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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026

Updated GU Title IX Site Omits Multiple Survivors’ Allegations Against Priest Nora Toscano Editor-in-Chief

Georgetown University’s updated Title IX webpage dedicated to clerical sex abuse now includes Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., but omits the multiple allegations of his sexual misconduct The Hoya publicized last week. The new webpage, which was changed immediately after The Hoya published its investigation, only notes that Ribeiro resigned after a 2010 university investigation, passing over three public allegations of additional misconduct in the 15 years prior. To experts and survivors, that nominal language reaffirms Georgetown’s apparent unwillingness to publicly recognize or adequately address misconduct. Last week, The Hoya confirmed that Ribeiro faced at least four sexual misconduct allegations while at Georgetown — three detailed in The Hoya’s reporting, and at least one that led to the university inquiry and his resignation. The Hoya’s investigation was the first public

report of a Jesuit engaging in sexual misconduct at Georgetown after being placed on leave following similar issues. Steven Slawinski (CAS ’97), who accused Ribeiro of sexually harassing and groping him in the mid-1990s, said Georgetown’s webpage changes feel like “lip service.” “It really makes me disappointed in Georgetown,” Slawinski told The Hoya. “It sends a message that they’re covering their ass, and that they’re circling the wagons and they’re not really concerned about this as a problem.” Experts said the Jesuits’ internal reporting structure, which does not require them to relay conduct reports to university officials, likely allowed Ribeiro to quietly return to campus. Because of that, it remains unclear if Georgetown ever knew about the three misconduct cases before the 2010 investigation. On the new Title IX page, Georgetown lists its novel April agreement with the local Jesuit See TITLE IX, A7

NEL PETER/THE HOYA

Georgetown Univeristy Chief of Staff Ann Moran accepted a Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights petition after students and workers rallied Oct. 22. The petition has garnered over 1,300 signatures since the student labor group launched it in early September.

GU Reviewing Just Employment Petition Noah De Haan and Brendan Fijol

Senior News Editor and City Desk Editor

NEL PETER/THE HOYA

The new Title IX webpage only mentions that Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., resigned after a 2010 university investigation.

Georgetown University is reviewing a petition to amend its hallmark employment policy after students and workers hand-delivered the petition to University President Eduardo Peñalver’s office Oct. 22, a university spokesperson said. The student labor group Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights (GCWR) organized the rally and delivery, which capped a nearly two-month petition drive and included speakers from Hoyas

for Immigrant Rights and the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA). The petition, which university Chief of Staff Anne Moran accepted in Healy Hall, calls on Georgetown to revise its Just Employment Policy (JEP), including changing how it calculates a living wage and preserving contracted workers’ seniority even if the university hires a new vendor. The spokesperson said Georgetown will thoroughly examine the petition. “We have received the petition from the Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “We are reviewing it carefully.”

Charles Gore, a facilities worker who serves on their union’s bargaining team, said he attended the rally to advocate for higher wages and support the students that introduced the petition. “When it comes down to living wages, I do believe that the university is behind on it, and they stay behind,” Gore told The Hoya. “But when the students are involved more than the employees, because of fear, that’s when I want to stand with the students, because they always stand for us.” The petition — which calls for an annual review of the JEP, requests a “democratic” process for considering

future changes and demands a broadened set of employee benefits — had garnered over 1,300 signatures upon its delivery. Cameron Mirmelli (SFS ’29), a workers’ rights activist and GUSA vice presidential candidate who attended the rally, said the JEP should be regularly updated to appropriately serve workers more than two decades after its inception. “This policy has not been updated in 21 years,” Mirmelli told The Hoya. “You can think about how I wasn’t even alive 21 years ago, and it’s really important to See PETITION, A7

GU College Republicans Face GU to Finalize Anthropic Deal Backlash for Far-Right Speaker For Claude Access, Official Says Annie Quimby Campus Life Editor

The Georgetown University College Republicans (GUCR) hosted a controversial right-wing German politician for an Oct. 19 event on mass immigration, drawing criticism from campus political, cultural and satirical groups. At the event, Marc Bernhard, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, suggested that Muslim immigration threatened German democracy and has put a burden on the country’s finances. The Georgetown University College Democrats (GUCD) and the College Democrats of America’s (CDA) Jewish Caucus condemned the speaker in a joint statement released Oct. 16, and the Georgetown Heckler, a comedy group, staged a public stunt to disrupt the event. A GUCR spokesperson said the group “stands by” its decision to host Bernhard. “Immigration enforcement, national sovereignty and the future of Europe deserve substantive debate, and students are capable of questioning a German parliamentarian and judging his arguments for themselves,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “The AfD is currently leading national polls, and its growing support deserves serious engagement,” the spokesperson added. “Just as Republicans reject the American left’s efforts to dismiss our positions as extreme, we too reject the German Socialist government’s labelling of AfD as extremist.” The AfD is the second-largest party in Germany’s representative

body and has seen growing success in state elections since 2017. It is the most successful far-right party since the Nazi era and advocates for anti-immigration and German nationalist policies. The AfD has faced domestic and international blowback for some politicians’ use of antisemitic language and alleged minimization of the Holocaust. During the event, members of the Georgetown Heckler staged intermittent alarms and ringtones that disrupted Bernhard’s speech. Over the course of an hour, eight alarms went off and six students got up and left the room. When one student pretended to answer a call, she said, “I’m at this event that shouldn’t be happening.” As the sixth alarm rang, a staff member from the Office of Student Affairs asked the audience to silence their phones and exercise their free speech during the event’s question and answer period. According to the university’s Policy on Speech and Expression, individuals are free to criticize others’ views but not obstruct or interfere. During the event, Bernhard urged conservatives around the globe to rally against open-immigration policies, which he said pose threats to the “survival of Western civilization.” “It’s not racist, but it’s the truth: Always, where you see problems is Muslims,” Bernhard said at the event. “We don’t have problems with Ukrainians. We don’t have problems with Polish. Even if they come from South America, it’s not an issue.” “We really can see it’s not compatible with democracy. I mean, I do not really know a single country

— do we really know a single country who is a Muslim majority with a democracy?” he added. In 2025, AfD members dispersed campaign flyers stylized as deportation tickets addressed to immigrants without legal status in Karlsruhe, a city in one of Bernhard’s districts. Critics drew parallels between a Nazi-era campaign that sent one-way plane tickets to Jerusalem to Jewish citizens, which Bernhard claimed he was unfamiliar with. Leo Auerbach (CAS ’27), the vice chair of the CDA’s Jewish Caucus, said the AfD’s platform jeopardizes the safety of Georgetown’s Jewish community. “The AfD scheduled campus appearance puts Georgetown’s commitment to free expression and Jewish safety on a collision course,” Auerbach told The Hoya. “We think that Georgetown must put the safety of its Jewish students above a platform for a foreign politician whose ideology is steeped in antisemitism and Holocaust revisionism.” “GUCR’s xenophobia on its own is troubling — now combining that with someone who has embraced xenophobia through employing antisemitic propaganda is deeply troubling,” Auerbach added. In September, GUCR became the first university-affiliated group to join the Mass Deportation Coalition, a national organization calling on President Donald Trump to deport more than one million noncitizens in 2026 and all undocumented immigrants by 2029. In March, GUCR

Andrew Jiang and Chloe Taft

Academics Desk Editor and Senior News Editor

Georgetown University is finalizing a license with Anthropic’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool Claude, a university official announced at a Faculty Senate meeting Oct. 19. The Anthropic license will be Georgetown’s third public partnership with a generative AI platform — the university began offering Gemini, Google’s AI assistant in March, and piloted a ChatGPT premium program for faculty and staff this month. Negotiations with Anthropic are reaching their final stages, the official said, and Georgetown aims to extend licenses to some faculty members by the end of the semester. Georgetown’s Chief Information Officer Douglas Little said Georgetown is currently negotiating with Anthropic and hopes to have more information later this semester. “We’re still working with Claude on protections and terms and conditions in order for us to be able to to sign a contract there,” Little said at the Faculty Senate meeting. University officials did not clarify when or if Claude access would later be extended to students. Earlier this month, University President Eduardo Peñalver said integrating AI, especially in the classroom, is a university priority. “Georgetown will give AI the investigation, and vigilance, it deserves,” Penalver said in his Oct. 9 NEL PETER/THE HOYA inauguration address. Georgetown University officials announced plans to offer See CLAUDE, A7 some Claude access at an Oct. 19 Faculty Senate meeting.

See GUCR, A7

NEWS

OPINION

GUIDE

SPORTS

GU Creates New Scholarship Fund

Commit to Radical Transparency

‘Other Mommy’ Rears Few Scares

Haney Holds Onto March Dreams

A11

DC Restricts E-Bike Use

Tell The Whole Truth

‘Whalefall’ Breaches Expectations

The Dynamic Duo

A12/A11

The O’Day Family Scholarship Fund will cover two first-generation, low-income students’ total cost of attendance each year.

The Washington, D.C. Department of Transportation regulated the number and locations of electric bicycles and scooters.

The Editorial Board condemns Georgetown’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J.

Steven Slawinski (CAS ’97), who alleges Ribeiro groped him, demands Georgetown publicize known reports of clerical abuse.

While ‘Other Mommy’ subverts many classic horror tropes, its plot disappoints, Mia Chan (CAS ’30) writes.

Blurred by awkward delivery, “Whalefall” still offers a tragic tale of lost loved ones, argues Grace Ko (CAS ’27).

Published Fridays

Georgetown women’s basketball coach Darnell Haney believes the Hoyas’ refreshed roster can reach the NCAA tournament.

Men’s basketball junior guard Kayvaun Mulready and junior forward Caleb Williams return for their third year with the Hoyas.

Send story ideas and tips to news@thehoya.com

A2 | THE HOYA

THEHOYA.COM | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026

OPINION EDITORIAL

Give Survivors Radical Transparency When The Hoya publicized new sexual misconduct allegations against Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., last week, Georgetown University’s response was cursory at best. A university spokesperson condemned “in the strongest possible terms any clergy abuse” and committed to ensuring university policies supporting survivors “are as strong as possible.” The Hoya’s report was the first that a Jesuit engaged in sexual misconduct at Georgetown after being placed on leave following similar issues. To experts, the case exemplified the pitfalls of a split reporting structure where the Society of Jesus often does not share misconduct reports with university administrators. The three survivors whose allegations The Hoya detailed deserved more from Georgetown. When the abuse occurred, they deserved support and a guarantee that perpetrators receive punishment. Today, they deserve to know that Georgetown will protect future students. In response to The Hoya’s reporting, the spokesperson revealed some new information: In April, Georgetown and the Jesuits developed “formal protocols” to ensure Jesuit misconduct reports are “appropriately shared.” The announcement is encouraging — but it was the first mention Georgetown ever made of any such protocols, six months after they were established. That is a far cry from the “radical transparency” that Colt Anderson, a Fordham University professor who studied Jesuit reporting structures, calls for. Almost immediately after The Hoya’s story, Georgetown revamped its Title IX webpage dedicated to clerical sex abuse. The changes included — verbatim — the university’s statement to The Hoya, and an added section about Ribeiro. However, the new webpage omits the accounts of survivors who came forward in The Hoya. Additionally, Georgetown did not notify students or survivors about the change. While guilt may not lie squarely with Georgetown, the university has been complicit through its inaction. Georgetown must commit to radical transparency when handling Jesuits’ sexual misconduct. Following its 2010 investigation, Georgetown should have shared the results and sought to bring Ribeiro to justice, rather than allowing him to resign. Equally important, in the years since Ribeiro’s resignation, the university should have publicly named priests accused of misconduct, educated students on counseling and reporting resources and developed institutional reforms to ensure cases like Ribeiro’s never happen again. Today, the Editorial Board calls on Georgetown to do all that and more. The university declined to comment on this editorial beyond the statement it provided for The Hoya’s investigation last week. Transparency requires public action. The university should begin by naming all Georgetown priests accused of misconduct, now and in the future. Ribeiro’s case is not the first time Jesuit priests at Georgetown have faced sexual misconduct allegations. In 2019, The Hoya identified the “Georgetown 14” — 14 Georgetown-affiliated Jesuits credibly accused of child sex abuse. In 2021, the university revoked an honorary degree from former provost Fr. J. Donald Freeze, S.J., whom graduates accused of nonconsensual kissing and touching while they were students. The church’s response to sexual abuse scandals such as the Georgetown 14 has focused on minor abuse. Ribeiro’s actions show, however, that college students are just as vulnerable to abuse. Failing to publicize this issue risks student safety. When James, who alleges Ribeiro sexually harassed him in the early 2000s, later asked Georgetown to publicly

HOYA HISTORY

name priests accused of misconduct against non-minors, they ignored his request. We call on them to honor it. In practicing this transparency, the university must also reveal its progress toward rectifying the institutional issues that perpetuate this abuse. In 2020, former University President John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95) established a board of directors working group overseeing the university’s response. Georgetown’s new Title IX webpage now claims the working group became a board of directors subcommittee in 2021, but no such subcommittee is listed on the board’s website, and it has not taken any public action. As it stands, we have no information about this working group or subcommittee that was the centerpiece of DeGioia’s response to this crisis. Second, Georgetown must reveal the full details of the information-sharing agreement between the university and the local Jesuits. The only webpage’s language is broad and discretionary, illustrating the lack of a concrete plan to establish transparency. It remains unclear how Georgetown will ensure compliance, what measures it has implemented or what “appropriately” sharing information means. For decades — at Georgetown and beyond — clerical abuse has persisted through a barrier that kept misconduct reports in the hands of the Jesuits. An information-sharing agreement could solve this problem, but it must contain genuine accountability and oversight measures. Given the Jesuits’ past failures to correct behavior, this agreement does not give the Editorial Board confidence that anything will change. We call on the university to show us the protocols purported to protect us. Finally, Georgetown must actively protect incoming students through education during orientation and training from Sexual Assault Peer Educators (SAPE), Georgetown’s main educational resource on sexual misconduct. Georgetown already has mandatory sexual assault prevention courses for first-years. However, The Hoya’s reporting showed that the university never directed SAPE to cover clerical abuse. Integrating information about clerical abuse into orientation materials is a simple step the university could take to ensure students are aware of the issue and know which resources are available. Thus, while the Editorial Board commends the reconciliatory sentiment of these measures, we do not believe they represent meaningful improvements to fix the institutions that failed James and so many other students. Georgetown had an opportunity to address these issues in 2020, when the news about Ribeiro first broke. By embracing short-term initiatives that failed to create lasting change, the university neglected its mission. Today, Georgetown has a second chance. For the sake of current and future students and survivors, and the legitimacy of Georgetown’s commitment to its values, we urge the university to take it.

IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE

“

While guilt may not lie squarely with Georgetown, the university has been complicit through its inaction. Georgetown must commit to radical transparency when handling Jesuits’ sexual misconduct. The Editorial Board

“Give Survivors Radical Transparency” thehoya.com

POLL This week, the Editorial Board examines Georgetown University’s response to The Hoya’s recent investigation into alleged clerical sexual misconduct on campus, calling on administrators to practice radical transparency and take more robust measures to reconcile with its history. To gauge student opinion, The Hoya asked its readers if they believe Georgetown has adequately responded to the university’s connections to clerical sexual abuse. Of the 52 respondents, 61.5% said no, 36.5% said yes and 1.9% said they were unsure.

EDITORIAL CARTOON by Apara Chandavarkar

The Hoya’s Editorial Board is composed of six students and is chaired by the Opinion editors. Editorials reflect only the beliefs of a majority of the board and are not representative of The Hoya or any individual member of the board. On-campus resources include Health Education Services (202-687-8949) and Counseling and Psychiatric Services (202-687-6985). Off-campus resources include the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-4673) and the D.C. Victim Hotline (844-443-5732). To report sexual misconduct at Georgetown, you can contact Georgetown’s Title IX coordinator (202-687-9183). Students can also seek free legal advice through the nonprofit Volare’s Title IX clinic for D.C. university survivors. Survivors of clerical sexual misconduct can also contact the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (877-762-7432).

Since its first issue in 1920, The Hoya has served to inform Georgetown’s campus dialogue. The following article is a glimpse into The Hoya’s rich history, allowing readers to appreciate the evolution of college journalism.

Ripple Effect: Abuse Shakes Catholic Faith March 26, 2010

With the latest scandal in the Catholic Church arguably reaching all the way to the Vatican, it’s time for the Church to set the record straight. Enough is enough. The recent expose of the sexual abuse cover-ups in the Irish Church and elsewhere in Europe has become a public relations nightmare for the Church. Irish anger was strong enough to prompt an unprecedented pastoral letter of apology from Pope Benedict XVI to Irish Catholics. But the pope and the Vatican have yet to take the steps necessary to indicate that the Church will not tolerate abuse in the future. In the short term, the Church needs to combat the growing belief that it is willing to let abuse infractions slide. To begin, the pope should accept the resignations, which have been offered voluntarily, of four Irish bishops who have been criticized for inadequately handling abuse cases. As of yet, the pope has only accepted one. In the long term, the Church needs to become much stricter in how it deals with allegations of abuse. Rather than deferring to its own internal system of canonical trials – which

has been the standard in the past for dealing with abuses among the clergy – the Church needs to supplement its own investigations with more cooperation with civil authorities. The New York Times has alleged that Church documents indicate that Pope Benedict XVI – then Cardinal Ratzinger – did not respond to concerns about a major sexual abuse case brought before his former office in the early 1990s. Fr. Lawrence C. Murphy – a now-deceased priest who had worked at a Wisconsin school for the deaf from 1950 to 1974 – was accused of abusing about 200 boys. The Times reported that the canonical investigation into the matter was quietly dropped, and Murphy was never defrocked or, it seems, even reprimanded. The case is an example of everything that can go wrong if the Church does not become more transparent about abuse cases. The Catholic Church has done more in recent years to counteract abuse within its parishes and schools. Most employees at Catholic schools, for instance, now undergo training to learn how to identity potential abusers. Every time a big player in the Church food chain looks the

LETTER TO THE EDITOR AND 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 600-700 words. The Hoya retains all rights to all published submissions. Send all submissions to: opinion@thehoya.com. 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 Editors Nico Abreu, Opal Kendall and Ajani Stella at executive@thehoya.com. NEWS TIPS News Editors Noah De Haan and Chloe Taft: Email news@thehoya.com. Guide Editors Anandita Agarwal and Isabelle Cialone: Email guide@ thehoya.com. Sports Editors Sam Fishman and Ethan Herweck: Email sports@thehoya. com.

other way, however, such progress is undermined. Abusers implicate only themselves, but cover-ups threaten the entire structure of the Church. If the Vatican wants to save face and protect abuse victims, it needs to admit its mistakes in handling abusers, and adopt stronger and more immediate action against those who strive to protect them. The bottom line? The top priority of the Church should always be the safety of the congregation, not the public image of the Church. The Church, however, has every right to – and should – work to rehabilitate abusive priests and help to reintegrate them into society. And if they are removed from positions where they can cause harm, there is no reason to overly publicize their transgressions. Forgiveness is, after all, a basic tenet of Catholic teaching. Forgiving, however, does not mean forgetting, and the Church cannot continue to turn a blind eye to priests who have committed abuse and those who have knowingly glossed it over. The Editorial Board

GENERAL INFORMATION The Hoya is published once a week during the academic year with the exception of holiday and exam periods. Address all correspondence to: The Hoya Georgetown University Box 571065 Washington, D.C. 20057-1065 The writing, articles, pictures, layout and format are the responsibility of The Hoya and do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty or students of Georgetown University. Signed columns and cartoons represent the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the editorial position of The Hoya. Unsigned essays that appear on the left side of the editorial page are the opinion of the majority of the editorial board. Georgetown University subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression for student editors. The Hoya does not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, color, national or ethnic origin. © 1920-2026. The Hoya, Georgetown University weekly. No part of this publication may be used without the permission of The Hoya Board of Editors. All rights reserved. The Hoya is available free of charge, one copy per reader, at distribution sites on and around the Georgetown University campus. Email: editor@thehoya.com Online at www.thehoya.com Circulation: 1,000

Founded January 14, 1920

Nora Toscano, Editor-in-Chief

Nico Abreu, Opal Kendall and Ajani Stella, Executive Editors Jackson Roberts, Managing Editor Noah De Haan, News Editor Chloe Taft, News Editor Jacqueline Gordon, Features Editor Serene Pai, Features Editor Thejas Kumar, Opinion Editor Leo Zhang, Opinion Editor Anandita Agarwal, Guide Editor Isabelle Cialone, Guide Editor Sam Fishman, Sports Editor Ethan Herweck, Sports Editor Angela Lekan, Science Editor Eva Siminiceanu, Science Editor Lucy Jung, Design Editor Anish Raja, Design Editor Elizabeth Hoerter, Copy Chief Allison Ma, Copy Chief Grace Rutherford, Copy Chief Katherine Hart, Blog Editor Yaya Hang, Multimedia Editor Miranda Kristina Santiago, Multimedia Editor Matthew Gassoso, Photo Editor Ella O’Connor, Audience Editor Caroline Woodward, Audience Editor

Board of Directors

Paulina Inglima, Chair

Ruth Abramovitz, Bethe Bogrette, Maren Fagan, Tanvi Gorripati, Aamir Jamil, Annikah Mishra

Connor Manrique-Johnson, General Manager

Rosie Garner, Director of Business Operations Jackson Roberts, Technology Director

Andrew Jiang Academics Desk Editor Annie Quimby Student Life Desk Editor Liv Sanchez Graduate Desk Editor Brendan Fijol City Desk Editor Joshua Lou GUSA Desk Editor Michael Shtrom Events Desk Editor Caroline Garland Deputy Features Editor Sophia Tully Deputy Features Editor Caden Larrenaga Deputy Opinion Editor Juan Almanza Deputy Guide Editor Eliza Doty Deputy Guide Editor Grace Ko Deputy Guide Editor Eliana Kut Deputy Guide Editor Penelope Snoep Deputy Guide Editor Finn Balon Deputy Sports Editor Golnar Jalinous Deputy Sports Editor Jacob Nolan Deputy Sports Editor Sasha Ahmad Deputy Science Editor Jaya Alenghat Deputy Science Editor Kaitlyn Lee Deputy Science Editor Adhithi Rajesh Deputy Science Editor Maddie Williams Deputy Science Editor Autumn Dunlop Deputy Design Editor Abby Kopf Deputy Design Editor Emilie Andrews Deputy Copy Editor Lucas Liang Deputy Copy Editor Sebastian Pallant Deputy Copy Editor Serena Nguyen Deputy Copy Editor Vivian Welch Deputy Copy Editor Connor Emmert Deputy Photo Editor Rohini Kudva Director of Human Relations Jacob An Director of Logistics Stefano Rangel Haddad Director of Outreach

THE HOYA | A3

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 | THEHOYA.COM

OPINION

VIEWPOINT • LEDLOW

Protect Off-Campus Living

n 2012, after years of tense relations with its neighbors, Georgetown University formed the Georgetown Community Partnership (GCP) to negotiate with local residents and incorporate their concerns. It was the brainchild of the first Georgetown University Campus Development Plan, a 2010 zoning program that set limits on new campus housing construction and renovation and capped student enrollment. The GCP and campus plan, however, have eroded campus culture by deprioritizing and policing students, particularly through the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program (SNAP), which enforces student conduct off campus. The issue is structural: The GCP has failed to meaningfully involve Georgetown students. To better develop a true partnership, students must make their voices heard. Despite promises to involve Hoyas, the GCP consists primarily of citizens’ associations and neighborhood elected officials. While the Georgetown University Student Association has one representative on the steering committee, residents outnumber them 5-to-1. As a result, the partnership has repeatedly supported policies that penalize students for minor mistakes, denying them the opportunity to grow as people. Yet Georgetown students have long neglected local representation. Only one of the two Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats dedicated to students is currently occupied, and student turnout is abysmal in the five districts that split campus. In one district, two people voted in 2024. To protect our college experience, students must register to vote from their dorm rooms and organize to build political influence. In recent years, Georgetown students have lost many freedoms. After a spike in noise complaints, the 2010 campus plan required students to remain on campus for three years, crowding Georgetown’s campus. When students do search for off-campus senior-year housing, they often have to lease years in advance at steep rents. While students drive massive demand in local housing and raise property values, their neighborhoods treat them as a nuisance. In Fall 2025, for instance, SNAP nearly doubled its proactive contacts — where it intervenes without a noise complaint — according to an analysis by The Hoya. These disciplinary cases are especially punishing, and at times cross the line into incredulity. All of these issues trace directly to our lack of local representation. SNAP responds directly to the GCP’s concerns, and the GCP

responds primarily to residents, not students. By electing Hoyas to local offices, we could directly push back on the zoning plans driving these trends. The stakes are clear. This summer, students received a barrage of emails demanding they “acknowledge” and sign a new parking policy that allows Georgetown to compare license plates to your personal information. Violation of this policy would refer your case to the Office of Student Conduct. Parking is not the only offcampus violation. Improper trash disposal, such as an overflowing garbage can, omitting your address from the bin or having more than two cans can also result in disciplinary action. If you were stuck inside during last year’s “snowcrete storm,” you could have been held liable for not clearing the snow within eight hours. It is hard to imagine a world in which street parking, garbage cans and snow shoveling demanded this response. Every Hoya should be concerned about the administration’s willingness to police minor issues. Rather than build relationships and set expectations with students, Georgetown is pushed to answer to the GCP and punish students for relatively minor issues. Under the code of conduct, which was significantly amended last year, two noise violations in Burleith result in a veritable laundry list: an eight-month conduct probation, a 16-week ban on hosting parties, 10 hours of community service and a “likely” relocation to on-campus housing with almost no discretion. The same conduct on campus results in a warning. The only difference is who calls to complain. Every one of these infractions stems from the campus plan, decided by a committee that students barely know about. But students do not have to just accept them. The campus plan is subject to amendment, and the elected officials who write it are up for election Nov. 3. If students want to protect their college experience, they have to be willing to organize around the issues that matter. In just a few days, all ANC seats are up for election, and you can fill them with students. If you aren’t registered to vote, or are registered in a different state, consider registering from your campus address the same day. If you care about student representation, talk to your neighbors and get out to vote.

MATTHEW GASSOSO/THE HOYA

VIEWPOINT • SLAWINSKI

GU, Finally Tell the Truth About Clerical Sex Abuse

n Fall 1995, I enrolled in Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J.,’s “Prize Novels” class. I was an English major, a resident assistant in Village C and a regular in this newspaper’s office. Ribeiro was 48, a popular professor and the chaplain-in-residence in Copley Hall. For the next two years, he sexually groomed, harassed and abused me. It began with talk. He made sexual comments in class. He invited students to dinner in Copley. He told me that if things got too loud in Village C, I could come sleep at his place, and then added that he slept naked. It unsettled me, and I did not know what to do with it. Then came a class film screening of “Hamlet” in a darkened basement room of Lauinger Library. Ribeiro took the chair next to me, and when the ghost of King Hamlet appeared on screen, I felt his hand grab my right leg and move onto my thigh. I froze. I understood what was happening but could not make myself name it. I said nothing. I ultimately took three courses with Ribeiro and we stayed in touch for several years after I graduated in 1997. People harmed this way often stay close to the person who harmed them, and I did. I felt chosen and valued by his attention. As long as he was my mentor and someone I looked up to, I thought what happened in that library could remain something less than what it was. In March 2020, I reported Ribeiro to Georgetown’s Title IX office. I Leo Ledlow is a senior in the was the third known person to report him, according to The Hoya’s School of Foreign Service.

COLUMN • VORA

reporting. The office sent me a list of support services. No one answered the question I had actually asked — what Georgetown would do to make sure it did not happen to someone else. When I followed up in 2023, I was referred to a support coordinator in Texas. I lived in New York. Last week, The Hoya detailed how a split reporting structure that did not require Jesuits to relay misconduct reports to university officials likely allowed Ribeiro to return from leave and abuse others after another student reported him in 1998. Almost immediately after the investigation was published, Georgetown quietly rewrote its webpage on clerical abuse. It now names Ribeiro, but mentions only the 2010 university investigation that led to his resignation and omits his three publicized survivors. The page also announces, in a single sentence, that in April, Georgetown and the local Jesuit province adopted “formal protocols” requiring that misconduct allegations against Jesuits “be appropriately shared.” However, graduates, students and survivors were never told, both about the changes to the Title IX page and the new informationsharing agreement with the Jesuits. The university does not specify how the agreement was implemented, leaving two institutions that have already struggled with transparency to determine compliance. No one outside can check whether it is followed, because “appropriately” means whatever the two parties decide it means. It keeps the information inside two institutions

that share an interest in limiting their exposure. Georgetown can fix this. Three steps would matter most. First, publish the agreement. Survivors deserve to know what happens to a report: what triggers sharing, who at the province sends it, who at Georgetown receives it and how quickly. An agreement no one can read cannot be enforced, and a promise no one outside can check is only a press release. Second, close the door that allowed Ribeiro to return to campus in 2000. Nothing suggests anyone at Georgetown asked why he left at the time. No Jesuit removed or placed on leave for misconduct should teach, minister or live at Georgetown again without written approval from the Title IX office and the president, given only after they have read the province’s file. Third, the university should tell the whole truth on its own public webpage. Georgetown should acknowledge every reported case, not only the one its investigators substantiated in 2010. I reported to the Title IX office six years ago, so the university knows about my case and chose to omit it. Further, the board subcommittee on clergy misconduct should have a published charter, a place on the governance website and an annual public report on its work. And every revision to the page should be dated, so survivors no longer learn of changes by reading the student newspaper. I froze in that dark library room. I was a student, alone with a man

the university trusted, and I had no idea what to do. Georgetown is not in that position. It has known about Ribeiro’s abuse since at least 2010 and known clerical abuse was a recurring pattern since at least 2020. It has lawyers, a board, a Title IX office and, now, an agreement with the Jesuits that it will not let anyone read. Georgetown taught me that a Jesuit education means telling the truth even when it costs you something. I am asking the university to do what it taught me. Publish the agreement. Close the door Ribeiro walked back through. And acknowledge, on its own page, everyone that has been hurt. Steven Slawinski graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences in 1997. On-campus resources include Health Education Services (202687-8949) and Counseling and Psychiatric Services (202-687-6985). Off-campus resources include the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-4673) and the D.C. Victim Hotline (844-443-5732). To report sexual misconduct at Georgetown, you can contact Georgetown’s Title IX coordinator (202-687-9183). Students can also seek free legal advice through the nonprofit Volare’s Title IX clinic for Washington, D.C. university survivors. Survivors of clerical sexual misconduct can also contact the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) (877-762-7432).

VIEWPOINT • BOCKELMAN

Stay Connected With Your Loved Ones Prepare Student-Athletes for Changes

ampus was peppier than normal, yet I couldn’t help but somberly trudge across it. It was Parents’ Weekend. Blue-and-gray shirts that read “Georgetown Mom” and “Georgetown Dad” stared at me cheekily, as if they knew the distance that forced them to the depths of many parents’ closets. I’m from Mumbai; my parents are 8,003 miles away. That same weekend I watched “E.T.” again; Steven Spielberg is truly nothing short of a magician. It is only natural to feel silent tears roll down your skin when hearing the words: “E.T. phone home.” I am going to keep it simple this week, my fellow Hoyas: phone home. It is too easy to get caught up in busy schedules. Some of us live as students, consultants, researchers, teaching assistants and even baristas, all within 24 hours. We rarely find time to be children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins or even friends. Naturally, our priorities are shaped by the setting we currently exist in, yet we must not forget to adjust these priorities to make space for what we have left behind. As Parents’ Weekend comes to an end, even if you wish to pretend that you do not miss home dearly, I urge you to remember that home misses you. Make that call. The root of the missed call epidemic that plagues our campus is the scarcity of seconds. I find myself with literally no time to think. I go from writing papers for my proseminar, to writing a Political and Social Thought midterm, to writing an object analysis for my Writing and Culture class, to writing this very column entry; I have a feeling a lot of you reading this relate. It is so easy

to settle into an overwhelmingly monotonous routine that places homesickness on the back burner. You cannot experience what doesn’t cross your mind. That doesn’t make the feeling extinct. Every time I glance at the pictures propped up on that massive Harbin pinboard, every time I microwave dehydrated packets of home-cooked Indian food for a quick seven-minute lunch between classes, every time I clap to the rhythm of Aarti in the Dharmic Meditation Center the rare Sunday I make it there, I miss home. While this fleeting feeling quickly fades to the next item on my to-do list, it makes itself known. Parents’ Weekend brought it all back for me. I saw hellos, high-fives and hugs. I felt none of them. It was also the birthday of my best friend from back home. I was in a meeting when the clock struck 12, missing that meaningful milestone. That night, I scurried over to the Pierce Reading Room and buried myself in books. I’m guessing Lau is 8,002.75 miles away from Mumbai. That night, campus felt like the cold of outer space. That night, I felt like an alien, like E.T. If my Parents’ Weekend overshare could not convince you that you are allowed to miss home, remember this: home misses you. When I did call my mother on my way back to Harbin that night, she snapped at me before I could even think the word hello. “I need a call every single day,” she told me. It’s easy to snap back when you’re being lectured at 1:00 a.m. after a Lau lock-in, yet I just couldn’t. I knew she needed it. My parents have spent so much of their life on me. For 19 years, my mom was somehow always

ollege athletics has changed dramatically over the past few years. Name, image and likeness (NIL) rules, the increasingly prominent transfer portal, conference realignment and revenue sharing have reshaped the industry. One estimate puts combined NIL and revenue-sharing compensation at about $2.25 billion in the 2025-26 academic year, up from $917 million in 2021-22. Congress is seeking stability through the Protect College Sports Act, which codifies NIL rights and creates a uniform national framework for college athletics. The Protect College Sports Act could bring some stability to college athletics, but important questions remain. One of the biggest is whether athletes are now employees, which would affect everything from Title IX to how athletic departments operate. As college sports become more professionalized, athletes need a voice in decisions that affect their futures. Louisiana State University’s dispute with the Southeastern Conference (SEC) shows the consequences of that uncertainty. A Louisiana judge cleared former professional football players to return to college competition, while the SEC maintained that its rules barred schools from playing them. When courts, conferences and the NCAA interpret eligibility differently, athletes are left making career decisions without clear guidance. Georgetown University cannot settle those disputes, but it can comply with existing laws, help students understand transfer and eligibility rules, explain the potential consequences of their decisions and connect them with the resources they need to make informed choices. Parth Vora is a first-year in the Georgetown should also give studentSchool of Foreign Service. This athletes a stronger voice in school is the third installment of his discussions about these policies, ensuring the people most affected by column “Hoyawood.” excited to hear my cranky quips as I got back home from school. Two months ago, I stopped going back home. I fell into a routine that left my mom’s own disrupted. I promise you, even if it is communicated through an unnecessary shouting match, people back home are just trying to say they miss you. If not for yourself, then for them, call home. Here’s how we could remedy the missed call epidemic: extend Google Calendar (GCal) culture beyond campus, beyond borders, perhaps. As excessive as it may sound, schedule a call with your parents, even if it’s just ten minutes twice a week; add one for your grandparents, too. Perhaps a five-minute task that tells you to send your high school friends a voice note. Let that GCal notification hold you accountable; that weekly table shows you that some ordinary phone calls are more meaningful than Zoom or Google Meet. As you adjust your GCal settings to include the setting you left behind, you consciously make it a part of your priorities. Maybe this can make homesickness feel less like a real malady. All I’m trying to say is this: it is okay to miss home. Home misses you too. If you ever feel like an alien, like I did, stranded in a strange solar system, remember the words: “E.T. phone home.” Make that call to whoever home may be to you. I promise, even an 8,003-mile gap will momentarily disappear.

the rules have a role in shaping them. At Georgetown, athlete empowerment should reflect the Jesuit value of “cura personalis,” or care for the whole person. Students need more than athletic and academic support; they also need guidance on contracts, agents, taxes, financial planning and legal issues. Whatever Congress decides, Georgetown can help athletes understand their rights, responsibilities and resources. Athletes should continue to help shape decisions about compensation, transfers, eligibility and safety. Georgetown’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) already works to bring student-athletes together, promote mental health and wellness, support community service andprovideaninclusivevoiceonissues affecting their experience. However, Georgetown can strengthen its role by establishing regular meetings between SAAC representatives and athletic department leaders to discuss proposed policies before they are implemented. The committee can also gather feedback from athletes across all sports, including non-revenue programs, and provide input on NIL education, transfer guidance, eligibility rules and athlete safety. Giving SAAC a more formal role in these discussions would help ensure school athletic leaders hear directly from the students affected by their decisions. Additionally, college sports’ newfound financial pressures should not push Olympic and other nonrevenue sports aside. Four Hoyas competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics, demonstrating how college programs contribute beyond the revenue they generate. These sports give athletes the opportunity to represent their country, inspire future generations and create a sense of national pride that extends far beyond campus. Georgetown

should support these programs because they reflect the university’s commitment to developing the whole person, providing opportunities for student-athletes to excel and valuing achievement beyond financial returns. The law could also create more bureaucracy if Congress, states, conferences, the NCAA and universities do not have clearly defined roles. If different organizations continue to interpret or enforce the rules differently, athletes and schools could face more confusion rather than less. Georgetown must therefore prepare to navigate these changes while keeping its educational mission at the center of its athletic programs. Success should not be measured only by recruiting, revenue or wins, but also by whether student-athletes receive a quality education, have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them and are prepared for life after college sports. The Protect College Sports Act could bring stability, but passage should begin reform, not end it. There are still questions about how revenue should beshared,whatrightsstudent-athletes should have and how to protect them without taking away future opportunities. These are complicated issues, but student-athletes need to be part of the discussion. For Georgetown, complying with the act is just the starting point. The university should focus on making sure student-athletes leave with a good education, a positive college experience and the ability to make good decisions once their playing days are over. Georgetown cannot control every change that comes to college sports, but it can put athletes in a position to succeed beyond athletics. Peter Bockelman is a professor in the School of Continuing Studies.

THEHOYA.COM | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026

A4 | THE HOYA

FEATURES

GU Centers Interdisciplinary STEM Programs. Some Engineering Hopefuls Say It’s Not Enough.

While some students and faculty say the school’s interdisciplinary approach successfully creates well-rounded graduates, others say it is insufficient in a job market that demands technical expertise.

ILLUSTRATION BY ANISH RAJA/THE HOYA

Faculty and students say while they appreciate Georgetown’s interdisciplinary approach to science fields, gaps in technical skill development make entering traditional engineering pathways difficult.

Samantha DiPaolo and Julia Jiang

Features Staff Writers

n most of his college applications, Cam Schlesinger (CAS ’28) was a biomedical engineering major. Georgetown University, which does not offer an engineering degree, seemed like an unconventional choice. He ended up at Georgetown after falling in love with the school, matriculating into its biological physics program in Fall 2024 with hopes to come close to his desired engineering education. After just three semesters, Schlesinger debated transferring, he said. “This program is great, but the opportunities that it is able to offer within the school are just not engineering-related,” Schlesinger told The Hoya. Instead of a traditional engineering degree, Georgetown offers various STEM-focused majors that align with its Jesuit liberal arts pedagogy. Georgetown touts its interdisciplinary STEM education as a benefit for students: It develops a well-rounded skill set attractive to employers, the university says. For many students and faculty, that liberal arts approach largely works. Others like Schlesinger, however, say it fails to balance versatile skills with the specialization needed for long-term success in the field — something they only discovered after a few years at Georgetown. Students interested in engineering can pursue the Columbia Combined Program (CCP), a five-year program allowing Georgetown students to transfer to Columbia University’s engineering school. Within Georgetown, students can obtain practical experience through physics; computer science; and science, technology and international affairs (STIA) degrees, as well as through the Center for Neuroengineering, a research group. But although Georgetown recently boasted earning Research 1 (R1) status for its 30th year — maintaining its place among the 187 top research institutions — Georgetown is one of just four R1 schools not currently offering or implementing a formal engineering degree. That leaves some Georgetown students without the opportunity to explore real-world applications outside the classroom, they said. A university spokesperson said an interdisciplinary education is important to Georgetown’s Jesuit identity. “Georgetown educates its students to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “For undergraduates, the Georgetown Core Curriculum is a distinctive expression of Georgetown University’s identity as a student-centered research university rooted in the Jesuit and Catholic tradition.” Theresa Sabonis-Helf, the STIA master’s program chair, said Georgetown’s Jesuit influences deprioritize technical foundations in favor of a well-rounded education. “To stay in a lab and not have any interest in how your work affects humanity is not very Jesuit, but to build programs that try to get everyone to think about those issues, I think it is,” Sabonis-Helf told The Hoya. Instead, some students have sought to fill the gap with extracurricular activities.

Schlesinger, who wanted to graduate in four years, said he decided to stay at Georgetown partially because he found a supplement to in-class instruction — spending a semester building neuroprosthetics in Sweden. “Through getting that opportunity abroad, I was basically like, ‘It’s totally doable,’” Schlesinger said. “It’s doable to get the basis here, get a network here, and then do the project stuff on my own or through internships or something else.” The Hoya spoke with over two dozen current and former STEM-focused students and faculty to understand how a Georgetown education influences students’ engineering career prospects. Georgetown’s curricular offerings, some students say, cannot support a vibrant career in engineering or other technical-focused STEM fields. Raha Hakimdavar, a space studies professor, said students pursuing an interdisciplinary education will likely struggle to break into traditional STEM industries. “It’s always a trade-off,” Hakimdavar told The Hoya. “If I’m just pure objective, if someone was interested in pursuing a path that was going to be purely scientific, to pursue it would be harder.” Schlesinger said no matter the merits of an interdisciplinary education, Georgetown’s approach makes it difficult for students to succeed as engineers. “If you’re actually trying to be an engineer, just transferring is a better idea,” Schlesinger said. Material Differences Among the 10 schools it considers its peer institutions, Georgetown is the only one without a distinct engineering program. Dartmouth College, one of those schools, simultaneously offers a “human-centered” approach and “project-based approach” to their engineering program. While, like Georgetown, they promote understanding of social and ethical responsibility, Dartmouth also exposes students to a hands-on curriculum in preparation for STEM careers, providing opportunities to build and test prototypes in introductory engineering courses. Jesuit schools like Georgetown are known for their liberal arts education, which emphasizes producing well-rounded students. Yet even compared to Jesuit schools with a similar interdisciplinary ethos, Georgetown remains an outlier. Boston College and Fairfield University offer engineering majors with both theoretical and hands-on components. Boston’s engineering program, similar to Dartmouth’s, couples specialized-skills training with a “human-centered” attitude. Fairfield advertises the same interdisciplinary approach as Georgetown — it just also provides students the technical education to back it up. Ana Estrada, a Fairfield engineering professor, said engineering-specific coursework better prepares her students to enter the field. “While I think that you can get a very solid STEM foundation with starting out in other fields, I do think that having dedicated engineering classes that teaches you the type of problem-solving approaches, the design processes and how to think like an engineer as an undergraduate student can be extremely beneficial

to more get up to speed quickly once they’re out in the workforce,” Estrada told The Hoya. Andres Carrano, Fairfield’s engineering dean, said Jesuit universities can balance specialized degrees with a uniquely well-rounded education. “Our students learn how to best utilize their engineering skills for the greater societal good and with a deep sense of social justice,” Carrano wrote to The Hoya. “This is something Jesuit engineering schools excel at worldwide.” Jason Ahn — who studies engineering at Johns Hopkins University, a top STEM institution and one of Georgetown’s self-identified peers — said the school’s research-focused classes give undergraduates early opportunities to participate in projects, which develop skills and real-world understanding that can directly translate to their career. “Throughout those, you could easily get integrated into these research programs that the professors offer,” Ahn told The Hoya. Georgetown, meanwhile, has maintained its interdisciplinary approach rather than following its peers. Faculty and students say the university’s science programs remain insufficient. While Fairfield offers classes like “Autonomous Mobile Robots,” which allows students to construct machines using university-provided hardware, Georgetown focuses on other subject matters or more theoretical concepts, such as “Science Tech in Global Arena,” which provides students with an understanding of how science and technology affect international affairs. Andres Permuy (CAS ’24), a CCP graduate, said Georgetown’s interdisciplinary approach helped him explore his interests but may be less suited to students steadfastly pursuing engineering. “The multidisciplinary part with Georgetown was very much me using its resources to figure that part out and then specialize later,” Permuy told The Hoya. “But for anyone wanting to do anything engineering and not having that kind of hyper-specific plan, Georgetown doesn’t really make much sense at all.” Despite lagging expansion of its engineering resources, Georgetown has consistently grown its interdisciplinary STEM offerings, including the STIA program in 1982, environmental biology in 2008 and the Tech & Society Initiative in 2022. More recently, the university has poured resources into expanding its artificial intelligence programs, which it again advertised as interdisciplinary. Mak Paranjape, a Georgetown physics professor conducting neuroengineering research, said establishing an engineering program at Georgetown would be costly and complicated. “It takes a lot of money to start an engineering department or an engineering faculty, not just in terms of getting the personnel and the courses established, but to be a legitimate degree-granting institution,” Paranjape told The Hoya. Georgetown’s only formal engineering opportunity is the CCP, in which students spend three years working toward a Georgetown diploma before earing a second bachelor’s of engineering after two years at Columbia. Permuy said he struggled to keep up with his peers at Columbia.

“Because I didn’t come from an entirely engineering background, there is a lot of catch-up to do,” Permuy said. The Center for Neuroengineering — Georgetown’s only other significant foray into engineering — provides students of all educational levels with concrete experience through workshops, summer classes and research opportunities. Still, Schlesinger said the center fails to fill Georgetown’s technical gap, particularly since students have to seek out those opportunities on top of a full courseload. He said the center did not use computer-aided design (CAD) software, which is a cornerstone of engineering work. “Going in, I was expecting it to be a little more hands-on than it is,” Schlesinger said. “They’re definitely interesting, but you aren’t working with CAD software,” Schlesinger added. “It’s not very project-based.” Aya Ahmad (CAS ’28), a former STIA major who switched to physics, said research projects exist within narrow fields, so students lack opportunities for exploration beyond the classroom. “If you don’t fall in any of those fields, it’s very, very hard for you to do research with a lab on campus,” Ahmad told The Hoya. Schlesinger said he plans to seek out the resources he did not get at Georgetown in a master’s degree at a different school. “I’ll probably go to grad school for engineering and then from there I’ll figure it out,” Schlesinger said. Gear Shift For many Georgetown students, that interdisciplinary STEM approach still pays off, especially combined with student-led extracurriculars. Sabonis-Helf, the STIA master’s chair, said an interdisciplinary education positions Georgetown to fill gaps in important industries. “What we’re missing the most are science communicators — people that understand the science well enough to really engage it, and to ask the right questions, but also people who can explain it to policymakers who really don’t understand it,” Sabonis-Helf said. “I see Georgetown as filling that really important role.” As part of its efforts to synthesize science and technology research for policymakers, the STIA program launched “Science Politics,” an online journal-magazine, earlier this year. Georgetown also connects current students with graduates working in technology and policy through its new Georgetown Technology Alliance, which features graduates such as Jon Berroya (COL ’98), who serves as director of government affairs and public policy at Google. Jongwon Han (CAS ’27), a math and physics major with a STIA minor, said while he dedicated his early education to technical STEM subjects, studying STIA gave him a well-rounded understanding of its applications. “Having a very good, nice blend of the STEM side and the policy side opens new interests for people like me who only focused on the STEM side before coming to college,” Han told The Hoya. Owen Chbani (SFS ’25), a STIA graduate, said interdisciplinary experts are essential in the workplace, especially regarding complex issues. “At a big workplace, like a government agency, there will be the techni-

cal experts who you can lean on when you need an analysis done, but there are also people who need to be able to understand the policy landscape, understand the background on that end,” Chbani told The Hoya. The effect of Georgetown’s interdisciplinary nature, students said, is that extracurriculars strive to provide the hands-on experience and technical skills that curricula deemphasize. Rafael Leme (CAS ’29) — the co-founder of the Georgetown Engineering and Robotics Society (GEARS), which looks to foster a STEM and engineering culture at Georgetown — said the newly formed club serves as an important space for students to get hands-on experience. “Students interested in engineering need a space to build physical, cool things. And that’s what we’re doing,” Leme told The Hoya. “That’s the gap that’s currently unfilled that I envision GEARS becoming.” Jessica Cao (SFS ’28), a STIA major, said student-led clubs complete what classwork lacks. “When I’m in clubs, they feel a lot more practical and tangible because there isn’t a real world deliverable that you’re making in classes most of the time,” Cao told The Hoya. “It gives a good foundation and exposure to what exists,” Cao added. “But then clubs allow me to take it one step further and apply it.” Houston, We Have a Problem But an interdisciplinary program with student-led extracurriculars is not enough for all aspiring engineers — even if they thought it was when they matriculated, like Schlesinger did. As students looking to pursue engineering consider their career prospects, some find the interdisciplinary approach insufficient. Dylan Burkett (CAS ’29), GEARS’ chief operating officer, said Georgetown’s STEM classes often force students to explore topics crucial to their careers on their own. “Most of the curriculum here is a mile wide and an inch deep,” Burkett told The Hoya. “So we’re taught the fundamentals of calculus, mechanics, electrical engineering and things like that, but we don’t really go super deep into it.” Engineering jobs typically require practical experience, including specific skills that only handson training can provide. And as jobs become increasingly competitive, some Georgetown students are worried their interdisciplinary education cannot keep up. Timothy Beach, the former STIA director, said during his time at Georgetown — from 1993 to 2014 — the program lacked practical opportunities, such as laboratory sessions, which left students without space for technical learning and ultimately justified Beach’s departure to the University of Texas at Austin, with large labs. “One of the problems — you’re talking about this tension of the generalist science policy versus science — was that we didn’t have labs at all,” Beach told The Hoya. Marco Otero (CAS ’28), a computer science major, said his initial training in specific programming skills made him optimistic about his Georgetown education, but his classes have since shifted toward more abstract curricula.

“They need to be on top of what is expected of the students going into the workforce,” Otero told The Hoya. “That’s something that’s missing right now.” Fairfield, for instance, provides engineering students with a dedicated career office and boasts its 100% placement rate within six months after graduation, as well as that three-fourths of its students participate in an internship. But Georgetown students said they have no such resources besides the general Cawley Career Education Center, which does not have an industry guide dedicated to engineering or related fields. Leme, the GEARS co-founder, said career networking opportunities provided through Cawley for engineering-interested students fall short compared to more popular fields. “They have connections with all sorts of companies, for example in finance or consulting, but you don’t see that same type of representation with tech or engineering, and that’s something that they have agency over,” Leme said. Engineering jobs are in demand: There were three times as many open jobs as candidates in early 2026. Yet most entry-level positions look at technical expertise, not higher-level thinking. Evan Barba, another Georgetown space studies faculty member, said employers do not appear to value interdisciplinary students. “It’s unfortunate because most people are not trained to look at generalists as being useful, malleable tools that they should value in their toolbox,” Barba told The Hoya. Anna Kelly (CAS ’27) — former president of the Georgetown University Space Initiative, a student organization that coordinates space-related professional development opportunities — said while Georgetown may be right that its strategy helps students long term, entry-level positions still favor technical degrees. “It’s very difficult because people like to put you in boxes when you’re starting off,” Kelly told The Hoya. “They want to put you in a policy box. They want to put you in an engineering box.” “There’s not really a box for interdisciplinary until a couple years in,” Kelly added. Brian Weeden, another Georgetown space studies faculty member, said specialized disciplinary depth, rather than casting a wide net, can better prepare STEM students for their desired field. “I do think there’s a risk to spreading too thin, in part because you really don’t get that depth anywhere,” Weeden told The Hoya. “There’s a lot to say for having really studied a particular subject or a particular discipline in detail that allows you to understand more.” Barba said the job market’s increasing focus on specialization makes it difficult for interdisciplinary students to demonstrate their capability in specific careers. “You are looking at a world that really, at this point, expects specialization,” Barba said. “And things have gotten so hyper-specialized that it’s difficult for a generalist or a Renaissance person to really demonstrate that they add value in a world that does not know how to extract value from someone like that.”

THE HOYA | A5

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 | THEHOYA.COM

SCIENCE: THE BELLRINGER EDITION

Editor’s Note: Since BellRinger’s inaugural ride in 2022, the event has grown to be a Georgetown University staple. Hosted annually, the event brings together Georgetown community members to support research done at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, the NCI-designated cancer-focused branch of Georgetown University Medical Center. As our peers, professors and community members get ready to start their bike rides and reach their fundraising targets, we hope to bring the people behind the Lombardi Center’s groundbreaking research into the foreground and encourage engagement with new strides in research all year long. BellRinger provides an amazing opportunity to make a difference and bring our community closer, and Lombardi’s researchers and their work continue to exemplify the strides made towards a healthier, more caring world.

Toretsky Lab Chases Ewing Sarcoma Treatment to Combat Pediatric Cancer Mustafa Kilicarslan Special to The Hoya

The Toretsky Lab at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is working to bring a new generation of targeted drugs to patients with Ewing sarcoma, a form of childhood cancer. Ewing sarcoma, a rare cancer that grows in or around the bones and mostly affects children and young adults, remains hard to treat. According to the lab’s director, doctors often have difficulty matching patients to therapies that will work for them. The Toretsky Lab, which focuses on pediatric cancer treatments, is developing drugs that target a protein behind the cancer while sparing healthy cells, which is a common issue with cancer treatments. Dr. Jeffrey Toretsky, who leads the lab, said his fellowship training experiences with metastatic Ewing sarcoma, which spreads from the original site to other body parts, set the course of his career. “Patients with metastatic Ewing sarcoma all died, and I saw that as an opportunity of need,” Toretsky told The Hoya.

Under current treatment, only around 20% of patients with this metastatic cancer survive, according to Toretsky. Toretsky said that while patients with localized, non-metastatic cancers have a higher survival rate, they remain at risk of relapse. “We don’t know who those patients are at the beginning of treatment,” he explained. “We put them through six to nine months of therapy, and then they relapse.” Toretsky said early cancer drugs benefited patients only slightly more than they harmed them — some were derived from mustard gas, a World War I weapon. He added that targeted therapy instead looks for specific vulnerabilities in the tumor to exploit. “We’re looking for things that are different in the cancer such that if we target those differences, we won’t affect the non-cancer cells as much,” Toretsky said. The lab’s main target is EWS-FLI1, a protein Toretsky described as the main driver of Ewing sarcoma. Starting in the early 2000s, the team spent about a decade searching for a chemical that could stick to EWS-FLI1 and keep other important proteins from

interacting with it. In 2016, a company the team founded began testing the resulting drug, TK216, in human trials for the first time. While initial results showed some TK216 patients with lasting remissions, the results were not quite enough for full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to Toretsky. The company then changed its focus and stopped developing the drug, and the lab is now working out how to move forward. In October 2026, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a federal funding agency, granted a Georgetown-led research team, including Toretsky Lab, up to $51.7 million to study disordered proteins, which lack a fixed shape and are difficult for drugs to latch onto. The researchers hope the work will guide future therapies. Dr. Aykut Üren, an oncology professor whose lab has shared space with Toretsky’s for over 25 years, said the drug needs a larger clinical trial and FDA approval before it can benefit all Ewing sarcoma patients. “It all started as a basic science project in the lab and eventually created a

drug that was tested on patients with Ewing Sarcoma,” Üren wrote to The Hoya. “The entire journey took almost 20 years, and it is not over yet.” Ally Latsilnik (CAS ’27), a biophysics major on the pre-medical track who joined the lab in January, said watching Toretsky split his time between the lab and the pediatric oncology clinic at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital changed how she views her future career. “The work he does in the lab gives his work in the clinic meaning and vice versa,” Latsilnik told The Hoya. “Seeing that interaction has made me more open to pursuing research in my career.” Toretsky, who plans to bike in the cancer research fundraiser BellRinger this year, said he hopes the lab’s next drug will reach patients and make a difference in their health outcomes. “I would love to be able to get another generation of a drug in the clinic that targets EWSFLI1,” Toretsky said. “The home run would be that it makes a big @RIDEBELLRINGER/INSTAGRAM difference for patients and keeps people surviving who aren’t other- Georgetown University’s Toretsky Lab is studying novel treatments for Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone cancer in children. wise surviving today.”

GU Lab Works With NASA on Space Travel Research Nair Lab Develops Cancer Treatments Targeting Gene Regulation, Personlization Henry Burgos

Special to The Hoya

Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center’s Fornace Lab are collaborating with NASA to investigate cancer risk during space travel. The project’s primary focus is to analyze how cosmic radiation affects the human body through metabolomics — a relatively novel research technique analyzing the body’s energy systems — that researchers hope could help develop potential treatments for astronauts. The work is part of the lab’s broader effort to understand how radiation and radiation therapy affect the human body. Dr. Albert Fornace, the lab’s principal investigator and Georgetown’s first molecular cancer research chair, said metabolomics can be a key player in understanding cancer. “There’s big differences in the metabolism of cancer cells,” Fornace told The Hoya. “So, I think the take-home message is that you can look at metabolomics as the actual work getting done in a cell.” Before coming to Georgetown, Fornace pioneered metabolomics research at the National Cancer Institute, the cancer research arm of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Fornace said his prior research prepared him for his ongoing work. “Some of our initial grants were actually to use metabolomics to identify biomarkers for radiation exposures, both for radiotherapy patients and also during accidents,” Fornace said. Fornace said metabolomics is particularly exciting because it can be used on nearly any living organism — alive or not. “I’ve seen metabolomics of mummies,” Fornace said. “Any biofluid you can do — tears, saliva, blood, serum, urine, sebum from the skin. All these noninvasive areas can be assessed.” In collaboration with NASA, Fornace Lab co-investigator Dr. Shubhankar Suman travels to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in

New York for NASA-funded research to gain samples for his lab at Georgetown. Suman irradiates animal models using a Brookhaven cyclotron, the only accelerator in the world that can simulate galactic radiation. Suman’s research looks to support NASA’s future missions by analyzing the behavioral and cognitive issues that space radiation causes. He seeks to limit the neurocognitive risks of this harmful radiation and the inflammation of the brain by testing anti-aging agents that can kill aging, radiated cells in the body. Suman said animal models can indicate how humans will fare in deep space, where solar or galactic radiation is much more harmful without protection from the Earth’s magnetic field. “Establishing a risk limit, particularly for the radiation exposure, is very important, and especially in the context of deep space where there is no in vivo data in the human being or even in the animal model,” Suman told The Hoya. “No one has went beyond the moon.” Fornace said space radiation is much higher energy and damaging to a person, which his group found both kills some cells and forces others to no longer divide. These non-dividing cells, or senescent cells, then produce pro-inflammatory molecules, called cytokines, which promote cancerous cell growth. Suman said Fornace Lab’s research is essential to future space travel. “Ultimately, the information and biological understanding that we develop using this different type of radiation, which we are not aware of that much,” Suman said. “It is ultimately going to help people on the Earth in the future.” The work with NASA is only part of the Fornace Lab’s metabolomic research, which Fornace said Georgetown helped pioneer. “We had an operational metabolomics resource in 2007 — this is before almost any academic center had it,” Fornace said. “I literally had people coming to us from the NIH, dif-

Kasey Juarez

Special to The Hoya

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Fornace Lab at Georgetown University Medical Center is working with NASA to determine how cosmic radiation affects the body.

ferent programs asking us to apply for grants because they wanted to have this new technology. This was sort of like the Wild West of metabolomics.” Now, as the metabolomics field has developed, the Fornace Lab focuses on many different aspects of cancer research, especially utilizing metabolomic research methods. Dr. Heng-Hong Li, a co-investigator in the Fornace Lab, investigates how radiation affects the immune system, particularly how radiotherapy affects patients. Li said she focuses on how radiotherapy affects one of the most radio-sensitive cells — the cytotoxic T cell, or CD8+ T cell — which is a key player in anti-tumor defense. Li investigates CD8+ T cells’ ability to identify and respond to cancer cells after radiotherapy. “We have shown that even though their number recovered, their function has changed,” Li told The Hoya. Li said her research contradicts the common understanding that the immune system returns to normal after radiotherapy or accidental radiation exposure.

“We see after radiation, the memory formation from the antigen-stimulated CD8+ T cells; those memory formations declined,” Li said. “Sometimes it’s actually maybe even higher, more hyperactive. That is also something you don’t want.” Li said metabolomics requires a very specific hypothesis to be helpful. “Be very cautious with that because metabolites change so quickly, even during your sample collection and within the cell tissue,” Li said. “If you use it wisely, then it can help to address some questions.” For the Fornace Lab, metabolomics is one tool among many, like the analysis of DNA, RNA and protein activity, to increase certainty in their findings. “Metabolism of glucose is, for example, critical to life, and then the informatics, particularly if you integrate all these, becomes just immense. So you’re really looking at different levels of life,” Fornace said. “Why you can move, why you can think. All of these things are due to the small molecules that are being generated.”

GU Lab Investigating Drug Resistance in Breast Cancer

Marin Pryma

Special to The Hoya

A cancer research lab at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is striving to combat drug resistance within a common subtype of breast cancer in its advanced stage. The Shajahan-Haq Lab, led by Ayesha Shajahan-Haq, associate professor in the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital oncology department, studies how drug therapies stop working to kill cancer cells and how to target mutations and adaptations of the cells. The Shajahan-Haq lab uses breast cancer cells that have been tweaked to reflect the cells seen in patients and uses molecular biology techniques to measure how the cells grow and function. Shajahan-Haq said the key to giving patients the best treatment is to understand how breast cancer cells become resistant to therapy and create new drugs unique to those mutations. “The lab works on identifying when and where cancer cells become resistant,” Shajahan-Haq told The

Hoya. “To combat this, we experiment with different drugs to target the pathways that allow survival adaptations to occur in tumors.” Wei He — a postdoctoral researcher at Georgetown who has published research papers with Shajahan-Haq — said that after 12 months, almost all cancers become resistant to common treatments. “We use endocrine therapy inhibitors to delay cell growth,” He told The Hoya. “The inhibitor lasts for about 12 months in which there is no resistance.” Endocrine therapy is conducted by decreasing natural hormone levels to inhibit growth of breast cancer cells. Research scientists also work alongside computational biologists to come up with computer models from the known biology of tumors and cancer cells to target the pathways that mutate and grow resistant. The lab also uses mice with synthesized tumors to identify drugs that could hit targets and stop uncontrollable cancer cell growth. Studies in vivo, which use animal models, are often necessary to pro-

ceed to clinical trials, which involve research with human volunteers. Erin Scheidemann, a former research scientist at the Shajahan-Haq lab, said the lab’s work using mice is important in order to translate their research to human volunteers. “The process from target discovery to identifying drugs that could hit these targets to essentially stop the cell growth was one process, and we would make it far, but then we’d need the in vivo validation in the mice studies to move onto clinical trials,” Scheidemann told The Hoya. In addition to cell- and mousebased work, scientists in the lab look at identifying and repurposing screening mechanisms, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to identify when resistance is oncoming and what changes in the cell when that resistance begins. Researchers also work alongside medical doctors and patient advocates to gain new perspectives as well. Deborah Charles (SFS ’87), a founding member of the Georgetown Breast Cancer Advocates group, said her job was to advocate for grant funding for important research.

“Researchers present their research to us when in need of grants, and we write letters of support for various proposals on why the research is important.” Charles told The Hoya. “Funding is essential for a lab to effectively operate.” Scheidemann said the work done in the lab is highlighted through collaboration of different organizations and scientists with different backgrounds, combining different perspectives. “The work is done for the people with cancer. We tend to have a relationship with the community,” Scheidemann said. Shajahan-Haq said that Georgetown has a strong relationship with its community, and the lab seeks to strengthen it with its efforts to engage with and reach out to patients directly so that they know what the researchers are doing to help. “I want to emphasize that we tackle problems within cancer — prevention, origin, radiation surgery and drugs within the advanced disease,” Shajahan-Haq said. “I like to reach out to the patients so they know what is going on on the research side of things.”

Georgetown University’s Nair Lab is studying how gene regulation drives cancer, aiming to help develop new treatment strategies. The Nair Lab, under the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, combines genomic, biochemical, biophysical, imaging and computational approaches to investigate how failures in gene regulation — which determines cells’ protein production — can lead to cancer. Currently, while most current cancer treatments target proteins or DNA, the lab aims to instead target RNA, which is the messenger between DNA and proteins and is far more abundant than DNA. Sreejith Nair, who leads the lab, said understanding how hormones such as estrogen and androgen accelerate cell growth on a molecular level can help develop more individualized treatment plans. “Many cancer patients still receive a uniform standard treatment without considering the individual variations among people,” Nair told The Hoya. “Our research opens a way to make cancer treatment more personalized by identifying patients who may be better recipients of platinum-based chemotherapy.” Chemotherapy widely uses cisplatin, which damages cancer cells’ DNA. But cisplatin can be toxic in the long term and can cause kidney damage, hearing loss or other negative health effects. To mitigate that risk, the Nair Lab is now using new technologies to try to bind cisplatin to cancer cells’ RNA, which has not been studied extensively. Nair said because cisplatin is dangerous for some patients, the lab’s research can make the treatment more effective and targeted. “We found that how much of these RNAs are present in a patient’s cancer cells can determine how well patients respond to cisplatin,” Nair said. “This finding suggests that we can use this information as a prediction tool. This is important because cisplatin is toxic.” “Currently, there is no way to identify which patients may or may not respond, so those who will eventually not respond must also undergo six months of chemotherapy only to realize it will not work,”

Nair added. “Our research may reveal a way to identify these patients in advance and direct them to better treatment options sooner.” Nair said next-generation sequencing techniques — high-speed technology that can process millions of DNA fragments at once to study diseases and provide personalized medicine — allow his team to simultaneously find out how thousands of genes are responding to hormones. “These powerful, modern technologies allow us to understand the cellular machines that regulate genes and molecules that cause them with unprecedented precision and depth,” Nair said. Richi Thakral, a first-year tumor biology doctoral student conducting thesis research in the Nair Lab, said he is using these technologies to map where cisplatin binds to RNA. “The goal is to incorporate this new experimental data into a prognostic model by leveraging existing clinical data and machine learning,” Thakral told The Hoya. “The hope is that this tool could tell us which patients are likely to benefit from treatment, making a real impact for clinicians and patients alike.” Meanwhile, Douglas Kung, a fifthyear tumor biology doctoral candidate in the Nair Lab, is investigating how intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) — which are unstructured, noodle-like domains found in most proteins — affect how proteins called transcription factors bind to DNA. Kung said he hopes his work can help develop treatments that can disrupt cancer-causing processes. “I hope that my research can be used to better understand how we may therapeutically target diseases that are driven by abnormal transcription factor signaling, as the large amounts of intrinsic disorder in transcription factors have made them historically ‘undruggable,’” Kung wrote to The Hoya. Thakral said he hopes his computational work can combine the lab’s technology with real data to improve patient care. “The goal is to incorporate this new experimental data into a prognostic model by leveraging existing clinical data and machine learning,” Thakral wrote. “The hope is that this tool could tell us which patients are likely to benefit from treatment, making a real impact for clinicians and patients alike.”

MATTHEW GASSOSO/THE HOYA

The Nair Lab at Georgetown University Medical Center is studying how gene regulation may predict patient outcomes.

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22 Republican States Back Trump Against Khan Suri

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WHAT’S NEW IN MULTIMEDIA? The Hoya Harvest Festival Check out The Hoya’s coverage of the Hoya Harvest Festival, an event that celebrates the diverse ways the Georgetown community supports the enviroment every autumn. Community members carved pumkins, listened to student performances and planted seasonal herbs. NEL PETER/THE HOYA

Iowa led 22 Republican states urging the Supreme Court to consider the Trump administration’s bid to redetain Georgetown postdoctoral research Badar Khan Suri, who has remained free from detention since May 2025.

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Popular Georgetown French Cafe’s GU Students Join National ‘No Kings’ Front Room Ruined in Electrical Fire Protest, Condemn Executive Authority Liv Sanchez

Graduate Desk Editor

A popular French restaurant on Prospect Street and Potomac Street in the Georgetown neighborhood was almost completely destroyed in an electrical fire Oct. 18. Washington, D.C. fire and emergency services responded to a blaze at La Bonne Vache at 9:34 p.m. Authorities were able to contain it without any injuries, but the fire severely damaged the restaurant’s interior and displaced two residents living in upstairs apartments. In an Oct. 20 statement, the La Bonne Vache team said the restaurant’s dining room sustained extensive damage from the electrical fire, and confirmed the popular French cafe plans to reopen in the future. “La Bonne Vache experienced a devastating electrical fire that severely damaged our front dining room,” the team wrote to The Hoya. “First and foremost, we want to express our deepest gratitude to our team, whose swift actions and composure helped prioritize the safety of our staff, guests, and neighbors. We are also incredibly grateful to the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department for their rapid response and efforts to bring the fire under control. In the wake of this heartbreaking event, we have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, concern, and support from our community.” “La Bonne Vache is built on the strength of its people and the support of its community,” the team added. “We will move forward, rebuild, and work to-

ward welcoming everyone back as soon as we are able.” Lucy Kiefer (CAS ’27), who lives near La Bonne Vache, said she noticed the chaos on her block around 9:30 p.m. “I just heard a lot of lights and sirens and radios, but that’s pretty common, so I didn’t think anything of it,” Kiefer told The Hoya. “Then it continued for a while, so I looked out the window and I saw a lot of fire trucks.” Salma Benchekroun (SFS ’27), who lives near the restaurant and arrived at the scene as firefighters were responding, said she saw smoke coming from the dining room. “I didn’t see any flames or anything — it was just some smoke coming from the restaurant,” Benchekroun told The Hoya. “They were breaking the windows to get in and put it out.” Kiefer said the damage to the restaurant is worse than she initially believed. “I saw them bringing out the hose, and they were starting to screw it into the fire hydrant on my street,” Kiefer said. “At that point, I got my roommates, and we went downstairs and outside, and we just saw a lot of fire trucks. There was some smoke — we couldn’t see any active flames.” La Bonne Vache originally opened in January 2024 and served French-inspired bistro food, including a variety of burgers, baguette sandwiches and cocktails. Chirag Tailor (CAS ’28), who regularly dined at La Bonne Vache, said that he appreciated the restaurant’s no-reservation policy, which often leads to a line of anticipatory diners that stretches down Prospect Street.

“It brings this element of spontaneity,” he said. “Last time my roommate and I went, we were waiting in line, and we met this couple who happened to know my roommate because their daughter had gone to his high school.” “We just made this random but cool connection,” Tailor added. As first responders tried to control the fire, Kiefer said a crowd gathered on Prospect Street, including the restaurant’s general manager, Guillermo Roa. “We saw some of the workers standing outside,” Kiefer said. “They were all huddled together crying, and so we checked on them to make sure they weren’t hurt. They were okay, and then we saw Guillermo. He showed up at around 10 p.m. and was just comforting his staff and trying to get more of a sense of what was going on.” Community members started an online fundraiser to cover staff members’ lost wages while the restaurant rebuilds. As of Oct. 20, it has raised nearly all of its $100,000 goal. Benchekroun said the fire was heartbreaking for both La Bonne Vache employees and the wider neighborhood community. “It was quite sad to watch that, because obviously the place means a lot to them and a lot to the Georgetown community,” Benchekroun said. Tailor said he was devastated by the damage to La Bonne Vache. “My roommate and I like to go spontaneously on the weekends,” Tailor said. “It’s always been fun, and it’s a great restaurant. I love how it’s a small, intimate vibe.” “I was completely shocked, and I hope it gets repaired soon,” Tailor added.

Joshua Lou

City Desk Editor

About 30 Georgetown University students joined thousands of protesters at the fourth “No Kings” protest in Washington, D.C., condemning expanded executive power and calling on voters to turn out in the upcoming midterm elections. The demonstrations — which were held at Arlington National Cemetery, the site of President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch, and the former Black Lives Matter Plaza — were part of hundreds of other protests carried out across the country. Attendees and speakers condemned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deployment in the District, the Kennedy Center’s closure and threats to press freedom. Mikenzie Hapworth-Eldridge (CAS, ’28) — outreach director for Georgetown’s chapter of the legal nonprofit American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which led a student group from the cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial — said protecting civil rights requires constant pressure on the government. “You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable and going into these places because one of the things I was always taught is that your rights aren’t always a given,” Hapworth-Eldridge told The Hoya. “They can be taken away from you.” “I think that it’s important that we continually fight for our rights, and we continually share our voice,” Hapworth-Eldridge added. Jaxon French (CAS ’29) — the advocacy director for the George-

town University College Democrats, which led the student group at the former Black Lives Matter Plaza — said he hopes the protest will raise awareness about executive overreach leading up to the national midterm elections in November. “Ultimately, this No Kings Day was about restoring checks and balances to our government by trying to retake both chambers of Congress,” French wrote to The Hoya. “Many of Trump’s actions have had little to no oversight from Congress due to Republicans turning a blind eye. Hopefully, if Democrats retake Congress, there will be a reining in of Trump’s foreign war, destabilizing tariff policies, and more.” “The more people that attend a protest, the more powerful the message, so by us being present, it allowed both us to be heard as young people and made louder the millions of angry Americans across the nation who rallied together,” French added. Hapworth-Eldridge, who attended the event with her mother, said she noticed a lack of young people. “One of the things my mom and I were noticing is there’s not a lot of young people here, and so I think as university students we have that duty to — like my mom was talking about — pass on the baton,” Hapworth-Eldridge said. During his second term, Trump initiated a war in Iran without congressional approval and launched a series of trade wars with global powers, including close allies. Trump has drawn criticism from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers for what they view as examples of executive overreach.

Talia Arcasoy (SFS ’29), the Georgetown ACLU chapter’s external activism director, said the group organized the protest outing to encourage students to exercise their right to speech, vote and engage in politics beyond Georgetown’s gates. “It’s important for us, as students especially, to show that we care about these things because we are the future generation of voters of people that will be working in government or working in the public sector,” Arcasoy told The Hoya. “Because we’re approaching midterms, the next step obviously is to get out to vote,” Arcasoy told The Hoya. Hapworth-Eldridge said protests engage people across the political spectrum. “I’m a big proponent of having conversations across the line and trying to find common ground,” Hapworth-Eldridge added. “I think one of the ways you do that is you come out here and you meet people and you listen to what they’re passionate about.” French said he encourages Georgetown students of all political beliefs to vote in the upcoming elections. “We are mere minutes from the seat of power, and because of that, we can have our voices heard much louder than anywhere else in the country,” French wrote. “I hope every Georgetown student votes, because regardless of your beliefs, you deserve to have a voice,” French added. “Voting is a privilege that many patriots have died to achieve or preserve, so I urge everyone not to take it for granted.”

GU Establishes $10 Million Scholarship Fund as Cost of Attendance Rises Joshua Lou

GUSA Desk Editor

Georgetown University established a $10 million scholarship fund for first-generation, low-income students (FGLI), University President Eduardo Peñalver announced Oct. 20. The O’Day Family Scholarship Fund, a gift from Daniel O’Day (CAS ’86) and Mara O’Day, will cover the annual cost of attendance for two undergraduates, beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. Georgetown increased tuition rates by 4.75% this year — marking the fifth consecutive year the university has raised its undergraduate tuition and making Georgetown one of the first U.S. universities with an annual sticker price greater than $100,000. Peñalver, who has made financial accessibility a central priority, said the endowment will give more students access to a Georgetown education. “At a time when a college education feels out of reach for too many families, the O’Day Family Scholarship makes it possible for more outstanding students to say ‘yes’ to Georgetown,” Peñalver wrote in a press release. Georgetown increased its undergraduate tuition to $74,520 for the 2026-27 academic year, up from $71,136 the previous year. According to a Feb. 9 email, the university also anticipated dedicating $278 million to financial aid for the 2026-27 academic year. Daniel O’Day — a member of Georgetown’s board of directors and

the CEO of Gilead Sciences, a pharmaceutical company — said the fund was inspired by his father, who was a first-generation college student. “At its heart, the scholarship is about opening doors for students with extraordinary potential so they can use their gifts for others — a Georgetown Jesuit value that matters deeply to our entire family,” O’Day wrote in the press release. Universities’ increasing costs of attendance nationwide come amid federal cuts to student aid. Roan Bedoian (CAS ’28), chair of the Georgetown University Student Association’s financial accessibility committee, said the gift will bolster the financial aid office’s work as funds wane. “It’s no surprise to anybody that the university is really under quite strict budget constraints as of late,” Bedoian told The Hoya. “Especially with the changing landscape of federal aid, having a private source like this that just helps pad those margins a little.” At his Oct. 9 inauguration, Peñalver stressed the importance of affordability, saying he plans to make Georgetown a leading university for financial accessibility. “It deprives our campus argument of the perspectives of entire segments of our society,” Peñalver said at the inauguration. “Georgetown will reclaim our place as a leader in accessibility and affordability.” “The reality of the $100,000 annual price of attendance calls for deep reflection about how Georgetown manages the costs of delivering a worldclass education,” Peñalver added.

Bedoian said rising costs of attendance could bar potential Georgetown students from higher education. “It’s no surprise no one’s happy about the rising costs,” Bedoian said. “As frustrating as I find them, I understand that there are certain ways in which Georgetown is forced to compensate for rising costs. I wish that we weren’t seeing the cost of attendance rise year over year without break, and certainly not by such margins.” Lower-income students have expressed feeling divided from the student body due to wide wealth disparities, with just 27% of FGLI students saying it felt easy to find peers at Georgetown in a 2020 university cultural climate survey. Sabrina Gómez (CAS ’27) — the co-president of Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP), a university initiative that supports FGLI students — said the gift will bolster the economic diversity of Georgetown’s student body. “It’s absolutely wonderful because more than when supporting a student financially, you’re more than just supporting the four years that they have at Georgetown,” Gómez told The Hoya. “You’re embodying and envisioning a future that is representative of students from all types of backgrounds.” Leroy Tamfu (CAS ’29), a GSP member, said the fund empowers students who may not have the financial resources for higher education. “It means that they get to define the future for themselves rather than their past defining it,” Tamfu told The Hoya. “Instead of their family’s economic situation being the reason why their future is locked away, people who are intel-

ligent, who’ve done the work, who really care about their future can define it on their own terms.” Bedoian said that while the gift may not directly impact every student at Georgetown, it is the right step forward. “Here’s the truth: Two is a very, very small number,” Bedoian said. “It’s not

like there’s going to be hundreds of students who are now able to attend Georgetown when they may have otherwise had to pass up on applying at all, or decline an offer of admission because of financial constraints. It’s not going to necessarily change the socioeconomic landscape of Georgetown University as a whole.”

“But I also firmly believe that two more students who aren’t going to graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, who aren’t going to go through school financially stressed every single day on top of all the stress that comes with being a Georgetown student, is fantastic,” Bedoian added.

MATTHEW GASSOSO/THE HOYA

Georgetown University inaugurated a $10 million scholarship fund that will allow two first-generation, low-income students to attend the university free of cost each year.

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Survivors, Experts Say New Title IX Student Activists Hand-Deliver Just Page Lacks Transparency, Honesty Employment Policy Petition to GU TITLE IX, from A1 province to ensure misconduct reports are “appropriately shared” with the university. But the site’s vague language is the exact same as the university’s statement to The Hoya last week, which came six months after the agreement was first established and which survivors of Ribeiro’s alleged misconduct condemned as insufficient. Slawinski said The Hoya’s reporting forced Georgetown’s hand. “I think they wouldn’t have made the changes had the article not come out, and it’s very vague about what they’re going to do” Slawinski said. Georgetown’s public admission comes over two decades after John, another survivor who is referred to by a pseudonym, reported Ribeiro’s alleged misconduct to the local Jesuit province and seven years after a third survivor reported it directly to university officials. John said Georgetown must confront its years-long silence, in part by adding his allegations to the webpage. “It makes it seem like it’s less severe than it is,” John told The Hoya. “If you’re going to do it, then provide all the information.” “I thought I did my job by reporting him,” John added. Slawinski said Georgetown has continued to disrespect survivors. “It felt pretty dismissive to me and to the other men that came forward,” he said. The Society of Jesus placed Ribeiro, who died in 2013, on leave in 1998 after John reported him for sexual harassment, alleging that the priest offered him pornography and shook his penis in front of him. A year after Ribeiro returned to campus in 2000, he met another student who later alleged similar misconduct, including that Ribeiro attempted to kiss him after he graduated. Ribeiro resigned after a 2010 university investigation found he had engaged in “unwanted touching of students” and “other inappropriate behavior.” None of the three survivors The Hoya spoke with spurred this inquiry. A university spokesperson did not respond to comment requests for this story, but said last week that Georgetown officials “condemn in the strongest possible terms any clergy abuse.”

“We are committed to ensuring that University policies are as strong as possible in supporting survivors,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. John Fortunato, a Fordham University professor who researched university responses to the Catholic Church’s clerical sex abuse crisis, said Georgetown’s response to The Hoya’s reporting does little to rebuild community trust. “When you get into an institutional crisis such as this, and one that’s not born out of a single incident, but a repeated pattern, the benefit of the doubt has been taken away,” Fortunato told The Hoya. “It can’t be a one-time solution,” he added. “It’s got to be continuous corrective actions.” Georgetown’s conduct, Fortunato said, has not met these standards. The new Title IX webpage also removed the “ongoing work” section that The Hoya disclosed was outdated. That section used to list a board of directors working group aimed at addressing clerical sex abuse that former University President John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95) established in 2020. Now, the webpage says the working group became a subcommittee in 2021, but no such committee is listed on the board’s website. Slawinski said the update remains unconvincing. “Georgetown is hiding behind this vague, nebulous subcommittee that doesn’t seem to have any rules or numbers, and now they’re saying that its investigation has wrapped up,” Slawinski said. “I’m glad that they added Ribeiro as one of the people that they are concerned about, but I think this goes a lot deeper than just two priests and something on their website.” The previous Title IX webpage acknowledged students’ sexual misconduct allegations against the late former Provost J. Donald Freeze, S.J., but did not list any of the “Georgetown 14” — the Georgetownaffiliated Jesuits named in the local Jesuit province’s 2018 list of priests credibly accused of sexually abusing minors. None of those Jesuits’ alleged misconduct occurred during their tenures at Georgetown. Ribeiro is now listed beneath Freeze, and the Georgetown 14 remain absent from the site. Georgetown made no public statement recognizing The Hoya’s recent reporting, and did not announce the changes to the Title IX webpage. For

experts and survivors, that lack of transparency raises serious concerns about compliance with the university’s new informationsharing agreement. Keith Rohman, a workplace misconduct and Title IX investigator, said “appropriately” in the April agreement is a “weasel word” that allows Georgetown and Jesuits to tailor misconduct protocols to their private interests. “It’s that word which suggests a level of control, and the Catholic Church hasn’t earned the right to make that judgment on their own,” Rohman told The Hoya. The Boston Globe first publicized how the Catholic Church systematically concealed sexually abusive priests in 2002 by relocating accused priests without notifying the public. Since then, thousands of suvivors across the country have raised sexual abuse allegations against Catholic clergy. Slawinski said he does not trust the April protocol, calling on Georgetown to publish the full agreement with the Jesuits. “I think that should be transparent,” Slawinski said. “Who receives it? Is it the Title IX coordinator or campus minister or the rector?” When asked by The Hoya for additional details about the protocol’s compliance mechanisms, the university spokesperson only gave its formal title and ignored other questions. Fortunato said when institutions face misconduct patterns, new protocols are not enough. Instead, he said, universities must respond directly to survivors’ concerns. “In this particular incident, this would be installing reporting procedures and then also instilling a confidence that something’s going to be done,” Fortunato said. “Without those steps, that corrective action, I don’t think you’re getting that trust back — and in fact you’re further eroding it,” Fortunato added. For Slawinski, Georgetown’s lackluster response has done little to address his core goal, which has remained the same since he first reported Ribeiro in 2018. He has received no reassurance, he said, that what happened to him would not happen to someone else. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and it’s difficult to discount this pattern,” Slawinski said.

Students Denounce Islamophobic Speaker at Republican Club Event GUCR, from A1

on the Holocaust, Bernhard said it was a very dark part of the country’s history and said Germany has paid enough reparations for its actions. After the event, The Heckler’s board members said hosting Bernhard was a mistake. “We all kept getting phone calls,” the board wrote to The Hoya. “We answered. It was history, begging us not to repeat it. We hope some others in the room heard that message as well.” The GUCR spokesperson said claims of antisemitism are “totally baseless.” The Jewish Student Association did not respond to The Hoya’s requests for comment. Bernhard said antisemitism allegations made toward his party should be directed at the left. “They are the most anti-Israel, the most anti-Jewish faction because now they work together with proPalestine, they burn Jewish flags and so on, and that’s why a lot of Jews leave Germany,” Bernhard said. Lukas Pitman (SFS ’27) — president of the Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition, a student organization that attempts to bridge divisions between political parties — said the disruption is not a productive means of resolution. “The answer to someone coming to campus that has values that you

disagree with is not just disrupting them for the sake of disruption to remove them from having a platform,” Pitman told The Hoya. “To have a healthy university, we have to have healthy disagreement,” Pitman added. Emma Silverman (CAS ’29), GUCD’s membership director, said she is disturbed that the university permitted GUCR to host the event and hasn’t released a statement about it. “By withholding such a response, the school insinuates that Jewish students are not included in interreligious understanding and that we are not afforded the care supposedly required by the Jesuit tradition,” Silverman wrote to The Hoya. “This would be incredibly disappointing to witness, especially as a Jewish student who has felt Georgetown normally can stand up for the values written into its founding documents.” Auerbach said the university should maintain its commitment to supporting Jewish students. “Georgetown is an amazing place to be Jewish,” Auerbach said. “Simply, this is an inflection point. We want the university’s new administration to acknowledge the impact on peer students of allowing a far-right extremist foreign politician on campus who has orchestrated antisemitic campaigns in the past.”

posted on X claiming Muslims were incompatible with U.S. society, which sparked campus outrage and demands that the group lose university funding. Administrators announced plans to review the matter, but have not publicized updates. Aya Ahmad (CAS ’28), president of Georgetown’s Muslim Student Association (MSA), said Bernhard’s speech contradicted the university’s Jesuit values. “Muslims and immigrants must not be scapegoated, dehumanized or reduced to harmful stereotypes,” Ahmad wrote to The Hoya. “Likewise, the minimization of the Holocaust and the atrocities of genocide is unacceptable. These forms of prejudice have no place in a campus culture grounded in mutual respect.” A GUCD spokesperson said the university should have better protected vulnerable communities from hateful rhetoric. “While GUCD supports the university’s commitment to free speech and believes that civil dialogue is essential to our political environment on campus, we believe that the hateful views espoused by Bernhard cross the line that should be tolerated by the university and as such should have warranted action,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. A university spokesperson did not respond to comment requests for this story but previously said Georgetown “is committed to ensuring that all members of our community have a safe and welcoming place to learn and receive the support they need to do so.” “While members of our community exercise freedom of speech, we work towards a living learning community that is free of bias and geared toward thoughtful, respectful dialogue,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. During the event, Bernhard fielded questions from the audience on JACKSON ROBERTS/THE HOYA immigration, economic policy and conservativeunity.Whenoneaudience Marc Bernhard, a far-right German politican, faced backlash member questioned his party’s stance at a Georgetown University College Republicans event Oct. 19.

PETITION, from A1

quantify just how many workers have been affected by this policy.” “It’s necessary that students on the campus realize how important this policy is, not only for the dignity of workers who previously came before us, the dignity of workers now, but also the dignity of workers in the future,” Mirmelli added. Georgetown has not substantially revised the JEP’s language since its creation in 2005, but the university regularly updates what it considers a “living wage” to account for costof-living changes. The petition asks Georgetown to annually update the policy’s living wage via a formula provided in the petition. Currently, the policy’s living wage aims to cover the cost of housing, healthcare, childcare and other necessities. Undergraduate students are concurrently voting on a nonbinding GUSA referendum that mirrors the petition’s language. For it to pass, at least one-eighth of the student body must vote for the referendum by 8 p.m. on Oct. 23. Georgetown’s board of directors is not required to consider any student referendum. Elinor Clark (CAS ’27), a member of the GCWR steering committee that created the petition, said Georgetown students must fight for campus workers’ rights. “We’re here today to stand up for the people who make our campus run, for the workers who are the heart of Georgetown,” Clark told The Hoya. “We want to make sure that their rights are protected and that they’re given the dignity and respect that they deserve.” Zadie Weaver (CAS ’28), a GUSA senator and presidential candidate who attended the rally, said she encourages students to organize for the workers that support their campus. “It’s really important to me for Georgetown students to recognize the immense privilege

that we have to be able to go to an institution like Georgetown with world-class professors, with amazing opportunities, and know that the only reason that we get to come here and focus on our education is because of the workers who clean the bathrooms and cook our food, serve our food — the plethora of things that workers do,” Weaver told The Hoya. Both Weaver and her opponent, Ayesha Murtaza (SFS ’29), endorsed the referendum and petition. Gore, the facilities worker, said student petitions give workers more say than they get at the bargaining table alone. “It is frustrating just because of the fact that I feel as though those words just went to empty ears,” Gore said. In November 2025, Georgetown’s facilities workers entered contract renegotiations with the university. In March, the university and the employees approved a contract with increased benefits and a 15% pay increase compounded across five, six-month segments. Last year, a student-led campaign drove Georgetown to reverse its plan to transfer Georgetown University Transportation Shuttles drivers to a third-party employer, which would have removed access to university benefits like health insurance and retirement packages. Now, Ted Bergman (CAS ’27), a GCWR outreach team member, said the labor group wants to urge Peñalver’s new administration to prioritize worker demands. “In the past, there’s always been some amount of antagonism that we’ve perceived,” Bergman told The Hoya. “Obviously, with the new administration, we don’t have a lot of information about how they might act.” “We need an updated Just Employment Policy, and the most effective way to alert the new administration to that is to — in a collective manner — walk up to the president’s office and deliver that petition,” Bergman added.

Clark said the rally reflects wider support from the Georgetown community for a renegotiated employment policy. “This rally is for the community,” Clark said. “It’s for the workers, it’s for the students, it’s for the administrators, but it’s also for everybody who makes Georgetown Georgetown.” “Alumni, parents, even people who live in the neighborhood have signed onto our petition because we recognize the importance of uplifting the people who make our campus run,” Clark added. GUSA President Darius Wagner (CAS ’27), who spoke at the rally, said students should both sign the petition and support the GUSA referendum. “They deserve a policy that gives them a living wage, that gives them a seat at the table and a policy that is updated more frequently than every 20 years,” Wagner said at the rally. Jackson Schnabel (SFS ’27), a campus workers’ rights advocate who supports the JEP petition, said the volume of students organizing for the petition is heartening. “This has been an incredible showing of the Georgetown community as a community that supports one another and wants to see everyone else in the community succeed and thrive,” Schnabel told The Hoya. “It was, and it is really inspiring to me, to see Georgetown show up in this way for its workers as members of this community.” Bergman said regardless of Georgetown’s final response to the petition, student organizers will continue to fight to expand workers’ rights at Georgetown. “We will see how Peñalver and the administration responds to our petition from today,” Bergman said. “But there will always be more opportunities to fight for this campaign, and even after this campaign is concluded, there’s always more work to do, even as you celebrate the accomplishments that are made.”

GU Poised to Offer Some Faculty Claude Licenses in AI Expansion CLAUDE, from A1

“We’ve launched a campus-wide effort to articulate the core principles that will guide our engagement with AI. And we will find ways to safeguard, encourage and reward those who take up the laboring oars of intellectual growth.” The new contract will come as Peñalver develops a university-wide AI framework to govern teaching, research and university operations, which he will submit to the board of directors by the end of Spring 2027. Currently, Georgetown professors develop individual class guidelines. Andrew Bennett, the government department chair, said increased faculty access to multiple AI platforms helps support research and course planning. “I do find some faculty are maybe using Gemini more than they used to, or maybe they didn’t used to at all, and they’re using it now,” Bennett told The Hoya in July. “On the other hand, in talking to colleagues, in the stuff also that I read, a lot of us find Claude superior for a lot of the things that we want to do.” “I think it’s good that we have options,” Bennett added. In March, Georgetown began offering Gemini access to faculty and staff before expanding access to students and launching AI-related curricula in the College of Arts & Sciences and the McDonough School of Business in Fall 2026. In October, a university spokesperson confirmed to The Hoya that the university is piloting ChatGPT premium in an opt-in program for faculty and staff. David Burk, an economics professor who uses Claude for its coding features, said he understands the university’s pursuit of multiple AI platforms. “It seems very competitive and rapidly developing, so if in some sense Claude was ‘the best’ nine months ago, that doesn’t mean Claude is the best in that sense now or will be in six months,” Burk told The Hoya. James Freericks — a physics professor who uses Claude’s principal investigator (PI) scientists program, an expanded application for researchers — said Anthropic’s variety of mod-

els incentivized him to use the platform, which has become his most-used AI model. “Claude has a PI scientist program, and they offer a higher level than everything that Georgetown offers, even on their free level for this program,” Freericks told The Hoya. Jonas Pfefferman (SFS ’28), a member of the Georgetown AI Association, said he was not shocked to hear that Georgetown is negotiating with Anthropic. “It feels like it’s on pace,” Pfefferman told The Hoya. “We’re certainly not at the bleeding edge, and it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re behind because we have it. We’re probably somewhere in the middle of that bell curve.” Bennett said he hopes to create more standardized policies on AI use within his department to support both students and faculty members as the university develops a centralized framework. “Part of my effort to address AI issues is to get us thinking as much as we can on the same page, so students don’t have to learn 15 different rules for 15 different classes, but there’s going to be some element that faculty are sovereign, and some are going to avoid it entirely and some are going to embrace it and help their students learn it,” Bennett said. Aaly Nanji (CAS ’29), a student interested in AI, said the university’s precedent of allowing faculty access to new AI platforms before students supports a more critical form of engagement with the technology. “I think that allowing the faculty to use AI maybe would allow them to create assignments or have a more creative approach to learning that incorporates AI in some ways, but also maintains those same critical thinking skills and allows them to foster those a little bit better,” Nanji told The Hoya. In September, Peñalver formed a steering committee of nine faculty members to develop the university-wide AI framework as part of his larger strategic planning process. At the faculty senate meeting, two committee members shared insights from the group’s community outreach, which they said was largely concluded.

Andrew Sobanet, the committee’s chairman, said he hopes to provide long-term guidance as the university plans to expand premium access to generative AI models. “The steering committee has been charged by President Peñalver to devise one consolidated set of core institutional values and higher-order principles, relevant to directing when and when not to use AI, to be completed and published by the end of the Fall 2026 semester,” Sobanet wrote to The Hoya. “These would be designed to acknowledge expected large changes in AI capabilities in the future.” Cal Newport, another steering committee member, said the university’s Jesuit values will determine its AI policy. “Cognitive formation and pedagogy, academic freedom, research, the preservation of human dignity, the promotion of the common good — these are the type of general areas that I would say we’re operating often in within our discussion,” Newport said at the meeting. Sobanet said the students who participated in the committee’s outreach efforts value an AI-driven education as AI becomes increasingly prevalent in the workforce. “They’re already expected to use AI at some of their internships, especially in consulting, and they expect to have to use it in jobs when they go out into the workforce,” Sobanet said at the meeting. “So they view it as a benefit to learn how to use AI now.” “For the most part, undergraduate students continue to use AI due to the pressures to succeed, and we can all certainly recognize that in our students and the easy availability of AI,” Sobanet added. Nanji said the university should continue to work toward increased AI access. “It seems like the use of AI is not going away, and trying to just dodge that by creating AI bans or not really engaging with these models isn’t the best thing for us as a community or even just people in general,” Nanji said. “I think that embracing it and learning how to work with and around it are the best strategies and the best way to do that is by gaining some exposure to these AI models.”

A8 | THE HOYA

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 | THEHOYA.COM

NEWS

Public Policy Experts Hopeful for Worldwide Democratic Transparency Joshua Lou

GUSA Desk Editor

At its second annual Democracy Dialogue event on Oct. 19, the Georgetown Democracy Initiative explored global regime changes, as well as implored political leaders to combat autocracy with transparent democracy. At the event, comparative politics professors argued newly democratic countries must develop a new legal and political order that distances themselves from their autocratic predecessors. The speakers, including global professors and think tank directors, said rebuilding democratic institutions is complex because authoritarianism leaves lasting scars on societies. Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton University sociology and international affairs professor who gave the keynote lecture, said redemocratization is extremely difficult after an authoritarian government has taken over, a process known as autocratization. “Since 1994, there’s not a single case of a democracy that went through an autocratizing episode and then emerged as a democracy again for longer than five years,” Scheppele said at the event. “You can get one good election, maybe two, but it’s very hard to get more than that before the country slides back again.” Today, 44 countries are actively undergoing autocratization and approximately 74% of the world’s population, or six billion people, live under autocratic rule, according to a recent report on democracy from the research group V-Dem Institute. Scheppele said former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s tenure is the most prominent example of modern democratic back-

sliding because Hungary is in multiple international organizations, including the European Union. “Orbán learned the value of weaponizing a national budget,” Scheppele said. “While he was out of office, he clearly studied everything that the Hungarian government paid for, and as soon as he came into office in 2010, he just cut the funds to everything that might oppose him.” “He crashed his democracy in plain sight of all the most exclusive clubs in the world, which meant a lot of other aspirational autocrats wanted to know how he did it,” Scheppele added. Opposition candidates Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party secured a landslide victory in Hungary’s 2026 parliamentary election, ending Orbán’s 16-year rule. Magyar aims to restore the prior rule of law and economic conditions. Scheppele said accountability and transparency are crucial for a country in the process of democratization. “If you’re not going to have that, you’re not going to follow the law that you inherited,” said Scheppele. “If you’re going to fire the people who are the holdovers, that’s a risky moment. Then any new government could just substitute themselves for the autocrats that got voted out.” Scheppele said newly democratic governments need to actively dismantle the laws and precedents that propped up authoritarian regimes. She pointed to “Operation Cleansing Fire,” a constitutional rewrite pushed through by Hungary’s current Prime Minister, Péter Magyar, to force out Orbán-appointed loyalists. “The laws that you’re not obligated to follow as a new demo-

cratic government are the laws that were put there precisely in order to hold an autocratic government in place,” Scheppele said. “So when you see Viktor Orbán changing the constitution to eliminate any opportunity for the parliament to impeach the president a year before the election, when you can see that that would probably lose, that’s not a rule you have to follow.” Sheri Berman, a Barnard College political science professor who spoke on the panel, said newly democratic governments must be careful to both uphold laws and maintain legitimacy. “Legality and legitimacy also are not the same thing,” Berman said at the event. “It might be perfectly legal to do something that’s completely illegitimate. That’s just as bad as breaking the rules. It does bring up this question: Is it ever legitimate to use undemocratic means if you feel that you are facing a legitimately undemocratic threat?” Karolina Gilas, a National Autonomous University of Mexico professor who spoke on the panel, said new governments should focus on respecting legal precedents. “When you bend the rules, you become what you are supposedly fighting,” Gilas said at the event. “It’s very difficult to rebuild following the rules put in place by the Orbán regime. But I’m very worried about justifying the means. It won’t work in the long term because when you lack legitimacy, the people read it.” The Georgetown Democracy Initiative was launched in Fall 2025 to support research and dialogue on the future of democracy globally, during a time when democratic

backsliding troubled political scientists around the world. Berman said the United States can learn from previous autocratization in Europe.

“What’s really bizarre is what’s going on in the United States, and that’s not something that we should worry about,” Berman said. “Historically, the only way to be

optimistic is to say, ‘Look, we have seen this story play out in the past.’ That doesn’t mean we should be complacent, but it does mean we should not be entirely surprised.”

JOSHUA LOU/THE HOYA

The Georgetown Democracy Initiative hosted an event with public policy experts to reconcile democracy and transparency in what the experts said is an increasingly autocratic era.

GU Students Optimistic Former Official, Foreign Policy Advisor Position Iran New E-Bike Regulations War, Affordability as Joint Midterm Elections Issue Will Mitigate Concerns Gabe Tiano

Special to the Hoya

Meera Shah and Myles Vuong

Features Staff Writer and Hoya Staff Writer

The District Department of Transportation of Washington, D.C. (DDOT), is restricting the use of electric scooters and dockless electric bikes, the department announced Oct. 14. The department placed limits on the number of scooters that can be left in public areas, updated standards for where operators, such as Lime, Capital Bikeshare and Veo, can deploy vehicles and required current operators to reapply for permits in response to a recent death. The bikes provide local transportation to Georgetown students, who have expressed frustration with the lack of public transportation accessibility in Georgetown, which does not have a Metro station and saw decreased coverage by the Metrobus system in 2025. Amalia Breen (CAS ’30), a frequent biker, said she struggles to avoid pedestrians when navigating through the Georgetown neighborhood. “Driving down, it gets really crowded, especially going through Wisconsin and M Street, and it gets hard to avoid those roads,” Breen told The Hoya. “It can become really difficult to navigate among pedestrians because the street doesn’t really have places to go.” “The bike lanes aren’t super clear or defined, and there’s always cars going really close to them, so they don’t exactly feel safe,” Breen added. “You can’t really ride on the sidewalks either because there’s so many pedestrians.” After the National Mall, Georgetown has the second most electric scooter and bike trips, and the Ward it resides in contains the highest number of micromobility vehicles, as well as crashes, in D.C. Alexa Loera (SFS ’30), who predominantly walks in the Georgetown area, said she frequently experiences safety concerns with people riding and parking Lime scooters on campus. “They’re speeding, or they’re going on the sidewalks when it’s very clearly dangerous,” Loera told The Hoya. “They don’t care about the pedestrians going around, also leaving scooters in Harbin elevators or in random places in the middle of the street.” Nikolai Seferian (CAS, McCourt ’27), who uses ride-share bikes to travel between the Hilltop and Georgetown’s Capitol Campus, said Lime bikes pose a danger on main roads. “It’s not uncommon to have a Lime bike stopped in the bike lane or on the road, which kind of presents a danger for the biker because then you’ve got to kind of swerve into the main lane of traffic and in front of where cars are,” Seferian told The Hoya.

Owen Brennen (CAS, McCourt ’30), who repeatedly runs into Lime bikes on campus, said he thinks the new limits on bike usage will benefit the Georgetown community, but not the wider D.C. area. “I don’t have an issue with the caps on speed and the limited use within Georgetown because I feel like when they’re being used on the campus, it’s pretty annoying to people walking around,” Brennen told The Hoya. “But I think they do raise an issue in the city.” “I think you should be able to get a bike or a scooter wherever you want because it’s one of the easier ways to get around D.C.,” Brennen added. The updated government regulations come as Lime heightened age limit enforcement following an uptick in scooter accidents. In September, the company upgraded its bike fleet with $17 million of technology to detect dangerous riding and non-compliant riders. Loera said current technology meant to force Lime scooters to deactivate when ridden on a sidewalk was ineffective but well intended. “It doesn’t really shut down,” Loera said. “It mostly shuts down when there’s a very crowded area, like right outside a monument, for example. But for the sidewalk, it’ll give you warnings, but doesn’t really do anything.” “I definitely agree with it because it’s so annoying when people are going so fast, so irresponsibly, in very crowded areas,” Loera added. Breen said she thinks increased enforcement of the 18-year-old age minimum is overly restrictive and limits access to bike transportation. “I think that they can be a little limiting at 18, because I know that there are a lot of people on campus and in the community that are under 18 that still would like to use those,” Breen said. “16 could be a little bit more accessible to everyone.” Alexander Svarre (SFS ’30), who rides Lime scooters to class, said the new artificial intelligence (AI) face recognition system also poses challenges to people using the scooters. “It started about a week ago, and it made Lime virtually completely unusable,” Svarre told The Hoya. “I am 18, and every time I scan my face, it doesn’t think I am for some reason.” Loera said despite their drawbacks, electric bikes and scooters remain a valuable mode of transportation for Georgetown students. “They get a bad rep because of a few select people who are being irresponsible with them, but in general they’re a great method of public transportation,” Loera said.

Two foreign policy experts argued a growing affordability crisis and the United States’ ongoing conflict with Iran will merge to form a unique voting issue in the upcoming midterm elections at a Georgetown University event Oct. 19. Marie Harf, a former U.S. Department of State deputy spokesperson, and Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank, argued foreign policy could play an outsized role in this year’s elections. The Iran war and the White House’s tariff policies have raised consumer prices, which Harf and Katulis said could link foreign policy with economic concerns for U.S. citizens, potentially harming Republicans’ midterm chances. Harf — who now leads the University of Pennsylvania’s global policy engagement center, the Perry World House — said the Iran war has raised gas prices while tariffs have made foreign goods more expensive, both of which worsened public opinion of the Republican Party. “When voters say that the cost of living, for many voters, is the

most important thing, there are two major things impacting that right now,” Harf said at the event. “Both of which are problems of President Trump and the Republicans’ own making: the war in Iran and tariffs, both of which are foreign policy issues.” After the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran in late February targeting Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities, the resulting conflict has ensnared the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz, a global trading corridor that funnels 20% of the world’s oil supply. Gasoline and diesel price increases associated with the Iran war have cost over $1,000 per U.S. household, according to experts’ estimates. After the event, Harf said foreign policy’s current political influence is atypical and speaks to its centrality to affordability. “The candidates that are doing better are linking the two, making clear for voters that the reason your prices are so high in large part is the war with Iran,” Harf told The Hoya. “That is unusual, particularly for a midterm election.”

The war and its associated costs are a leading issue in the 2026 midterm elections. The Iran war has had a greater influence than expected, eclipsing both immigration and crime in importance to voters. Katulis agreed with Harf, saying that the war’s unpopularity does not make it a midterm voting issue on its own. “Will the Middle East impact it? I think only through the factor that Marie identified, which is inflation,” Katulis said at the event. “Democratic candidates that have tied this war to gas prices, to grocery store prices, which I think will actually do quite well.” According to a report, many midterm races feature attack ads about the Iran war and the economic burdens of the conflict. Harf said unlike the Iran war or tariffs, she does not believe candidates’ opinions on U.S. relations with Israel will have a significant impact on midterm results because they feel removed from many voters. “I think voters care about rising costs, inflation, the economy, which is impacted by the Iran war and by tariffs, both foreign

policy issues,” Harf said at the event. “They care about healthcare and healthcare costs. They care about the war in Iran in general, but we don’t see voters, in the top number of issues they talk about, talk about their relationship with Israel.” Katulis said it is unfortunate that voters require economic pressure to care about foreign policy issues. “I’m alarmed that when you add up the sum total of foreign policy issues — including Iran, Israel, Palestine, but add to it Ukraine, Russia, China — it barely registers when you ask voters what they’re going to go to a poll for,” Katulis said. Harf said the Iran war and resulting affordability issues could ultimately decide competitive midterm races, pointing to a Fox News poll that showed nearly three-fourths of voters were concerned about the war. “That’s a really big number when we’re looking at a lot of competitive races and races that are going to be determined by not very large margins,” Harf said. “Voters care about what’s happening in Iran,” Harf added.

GU Physics Professors Awarded Grant for Magnet Research Myles Vuong

News Staff Writer

Two Georgetown University physics professors won a threeyear military grant to investigate defects in magnetic materials, the university announced Oct. 14. Kai Liu and Gen Yin won the recurring grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research — a federal program managing scientific development for the Air and Space Force — to research the impact of a material’s physical structure on its magnetic behavior. The team hopes to discover new applications for these magnets in emerging technologies, including developing an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model to bolster research efficiency. Yin, who focuses on theoretical calculations, said emerging technologies frequently rely on magnetic materials. “Although we’re no longer using magnetorecording in our cell phones or laptops, we are in data centers, the biggest market in terms of data storage,” Yin told The Hoya. “Another thing is permanent magnets. We have application scenarios for motors, electric vehicles and drones.” Magnetorecording, a type of data storage that uses magnetic patterns, remains a central technology for information recording, especially as AI demands greater data storage space.

Liu, who leads the team’s experimental lab work, said their research has wide-ranging applications, such as lowering electronic devices’ energy usage and charging time. “Unlike today’s electronics where you have to keep your computer plugged in all the time, with future energy-efficient technology maybe you don’t need to,” Liu told The Hoya. “The energy consumption can be vastly lowered.” Yin said synthesizing magnetic materials often results in atomic defects, either missing or incorrectly replaced atoms in material structures, but the team hopes to explore whether these defects could usefully impact magnetic properties. “The typical difficulty when we’re dealing with magnetic materials is that after you fabricate it, it is really rare for us to have pure materials,” Yin said. “Disorders are inevitable. We’re trying to study disorder as a design parameter. Like a feature, not a bug.” Liu said the magnetic defects’ hidden nature necessitates advanced technology to detect them. “It’s a very difficult problem because defects are often buried inside the materials, so they are not just lying on the surface for you to see,” Liu said. “You need some kind of X-ray vision to allow you to see through the material to find out where there are imperfections.” Liu’s lab will conduct experimental research using the first-or-

der reversal curve (FORC) technique — a physics process akin to magnetic “fingerprinting.” Liu said his lab is using the FORC technique to locate these defects and distinguish them from pure materials. “We are disturbing the system, finding out its magnetic response and mapping it,” Liu said. “We’re capturing a magnetic fingerprint of a material. Once we introduce some imperfection, we will find a different fingerprint.” Bradley Fugetta (CAS ’23), a third-year physics doctoral student working in Liu’s lab, said simulations and machine learning will help identify proposed materials’ properties before creating experimental samples. “I’m going to be running simulations of materials using first-order reversal curves that we think encode certain properties of the material that are not obvious and require some amount of machine learning to pull them out,” Fugetta told The Hoya. “I’ll then also make experimental samples and measure those experimental results to then validate the sets that we’ve made in simulation.” Fugetta said Yin’s mentorship helped him grow into a stronger researcher because the lab culture gave students freedom to explore. “I was his first student during COVID, so it was a lot of freedom and figuring stuff out together,”

Fugetta said. “We felt a lot more personalized and almost peer-to-peer. He had great insights, a wealth of knowledge, but also allowed me to work on my own to figure out how to solve problems like this.” Yin said machine learning makes the experimental process more efficient since models can analyze more dimensions than humans. “With machine learning approaches, we now have the capability to map out how many different ways to put disorders in the material,” Yin said. “The machine learning algorithm assesses all the steps we tried before in a high-dimensional space that is impossible for human eyes to interpret, and gives a suggestion of where the most probable spot is to explore next, and then that extensively expedites the exploration.” Yin said the scientific community has to figure out how to integrate AI into research. “We as physicists need to have some human flavor in the research,” Yin said. “We don’t throw everything to machine learning. It’s our curiosity that really drives us to try to ask the question: Why is this better? What general new design principle can we get out of this?” “AI has to generate some new understanding, new picture, new intuition that can be integrated into human understanding that can be reapplied in other fields,” Yin added.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 | THEHOYA.COM

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A10 | THE HOYA

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 | THEHOYA.COM

MUSIC

FILM

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Special to The Hoya

‘She’s the Best’ Proves the Wildest Party ‘Other Mommy’ Equally Subverts Yet Takes Place in the Recording Studio Succumbs to Horror Genre’s Pitfalls Isabella Alvayero

“She’s the Best” proves that Troye Sivan can take a break from his nineto-five as Charli XCX’s party boy sidekick to explore deeper feelings of isolation and vulnerability. As a child actor-turned-vlogger, Sivan’s life has always been documented on the internet. His 2023 album “Something to Give Each Other” highlights the glamor of rising stardom, and landed him a gig headlining the iconic SWEAT tour for Charli XCX. Though he has produced party anthems since his last album, “She’s the Best” steps away from this path to explore emotional misery. In exploring this misery, Sivan’s fourth studio album is a journey of the dynamics of his queer identity beyond the one media has coined for him. “She’s the Best,” the opener and title track, is rough and jagged, containing more talking than singing. Its blend of drums and electric guitar — with the background of string instruments — is perfectly chaotic. The first part of the song feels like an introduction to the rebellious nature that comes with teenage angst. The song then melts into what feels like an endless harmonic haze. This introduction blends with the rest of the album’s superfluous range, as each song feels like a constant vacillation between reality and daydreaming. The album’s third track, “Canada Dry,” is a perfect execution of the synth his loyal Friday night listeners crave. Its catchy beat and sensual lyrics lull you into a state of oblivion and lift you into an ignorance that allows you to forget that the song is nothing more than his “uh-huhs.” If “Canada Dry” was not party enough for Sivan, then leave it to “Party,” which questions where you should party — “Party at the club, party in the day, party at my house.” The song itself is a repetitive loop of such locations, but rather than feeling trite or monotone, it feels daring and camp, especially with a cinematic music video. This boldness proves precisely why the track is on the album, fitting both the specific aesthetic of “She’s the Best” but also Sivan’s broader image and discography. The rest of the album presents a longing for companionship which Sivan has not emphasized since

Mia Chan

@TROYESIVAN/INSTAGRAM

“She’s the Best” showcases Troye Sivan’s versatility but falls flat in its surface-level lyricism, writes Isabella Alvayaro (CAS ’29). he released “One of Your Girls” in 2023. “FF,” “Love So Big It Hurts” and “Embarrassingly” orchestrate the feeling of pitifulness into cascades of guitar and synth. They are sung as a conversation to himself at different points in time, exploring feelings of emotional paralysis. “In the zine of my mind / And I can’t tell you why / I’m all choked up, pull myself together” from “Love So Big It Hurts” paints that static of the Australian singer-songwriter’s inner voice. It’s a hesitance to speak, described in the lyrics that make the album seem less about love and more about accepting feelings of foolishness. Sivan explores his own personal journey of being struck with wanting intimacy as he pursues fame. The album feels like a tension between wanting to explore the unpolished version of desire while not committing to the mistakes that come with it. Beats blend to create a harmony, play an ode to party central and transcend to a sound with more depth and emotion. But there is no true intimacy in any part of the album besides the echoing verses of longing in each song; he is creative in all senses but lyricism. While this album shows

growth in creative direction, it still seems too superficial to be more than a break. Had the lyrics touched more into emotional rawness and personal depth, Sivan would have done more than party in the studio. The album’s biggest strife is its lack of cohesion and overall indecisiveness. Sivan committed to no single sound in “She’s the Best” — he goes from electric guitar to a cinematic orchestra all in one go. This album made clear that he defies genre and subjects — and despite the discordance, it works. The curated see-saw of synth and acoustic guitar that swings the album up and down is enough to push Sivan outside of vlogger-turned-musician to a musician who used to vlog. Despite the lack of maturity the album has, its simplistic tone of chasing love is timeless. Sivan has made it known that his music is reflective of his own growing pains as a gay man. His music is inherently taken into the world of “gay pop” and creates a new wave of creative directions that challenges other artists to reflect more on the intentionality of their work. Thus, “She’s the Best” is impactful in its new sonic direction, even if the lyrics remain somewhat lacking.

In July, theaters were packed with fans watching Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated and critically acclaimed film “The Odyssey.” While the film’s stunning acting, cinematography and score certainly left a mark on audiences, an unassuming trailer was also seared into the minds of theatergoers prior to the movie; this, of course, was the upcoming supernatural horror film “Other Mommy.” While the movie is chock full of impressive performances and entertaining twists on classic horror cliches, its underdeveloped plot and lackluster scares ultimately leave it as a fun but forgettable watch. “Other Mommy” — an adaptation of the best-selling novel “Incidents Around the House” from Josh Malerman of “Bird Box” fame — follows eight-year-old Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) and her experience with a supernatural entity, also known as “other mommy” (Jessica Chastain), while living in a strained household. Bela’s father Russ (Jay Duplass) and her mother Ursula (Jessica Chastain) initially share a tumultuous relationship as Ursula assumes the role of a hardworking yet absent corporate wife while Russ acts as the caring, albeit insecure, house-husband. Consequently, in this distant household, Bela finds emotional respite playing with her other mommy, a shapeshifting entity who takes on the appearance of Bela’s mother, Ursula. In a sequence of inexplicable supernatural events, the entity tries to gain Bela’s voluntary permission to “enter her heart” and possess her body. As the other mommy grows increasingly violent and volatile,

the family attempts to outrun her. They seek refuge with Uncle Frank (Arian Moayed), with whom Ursula is secretly having an affair, before fleeing to the home of Ursula’s mother, Grandma Ruth (Karen Allen), where they hire ghost hunters to try and repel the entity. However, the other mommy remains persistent, and the family eventually concedes, returning home to engage in the film’s final confrontation. I went into “Other Mommy” with the expectation of a scary and exhilarating horror movie. But while the initial jumpscares stimulated some serious heart palpitations, the trope grew tired towards the latter half; when the screen went dark, I came to expect the other mommy suddenly appearing or growing an additional head, leading to a lessthan-satisfactory scare. Furthermore, the film’s plot felt a bit shoehorned together: it served less as a cohesive, developed story and more as a series of horror vignettes. For instance, in the beginning of the film, a tense call between Ursula and Grandma Ruth alludes to a parental friction that may stem from Ursula’s marriage to Russ. However, this plot point is never fully fleshed out, leaving the audience with unanswered questions and foregoing a valuable opportunity to better characterize Ursula and Russ’s strained relationship. The plot’s lack of development becomes increasingly evident through Grandma Ruth’s role — or lack thereof — in the movie. Her primary and seemingly only function within the story is to impart cliche wisdom onto Bela by explaining that pain is inevitable.

It’s a valuable lesson which helps Bela defeat the other mommy, but it reads a bit stereotypical and feels disjointed within this otherwise turn-your-brain-off movie. Still, the movie does a surprisingly good job in subverting horror movie stereotypes. It was incredibly refreshing when Bela’s parents could see the other mommy as well, effectively side-stepping the frustrating trope of parental skepticism of supernaturality. And when Bela remarks she left her stuffed animal “Vulchy” in the family’s cursed home, she is promptly ignored, which differs from the stupidity seen too often in most horror movies. The other mommy was easily the standout in this film. Chastain’s performance as the crazed, supernatural entity hellbent on possessing Bela proved incredibly disturbing through grotesque facial expressions and unnatural, uncanny mannerisms. Her performance alongside Clark and Duplass displays the epitome of a dysfunctional yet undeniably loving family, giving the film an emotional heart its plot lacks. While “Other Mommy” offers real enjoyment through its engaging performances and clever subversion of horror cliches, its thin storyline and underdeveloped characters ultimately overshadow these strengths. Still, the film proved I could sit through an hour and a half of Chastain bulging her neck muscles and dangling from the ceiling, a small victory for my everdeclining attention span. “Other Mommy” might not be worth a trip to the theater, but it’s worth a watch once it hits streaming, even if it’s only for Chastain.

ON YOUR RADAR

By Aarushi Maskara

ADAMS MORGAN APPLE FESTIVAL

If you want to be surrounded by all things apple, head to Adams Morgan’s annual apple festival this Saturday, Oct. 24, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sample heirloom apples from Licking Creek Bend Farm, browse fall-themed deals from local shops and grab a slice of homemade pie. The festival is free and open to all.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES/IMDB

Mia Chan (CAS ’30) finds that horror film “Other Mommy” delivers great performances but stops there, with a storyline that ultimately feels disjointed and underdeveloped.

CONCERT

Kelela Healed Me at ‘New Avatar Live’ 

Eli Tuchinsky

@ADMOBID/INSTAGRAM

Hoya Staff Writer

CAPITAL HARVEST ON THE PLAZA Check out more than 25 local vendors at the final Capital Harvest market on The Plaza of the season, happening at the Woodrow Wilson Plaza this Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Try fresh produce and prepared foods, shop handcrafted goods and watch chef demos of seasonal recipes. Admission is free. @DOWNTOWNDCBID/INSTAGRAM

PUMPKINPALOOZA Take a much-needed break from midterms and pick your own pumpkin for free at NoMa’s PumpkinPalooza happening this Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 4 p.m. in Alethia Tanner Park. Enjoy great food, an alpaca petting zoo and a “Minions & Monsters” movie screening. Pumpkins are available on a first-come, first-served basis. @NOMA.BID/INSTAGRAM

FALL BALL: AN ECO HALLOWEEN BASH Don your best costume for Georgetown University’s inaugural Fall Ball, a Halloween bash hosted by Earth Commons this Thursday, Oct. 29, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 111 Massachusetts Ave. NW on the Capitol Campus. The event features music, pumpkin carving and a costume contest. Admission is free, but you must register in advance. @THEEARTHCOMMONS/INSTAGRAM

When Washington, D.C.-born alternative R&B artist Kelela announced her upcoming tour promoting her recently released third album “new avatar,” I was quick to jump into the Ticketmaster queue. To no surprise, Kelela’s performance was awe-inspiring, mixing rock, electronica and R&B to serve as the vehicle for spiritual transformation over a therapeutic 90 minutes. “idea 1,” the first single Kelela released for the album, is an alternative R&B song influenced by shoegaze music, a branch of indie rock characterized by heavy distortion. It introduced listeners to her new guitar-based sound, inspired by her exhaustion living as a Black woman in a sociopolitical climate that expects her to advocate for her own existence. Kelela continued this direction in the full album “new avatar,” which she said was created to provide a “space to feel over it.” Full of guitar riffs and rock influence, the album pushed Kelela’s already experimental discography in a new, grungier direction. Walking into “New Avatar Live,” I expected the backup guitarist, the bassist and the leather jackets. What I did not expect was how alien the performance would be. Opening the setlist with “Fooley (LEECH Ambient Queen Remix),” from the remix of her 2023 sophomore LP “Raven,” I was overcome with a sensation not dissimilar to floating in a sensory deprivation tank. Kelela’s costuming only bolstered this extraterrestrial effect, donning sunglasses and a

mysterious white light fixture to her chest, turning her heart into a beacon for a hypnotized audience. Spanning her 13-year career, the show was primarily made up of songs from her 2013 mixtape “Cut 4 Me,” “Hallucinogen” — her 2015 EP — and “new avatar.” While the crowd was responsive to it for the most part, some segments during the show — such as the guitar-reworked “Rewind” — seemed to dampen the enthusiasm a little bit. However, this was quickly picked back up by the transition to the fifth track of “new avatar,” “against me.” Major hits like “Happy Ending,” “the bridge” and “Bank Head” also immediately jolted the audience back to life. “outta time” was a particular highlight as Kelela embraced her rockstar persona with the loudest bass humanly possible. One of the most sentimental moments came during a brief speaking interlude, during which Kelela touched on what it meant to her to perform in her hometown. Choking up, Kelela thanked her family, who were in the crowd, and her audience for reflecting the art she hoped to put out. Coming after “crystallize” and before “A Message,” thespeechmadeKelela’simpassioned R&B all the more cathartic, with the rest of the audience shouting words of encouragement with plenty of D.C. pride. Kelela later said that D.C. had been the best crowd on the tour, which further invigorated the audience. As the show wound to a close, Kelela kept her foot on the gas and transitioned the show into what she

labeled a “high-energy rave.” Playing a bouncy unreleased “linknb” remix before performing the original track, the previously chill crowd exploded into a mosh pit. The real highlight of her final act, however, was her mashup of “The High” — the closing track of “Hallucinogen” — with Massive Attack’s 1998 song “Teardrop” from their legendary album “Mezzanine.” “The High” worked perfectly with the dark, intimate trip hop of Massive Attack, though hearing the intro of “Teardrop” without Elizabeth Fraser’s iconic vocals was slightly jarring. Finishing up with thanks to her band, Kelela left the stage abruptly, and much of the crowd exited with evident confusion. Unfortunately for those who had just left, Kelela quickly returned with a two-song encore: “if we meet again” and another mashup, this time between her soothing pre-game track “Contact” and Aaliyah’s “One In a Million.” After an emotional roller coaster of a concert, the combo was a needed return to lightheartedness, and everyone in my section was dancing and laughing with friends as the night of fun came to a close. Sitting on the Metro’s Red Line surrounded by fellow concertgoers in elaborate black outfits and inverted makeup, I was dazed and joyous, basking in Kelela’s healing aura. “New Avatar Live” was a transformative event, one that rejuvenated my spirits and left me craving more.

THE HOYA | A11

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 | THEHOYA.COM

MUSIC

FILM

Disconnection on ‘Dopamine Chamber’ Just One Drop Is Needed to See Everything FONTAINES, from A12

photograph,” capture the fatigue of a mechanical existence and the impossibility of escaping the everlasting need to perform, no matter how undesirable it may seem. “Happy for You” opens with a beautiful guitar riff and builds slowly but never falls into being boring. Though it takes a while to pick up and to some may seem repetitive, the underlying passive aggressiveness of the lyrics, which gradually builds into blatancy, carries the song robustly. Once again, the ending is sonically genius, closing with drums overtaking all other elements of the track. “Tongue,” while not a standout favorite of the album, remains a reminder of why fans love this band and their innovation. The song layers a diverse variety of sounds with a shift in tone in the middle. Though the shift could very much have failed in its execution, the transition is satisfyingly smooth and fits in without fault. “One Man,” on the other hand, slightly slows the progression of the album in terms of its tempo. However, it is one of the more personal songs, built around the vulnerabil-

ity of accountability and the overwhelm of only being “one man,” perhaps indicating a reflection on men’s mental health and the loneliness epidemic. The most surprising moment on the album is “Where is Gone?” which features a collaboration with ROSALÍA, who is the first guest vocalist Fontaines D.C. has ever had on a song. For a band that has spent its entire career on its own, inviting someone is a bold choice that only highlights the band’s fearlessness in taking risks and their innovative nature. Initially, it seems as though the two artists’ voices strain to blend, but as the song continues, they begin to meld well together. As a slower song, “Where is Gone?” caters more to ROSALÍA’s own sound, but it still rests comfortably within Fontaines D.C.’s dark and brooding world. “You Miss Me” is balanced and put together, competing in the running for my favorite on the album. However, I also want to give “Japan” its flowers. Although it is the least popular track among fans, it contains some of the best lyrics and storytelling on the album. “Japan,” which depicts un-

requited love or distance in a relationship, is utterly melancholic but strangely comforting and beautiful. Chatten’s delivery is often so shockingly monotonous and mundane that the lyrics become even more raw and vulnerable to the listener. There could not have been a better way to end the album than “Intimate.” Perfectly representing why the band made this record, the lead singer asks, “What kind of metal are you made of? Can I take a closer look?” as if longing to truly know another person beyond the distractions of modernity that prohibit intimacy. The song answers simply that what is intimate is “all that’s real.” Fontaines D.C. is a band that consistently delivers more than what is promised, along with innovation, topical messaging and overall vigor. So, while I hope you are reading this in print, fingertips oiling the pages, if you are reading on a device, perhaps we should take some advice from this work of art and search for something real beyond the pixels on our screen. We will not find true comfort within our screens, as much as we wish otherwise.

BE OUR GUEST

The Hearty Cuisine of Cottage House

COTTAGE, from A12

Italian occupation in the 1930s and 1940s, the Indian presence on the menu can be traced back to trade with the Indian subcontinent, a phenomenon that was born when Ethiopia’s ancient Aksumite kingdom began importing spices in exchange for gold and ivory. The period of escalating human rights abuses in the 1970s under the Derg pushed many Ethiopian intellectuals to settle in D.C. permanently, during

which time the demand for Ethiopian cuisine naturally rose, pushing many homesick Ethiopians to shop at Indian grocery stores for familiar favorites like black caraway and cardamom. The ancient relationship between India and Ethiopia is why Cottage House was particularly comforting to me, as it gave me a taste of home away from home, while also providing a very traditional Ethiopian cuisine experience. During my mid-meal digestion pause, I sat back to admire my sur-

roundings full of diverse dishes which my friends were dipping injera into. The food, it became clear, is meant to be shared, to be talked around, even to be fed to one another. This is precisely the essence of Cottage House’s charm: Not a single menu item is meant to be eaten individually. Hopefully you’ll make the trip, and while you break off pieces of injera and scoop up bites of aromatic wats, you’ll find the experience is as much about the collective act of sharing as it is about the flavors.

FILM

‘NAZA’ Forces Us to Confront Complicity

in Genre-Defining ‘You Can See Everything’ 

Sophie Erlinger Hoya Staff Writer

Just days after the film’s theatrical release, “You Can See Everything” boasts one of the highest rating on Letterboxd, a 97% Certified Fresh designation on Rotten Tomatoes and plenty of awards season buzz. The consensus is overwhelmingly positive, to the point that one must question if everything is really as it seems. “You Can See Everything,” the brainchild of comedian Nathan Fielder and director Lance Oppenheim, breaks genre boundaries. It is paradoxical — introspective and satirical, sympathetic and exposing, deceptive and stable. I can only classify this film as a narrative documentary, which may seem contradictory yet perfectly captures how Fielder both follows and shapes the life of Theranos founder and fraudster Elizabeth Holmes. The film comes after “The Inventor” and “The Dropout,” the other critically acclaimed depictions of the Theranos scandal in what I am dubbing the “Elizabeth Holmes Cinematic Universe.” It also fits nicely with Fielder’s other work, including his experimental documentary series “The Rehearsal,” which should be required viewing for “You Can See Everything.” Holmes and her partner Billy Evans reached out to A24 to document her life, opening their home to Oppenheim and Fielder just 34 days before her 2023 sentence. The film portrays her daily life, follows her preparation for prison and shares revealing conversations between Holmes and Fielder. Through the film, I saw everything. And that everything, simply put, was excellent. From content to editing, “You Can See Everything” is a masterclass not only in investigative documentaries, but also in storytelling. “You Can See Everything” analyzes Holmes’ psyche. Portraits of Holmes and Evans’ unusual do-

mestic life reveal her comfort in codependent relationships. Despite their seemingly loving and collaborative relationship, Evans hides important information such as the documentary’s terms from Holmes. He also speaks for her during confessionals and feeds her delusion that the technology required for Theranos is real. He even convinces her to insist that a quote in Holmes’ New York Times interview is false because “it doesn’t sound like her.” This does not absolve Holmes of her crimes, but instead adds nuance by painting her as a tragic, troubled figure. It is clear she wants control over her image, mentioning that she despises the iconic photo of herself holding a drop of blood. Holmes relishes cycles of deception, so, in return, she too manipulates. She claims to have never lied in her entire life and insists that her invention “could” have worked. In the film’s most hilarious and frustrating moment, Fielder plays Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First” sketch for Holmes and Evans in an attempt to teach the importance of specific language. The comedic wordplay goes right over her head. What makes “You Can See Everything” revolutionary is the midpoint twist, which shifts the focus from Holmes and gives us an unexpected insight into her life beyond the initial 34 days. The reveal moves the “plot” down a completely different path and solidifies the film’s place in the Holmes multiverse. Fielder puts his signature touch on the film, which, as a fan of his work, kept me engaged throughout the lengthy runtime. The film is beautifully and intentionally shot, brilliantly portraying the subject matter. The framing of Holmes and Fielder’s conversations stood out most, first drawing my attention in the teaser. Despite the initial intention being for Fielder to speak from behind the camera, it instead zooms in on Fielder’s and

Holmes’ faces. We get an intense close-up view of one of the most infamous and elusive figures of our time. Every twitch of the eye or lick of the lips allows us to see that what is truly important is not what people say, but how they say it. One of my favorite details is the imagery of Holmes behind bars. Holmes gets her body scanned so her children can see an artificial intelligence hologram of her while she is in jail. As her arms stretch out, she stares at the camera as though staring down the barrel of a gun, with the body-scanning equipment framing her face. Of course, there is no actual footage of Fielder and Holmes’ interaction in the prison, but these shots serve as a constant reminder of the impending deadline. Oppenheim also focuses on Holmes’ location in Del Mar, Calif. The film includes many gorgeous scenes of Holmes and her family playing in the water. These serene panoramic views serve as a reprieve from the documentary’s chaotic twists, making the following reveals even more dramatic in comparison. This contrast also continues Holmes’ portrayal as a human, if not sympathetic, figure. She is clearly mentally troubled, but still she seeks tranquility away from her hectic life. “You Can See Everything” also possesses the color grade now synonymous with Oppenheim, who once again collaborated with colorist Damien Vandercruyssen after their recent work on “Primetime.” With a cool grayish-blue hue and a slight grain, the dreamy and dizzying visuals place an imaginary lens over the camera. Although welcomed into Holmes’ home, the grading caused me to feel eerily removed, as if viewing surveillance footage. The slogan of Theranos states that “one tiny drop changes everything.” Fielder and Oppenheim have proven that one creative documentary can change everything.

 Isabelle Cialone Senior Guide Editor

At a time when an entire world of violence and bloodshed can be witnessed at our fingertips, it is increasingly baffling to me that people can ignore, or even outright deny, atrocities such as the murder of over 70,000 Palestinians — over 20,000 of them children — because of the war Israel’s military has waged with Hamas since the militant group’s October 2023 attacks. “NAZA,” the latest documentary from Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, forces viewers to confront the horrific reality behind these mass murders: The people responsible largely consider themselves innocent cogs in a machine — highly enviable professionals who are simply doing their job. In unveiling these horrors, “NAZA” is fear-inducing and uncomfortable, but this discomfort feels intentional, a call for the audience to grapple with the reality of standing idly by during atrocity. In a sequence of interviews conducted in the obscure darkness of Tel Aviv’s rooftops, Abraham prompts terrifying revelations from several dozen Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staffers whose voices are “digitally altered to disguise their identities.” The film’s title, derived from the Hebrew military term for “collateral damage,” gestures at IDF members’ testimonies that reveal the quiet complicity within a system that justifies the deaths of countless civilians, in the hopes of killing even one Hamas operative. An IDF spokesperson has rejected the film’s claims, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared it to ballistic missiles fired at Israel, threatening to revoke Abraham and Szor’s citizenships. In response, the directors said they spoke to over 100 sources to produce the documentary. The interviewees, who range from surveillance system engineers to soldiers, describe at length what they know to be war crimes that they have committed. They discuss how, after artificial intelligence (AI) marks suspected Hamas operatives — often inaccurately — they analyzed the suspects’ text messages and phone calls with their family to determine when they would return home. They then intentionally targeted family homes, setting an arbitrary limit of 20 “naza,” with no distinction between children and adults, men and women, or civilians and militants. At one point, an IDF member said the military

JW FILMS/IMDB

For Isabelle Cialone (CAS ’27), “NAZA” is an unforgettable and necessary portrait of complacency amid war and conflict. justified the deaths of 500 “naza” for a single, suspected operative. One man likens the act of flattening family homes to playing video games while another expresses how “fun” the entire operation is. The camera lingers discomfitingly on Israelis in their homes as the film delves into the heartless surveillance technology Israel has developed and implemented throughout Palestine. The audience, peering voyeuristically upon people cooking, sleeping and reading, is forced to confront the violation of constant surveillance and juxtapose it with Israelis’ privilege as Netanyahu looms on living-room television sets. Apart from the film’s final minutes, we do not see or hear from any Palestinians, an absence that is frustrating but also devastatingly symbolic. Closing with heartbreaking footage of a father searching for his family’s bodies in the aftermath of a building’s destruction, the norm in Palestine under ceaseless siege and surveillance, the film left me utterly appalled by the IDF’s apparent ability not only to ignore but to actively justify this affront to humanity. The film also displayed, for the first time, some striking, resounding confessions. Abraham asks bluntly once: “Do you think this is a genocide?” “Yes, completely,” is the matter-offact response one IDF personnel offers him. A growing body of scholars and advocates — including the leading International Association of Genocide Scholars and a United Nations commission — have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel has consistently denied these claims.

Another soldier comments on how his upbringing in Israel imparted upon him a fear of and hatred for the Nazis’ inhumanity. Now, as he grapples with his own actions, he can only ask: “The Nazis were the devil, but what am I?” The film’s editing balances interviews with people who have recognized their complicity and people who have no remorse or moral qualms. It is a chilling look at the worst that humanity can do and is currently doing. Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the documentary has sparked mass outrage — most notably, and also most unsurprisingly, among Israeli politicians. Decried as antisemitic and an attack on the state of Israel, “NAZA” itself contains the key to combating these condemnations. The documentary points to Netanyahu’s own 1986 definition of terrorism as “the systematic and deliberate attack, the murder, maiming and menacing, of innocents, of civilians, for political goals.” The directors argue that he is now responsible for those very actions by relying on the technologically enabled mass murder that the film unveils. After discussing the technology that facilitates the mass murder of Palestinians, an interviewee scathingly adds that the IDF is acting with immense urgency in carrying out this genocide before they lose international legitimacy. “NAZA” lays out a harsh truth, begging that its audience recognize and act against this evil imminently. This should be mandatory viewing, especially for those who find themselves able to ignore or deny Israel’s wanton killing of civilians.

A24/IMDB

“You Can See Everything” is a genre-bending and genre-defining film, rewriting the norms of storytelling and Hollywood, writes Sophie Erlinger (CAS ’29).

FILM

‘Whalefall’ Sinks With Sentimentality WHALEFALL, from A12 that distances itself from the audience as it layers tragedy upon tragedy with each flashback. The film, however, succeeds in delivering much-needed emotional nuance in other ways, particularly with Abrams’ performance. Much like “Resident Evil,” Abrams is essentially the film’s sole leading man. Its dual nature as a drama and a thriller is solidified by Abrams’ talent in serving both genres. The film’s horror comes through his quite memorable range of shrieks in the whale’s belly and an overwhelming sense of panic that is terribly intoxicating. Abrams’ scenes with Brolin, especially the very first flashback that occurs as soon as Gardiner enters the whale, are what drive the drama and tragedy of “Whalefall.” Both are undeniably strong performers, which makes for scenes that are dynamic and heartbreaking regardless of what the script offers them. For a creature feature, “Whalefall” is unique for its equal emphasis on physical as well as emotional survival. While it may confuse sentimentality with nuance in its more emotional peaks, it is clear that “Whalefall” is still a novel take on the ways our parents are reflected within us, whether we want them to be or not.

20TH CENTURY/IMDB

“Whalefall” is memorable for its emphasis on emotional depth but fails to meaningful execute, writes Grace Ko (CAS ’27).

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 MUSIC

Fontaines DC Explores Lost Authenticity  Eliza Doty

Guide Deputy Editor

“We’re in a glorious age of distraction,” Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten told NPR before the release of the band’s fifth album, “Dopamine Chamber.” This new addition to the band’s discography, once again produced by the very talented James Ford, focuses on the modern age of instantaneous dopamine hits and the loss of human connection and authenticity in the process. In comparison to “Skinty Fia” and “Romance” — the Irish band’s two previous albums — “Dopamine Chamber” finds a more pensive, subtly darker and gloomier course. While not as sonically intense and consistently lively as its predecessors, the album is nevertheless as passionate in its thematics. Following the opener, “Six Shot Morning,” “Marianne” is an ideal second song. Inspired by “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” the song sits at the heart of the album’s story of “trying to replace a human soul with material possessions,” Chatten said in the NPR interview. Living in today’s world means existing with the constant allure of escape, as indicated by the lyrics “I can help you disappear,” which are sung by the same technology that permits this escapism. However, this song also examines how the choice to give in always comes at the cost of losing ourselves. Its ending is absolutely perfect, with the verse and chorus overlaying one another to form something quite like the band’s classic transcendent finishes. “Mimesis,” which debuted at a gig in London a day before the album’s release, is a slight shift away from the band’s signature guitar-rock sound. After a recent reading of Aristotle’s “Poetics,” I was eager to listen to the song; its title is the Aristotelian term for art’s imitation of life in search of deeper human understanding as a sort of education. Chatten’s lyrics, such as “tired living in a See FONTAINES, A11

ISABELLA ALVAYERO/THE HOYA

Cash Moore (CAS ’28) commends the community that echoed off the walls of White-Gravenor Hall at the Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights’ Sound of Solidarity Concert, which advocated Georgetown amend its Just Employment Policy in a mix of musical talent and heartfelt advocacy.

CONCERT

Sound of Solidarity Concert Calls for Just Employment

 Cash Moore

Hoya Staff Writer

Under gathering storm clouds on Oct. 16, Georgetown University students and workers packed Copley Lawn for four local bands, a grill and one last push before Georgetown students vote on a referendum to ask the university to amend its Just Employment Policy (JEP), which guarantees workers a living wage. The Sound of Solidarity Concert was organized by the Georgetown Coalition for Workers’ Rights (GCWR) and Hoyas for Immigrant Rights (HFIR), in partnership with various academic departments and programs. It was the latest in a string of solidarity concerts that began last fall, after the administration moved to shift Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle (GUTS) drivers to a third-party contractor. The administration ultimately decided not to move forward with the proposal

after fruitful community activism. This time, the message aimed to reach beyond the shuttle drivers. As speakers reminded the crowd between sets, the fight included everyone from facilities and dining workers to adjunct professors, student workers and staff. Candidates, one of Georgetown’s student bands that played at last spring’s May Day concert, opened the evening. The late afternoon sun bounced off the face of WhiteGravenor Hall as most of the audience sat in the grass with plates on their laps. The smell of Georgetown University Grilling Society (GUGS) hot dogs and Jamaican food from O’Neil’s Famous Jerk, a catering company owned by Georgetown facilities worker O’Neil Batchelor, wafted over the lawn. As students nodded along to the piano and guitar shreds, business students and professors in full suits strolled past, contrasting the jorts, oversized shirts and baggy jeans many of the concertgoers donned.

The advocacy, of course, was never far from the music. Photographers and videographers zipped around the event with QR codes to the petition to amend the JEP taped to their backs. The petition, which began circulating during New Student Orientation (NSO), calls for the first substantial update to the policy since it was created in 2005. During pauses between sets, organizers advocated for raising the university’s minimum wage, expanding benefits and giving the workers who make this school more protections and a say in the decisions that affect them. Members of HFIR called for protections for migrant workers amid the federal government’s immigration crackdown and handed out a poem written by a few of the workers. Kid Named Rhi, an American University band, followed with a set of laid-back indie rock that suited the crowd. Then came Doll,

another Georgetown band. Little by little, people started inching their chairs toward the stage, and by the time the band launched into a rock cover of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” most people had abandoned their chairs completely and opted to dance and rock out instead. It is hard to think of a more fitting song for a labor solidarity concert, and the crowd seemed to agree. As the sun dropped behind the stone and brick walls around the lawn, the fairy lights strung around the hand-painted “Sound of Solidarity” banner slowly took over, glowing brighter with every song. The sky was changing too. Everyone could sense the impending rain, and you could see people checking the weather app on their phones and glancing up between songs. Sonorosa, a local emo and posthardcore band, closed the concert with just two songs before storm warnings cut their set short. As the

finale turned into moshpits and twostepping, it became the loudest and most energetic moment of the night. Off to the side, a dad in full golf attire filmed his young son behind the drum kit, which might have been my favorite image of the evening. By the end, two kinds of anxiety hung over the lawn. One was about the storm, but the other was about the referendum, which will appear on the Oct. 21-23 Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) ballot. While the referendum is nonbinding, meaning that the university would not be required to change the JEP, organizers still advocated for strong student turnout. Nobody on that lawn could say for sure if that storm or referendum would pass. But for a couple of hours, students and workers sat (or moshed) with uncertainty together, and they answered that feeling the best way they knew how: community.

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Cottage House Ethopian Tastes Like Home ‘Whalefall’ Is the Creature Blake Mahoney and Zara Vaseem

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Guide Columnists

On Oct. 1, Georgetown University Eating Society (GUES) ventured on a crisp, early autumn walk to Cottage House Ethiopian Cuisine on Wisconsin Avenue. As we crammed into the small foyer, the welcoming ambience made us feel like we were coming back home amidst the bustling streets. The staff laughed jovially as we entered. The noise from the passersby was quickly drowned out by the soft atmosphere that characterizes Cottage House’s dining experience: warming hospitality, steeped in simple yet heartwarming Ethiopian culture. Upon being seated among the colorful array of cloth and dishes spread among the tables, we ordered the aybi love bites as our first dish, which offered a taste of traditional Ethiopian cheese. Out came three mounds of crumbly, lightly moist and salty cheese. We took turns trying each by scooping it with injera, a signature Ethiopian staple sourdough bread produced from the ancient teff grain, which is thin, soft and mildly sour, with a spongy side. While Ethiopia retains over 77 distinct ethnic groups, the majority are united by a common enjoyment of injera. Making the dish is a labor of love, requiring several days just to ferment the wheat batter. The resulting sponginess allows it to perfectly soak up the cuisine’s flavors. As we broke off pieces of injera and used them to scoop up different aromatic bites, we relished in each other’s

Grace Ko

Guide Deputy Editor

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Blake Mahoney (SFS ’27) and Zara Vaseem (CAS ’30) believe Cottage House Ethiopian Cuisine not only brings rich, savory Ethiopian flavors to patrons’ lips but warmly reminds them of South Asia. reactions to the different tastes, the food acting as a conduit for conversation. My dining mates and I also couldn’t help but notice the bread’s similarities to dosa, which were not the last remarks we’d make on parallels to Indian cuisine. The wats — rich Ethiopian stews — came out on large silver dishes, with a massive piece of circular injera and colorful, aromatic dishes scooped around the injera’s perimeter, each one distinctly inviting. Each mouthful

offered something different, from the creamy red lentils of Mesir Wat, to the hearty kik alicha reminiscent of Indian daal, to the fatty hard-boiled egg in a pool of spiced collard greens. Just remembering these dishes is enough to make me salivate! Satisfying a longing in my soul I had never realized existed were the several beef and lamb wats with slow-cooked and spicy, buttery meats. However, the vast majority of dishes were vegan or vegetarian, likely due to the influence

of Orthodox Christianity on Ethiopian cuisine. Either way, we found ourselves devouring each dish, definitely exceeding the average fiber and micronutrient levels of the average Leo’s meal. We ended the meal with sweet and soupy gulab jamun and nutty baklava. The variety of desserts available, which also included rasmalai, particularly struck me. Though Indians were expelled from Ethiopia under the fascist See COTTAGE, A11

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To be honest, the only reason I showed up to the theater on opening weekend for a creature feature about a huge sperm whale was Austin Abrams. A moment of happy coincidence, the release of “Resident Evil” around a month prior has inspired a wave of interest in the actor, my own included, and I thought I might as well watch a movie about a whale if it might mean another great performance. As a result, I got to experience a film that was much more intriguing than its initial trailers may have suggested. Adapted by director Brian Duffield from Daniel Kraus’ eponymous novel, “Whalefall” centers on Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams) as he dives for his father’s (Josh Brolin) remains. In a moment of extremely unfortunate luck, Gardiner is swallowed by a sperm whale and must fight for his life to get out alive. At the heart of “Whalefall,” there is a moving story about a father and son, and the tragedy of only truly understanding and loving someone after they have passed. Yet, in execution, that emotional truth gets muddled by strange delivery, poor editing choices and an overbearing emphasis on Gardiner’s sadness. The strongest aspect of “Whalefall” is its structure. Flashbacks integrated with Gardiner’s attempt at survival

creatively highlight his strained relationship with his father, Mitt. Each decision he makes is accompanied by a flashback that reveals more about his relationship with his father. A piece of diving advice, a throwaway comment — no matter the bitterness that lingers in these memories, these small details serve as the tools for Gardiner’s survival. It is a beautiful echo of the past that shapes the film’s strong emotional core. However, the film is sometimes too overbearing with its sentimentality. Its final sequence involves Gardiner hallucinating his father’s presence within the whale as he loses hope in his survival. It may just be that I am a deeply unserious person, but his father’s echoing voice in the whale’s belly was a tad too much to be the film’s greatest emotional punch. It is supposed to be magical, even a little surreal, but Brolin’s disembodied voice becomes comical, particularly with its unnatural, spaced dialogue, which is supposed to emphasize the ghostly, supernatural atmosphere. It is an admirable but mismatched concoction of ingredients. It can be hard to deliver an emotional moment that does not feel as if it is baiting the audience to cry, and this final sequence of “Whalefall” constantly treads too close to that line. The imbalance of sentimentality and rationality results in a final act See WHALEFALL, A11