All good things must come to an end. Today, The Georgetown Voice publishes my byline for the last time. My first byline ran when I was a first-year, in the fall of 1983. Or was it 1982? No, it had to be 1983 because the theme for my senior prom was “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and I don’t think Culture Club was too popular in the spring of 1982. I’m not sure how I know that.
It has been a long haul for this Hoya, but I have finally earned the credits needed to graduate. The mistakes and misdeeds that extended my matriculation on the Hilltop are too numerous and tedious to detail here.
Although my name has fallen out of the masthead from time to time due to an understandable assumption that I had graduated, I have been a member of the Voice’s reporting staff for 20 years. Don’t believe me? Look it up. Somebody told me that there’s a building somewhere on campus that has, like, hundreds and hundreds of books, including bound copies of the Voice.
Things have changed in 20 years. When I was a freshman the men’s basketball team not only made the NCAA tournament, we won the whole freakin’ thing! John Thompson was coach, and Craig Esherick was his assistant. Somebody told me that now Esherick is head coach. People are always trying to goof on me like that. As if Craig Esherick could run a big-time college basketball program!
I remember the Voice’s Big East Preview issue for the ‘83-’84 season. I suggested that my friends, Chris Whitney and Mark Ryan, who were the co-Sports Editors at the time, use the headline: “Hungry Like the Wolfpack.” As you no doubt recall, the N.C. State Wolfpack had won the 1983 NCAA championship, and Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” was a recent megahit. Chris and Mark laughed at the clever word play, but they didn’t use it. Frankly, I think it was just a touch of the NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrome, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I was talking about how much things have changed. Twenty years ago, the president of Georgetown was, get this, a Jesuit priest! Jack, excuse me, Dr. Jack DeGioia was still just Tim Healy’s Chief Gofer. Or was that Dr. Dan Porterfield? No, I think Dan was Assistant Chief Gofer. Actually, I can’t remember which one of those brown-nosers was always driving Father Healy around in that silver Caprice Classic.
Alcohol policy? Hell, the only policy was that that if you had alcohol in your room, you’d better have enough for the RA. We actually had a large garbage can mounted on casters in which we placed a keg and ice. We rolled it from room to room on ninth floor of Harbin. “Keg on Wheels,” we called it. Those were the days. At least I think they were. I don’t remember much of my freshman year. At least not my first one.
But I remember my beginning at the Voice like it was yesterday. I ran into Voice Community News Editor Avery Vise as he was coming out of O’Gara. I was going into O’Gara to pay the Guppies their 10 measly bucks for parking my Vega in Healy Circle overnight. Like John Carroll needed the whole damn driveway to himself! Somebody told me that you can’t even drive a car into Healy Circle anymore.
Avery was clearly frustrated with his Voice duties. “Somebody has to help me write all this crap,” he lamented. Then his face lit up suddenly. “Hey, how ‘bout you? I suppose you couldn’t screw it up too badly.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Sadly, somebody told me that O’Gara has since been torn down. Now that I think about it, that’s probably why the Voice moved to another building in 1984. I really hadn’t thought about it because I sold my car in 1985 and therefore haven’t needed to pay any more parking tickets.
The Voice has moved a couple of times since the O’Gara days. First we went to that funky building next to the Exorcist stairs. They kicked us out of there after a year or two on the premise that they were redeveloping the building as commercial office space. Then we were in a dank and dark space in the bowels of Village B.
Now we are in the Leavey Center, which seems like a nice enough place. Somebody told me that this building, not Healy Basement, is the student center now. I guess that’s why I can’t find Vital Vittles anymore.
Anyway, Avery, Chris and Mark had lived on Harbin nine before me. Other than a couple of “more-professional-than-thou” serious journalist types, the basic qualification for being on the Voice staff that year was that you had lived on either Harbin ninth or New North second as a first-year. Somebody told me a couple of years ago that New North had been converted into office space.
Avery was Cover Editor all by himself the following year, although between you and me, he did a lousy job. He spent half the year stressing over a major research paper he never finished and the other half humping it through 19 academic hours so he could graduate, having dropped the course involving said research paper.
Voice Editor-in-Chief Gregg Leslie did most of Avery’s work because he didn’t like the idea of publishing a blank cover and having a big hole in the middle of the paper on his watch. Today, Gregg has a law degree and a snazzy title: legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Cool!
Anyway, I have been asked why in 20 years I haven’t moved up the ranks at the Voice. Why am I still a staff reporter? Truth be told, I have had fewer than a dozen articles published in the last 20 years. There’s lots of reason for this. Mostly, I suppose, is the fact that I just didn’t finish many of articles I started.
Also, I guess many potential interviewees were scared of me, like they used to be of Mike Wallace and Tabitha Soren. For example, I had an interview scheduled with D.C. Mayor Marion Barry back in January 1990. I showed up for the appointment, but Barry’s secretary said he couldn’t make it because-get this-he had been arrested by the FBI for smoking crack at the Vista International Hotel the night before! I was pissed, but I have to applaud Barry’s secretary for such a creative dodge.
If I did somehow manage to file an article, it rarely ran. When I inquired why not, most editors simply ignored me as if I didn’t even exist. The honorable few that did respond usually claimed that my work lacked focus, that I tended to ramble and that I never got to the point. Another excuse was that my sourcing was sloppy, that I needed attribution and confirmation.
Here’s a case in point: One of the articles I submitted to the Voice led with the following: “Georgetown University’s students and faculty were surprised to learn last week that the university’s president, Rev. Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., starred as Grandpa Martin Vanderhof in the classic Frank Capra film You Can’t Take it With You.”
My editor questioned my facts, pointing out that Lionel Barrymore is widely known to have played that part and that the film was released in 1938, when O’Donovan was only about four years old. The editor asked me who told me about O’Donovan’s previously undisclosed film career. “I’m not really sure,” I admitted sheepishly. “Somebody.”
That’s always been my motto: Somebody said it or I wouldn’t have printed it.
Even though my work hasn’t appeared in the Voice often, I’m proud that my name has been there in the masthead, year after year. After all, it’s not what you do, it’s what you get credit for doing.
As I finally depart Georgetown, I leave you with a few words of wisdom. Relax. Take it easy. As somebody once told me, “Perseverance killed the cat.”
Dan Falcon will supposedly graduate in May 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and a double minor in Classics and Chemistry. He pursued a degree in journalism for five years before realizing that Georgetown does not offer one. A native of Maryland, Falcon was elected president of the student body at Loyola High School in Towson before being disqualified on the pretext that he didn’t actually exist.
A Lexicon of Yesterdecades
Here are some names and terms used on this page that may be unfamiliar to today’s Hoya:
Culture Club-British New Wave band that was inexplicably very popular for a brief period in the early 1980s and was fronted by the androgynous, mumu-wearing Boy George. Although music critics differ concerning the scope of the band’s talent and influence, all clear-thinking Americans know they sucked.
Duran Duran-A bunch of pretty-boy pop stars who are known primarily for spearheading creativity and production values in music videos. In other words, they used very sexy young women who were either dressed quite sparingly or costumed as ferocious wild animals.
Healy Basement-A shorthand reference to the GU student center back in the 1980s (and, presumably, earlier). In Healy Basement were Vital Vittles, Saxa Sundries, the Center Caf?, The Pub, an arcade (featuring Asteroids, Centipede, Joust, Frogger and more!) and the offices of The Corp, a self-absorbed group of overachievers who thought they were really cool because they ran some or all of those penny-ante businesses.
John Thompson-Coached Georgetown’s men’s basketball team during its period of greatest glory, when the team played in three NCAA championship games in four years, winning one. Deemed irreplaceable, Thompson’s retirement led the University to disband its basketball program for all practical purposes.
Leo O’Donovan, S.J.-Apparently, O’Donovan was president of Georgetown during the 1990s.
Mask and Bauble-Supposedly the oldest continually running student theatrical society in the United States. Technically may not be a relic of the 1980s, but no one has uncovered concrete evidence that the group still exists.
Marion Barry-Dubbed by the Washington City Paper as “Mayor-for-Life,” Barry was again elected D.C.’s mayor in the 1990s despite being videotaped smoking crack and convicted for said offense. Barry’s lasting legacy, however, may be that of Bill Clinton’s obvious, but unacknowledged, role model and mentor.
O’Gara-A small, non-descript wood-frame building that housed the Georgetown University Protective Services-known affectionately as Guppies-as well as The Georgetown Voice. The building, which stood where Village C now stands, was so devoid of style and grace that the neighboring New South looked elegant by comparison.
Timothy Healy, S.J.-A hard-drinking, hard-smoking Jesuit who presided over Georgetown’s academic and athletic ascension in the ‘70s and ‘80s. A real Jesuit’s Jesuit!
Typewriter-Printing device of yore. Although some people claim to have used one, most historians consider the typewriter to be either mythical or a common figment of dementia.
