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News

SFS Dean Kasper set to resign

At the end of this semester, School of Foreign Service Dean Bryan Kasper will leave Georgetown for a job at the State Department. Kasper has worked for Georgetown since 1998.

Features

Best of 2011

Movies: Drive, Harry Potter, Bridesmaids, 50/50, Midnight in Paris, Super 8, The Muppets, The Help, Moneyball, Contagion Music: Fleet Foxes, Kanye West & Jay-Z, Adele, The Weeknd, Bon Iver, Coldplay, The Decemberists, The Strokes, Childish Gambino, Tom Waits

Voices

Even Georgetown students struggle with mental illness

As Georgetown students, we pride ourselves on being accepting of all those who study and work at our school. To most students, the days of widespread institutional racism, classism, and heterosexism are gone. Bureaucracies have been established, policies enacted, and we all live thinking that justice has overcome bigotry. And, in many ways, it has—when I’ve encountered racism, it has been with my distant, parochial relatives, not with my classmates at Georgetown. But while students would camp out in Red Square, stage protests, and hold rallies against a racial or social injustice on campus, no one will venture to openly discuss issues of mental illness.

Voices

Faster-than-light particles may contradict Einstein himself

It was rumored that only three people in the world have understood Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it,” physicist Niels Bohr once said. Quantum theory is now recognized as the most significant advancement in physics of the last century, yet recent experiments in Europe suggest that neutrinos can travel faster than light, in seeming violation of quantum theory and Einstein’s equations.

Voices

Carrying On: An N64 to fall back on

Over Thanksgiving break, my roommates sent me home with a request. Actually, it was more like an order: “Don’t come back unless you bring your Nintendo 64.”

Voices

Political correctness muddles discussion of race on campus

A few years back, several incidents pushed issues of race and diversity at Georgetown to the forefront of the campus’s mind. In 2007, the attack of a gay student on campus prompted the formation of the LGBTQ center at Georgetown. In the same year, some criticized the priorities of Georgetown students when a protest on the alcohol policy received more attention than a vigil for the Jena Six that was held on the same day. In 2008 and 2009, students protested the Hoya and the Georgetown Heckler for publishing satirical articles that they found insensitive toward minorities and women who had faced assault.

Editorials

Black Friday: True American capitalism

Riots, gunfire, pepper spray, police brutality: although often attributed to the Occupy protests or political revolution in the Middle East, these images actually depict scenes from 2011’s Black Friday shopping brouhaha. Assaults over two-dollar waffle makers, parking lot robberies, a woman pepper spraying a crowd vying for an Xbox 360, and police knocking a man unconscious for attempting to protect a prized video game are all among this year’s Black Friday excursions gone horribly wrong.

Editorials

NBA misses its shot at meaningful reform

While most of the sports world was focused on football and the fallout of the Penn State scandal, National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern and Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter were secretly hashing out an agreement to end the 150-day NBA lockout. Then, last Saturday, the Commissioner’s Office announced that an agreement was in place, and that the season would tentatively begin on Christmas day.

Editorials

Emulate Sweeney’s spirit, not his actions

While most Georgetown students were enjoying turkey and family time, one of our fellow students found himself incarcerated by a violent military regime. Derrik Sweeney had been studying abroad in Egypt, but was forced to bring his semester to an end after being arrested near Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the country’s most recent pro-democracy protests. Along with two other American students, Sweeney was captured after the demonstrations turned violent, and was accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at security forces

Leisure

Tinkered and tailored to perfection

Though Intro to International Relations professors may paint the Cold War as a nostalgic period of simple bipolarity, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the period’s politics were anything but straightforward. The Cold War of British novelist and retired spy John le Carré is dizzyingly complex, and offers no reassurances of the West’s moral superiority. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson is the latest to take on le Carré’s work, adapting his novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy into a film with a star-studded cast led by Gary Oldman. Thankfully, Alfredson abandons none of the book’s complexity in this stylish, throwback spy flick.

Leisure

These digital canvases fail to inspire

For an exhibit entitled A Theatre of Objects, artist Andy Holtin’s collection of video channels at Flashpoint Gallery near Mount Vernon does little to entertain or stimulate the viewer beyond its original use of media. Using a trio of varying yet simplistic scenes, Holtin attempts to “understand and narrate human interaction and intent, even with the vaguest of clues.” A secondary goal is to reevaluate the role of the video equipment itself, making it a dynamic medium rather than simply stationary machinery. While this objective adds an intriguing dimension to the favored medium of our YouTube generation, it fails to make up for the lack of captivating content in the scenes themselves.

Leisure

Wheatgrass shots, limes, and carrotinis

At Georgetown, we live on a campus where most beverages are either caffeinated or alcoholic (or, in the heyday of Four Loko, both). So D.C.’s latest food truck, Juice Revolution, can offer Hoyas a new, healthy and refreshing drink option—live juice. Instead of prepackaged juice, which is inevitably pasteurized, Juice Revolution offers its patrons a series of live juices packed with vitamins and antioxidants made from fresh fruits and veggies.

Leisure

Critial Voices: Trey Songz, Inevitable

When Trey Songz rocketed to mass popularity in 2010 with hit singles “Say Aah” and “Bottoms Up,” he set a high standard for his music. With the internet buzzing with speculation about Chapter 5, his upcoming 2012 studio album, the five-track EP Inevitable provides a clear preview of Songz’s newest work. Unfortunately, Inevitable without question misses the high mark of his 2010 singles, and what remains is a steaming pile of rap that leaves former fans praying that the inevitable transformation of the EP into Chapter 5 never comes.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Curren$y, Jet World Order

In concept and construction, the latest album from prolific rapper Curren$y, Jet World Order, is a lot like Lil’ Wayne’s We Are Young Money or Jay-Z’s The Dynasty: Roc la Familia—albums worth of tracks from associates and labelmates, with different artists featured in various combinations in each song. An album of this type usually works nicely because it gives listeners the opportunity to listen to a familiar artist while exposing them to the stylings of associated up-and-comers. Unfortunately, on Jet World Order, Curren$y himself only appears in three of the album’s twelve tracks, and without him the other artists fail to hold up.

Leisure

Box Office, Baby!: No Green for NC-17

Walking into a screening of Shame, an upcoming film labeled with the dreaded NC-17 rating, I felt a tingle of excitement. No, not the excitement a pubescent boy feels before opening his first Playboy, but the excitement that I was about to witness a quality film. Unfortunately, the stigma of pornography that an NC-17 rating carries has left many independent films like Shame at the cruel mercy of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Leisure

Trash Talk: In sickness and in wealth

This Thanksgiving, the Kardashian clan has a lot to be thankful for. Rob came in a respectable second in ABC’s Dancing with the Stars finale (his sister Kim only lasted three weeks). Khloe’s husband Lamar Odom returned to work thanks to a breakthrough in negotiations between the NBA and the players’ union. Kourtney revealed the shocking news that she and boyfriend Scott Disick are pregnant with their second child. And this Sunday, the next installment of the Kardashian saga, Kourtney & Kim Take New York, premiered on E! to an impressive 3.2 million viewers.

Sports

Women rebound with Round-Up wins

Instead of sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner in their homes across the country, the Georgetown women’s basketball team feasted on the Georgia Bulldogs and the UNLV Lady Rebels. After a tough start to the season, the No. 20 Hoyas have since attained a laudable record of 5-2, especially considering the caliber of their opponents.

Sports

Miltenberg guides Hoyas to Title

Since his days as a student, Chris Miltenberg (MSB ‘03) has bled Hoya blue, which made his transition from athlete to coach especially seamless. The Peter Tegen National Women’s Coach of the Year channeled his Georgetown tradition to his women’s cross country team, guiding them to the national championship.

Sports

The Sports Sermon

The nuclear winter that almost came out of the NBA lockout could have been the most devastating occurrence in the league’s history. Just a short time ago, it was looking like the NBA was going to suffer a fate similar to that of the NHL in 2004, when the hockey league missed out on an entire season.

Sports

Double Teamed: Young Hoyas Turning Heads

To say that people were expecting a down year from the Georgetown men’s basketball team before the start of the season may be an understatement. The Hoyas were picked to finish tenth in the Big East in a poll of the conference’s coaches, their lowest ranking since the conference expanded to 16 teams in 2005.

Sports

Upstart Hoyas ready for tussle in Tuscaloosa

The Georgetown men’s basketball team entered this season surrounded by doubts about the quality of their squad. Could the Hoyas fill the void left by free-scoring guards Chris Wright and Austin Freeman? Did they have a capable enough inside presence to succeed Julian Vaughn as the rock in the middle at Big Man U?

Sports

Clark reaches milestone, Hoyas overcome slow start to beat IUPUI

It took longer than expected, but Jason Clark scored his 1,000th career point Monday night. It also took the Hoyas (5-1) longer than they expected, but they eventually pulled away from IUPUI (2-5) to capture an 81-58 victory.

Voices

We’ve got 99 problems, but income inequality ain’t one

Everyone is painfully aware that the proportionate income of the richest Americans is growing. Like a cancerous tumor, the wealth of America’s elite threatens to envelop us all. As their collective fortunes reach critical mass, the moral fabric of our society will tear apart, fire and brimstone will fall from the sky, machines will rise up against the human race, and Nicki Minaj will be the last cultural legacy of humanity. Or maybe not. Unfortunately, the dystopian visions enthusiastically broadcast from Zuccotti Park by the Occupy Wall Street movement present a distorted picture of this economic trend. True, the income of the top one percent has increased steadily from roughly 10 percent of the total national income in 1985 to 17 percent in 2009.