

“I think there’s quite some damage being done right now by the Trump campaign, so I don’t think it’s quite as easy as he made it sound.”

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Friday, april 15, 2016

SFS Grad’s Book Inspires Entrepreneurs ENTREPRENEURSHIP, from A10

“My favorite class was International Political Economy with Professor George Shambaugh,” he said. “I wrote a piece that got published in a journal and it gave me a lot of confidence.”

He said he was excited that Georgetown, a traditionally pre-professional school, is embracing entrepreneurship and encouraging its growth on campus.

He took a moment to thank StartUp Hoyas Founding Director and MBA professor Jeff Reid, whose entrepreneurship class he spoke to about his book last week, for bringing about and continuing to uphold the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative.

“People can pursue entrepreneurial interests and make it a part of their lives.”

Patrick MCGINNIS Author, “The 10% Entrepreneur”

A staunch supporter of McGinnis’ work, Reid called his book an appealing guide to entrepreneurship, especially for students.

“It describes a way that people can pursue entrepreneurial interests and make it a part of their lives without going all in,” Reid said. “You can give 10 percent of your time and, in return, you start to build up experience, knowledge, network and equity in other startups.”

Reid’s student who learned about the book from Reid, Jordan Edelman (MBA ’16), agreed, calling McGinnis’ book relatable.

“What Patrick did really well was share his story,” Edelman said. “He originally wasn’t an entrepreneur himself, but just by having a very large network of people he was introduced to ideas that, in his spare time, he chose to focus on.”

McGinnis’ Georgetown classmate Rasheen Carbin (SFS ’98), who founded his own company called nspHire in 2014, emphasized that “The 10% Entrepreneur” is a great idea in today’s economy.

“The overwhelming pressure to find a job can be really hard,” he said. “The 10% Entrepreneur” gives you a roadmap for pursuing your passion and the tools to figure it out.”

McGinnis is also credited with inventing the term “FOMO,” which stands for “fear of missing out” and is widely used by adolescents today, while he was a student at Harvard Business School.

When asked if he had any final words of advice for students, McGinnis emphasized the importance of following your passions and ideas right away.

“You can be a 10 percent entrepreneur in college,” he said. “It’s never too early to start.”

LEONSIS, from A10

with the prize, especially among those who might struggle to finance a new venture without support.

“We want to encourage entrepreneurial thinking, but unfortunately many young entrepreneurs are stymied because of a lack of financial resources” Leonsis wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Our family wanted to help alleviate that obstacle.”

According to Jeff Reid, GEI founding director, the board will likely award about $50,000 each semester for the winning startup or startups. Reid said nominees will be evaluated based on the viability of their venture, their passion and initiative, their commitment to problem-solving and creating value in communities via entrepreneurship and their business acumen.

The startups that will likely be awarded funding by the Leonsis prize will have already undergone substantial development, allowing the prize to help spur their expansion.

“I think the students who are likely to get the Leonsis

RADIUS, from A10

The George Washington University, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, and more.

Members of the team hold the majority of the shares in the company, with family and friend investors holding 19.2 percent and the Galata Business Angels Group holding another 4 percent.

Salhon spends over two to three hours a day working on Radius-related activities, including contacting developers and team members, attending promotional events and building the app itself.

“The fun part of it is you get to make all the decisions. The not-so-fun part of it is that there are too many decisions to make,” Salhon said.

Although Salhon said he enjoys working on Radius, he also said that this lifestyle can be exhausting. Since the developer team is based in Turkey, the time difference requires him to go to bed late and wake up early in order to communicate with them.

Salhon also must do mundane tasks like writing a privacy statement, emailing back and forth with a lawyer about the logo, and paying the app store fee.

However, he concluded that he

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prize will have gone beyond the idea phase and so the prize will help them turn the idea into a real business,” Reid said.

The idea for the prize was born in late January 2016 when Reid and MSB Dean, David Thomas approached Leonsis with an offer to serve as chairman of the GEI Advisory Board. Reid said Leonsis not only accepted the position, but also quickly expressed his family’s desire to grant a prize to Georgetown with the goal of encouraging student entrepreneurship.

“The same day he said yes to the board and he suggested the prize,” Reid said. “So, it was his idea, but it fits in with our goal and our program, so it was easy for us to say yes to that.”

Ted Leonsis now serves on the GEI Advisory Board with his son Zach Leonsis (MBA ’15), who is vice president and general manager of Monumental Sports Network. The prize was given on behalf of his family, which also includes his wife Lynn and his daughter Elle (COL ’14).

Reid predicted the prize could inspire new Georgetown students, previously not con-

sidering an entrepreneurial career path, to reconsider their options. Reid said proper seed funding, early investments in the company, usually by the founders or friends, until it can generate money of its own, can be the deciding factor in launching a new business.

“It might encourage some students to take the entrepreneurial leap who otherwise might not have taken that leap,” Reid said. “Ten-thousand dollars or $20,000 can make the difference between something that stays as a class project and something that actually becomes a startup company.”

Daniel Lysak (COL ’18), a member of the Entrepreneurship Fellows Program, is currently working on a team project to create a social app for travelers to share advice with friends. Interested in applying for the prize himself, Lysak said the prize will motivate others to pursue entrepreneurship as well.

“Obviously entrepreneurs are intrinsically motivated, but to have a sort of award that says ‘if you really refine and work hard and contemplate

a great idea, that it could really have a chance of success,’ I think that will make more people incentivized to become entrepreneurs,” Lysak said.

Kamar Mack (COL ’19), an aspiring entrepreneur and co-founder of developing company, Beyond a Meal, with partner Dara Lajevardian (COL ’19), is also interested in applying for the prize in the fall or spring of next year. Mack said the prize will inspire more Georgetown students to become entrepreneurs. “[The prize] really sparks an entrepreneurial bug, because entrepreneurship is contagious and once your friends start launching ventures, you start thinking,” Mack said.

“Basically it creates an environment where entrepreneurship is alive and well.”

Mack’s startup aims to feed and clothe the homeless while engaging the community and making a profit. Still in its embryonic stage, the company won a Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative pitch competition in February. Mack hopes to win a share of the Leonsis prize to help his company live up to its potential.

App Detects Friends Nearby

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Leonsis Prize Spurs Innovation

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enjoys the opportunities Radius brings him.

“I like this lifestyle because it opens so many doors,” Salhon said.

Salhon expressed his desire to eventually return to Turkey, where he grew up, and develop a strong start-up culture.

“When the time comes, [I want] to go back to Turkey and create something better ... using our contacts through what we did through Radius,” Salhon said.

This summer, the Radius team will congregate in San Francisco to work full-time on the app. The main goals for the summer will be to improve the product based on feedback and data collected from the app thus far, to build a network in the city, and to raise more money if needed. Salhon expressed the importance of the upcoming summer in the growth of their company.

“We have a team, we have a plan and we have a product.

There’s no reason to fail right now unless we can’t grow ... so this summer is going to be targeted towards how [to] grow a lot, starting with targeted universities,” Salhon said.

Ata Sari, a junior at University of California, Santa Barbara and West Coast regional manager,

said that working with Radius has been a positive growing experience.

“College is such a convenient environment for start-

ups with its immense opportunities. We should all learn from our minor mistakes, which contributes to our personal development,” Sari said.

THE GW HATCHET

Eytan Nahmiyas, junior at The George Washington University and co-founder of Radius, works to develop the mobile app.

MBAs Help After Katrina SERVICE, from A10

nice to see that within a few days we were really able to do something that really advanced the progress of the house,” Desai said.

According to Desai, making progress in the construction of the house was crucial because of the damage that remains in the area from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Desai said the damage that remains is worse than many people realize.

“There’s still a lot that needs to be done in terms of rebuilding houses and finding a lot of families a place to live because their houses got destroyed,” Desai said.

“There wasn’t a lot of government support and there’s still a lot that needs to be done, which is shocking because we stopped hearing about it in the news a long time ago but there’s still a great need for volunteers.”

David Crowley (MBA ’17), who volunteers regularly with For Love of Children’s program for underprivileged children, also participated in the MBA service trip.

Crowley said he loved giving back to the community in a different way than he usually does in D.C. “We actually met one of the other family homeowners that had just started moving into the house that had been completed last month,” Crowley said, “So that was pretty neat to get their perspective on all the benefits of the program and how appreciative they were of all the work Habitat’s doing down there.”

According to Desai, getting the right number of participants and sufficient funding for the trip were both immense challenges Taylor faced in her organization of the trip. Desai said Taylor created a GoFundMe page, which allowed her to raise money for the trip from independent donations by friends, family and faculty, covering nearly all student costs except airfare.

According to Taylor, the hardest part of the trip was encouraging patience and teamwork among the group.

“The biggest challenge was patience in teamwork,” Taylor said.

“For example, in order to build the wall, a few of us had to first gather the wood, then a few of us has to measure and cut, then came the hammering and then assembly and so on. Everyone had a job.”

Taylor offered several pieces of advice for students considering planning service trips in any capacity and emphasized the importance of patience, especially when things do not go as planned.

“Be patient,” Taylor said. “Things that might seem like they’re coming together could fall apart. I had

too many people booked, so I had to turn people away, only for people to cancel last minute, which meant we would not meet the needs of the site. It worked out in the end, but it was frustrating at first to have too many, and then to have too few and even turn people away.”

Taylor said much of her advice is universal since it applies to practically any challenge students may face during their undergraduate and graduate careers.

“Understand that people are going to complain no matter what.

Not everyone will be happy, or think the work is sexy, so don’t try to please everyone. At the end of the day it is a service trip. It’s not meant to bolster anyone’s ego,” Taylor said.

COURTESY TAHIRA TAYLOR (GRD ’17)

Georgetown MBA students visited New Orleans over Easter break to build houses that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Business & Tech FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

business bits Professor recognized for sponsored research The Office of the Provost named professor and Area Coordinator for Operations and Information Management at the McDonough School of Business Robin DillonMerrill a 2016 Distinguished Georgetown Investigator.

Dillon-Merrill was one of 26 Georgetown faculty to receive the award for extraordinary achievements in sponsored research this year. Dillon-Merrill’s research focuses on why people make the decisions they do under conditions of uncertainty and risk and seeks to understand the decisions people make after “near-miss” events like terrorism or hurricane evacuation.

MSB Hosts Roundtable on Ethics of Bankruptcy The Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics, co-sponsored by University of Illinois’ program in law and philosophy, convened the roundtable, Ethics of Bankruptcy, at the McDonough School of Business on April 1. The daylong faculty discussion of peer academic papers on law, ethics and business featured Georgetown’s own faculty, Jason Brennan, David Faraci, John Hasnas, Peter Jaworski and Govind Persad as moderators and discussants.

Sharpe Named Honorary AWIU Committee Member

Leonsis Family Donates $1 Million Owen Eagan Hoya Staff Writer

The McDonough School of Business announced the start of the Leonsis Family Entrepreneurship Prize, a $1 million gift from the family of Ted Leonsis (CAS ’77) that aims to foster entrepreneurship among Georgetown students and alumni, last week.

“We want to encourage entrepreneurial thinking.”

TED Leonsis CEO, Monumental Sports

Leonsis is an entrepreneur, investor and founder and CEO of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which operates and owns sports teams like the NHL’s Washington Capitals and the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, D.C. Leonsis’ donation to Georgetown will go toward the new prize that will be granted to students and recent alumni nominated for their promising startup ideas.

Students in any of Georgetown’s undergraduate or graduate schools, as well as alumni who have graduated within the past six months, can be nominated for the prize by a Georgetown faculty member or an entrepreneur-inresidence, an entrepreneur who is available throughout the semester to meet with students to encour-

Biz journals

Ted Leonsis, founder and CEO of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, donated a $1 million gift to Georgetown to start the Leonsis Prize for Entrepreneurship that will support young innovators. years, nominees will have the opportunity to submit an application to the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative for internal committee review. GEI will select finalists to give presentations in front of the GEI Advisory Board, which will ul-

age entrepreneurship on campus.

The nominees will compete each year for a share of a $100,000 allotment to fund their entrepreneurial aspirations.

Starting in fall 2016 and continuing each semester for the next ten

Carlos Ghosn, Brazilian-born chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, spoke to students about the global automotive industry at the McDonough School of Business on March 22 in an installment of the Paul Hill Lecture Series.

Ghosn, who currently manages the Renault-Nissan headquarters in Japan and France, emphasized the importance of incorporating leaders from a diversity of backgrounds in large companies. “We have to have a mindset of empathy and look for how diversity can enrich us and become an inspiration,” Ghosn said at the event. Ghosn explained that he is currently working with Nissan to develop new auto technologies such as the self-driving car and electric vehicles that will be better for the environment than vehicles that use gasoline.

See LEONSIS A9

Alumnus Publishes NewBook

Senior Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Programs at the McDonough School of Business Norean Sharpe was is an honorary committee member of the American Women for International Understanding.

The AWIU is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that promotes women-to-women interaction and understanding worldwide. The AWIU has previously awarded Melanne Verveer, the founder of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, with its annual International Women of Courage and Internationalism Award.

Renault-nissan CEO shares expertise with students

timately grant funding to the winning company or companies.

Leonsis expressed his family’s desire to promote innovation among Georgetown students

LÉa Nicolas

Hoya Staff Writer

RADIUS APP

Location-based messaging app Radius was recently valued at $1.25 million and received a $50,000 starting investment from the Galata Business Angels group, located in Turkey.

Student App Secures Investor Cheryl Liu

Hoya Staff Writer

The app Radius, co-founded

by Georgetown student Tali Salhon (MSB ’17), recently obtained a starting $50,000 investment from the Turkish company, Galata Business Angels Group.

Valued at $1.25 million, the location-based messaging app is headquartered in Turkey and the majority of its users currently reside in the United States, United Kingdom and Turkey. Salhon, along with The George Washington University junior Eytan Nahmiyas and University of Pennsylvania ju-

nior Sinan Koc, have been working on the app for the past two years.

Radius aims to connect friends who are in the same vicinity, anywhere from 150 feet to half a mile. Users can opt to receive push notifications when friends cross into their set radius and are able to create group chats or individual messages with those nearby friends, all without disclosing exact location. Radius’ primary purpose is to make it easier to communicate and meet up with nearby friends. Inspired

by Snapchat, Radius’ chats expire after 24 hours without

use.

Nahmiyas said the long-term goal of the app was to change daily lives for its users, especially college students.

“We hear many stories from people, on how they saw their friends were in their radius, in the most random places and how they ended up meeting up through Radius. We want these stories to be part of more people’s lives,” Nahmiyas said.

The Radius team is currently comprised of several college students across the nation, with members at Georgetown, See RADIUS, A9

Students Build Homes in New Orleans Gracie Hochberg Hoya Staff Writer

On March 23, more than a dozen Georgetown Masters of Business Administration students volunteered their time to build houses with Habitat for Humanity and the Audubon Institute in New Orleans, La. Tahira Taylor (GRD ’17), vice president of community and sustainability for the McDonough School of Business, organized and gathered funding for the five-day venture.

Taylor said she wanted to organize the trip as an opportunity for Georgetown students to be funded to travel internationally, basing the service trip on service treks at other universities.

“A lot of other schools offer service treks and the MSB is big on service and

on our global presence,” Taylor said. “This trip was domestic due to timing, but the plan is to make it an international thing.

There are no other planned, group travel activities outside of the global project, but it’s clear the desire is there.”

Students constructed a house in its early stages, gathered materials and assembled various elements of the building’s infrastructure during the trip. Tejal Desai (GRD ’17), an MBA student who participated in the service trip, said she was shocked by how much the students accomplished in just a few TEJAL DESAI GRD ’17 days in New Orleans.

“By the end of the last day of our service trek we were able to put up the walls which was really cool.

Habitat generally takes about 12 weeks to build a full house so it was really

“There’s still a lot that needs to be done in terms of rebuilding houses.”

COURTESY TAHIRA TAYLOR (GRD ’17)

MBA students help rebuild houses destroyed in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans over Easter break.

See SERVICE, A9

Patrick McGinnis (SFS ’98) proved that a student’s choice in major does not necessarily determine his or her career path in his book, “The 10% Entrepreneur,” released April 12.

The book is geared toward working men and women with an interest in entrepreneurship, offering professional advice on how to entertain this interest without taking on the weighted risk of launching a personal company.

After majoring in international economics, McGinnis immediately went into banking upon graduating from Georgetown.

However, when his company blew up in the 2008 economic crisis, he decided that he wanted to play a more active role in his financial future.

“If I was going to fail, I wanted to fail because I messed up, not because somebody that I have never met at my company had done something to mess us up,” McGinnis said. “I wanted to get more skin in the game.”

The first startup in which McGinnis invested, Real Influence, worked with YouTube celebrities to promote videos. He stayed with the company, which was started by a friend, for a year before moving on to invest in another friend’s company, now valued at over $100 million. While speaking about his career path, McGinnis emphasized the value of Georgetown friends and their role in his success.

“These Georgetown connections will help you throughout your career,” McGinnis said. “Being in the SFS and being able to build an international career with the education I got provided me with a network of people that extends all over the world.”

“The 10% Entrepreneur” includes stories from Luke Holden (GRD ’07), founder of Luke’s Lobster; a group of friends who met at a Bible study and opened a brewery, the profit of which is valued in the millions; and many other entrepreneurs from four continents and nine countries around the world. McGinnis credited Georgetown with the global mindset he had when he approached his book, as well as his ability to write.

See ENTREPRENEURSHIP, A9