News

Newt Gingrich speaks at Georgetown amid protests

A group of 22 students gathered on Healy lawn yesterday to protest former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s lecture in Gaston Hall. The talk, entitled, “Giving Young Americans the Right to Choose a Personal Social Security Account,” was sponsored by Georgetown University College Republicans and the Lecture Fund. The Lecture Fund has invited all 2012 presidential candidates to speak at Georgetown, and Gingrich is the first candidate to have accepted the invitation, an interesting move in what seems to be the death rattles of Gingrich’s bid for the 2012 presidency.

By Tiare Dunlap March 29, 2012

News

GUSA executive establishes Georgetown Day committee

Since news of the lack of Georgetown Day planning hit campus last week, the GUSA executive has spearheaded an effort to salvage this year’s festivities and put the event on firm footing for the future.

By Matthew Weinmann March 29, 2012

News

Saxa Politica: Oppose the campus plan!

In a Feb. 9 D.C. Zoning Commission hearing, Zoning Commissioner Peter May picked up a stack of letters written by Georgetown neighborhood residents, read off some excerpts, and said that students were creating objectionable impacts in the neighborhood.And with that, the neighbors won in their opposition to the University’s 2010 Campus Plan. Georgetown now has to prove that it will reduce student impact before the plan can be approved.

By Ryan Bellmore March 29, 2012

Features

Shark Week 2012

Madhuri Vairapandi Julien Isaacs

By the Voice Staff March 29, 2012

Editorials

Sharks must unite to fight ocean pollution

On March 28, the South Pacific state of Tiburonia sent a delegation of research sharks to study North Pacific fish and shark communities. The purpose of the trip, according to research leader Gil Maneater, was to “investigate the health conditions in the North Pacific and hopefully come to some conclusion as to why North Pacific emigrants are mired with high levels of disease.” Their findings shocked and horrified them. A massive garbage patch consisting entirely of human debris, mostly plastic broken down into confetti-like pellets, has built up along the North Pacific Gyre current and, until now, been unknown to Tiburonia sharks. This giant quantity of minuscule plastic pieces, while not always visible to the naked shark eye, not only causes severely impaired vision for hunting but also makes native fish and shark populations sick as the pellets build up in their digestive tracts.

By the Editorial Board March 29, 2012

Editorials

Shark finning necessitates mass uprising

On March 23, the marine residents of the small coral enclave of Pleasant Tides awoke to a scene of horror. Lonnie Leftfin, a local public school teacher and coach of the Pleasant Tides High School marine soccer team, lay finless and dying in the town square, parasitic eels approaching to finish off this once-revered shark. Since then, dozens of shark protests have sprung up in Pacific Rim communities from California to Korea. Although some take a more hard-line stance, the principal message of the demonstrations has been to call for a moratorium on the practice of finning. Despite sharks’ pleas, humans have turned a deaf ear to this tragedy, as they continue their destruction not only of the shark population, but of the very oceans they inhabit. The protesters’ message, therefore, does not go far enough. They should be demanding not only a permanent stop to finning, but a dramatic change in how humans treat the ocean, and should be ready and willing to overthrow their oppressors by force if their demands are not met.

By the Editorial Board March 29, 2012

Editorials

Sharks should hate humans, not each other

Environmental issues usually get the most coverage when humans focus on oceanic issues, but instances of social inequality persist at a level that the vast majority of Georgetown students would find abhorrent. Movies such as Jaws portray sharks as ruthless creatures incapable of self-control, which is the typical depiction of sharks in popular media. Finding Nemo depicts sharks as the bloodthirsty vampires of the sea, jumping into attack mode at the scent of the slightest drop of blood, but it also exposes a serious problem within the shark community—intra-species inequality.

By the Editorial Board March 29, 2012

Page 13 Cartoons

MEGASHARK VS. DINOJACK

By the Voice Staff March 29, 2012

Sports

Double Teamed: Hollis loss to pros expected

This column was supposed to be about which athlete owns the nickname “The Shark” (obviously, it’s former Ohio State basketball walk-on Mark Titus), but then Hollis Thompson declared for the NBA Draft on Tuesday, moving HoyaTalk to DEFCON 1 and officially kicking off the traditional early spring hand-wringing over the state of Georgetown’s roster.

By Tim Shine March 28, 2012

Sports

San Jose defies convention, push for playoffs

A year ago, the San Jose Sharks were riding high into the playoffs, clinching the Pacific Division for the sixth time and surfing a tidal wave of success into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. But after rolling through Los Angeles and eking out a seventh-game victory against Detroit, the Sharks went on to lose in the semifinals to Vancouver, ending another run for the highly touted Shark squad.

By Keaton Hoffman March 28, 2012