News

Plans for local library underway

The D.C. Public Library has begun the process of reconstructing and renovating its Georgetown branch, nearly a year after a fire severely damaged the building and the library collection.

By John Cooke March 13, 2008

News

Student groups talk diversity

A month after a Georgetown student woke up with a swastika drawn on his body, more than thirty student organizations, including the Georgetown University Student Association, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Jewish Student Association and the Corp, held a second Diversity forum last night, following up on one held last fall.

By Crystal Chung March 13, 2008

Leisure

Popped Culture: Backlash to the backlash

Vampire Weekend released their first CD at the end of January, and depending on who you are (and how much time you spend on the internet), you either hate them in spite of the hype, or like them despite the backlash. The band hasn’t been around that long and has already zoomed through the cycle of taste—blog buzz, great reviews, trickle into the mainstream, SNL performance, saturation (they play it at MUG!)—at warp speed.

By Shira Hecht March 13, 2008

News

New prez, new plans

After being officially sworn in at Monday night’s GUSA senate meeting as the new GUSA President and Vice President, Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) and James Kelly (COL ’09) laid out an ambitious timeline for accomplishing their three major initiatives: a “GUSA Summer Fellows” program, a take-your-professors-to-lunch program and a modification of the alcohol policy.

By Juliana Brint March 13, 2008

Leisure

Critical Voices: Destroyer, Trouble in Dreams

Dan Bejar, the chief songwriter and musician of Destroyer, is a weird fella. But he’s smart, and it sells—the raspy David Bowie voice, the deliberately obscure lyrics, the meandering array of yelps and proclamations. And it helps that his band is just getting tighter. Trouble in Dreams generally eschews the hard-charging hooks of his lastshy;shy;—and arguably most accessible—album, Rubies, but it’s still Euro-pop blues for the masses.

By Tim Fernholz March 13, 2008

Leisure

State of the brain, in one act

This year’s Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival features last year’s winner of Mask & Bauble’s one act play contest, “Lost in the Brain of A Great Man,” written by Seamus Sullivan (SFS ’08). Inspired by watching the furrowed brow of President George W. Bush while giving last year’s State of the Union address, this precocious play chronicles the brain activity of an unspecified president before giving the address.

By Ryan Maye Handy March 13, 2008

Leisure

Not very “Impressed by Light”

The National Gallery’s new photography exhibit, which displays British calotype photography from 1840 to 1860, may be called “Impressed by Light,” but whether you’ll be impressed by the collection is up for debate. Though the 120 photographs presented in the exhibit are historically important as some of the first photographs in British history, their subject matter is often fairly unadventurous and most of the photos are too small and modest to make an impression on our minds, which have been conditioned with flashier modern work.

By Justin Hunter Scott March 13, 2008

Leisure

Boys and death in a City of Men

In an early scene from Brazilian director Paulo Morelli’s City of Men, best friends Ace and Laranjinha pester Laranjinha’s grandmother for clues about his absent father. The grandmother scoffs at the questions, asking them what good could come from a father who abandons his own child. Ace (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlen Cunha) exchange a terrified look, run out the door and scramble through the favela shouting the name of Ace’s young son, Clayton (played by twins Vinícius and Vítor Oliveira), who has been dropped off with acquaintances somewhere in the slum. His father has no idea where he could be.

Ace and Laranjinha’s frantic quest to find Clayton reflects the film’s central themes of fatherhood and maturity. City of Men is based on the TV series that was inspired by Fernando Meirelles’ 2002 film City of God. City of Men shares with that movie its setting in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, an area of violent gang crime; the characters differ, although some of the actors return. While City of God made gang wars the centerpiece of the film, though, City of Men accepts them as a part of life in the slum and focuses on what Morelli sees as the root of the problem: absentee fathers.

By Sara Carothers March 13, 2008

Sports

Taming the Wildcats

The Big East Tournament, like any other bracket-based affair, is designed to give the top seed the easiest road to victory—a right that team has presumably earned throughout the season. This might have been difficult to stomach for Hoya fans when the conference tournament bracket was finalized earlier this week. Top-seeded Georgetown (25-4, 15-3 BE) would face the winner of the 8/9 game between the Syracuse Orange (19-13, 9-9 BE) and the Villanova Wildcats (20-11, 9-9 BE). Both teams step up their game against longtime conference rival Georgetown, and the Orange had already defeated the Hoyas at the Carrier Dome earlier in the season.

By Anthony Francavilla March 13, 2008

Sports

Welcome to the Major League:

In a cross-town pairing relocated nearly a thousand miles to the south, Georgetown played an exhibition game against the Washington Nationals at Space Coast Park in Viera, Fla. The Hoyas lost the contest 15-0 in the first action of Spring Training for the Nationals, who compete in Florida’s Grapefruit League. And while it may have been a walk in the park for the likes of Dmitri Young, Ronnie Belliard, Austin Kearns and Ryan Zimmerman, it was an important litmus test for a Georgetown team poised to make great strides in 2008. The game was the Hoyas’ first taste of baseball’s highest level since 1901, when they last competed against a major league franchise.

By Tom Philipps March 13, 2008