Archive

Critical Voices: Bombay Bicycle Club, A Different Kind of Fix

Despite their young career, the members of the Bombay Bicycle Club have proven themselves worthy of recognition through a rapid-fire series of successful indie albums. Their latest release, A Different Kind of Fix, follows 2010’s Flaws and 2009’s I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose, both of which reached the top fifty on the UK Albums Chart. Thankfully, Fix lives up to the standards set by both the band’s previous successes.

By Jane Conroy January 19, 2012

God Mode: Tiny Tower‘s big break

The iPhone might be the most popular video game system of all time. It almost definitely is when lumped in with the iPad and iTouch—Apple had sold 250 million of its iOS devices in October of last year, a total that has surely skyrocketed after the holidays. To put that in perspective, the PlayStation 2, the best-selling traditional video game console of all time, barely surpassed 150 million units sold in its lifetime.

By Tim Shine January 19, 2012

Blast that Box: 99 problems, but the rich ain’t one

“Gotta give us what we need/ Our freedom of speech is freedom or death/ We got to fight the powers that be.” When Public Enemy used these words in 1989 to command their fans to “fight the power,” they could not have guessed that their message would be embodied by a global movement more than two decades. But four months ago, the Occupy Wall Street protests burst onto the scene with a flurry of media coverage, and since then, terms like “Occupy” and “the 99 percent” have unquestionably become part of our lexicon. The Occupy movement has managed to gain universal attention, garner celebrity support, and even shape America’s political debates. Unsurprisingly, rappers have also attempted to ingratiate themselves with the movement.

By Matt Pacana January 19, 2012

Nomadic’s acts are *Un-f**king-Believable*

“I was high as heck and I just wanted to love things.” Channeling a well-intentioned hippie at the beginning of the production, it’s a shock to see Addison Williams (COL ’14) morph into a sociopathic killer in the span of a few short hours. Yet Nomadic Theatre’s Night of One-Act Plays encourages this kind of versatility. While he plays the lovable Truman in John Behlmann’s Un-f**king-Believable, Williams casts off the character to take on a darker role in Neil LaBute’s Coax. Brought together on a sparse stage, the plays in Nomadic’s Night of One-Acts don’t sync together intuitively, but they combine to provide the audience with a wonderful range of theatre.

By Heather Regen January 19, 2012

Features

Workers unite: GSC organizes around labor rights

In the spring of 2005, 26 members of Georgetown Solidarity Committee staged an eight-day hunger strike as part of their Living Wage Campaign, a multi-year effort to improve the working conditions of the University’s subcontracted custodial staff. At the outset of the campaign, many custodial workers were not even making minimum wage. According to Gladys Cisneros (COL ’04, MA ‘06), then a member of Solidarity and now an AFL-CIO employee, GSC’s ultimate goal was a wage floor based not on the legal minimum wage, but rather on standard of living.

By Gavin Bade January 19, 2012

Unbuilt Washington: A new type of rejection

People sometimes take Washington D.C. for granted, but it’s beautiful—the manicured grass lawns surrounding the mall, the minimalist Washington Monument, the simple yet dignified White House, and the famed cherry blossoms bordering the tidal basin. But what if the grassy plane of the national mall were flooded with water à la Venetian canals, and Congresspeople were carried in paddleboats to the different federal departments? Or if walking across the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Bridge, bookended with two gothic towers straight from Medieval England, you were met with a pyramid-shaped version of the Lincoln Memorial, seemingly plucked out of Egypt?

By Mary Borowiec January 19, 2012

A journey through grief and New York

According to the “seven stages of grief” theory, dealing with loss typically means journeying through different emotions—from shock and denial to pain and guilt—experienced before acceptance. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, though, nine-year-old Oskar Schell’s own path is anything but linear. Looking through Oskar’s eyes, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close director Stephen Daldry deftly handles this fragile material and crafts a cinematic adaptation true to Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel.

By Julia Lloyd-George January 19, 2012

Editorials

NDAA an inexcusable violation of civil liberties

On December 31, President Obama signed into law the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, one of the most constitutionally questionable bills in the history of the United States. The law broadens the definition of the “War on Terror” and legalizes the indefinite detention of foreign nationals and American citizens. While the President issued a signing statement promising to disregard this final provision, one ought to remain intensely skeptical of this claim—indefinite detention, while not yet officially applied to American citizens, is already regularly practiced abroad, and Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t change that it is now part of official law.

By the Editorial Board January 19, 2012

Editorials

GSC holds Georgetown to its Jesuit values

As the only campus organization dedicated to the needs of workers, the Georgetown Solidarity Committee plays a uniquely vital role on Georgetown’s campus. Although the University administration is nominally committed to the Jesuit value of social justice, many of the subcontracted workers on campus, including Leo’s workers and custodial staff, work long hours for meager wages, all while receiving inadequate healthcare services.

By the Editorial Board January 19, 2012

Editorials

Extra funds best applied to public schools

Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and his administrative staff rang in the new year by doling out the $42.2 million that D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Natwar Gandhi, projected as a surplus from initial predictions for fiscal year 2012’s revenue. Gray allocated over half the funds—$21.4 million—to D.C. Public Schools. The announcement stood in stark contrast to the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula used in the Per Pupil Funding Analysis in the Mayor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, which established a requirement for public and public charter students to be funded equally.

By the Editorial Board January 19, 2012

American system fails to provide educational equity

Isaac Newton, one of the all-time greatest minds in the field of physics, touched upon a fundamental truth when he humbly admitted that “if I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Because knowledge is a global public good, as philosophers almost universally agree, Newton was entitled to the combined wealth of human knowledge accumulated before him; accordingly, his addition to this wealth became the right of all men after him.

By Patricia Cipollitti January 19, 2012

Canada autism registry: Safety at cost of sensitivity

Recently, the city of Ottawa, Canada formed a child autism registry. A collaboration between the Autism Organization of Ontario and the Ottawa Police Department, the registry allows 911 dispatchers to respond to emergencies involving children with autism spectrum disorder. The two organizations argued heavily for the formation of the registry, saying that it would help these children receive optimal emergency care.

By Ambika Tripathi January 19, 2012

Carrying On: Politics beyond the Hill

A few nights a week, I run roughly two miles to the White House and experience a brief moment of awe that, despite all that has happened during my time at Georgetown, the white walls still stand—untarnished, opaque, and foreboding. Every so often, I like to remind myself that I live in a city where leaders make decisions that resound further than a few city blocks. I will be the first to admit that I haven’t paid as much attention to the decisions made within those walls as some of my peers have. What I have paid attention to, however, is the image these leaders have constructed—who it is they wish me to see beyond the walls, rather than who they are within them. Just last week, I found myself lingering in front of the White House as men dressed in orange jumpsuits piled into a makeshift prison in the middle of the sidewalk clutching “Close Guantanamo” signs through the bars, in response to a promise made during Obama’s campaign that will likely go unrealized.

By Kate Imel January 19, 2012

Counterculture condemns copulation with contraception

In modern media, sex is often portrayed as a tool for pleasure. The cast of Jersey Shore doesn’t show love or commitment to each other, and Cosmopolitan only monetizes and sells sex as recreation. Instead of signifying a unique relationship, intercourse has been reduced to the simple sharing of a sensation. Even hundreds of years ago, philosopher Immanuel Kant recognized the negative ramifications of this most basic, hedonistic use of sex: “Sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite; as soon as that appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry.” According to Kant, those who engage in casual sex are reduced to mere objects and insatiable animals.

By Christian Verghese January 19, 2012

Georgetown to move SCS downtown

During his yearly sit-down with campus media outlets, University President John DeGioia announced Georgetown’s plan to provide a new location in downtown Washington for one thousand School of Continuing Studies students by the end of 2013.

By Kevin Diasti January 19, 2012

City on a Hill: Gray should side with Occupy

Last Thursday, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray released a letter sent to the head of the National Park Service requesting the removal of Occupy protesters at McPherson Square.

By Gavin Bade January 19, 2012

GUSA campaigns for vote on SAFE reform projects

Last week, Georgetown University Student Association Senior Counselor Sam Ungar (COL ’12) sent an email to GUSA senators and campus media announcing the creation of Students for a Better Georgetown, an independent advocacy group of GUSA members involved in Working Groups for Georgetown Energy, the Social Innovation and Public Service fund, and the New South Student Center. Ungar said the group intends to mount an “aggressive” pro-referendum campaign, encouraging students to vote for the fund allocations.

By Ambika Tripathi January 19, 2012

Obamas join Georgetown to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy

On Monday, Georgetown held its tenth annual “Let Freedom Ring” Concert at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall in celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Morgan Manger January 19, 2012

University releases final Campus Plan

After almost a year of hearings, Georgetown submitted its final defense of its 2010 Campus Plan to the D.C. Office of Planning on Friday.

By Amy Liu January 19, 2012

Page 13 Cartoons

This Week in Jack DeGioia’s Adventures: Georgetown’s Multibillion Dollar Donors

By the Voice Staff January 19, 2012

Tennis serves up start of spring season at VCU

With the spring season quickly approaching, the Georgetown varsity men’s and women’s tennis teams are eagerly anticipating their upcoming matchups. In 2012, both teams are facing much greater expectations, even after a promising 2011 finish.

By Melissa Sullivan January 19, 2012

Men’s basketball looks to fix flaws

The Georgetown men’s basketball team returns home this week to face Rutgers on Saturday. While no coach would scoff at sweeping such a quick turnaround, Head Coach John Thompson III wants more from his team as the gauntlet that is Big East conference play rumbles on.

By Tim Shine January 19, 2012

Sports Sermon: Parallels between NFC’s Final Two

At the beginning of this season, football experts looked at the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants and immediately wrote both off as pretenders, saying that no one in the right mind would pick either to win their division or capture a Wild Card spot. And honestly, who could blame those experts?

By Kevin Joseph January 19, 2012