Students with purple, green and pink hair are lolling on Copley Lawn. Strange-looking cigarettes, which appear to be smoked communally, hang from their mouths. Every now and then a lighter flares. The sun is setting behind Healy Hall. Someone is strumming a guitar, and a co-ed with flaxen locks in curls down her back is spinning happily in a circle, her peasant skirt billowing around her. Few students have shown up for class all day.
Wait, rewind. Where am I? This isn’t Georgetown, where April 20 is just any other day. Whatever would the administration (and for that matter, the student body) do if such a lazy day were to pass at this prestigious university?
Imagine for a second that a gaggle of Jesuit priests, Rabbi White and Imam Yahya depart from their offices in Campus Ministry to take a lunchtime stroll. Rather than finding the typical array of girls bedecked in flowered Lilly Pulitzer skirts and sprightly young men throwing Frisbees, they find kids strewn across the lawn, Phish and Led Zeppelin blaring from portable speakers. Brownie crumbs litter the ground. The authorities are shocked-the Hoya world of preppy familiarity has been turned upside-down and Woodstock 2005 has taken over! The scent of marijuana in the air is undeniable.
OK, so we all know that such a scene would never take place on this lovely, yet rather conservative campus of ours. I do not intend to condone illegal drug use, but rather to use it as an extreme example of the open-mindedness and creativity emphasized at many universities. Since I started attending this school in 2001, I have been trying to come to terms with its unique international presence but staunchly traditional atmosphere. Traditional is not necessarily negative, but it does convey a certain unadventurous conformity. Georgetown is often criticized for being unrealistically stuck in the past, and this is not solely due to its religious identity.
Catholic or not, this university seems to draw a certain type of student from a certain background. It is not rare to find a royal or the child of a CEO of a major company around campus. It would be very surprising, however, to find the offspring of a movie star or an artist worth millions. What is it about Georgetown that makes it more pre-professional than artistic? It could be the fact that MSB kids know they’re on the path to a job in I-banking in New York City if they want it enough, or that Georgetown succeeds in getting a very high percentage of its students into medical school. Are we that uptight? Do we spend too much time in Lauinger?
Whatever the case may be, I have to commend the University for making efforts to move toward the cultivation of a less homogenous student body. I am not referring to socio-economic status, citizenship or race, but rather to the construction of a much-needed performing arts building and the encouragement of non-traditional modes of expression. Members of the upper echelons should make it their duty to attend events like this weekend’s GU Dance spring concert and Battle of the Bands, to share with students their talents for things that are non-academic but might just be very much Georgetown.
