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Editorials

Employees of the Corp gotta get paid

Flexible hours, great parties, opportunities for advancement, a tight community of coworkers: what’s not to like about working for Students of Georgetown? Their wages. Entry-level Corp employees earn a meager $7.55 per hour—D.C. minimum wage. That’s fine for some students, but too low for others struggling to pay their tuition and living expenses. While the Corp embodies their mission of “Students serving students” in nearly everything they do, they should make paying their employees a decent wage a priority in addition to their outside philanthropic endeavors.

Editorials

Use it (a U-lock) or lose it (your bike)

Like an ill-fitting brassiere, Georgetown has had trouble keeping its racks in order—bike racks, that is. While the bike storage areas are centrally located, bike thieves have had no problem pilfering student owned transportation of late. At least 16 students have reported stolen bicycles to DPS this semester. Though this number isn’t staggering, it is significant enough to merit attention. There is good news though: it isn’t that difficult to keep your bike chained to the rack.

Editorials

More Flex Dollars will set you free

There’s only one thing that Dining Services fears more than the norovirus: competition. When Georgetown introduced Flex Dollars, a program intended to give students choices beyond Leo’s for their meal plans, last year, they made it too small (a maximum of $100 per term) and too limited (just a number of venues on campus) to make a real difference. Over a year later, the program hasn’t gotten any better. It’s time for Georgetown to expand the Flex Dollars program so that the initiative finally lives up to its name and gives students real meal flexibility.

Leisure

Too many Lies in this Body

If you were hoping for Ridley Scott’s latest blockbuster to be in the same league as the director’s critically lauded Roman epoch, 2000’s Gladiator, prepare to be disappointed. Body of Lies is a middling action flick that, though well-made, falls short of Scott’s award-winning masterpiece.

Leisure

Granny chic

There’s a girl in my art history class who always looks so put together. She wears really great scarves, gold jewelry (nothing too flashy, always tastefully antiqued), cozy looking sweaters, and fabulous tortoiseshell glasses. Her look is very classic and very now, but there’s only one way I can think to describe it: grandma chic. She dresses like an old lady.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Gang Gang Dance, “Saint Dymphna”

Hundreds of avant-noise bands start their careers banging out a mind-numbing racket in their basements. But only a small handful emerge from that dank womb (still dripping with primordial ooze) to produce something as staggeringly beautiful and conceptually challenging as Gang Gang Dance’s Saint Dymphna.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Dillinger Four, “C I V I L W A R”

Does anyone else miss socially aware pop-punk music? I’m not talking about Green Day and Sum 41’s gimmicky politico-punk balladry, but something more along the lines of what Dillinger Four perfected fourteen years ago. With a shallow catalog of only four full lengths to date, this long-lasting band has finally released its Chinese Democracy in CIVIL WAR, a record six years in the making.

Leisure

Dessert it yourself — The New DIY

Although it’s already mid-October, I’ve declared this fall to be the Summer of George! Although the results were mixed for the oft-chunky George Costanza, my roommate Dan and I are all about gettin’ into being healthy and lovin’ love. The first step on our road to healthy living begins where any bildungsroman should, in the dessert aisle.

Features

Fall Fashion 2008

This fall, fashion takes its cue from the movies. Books like Brideshead Revisited and Atonement set the stage for the never-ending parade of hacking jackets, cocktail dresses and felted hats that marched out of movie screens, onto runways and into stores. High waists and sheer, fluttery sleeves abound, and it’s now possible to sit in class looking like you’re relaxing on some far off terrace, surrounded by Georgian columns with a gin fizz in your hand. This season, draw inspiration from those women from the 30s who rediscovered their waists after the flappers draped their curves away for a decade.

Leisure

Myth, Moonwalking, and the Mississippi

Black Theater Ensemble’s … And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi sounds like a bait-and-switch, drawing people in with a whimsical title that turns out to be a metaphor. But there really is a Jesus, and he does moonwalk the river in light-up Chuck Taylors. It doesn’t make much sense, but then again neither does the play. Luckily, both are worth seeing anyway.

Voices

Technology & its discontents: it’s my life in a box

It’s hardly a new problem, this constant mediation of experience into information and information into broadcasts. We take pictures just to tag them, have exciting adventures that immediately become emails or blog notes, distill our day-to-day life into status updates and Twitter shout-outs. The Facebook profile box is just the latest way to process the world through processes. Rather than experience itself, we have the experiencing of the experiencing, thinking about how we’ll tell other people about what we’re doing right now. It’s a meta-existence—thinking about what we’re doing rather than doing it.

Voices

Lessons from the tweenage wasteland

On the edge of the scene, I sympathized with the intimidated professionals and the weary grandmother, but part of me envied the energetic horde—social anxiety, overactive hormones, and all. Watching from the outside, I noticed the loss of my connection with their age group and I felt old. Unlike members of that raucous mob, I am no longer engaged in the exuberant assertion of my newly-discovered individuality. To wake up, I require two or more shots of espresso. I cannot imagine the preemptive wasting of energy on the doorstep of academia at the beginning of a day. I doubt any of the frightened, drowsy suits at the bus stop could either.

Page 13 Cartoons

The dearth of discussion about depression

The repercussions of depression are great for those who deal with it daily. Depression is more than just its physical symptoms.

Antidepressants can dramatically affect your social life at college; anyone who’s been on them knows that it’s not a good idea to drink while taking medication. Some would choose not to drink anyway, but being on medication means that you never get to make that choice.

Voices

Unmasking the Man at the DNC and RNC

About a month ago, I was staring into the barrel of a gun. I remember the nauseating feeling in my stomach—an intoxicating blend of extreme fear, shock and blinding anger. During my time spent protesting the Democratic and Republican national conventions in Denver, Colorado and St. Paul, Minnesota, I felt these emotions many times: fear because of the burning sensation as my body was coated in chemical spray; shock at seeing clouds of gas, tinted red by the lights, engulfing us as we ran, coughing and gagging: even terror at hearing the concussion grenades bursting over our heads, making us stumble amidst the whirlwind of chaos.

News

GU to get Google Mail

Two years after Google unveiled Google Apps for Education, Georgetown’s University Information Services has decided to implement the service which will replace the University-run GUMail.

News

Caught Red-Handed

Department of Public Safety Officer Maurice Hunter responded to a student tip and apprehended a suspected bicycle thief near the Darnall Hall bicycle racks on Sunday evening. Two other suspects ran from the scene and remain at large.

News

One is the loneliest number

Within 90 days, selling individual containers of beer and liquor that are a half-pint or smaller will no longer be legal in Ward 2—which includes Georgetown—Ward 6 and Ward 1. The act was passed last week by the D.C. City Council.

News

Corp sees record revenue

Students of Georgetown, Inc. has announced that its 2008 fiscal year was a record-breaking one that saw $4,167,967 in revenue, and an increase in overall operating income from fiscal year 2007.

News

Shoplifters target Gtown

The Metropolitan Police Department has recently increased patrols in Georgetown ‘s business district in response to an upswing in shoplifting on M Street and Wisconsin Avenue. According to an email from Second District Commander Mark Carter, the officers who are part of this increase have been reassigned from separate late night patrols.

News

Magis Row themes revealed

The Office of Student Housing has announced the themes for the houses on Magis Row, a group of fourteen miniature LIving and Learning Communities in University townhouses.

News

City on a Hill: Michael Brown for D.C. Council

The 1973 Home Rule Act, which outlines the District’s self-governance, screwed the District of Columbia over in a variety of ways. It denies Congressional representation and made any legislation passed by the D.C. Council subject to the whims of Congress. But the setting aside of two of the D.C. Council’s four at-large seats for non-Democrats is one of the most flagrant violations of fair representation.

Editorials

Facing norovirus, University didn’t blink

Too often Georgetown’s response to a campus crisis can be described in four words: too little, too late. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case when the norovirus, a highly contagious disease marked by vomiting, diarrhea, and fever, hit campus last week. Hours after the first feverish student appeared in the Georgetown University Hospital emergency room, the administration jumped into action. Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson kept the Georgetown community informed with numerous email updates and press conferences, Facilities took steps to stem the spread of the virus, and a combination of departments provided support to those unlucky enough to have caught it. With the exception of Georgetown’s replacement dining options while Leo’s was closed, Georgetown’s administration deserves credit for its rapid, comprehensive response.

Editorials

Vote for ‘that one’ to rebuild America

“Every generation needs a new revolution.” Although Thomas Jefferson spoke these words over 200 years ago, he could have been talking about the 2008 presidential election. With less than a month left before the election, America is in its worst shape in recent memory. The economy is crumbling, we’re stuck in an unnecessary war that has cost us thousands of lives and hundred of billions of dollars, and our civil liberties have been shredded by eight years of executive power run amok. These conditions all point to one thing: the time for our revolution, a revolution of rebuilding America and moving away from the failed policies and ideology of the past eight years, has come. For this reason, the Voice editorial board endorses Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for President of the United States.

Sports

It’s not so bad

Trojans, Gators, Buckeyes, and Bulldogs, fear not: Although your teams have already marred their records with the dreaded “one loss” that has plagued national championship hopefuls in recent years, your title hopes are still alive and kicking. Gone are the days when undefeated teams could be left out of the BCS title game, as was the case with Auburn in 2004. Not long ago, BCS detractors pointed out that the greatest flaw in the now ten-year-old system was its inability to accommodate more than two unbeaten teams. But after 11-2 LSU took home the trophy last year, more complicated problems have surfaced: what does the committee do when three teams, even four, are tied atop the rankings with one or two losses?